Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature 9781351919395, 2007023672, 9780754662945

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Masculinity and EMotion in Early ModErn English litEraturE

Women and gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger in the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and gender in the Early Modern World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the americas, asia, and africa. submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. titles in the series include Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew Matthew Biberman Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts Edited by Mary Ellen lamb and Karen Bamford Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640–1660 Marcus nevitt Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England Edited by Michelle M. dowd and Julie a. Eckerle Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe A Cross-Cultural Approach Julie campbell

Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English literature

JEnnifEr c. Vaught University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2008 Jennifer c. Vaught 2008 Jennifer c. Vaught has asserted her moral right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English literature. – (Women and gender in the Early Modern World) 1. English literature – Early modern, 1500–1700 - history and criticism. 2. Masculinity in literature. 3. Emotions in literature 4. Men in literature. i. Vaught, Jennifer c. 820.9’353’09031 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English literature / edited by Jennifer c. Vaught. p. cm. – (Women and gender in the Early Modern World) includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English literature – Early modern, 1500–1700 – history and criticism. 2. Masculinity in literature. 3. Emotions in literature. 4. Men in literature. 5. Men – Psychology – history – 16th century. 6. Men – Psychology – history – 17th century. 7. Masculinity – history. i. Vaught, Jennifer c. Pr428.M37M37 2007 820.9’353–dc22 2007023672

isBn 9780754662945 (hbk) this volume has been printed on acid-free paper

contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments introduction: Men Who Weep and Wail: Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English literature Part One: The Intertextual Poetics of Scholarly Men: Affect in Arboreal Works by Spenser and Jonson 1. 2.

Passionate Protestantism: spenser’s dialogic, feminine Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene a Pen as Mighty as the sword: stoical anger in Jonson’s Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter

Part Two: Emotional Kings and their Stoical Usurpers in Marlowe’s Edward II and Shakespeare’s Richard II 3. 4.

“Monster of Men!”: androgyny, affect, and Politically savvy action in Marlowe’s Edward II “Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes”: Woeful rhetoric and crocodile tears in shakespeare’s Richard II

Part Three: Chivalric Knights, Courtiers, and Shepherds Prone to Tears in Pastoral Romances by Sidney and Spenser 5. 6.

crossdressers in love: Men of feeling and narrative agency in sidney’s New Arcadia “to sing like birds i’ th’ cage”: lyrical, Private Expressions of Emotion in Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene

Part Four: Demonstrative Family Men: Masculinity and Sentiment in Works by Shakespeare, Lanyer, Cary, Donne, Walton, and Garrick 7. 8.

“‘affection! thy intention stabs the center’: Male irrationality vs. female composure in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale nightmarish Visions of grief: lamentable Men in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne

vii ix 1

25 29 58

73 74 88

115 117 136

157 160 177

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9.

fathers and rogues: Peddling Middle-class Values by shedding tears on stage in david garrick’s Florizel and Perdita

Postscript Bibliography Index

192 209 213 235

list of illustrations William hamilton, The Duke of York Discovering His Son Aumerle’s Treachery Richard II. Act 5. Scene 2, oil on canvas, late 1790s, folger shakespeare library.

102

henry fuseli, Richard II. Act 5. Scene 5. “I wasted Time and now doth Time waste me, / For now hath Time made me his numbring clock,” engraving, 1803, folger shakespeare library.

106

John James halls, Winter’s Tale. Antigonus—“This is the chase— Well may I get aboard!” Act 3, Scene 3, engraving, 1807, folger shakespeare library.

170

8.1

Edvard Munch, Geschrei (The Scream), lithograph, 1895, national gallery of art, Washington, d.c.

179

9.1

James Mcardell after a picture by Benjamin Wilson, Mr. Garrick in Hamlet. Act 1. Scene 4, engraving, 1754, folger shakespeare library.

193

James Mcardell after a picture by Benjamin Wilson, Garrick as King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1, engraving, 1754, folger shakespeare library.

194

William hogarth and charles grignion after a painting by William hogarth, Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III: Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 7, engraving, 1746, folger shakespeare library.

195

simon françois ravenet, Mrs. Pritchard as the Character of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale in Garrickiana, engraving, 1754, folger shakespeare library.

201

caroline Watson after a painting by robert Edge Pine, Garrick Delivering the Ode to Shakespeare at the Jubilee, engraving, 1783, folger shakespeare library.

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John saunders after a picture by Benjamin Van der gucht, Mr. Garrick as Steward of the Stratford Jubilee, engraving, 1769, folger shakespeare library.

205

4.1

4.2

7.1

9.2

9.3

9.4

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acknowledgments i wish to thank a number of institutions and individuals for their support of this project from its germination to its fruition. Most recently, i am grateful to the louisiana Board of regents for providing me with an atlas grant for a sabbatical leave during 2006–07 to complete this book. i am indebted to the university of louisiana at lafayette for matching the funds from the Board of regents for this sabbatical that included a month-long stay at the folger shakespeare library in Washington, d.c. i also wish to thank the college of liberal arts at the university of louisiana at lafayette for giving me a summer research grant in 2003 to fund my continued work on this book project. i am grateful to dean a. david Barry for helping me secure permissions for visual material. My department heads and colleagues at the university of louisiana at lafayette and northern Michigan university where i have taught during the writing of this book have been enormously supportive. those i wish to thank in particular are Marcia gaudet, head, department of English at the university of louisiana at lafayette; robert glenn, Professor Emeritus of English at northern Michigan university; and James schiffer, head, department of English at northern Michigan university. i am further indebted to the English departments at the university of louisiana at lafayette and northern Michigan university for travel funds that enabled me to present bits and pieces of this longer project at national and international conferences. i also wish to thank audiences at a number of conference special sessions and seminars for their questions and comments in response to papers i delivered there. these conferences included meetings of the international spenser society in toronto, the renaissance society of america in san francisco, the international congress on Medieval studies at Western Michigan university in Kalamazoo, the shakespeare association of america in new orleans and Victoria, British columbia, and the World shakespeare congress in Valencia, spain. thanks above all goes to Erika gaffney, my commissioning editor at ashgate Publishing, for expressing interest in this project at several of these conferences and for sending my completed manuscript to an anonymous reader whose detailed comments were extremely thoughtful and constructive. i am also indebted to allyson Poska and abby Zanger, editors of the ashgate special series on Women and Gender and the Early Modern World, for including my book project in their series. i wish to thank georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at the folger shakespeare library, for leading me indirectly to the cover illustration for this book and the folger reading room staff for helping make my visit there a truly delightful and rewarding month. i am grateful to art resource in new york city for permission to use their photograph of Laocoon for my cover image, and i am indebted to the folger shakespeare library for permission to reproduce nine illustrations from their collection and the national gallery of art in Washington, d.c. for permission to reproduce their lithograph of Munch’s “the scream.”

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Parts of several chapters from this book have appeared in different forms in earlier publications. i wish to thank the following journals for granting me permission to reprint these essays: “spenser’s dialogic Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene,” Studies in English Literature 41.1 (2001): 71–89; “Men Who Weep and Wail: Masculinity and Emotion in sidney’s New Arcadia,” Literature Compass 2 (2005): 1–16; and “Masculinity and affect in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: Men of feeling in the renaissance through the Enlightenment,” 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 10 (2004): 87–107. thanks also goes to Jacqueline Vanhoutte, associate Professor of English at the university of north texas, for inviting me to contribute to this Special Feature volume of 1650–1850 on “Enlightening the renaissance.” the collection of essays that i edited and introduced with the assistance of lynne dickson Bruckner, Grief and Gender: 700–1700 (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), has been instrumental in my thinking about the related topic of masculinity and emotion. i am indebted to the contributors of this volume for their collective insights on the ways in which gender identity shapes emotional expressiveness during the medieval and renaissance periods. individuals i wish to thank in particular for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of chapters in this book are alfred david, Peter lindenbaum, and Joan Pong linton at indiana university and theresa M. Krier at Macalester college in st. Paul, Minnesota. Judith anderson, who read and responded to chapters in their prior forms with remarkable care and attention, is perhaps the best mentor anyone could hope to find. For countless walks around the Indiana University library arboretum and rides to and from Kalamazoo during which we talked about this project at its various stages on route to annual meetings of the spenser and sidney societies i am truly grateful. her intellectual inspiration, unfailing support, and friendship over the years have been my compass during the labyrinthine, yet ultimately satisfying journey of writing this book. finally, i wish to thank my parents, carl and Jane Vaught, and my husband, Will, for “being there” during the development and growth of this project. My father read parts of a number of chapters at various stages, offered encouragement, and believed sincerely, as he often said, that “i would get where i was going.” traces of his philosophical passion for st. augustine are immanent throughout this book. to my mother i am grateful for teaching me to balance work and play, to appreciate the humor of academia in its most absurd forms, and to question intuitively conventional beliefs and assumptions. to her a brain without a heart is incomplete. i have dedicated this book to Will because he has taught me that my mother was right. to him i am indebted for endless hours of conversation about this project at home in louisiana or on the beaches of the upper Peninsula of Michigan, for sometimes indulging my worries and obsessions about finishing it, and for helping to keep me happy in the process. he has taught me that experiencing as well as thinking about all kinds of passions are vital.

For Will

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introduction

Men Who Weep and Wail: Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English literature Weeping and wailing and other demonstrations of excessive emotion often function as sources of power for men in early modern English literature. though medieval and renaissance women are usually represented as the sex more prone to such emotional outbursts than men, men also express a wide range of powerful emotions—grief, sadness, melancholy, anger, despair, patience, and joy—in early modern poetry, prose, and plays.1 in this study on masculinity and emotion in works by spenser and shakespeare and a number of their contemporaries, i focus on literary 1 in keeping with classical precedents, excessive displays of emotion are often gendered as feminine in medieval and early modern discourse. in the late fourth century st John chroysostom criticizes women’s excessive mourning and lamentation by focusing on their violent, ritualized gestures of “baring their arms, tearing their hair, making scratches down their cheeks”: Commentary on St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, trans. sister thomas aquinas goggin, vol. 2 (Washington, d.c.: catholic university Press of america, 1960-69), p. 177 as cited by Patricia Phillippy in Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2002), p. 15. andreas hyperius warns his readers that “it is very uncomly and wommanish to lament without measure” and criticizes those who indulge in a “womannish kinde of wayling and shricking”: The Practice of Preaching, Otherwise Called the Pathway to the Pulpit (london: thomas East, 1577), pp. 171-2, 174. robert Burton similarly notes the shamefulness of those who “almost goe besides themselves” by lamenting like “those Irish women”: The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. nicolas K. Kiessling, thomas c. faulkner, and rhonda l. Blair, vol. 2 (oxford: clarendon Press, 1997), p. 176. see Elizabeth M.a. hodgson, “Prophecy and gendered Mourning in lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum,” SEL 43 (2003): 103-4, for a brief discussion of hyperius and Burton in relation to the early modern cultural concern over the excessive mourning of grieving women. for recent, critical discussions of the gendering of the emotions as feminine and reason or rationality as masculine in the early modern period see: Phyllis rackin, “historical difference / sexual difference” in Privileging Gender in Early Modern England, ed. Jean Brink (Kirksville, Mo: sixteenth century Journal Publishers, 1993), pp. 46, 50-51 and gwynne Kennedy, Just Anger: Representing Women’s Anger in Early Modern England (carbondale: southern illinois Press, 2000), p. 5. the galenic theory of the humoral body positing that women are colder and moister than men contributed to the belief that women are “more susceptible to extreme emotion”: Michael schoenfeldt, “‘commotion strange’: Passion in Paradise Lost” in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, ed. gail Kern Paster, Katherine rowe, and Mary floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 45. see also ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (new york: cambridge

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representations of men from different professions and social classes and the power of their emotional expressiveness in general and their shedding of tears in particular. i examine the profound impact of the cultural shift in the English aristocracy from violent warriors to courtiers or gentlemen on the emotional registers of all kinds of men in early modern literature. although a number of literary critics rightly note that women are often imagined as anxiety-producing, contaminating, or debilitating for men during this period, i demonstrate that those men who ally themselves with women by adopting conventionally feminine forms of expression such as weeping and wailing are often strengthened rather than weakened as a result.2 i trace the gradual emergence of men of feeling in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary texts and the blossoming of this popular version of manhood during the eighteenth century. in a variety of works ranging from the epic, lyric, and romance to drama, pastoral, and prose biography, male demonstrations of emotion in public forums and private, interior spaces are empowering, liberating, dignifying, and (politically and financially) useful. gender tends to shape and limit the ways in which both sexes display a variety of emotions in early modern texts representative of different literary genres. Men often express their emotions stoically or moderately, or vent intense emotions through violent action.3 Women frequently grieve by weeping and wailing and traditionally university Press, 1980), p. 42, in which he notes the early modern suspicion that the uterus “weakens rationality and increases the incidence and violence of passions in women.” 2 see, for example, Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern Europe (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1996), p. 5; coppélia Kahn in Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1981), p. 12; and Janet adelman in Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to the Tempest (new york: routledge, 1992), pp. 3-4. 3 literary and non-literary representations of men who express their emotions stoically, moderately, or violently often reflect the existing cultural decorum about how they ought to display their feelings. letters, sermons, religious tracts, and courtesy books provide concrete evidence of the vicissitudes of such expectations. Plutarch’s letter to apollonius in response to the death of his son, for instance, epitomizes the ancient tradition of equating stoicism with manliness and effeminacy with slavishness: “yes, mourning is verily feminine, and weak, and ignoble, since women are more given to it than men, and barbarians more than greeks, and inferior men more than better men”: Moralia, vol. 2, trans. frank cole Babbitt (london: heinemann, 1928), 2.165-7. Phillippy notes that male reformers similarly treated stoical, moderate grief as valuable and masculine: Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England, p. 8. on p. 12 she adds that in a 1531 English translation of Erasmus’ De Morto Declamatio he encourages men to moderate their sorrow: “to have always a stedfast mynde is a token of a perfecte wyse man”: A treatyse perswading a man paciently to suffer the death of his freende (De morto declamatio) (london: thomas Berthelet, 1531). Violence, however, can contribute to the acceptability of excess grief in men. in shakespeare’s Macbeth Malcolm praises grieving Macduff’s decision to act violently in response to the slaughter of his family by exclaiming, “this tune goes manly”: The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. g. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), IV.iii.235. In The English Gentleman, by contrast, richard Brathwait discourages such violence in a man and argues, in the words of Mervyn James, that contemplation is “a suitable avocation for the caroline gentleman”: The English Gentleman (1630; reprint, amsterdam: theatrum orbis terrarum, 1975), p. 47 as cited by James in

Introduction

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perform the cultural work of mourning.4 nevertheless, early modern writers also feature those who redefine customary rhetoric about how men and women tend to display a range of emotions. as we might expect, these writers do not necessarily depict men as the more rational and less emotional sex. a number of the male figures I discuss in this study are prone to excessive demonstrations of emotion and even hysteria. their social class, ethnic background, and age largely determine the emotional registers associated with them.5 in general, these men are at greater liberty to shed tears in the privacy of their own homes rather than in public. some early modern women focal in my project are not prone to tears and respond stoically, angrily, or even aggressively to misfortune or loss. not surprisingly, the decorum for how men and women ought to express emotion during this period varies in response to myriad historical, cultural, and religious factors.6 Genre also influences the impact Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1986), p. 394. 4 in Book i of spenser’s Faerie Queene una begins to “waile & weepe” when she discovers that redcrosse has abandoned her (ii.7.9). yet in Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (new york: E.J. Brill, 1996), p. 3, Marjory lange notes that prominent early modern writers such as “Elizabeth i, rachel speght, aemilia lanyer, and Mary Wroth” tend not to write about tears in an effort to avoid reiterating largely negative stereotypes about the natural predisposition of women to excess emotion. lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum provides an exception to this general rule because she focuses on mourning women who shed holy tears in response to Christ’s crucifixion. Literary critics and historians who discuss mourning, ritualized lamentation, and preparing and dressing the corpse as women’s work are sharon t. strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns hopkins university Press, 1992), pp. 119 and 173; Juliana schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1992), p. 18; and david cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (oxford: oxford university Press, 1997), p. 428. 5 a number of literary critics, historians, and early modern writers discuss how class, ethnic background, and age shape literary and cultural expectations for the emotional expressiveness of men and women. in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 2002), p. 14, Joshua scodel argues that imaginative writers from the Elizabethan period through the restoration present extreme passion as an aristocratic sign of “true nobility.” in Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750 (oxford: clarendon, 1998), p. 225, ralph houlbrooke notes that immoderate grief was often linked with ethnic groups other than the English. the irish, for example, were notorious for their “‘howlings and lamentations’ at funerals”: J. Weever, Ancient funerall monuments within the united monarchie of Great Britain, Ireland, and the islands adjacent (1631), pp. 13-17 as cited by houlbrooke. in Treatise on Laughter (1579), trans. gregory david de rocher (university of alabama, 1980), p. 98, laurent Joubert states that “weeping is easier for those who by their constitution and nature, or by reason of their age, sex, or culture, are weaker and moister, which is why we see phlegmatic people tear promptly, along with children, elderly people, and women.” 6 in the “introduction” to Speaking Grief in English Literary Culture: Shakespeare to Milton, ed. Margo swiss and david a. Kent (Pittsburgh: duquesne university Press, 2002), p. 8, swiss and Kent note that the increased tolerance for written expressions of grief in seventeenth-century culture is the result of a number of factors. these factors include the

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of gender on emotional expressiveness. the following episodes from Book iii of spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene (1590) and shakespeare’s history play Richard II (1595) and his romance The Winter’s Tale (1612) showcase the comedy and tragedy surrounding early modern men who weep and wail (and women who do not). collectively, these episodes illustrate the vital, oftentimes positive ways in which emotion shapes the fictive lives of men and women in early modern literary works. in Book iii of The Faerie Queene spenser lends comedy to scudamour’s weeping and wailing over the abduction of his beloved, amoret, on their wedding day. Britomart discovers the woeful chivalric knight lamenting on the ground and administers “med’cine” to his “grief” by venturing to rescue his beloved from the enchanter, Busirane. When scudamour is unable to accompany Britomart into the house of Busirane where the enchanter has imprisoned amoret, his “grieuous” groans, sighs, and sobs become particularly comic and even ridiculous through the exaggerated style in which spenser presents them. out of frustration, scudamour “wilfully” throws himself on the ground where he “did beat and bounse his head and brest full sore.”7 though male knights in medieval and renaissance literature often deliver laments or complaints over the unattainable affections of their ladies, spenser surprises the reader with hyperbolic details such as scudamour’s dramatic gestures of banging his head and chest on the ground. his brief interchange with Britomart challenges the misleading association of masculinity with reason and femininity with emotion. ironically, Britomart keeps her cool, while scudamour loses his head. shakespeare’s Richard II highlights the connection between masculinity and emotional expressiveness, though in a tragic rather than a comic context. King richard weeps and wails over the loss of his kingdom when he returns from ireland to discover that his troops now support his political opponent, Bolingbroke. realizing that he will be deposed and eventually murdered, richard delivers his famous speech, “for god’s sake let us sit upon the ground / and tell sad stories of the death of kings.” in response to richard’s lament, the Bishop of carlisle exclaims, “wise men ne’re sit and wail their woes, / But presently prevent the ways to wail.”8 he scorns the soon-to-be-deposed King for weeping and wailing on the ground in a pathetic fashion and doubts his heroic masculinity as a result. their dialogue highlights the imposition of rigid standards of decorum for the expression of emotion by male leaders in the public eye. the stoical Bishop views unrestrained demonstrations of emotion as unmanly and effeminizing. as clergyman thomas fuller similarly states in 1642, “excessive was the sorrow of King richard the second ... beseeming him Protestant reformation and its repudiation of the doctrine of purgatory so that the bereaved no longer prayed for their loved ones there; the increase of literacy and individualism that valued self-expression; the cult of melancholy; and the rising interest in naturalism and psychology that led to personalized displays of affect on tomb inscriptions at grave sites. 7 Edmund spenser, Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin greenlaw, charles grosvenor osgood, fredrick Morgan Padelford, et al., 9 vols. (1932-57; reprint, Baltimore: Johns hopkins university Press, 1966), iii.xi.7, 8, 13, 27. all subsequent quotations of The Faerie Queene are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text by book, canto, stanza, and line number unless noted otherwise. 8 King Richard II, ed. Peter ure, the arden shakespeare (1956; reprint, london: routledge, 1989), iii.ii.145, 155-6, 178-9.

Introduction

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neither as king, man, or christian.”9 Both religious figures scorn Richard’s lack of moderation. nevertheless, early modern men and women in a variety of literary genres often counter or transgress all kinds of limitations placed on how others expect them to express emotion. in shakespeare’s tragicomedy The Winter’s Tale hermione states that she is “not prone to weeping, as [her] sex / commonly are.” yet in response to leontes’ false claim that she is guilty of adultery, hermione proclaims with dignity over the loss of her husband’s faith that she has “that honourable grief lodg’d here which burns / Worse than tears drown.” hermione’s composure and self-restraint are as unconventional and remarkable as the extent of leontes’ tears in response to the loss of his family. he sheds tears beside the grave of hermione and his young son, Mamillius, for sixteen years during which he endures the tragic consequences of misjudging his wife.10 hermione’s heroic patience, abiding hope for the return of her exiled daughter, Perdita, and forgiveness of leontes are ultimately more powerful than the savagery of her husband’s jealousy. Like Hermione, her friend Paulina defies convention by venting her anger at leontes and falsely reporting that his wife has died. she becomes furious at the King of sicilia for triggering the death of his son and ordering the abandonment of his infant daughter on a foreign shore. as a result of the charade Paulina orchestrates, leontes grieves over his loss of hermione until Perdita returns to sicilia as a young woman and figuratively restores her mother back to life. In Act V the aggressive and violent dimension of Paulina’s chastising rhetoric provides leontes with a means of expressing remorse and performing penance for his transgressions. Even though the debilitating emotion of grief resists language profoundly and is ultimately inexpressible, signifying loss through “sad stories of the death of kings” in Richard II or tears of contrition for the destruction of a family reunited by the end of the play in The Winter’s Tale is psychologically regenerative (iii.ii.156). these textual examples from spenser and shakespeare foreground the multiple ways in which emotional expressiveness in general and tears in particular are often empowering for early modern men and women in a variety of imaginative writings. yet at the wrong place and time excessive, immoderate demonstrations of emotion can become debilitating for both sexes. this book seeks to answer the following questions about early modern versions of masculinity in relation to the emotions. How do definitions of masculinity fluctuate according to factors such as a man’s profession, social class, and age in early modern literature? how do these material factors alter the emotional registers generally 9 thomas fuller, The Holy State (cambridge: roger daniel for John Williams, 1642), pp. 52-3, as cited by Phillippy, Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England, p. 70. likewise, in The Practice of Preaching (1577), p. 171, hyperius advises men to avoid the “effeminate weakness” of immoderate grieving in response to death. in “the semiotics of Masculinity in renaissance England” in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James grantham turner (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1993), p. 239, david Kuchta demonstrates that such “effeminacy” was often equated with a “loss of moderation” in the early modern period. 10 The Winter’s Tale, ed. J.h.d. Pafford, the arden shakespeare (1963; reprint, london: routledge, 1984), ii.i.108-12 and iii.ii.239.

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acceptable for fictive representations of men and boys during this period? To what extent do men and women in a number of literary works by spenser, shakespeare, and their contemporaries moderate or stoically restrain their emotions? When are unrestrained displays of pity, compassion, desire, and righteous anger empowering for men in particular? under what circumstances are women, rather than men, associated with stoicism, anger, aggressiveness, and violence? how do public and private settings influence male and female expressions of emotion in various genres? in what ways do early modern literary works unsettle the conventional associations of masculinity with reason and femininity with emotion? how do selected texts from this period challenge the customary assumption of the supremacy of reason over emotion in Western culture? above all, this study refutes the notion that literary conceptions of masculinity and femininity are hegemonic or transhistorical. likewise, rules of decorum for male and female expressions of emotion in a number of early modern works are highly mutable. Paradoxically, focusing on the subject of masculinity and emotion is a feminist project.11 Including the study of men in the field of gender studies implicitly challenges the misleading association of men with the mind and women with the body and avoids perpetuating the illusion that men are the ungendered sex.12 like women’s 11 the topic of masculinity has generated a considerable amount of scholarly interest over the past decade. the following, select references illustrate the variety of recent approaches to this fruitful and intriguing topic. Key, representative works on theories of gender and masculinities across historical periods include Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (new york: routledge, 1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (new york: routledge, 1993). Kaja silverman focuses on “deviant” masculinities “that eschew oedipal normalization” in relation to theoretical principles, novels, and film in Male Subjectivity at the Margins (new york: routledge, 1992), p. 2. discussing medieval and renaissance Europe as well as contemporary american culture, Marjorie garber explores how clothing constructs (and deconstructs) masculinity in Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (new york: harper collins, 1993). A number of critics have examined medieval and Renaissance texts in light of the field of men’s studies, which “originates within feminism” and is an effort to study men as gendered: see, for example, Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. clare a. lees, thelma s. fenster, and Jo ann Mcnamara (Minneapolis: university of Minnesota Press, 1994), p. xi. in contrast to the focus on heroic warriors in Medieval Masculinities, i deal in particular with men who define themselves in other than aggressive, violent terms. in her recent study From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ruth Mazo Karras similarly analyzes three non-violent models of masculinity—at court, the university, and the craft workshop—in the late Middle ages. for a useful examination of the history of manhood in England from 1560 to 1640 see alexandra shephard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (oxford: oxford university Press, 2003). 12 see Elizabeth V. spelman, “Woman as Body: ancient and contemporary Views,” Feminist Studies 8 (1982): 109-31, for a discussion of the traditional association of men with the mind and women with the body. This artificial division between the sexes tends to identify women with the emotions, which are often imagined as tied to the body in some way. in Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1997), p. 18, susan James contends that “the emergence of a

Introduction

7

studies, men’s studies as a complementary field of inquiry often exhibits feminist goals and aims by resisting the oppression that results from what clare a. lees describes as rigid “classifications of male and female.”13 A number of literary figures central in my study actively court gender confusion or are noticeably androgynous. in the broadest, theoretical terms this book illustrates that there are multiple kinds of masculinities, instead of several hegemonic categories, and that these male as well as female gender roles are cultural constructions that are performative and even masquerades.14 although recent theories of gender have focused on both men and women, they tend to under emphasize issues of history and agency. By reducing historical reality to language, and agency to discourse, they overlook cultural material issues of class, physiology, and anatomy that influence the gendering of the emotions and the body, which is matter not reducible to words.15 the pronounced cultural shift in the English aristocracy from a class of violent warriors to more civilized courtiers or gentlemen with comparatively little military experience gradually transformed literary standards of manhood in the renaissance. a bloody or scarred body was no longer the predominant sign of a man in a variety of genres. although we customarily imagine medieval and renaissance men in heroic, militaristic terms, I focus on the fictive lives of emotionally expressive figures who occupy private, interior settings as well as the battlefield. My study of men who weep and wail is an effort to validate the power of the emotions and celebrate the sustained, but far from exclusive association of emotional displays with femininity in imaginative clear division between the body and the mind served to attach women more firmly to the physical world, and a comparable split between reason and passion condemned them to the realm of affect.” in Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism (new york: routledge, 1990) editors Joseph a. Boone and Michael cadden note that a number of contemporary critics have “begun to embody the feminist injunction to return gender to the universal term Man” (p. 2). 13 Medieval Masculinities, p. xvii. 14 for intriguing analyses of gender as a cultural construction see Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 7, and Joan Wallach scott, Gender and the Politics of History (new york: columbia university Press, 1988), p. 32. Butler is well-known for her emphasis on the performative dimension of gender: see, for instance, Bodies That Matter, p. 1. in “unveiling Masculinity: the construction of gender in Mark 6: 17-29,” Biblical Interpretation 2 (1994), p. 36, Jennifer a. glancy asks provocatively, “if femininity or womanliness is a masquerade, why not masculinity?” 15 in Medieval Masculinities, pp. xviii-ix, lees remarks on this gap in current thinking about gender. she states, for instance, that “there is little historical study in Gender Trouble.” lees continues that Butler’s reduction of “historical reality” to language “may be read as implying that the history of male or female oppression is knowable only as a narrative of that discourse (despite her rhetorical assertions to the contrary). such oppression is felt in the flesh and blood of bodies, however restricted to language our representation of it is.” lees responds to Butler’s argument about the discursive nature of agency by noting that “the problem is not one of the enormous power of language as a representation of reality, but one of the reductive notion of agency within history analyzed as discourse: ‘discourse’ can no more deal with change than it can with oppression.” the collection Medieval Masculinities thereby challenges contemporary theories of sex and gender that deal inadequately with literary history and agency.

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Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

writings by early modern male and female authors—spenser, shakespeare, sidney, Marlowe, aemilia lanyer, Elizabeth cary, Jonson, donne, izaak Walton, and david garrick.16 in my study of masculinity and emotion in early modern English literature i consider the ways in which a number of historical upheavals stimulated reimaginings of gender categories. Perceptions of the softening of aristocratic versions of manhood resulted in part from the change in profession for many upper-class Englishmen from the militaristic to the civilian arts.17 i explore the sustained impact of this historical 16 schiesari, p. 266, similarly calls for a “feminist rethinking of the emotions” that avoids devaluing or disparaging them. in Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1999), p. 7, Julie Ellison adds that “the renovation of sentiment as worthy of our most complex thinking and teaching” is an important dimension of “feminist literary scholarship.” 17 recent critical works on the gradual shift of the English aristocrat from violent warrior to more civilized courtier or gentleman are wide and varied. in Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, p.128, shephard states that literary and historical studies of “a qualitative shift toward less violent cultural norms” in early modern England often refer to norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization, trans. Edmund Jephcott (oxford: Blackwell, 1994). in his ground-breaking work, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (oxford: clarendon, 1965), pp. 263-4, 269, lawrence stone argues that the anxiety among the aristocracy over how to redefine themselves in other than violent, militaristic terms intensified toward the end of the sixteenth century. In “The Crisis of the aristocracy in Julius Caesar,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 75-111, esp. 106-8, Wayne a. rebhorn notes that from the reign of henry Viii through the civil War “the aristocracy became a class of courtiers who often had little or no military experience” (p. 107). in her recent “irishmen, aristocrats, and other White Barbarians,” Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997): 494-525, debora shuger discusses the discouraging of the violence endemic to an aristocratic culture of warriors in the writings of spenser and davies. she demonstrates that both James harrington, a seventeenth-century political writer, and lawrence stone report that “between 1580 and 1620 the English nobility ceded much of their power—and their property—to the crown and commons, forsook their ancient habits of violence, and submitted their traditional liberties to the rule of locally administered royal law” (521): see James harrington, The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. J.g.a. Pocock (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1977), pp. 196-9, 606-10 and stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, pp. 7, 15, 201, 208, 250, 256. interestingly, English courtesy manuals from Elyot to Peacham tend to omit military expertise from “the complete ideal of the gentleman”: see ruth Kelso, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (urbana: university of illinois Press, 1929), p. 48, as cited by shuger, p. 520. other literary critics who discuss the demilitarization of the English aristocracy include linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620 (chicago: university of illinois Press, 1984), pp. 159-67, 278-81, and 291 and richard halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1991), p. 237. in Society, Politics and Culture, pp. 308-415, esp. 375-6, James explores the rise of the “new man” in relation to an emerging code of honor associated less with war, pedigree, and descent and more with intellect, learning, and virtue. These “new men” included “lawyers, officials, merchants, even husbandmen and artisans.” he adds that “the traditional ascription to noblemen of innate qualities as men of war ... disappeared” by 1640 (p. 408).

Introduction

9

shift on a variety of masculine identities in early modern writings. the widelydocumented transformation in the English aristocracy from warriors to courtiers or gentlemen generated a class of men whom castiglione in The Book of the Courtier felt compelled to defend against charges of effeminacy.18 from the ascension of Elizabeth i to the throne in 1558 through the beginning of the Puritan revolution in 1640, profound changes in the structure of the family such as the increasing authority of the wife and mother at home introduced further ambiguity in definitions of gender roles. as William gouge argues in “of domestical duties,” men and women should be considered partners in marriage.19 the shifting balance of power in the English household contributed to the somewhat anxious relationship between men and women, who were not as different from one another as prior generations once believed.20 Early modern perceptions of the similarities between male and female bodies added to anxiety-ridden fears of gender ambiguity that rigid cultural expectations about how men and women should express emotion attempted to counter. thomas laqueur, who has discussed galen’s classical theory of the “one-sex body” in relation to renaissance anatomists, sheds light on how conceptions of physiology influenced cultural dictates placed on the emotional expressiveness of men and women.21 according to laqueur’s critical assessment of early modern interpretations of galenic theory, males and females share the same genitalia—either external or see Jennifer low, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) for how aristocratic men redefined themselves as dueling courtiers rather than battling warriors. in The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness, and Honour (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2003) Markku Peltonen explores why dueling became an integral part of the renaissance culture of courtesy. although medieval trials by battle were often considered barbarian, duels of honor became pivotal for the renaissance ideology of civility. in contrast to stone, James, and low, Peltonen contends that duels of honor were not “a remnant from medieval honour culture” but came to England as a result of the adoption of the “italianate ideology of courtesy and civility” (p. 13). 18 Baldesar castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. charles s. singleton (new york: doubleday, 1959), pp. 36 and 92. thomas hoby translated this work into English in 1561. in The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, p. 245, halpern relevantly notes that “the aristocracy felt emasculated by conversion from a militarized to a consuming class.” 19 see Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern Europe, pp. 17 and 25, for a discussion of gouge’s “of domestical duties” in response to shifts in the gender hierarchy at home. 20 in “‘the Part of a christian Man’: the cultural Politics of Manhood in Early Modern England,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England, ed. susan d. amussen and Mark a. Kishlansky (Manchester: Manchester university Press, 1995), p. 215, Susan Dwyer Amussen remarks on the fluidity of gender categories as suggested by the frequency of cross-dressing among all classes of people in the early modern period. she notes that “a steady stream of women—often celebrated in ballads—put on male clothing and went to sea; men put on women’s clothes and disguises in riots.” 21 here i am borrowing stephen orgel’s useful phrase describing laqueur’s theory in “nobody’s Perfect: or Why did the English stage take Boys for Women?” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 13.

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Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

internal—but possess a unique body chemistry consisting of four elements and “humours.”22 unlike male bodies, which were thought to exhibit more of the higher elements of air and fire, female bodies were imagined as containing more of the lower elements of earth and water and were considered to be colder and moister as a result. from a premodern perspective the body chemistry of women explained why they possessed insufficient heat to push their genitals outside of the body at birth and were more prone to weeping than men. Early modern women, whose bodies were commonly depicted as “leaky vessels,” were also thought to possess less innate ability to control their emotions.23 as the dutch physician levinus lemnius asserts in The Secret Miracles of Nature (1658), “women are subject to all passions and perturbations ... a woman enraged, is besides her selfe, and hath not power over her self, so that she cannot rule her passions, or bridle her disturbed affections, or stand against them with force of reason and judgment.”24 although the galenic view of anatomy coexisted with the archaic belief in witchcraft, the cultural misperception that women are more prone to sentimentality than men still persists today.25 Because of the persistent link of sentiment with the female body in early modern discourse, i deal in particular with men whose affective rhetoric, gestures, and tears tend to ally them with women. recently, literary critics have demonstrated that early modern writers often depict women as sources of anxiety for men.26 a number of the men i examine in this study exhibit a considerable degree of anxiety in response 22 thomas laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). For a useful overview of Galen’s influence on Renaissance understandings of male and female bodies see Bruce r. smith, Shakespeare and Masculinity (oxford: oxford university Press, 2000), p. 15. 23 For a relevant discussion of figures like Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as “leaky vessels” see gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England, pp. 32-3. in A Treatise of Melancholie, a facsimile of the 1586 edition (new york: columbia university Press, 1940), p. 144, timothy Bright notes that “children are more apt to weepe, then those who are of greater yeares, and women more than men, the one having by youth the body more moist, rare, and soft, and the other by sex.” 24 levinus lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature (london, 1658), pp. 273-4. 25 in Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1999), editors Mary chapman and glenn hendler note in their introductory essay that prior “studies of gender in american sentimental culture have focused almost exclusively on women ... as if critics fear the results of deconstructing the alignments of reason, commerce, and the public sphere with men, and feelings, domesticity and the private sphere with women” (p. 7). the contributors to their collection, however, rightly “question any uncomplicated gendering of sentiment as feminine” (p. 8). 26 in Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England Breitenberg discusses masculine subjectivity in terms of cultural, historical factors such as humoral psychology and changing conceptions of the family. His study differs significantly from psychoanalytic readings of the formation of masculine identity through separation from the debilitating or contaminating figure of the mother by Kahn in Man’s Estate, p. 12, and Janet adelman in Suffocating Mothers, pp. 3-4. as these latter two works illustrate, a number of critics have discussed the topic of masculinity in relation to shakespeare, but fewer have done so in relation to the works i discuss by sidney, spenser, Marlowe, lanyer, cary, Jonson, donne, Walton, and garrick as well as shakespeare. though Jonson is known as one of the most aggressively

Introduction

11

to the sexual or rhetorical authority of women, but others voice comparatively less or little such anxiety. i build on current discussions of the literary formation of masculine identities in the early modern period by illustrating that writers of poetry, prose, and plays frequently imagine emotionally expressive men and boys who are strengthened by their positive alliances with women and weakened by their separation or alienation from them. Even though some men in the texts i discuss steal women’s capacities to move their audiences through laments, complaints, oral narratives, or tears, their speech acts simultaneously highlight how potent these conventionally feminine forms of expression can be.27 overall, this book aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about masculinity and emotion in early modern literary texts and cultural contexts.28 masculine figures in the English Renaissance, his ambiguous relation to femininity is less widely addressed. 27 in The Gendering of Melancholia, pp. 7 and 15, schiesari argues that melancholia, a frequently intellectualized emotion, was considered a positive virtue for men but less flattering for women in the renaissance. 28 the subject of emotion has recently stimulated a great deal of interest from a wide range of disciplines. Pioneering studies of emotion in relation to literary and cultural studies include norbert Elias’ proposal of a theory of emotional change in The Civilizing Process and stone’s discussion of sentiment in relation to the family in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800. Paster is widely noted for her inaugural study of the humoral body entitled The Body Embarrassed and for the collection of essays that she, Katherine rowe, and Mary floyd-Wilson have recently edited, Reading the Early Modern Passions. in Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2004) Paster discusses the language of affect in early modern drama in relation to its cultural context. literary and cultural studies of emotion in terms of gender in early modern England include schiesari, The Gendering Of Melancholia; lynn Enterline, The Tears of Narcissus: Melancholia and Masculinity in Early Modern Writing (stanford: stanford university Press, 1995); Kennedy, Just Anger; and Grief and Gender: 700-1700, ed. Jennifer c. Vaught with lynne dickson Bruckner (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). the number of recent studies on melancholy include douglas trevor’s The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and reflect an abiding interest in this emotion focal in early modern works such as timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie (1586) and robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). in contrast to prior, critical discussions of melancholy and its association with elite intellectuals, in Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature i focus on a breadth of emotions expressed by upper-, middle-, and some lower-ranking men representative of different professions and trades. over the past thirty years or so writers of literary and cultural criticism have debated the early modern controversy over the status of the emotions. in “the two faces of humanism: stoicism and augustinianism in renaissance thought” in A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1975), pp. 19-73, William J. Bouwsma analyzes the competing strands of thought on renaissance perceptions of the dignity, dangerousness, or inappropriateness of the emotions. in Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England, pp. 15-19, schoenfeldt explores the relation between stoic and augustinian responses to the emotions and early modern psychology. schoenfeldt cites thomas Wright’s Passions of the Minde in Generall, ed. thomas o. sloan (1604; reprint, urbana: university

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Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

Interest in the emotions has blossomed in the last decade, in fields ranging from anthropology and sociology to philosophy and feminism. nevertheless, relatively few literary critics focus on men and the range of emotions they express in works by spenser, shakespeare, and their contemporaries. a common misperception about early modern people is that they “were not particularly conscious of emotions” and were “lacking a vocabulary to discuss emotional experience directly.”29 on the contrary, in the texts focal in this study male and female writers and literary figures often represent or display emotions of “grief,” “anger,” “sorrow,” “despair,” or “joy” with great subtlety. the different terms early modern people chose to describe these emotions highlight gradual shifts in how they thought about these complex concepts expressive of interior states of mind. though the words “passions” and of illinois Press, 1971) as a pivotal source that presents the emotions—described as the “passions” or “affections” in the early modern period—as a disease (p. 17). future quotations of Wright are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text. i have modernized the spelling in this edition for ease of reference. in Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1988), p. 79, n. 86, shuger remarks that Wright’s rhetorical treatise is exemplary of the early modern vacillation between the stoic and augustinian poles of interpreting emotion. see robert cockcroft, Rhetorical Affect in Early Modern Writing: Renaissance Passions Reconsidered (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) for further discussion of early modern emotion in relation to rhetoric and linguistics. over the last decade in particular, studies of the emotions have emerged in numerous disciplines. representative works on emotion in relation to anthropology are catherine a. lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1988) and her “the cultural construction of Emotions” in Language and the Politics of Emotion, ed. catherine a. lutz and lila abu-lughod (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1990), pp. 3-13. lutz’s observation that “emotion is a sociocultural construct” has transformed current research on the emotions (p. 7). relatively recent critical works on the emotions in terms of history, philosophy, cognitive science, and feminism include: Peter n. stearns and carol Z. stearns, “Emotionology: clarifying the history of Emotions and Emotional standards,” American Historical Review 90 (1985): 813-36; Barbara h. rosenwein, “review Essay: Worrying about Emotion in history,” American Historical Review 107 (2002): 821-45; adele Pinch, Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen (stanford: stanford university Press, 1996); susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in SeventeenthCentury Philosophy; Mary thomas crane, Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 2001); antonio d’amasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (new york: Putnam, 1994) and The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (new york: harcourt Brace, 1999); and alison M. Jaggar, “love and Knowledge: Emotion in feminist Epistemology” in Gender /Body/ Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing, ed. alison M. Jaggar and susan Bordo (new Brunswick: rutgers university Press, 1989), pp. 145-171. Jaggar notes importantly that emotions are “historical products, bearing the marks of the society that constructed them” (p. 159). 29 carol Zisowitz stearns and Peter n. stearns cite this common misperception about early modern people in Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America’s History (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1986), p. 22, as quoted by Kennedy in Just Anger, p. 2.

Introduction

13

“affections” were commonly used in the renaissance before the term “emotion” took hold around 1660, the words “sentiment” and “sensibility” became popular ways of referring to the sensitive dimension of the psyche in the eighteenth century.30 The word “sentimentality” first used in 1770 highlights the somewhat negative attitude toward excessive amounts of passion before and after the french revolution that inaugurated the celebrated age of reason.31 linguistic metamorphoses of these various terms for feeling illuminate how conceptions of the emotions change over the centuries and in response to specific historical factors. As we know, various individuals are not necessarily passive in the midst of these transformations. those who contest and revise their culture’s expectations about how men and women ought to express emotion exhibit a degree of agency as a result. Men who weep and wail often evoke an ambivalent, double-edged response from early modern writers, readers, and dramatic audiences because of two, competing strands of thought on the emotions within the humanist tradition: stoicism and augustinianism. the former emphasizes the cultivation of indifference, or apatheia toward the dangerous threat of the emotions and the establishing of rigorous and rational self-control.32 stoicism became increasingly popular among some humanists because of numerous translations of cicero, seneca, and Plutarch during the 1560s and 1570s.33 nevertheless, other English writers tend to combine aristotle’s emphasis on moderating instead of eliminating potentially destructive emotions in the Nicomachean Ethics with st augustine’s impassioned critique of stoicism in The City of God.34 Both aristotle and st augustine emphasize the potential power 30 Steven Mullaney provides this date for the first usages of this term in “Emotion and Its discontents,” a paper presented at a meeting of the Modern language association in chicago, 1999, as cited in “introduction: reading the Early Modern Passions” in Reading the Early Modern Passions, p. 2. 31 although the terms “sentiment,” “sympathy,” and “sensibility” were used throughout the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, they took on specific, increasingly negative nuances in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Meanings for the words “sentiment” and “sentimental,” which first appeared in English in the 1740s, were largely neutral, or slightly positive but became derogatory in the wake of the french revolution. in the 1750s garrick attempted to combat such negative meanings of the term “sentiment” through his productions and performances on stage. from 1770 through 1789 when the reign of terror began, the term “sentiment” was increasingly associated with anarchic passions that threatened to dominate the balancing force of reason: leigh Woods, Garrick Claims the Stage: Acting as Social Emblem in Eighteenth-Century England (Westport, conn.: greenwood Press, 1984), p. 84. By the end of the eighteenth century the relatively new word “sentimental” had acquired the suggestions of “the shallow, the excessive, and the insincere” in the novel, drama, and philosophical writings that this term still has today: r.f. Brissenden, Virtue in Distress: Studies in the Novel of Sentiment from Richardson to Sade (new york: harper and row, 1974), pp. 17 and 49. 32 cited from A Usable Past, p. 25. as Bouwswa notes, the stoical branch of humanism took hold around 1550 in England. 33 James, Society, Politics and Culture, p. 384. 34 scodel, Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature, p. 2. in the English Gentleman (1630), pp. 78, 347, 356, and 459, richard Brathwait similarly emphasizes the virtue of moderation.

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Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

of the emotions to move one to virtuous deeds.35 the opposition and complex interaction between these two schools of thought—stoicism and augustinianism— persist throughout the early modern period in works by men and women.36 in the seventeenth century Ben Jonson and Elizabeth cary, both of whom had converted to roman catholicism at one point, wrote works endorsing stoicism.37 St Augustine’s profound influence on humanist and Reformation writers such as Erasmus, luther, and calvin insured the vital and continuing impact of his positive view of the emotions within the catholic and Protestant traditions.38 in The City of God augustine argues that “affections” that “follow the guidance of right reason” are neither “diseases” or “vicious passions” and those people not excited by any emotion are “monstrous” and lacking in “humanity.”39 in Erasmus’ Praise of Folly the character named folly critiques stoicism in an augustinian fashion by exclaiming, “Who would not flee in horror from such a man, as he would from a monster ... a man who is completely deaf to all human sentiment ... no more moved by love or pity than ‘a chunk of flint.’”40 as Erasmus and calvin suggest, the augustinian branch of humanism tends to focus on the dignity of tears in particular and the spiritual benefit of emotional expressiveness more generally. Proponents of this latter school of thought believed that both the emotional and intellectual faculties—the heart and mind—are divine gifts.41 they also espoused the virtues of grace and dependence on God leading to salvation rather than rigorous self-sufficiency. Augustinians reacted negatively to the stoical view that excessive demonstrations of emotions by weeping or wailing are depraved. the french Protestant reformer calvin, for example, criticizes “new stoics who count it depraved not only to groan and weep but also to be sad and care-ridden.” he claims that those who follow the example of christ’s tears “have nothing to do with this iron-hearted philosophy.”42 the sermon John donne preached on the widely-cited biblical verse, “and Jesus wept” (John 11.35) from

35 see Nicomachean Ethics iii.8 as cited by Jill Kraye in Moral Philosophy, vol. 7, Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. charles B. schmidt (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1988), p. 361 and The City of God, trans. Marcus dods (new york: Modern library, 1950), 9.5 and 14.8-9, here p. 285. 36 see richard strier, “against the rule of reason: Praise of Passion from Petrarch to luther to shakespeare to herbert,” in Reading the Early Modern Passions, p. 23. 37 in A Usable Past, p. 62, Bouwsma notes that “humanists of more stoic tendencies ... seem to have been less likely to become Protestants than those of the more augustinian kind.” in Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1995), p. 199, claudia l. Johnson discusses feminist appropriations of stoicism, a theoretical approach relevant to cary’s play. 38 James, Passion and Action, p. 25. 39 augustine, The City of God, 14.9, pp. 454 and 456. 40 desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans. clarence h. Miller (new haven: yale university Press, 1979), p. 46. here Erasmus cites Virgil, Aeneid, Vi.471. 41 Bouwsma, A Usable Past, p. 26. 42 John calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John t. Mcneill, trans. ford lewis Battles, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), iii.viii.9.

Introduction

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the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1622 exemplifies the prevailing emphasis on the spiritual, dignifying power of tears within the augustinian, Protestant tradition.43 Since a number of literary figures I discuss are empowered by affective utterances that manifest their inner world, my study more generally concerns early modern conceptions of interiority, particularly in relation to men. such personal, subjective matters are commonly but not exclusively associated with women in the Middle ages and renaissance.44 tears and other displays of woe are recurring tropes for medieval and early modern men in a variety of literary traditions. i examine a number of emotionally expressive, renaissance men—scholars, kings, chivalric knights, and family men among others—who struggle to establish both public and private identities as well as active and contemplative lives with varying degrees of success. a number of the weeping and wailing men i examine withdraw into private, interior, or enclosed spaces with positive or negative ends. these spaces, which range from the inner rooms of castles and houses to a study, hermitage, or even prison cells, provide an effective means of imagining and representing the psyche. as architectural metaphors, they sometimes represent the labyrinthine workings of the inner life. Because the rhetoric of inwardness was often, but not always depicted as feminine in the early modern period men frequently convey feelings of joy, sorrow, or pain through feminized signs of affect—tears, groans, or outcries—that tend to ally them in a positive fashion with women who weep and wail.45 these semiotic forms gesture toward the inward and gendered terrain of the mind. 43 in Telling Tears in the English Renaissance, pp. 156-85, lange discusses donne’s sermon on the biblical verse “and Jesus wept” (John 11:35). in her intriguing, comprehensive study of weeping more generally she considers tears in renaissance medical literature, Poetic Miscellanies, sermons, and the religious poetry of donne, herbert, and crashaw. however, she does not examine tears in works by sidney, spenser, or shakespeare. strier explores the insufficiently recognized praise of “strong, even uncontrolled emotion” within the Judaeochristian tradition in “against the rule of reason,” pp. 23-42. douglas trevor contends that spenser’s endorsement of holy expressions of sadness denotes him as a Protestant poet whose religious beliefs differ from the theological orthodoxy of luther and calvin in “sadness in The Faerie Queene” in Reading the Early Modern Passions, pp. 240-52. 44 in “friars, sanctity, and gender: Mendicant Encounters with saints, 1250-1325” in Medieval Masculinities, pp. 103-4, John coakley notes that “when we view friars’ portrayal of men against the contrasting background of their portrayal of women, it becomes apparent that men’s own inner life is, if not a completely taboo subject of investigation, at least one approached with a good deal of reticence.” in The Limits of Eroticism in Post-Petrarchan Narrative: Conditional Pleasure from Spenser to Marvell (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1998), p. 9, Dorothy Stephens attests to the continued identification of interiority with femininity in the renaissance. see also the useful collection of essays on the related subject, Privacy, Domesticity, and Women in Early Modern England, ed. corinne s. abate (aldershot: ashgate, 2003). yet in “deep inner lives, individualism and People of honour,” History of Political Thought 16 (1995): 190-207, William ian Miller reminds us that the literary focus on male affect and interiority dates back to the icelandic saga. 45 Well-known studies of the rhetoric of inwardness include anne ferry, The “Inward” Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1983), p. xi and Katharine Maus in Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1995). see also theresa M. Krier on interiority and

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i approach the topic of masculinity and emotion in works by spenser, shakespeare, and their contemporaries through the bi-focal lens of gender studies and intertextuality.46 i focus in particular on how intertextual dialogues among writers shape their literary representations of men empowered by emotion.47 My notion of dialogue is informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of language and Julia Kristeva’s view of intertextuality that she developed in response to his writings. as Bakhtin argues in “the Word in dostoevsky,”: the word is not a thing, but rather the eternally mobile, eternally changing medium of dialogical intercourse. it never coincides with a single consciousness or a single voice ... in the process the word does not forget where it has been and can never wholly free itself from the dominion of the contexts of which it has been part.48

Kristeva provides a useful gloss on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism when she states that he conceives of the “‘literary word’ as an intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (fixed meaning), and as a dialogue among several writings.”49 Because the early modern writers i discuss share a common literary and culture context their works featuring men who weep and wail often contain parallel episodes, similar characters and motifs, and some intertextual connections. instead of arguing that one text directly influenced another, I focus on the dialogic relation of selected works by Spenser, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries. These influential literary texts, femininity in Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser, Classical Imitation, and the Decorums of Vision (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1990). on privacy in relation to gender see lena orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1994); orest ranum, “the refuges of intimacy” in Passions of the Renaissance, ed. roger chartier, trans. arthur goldhammer, vol. 3 of A History of Private Life, ed. Philippe ariés and georges duby (cambridge: harvard university Press, 1989); and s.P. cerasano and Marion Wynne-davies, ed., Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private in the English Renaissance (detroit: Wayne state university Press, 1992). 46 Kahn illustrates the fruitful connection between gender studies and intertextuality by arguing that the ideology of classical versions of masculinity in shakespeare’s roman plays resulted from how he read and incorporated bits and pieces from latin authors like Plutarch: Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women (new york: routledge, 1997), p. 2. 47 in Roman Shakespeare, p. 20, Kahn cites several feminist critics who approach shakespeare’s plays in terms of intertextuality and who focus on how his borrowings tend to efface, silence, and undermine the agency of women. they “problematize source study” by uncovering a “gender bias” in shakespeare’s selection and treatment of his sources. these critics deal specifically with the female figures of Lucrece in The Rape of Lucrece and with lavinia in Titus Andronicus. see, for example, Patricia Klindienst Joplin, “the Voice of the shuttle is ours,” Stanford Literature Review 1 (1984): 25-53; stephanie h. Jed, Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1989); and Jane o. newman, “‘and let Mild Women to him lose their Mildness’: Philomela, female Violence, and shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece,” Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 304-26. 48 Bakhtin, “the Word in dostoevsky” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. r.W. rotsel (ardis, 1973), pp. 150-69, here p. 167. 49 The Kristeva Reader, ed. and trans. toril Moi (new york: columbia university Press, 1986), p. 36.

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a number of which were extremely popular, help gauge the responses of sixteenth, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century readers and theatrical audiences to shifting definitions of masculinities in relation to emotion. The goal of this project is not exhaustive coverage of the full range of early modern literary works dealing with these matters, an impossible task. instead, i focus on texts paired for purposes of comparison and that represent a variety of different genres spanning this time period. in an attempt to add to the body of literary scholarship about early modern masculinities and emotion i examine men who weep and wail in Books i and Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590–96) and in shakespeare’s Richard II (1595) and The Winter’s Tale (1612). Spenser’s first and sixth books, which frame the 1596 version of his poem, contain a number of emotionally expressive male figures who occupy private, interior spaces. While Richard II, written in the mid-1590s, coincided with the publication of Book Vi of The Faerie Queene, it is less this coincidence than richard’s histrionic displays of emotion that have made it an appropriate choice for my study. in this play the word “grief” occurs more times than in any other work by shakespeare.50 The Winter’s Tale, the title of which alludes to oral narratives told by women, throughout foregrounds those who are empowered by rhetoric and ultimately by tears. together the two plays roughly span the dramatist’s career: Richard II is an early history play, whereas The Winter’s Tale is a late romance and therefore belongs to the genre that is traditionally considered an escape from the material fact of history. the main focus of my project remains on close readings of these and other carefully selected literary texts for signs of how, why, where, when, and under what circumstances emotional expressiveness in general and tears in particular are empowering for men. i examine these pivotal works by spenser and shakespeare in dialogic relation to those by their contemporaries in order to explore how male figures situated in a variety of literary genres and representative of various professions and social classes express emotions, ranging from grief to joy. in Part one i discuss the intertextual poetics of scholarly men in Book i of spenser’s Faerie Queene and Jonson’s Timber: or Discoveries upon Men and Matter (1640) in order to highlight their contrasting views on the dignity or dangerousness of the emotions from augustinian or stoic perspectives. in Part two i analyze the perils of excessive emotion for kings in Marlowe’s Edward II (1593) and shakespeare’s Richard II (1595), history plays that highlight the legendary power of weeping and wailing for these public figures whose private desires ultimately cost them their kingdoms. in Part three my examination of sidney’s New Arcadia (1593) and Book Vi of The Faerie Queene—two romances with pronounced pastoral elements— focuses on chivalric knights, retired courtiers, shepherds, and writers whose displays of affect and retreats from the public eye into private spaces evoke varying degrees of anxiety or ambivalence. in Part four i compare shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (1612) to sir izaak Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne (1640) and david garrick’s Florizel and Perdita (1756)—his popular reinvention of shakespeare’s play. in this section i not only discuss the prominence 50 Maurice charney, “Marlowe’s Edward II as Model for shakespeare’s Richard II,” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 33 (1994): 39.

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of emotionally expressive husbands, fathers, and sons in works by shakespeare, Walton, and garrick but also in donne’s own poems and sermons, aemilia lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), and Elizabeth cary’s Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry (1613). demonstrative family men in this wide range of works set the stage for literary men of sensibility in the eighteenth century. all the literary texts i examine in this project illustrate that the emotions are overwhelmingly powerful, either in a positive or negative sense. tears of confession spiritually heal and redeem redcrosse Knight on his quest for holiness in Book i of The Faerie Queene, but calidore’s erotic waves of passion for Pastorella lead him astray from his quest for the Blatant Beast in Book Vi. the stoical Bishop of carlisle criticizes shakespeare’s richard ii for his devastating lack of self-control when he weeps and wails on the ground in response to his impending deposition and murder, whereas leontes performs a “saint-like sorrow” by grieving for his wife and children for sixteen years in The Winter’s Tale (V.i.2). similarly, in The Life of Dr. John Donne Walton’s focus on donne’s psychologically restorative displays of grief over his loss of numerous family members emphasizes the preacher and poet’s spiritual as well as intellectual dignity. overall, the poetry, prose, and plays i analyze in this book reveal in an aristotelian fashion that moderate expressions of emotion by all kinds of men in public and private spaces are generally acceptable but that immoderate or ill-timed displays of affect are often sources of anxiety or ambivalence. following the teachings of st augustine, numerous writers i discuss from spenser to garrick feature weeping and wailing men who are strengthened rather than weakened by tears in a variety of literary genres. the majority of popular texts i include in this study highlight the shaping influence of Aristotle and St Augustine on early modern attitudes toward the emotions. yet the works i discuss by Jonson and cary, which they wrote for elite groups of intellectuals familiar with the classical, rhetorical tradition of seneca and cicero, endorse stoicism. aristotelian moderation yoked with augustinian toleration for emotional expressiveness by men and women was becoming the literary rage rather than stoicism. this book develops in response to relatively recent, critical studies on the relation of masculinity to the emotions in early modern literary texts. the two works that i would single out as having the most sustained impact on my project are g.W. Pigman iii’s Grief and English Renaissance Elegy and Juliana schiesari’s The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature. Pigman published his ground-breaking study in 1985 prior to more recent studies on the history of the emotions. he demonstrates the increasing acceptance of displays of grief and mourning in the literary tradition of the elegy from surrey to Milton, a thesis for which cultural documents from the early modern period such as “sermons, religious tracts, and formularies” provide additional support.51 i further substantiate and build upon Pigman’s argument by examining the increasing tolerance for and celebration of male and female displays of a variety of emotions, not limited to grief, in selected literary works by early 51 Pigman, Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 2. i am citing this phrase from the “introduction” by Margo swiss and david a. Kent in which they refer to and expand on Pigman’s thesis: Speaking Grief in English Literary Culture: Shakespeare to Milton, p. 8.

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modern writers ranging from spenser to garrick. unlike Pigman, i illustrate how the predominant shift away from stoical attitudes toward the emotions so commonplace in the 1550s—with notable exceptions such as Jonson and cary—contributed to the rise of the eighteenth-century trope of the man of feeling. to my knowledge no one else has traced signs of the development of this popular, literary figure in terms of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry, plays, and prose related to masculinity and the emotions. in schiesari’s Gendering of Melancholy she highlights the literary and cultural privileging of this particular emotion in men by viewing it as a sign of their elite exceptionality. Melancholia in women, by contrast, is often a figure for the illness of depression in the early modern period and is thereby frequently represented as disparaging for them. she views femininity as commonly devalued by men and deals with male figures who appropriate the female cultural predisposition to excess emotion in ways that reinforce the patriarchal hierarchy.52 however, i focus on men who ally themselves with women in a positive, less appropriative fashion and who are strengthened rather than weakened by their feminized displays of affect in literary texts that topple the customary gender hierarchy and the privileging of reason over emotion. in Julie Ellison’s Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo–American Emotion, a study of male sentiment in late seventeenth- and eighteenth century British and america writings, she makes the important point that “sensibility as a cultural ethos took shape in England significantly earlier than we once thought, as part of the culture of elite men,” which schiesari examines in relation to renaissance literature.53 i argue that early modern writers often imagine men whose weeping and wailing are largely empowering in keeping with aristotelian and augustinian perspectives on the positive value of the emotions. a number of the writers i examine begin building the foundation for the long era of sensibility as early as the sixteenth century. In my first chapter, “Passionate Protestantism: Spenser’s Dialogic, Feminine Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene,” i begin with redcrosse Knight, a Protestant hero whose salvation depends on tears of contrition and grace. throughout the legend of holiness spenser depicts male weeping and wailing as avenues for spiritual strength. his emphasis on the dignity of emotional expressiveness in religious experience allies him with the augustinian rather than stoical branches of humanism. spenser achieves a degree of agency by grafting Protestant nuances onto the words and phrases he borrows from ovid, Virgil, chaucer, and ariosto among others during arboreal episodes of Book i. one of the many distinctive features of spenser’s English epic written during the reign of Elizabeth i is his celebration of men who depend on women. redcrosse relies on una in the cave of despair and the female figure of Mercy at the House of Holiness. Yet the poet’s polyvocality allies him with the doubleness and multiplicity often associated with female figures like Error and duessa in Book i. Paradoxically, he secures his enduring reputation as poet laureate through his dialogic, feminine voice. in the second chapter, “a Pen as Mighty as the sword: stoical anger in Jonson’s Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter,” i turn to Jonson’s frequent allusions 52 31-2. 53

see, for example, schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholy, pp. 7, 10-12, 15-16, and Ellison, Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion, p. 9.

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to classical and renaissance literary predecessors as a scholarly writer. he alludes to the stoical rhetoricians seneca, cicero, and Quintilian and the humanist Juan luis Vives, whose interests in education, teaching, and rules of style paralleled his own (1493–1540). unlike spenser, whose affection for and friendly dependence on numerous literary predecessors is clear throughout The Faerie Queene, Jonson competes fiercely, aggressively, and even violently with ancient and early modern writers he perceives as rivals for the laurel crown. in contrast to spenser’s emphasis on passionate Protestantism in Book i of The Faerie Queene, Jonson combines stoicism with anger directed at social inequalities in Timber. he undermines the current system of inherited wealth and property in the seventeenth century by advocating that individuals should advance as a result of their wit, virtue, and labor instead. in my third chapter, “Monster of Men!”: affect, androgyny, and Politically savvy action in Marlowe’s Edward II,” i consider the dramatist’s treatment of masculinity and femininity as performative gender categories. characters in this play don, discard, and manipulate gender identities as if they were interchangeable masks and costumes worn by actors on stage. intertextual allusions to homer, Virgil, and ovid accentuate how these metamorphosing identities are shaped by the classical, literary tradition. the ideological clash between feudal warriors who shed blood instead of tears and emotionally expressive courtiers interested in theatrical display rather than war contributes to the deadly conflict between Edward II, histrionic gaveston, and those who torture them. yet the King’s affective rhetoric, gestures, and tears are politically empowering despite his deposition and eventual murder. his heroic endurance of suffering grants him legendary status. Marlowe undermines his culture’s privileging of stoicism and violence in men by depicting those who lack pity and act ruthlessly as monsters. his play evokes sympathy for those victimized by his culture’s antipathy toward men who identify with women and gestures toward a humane view of androgyny. in contrast to his father, androgynous Edward iii expresses his feelings of grief and outrage in a moderate and timely fashion and acts swiftly as a just ruler. My fourth chapter, “Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes”: Woeful rhetoric and crocodile tears in shakespeare’s Richard II,” deals with kings representative of competing versions of masculinity and emotional registers in early modern drama. Richard II is a notably feminine, melodramatic figure whose flaws include his narcissism and self-absorption. a man of sentiment, he defends himself valiantly through emotionally moving rhetoric, gestures, and tears once he loses the crown. he joins the company of a number of women in Richard II who shape perceptions of past and future events by weeping, wailing, and cursing. in contrast to the association of active, violent kinds of manhood with the public realm of politics in a number of shakespeare’s history plays, richard begins to contemplate what it means to be “but man” once he loses his crown and is confined to relatively private, interior spaces (V.v.39). the lamentable, memorable utterances that the King and Queen deliver in intimate enclosures, such as a garden, the recesses of royal houses and castles, or a prison, grant them sustained influence over future accounts of the past. The woeful legend of richard ii that he and others weave from the yarns they spin about his

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reign convinces their listeners that the deposed King is a sympathetic victim of an illegitimate usurper. In the fifth chapter, “Crossdressers in Love: Men of Feeling and Narrative Agency in sidney’s New Arcadia,” I examine men who define their heroic identities by wielding a pen as well as a sword. sidney displays a pronounced sense of decorum for male expressions of emotion by limiting under what circumstances chivalric knights, courtiers, and shepherds can shed tears without suffering emasculation. the New Arcadia reflects cultural shifts among aristocratic men from militaristic to civilian professions in a number of ways. sidney conveys the increasing remoteness of the ideal, chivalric world of knightly errands and jousts by exposing the futility rather than glory of battle and by frequently using the term “armor” in a figurative rather than literal sense. Pyrocles, who sheds his princely, heroic garb and crossdresses as a woman wearing silk, gestures toward the feminization of masculinity during the reign of Elizabeth i. in the New Arcadia sidney sometimes imagines authoritative, transgressive women—those who impersonate men through their deeds rather than their dress—as threatening or even monstrous. in general, he exhibits a considerable degree of anxiety and ambivalence in response to chivalric knights who are liberated from their armor, prone to tears, and subject to female authority. My sixth chapter, “‘to sing like birds i’ th’cage’: lyrical, Private Expressions of Emotion in Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene,” features a variety of emotionally expressive men from different social classes and backgrounds, including chivalric knights, retired courtiers, shepherds, poets, and wild, primitive men. they tend to express intense affect in private, interior spaces—glades in forests, hermitages, pastoral retreats, and intimate circles of dancing ladies on Mount acidale. the relatively new troupe of affective men in Book Vi follows in the footsteps of demonstrative figures such as Marinel, Timias, and Scudamour in Books III and IV. Befitting the large-scale transformation in the English aristocracy from brutal warriors to refined courtiers or gentlemen during the sixteenth century, Spenser concentrates on men who exhibit rhetorical acumen, display emotion, and define themselves not only as soldiers, but also as lovers, family men, and educators. in fact, a number of chivalric knights in Book Vi feel liberated from the shedding of their armor and perform admirably without it. in the legend of courtesy male figures distinguished by their lyrical, private expressions of emotion in secluded spaces point to the prominent linking of masculinity, affect, and interiority in this final book of Spenser’s epic romance. in chapter seven, “‘affection! thy intention stabs the center’: Male irrationality vs. female composure in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale,” i consider a number of emotionally expressive men and stoical women. husbands and fathers in this play become jealous and violent toward women because masculinity is not as different from femininity as they once thought. The Winter’s Tale inverts the traditional gender hierarchy by spot-lighting several women with authoritative and persuasive powers of rhetoric. the tragicomedy challenges the persistent linking of masculinity with reason and femininity with hysteria by focusing on men who become enraged and women whose composure is unshakeable. Even the anger of these particular women is pedagogically useful. in seventeenth-century domestic circles wives were often perceived as friends on par with their husbands and mothers played a substantial

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role in the education of children. throughout The Winter’s Tale men and boys learn to respond with affection instead of anxiety to women and the passionate agency they embody. this play ultimately celebrates emotionally expressive men and stoical women and thereby blurs, transgresses, and reinvents customary early modern gender categories in relation to the passions. in the eighth chapter, “nightmarish Visions of grief: lamentable Men in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne,” i focus on shifting definitions of masculinity in relation to the emotion of grief in the seventeenth century. these parallel texts by shakespeare and Walton include nightmarish visions experienced by grieving fathers and mothers who suffer the loss of children. Walton presents donne’s patient endurance of grief as heroic and worthy of a saint. this poet and preacher, whose own works vividly display his emotions, resembles the melancholic scholar hamlet in some respects. Walton’s transformation of donne’s familial sorrow into an intellectual virtue is in keeping with the implicit tolerance for and praise of demonstrative men in a number of literary works written during the seventeenth century. yet early modern representations of tearful, passionate men vary widely. in aemilia lanyer’s narrative poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum christ is the ideal figure who sheds feminine tears that are a communal source of grace. In Elizabeth cary’s stoic, closet drama The Tragedy of Mariam herod’s excessive grief contributes to his madness after he orders the execution of his wife. By contrast, prolonged mourning practices that are psychologically regenerative and spiritually beneficial remain focal in Shakespeare’s domestic tragicomedy, The Winter’s Tale, and Walton’s biography, The Life of Dr. John Donne. Both works include life-like statues that memorialize the dead. Men who weep and wail in these comparable works by shakespeare and Walton serve as forerunners of literary men of sensibility in the eighteenth century. In the ninth and final chapter, “Fathers and Rogues: Peddling Middle-Class Values By shedding tears on stage in david garrick’s Florizel and Perdita,” i conclude with the keen interest that the shakespearean actor and playwright david Garrick (1717–79) displayed in the figure of Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. leontes’ sustained remorse for doubting Hermione’s fidelity and exiling their infant daughter to Bohemia appealed to this actor famous for his tearful rhetoric and gestures on stage. Garrick’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play sheds light on the influence of the rising middle ranks on standards of literary taste during the eighteenth century. the entertaining rogue and pedlar, autolycus, so prominent at the beginning of this adaptation reflects the increasing number of self-made tradesmen in the eighteenth century. in Florizel and Perdita garrick showcases sentimental fathers and mothers in vogue during the Age of Sensibility. Interestingly, his female figures are more subservient and less outspoken than those in The Winter’s Tale. this tragicomedy highlights the subtle continuum between shakespeare’s works and garrick’s plays that celebrate the cultural ideal of sentiment focal in popular novels like henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771).54 the intertwining of masculinity and

54 See, for instance, G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1992), pp. 247-50.

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affection in The Winter’s Tale and Florizel and Perdita evokes sustained, positive responses from eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century critics. ultimately, this study of masculinity and emotion in early modern England reveals that the man of feeling so popular in the eighteenth century began to take definitive shape in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I trace the development of this compelling figure prone to affect on page and stage in a number of widelycirculated, renaissance texts. the critical assumption that men of sentiment are largely an eighteenth-century literary phenomenon results from misunderstandings about the complex relation of masculinity and emotion in centuries prior to the Enlightenment.55 revising the chronology for the emergence of men of sensibility is important for several reasons. first, it emphasizes that numerous English writers, readers, and audience members represented, imagined, and viewed male and female displays of a range of emotions as valuable and worthy of respect from the latter part of the sixteenth century onward. second, it highlights that emotionally expressive, feminine, and androgynous male figures are not only tolerated but also celebrated as powerful, strong, and heroic in a wide range of literary works written during this period. i demonstrate that the emotions in general and tears in particular are potential avenues of agency for both sexes and challenge the assumption that men are necessarily weakened by their alliances with women in the early modern period. these intertwining goals add to the feminist bent of this project. this study is also intended to stimulate further critical dialogue between the neighboring, vast periods of the renaissance and the long eighteenth century during which the literary motif of the man of feeling flourished most explicitly. In early modern works as different as the epic, lyric, commonplace book, drama, prose romance, and biography tears shed by diverse groups of men (scholars, kings, chivalric knights, courtiers, family men, and rogues) remain sources of spiritual dignity, political fame, psychological regeneration, and commercial success.

55 in Garrick Claims the Stage, pp. 39-40, Woods relevantly notes that “the sentimental framework was one which had applications beyond the boundaries of historical period, nationality, and genre.” Eighteenth-century critics tended to use the term “sentiment” when referring to familial or romantic scenes in plays, emotionally intense soliloquies, and the affective responses these moments evoked in audiences. i argue that garrick read shakespeare as if he were a sentimental playwright.

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Part onE the intertextual Poetics of scholarly Men: affect in arboreal Works by spenser and Jonson Both Edmund spenser and Ben Jonson were scholars whose notions about manhood were shaped by the christian–humanist tradition. these literary rivals present themselves as men worthy of the laurel crown by alluding to famous literary predecessors in Book i of The Faerie Queene (1590) and in Timber: Or Discoveries Upon Men and Matter (1623–35).1 i have placed key arboreal episodes in Book i of The Faerie Queene in dialogue with Timber because these parallel works deal with masculinity and emotion in relation to literary production. not surprisingly, spenser and Jonson were both accomplished writers who exhibit contrasting sensibilities as readers of prior texts. as a result, they allude to different kinds of literary authorities in The Faerie Queene and Timber. in Book i spenser refers frequently to ovid, Virgil, chaucer, and ariosto, whereas in Timber Jonson prefers the roman writers seneca, cicero, and Quintilian and the renaissance humanist Juan luis Vives (1493– 1540). interestingly, both spenser and Jonson allude to these multiple predecessors in episodes or works related to trees, motifs that stand for the literary and cultural matter that has shaped and informed their poetics. their contrasting intertextual methods of reading and responding to prior works reveal important differences in how these men of feeling imagine their roles as scholarly men.

1 the topic of masculinity in relation to spenser’s and Jonson’s literary ambitions has received relatively little critical attention. although a number of critics have discussed spenser’s launching of a career as an epic poet in imitation of Virgil, few have discussed the issue of manhood in relation to his fashioning of a professional identity as a scholarly writer. this issue is particularly worthy of discussion given that Virgil’s rome is inherently linked with virility and manliness: Kahn, Roman Shakespeare, p. 25. Well-known studies of spenser’s and Jonson’s professional ambitions are richard helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and the Literary System (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1983); david lee Miller, “spenser’s Vocation, spenser’s career,” ELH 50 (1983): 197-231; and Patrick cheney, Spenser’s Famous Flight: A Renaissance Idea of a Literary Career (toronto: university of toronto Press, 1993). a number of critics have discussed Jonson’s laureate pursuits and his rivalry with other writers: see, for example, helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates and James shapiro, Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare (new york: columbia university Press, 1991). few, however, have explored how Jonson grounds his professional identity on representations of his manhood.

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as humanists, spenser and Jonson read and digested a variety of classical, medieval, and renaissance works. spenser achieves fame as an epic poet by adding individuating Protestant nuances to the words and phrases he borrows from ovid, Virgil, chaucer, and ariosto among others. his intertextual allusions to their works are multiple and varied in the episodes of the Wandering Wood; the grove of fradubio, a man metamorphosed into a tree; and the wasteland of despair, who hangs himself to no avail on “old stockes and stubs of trees” (ix.34.1). i have selected these particular arboreal episodes because they are representative of how spenser digests and refashions fragments of prior texts in Book i. as Jonson states in the latin epigraph to Timber, the greek term silva, meaning “woods” or “forest,” functions as a metaphor for the “multiplici materia” out of which a writer constructs his works as a craftsmen builds a house from timber.2 according to Jonson, a writer labors to shape this silva, referring to the “pieces of raw material” he collects from his predecessors, into a whole, new work of art.3 My focus on the arboreal dimension of works by spenser and Jonson provides a useful way for grouping together sections of these writers’ varied and disparate texts that are most relevant to my larger discussion of masculinity and emotion. Whether intentionally or not, both spenser and Jonson allude to numerous literary predecessors in these texts related to trees. such allusive networks provide vital seed beds for comparing their intertextual poetics. unlike spenser, who defends passionate Protestantism in his innovative epic The Faerie Queene, Jonson advocates classical rigorism in his collection of fragments from roman, stoical writers in Timber. as we might expect, early modern conceptions of masculinity—whether in reference to scholars, kings, chivalric knights, family men, or rogues—are far from heterogeneous and vary according to factors such as a man’s profession, social rank, and age. spenser and Jonson’s profoundly different masculine sensibilities as literary scholars were shaped in part by their contrasting views of the emotions. in general, augustinian defenders of passionate Protestantism focused on the spiritual value of the emotions, whereas representatives of stoical classicism advocated indifference toward them. from the classical period through the renaissance, stoics 2 Ben Jonson, ed. c.h. herford, Percy simpson, and Evelyn simpson, 11 vols. (oxford: oxford university Press, 1925-52), 8: 562. future quotations from this edition of Jonson’s Works are cited as h & s, Works, by volume, page, and line numbers. in Works, 9: 213 herford and simpson conjecture that 1623 to 1635 cover the dates of Jonson’s “collection” of Timber: Discoveries upon Men and Matter that was published posthumously in the 1640 folio. for a discussion of “woods” as a metaphor in the renaissance for the selection of passages for contemplation see timothy Murray, Theatrical Legitimation: Allegories of Genius in Seventeenth-century England and France (new york: oxford university Press, 1987), p. 48. in Words That Matter: Linguistic Perception in Renaissance English (stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 106, Judith H. Anderson notes the specific association of silva with words and mentions that in Jonson’s translation of horace’s Ars Poetica the term “is associated both with uncultivated wilderness–raw material–and with orpheus, the poet as civilizer.” 3 don E. Wayne provides this literal translation of the term silva in “Jonson’s sidney: legacy and legitimation in The Forrest” in Sir Philip Sydney’s Achievement, ed. M.J.B. allen, dominic Baker-smith, and arthur f. Kinney (new york: aMs Press, 1990), p. 231.

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emphasized the perfection of the rational faculties of the mind and the cultivation of apatheia, or indifference toward bodily impulses and affections.4 the stoical branch of humanism, which took hold around 1550 in Europe and England, continued to exert a profound influence on Jonson’s Works published in 1616. Jonson praises the stoical ideal of rational self-sufficiency and distrusts the passions in Timber. g.W. Pigman iii remarks upon Jonson’s emphasis on restraining the emotion of grief in his elegies published in his Works by stating, “Jonson is far from representative of the seventeenth century: his attitude towards mourning is a throwback to the 1550s.”5 in Book i of his epic The Faerie Queene first published in 1590, by contrast, spenser exhibits remarkable tolerance for male and female expressions of emotions, including grief, sorrow, and joy. he represents male weeping and wailing as spiritually restorative. in this way he depicts in a positive light those means of expressing emotion that are traditionally associated with women in Western culture. the view of women as prone to emotional excess persists throughout early modern England. as thomas Wright states in Passions of the Minde in Generall (1604), the passions of his female audience are “most vehement and mutable (3). in “on the Emotions, or Perturbations of the Mind” (1658) thomas hobbes similarly remarks “that those that weep the greatest amount and more frequently are those, such as women and children, who have the least hope in themselves and the most in friends.”6 yet excessive displays of emotion are not necessarily limited to women and children in the early modern period. in the “Ballad of st. george for England” (1658–64) st george “bitterly did waile and wéep” in the dungeon.7 in this way he resembles spenser’s una, who begins to “waile and weep” when redcrosse abandons her (i.ii.7.9). in Book i of The Faerie Queene redcrosse’s sorrow for his sins ultimately leads to repentance, a fact that supports Wright’s augustinian position that the emotions are powerful and useful in a christian context. as he comments, “sadness bringeth repentance” (17). My comparison of spenser’s poetics in Book i of The Faerie Queene with Jonson’s in Timber: or, Discoveries upon Men and Matter highlights their vastly different perspectives on masculinity in relation to femininity as well as the emotions. one of the many factors that distinguishes Book i of The Faerie Queene from Timber is spenser’s celebration of men who depend on women. redcrosse receives hope of eternal salvation toward the end of Book i as a result of his reliance on una in the Wandering Wood and the cave of Despair. In addition, the female figure of Mercy serves as his guide at the spiritually purifying house of holiness. likewise, spenser depends on the support of Elizabeth i in order to receive the promise of the laurel crown. he dedicates The Faerie Queene to Gloriana, a mirror reflection of the Queen, and fittingly glorifies femininity in a number of cases throughout his 4 Bouwsma, A Usable Past, p. 25. 5 Pigman, Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 1. 6 thomas hobbes, “on the Emotions, or Perturbations of the Mind,” in Man and Citizen (1658), trans. charles t. Wood, t.s.K. scott-craig, and Bernard gert (garden city, ny: anchor Books, 1972), p. 59. 7 “a most excellent ballad of s. george for England and the kings daughter of aegypt, whom he delivered from death, and how he slew a mighty dragon the tune is flying fame” (london: Printed for f. coles, t. Vere, and W. gilbertson, 1658-64).

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epic. Jonson, who was writing during the reign of James i, attempts to distance or separate himself from what he perceives as the threat of femininity in Timber. he thereby epitomizes the anxiety of some early modern men toward what they fear is the “contaminating” or “debilitating” influence of women.8 in this way spenser and Jonson provide a “double vision” of how early modern writers conceived of masculinity, femininity, and the emotions. Early modern, literary responses to the decorum for male expressions of emotion are widely ambiguous and tend to stress either the dignity of or dangerousness and inappropriateness of powerful displays of affect. spenser, a Protestant writer emphasizing the need for grace and the augustinian value of tears, fashions male figures whose demonstrations of emotion, ranging from sorrow for sin to heavenly joy, are spiritually liberating rather than weakening. he focuses on chivalric knights who are emotionally expressive as well as martially aggressive. Jonson, however, stresses the role of reason, rather than emotion in the classical education of scholarly men. he perceives the emotions as dangerous forces that stoics such as himself and his literary followers need to combat and overcome. nevertheless, Jonson’s own anger over social inequalities fuels his critique of aristocratic versions of manhood in Timber. Moderate, timely expressions of emotion function as vital aspects of the professional identities for both these scholarly men.

8 see, for example, Janet adelman, Suffocating Mothers, pp. 3-4, and Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, p. 9.

1.

Passionate Protestantism: spenser’s dialogic, feminine Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene Book i of The Faerie Queene marks the beginning of spenser’s distinctly Protestant epic in English. a number of arboreal episodes in Book i—redcrosse Knight’s adventures in the Wandering Wood, his dialogue with fradubio, the bleeding, speaking tree, and his temptation by despair—highlight important stages in redcrosse’s quest for spiritual liberation through grace. the Wandering Wood illustrates that he is prone to error without una; his dialogue with fradubio accentuates redcrosse’s need for confession and tears of contrition; and his temptation by despair exposes his spiritual vulnerabilities without mercy. in these arboreal episodes spenser distinguishes his poem from those by his classical, medieval, and renaissance predecessors by emphasizing the Protestant idea that only grace provides his tearful, contrite redcrosse with escape from entrapment within his own sinful nature.9 9 although numerous critics have discussed spenser’s intertextual allusions in Book i of The Faerie Queene, few have done so in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s term “dialogism” or fully discussed the extent to which these arboreal episodes are polyvocal. see The Dialogic Imagination, p. 280, for a useful discussion of the term “dialogism” as double-voicedness. for discussions of spenser’s allusions in the Wandering Wood see William nelson, The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study (new york: columbia university Press, 1963), pp. 1589; James nohrnberg, The Analogy of The Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1976), pp. 137-9; Jeffrey Knapp, “Error as a Means of Empire” in An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1992), pp. 109-117; darryl gless, Interpretation and Theology in Spenser (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994), pp. 57-61; and syrithe Pugh, Spenser and Ovid (aldershot: ashgate, 2005), pp. 44-7, 128, and 237. John Watkins insightfully analyzes the fradubio episode in relation to its Virgilian subtext and the ariostan parody of Polydorus in The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic (new haven: yale university Press, 1995), pp. 90-98. shirley clay scott provides the literary history of a tree that bleeds and speaks in “from Polydorus to fradubio: the history of a Topos,” Spenser Studies 7 (1987): 27-57. Elizabeth J. Bellamy also discusses the poet’s return to his literary origins in “the Broken Branch and the ‘living Well’: spenser’s fradubio and romance Error in The Faerie Queene,” Renaissance Papers (1985): 5. for additional discussions of spenser’s allusions to ariosto in Book i of The Faerie Queene see Paul alpers, The Poetry of “The Faerie Queene” (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1967), pp. 160-79; Peter desa Wiggins, “spenser’s use of ariosto: imitation and allusion in Book i of the Faerie Queene,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991): 257-79; and andrew fichter, Poets Historical: Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (new haven: yale university Press,

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Mirroring redcrosse Knight, who becomes “wrapt in Errours endlesse traine” in the Wandering Wood, spenser at the outset of The Faerie Queene is himself caught in a maze of literary allusions (i.i.18.9).10 the sheer number of allusions to prior texts in the opening episode of his epic threatens him with anonymity and the loss of voice. yet he avoids these perils by engaging in dialogue with the voices of his literary predecessors and adding innovative nuances to the phrases and motifs he borrows from them. in this way he creates a distinctive voice and maintains his agency as a writer to a significant extent. Instead of suffering erasure, he leaves his personalized signature on the allusive landscape of the Wandering Wood containing traces of other poets. he distinguishes his Protestant poem from theirs by focusing on the ultimate liberation of men who weep and wail through grace and spiritual redemption. I in the arboreal episodes of Book i spenser exhibits not only passionate Protestantism but also his dialogic, feminine voice that results in part from the allusiveness of The Faerie Queene.11 discussing the art of literary imitation, thomas greene describes 1982), pp. 70-111 and 156-206. in “spenser and ariosto: funny Peril and comic chaos,” Comparative Literature Studies 25 (1988): 23-34, lauren silberman relevantly focuses on spenser’s allusions to ariosto in Book iii of The Faerie Queene. Much has been written about the issue of lyric and narrative voice in The Faerie Queene, but the topic of dialogue between voices demands further exploration. roland greene, for example, states that he would like to see “spenser’s dialogic bent tested” more extensively. see his “The Shepheardes Calendar, dialogue, and Periphrasis,” Spenser Studies 8 (1990): 29. like greene, who adopts a Bakhtinian approach to lyric discourse, shormishtha Panja uses Bakhtin’s term “heteroglossia” to characterize the “interaction between different narrative voices” on Mt. Acidale. See “A Self-Reflexive Parable of Narration: The Faerie Queene,” The Journal of Narrative Technique 15 (1985): 284. 10 I mean by the term “poet” not the historical figure of Spenser per se, but the voice that emerges from the text itself. 11 My discussion of Book i of spenser’s Faerie Queene in terms of the poet’s “dialogic, feminine” voice is based on recent responses to and extensions of Bakhtin’s thinking about language within contemporary literary theory in several respects. throughout the section on spenser i use the term “dialogic” in relation to an epic, a genre Bakthin denotes as “monologic.” Writing in the wake of romanticism, Bakhtin argues that a poem such as an epic is “a unitary, monologically sealed-off utterance” and that only prose fiction has the potential for dialogism: Dialogic Imagination, p. 296. yet in “dialogism and the addressee in lyric Poetry,” University of Toronto Quarterly 61 (1992): 392, Marianne and Michael shapiro demonstrate the ways in which “dialogism” and “addressivity” are inherent in the language of poetry despite Bakhtin’s own inclination to reduce the applicability of this term almost exclusively to prose fiction. Nevertheless, Bakhtin himself remarks that Dante’s conversations with former versions of himself in The Divine Comedy make his epic an example of polyphony (408). i explore the relation between Bakhtin’s notion of “dialogism” and contemporary feminist thought by applying an expanded use of his term to spenser’s fashioning of a distinctive literary identity and voice that conveys his own sympathies with femininity. a number of recent literary and cultural critics discuss the inherent conjunction between Bakhtin’s theory

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intertextual allusions in renaissance works as “creative interplay” between a poet like spenser and the ghost-like voices that inhabit his texts.12 although spenser’s words allude to a wide range of intertextual and cultural contexts beyond his awareness, they also embody some of his most vivid memories of former poets, indicating that he shapes his text with such literary figures in mind. Spenser pays tribute to these predecessors whose influence on him is constructive and earns recognition himself by respecting the integrity of classical, medieval, and renaissance works that have inspired him and fashioning an individuating utterance in dialogue with them. his method of reading and responding to prior texts reflects Greene’s notion that “the humanist text is not one text but two: it harbors an ancient subtext or an array of such subtexts.”13 Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence provides an intriguing model for how poets—early modern or modern—negotiate their relationships with other poets. He bases his famous theory of the anxiety of influence on the yoking of masculinity and aggression. Bloom argues that “from the sons of homer to the sons of Ben Jonson, poetic influence had been described as a filial relationship.”14 he characterizes the rivalry between an older and younger poet as a freudian “battle between strong equals, father and son as mighty opposites, laius and oedipus at the crossroads” (11). he states later that “sublimation of aggressive instincts is central to writing and reading poetry” (115). Bloom’s theory about how a poet negotiates his relationship to other poets is based on post-Enlightenment writers of nineteenth and twentieth-century British and american literature. he remarks, for instance, that “Shakespeare belongs to the giant age before the flood, before the anxiety of influence became central to poetic consciousness” (11). Discussing the dominance of Milton on the literary consciousness of subsequent poets, Bloom notes in passing that spenser exhibits a relatively mild “temperament” in relation to the “various fiercenesses of Blake, Shelley, Browning, Whitman, and Yeats” (33). Yet in his of language and feminism. see, for example, Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, ed. dale M. Bauer and susan Jaret McKinstry (albany: state university of new york Press, 1991). in their introduction to this collection Bauer and McKinstry argue that “dialogism” is “central to feminist practice” because it invites the possibilities of “activism,” “change,” and “agency and resistance” through language (2-3). 12 greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (new haven: yale university Press, 1982), pp. 98 and 143. Bakhtin’s theory of language illuminates the notion that a dialogue occurs within the monologic voice of the poet in spenser’s catalogue of trees. see Julia Kristeva’s discussion of Bakhtin in “Word, dialogue and novel” in The Kristeva Reader, pp. 36-8. John hollander discusses the phenomenon of intertextual echo in early modern through modern literary contexts in The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1981), pp. 6-61. 13 in Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History (new haven: yale university Press, 1982), p. 55, gerald l. Bruns discusses greene’s notion of ancient subtexts harbored in humanist texts and cites this phrase from greene’s essay “Petrarch and the humanist hermeneutic” in Italian Literature: Roots and Branches, ed. giose rimanelli and Kenneth John atchity (new haven: yale university Press, 1976), p. 211. 14 The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (new york: oxford university Press, 1973), p. 26.

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epic spenser illustrates that not all male writers adhere to the aggressive model of intertextuality Bloom imagines. in Book i of The Faerie Queene spenser responds to other poets in a cooperative rather than aggressive fashion and exhibits a dialogic rather than a monologic voice. Monologism is the implicit goal of a writer who desires to overcome and even silence echoes of his literary predecessors. instead of representing his poetic fathers as rivals invoking violence from their sons, spenser exhibits a surprising degree of comfort with the notion of his dependence on them. in gerald Bruns’ discussion of various methods of inventing, reading, and interpreting texts from the ancients to the moderns, he argues that invention during the early modern period was often conceived as “finding what it is that can be said in any given case” instead of as “unprecedented origination” (56). in the case of Book i of spenser’s Faerie Queene, his formulating a dialogic response to prior texts takes precedence over anxiety or aggression between fellow creators. in contrast to Bruns, Bloom largely focuses his theory of intertextual rivalry on post-Enlightenment writers, both British and american. spenser’s relationship with his literary predecessors is characteristic of the open exchange between medieval or early modern writers of unfinished texts within the kind of manuscript culture Bruns describes. he states that “in a manuscript culture the text is not reducible to the letter; that is, a text always contains more than it says, or more than its letters contain.” according to this model of reading and interpretation, the text is “tacitly unfinished: it is never fully present but is always available for a later hand to bring it more completely into the open.” describing “the space between the lines” where the embellisher “intervenes,” Bruns continues that “the modern mind would figure it as absence, the ancient as plenitude” (56). As Bruns argues, the space between the lines of a text is often generative. in Book i of The Faerie Queene this generative space allows for spenser’s distinctive responses to his literary predecessors and facilitates his intertextual dialogue with them. his dialogic, feminine voice becomes part of his professional identity as a scholarly man. Surprisingly, the female, monstrous figure of Error in the Wandering Wood provides a useful analogy for how Spenser responds creatively to the influential words of others. this dimension of his poetics highlights the productive, generative relation of masculinity to femininity in his epic. like the “bookes and papers” that spill out of Error’s mouth in their entirety and remain whole when redcrosse strangles her in her cave (i.i.20.6), the texts to which spenser alludes in Book i retain their original, distinctive flavor instead of becoming assimilated into his own voice. spenser’s method of intertextual allusion highlights differences between his works and those by his predecessors instead of making them similar to his own, the meaning of the latin term assimilare. although Error provides a negative example of the literary and religious production of “bookes and papers,” or catholic propaganda that detracts from the Protestant faith, her regurgitation of these works so they remain whole provides an apt figure for Spenser’s own poetics. In Bloom’s discussion of the anxiety of influence, he relevantly describes the “God of poets” not as “Apollo” but as the mythical figure of “Error, who lives at the back of a cave” (78). My analogy between Spenser’s poetics and the figure Error is not as surprising as we might think. for Bloom a poem is necessarily an act of

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misreading and misinterpretation involving the turning and twisting of the words of others (71). likewise, this convolution is characteristic of Error’s body in the cave in the Wandering Wood. in contrast to Bloom’s theory, spenser’s own acts of reading and responding to the words of classical, medieval, and renaissance predecessors in this episode of Book i of The Faerie Queene preserve the alterity and flavor of prior works instead of assimilating them beyond recognition or subjecting them to distortion. In a later episode of Book I the poet figure Despair tempts Redcrosse to commit suicide by perverting the meaning of his classical and biblical sources. his “perverse” readings of other texts involve such an erroneous turn or deviation away from context-sensitive interpretations and fit Bloom’s notion of a poem as an intentional misreading of the words of another. yet spenser’s method of reading and responding to earlier texts in the episodes of the Wandering Wood and the grove of fradubio differs significantly from Despair’s in the cave where he ultimately attempts to hang himself on a fruitless tree. in multiple ways spenser’s poetics diverges dramatically from Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence. unlike despair, spenser does not allude to fragments from other texts simply for his own ends. he preserves the distinctiveness of prior texts by ingesting both their letter and spirit, or sententiae. the classical, medieval, and renaissance texts to which spenser alludes maintain their autonomy and difference from his own because he recalls not only isolated words and phrases from them but their larger contexts as well. in this way he emerges as an exception to Mary thomas crane’s notion about ways of reading characteristic of writers of the renaissance commonplace book. she argues that such writers often construct texts from “undigested bits of other texts,” a phrase she uses to describe Ben Jonson’s method of borrowing from his sources in Timber, a prose work that resembles a commonplace book in some respects.15 drawing on laurent Jenny’s theory of intertextuality, thomas hubbard argues in his discussion of the relationship between classical and renaissance writers of pastoral that “through the window of a specific citation” we remember “the context, significance, and tendency of the cited, imitated, or otherwise invoked locus and the total ideological program of the work in which it is embedded.” likewise, spenser reads and responds to fragments from a variety of works by his predecessors in a manner that is sensitive to their situation within literary history.16 his dialogic voice 15 “‘his owne style’: Voice and Writing in Jonson’s Poems,” Criticism 32 (1990): 37. for a discussion of how commonplace books encouraged the production of new texts from parts of prior ones see ann Moss, “commonplace-rhetoric and thought-Patterns in Early Modern culture” in The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences, ed. r.h. roberts and J.M.M. good (charlottesville: university Press of Virginia, 1993), pp. 49-60. Judith h. anderson notes that methods of reading commonly found in commonplace books were “insensitive to textual or historical context”: see her essay “Venus and Adonis: spenser, shakespeare, and the forms of desire” in Grief and Gender: 7001700, ed. Jennifer c. Vaught with lynne dickson Bruckner (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 152. 16 see hubbard, The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton (ann arbor: university of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 9, and Jenny, “the strategy of form” in French Literary Theory Today: A Reader, ed. tzvetan todorov and trans. r. carter (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1982), pp. 44-5.

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preserves traces of the differences between his Protestant epic and poems by ovid, Virgil, chaucer, and ariosto among others. in Book i of The Faerie Queene their multiple voices remain audible. nevertheless, spenser’s own polyvocality implicates him in the doubleness and multiplicity embodied by dangerous, female figures in Book I.17 like the serpent Error, who raises herself “with doubled forces high aboue the ground” during her battle with redcrosse in the Wandering Wood (i.i.18.3–4), duessa’s name means “due-esse,” or double Being. his representation of Error and duessa in these terms befits Luce Irigaray’s famous description of women as “the sex which is not one,” but multiple.18 spenser depends on the interplay of his dialogic voice with those of his multiple predecessors in order to establish his literary reputation and fashion his masculine identity as poet laureate. He also fulfills his scholarly ambitions by writing an epic with numerous, interlacing plots characteristic of a romance. the very narrative structure of The Faerie Queene reminiscent of ariosto’s Orlando Furioso thereby allies his poetics with femininity to an extent. spenser’s blending of epic and romance is an androgynous move.19 though spenser begins his epic with the famous announcement, “lo i the man,” an echo of Virgil’s Aeneid, its success is intimately connected to femininity and emotional expressiveness. He fittingly addresses each Proem of The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth i. in the opening line of Book i, which he dedicates to the “great lady of the greatest isle” (Proem 1.4.3), spenser rewrites the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid, “arms and the man i sing” in a manner that mutes its militaristic dimension. although violence and aggression were commonly associated with masculinity in the early modern period, Spenser imagines men who define themselves in other than militaristic terms. his phrase in the opening stanza of the Poem, “and sing of Knights and ladies gentle deeds” alludes not only to Virgil’s Aeneid but also 17 For a discussion of Spenser’s negative representation of female figures in terms of their monstrousness and duplicity despite his own dependence on a similar multiplicity of plot and literary models, see Mihoko suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1989), pp. 195-206. Katherine Eggert, by contrast, discusses in detail the positive association of spenser’s poetics with femininity in Books iii and V of The Faerie Queene in Showing Like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 22-50. in “Poetic Parthenogenesis and spenser’s idea of creation in The Faerie Queene,” SEL 40 (2000): 63-79, Elizabeth spiller compares and contrasts Errour’s negative literary production with the poet’s own creative process that involves the positive gestation of ideas. throughout his epic spenser uses terms such as “labour,” “conceiue,” “borne,” and “deliuer” to describe the conception and fulfillment of ideas by Redcrosse, Arthur, Merlin, and the poet himself. ironically, they achieve their masculine identity by thinking ideas into being rather than through the feminine act of producing a child. 18 cited by Butler in Gender Trouble, p. 9. 19 see Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1993), pp. 227-33, for a discussion of The Faerie Queene in relation to the gendering of different genres during the early modern period. in “Epic and Empire,” Comparative Literature Studies 41 (1989): 20-21, david Quint links the genre of romance with the feminized Easterner such as cleopatra.

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to ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (Proem i.1.5). the above phrase particularly recalls ariosto’s line, “le donne, i cavallier, l’arme, gli amori / le cortesis, l’audaci imprese io canto.”20 toward the beginning of The Faerie Queene spenser also alludes to the pastoral mode. he recalls his pastoral persona of colin clout from his lyrical and oftentimes plaintive Shepheardes Calendar when he describes redcrosse as “gentle shepheard” in the midst of his battle with Error. the poet thereby presents redcrosse as gentle and emotionally expressive, a far cry from Virgil’s aeneas, a stoic who sacrifices his passion for Dido to establish an empire founded on Roman ideals. spenser’s emphasis on the affective dimension of redcrosse is one way in which he distinguishes his epic from Virgil’s. spenser presents versions of masculinity as intertwined with femininity, for better and for worse, from the very first episode of Book I of The Faerie Queene. in contrast to aeneas traveling with his father anchises, redcrosse begins his epic quest with una as his female guide in the Wandering Wood. Error lives in a dangerous Wood representative of the multiplicity irigaray associates with femininity. this Wood contains multiple “pathes and alleies” that are with “footing worne”—a pun referring to metrical as well as human feet and suggesting that other poets have been among those who venture into this grove (i.i.7.8).21 the birds whose harmonious song leads redcrosse and una farther into the forest are also suggestive of the presence of numerous poets and their lyrical voices: and foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.22 (8.1–4; my emphasis)

20 a.c. hamilton, ed., The Faerie Queene (new york: longman, 1977), p. 27. 21 the conventional topos of the Wandering Wood is reminiscent of the woods in Book Vi of the Aeneid VI that hide the golden bough, the selva oscura in dante’s Inferno, and the landscapes in ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in which the knights pursue angelica: see gless, Interpretation and Theology in Spenser, p. 61. other texts that Book i recalls, in some cases only briefly, are Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, William caxton’s Golden Legend, mumming plays with st george, tudor anti-catholic satires, pilgrimage allegories such as The Example of Vertue by stephen hawes, and stephen Bateman’s Protestant allegory: see, for example, Paul r. rovang, Refashioning “Knights and Ladies Gentle Deeds:” The Intertextuality of Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Malory’s Morte Darthur (Madison, nJ: fairleigh dickinson Press, 1996), pp. 23-38; carol V. Kaske, “how spenser really used stephen hawes in the legend of holiness” in Unfolded Tales: Essays in Renaissance Romance, ed. george M. logan and gordon teskey (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1989), pp. 119-36; and anne lake Prescott, “spenser’s chivalric restoration: from Bateman’s Travayled Pylgrime to the redcrosse Knight,” Studies in Philology 86 (1989): 166-97. 22 the elaborate alliteration in these lines (i.e. “seemd ... song ... scorne ... sky”) describing the singing birds “creates its own ‘sweete harmony’ in order to convey the sense of the enclosed garden”: hamilton, ed., The Faerie Queene, p. 32.

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songbirds provide “an image of voice ... especially the poet’s lyrical voice” in classical as well as renaissance works.23 as diane henderson argues in Passion Made Public: Elizabethan Lyric, Gender, and Performance, the lyric “was perceived as feminine and insignificant” in the Renaissance.24 though spenser embarks on an epic, a largely masculine genre often associated with fame and public concerns of empire, he adds a feminine dimension to his overall project by alluding to the genres of romance and lyric and the mode of pastoral, which commonly includes private retreats from the public domain and even the desire for anonymity. at the beginning of his epic spenser advertises his poetic authority and laureate ambitions by sounding the lyrical voice of orpheus, an emotionally expressive figure.25 the “birdes sweete harmony” that redcrosse and una hear as they enter the Wandering Wood glances at this archetypal poet and musician, who sits among “a flock of birds” and tunes his lyre until he is satisfied that the notes “agree ... in harmony” in ovid’s Metamorphoses X.26 in the catalogue of trees in the Wandering Wood spenser alludes to the grove of trees that provides orpheus with shade while he sings. he refers obliquely to the larger context of the ovidian episode of orpheus and Eurydice as well. later in ovid’s Metamorphoses orpheus sheds tears abundantly after he fails to lead Eurydice out of hell as a result of his fateful glance backward when he doubts that she is following him. for seven days after losing her, “care, anguish of soul, and tears were his nourishment.”27 the classical version of masculinity orpheus embodies includes the expression of grief unmoderated by stoicism. he provides the literary archetype for the men of feeling spenser imagines in Book i of The Faerie Queene. By alluding to and even identifying with orpheus spenser associates himself with an affective figure linked throughout literary history with peace, song, and effeminacy. orpheus is famous for his pacifying song that calms savage beasts and produces harmony. song is a genre that accumulates feminine nuances throughout the English renaissance. songs and Petrarchan sonnets were sometimes attacked during this period because of the fear that the weakness of the female subject often focal in these works would be transferred to the male poet.28 Jonson in Timber: Or 23 see Eleanor cook’s discussion of the literary history of songbirds in “Birds in Paradise: uses of allusion in Milton, Keats, Whitman, stevens and ammons,” Studies in Romanticism 26 (1987): 423-4 and Patrick cheney’s Spenser’s Famous Flight: A Renaissance Idea of a Literary Career. 24 Passion Made Public: Elizabethan Lyric, Gender, and Performance (urbana: university of illinois, 1995), p. 199. 25 thomas cain pertinently remarks that orpheus “offers the ambitious renaissance poet an apt symbol of himself as artist” in “spenser and the renaissance orpheus,” University of Toronto Quarterly 41 (1971-1972): 24; see cheney, Spenser’s Famous Flight, pp. 31-63, for a discussion of spenser’s idea of an orphic literary career. 26 ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. a.d. Melville (oxford: oxford university Press, 1986), p. 229. 27 Ovid, vol 4., Metamorphoses: Books IX-XV, trans. frank Justus Miller (1916; reprint, cambridge: harvard university Press, 1984), X.73-5. 28 in Passion Made Public, pp. 14-16 and 33-40, henderson notes the common anxiety in the renaissance that the weakness of the female addressee in erotic lyrics would be

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Discoveries Upon Men and Matter denigrates song-like lyrics by stating, “others there are, that have no composition at all; but a kind of tuneing, and riming fall, in what they write. it runs and slides, and onely makes a sound. Womens-poets they are call’d: as you have womens-taylors.”29 here he considers musicality in poetry an effeminizing sign of a weak style. attesting to the longevity of orpheus’ reputation for musicality and effeminacy, Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century states that “the gods deluded Orpheus with an airy figure in place of the loved one, deluded him because he was effeminate, not courageous, because he was a cithara-player, not a man.”30 this renowned lyricist with the proven ability to bring about civil harmony through song provides Spenser with a means of redefining the ethos of martial heroism usually linked with the genre of epic. the version of masculinity he projects for himself is associated with potentially feminizing qualities of lyricism, peace-making, and emotional expressiveness. spenser’s method of reading and responding to the ovidian myth of orpheus adds to the impression that he is a scholarly man of feeling. in Book i of The Faerie Queene he not only recalls the catalogue of trees that orpheus summons with his song in Book X of the Metamorphoses but also the surrounding context of the orpheus myth in ovid. like orpheus, who loses Eurydice while leading her out of hell when in the words of arthur golding he begins “to dowt him lest shee follow[s] not” and looks back, Redcrosse doubts Una’s fidelity to him at Archimago’s house and loses her, though temporarily.31 the word “doubt” so focal in this tragic moment in ovid becomes pivotal in the subsequent episode of fradubio, or “Brother doubt,” a man metamorphosed into a tree. spenser weeps nearly as profusely as orpheus when responding to Redcrosse’s abandonment of Una, an allegorical figure representing English Protestant truth: When such i see, that all for pittie i could die. and now it is empassioned so deepe, for fairest unaes sake, of whom i sing, that my fraile eyes these lines with teares do steepe, ... (i.iii.1.9–iii.2.1–3)

transferred to the male poet. i argue, however, that spenser complicates this assumption. henderson concurs that in the Amoretti he includes female speakers who exhibit agency and thereby acknowledges “an ongoing feminine power that resists or modifies his monovocal shaping” (p. 60; my emphasis). though i agree with henderson that spenser often represents femininity in powerful terms, i contend that his voice is dialogic rather than monologic. his dialogic voice becomes his trademark throughout The Faerie Queene. 29 h & s, Works, vol. 8, Timber: Or Discoveries Upon Men and Matter, p. 585, lines 710-13. 30 cited by Bloom in The Anxiety of Influence, p. 72. 31 here i am citing golding’s 1567 translation of ovid’s Metamorphoses with which spenser was familiar: Metamorphoses, trans. arthur golding, ed. John frederick nims (new york: Macmillan, 1965), X.58-9; my emphasis. golding’s “dowt” is a translation of the original latin verb deficio, meaning “to fail” or “desert,” in the lines describing orpheus’ tragic backward glance: “hic, ne deficeret, metuens avidusque videndi / flexit amans oculos”: Ovid, vol 4., Metamorphoses: Books IX-XV, trans. frank Justus Miller, X.56-7.

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it is not surprising that spenser responds so passionately to redcrosse’s mistake. in a Protestant allegory redcrosse’s doubting of una has theological implications missing in ovid. from a Protestant perspective his betrayal of una is potentially damnable. yet in ovid’s Metamorphoses Eurydice, not orpheus, remains in the underworld. redcrosse imperils his soul not only by lacking faith in una, who represents the true church, but also by betraying her for duessa, the great Whore of Babylon embodying the threat of roman catholicism. fradubio, a friar, anticipates and mirrors redcrosse’s faithlessness by abandoning fraelissa for duessa. like Fradubio, Redcrosse is beguiled by Duessa, a figure for the false church, and becomes entrapped within his own sinful nature. the individuating nuances that spenser grafts onto his allusions to chaucer, his native guide in the Wandering Wood, further accentuate the augustinian, Protestant dimension of the first epic written in English. These innovations contribute to spenser’s scholarly renown as an epic poet worthy of the laurel crown. like redcrosse and una, who enjoy the “birdes sweete harmony” characteristic of an enclosed garden or paradise as they wander into the Wood, in chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls the dreamer enters a locus amoenus with “trees clad with leves that ay shal laste” and with birds that sing in “armonye.”32 the harmonious bird song in chaucer’s Parliament recalls orpheus’ emotionally expressive voice and lyre as he sings among a “flock of birds” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. yet in contrast to chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, spenser’s Wandering Wood leads to a den of theological errors rather than a paradise. the kinds of spiritual errors that redcrosse makes in Book i can be eradicated only through tears of contrition and grace, rather than physical strength and militaristic valor. Venturing into the den of Error imperils redcrosse’s soul as well as his body and emphasizes his need for una. the phrase describing redcrosse and una in the Wandering Wood as “therein shrouded from the tempest dred” indicates that these kinds of error can be deadly. the word “shrouded,” for instance, is suggestive of a mourning “shroud.” spenser transforms chaucer’s earthly paradise in The Parliament of Fowls into a hellish labyrinth in which redcrosse depends on the female figure of Una for salvation. An agent of grace, she forgives him despite his confessed lust for duessa. in Passions of the Minde in Generall Wright argues that we are subject to the kind of error central in spenser’s Wandering Wood because of the consuming “power” of passion (3). as Bacon similarly states in the Novum Organum (1620), “numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.”33 such misdirected passion can become blinding and intellectually debilitating. like redcrosse, even the male gods in Book i of spenser’s poem exhibit a pronounced, emotional dimension that can lead to error without grace embodied by una. “angry Ioue,” for instance, pours a “hideous storme of raine ... into his lemans 32 The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 3878, lines 173 and 191. 33 Translation of the Novum Organum, in Works, ed. J. spedding et al. (london: longman, 1857-61), iv.57 as cited by susan James in “Passion and Error” in Passion and Action, p. 162.

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lap,” a distant echo of the storm in The Aeneid that forces dido and aeneas to take shelter in a cave (i.i.6.6–7). unlike Virgil, spenser imagines a storm that compels all “wight[s] ... to shrowd” themselves in the forest, indicating that every man and woman wanders in a delightful, though fallen world, even poets inspired by its multiplicity of forms—epic, romance, lyric, and pastoral (i.i.6.8). the troubling detail that the birds in the Wandering Wood “scorne the cruell sky” associated with Jove continues to intimate the spiritual perilousness of the setting and the need for grace (i.i.8.4). there, redcrosse remains spiritually as well as emotionally vulnerable when he acts independently of una. his renewed faith in her leads him to salvation. spenser’s allusion to Virgil’s Georgics when redcrosse and una enter the Wandering Wood during a downpour underscores the generative relationship between masculinity and femininity in the legend of holiness. in Virgil’s work, “the father almighty, comes down in fruitful showers into the lap of his joyous spouse, and his might, with her mighty frame commingling, nurtures all growths.”34 Whereas Virgil represents both “the father” and his female spouse as “mighty,” Jonson in his poem “to the Memory of shakespeare” associates mightiness with an aggressive version of manhood. in this poem he commends Marlowe for his “mighty line,” a vigorous kind of rhetoric characteristic of the violent and independent warrior, tamburlaine.35 spenser’s Virgilian allusion, by contrast, points to the productive cooperation between the sexes and a man’s dependence on a woman. the surrounding context of the allusion in the Wandering Wood—the setting where una comes to the aid of redcrosse during his battle with Error—does so as well. in this way spenser remains true to the spirit as well as the letter of the above passage from the Georgics. redcrosse exhibits his reliance on una by following her advice that he battle Error by adding “faith unto [his] force” (i.i.19.3). the renaissance poet fashions an innovative, Protestant epic by emphasizing redcrosse’s manly, physical strength as well as his spiritual vulnerability and need for grace. Weeping and wailing are virtues rather than vices for spenser’s hero. While redcrosse and una listen with delight to the harmonious bird song at the entrance to the Wandering Wood, the reader encounters the lyrical set piece of the catalogue of trees, another literary topos in which spenser engages in dialogue with multiple literary predecessors:

34 Virgil, vol. 1, trans. h. rushton fairclough (1916; reprint, london: William heinemann, 1930), ii.325-27 (my emphasis). 35 h & s, Works, 8: 391, line 30.

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Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature the sayling Pine, the cedar proud and tall, the vine-prop Elme, the Poplar neuer dry, the builder oake, sole king of forrests all, the aspine good for staues, the cypresse funerall. the laurell, meed of mightie conquerours and Poets sage, the firre that weepeth still, the Willow worne of forlorne Paramours, the Eugh obedient to the benders will, the Birch for shaftes, the sallow for the mill, the Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound, the warlike Beech, the ash for nothing ill, the fruitfull oliue, and the Platane round, the caruer holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound. (i.i. 8.6–9, i.i.9)

By beginning and ending almost every line in the catalogue with the tree-shaped letter “t” or with “ll” or a “d,” spenser demarcates the boundaries of this conventional topos, both aurally and visually. his seemingly endless repetition of the word “the” at the beginning of every line but one creates a tableau of a forest of trees—a feature he borrows from the catalogue of trees in chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls. as spenser’s imitation of chaucer suggests, the voices of past poets haunt this catalogue. Prior texts constitute the silva, or raw material out of which spenser builds Book i of The Faerie Queene. Jonson alludes to this literary formative material in the very title of his work Timber. Works by classical, medieval, and renaissance contemporaries are generative for both of them. spenser’s openness to multiple, other literary voices adds a feminine dimension to his masculine persona as a poet. his trees allude both to texts that are housed in the interior space of the poet’s memory, and to those embedded in the memory of his distinctly English, Protestant culture. as Julia Kristeva argues, intertextual allusions have multiple points of origin that “cannot be identified as belonging either solely to a particular author or even to a particular historical moment.” furthermore, these allusions open “a text to other voices and echoes of other texts ... interrogating the idea that a single authorial presence speaks or controls an utterance.”36 the potentially endless number of intertextual allusions that intrude into the lyrical voice of the poet in the catalogue of trees decenter him. yet he resists the threat of textual entrapment within this echo chamber by engaging in dialogue with memories of other poets contained within his own voice. By grafting individuating details onto the phrases he borrows from his literary predecessors spenser differentiates his woodland from theirs and creates a unique, dialogic voice. he gains agency by adding original nuances to his catalogue that humanize several trees within it. his highly crafted topos also comments on the process of creating poetry in the wake of other, authoritative voices. spenser’s intertextual dialogue with prior poets further suggests that he possesses a degree of control over his text and his future literary status. in the catalogue of trees he 36 From Elizabeth D. Harvey’s useful paraphrase of Julia Kristeva’s definition of intertextuality in Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts (new york: routledge, 1992), p. 10.

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responds knowingly to famous predecessors like ovid, lucan, statius, Boccaccio, and chaucer and creates a niche for himself in relation to these literary authorities on which his own laureate status depends. such dependency on other voices is a vital aspect of his masculine identity as a scholar. the catalogue of trees alludes foremost to ovid’s Metamorphoses and the emotionally expressive figure of Orpheus. In the first line of the Catalogue, Spenser’s “sayling Pine” recalls ovid’s description of the golden and iron ages in Book i of the Metamorphoses. during the golden age, “the loftie Pynetree was not hewen from mountaines where it stood, / in seeking straunge and forren landes, to rove up on the flood” (I.109–10).37 spenser’s phrase, “the sayling Pine” situates his catalogue during the iron age when “men now spread sails to the winds, though the sailor as yet scarce knew them; and keels of pine which long had stood up on high mountain-sides, now leaped insolently over unknown waves” (i.131–4). the figure of the warrior who sets sail in an epic such as Homer’s Odyssey is thereby a feature of the iron age. during the golden age, by contrast, “there was no need at all of armed men, for nations, secure from war’s alarms, passed the years in gentle ease” (Metamorphoses i.99–100). as this passage by ovid suggests, those who live in peace, rather than at war, are allied more closely with this past ideal. gentleness is an important aspect of manhood during the golden age. not surprisingly, the association of masculinity with aggressiveness and violence is characteristic of the iron age. spenser, however, continues to glance at the possibility of establishing a peaceful, utopian commonwealth during such georgic interludes in his epic and throughout his literary career.38 on a number of occasions the poet’s multiple allusions to the trees that orpheus summons with his song in Book X of the Metamorphoses associate his renaissance Catalogue with a fallen world in which the Everyman figure of Redcrosse receives 37 Metamorphoses, trans. arthur golding, ed. John frederick nims, i.109-10. 38 in Book V of The Faerie Queene and The View of the Present State of Ireland spenser advocates violence and aggression as necessities for instituting justice and liberty in the iron age. in the Proem to the legend of Justice he laments the replacement of “the golden age” with “a stonie one” marked by “corruption” (ii.1-2 and iii.4). in canto ix of Book V both Mercilla and duessa are hanged for the larger good of the commonwealth. in The View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) spenser envisions using violence as a preliminary tool to bring about eventual peace and utopian rural harmony in a civilization in which such violence is ultimately discouraged. in “irishmen, aristocrats, and other Barbarians” shuger describes this eventual process as a “georgic revolution” (509). once English colonizers force and impose involuntary civilization on the ruling aristocratic irish, which spenser depicts as violent and cruel barbarians not unlike the English warrior aristocracy, the rising bourgeoisie will be able to institute a rural commonwealth based on private property, patrilineal inheritance, and farming reminiscent of the classical ideal of the golden age (shuger 502, 507-8, 510, 512, 516, and 518). As the figure Irenius recommends in The View, “moderacion ought to be had in tempering and menaging of this stubborne nacion of the irishe, to bring them from theire delight of lycensious barborisme vnto the loue of goodnes and civillitie.” Eudoxus replies in agreement, “For the Englishe were at first as stoute and warlike a people as ever were the irishe, and yett yee see are now brought to that civillitie”: spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland , ed. W.l. renwick (london: scholartis Press, 1934), p. 16.

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grace through tears of repentance. He appropriately alludes to Ovidian figures who weep and wail over their fate while fashioning an epic hero whose tears of remorse for sins are appropriate in a Protestant age. spenser’s epic is infused with the emotional dimension of other Ovidian figures besides Orpheus and their stories about unrequited love, anger, and sorrow. the poet’s “sayling pine” evokes memories of the goddess cybele’s vengeful transformation of her lover, atys, into a pine tree for abandoning her for a nymph in ovid (X.104). spenser’s “cypresse funerall,” a tree that was planted in graveyards, also recalls the mythical figure, Cyparissus. This Ovidian figure inadvertently kills his beloved stag and is metamorphosed into a cypress tree as a result of his endless weeping (X.8). in the Metamorphoses ovid includes numerous men and women whose expressions of grief are unmoderated by Stoicism. Spenser follows Ovid’s lead, but diverges significantly from him by imagining those who weep and wail over their sins in the augustinian, Protestant context of The Faerie Queene. the emotional dimension of ovid’s stories of transformation particularly excited spenser’s imagination. Spenser’s allusion to the Ovidian figure of Myrrha in the line, “the Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound” underscores the dimension of tragedy in a fallen world where tears of remorse without grace are insufficient for forgiveness (i.9.6; my emphasis). characteristic of spenser’s method of alluding to bits and pieces of a prior text in relation to that original text as a whole, the “bittersweet” thoughts and feelings he attributes to the “Mirrhe” tree are reflective of his sensitivity to the larger context of the ovidian episode of Myrrha. in Metamorphoses X aphrodite transforms Myrrha into a myrtle tree for committing incest with her father. Myrrha endures the agony of the bark “dividing” during her delivery of adonis as a result. The pain of human labor, particularly of giving birth to a child, is reflected in her bark that is “wet with falling tears” and by her “groaning branches” (X.510–13). As a Protestant reader influenced by the Augustinian branch of humanism, Spenser responds to Myrrha’s weeping and groaning in ovid’s Metamorphoses as if these emotive gestures were acts of contrition appropriate for Christianized figures in The Faerie Queene. like Myrrha, redcrosse, and una, spenser feels “bittersweet” about this fallen world—wandering through it is pleasurable but beguilingly dangerous, as suggested by his description of “the Maple” in the catalogue of trees, which is “seeldom inward sound” (9.9). spenser adds a christian dimension to the tragedy of Myrrha by transplanting the ovidian “Mirrhe” tree into the conventional landscape of the Wandering Wood, a fallen world in his Protestant epic in which Everyman and woman need grace and receive it through tears of contrition. throughout Book i of The Faerie Queene spenser, whose sympathies lie with passionate Protestantism reflective of Augustinianism, responds ambivalently to militarism and the aggressive version of manhood that accompanies it. in the catalogue of trees spenser alludes not only to ovid’s Metamorphoses but also to lucan’s Pharsalia in which caesar fells a sacred grove of oak, cypress, and ash trees outside Massilia. spenser includes all three of these trees in his renaissance catalogue, describing them as “the builder oak,” “the cypresse funerall,” and “the ash for nothing ill” (8.8–9 and 9.7). lucan represents the axe-wielding caesar as a villain who founds an empire at any price—even that of “war blazing over the

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world.”39 Although Spenser sometimes exhibits what Robin Headlam Wells identifies as “the pacifist element in English civic humanism,” he generally endorses a less extreme view of manhood that includes violence when necessary.40 redcrosse, for instance, wanders in a fallen world necessitating the use of “Birch for shaftes” and “warlike Beech” (9.5–7). a degree of aggression and militaristic valor remains necessary for redcrosse as a Protestant, masculine hero in the Wandering Wood. although caesar’s sacrilegious felling of the oak, cypress, and ash trees is one of his many acts in lucan’s Pharsalia that are excessively violent, to a Protestant reader like spenser the sacred grove is unavoidably pagan and idolatrous. it contains altars that are “heaped with hideous offerings,” trees “sprinkled with human gore,” and “images of the gods, grim and rude” carved from “felled tree-trunks” (iii.404–5, 412–13). in the “februarie” eclogue of The Shepheardes Calendar spenser explicitly links the felling of an oak with the abolishing of catholic practices during the reformation. the elderly shepherd thenot describes the oak that a woodsman eventually chops down as a sacred tree that was “often crost with the priestes crewe” and “halowed with holy water dewe.”41 resembling a Protestant reformer, redcrosse casts down false gods in the Wandering Wood reminiscent of the grove in lucan’s Pharsalia when he uses his sword to behead Error, whose mouth spews forth “bookes and papers” alluding to catholic propaganda (20.6).42 spenser’s allusions to the imperialist caesar in lucan’s Pharsalia highlight his own reliance on Elizabeth i whose militarism was sometimes necessary for her defense of English nationalism. he links such imperial aggression with the formation of British identity. unlike lucan, who harshly criticizes imperialists like caesar, spenser implicitly allies them with his Queen and poets like himself. he states, for instance, “the laurell, meed of mightie conquerours / and Poets sage.” This line appropriately crowns the first full stanza of the Catalogue of Trees and alludes to his literary ambitions as a renaissance poet and scholar. in further contrast to lucan’s antimonarchist Pharsalia, the crowning line of spenser’s catalogue printed in 1590 subtly praises Queen Elizabeth for England’s recent defeat of the spanish armada in 1588. in addition, spenser’s line describing “the laurel, meed of mightie conquerours” recalls distantly Boccaccio’s “palm tree, reward of the victorious” in his Teseide (9.1–2) and Petrarch’s sonnets addressed to his beloved but unattainable laura.43 in “the laurel” line of the catalogue of trees spenser’s coupling of Petrarch’s well-known idolatry of laura with his implicit praise of 39 Lucan, trans. J.d. duff (1928; reprint, london: William heinemann, 1962), iii.391. subsequent quotations of the Pharsalia are from this translation. for a discussion of lucan’s parody of Virgilian epic see Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form From Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1993), p. 8. 40 Shakespeare on Masculinity (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000), p. 15. 41 The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser, ed. William oram et al (new haven: yale university Press, 1989), p. 47, lines 207-10. 42 Pompey’s head is comparably severed when he is assassinated in Egypt: Pharsalia Viii.667. 43 giovanni Boccaccio, The Book of Theseus, trans. Bernadette Marie Mccoy (new york: Medieval text association, 1974), 11.24.

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Elizabeth transforms the Queen into an object of worship. Because of the association of Petrarchan love lyric with femininity in the renaissance his indirect allusion to the “laurel” of Petrarch adds to his muting of the traditionally masculine, violent dimension of his epic.44 yet spenser’s yoking of Petrarch’s laura with Elizabeth underlines his own dependence on a female figure who recognized when it was necessary to fight. His reliance on the Queen for professional success at court leaves its imprint on the relatively positive interlacing of masculinity and femininity in Book i of The Faerie Queene. spenser’s method of reading and responding to lucan further exhibits his skepticism about the ultimate value of aggressiveness and violence for early modern men. like lucan, he recognized the horror and tragedy of civil war, whether it be his culture’s memories of the War of the roses, the civil wars then raging in France, or the dangers of civil conflict when facing powerful external enemies like spain.45 Spenser’s ambivalent, conflicting responses to the prospect of war are also reflective of the larger context of the passage from the Pharsalia in which lucan fiercely criticizes the axe-wielding Caesar. Jonson is much less ambivalent about such violent, aggressive representations of masculinity and frequently describes men in terms of battles and athletic contests in Timber: or Discoveries Upon Men and Matter. as we might expect, spenser’s and Jonson’s literary tastes and views of manhood are strikingly different. Early modern representations of masculinity are far from hegemonic, ranging from the pacific to the pugnacious. spenser’s allusions to statius’ Thebaid, Vi. 93–107, and Boccaccio’s Teseide, lines 22–4, in which Theseus sacrifices a grove of trees in order to build a funeral pyre are telling about the poet’s cooperative and dependent, rather than dominating and aggressive responses to the voices of his literary predecessors. his gentle, affectionate method of representing prior poets who have influenced and guided his own career further distinguishes him from Jonson, who verbally attacks contemporary aristocrats and writers with whom he competes for fame. in Timber Jonson criticizes spenser for “affecting the ancients” and famously (and a bit comically) demeans shakespeare for knowing “little latin and less greek” (1806). spenser, by contrast, represents his literary predecessors as beloved friends on whom his own literary status depends. his “vine-prop Elme” alludes to statius’ “elms that give friendly shelter to the vines” and to Boccaccio’s “elm tree, beloved of vines,” one of many kinds of trees felled by the axe in these classical and medieval catalogues.46 spenser’s phrase “the vine-prop Elme” also echoes chaucer’s “piler elm” in his catalogue of trees 44 in Passion Made Public, p. 15, henderson discusses the association of Petrarchan discourse with femininity in the renaissance. 45 to a medieval or renaissance reader lucan’s Pharsalia was “regarded as the locus classicus for the treatment of the subject of civil war”: see george M. logan, “lucan– daniel–shakespeare: new light on the relation Between The Civil Wars and Richard II,” Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 125. for a discussion of how renaissance critics responded to the Pharsalia see gerald M. Maclean, Time’s Witness: Historical Representation in English Poetry, 1603-1660 (Madison: university of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 26-46. 46 FQ i.i.8.7; Statius, vol. 2, Thebaid V-XII, Achilleid, trans. J.h. Moxley (1928; reprint, london: heinemann, 1961), Vi.106; The Book of Theseus, trans. Bernadette Marie Mccoy (new york: Medieval text association, 1974), p. 293.

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in The Parliament of Fowls.47 Editor larry Benson speculates convincingly that the word “piler” refers to “Pillar,” which was a support for vines. spenser’s response to chaucer’s “piler elm” in his own catalogue of trees suggests that he read this chaucerian phrase with the notion of support in mind. in a context whose topoi everywhere proclaim and at times specifically evoke the poet’s craft, the support and protection that the vine receives from the elm, a common symbol of male friendship or the union of marriage, is analogous to the strengthening relationship between spenser and his poetic forefathers, who enable him to strive for fame.48 the detail “Poets sage,” original with spenser, emphasizes that his catalogue of trees serves as a monument, or a kind of memorial, to those famous writers who have sustained his poetic voice.49 this phrase suggests that the wise spirits of his literary ancestors abide within the grove.50 By adding a human as well as vegetative dimension to his catalogue spenser dramatizes his symbiotic relationship with prior writers. This model of intertextuality, which involves a figurative exchange of texts between male poets, glances obliquely at orpheus’ homoerotic turn away from women after he loses Eurydice for the second time in hades.51 Whether intentionally or not, Spenser reflects the dimension of male friendship in the myth of Orpheus by representing his relationship with his literary predecessors in terms of the elm and the vine. This model of intertextuality based on male friendship and even a figurative marriage of minds differs significantly from Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence, which emphasizes the author’s Oedipal desire for the death of the “Poetic father,” the ultimate expression of the desire to silence and establish independence from a dominant literary predecessor.52 spenser’s poetics in Book i of The Faerie Queene, which is rooted in Protestantism and allied with femininity in a positive, full sense, allows for the possibility of his creative dependence on prior writers and his dialogic, generative engagement with their voices. in prior romances such as 47 Benson, ed. The Riverside Chaucer, p. 997. spenser alludes to chaucer’s catalogue in several other ways as well: he borrows his “builder oake” (176) and closely imitates his “saylynge fyr” (179) in the phrase “sayling Pine.” spenser’s “cypresse funerall” also recalls chaucer’s “cipresse, deth to playne” (179), and his “Eugh obedient to the benders will,” a tree used traditionally for making bows, echoes his “sheterer ew” (180). 48 Peggy Munoz simonds, “the Marriage topos in Cymbeline: shakespeare’s Variation on a classical theme,” ELR 19 (1989): 109-10. 49 anderson demonstrates the etymological connection between “monument” (monere ‘to remind’) and “memory” in “‘Myn auctour’: spenser’s Enabling fiction and Eumnestes’ ‘immortall scrine’” in Unfolded Tales, pp. 16-31, here p. 26. 50 in The Art of Naming, pp. 151-4, ferry discusses the relation of spenser’s catalogue of trees to the literary tradition of naming prior poets. 51 for a discussion of the erotics of the Januarye eclogue of spenser’s Shepheardes Calender as it pertains to his possible homosexual relationship with gabriel harvey see Jonathan goldberg, “colin to hobbinol: spenser’s familiar letters,” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 107-26. others who have pointed to suggestions of homoeroticism in spenser’s life and works are richard rambuss, “spenser’s loves, spenser’s careers,” in Spenser’s Life and the Subject of Biography, ed. Judith h. anderson and david a. richardson (amherst: university of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 1-17 and “desire in translation: friendship in the life and Work of spenser,” English Studies in Canada 20 (1994): 171-85. 52 The Anxiety of Influence, p. 44.

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Boccaccio’s Teseida and ariosto’s Orlando Furioso women are largely limited by their roles as eroticized objects of desire.53 in Book i of The Faerie Queene, by contrast, una in the Wandering Wood and cave of despair and Mercy at the house of holiness primarily function as spiritual agents instrumental in redcrosse’s quest for holiness through grace. Una particularly resembles the holy figure of Beatrice as dante’s spiritual guide in his epic The Divine Comedy. throughout the episode of the Wandering Wood spenser fashions a masculine, literary identity as a poet and scholar that allies him with feminine sources of creativity. In the first of several epic similes during Redcrosse’s battle with Error, he compares the “floud of poyson horrible and blacke” that spews out of her mouth to the overflowing Nile, a serpentine river associated with the legendary figure of Cleopatra (i.i.20.1). his description of the “partly male / and partly female” creatures that “old father Nilus” produces out of the “fertile slime” of “the Aegyptian vale” (21.1–2, 7–8) recalls a passage in Book i of the Metamorphoses in which ovid compares the “sunbaked slime” of the nile to “a mother’s womb.”54 following in the footsteps of ovid, spenser depicts the nile in positive, feminine, and generative terms. unlike spenser, other male writers and literary figures during the Renaissance respond to maternity and birth in terms of anxiety. in The Winter’s Tale, for example, shakespeare’s leontes becomes jealous when his pregnant wife, hermione, convinces their friend, Polixenes, to extend his visit in sicilia. the birth of their daughter nine months after his arrival only intensifies Leontes’ irrational suspicions and rage. Apparently lacking such anxiety with respect to the generative powers of women, spenser imagines the androgynous, fertile nile as a positive source of creativity analogous to the production of literary texts.55 in a more negative fashion Error produces “bookes and papers” reminiscent of catholic propaganda (20.1) and a “spawne of serpents ... blacke as inke” out of her “maw,” or stomach (22.7). ironically, these references to the manuscript and print culture surrounding The Faerie Queene further link the female figure of Error to Spenser’s own poetics. spenser inscribes his initials on the conventional landscape of the Wandering Wood during Redcrosse’s battle with Error by alluding to the famous figure of Colin clout from The Shepheardes Calendar. this allusion helps to tame the militaristic thrust of his epic. his intertextual dialogue with prior poets thereby includes his achievement of a degree of agency and individuality. in his second epic simile in this arboreal episode spenser—oddly and conspicuously—compares the Knight’s staring in amazement at the “spawne of serpents” that Error produces out of her mouth to a shepherd’s viewing his flock: “As gentle Shepheard in sweete euen-tide, / When ruddy Phoebus gins to welke in west, / High on an hill, his flocke to vewen 53 cf. Palemone and arcite’s duel for the love of Emilia in the Teseida and ruggiero’s interactions with the sensual figures of Bradamante, Alcina, and Doralice in Orlando Furioso: see, for example, Wiggins, “spenser’s use of ariosto: imitation and allusion in Book i of The Faerie Queene”: 269-73. 54 Ovid, vol. 3, Metamorphoses: Books I-VIII, trans. frank Justus Miller (1916; reprint, cambridge: harvard university Press, 1984), i. 420. future quotations of ovid’s Metamorphoses are from Miller’s translation unless noted otherwise. 55 on this subject see the relevant collection of essays, Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, ed. douglas a. Brooks (aldershot: ashgate, 2004).

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wide, / Markes which do byte their hasty supper best” (23.1–4). these lines recollect spenser’s and Virgil’s beginnings as writers of agricultural poems and evoke memories of the shepherd colin clout in particular. in the Proem to Book i spenser refers explicitly to his literary persona from the Shepheardes Calendar in terms of the progression of his career from a “minor” pastoral poem to a “major” epic and romance.56 he exchanges his “oaten reeds” for “trumpets sterne” to “sing of Knights and ladies gentle deeds” (1.4–5). in the opening episode of the Wandering Wood he curiously reverts to the mode of pastoral. By describing redcrosse as a “gentle shepheard” in the midst of his battle with Error spenser softens the martial dimension of his epic hero. the “gnattes” surrounding redcrosse at this moment in battle also glance at the birds representing pastoral poets such as theocritus, Virgil, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in the “Epistle” to The Shepheardes Calendar.57 the shepherd to which spenser compares redcrosse uses his “clownish hands” to brush away these “gnattes” with their “tender wyngs,” a phrase that recalls the “tender wings” of the birds in The Shepheardes Calendar (23.8). the shepherd’s act of brushing away these insects provides an emblem of spenser distancing himself from other writers of pastoral as well as from his own literary beginnings. In contrast to Bloom’s model of poetic influence as Oedipal rivalry between father and son, spenser’s model of the symbiotic relationship between poet and predecessor is less violent and more gentle. the shepherd’s delicate gesture of brushing them away is suggestive of the generative space between spenser and prior poets. though his act of self-preservation is not overtly aggressive, it provides him with the distance necessary for producing his own epic romance in dialogue with the voices of Virgil and ariosto among others. in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene the pastoral figure of Colin Clout appears more explicitly on Mount acidale surrounded by three graces and a ring of dancing, naked ladies. his destructive act of breaking his pipe after calidore interrupts the dance expresses spenser’s own fears of losing his creative powers associated with the three, feminine graces at the top of that Mount. in Book i spenser’s allusions to orpheus foreshadow these same literary anxieties. the body of this archetypal lyricist is eventually torn to pieces by the Maenads, though his voice remains.58 to a renaissance reader orpheus’ dismemberment represents the confrontation of civilized versions of masculinity with the feminine wild.59 his fate thereby gestures at the anxious underbelly of spenser’s relationship to femininity in Book i of The Faerie Queene. The intertwining of his poetics with the monstrous figure of Error 56 . in An Empire Nowhere, p. 114, Knapp describes the tone of this stanza as “elegiac” because spenser is expressing his nostalgia for the pastoral phase of his literary career that is coming to an end. Both he and hamilton note the similarity between “the shepherd with his clownish hands” in the stanza and “the clownish young man both redcrosse and spenser has been until only recently” (p. 114). see hamilton, The Faerie Queene, p. 36. 57 William a. oram et al., The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser, p. 18. 58 greene more generally treats the vulnerability of “the text as well as the creator to dismemberment” in The Light in Troy, p. 163. 59 Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity, p. 27. to a number of English humanists, like spenser, orpheus represented an alternative, civilizing version of masculinity.

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is a case in point. the analogous, if somewhat coincidental parallel between his method of digesting works by his literary predecessors as whole entities and Error’s practice of regurgitating “books and papers” in their entirety hints that his ways of reading and writing are allied with femininity to an extent. his dependence on Elizabeth i for literary advancement must have generated a degree of anxiety as well as financial support for his art and added to his sense of political vulnerability as a writer. like orpheus confronting the Maenads, the body of spenser’s Faerie Queene is figuratively dismembered when bits and pieces of his Catalogue reappear during redcrosse’s subsequent dialogue with fradubio, the bleeding, speaking tree. nevertheless, his orphic voice continues to resound strongly within the Wandering Wood: the poet’s authoritative, lyric dialogue with the voices that haunt this allusive landscape nourishes and strengthens his own, enabling him to pursue his epic course. II Men who weep and wail are coming out of the woodwork in the legend of holiness. The Ovidian figures of Cyparissus, Myrrha, and Daphne, whose stories are embedded in the catalogue of trees in the Wandering Wood, anticipate emotionally expressive fradubio and fraelissa in Book i of The Faerie Queene.60 fradubio’s abandoning of Fraelissa, which parallels Redcrosse’s fleeing from Una at Archimago’s house, results in their metamorphoses into trees. they remain immobile and mute until redcrosse arrives in this anti-pastoral grove in which the “fearefull shepheard” never played “his mery oaten pipe” (i.i.28.7–9). in the prior topos of the Wandering Wood the poet avoids anonymity and loss of voice through his intertextual dialogue with other poets and grapples with his relationship to his literary past. in contrast to the catalogue of trees, which occurs on a textual level beyond redcrosse’s and una’s awareness, the episode of fradubio directly involves the young Knight vulnerable to concupiscence. like spenser as poet in the Wandering Wood, redcrosse converses with a voice from literary history, which in this case is reembodied in fradubio. unlike the silent, emblematic trees in the Wandering Wood, the tree-man fradubio delivers his woeful autobiography in a personal voice. Precursors of this bleeding, speaking tree appear prominently in Virgil, Ariosto, and Dante and briefly in Ovid, Boccaccio, and tasso (44.2).61 redcrosse’s dialogue with fradubio reveals how this 60 in “rhetoric, allegory, and dramatic Modality in spenser’s fradubio Episode,” ELR 3 (1973): 351-68, William J. Kennedy notes an intratextual allusion linking the two episodes: whereas the Dwarf admonishes Redcrosse “Fly fly” outside the den of Error (I.i.13.8), the tree man warns him to avoid yet another perilous landscape: “But fly, ah fly far hence away” (i.ii.31.4). i am generally indebted to Kennedy’s insightful discussion of the rhetorical situation of fradubio’s monologue. 61 see, for example, dante’s Inferno Xiii; Ovid, vol. 3, Metamorphoses: Books I-VIII, trans. Miller, ii.362: “parce, precor: nostrum laceratur in arbore corpus” and Viii.761-2; giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Filocolo, trans. donald cheney with thomas g. Bergin (new york: garland, 1985); and torquato tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, trans. anthony M. Esolen (Baltimore: Johns hopkins university Press, 2000), 13.41-2.

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fallen Protestant hero in need of grace reads (or misreads) a text. this episode further emphasizes the spiritual benefit of tears of contrition that ultimately lead Redcrosse to the “well of life” (i.xi.29.9). the tree man’s tears anticipate this redemptive spring. in the episode of fradubio spenser’s depiction of redcrosse as a Protestant man of feeling distinguishes his hero from those in Virgil’s Aeneid and ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Unlike Aeneas, who reflects the Stoic, Roman ideal of rational self-sufficiency, Redcrosse receives salvation only through grace. In The City of God st augustine describes aeneas as a stoic by citing Virgil’s description of him: “he stands immovable by tears, / nor tenderest words with pity hears.”62 Both redcrosse and fradubio, by contrast, are prone to tears of remorse. during the Knight’s battle with the dragon at the end of Book i, he is cleansed by his fall into a “well” that Fradubio wishes he could find and that Redcrosse discovers by accident (or through divine Providence). in contrast to the mood of hopelessness in the parallel episode in ariosto’s epic Orlando Furioso involving a man metamorphosed into a myrtle tree, spenser presents confessional rhetoric and tears of contrition as avenues for liberation from a sinful nature. spenser’s imagining of redcrosse’s dialogue with fradubio recalls aeneas’ encounter with the tree-man Polydorus in Book iii of The Aeneid in multiple ways. fradubio sheds a mixture of blood and tears when redcrosse breaks a branch from his trunk to weave a garland for duessa. he laments: ... o spare with guilty hands to teare My tender sides in this rough rynd embard, But fly, ah fly far hence away, for feare least to you hap, that happened to me heare, and to this wretched lady, my deare loue, o too deare loue, loue bought with death too deare. (31.2–7)

like aeneas, redcrosse is so startled by the bleeding, speaking fradubio that his hair stands up. Echoing aeneas’ exclamation, “i was appalled, my hair stood up,” the poet describes redcrosse, “astond he stood, and vp his haire did houe” (i.ii.31.8).63 spenser, however, adds the original detail that the Knight “could no member moue” (31.9), a phrase suggesting that for a moment he, too, is rooted to the ground. Redcrosse’s physical resemblance to Fradubio in this line reflects their parallel, guilty behavior: whereas fradubio betrayed fraelissa for duessa, redcrosse has abandoned Una and become enamored of the same bewitching figure. Spenser’s establishing of redcrosse’s guilt at the beginning of this episode emphasizes both the blinding power of lust and his need for grace. redcrosse’s immobility during which he “could no member moue” is indicative of his temporary loss of manhood and the threat of effeminacy while he remains with duessa. after redcrosse recovers from his immobility—a brief, physiological response to the startling voice of fradubio—he addresses the tree-man when “the dreadful passion” is past and “manhood well awake” (32.1–2). redcrosse’s “passion” 62 Aeneid iV.449 as cited by st augustine, The City of God, p. 284. 63 Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-VI, trans. h. rushton fairclough, iii.48. all subsequent quotations of The Aeneid are from this translation.

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in the forbidden grove is potentially immobilizing and “dreadful.” the leaves “trembling with every blast” at the beginning of the episode function as a portend warning Redcrosse to flee to avoid this paralyzing fate (28.5). These trembling leaves recur in a subsequent episode of Book i when redcrosse lies down beside the fountain with duessa. there, “he feedes vpon the cooling shade, and bayes / his sweatie forehead in the breathing wind, / Which through the trembling leaues full gently playes” (i.vi.3.1–3; my emphasis). redcrosse similarly becomes immobile after indulging in his passion for duessa beside the fountain, leading the poet to comment, “eftsoones his manly forces gan to faile” (6.4). stasis and indulgence in an illicit love affair are potentially emasculating and effeminizing for an epic hero who should remain devoted to virtuous action and contemplation. his emotion of lust is indeed overpowering and even debilitating in this case. unlike aeneas, who embodies the roman ideal of stoicism and rational selfsufficiency, Redcrosse remains a prisoner to his own passions and helpless without mercy. in contrast to aeneas’ hands, which are untainted by guilt when he plucks three branches from the myrtle tree in order to build a sacrificial altar in Virgil’s epic, redcrosse’s are already guilty when he tears a bough from fradubio to weave a garland for duessa. Polydorus emphasizes aeneas’ purity by declaring, “spare me in the tomb at last; spare the pollution of thy pure hands” (41–2; my emphasis). fradubio, by contrast, implores redcrosse, “o spare with guilty hands to teare / My tender sides in this rough rynd embard” (31.2–3; my emphasis). this phrase, which alludes to redcrosse’s concupiscence, conveys spenser’s disdainful view of the Knight’s lust for (and idolatry of) a woman representative of roman catholicism. instead of building a sacrificial altar with the branch he tears from Fradubio, Redcrosse adorns one in the form of his lady—a reprehensible act in a Protestant poem. in ariosto’s Orlando Furioso ruggiero’s act of tying his hippogriff to a myrtle tree followed by the animal’s destruction of a number of its branches when it kicks and rears gently mocks Aeneas’ pious motives for plucking the boughs in order to build a sacrificial altar in Virgil’s epic. ruggiero’s hippogriff is an embodiment of unruly passion that becomes destructive if unrestrained or unmoderated. though astonished to hear the tree-man cry in pain, ruggiero merely blushes and apologizes for his mistake, a parodic subduing of aeneas’ hair-raising horror after hearing the voice of Polydorus (Vi.29). in contrast to aeneas’ encounter with Polydorus, redcrosse’s dialogue with fradubio emphasizes the ineducability of those blinded by lust and theological error and their need for grace.64 not surprisingly, redcrosse becomes prone to misreading as a result of his abandonment of una and lust for duessa. unlike aeneas, who recognizes immediately that Polydorus is a “portent” (26) and listens to his warning that he “flee the cruel land, flee the greedy shore” (36), Redcrosse misunderstands, or at least fails to heed Fradubio’s admonition that he “But fly, ah fly far hence away” (31.4). the Knight remains blind to the fact that the very witch who cast a spell on fradubio and fraelissa is now beside him. in a Protestant poem misdirected, excessive passion without mercy or grace has grave consequences. una will remind redcrosse that mercy is always available to him and prevent him from committing 64 see Watkins, The Specter Of Dido, pp. 95-8.

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suicide in the cave of despair. fradubio’s weeping and wailing for his sins are informed by the augustinian branch of renaissance humanism emphasizing that tears of contrition expressing the need for grace are dignifying (31.2, 33.1). Virgil, by contrast, promotes the stoical virtues of emotional restraint and rational selfsufficiency for men in The Aeneid. as a result, only women perform the role of mourners during the funeral for Polydorus, who was transformed into a tree by the greedy Thracian King (III.65). Spenser’s epic, by contrast, reflects his culture’s increasingly tolerant attitude toward expressions of grief and mourning by men and women, both of whom participated actively in funeral rituals in sixteenth-century England.65 sidney’s elaborate funeral in 1586, however, included only an elite group of men, a dramatic shift from the classical mourning rite of wailing women and children performing lamentations over the body of the deceased.66 in the episode of fradubio spenser distinguishes his poem from ariosto’s by accentuating the liberating potential of tears of contrition and confessional rhetoric. like astolfo, the man metamorphosed into a myrtle tree in Orlando Furioso, fradubio tells a story about his destructive passion for a woman who reduced him to his vegetative state. astolfo laments the painfulness and uselessness of recalling and articulating his past by stating, “alas! My bleeding wounds why do i probe, / having no hope of healing medicine?” (i.ii.34.4–5). yet redcrosse entreats fradubio to tell his story because “he oft finds med’cine, who his griefe imparts” and “double griefs afflict concealing harts” (I.ii.34.4–5). St Augustine similarly describes the healing powers of confession when imploring god to “hear the groaning of the prisoners and loosen us from those fetters which we have forged for ourselves.”67 in Orlando Furioso astolfo lacks such faith in the power of confessional rhetoric. he foresees that his attempt to warn ruggiero about alcina will prove futile when he exclaims, “such knowledge as i have i’ve gladly shared, / although i doubt if it will much avail you” (53.1–2). Ruggiero later confirms Astolfo’s fear when he, too, falls in love with the witch, alcina, and discounts the myrtle’s story as “nothing ... but lies” (Vii.17.8). in this case blinding passion overpowers all kinds of rational speech. spenser’s episode of the tree-man is largely more hopeful than ariosto’s with respect to the healing power of the spoken and written word. spenser autographs the conventional topos of the man metamorphosed into a speaking, bleeding tree when redcrosse buries the broken branch he has torn from 65 the college of arms’ regulations for heraldic funerals required that mourners be the same sex as the deceased: Phillippy, Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England, p. 21. in Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 436, cressy includes a picture of “the bride’s burial, with women coffin bearers, from The Two Unfortunate Lovers (1621)” and notes that “married women or maids held the pall at the funerals of one of their gender.” 66 Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art (new york: new york university Press, 1976), p. 22. 67 see Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion, trans. and ed. albert c. outler (london: Westminster, 1955), iii, 8. lacan relevantly characterizes the “talking cure,” which redcrosse prescribes for fradubio, as a process whereby the patient’s troublesome symptoms are “made word”: Martin thom, “the unconscious structured as a language” in The Talking Cure: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language, ed. colin Mccabe (new york: st Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 2.

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fradubio, a detail missing in Virgil and ariosto. redcrosse’s act of removing the branch from sight illustrates his failure, or perhaps even his unwillingness, to recognize that he, too, could be confined in a tree by Duessa.68 from the start of the episode redcrosse misreads the import of fradubio’s narrative, which begins with his warning that the Knight flee in order to avoid “what happened” to him (31.5). By the end of their dialogue he attempts to forget what he has heard by hiding the evidence implicating him in the tree man’s delivery of his story. he inadvertently curtails fradubio’s “ruefull plaints” and silences him by stopping up the hole in his bark, an act intended to diminish his bleeding (32.9): When all this speech the liuing tree had spent, the bleeding bough did thrust into the ground, that from the bloud he might be innocent, and with fresh clay did close the wooden wound.69 (44.5–8)

Despite the differences between a poet enmeshed in fictional topoi and a literary tree man and woman physically imprisoned in the natural world, spenser is himself a storyteller who faces the peril of losing his own voice within a landscape haunted by ghostly echoes of prior writers. his anxieties about losing his creative powers surface not only in the Wandering Wood in relation to the myth of orpheus, but also in the episode of fradubio whom redcrosse inadvertently silences. as illustrated by the poet’s reimagining of the tree-man episodes in Virgil and ariosto, his original contributions to the epic tradition are self-expressive and in this sense liberating, and they grant him a demonstrable degree of agency—origin-ality—in this conventional landscape. redcrosse’s dialogue with fradubio about the need for confession, tears, and grace intensifies the passionately Protestant dimension of Spenser’s epic. nevertheless, redcrosse’s failure to read and interpret fradubio’s warning about duessa leads him to despair. III Like Spenser, the figure of Despair in a later episode of Book I of The Faerie Queene is a skilled poet and scholar well-versed in the humanist tradition. despair entraps redcrosse by appealing to classical and biblical authorities that appear to lend credibility to his argument that the Knight should commit suicide. an archmanipulator, he wrenches phrases from seneca and cicero out of context and maliciously parodies spenser’s dialogic method of intertextual allusion as a result. despair’s and redcrosse’s ways of misreading in this episode expose the pitfalls of the stoical views of seneca and cicero for a Protestant hero. the emphasis of 68 donald cheney notes that redcrosse’s gesture “suggests the repression of unwelcome knowledge”: Spenser’s Image of Nature: Wild Man and Shepherd in The Faerie Queene (new haven: yale university Press, 1966), p. 43. 69 these lines recall the silencing of the ovidian heliades, who lament their brother Phaeton’s death and are metamorphosed into trees, when “the bark closed over [their] latest words” [“cortex in verba novissima venit”]: Ovid, vol. 3, Metamorphoses, trans. Miller, ii.363.

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these classical rhetoricians on the manly virtues of emotional rigorism and rational self-sufficiency proves to be deadly for a despairing, suicidal Redcrosse in need of grace. his overpowering emotion of despair makes him particularly prone to acts of misreading. Despair is a poet figure whose persuasive utterances are entrapping, not liberating. Whereas his rhetoric focuses on redcrosse’s past mistakes, spenser’s in the subsequent episodes of the house of holiness and the Mount of contemplation provides the Knight with the possibility of future redemption. sir trevisan, who flees the cave of Despair with a noose around his neck, forewarns Redcrosse about the pernicious power of despair’s “idle speach” (ix.31.1). his gesture of always “looking backe” exemplifies the retrospective dimension of this episode focused on despair, a psychological state that commonly involves dwelling on prior blunders (25.3). recalling the fradubio episode, redcrosse willfully misinterprets what he hears outside the cave of despair by failing to apply sir trevisan’s story about his near escape and sir terwin’s death by suicide to his own physical and spiritual vulnerabilities. in this cave redcrosse engages in dialogue with himself as another. despair mirrors the emotional state of the spiritually defeated hero in a number of ways. his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks remind the reader of redcrosse in orgoglio’s prison (cf. viii.41.1–3 and ix.35.6–8). in addition, despair’s vivid memory of redcrosse’s past imprisonment and the blurring of pronouns during their dialogue further suggest that the Knight is conducting an interior monologue with his alter ego (45.5–6).70 the episode of despair illustrates that this psychological state makes the kinds of texts one chooses to read (or misread) dangerous. despair tempts redcrosse to take his own life by alluding to the stoics, seneca and cicero. texts that endorse suicide as a noble course of action prey on the emotional weaknesses of the Protestant hero. in the christian context of spenser’s poem suicide is damnable. in a renaissance epic despair misinterprets these classical texts willfully. When he argues, “is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease?” (i.ix.40.6), he echoes the senecan phrase, “no great pain lasts long,” but removes it out of context. he obscures the fact that his classical predecessor is discussing the timely death of an old man, whereas he is enticing the young Knight to an untimely end.71 despair alludes deceptively to seneca’s description of the death of an old man as “a rest which is ordained for 70 alpers, The Poetry of “The Faerie Queene,” p. 354, remarks on the ambiguity of whether redcrosse or despair is speaking the last four lines of stanza 41, and both he and hamilton, ed., The Faerie Queene, draw attention to a similar blurring of the speakers in stanza 42. in Words that Matter, p. 178, anderson argues that the blurring of despair and Redcrosse in a number of lines befits Spenser’s description of Despair as the mirror image of the despairing Knight in orgoglio’s dungeon. 71 Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, vol. 1, trans. richard M. gummere (1918; reprint, london: heinemann, 1917–25), XXX.14. future quotations of seneca are from this translation and will be cited parenthetically. in “art, rhetoric, and holy dying in The Faerie Queene with special reference to the despair canto,” Studies in Philology 61 (1964): 128-39, Kathrine Koller lists this proverbial phrase among others and argues that such “classical tags found their way into the christian literature on death” (p. 121). the Variorum also notes that “a great deal of the sophistry” of despair “seems taken from seneca” (p. 279).

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mankind, a rest that is welcome to the weary” (Epistle 30.12; my emphasis) by attempting to persuade redcrosse to “enioy eternall rest / and happie ease” before his time (40.1–2). his allusion to seneca is intentionally perverse. despair’s prior utterance, “Who trauels by the wearie wandring way, / to come vnto his wished home in haste” ironically and irrationally underlines the fact that redcrosse’s death would be hasty and premature (39.1–2; my emphasis). despair perversely echoes cicero’s utterance, “the nearer i approach death the more i feel like one who ... is about to anchor in his home port after a long voyage” in his famous lullaby, “sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, / Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please” (40.8–9).72 Without redcrosse’s awareness, the rhetorician cleverly conceals the difference between an old sailor relieved by his arrival at port and the relatively young Knight, who is currently contemplating suicide. despair also attempts to entrap redcrosse by misreading and misusing scripture, the supreme example of an authoritative text that should lead to spiritual salvation rather than damnation by suicide. he quotes verses out of context, interprets them in a deceptively literal fashion, and restricts the possible meanings of individual words.73 his phrase, “for life must life, and bloud must bloud repay” alludes to genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (43.6).74 he fails to mention, however, that just a few lines after this old testament adage about justice, god forms a new covenant with noah suggestive of the christian concept of mercy. using the word “blood” literally rather than symbolically, despair curtails the meaning of the term to a tangible, material substance. he thereby obscures the notion that the “blood” of christ, though its loss can result in death, is also a well-known symbol of redemption and of forgiveness for past transgressions. in his argument, “is not great grace to ... free his feet, that in the myre sticke fast,” he uses the word “grace” in a similarly reductive fashion (39.4–5; my emphasis). as a result, he purposely confuses the notion of performing a social courtesy with a divine gift—i.e. he means “doing someone a favor” rather than providing the means to salvation. despair excludes the possibility of redcrosse ever receiving salvation and focuses solely on his demise by stating, “death is the end of woes: die soone, o faeries sonne” (i.ix.47.9; my emphasis). he restricts the meaning of the word “end” to ‘termination of being, or death.’75 on the Mount of contemplation, by contrast, 72 Cicero: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. William armistead falconer (1923; reprint, london: William heinemann, 1964), XiX.71. Koller, p. 131, also cites this line from cicero in connection with the despair episode. 73 Ann E. Imbrie analyzes Despair’s perverse use of specific scriptural passages and arrives at a similar conclusion in “‘Playing legerdemaine with the scripture’: Parodic sermons in The Faerie Queene,” ELR 17 (1987): 142-55, esp. pp. 146-50. 74 robert Kellogg and oliver steele, eds., annotate this biblical allusion in Books I and II of “The Faerie Queene” (new york: odyssey, 1965). another intertext for lines 1-2 of stanza 43, “the lenger life, i wote the greater sin, / the greater sin, the greater punishment” is a poem in Tottel’s Miscellany: “the longer life the more offence; / the more offence the greater pain”: see The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, p. 280. 75 the Oxford English Dictionary defines these two meanings of the word “end” as ‘an intended result of an action, an aim, [or] purpose’ and as the ‘termination of existence’ or ‘death.’ i have glossed the word “end” in slightly different terms more suitable to spenser’s

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the female figure Mercy envisions salvation as Redcrosse’s “end” when she follows in the footsteps of una by liberating him from despair. she uses the word “end” in its fuller, figurative sense of ‘purpose, goal, or ultimate intention’ when she states that the Knight seeks “that same end, which euery liuing wight / should make his marke, high heauen to attaine” (i.x.49–50; my emphasis). unlike despair, Mercy is one of several women in Book i who play a positive, supporting role in redcrosse’s quest. In further contrast to Despair, who focuses obsessively on literal, superficial readings of classical and biblical texts and reduces the variety of meanings of particular words, Spenser remains faithful to the multiple resonances of prior, influential texts. in the episodes of the Wandering Wood and fradubio, for instance, he preserves the integrity and aesthetic wholeness of prior models by conveying the spirit, and not simply the letter, of the passages he borrows from them. ironically, despair’s technique of mimicry resembles spenser’s in that they both borrow words and phrases from other texts and place them in original contexts. nevertheless, despair’s method of reading and responding to prior authoritative texts is intentionally perverse and involves calculated misinterpretation and distortion. his responses to cicero and seneca are examples of what harold Bloom describes in his discussion of the anxiety of influence as a “communication deliberately twisted askew, turned about” and as “a mistranslation of its precursors” (71). despair perverts the meanings of classical, stoical works in order to deceive his audience, resulting in a parody of spenser’s dialogic method of intertextual allusion. By twisting the meanings of classical and biblical texts, despair obscures the possibility of redcrosse’s ever receiving grace and denies him access to his only means of spiritual liberation. the tempter’s incomplete, perverse representation of the deity as a merely just and wrathful figure acts “as a swords point” that through his “hart did perse” (48.2). their conceptions of an old testament god are as harsh and unforgiving as the one doctor faustus imagines at the end of Marlowe’s play about despair. although redcrosse doubts previously “how ... a man” may “with idle speach / Be wonne, to spoyle the castle of his health” (31.1–2), shortly after he listens to despair’s seductive speech, “all his manly powers it did disperse” (48.7). such “idle talk” is empowering for despair, even though this kind of rhetoric is often labeled as feminine in the renaissance and thereby considered weakening for a man.76 his moving words lead redcrosse to grasp a literal, potentially self-

nuancing. in christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, a contemporary play concerning the pride of despair, the word “end” occurs 12 times in the course of the play and ranges in meaning from “goal, or ultimate intention” in faustus’ opening soliloquy, “is to dispute well logickes chiefest end?” (i.i.8) to “death” near the conclusion of the play, when a scholar proposes to the others that “though faustus’ end be such / as every christian heart laments to think on ... we’ll give his mangled limbs due burial” (V.iii.13-17; my emphasis). see J.B. steane, ed., The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (1969; reprint, harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), pp. 266 and 338. future quotations of Marlowe’s plays are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. 76 see Elizabeth a. foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (london: longman, 1999), p. 61, for a discussion of representations of “idle talk” as feminine in the renaissance.

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destructive weapon that is a parody of the one symbolizing the word of god in revelation 19:15. spenser describes the blasted landscape of despair in arboreal terms that recur throughout Book i of The Faerie Queene and in Jonson’s Timber: or Discoveries Upon Men and Matter. as redcrosse grasps the sword to commit suicide, his hand “tremble[s] like a leafe of aspin greene” (9.51.4). this line recalls fradubio’s trembling leaves and creates a parallel between redcrosse and Piero delle Vigne, dante’s tree man in the canto of the suicides (51.4). like dante, who situates Piero delle Vigne in a desert that he describes in terms of negatives suggestive of the denial of life: “no green leaves, ... no smooth branches, ... no fruit,” spenser describes the blasted landscape of despair in arboreal terms indicative of its lack of productivity: “and all about old stockes and stubs of trees, / whereon nor fruit, nor leafe was ever seene” (i.ix.34.1–2).77 una, however, prevents redcrosse from committing suicide by exclaiming, “ne let vaine words bewitch thy manly heart” and rebukes him for believing that mercy is unavailable to him (53.2). interestingly, his dependence on the female figure of Una restores his manhood. After Redcrosse escapes from the cave, despair provides a proleptic vision of what could have happened to the doubting Knight by repeatedly attempting to hang himself on a tree. unlike fradubio’s narrative, which contains the promise of redemption at the well of grace, despair’s lyrical rhetoric lacks a restorative, future dimension and offers redcrosse no imaginative means of escape from the hopelessness this allegorical figure represents. The tempter’s parody of dialogism is entrapping rather than liberating and results in his own voicelessness. With the help of Una in the cave of Despair and the female figure of Mercy at the House of Holiness, Redcrosse finally arrives at the well of grace at the end of Book I. During Redcrosse’s battle with the dragon, Spenser fittingly commends him for his “twelve thousand dolours” that far exceed the “twelve huge labours” of hercules (xi.27.3, 7). as this pivotal line illustrates, emotional expressiveness is vital for spenser’s epic hero. after falling into this well, a symbol for the waters of baptism, the “new-borne knight to battell new did rise” (xi.34.9). he overcomes the dragon, a serpentine figure akin to Error, only through tears of contrition, the rhetoric of confession, and the grace that accompanies baptism. although redcrosse’s betrothal to una results in “joy,” she is left to “mourn” while he continues his quest for the faerie Queene (41.1, 9). the deferral of their blissful end returns the reader to the beginning of Book i in which una wears a “blacke stole ... as one that inly mournd” for her imprisoned parents (i.i.4.5–6). spenser’s emphasis on the emotions of lust, grief, sorrow, despair, and joy throughout The Faerie Queene distinguishes his epic from works such as Virgil’s Aeneid and ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and allies the Protestant poet with the augustinian branch of humanism. his focus on overpowering emotions, including both their dignity and underlying dangerousness, makes his poem akin to ovid’s Metamorphoses among others. throughout Book i of The Faerie Queene spenser achieves fame as a poet and scholar by conversing with such intertextual voices and establishing his own dialogic 77 dante alighieri, The Divine Comedy, vol. 1, Inferno, trans. Mark Musa (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1971), Xiii.4-6, p. 186.

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imagination.78 in addition to borrowing words and phrases from multiple literary predecessors, he alludes to the larger contexts of their works and remains mindful of differences between his poem and those by his classical, medieval, and renaissance predecessors. in the new context of a Protestant epic spenser highlights the hidden dangers of roman catholicism in the Wandering Wood and presents the possibility of escape from theological error and blinding passion through confession, tears, and grace in the episode of Fradubio. Despite sustained flashes of originality during Spenser’s dialogue with prior, influential poets, the specter of Despair is abiding and suggestive of the alternative loss of voice that can result from entrapment within endless, contextual rounds.

78 for a discussion of dialogism in relation to the epic see “Epic and novel: toward a Methodology for the study of the novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael holquist, trans. caryl Emerson and Michael holquist (austin: university of texas Press, 1981), pp. 340.

2.

a Pen as Mighty as the sword: stoical anger in Jonson’s Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter “Spencer, affecting the ancients, writ no language: yet i would have him read for his matter” (Timber 1806–8).

like spenser in Book i of The Faerie Queene, Jonson as a scholarly writer alludes to numerous classical and renaissance, literary predecessors in Timber: or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter. he draws particularly on material from seneca, cicero, Quintilian, and Juan luis Vives, a Spanish Catholic humanist heavily influenced by the stoics.79 unlike spenser, who depicts his relation to a broad range of literary predecessors in terms of friendship and even dependence, Jonson exhibits a fiercely aggressive sense of rivalry and competition with ancient and early modern writers. he defends the manliness of his rhetorical art by attacking signs of effeminacy in rival laureates and aristocrats of his day. his anger at those aristocrats who have risen to the top of the social hierarchy through birthright rather than merit fuels these attacks. throughout Timber Jonson implicitly challenges seventeenth-century notions of inherited wealth and property and envisions a social hierarchy in which individuals advance as a result of their wit and virtuous action instead.80 spenser and Jonson differ not only in how they negotiate their relation to voices from literary history but also in how they imagine their works will be read by future audiences. although spenser displays little faith in his ability to control how men and women will interpret his poetry, Jonson attempts to shape how his poetry, prose, and plays will educate what he describes as a largely male audience. his methods of reading and responding to prior works and his efforts to shape and determine his own future literary reputation result in the impression of a strikingly different, scholarly man than spenser.81 in contrast to spenser, who emphasizes passionate Protestantism in 79 Bouwsma, A Usable Past, p. 60. 80 in Society, Politics and Culture, p. 375, James states that as early as the sixteenth century “uncertainty about the status of heredity increased, with a proneness to present honour, virtue and nobility as detachable from their anchorage in pedigree and descent.” 81 for an overview of the importance of masculinity in Jonson’s works see ronald huebert, “a shrew yet honest: Manliness in Jonson,” Renaissance Drama 15 (1984): 3168. other works relevant to this topic are douglas lanier, “Masculine silence: Epicoene and Jonsonian stylistics,” College Literature 21 (1994): 1-18; goldberg, “fatherly authority: the Politics of stuart family images,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual

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Book i of The Faerie Queene, Jonson combines stoicism with unrestrained anger directed at social inequalities in Timber. I Jonson’s Timber, which was published posthumously by sir Kenelm drury in the 1640 folio, is a prose fragment the closest genre for which is a commonplace book. in this prose work Jonson presents himself as a reader, writer, and teacher concerned not only with influencing the coterie of Cavalier poets known as the Sons of Ben but also with guiding future generations of humanist scholars.82 he models how the ideal man ought to read and respond to works by a variety of classical and humanist predecessors whose writings are largely stoical. in Timber, a tract embodying Jonson’s poetics, he focuses on the labor of working with words and the art of composing a distinctive literary style in relation to issues of rank and gender. according to Jonson, such intellectual labor is essential for the merited achievement of noble status, which he believes ought not to be inherited but available to all who use their rational capabilities in the pursuit of truth.83 in contrast to spenser, Jonson tends to respond anxiously and ambivalently to the blurring of hierarchical distinctions between the sexes and finds androgyny and effeminacy objectionable for a man.84 In his eyes the ideal man is appropriately defined by characteristics traditionally viewed as masculine such as violence, rivalry, and independence.85 in Timber Jonson’s espousing of self-reliance and stoical restraint of excessive passion is qualified by his own dependence on a community of classical and early modern writers whose works provide the silva, or raw material, out of which he creates Timber.86 his legacy is similarly contingent on the communal impressions and judgements of other readers, male and female. the kinds of texts to which spenser and Jonson allude in their arboreal works that delineate their own poetics contribute to their projection of contrasting masculine personae as scholarly writers. their radically different responses to ovid are a Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and nancy Vickers (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1986), pp. 3-32; and tetsuji hiramatsu, “Ben Jonson’s Pursuit of Manly Eloquence: reading his Poems through the Poetics in Timber,” Josai Jinbun Kenkyu 12 (1985): 115-52. recently, critics have begun to discuss Jonson’s texts in terms of feminist concerns. see, for example, essays by clare McManus, helen ostovich, and Julie sanders in Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics, and the Jonsonian Canon, ed. Julie sanders, Kate chedgzoy, and susan Wiseman (new york: st Martin’s, 1998). 82 Jennifer Brady, “Progenitors and other sons in Ben Jonson’s Discoveries,” in New Perspectives on Ben Jonson, ed. James hirsh (Madison: fairleigh dickinson university Press, 1997), pp. 16-17. 83 don E. Wayne, “Mediation and contestation: English classicism from sidney to Jonson,” Criticism 25 (1983): 236. 84 huebert, “a shrew yet honest: Manliness in Jonson”: 54. 85 amussen, “‘the Part of a christian Man’: the cultural Politics of Manhood in Early Modern England,” p. 227. 86 richard s. Peterson, Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson (new haven: yale university Press, 1981), p. 30.

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case in point. in the catalogue of trees spenser alludes to love stories of loss and betrayal from Book X of ovid’s Metamorphoses. spenser’s catalogue particularly recalls ovidian myths involving emotion: orpheus grieves for Eurydice, cybele seeks vengeance for atys’ betrayal of her, and Myrrha feels shame for committing incest. Jonson, by contrast, writes little about what Katharine Eisaman Maus describes as “the emotional dynamics of unrequited love, which interest many of his contemporaries.”87 his disinterest in and even distrust of the emotions parallel that of classical rhetoricians, who tend to emphasize the virtues of rational selfsufficiency and stoical rigorism. Jonson detaches himself from the Ovidian, love tradition commonly emulated by Elizabethan and Jacobean writers and alludes widely to stoic, roman writers instead.88 in contrast to spenser, his arboreal work Timber displays his collection of fragments from seneca, cicero, and Quintilian as well as the renaissance humanist Vives. in their commentary on Timber, c.h. herford Percy and Evelyn simpson contend that Jonson “fuses, rearranges, and adapts his borrowed matter” having “thought out little or nothing for himself.”89 on the contrary, Jonson’s understated anger in response to social inequalities in seventeenth-century England makes his educational treatise written in the form and style of a commonplace book distinct. spenser and Jonson project strikingly different masculine personae as scholars largely because of how and what they read. Both men were voracious readers and writers with unique methods of responding to prior texts in Book i of The Faerie Queene and Timber. these two works contain digestive metaphors suggestive of how they imitate prior poets. representations of imitatio as digestion were common in humanist texts during this period.90 like the female monster Error, who ingests and spills forth entire “bookes and papers,” spenser alludes to bits and pieces of prior works in a context-sensitive manner so that they remain intact instead of assimilated and indistinguishable from his own voice. dialogism results from the creative interplay between his voice and multiple others. digestive similes and metaphors similarly provide analogues for Jonson’s method of poetic imitation. for instance, he states in Timber, “the third requisite in our Poet, or Maker, is Imitation, to bee able to convert the substance, or riches of an other Poet, to his owne use ... not, as a creature, that swallowes, what it takes in, crude, raw, or indigested; but, that feedes with an appetite, and hath a stomacke to concoct, divide, and turne all into nourishment” (2466–75). Jonson’s desire to assimilate other voices into his own suggests that he strives for monologism. nevertheless, dialogism actually results from the interplay between multiple, classical and humanist voices in Timber. as don Wayne remarks in his discussion of the “dialogic” structure of Jonson’s 87 Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1984), p. 20. 88 see helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates, p. 112, for a brief discussion of Jonson’s detachment from the ovidian love tradition. 89 in h & s, Works, vol. 9, Timber, p. 211. 90 see, for example, terence cave’s discussion of Erasmus’ De copia in relation to theories of imitation by cicero and Quintilian in The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (oxford: clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 37 and 45, and greene, The Light in Troy, pp. 275-6, on Jonson’s adaptation of this commonplace metaphor.

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collection of poems entitled The Forrest, his responses to such intertextual voices remain “both assimilative and contentious.”91 the masculine persona Jonson projects as a scholar is significantly more aggressive and violent than Spenser’s. In contrast to Jonson, spenser imagines his relationship with his literary predecessors in terms of comfortable dependence and mutual support. throughout The Faerie Queene spenser uses images suggestive of friendship, love, and even marriage to represent his dialogic relationship with his literary predecessors. in the catalogue of trees, for instance, spenser’s “vine-prop Elme” provides an apt figure for the support he receives from his predecessors. As I mentioned previously, this phrase alludes to statius’ “elms that give friendly shelter to the vines” and to Boccaccio’s “elm tree, beloved of vines.” spenser’s use of the vine and the elm motif, which is a common symbol of male friendship and of marriage, accentuates his affection for such literary authorities. although he distinguishes his Protestant epic from works by earlier poets, his reverence for other literary voices is sustained throughout The Faerie Queene. in Book iV spenser addresses chaucer in a reverential tone and highlights his reliance on him for guidance before providing an ending for his unfinished Squire’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales. he addresses “dan Chaucer, well of English vndefyled” and depends on the “infusion sweete” of the medieval poet’s “owne spirit, which doth in [him] surviue” (iV. ii.32.8–9 and 34.6–7). as spenser professes in response to his invocation of the spirit of chaucer, “i follow here the footing of thy feete” (iV.ii.34.8).92 the openness and indeterminacy of Chaucer’s unfinished manuscript calls for Spenser’s dialogic response. their intertextual relationship as depicted in this friendly exchange lacks the envy, resentment, anxiety, and aggression commonly associated with freudian models of rivalry between literary fathers and sons.93 in contrast to spenser, Jonson strives for monologism by emphasizing the importance of a poet imitating another man so closely that the differences between their works become almost indistinguishable. in Timber he states that a writer should follow “one excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him, till he grow very Hee: or, so like him, as the copie may be mistaken for the Principall.” nevertheless, Jonson states that the writer should follow another without imitating “servilely” (2469–75). Jonson, who fostered the tribe of the sons of Ben, hopes to teach his literary heirs “to reade the best authors, observe the best speakers: and much exercise of [their] own style” (1698–9). in Timber he recommends that a writer should strive to produce a unified text out of the words and phrases he borrows from others. In this way he or she resembles the bee that makes honey from the “choisest flowers” and transforms 91 “Jonson’s sidney”: p. 250. 92 For a discussion of Spenser’s invocation of Chaucer as he rewrites the unfinished Squire’s Tale in Book iV of The Faerie Queene see goldberg, Endlesse Worke: Spenser and the Structures of Discourse (Baltimore: the Johns hopkins university Press, 1981), pp. 3172. 93 Krier similarly argues that freud’s theory that group psychology is necessarily based on rivalry is flawed. In Birth Passages: Maternity, Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare (ithaca: cornell university Press, 2002), p. 127, she demonstrates that the avian parliamentarians representative of different economic classes in chaucer’s Parlement of Foules lack such rivalry and create “alternative economies in finance, love, and in the psyche.”

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the nectar into “one relish, and savour” (2477–8). seneca similarly compares reading and writing to the art of making honey “whereby separate elements are united into one substance.”94 near the end of Timber Jonson describes the process of creating such a unified work in terms of the construction of a house that “consisting of diverse materialls, becomes one structure, and one dwelling; so an action, compos’d of diverse parts, may become one Fable Epicke, or Dramaticke” (2791–3). the poet thereby creates “one” entity out of “diverse materialls.” Jonson’s focus on unifying multiple sources in Timber is further suggestive of his desire for monologism.95 throughout Timber Jonson presents his multiple, literary predecessors as rivals with whom he competes aggressively and violently, yet rationally. he demands that his texts be considered independently of “the writings of the Ancients” but by the same intellectual criteria.96 in a passage that alludes to Vives’ treatise on education, In Libros de Disciplinis Praefatio, he states: i know Nothing can conduce more to letters, then to examine the writings of the Ancients, and not to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them ... for to all the observations of the Ancients, wee have our owne experience: which, if wee will use, and apply, wee have better meanes to pronounce. it is true they open’d the gates, and made the way, that went before us; but as guides, not commanders ... truth lyes open to all; it is no mans severall.” (129–40)

in Jonson’s phrase “truth ... is no mans severall,” the word “severall” means ‘private property.’ his inclusion of this word implies that access to truth should not depend on one’s economic means for acquiring social status signified by private property.97 94 Epistulae Morales, vol. 2, trans. richard M. gummere (london: heineman, 1917), lXXXiV 4.14-15, p. 279. 95 By striving for monologism instead of dialogism in Timber Jonson partakes of what luce irigaray describes as “a monologic masculinist economy,” as cited in Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 13. referring to irigaray, Butler uses this phrase in the context of her discussion of the gender hierarchy of masculinity over femininity and the issues of compulsory heterosexuality and phallocentrism. for the purposes of my argument about the differences between spenser’s and Jonson’s poetics, irigaray’s phrase as cited by Butler is also suggestive of the wider association of monologism with masculinity and dialogism with femininity throughout Western culture. as i mentioned earlier, irigaray tellingly describes women as “the sex which is not one,” but multiple (p. 9). for further discussion of irigaray’s emphasis on the dialogism of language and its challenge to phallocentric discourse see gail M. schwab, “irigarayan dialogism: Play and Powerplay” in Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, ed. dale M. Bauer and susan Jaret (albany: state university of new york Press, 1991), pp. 5572. 96 a number of critics have expanded on the central premise of thomas greene’s influential essay “Ben Jonson and the Centered Self,” SEL 10 (1970): 325-48. those who discuss Jonson’s desire for autonomy and intellectual freedom as well as his resistance to difference are stanley fish, “authors-readers: Jonson’s community of the same,” Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. chaviva hôsek and Patricia Parker (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1985), p. 146, and annabel Patterson, “lyric and society in Jonson’s Underwood” in Lyric Poetry, p. 153. 97 Herford and Simpson define “severall” as “private property” in Works, 9: 218. Wayne discusses the increasing perception of a poet’s skill as intellectual property in a patronage

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truth derives from a man’s virtuous use of his capacity for reason instead. Jonson’s assertion that “truth lyes open to all” provides the possibility of including women as possessors of intellectual “truth,” though they often lacked a formal education or the luxury to pursue careers in the public domain in Jacobean England. hinting at his fierce ambition to surpass the “Ancients,” Jonson exclaims in a subsequent passage that he does not “desire to be equall to those that went before” but asks only that his “reason” be “examin’d with theirs, and so much faith to be given them, or [him], as those shall evict” (151–3). he states that his writings are not dependent on the “ancients” and should be examined on the same terms as theirs because “all” have access to reason—ancients and early moderns, men and women, as well as upper and lower ranks. fiercely competitive, Jonson criticizes spenser and shakespeare, his literary rivals, for allowing their rational faculties to be overtaken by their emotions, which he interprets as a sign of effeminacy. he denigrates spenser by stating that “in affecting the ancients,” he “writ no language” (1806–7). Jonson similarly criticizes shakespeare for failing to exhibit rational restraint of his passions by stating, “the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a thousand” (646–50). He explains acerbically that “wherein hee flow’d with that facility,” sometimes “it was necessary he should be stop’d” (658–9). By criticizing spenser and shakespeare for what he perceives as their excessive passion or enthusiasm and lack of temperance Jonson implies in a stoical fashion that his own emotions rarely get the best of his reason and that his style is relatively plain and restrained—virtues he believes are necessary for the ideal, scholarly man worthy of laureate status he imagines. through the pedagogical example of “honorable” shakespeare he warns his readers to avoid the emotionalism of idolatry, either of the ancients or of such a popular, contemporary playwright. Eighteenth-century readers and viewing audiences failed to heed this warning by transforming shakespeare into the very idol Jonson fears would corrupt the capacity of audience members and readers for individualized, aesthetic judgement. david garrick tapped into the eighteenth-century enthusiasm for the Bard by writing and producing numerous adaptations of shakespeare’s plays such as Florizel and Perdita first produced in 1756. despite Jonson’s criticism of spenser’s “affecting the ancients,” he read The Faerie Queene with fondness and care. James riddell and stanley stewart note that Jonson’s copy of Book ii, the legend of temperance, is “by far, the most heavily annotated part of The Faerie Queene” book he read.98 intertextual connections between spenser’s Bower of Bliss in Book ii and Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair shed further light on Jonson’s stoical conviction that excessive enthusiasm and zeal can become dangerous. in this festive comedy Jonson satirizes Puritanical zealots by alluding to guyon’s enthusiastic destruction of the Bower of Bliss. like guyon, Jonson’s Zeal-of-the-land Busy reacts intemperately by demolishing not a bower system that was turning into a marketplace in “Mediation and contestation”: 226. 98 see James a. riddell and stanley stewart, Jonson’s Spenser: Evidence and Historical Criticism (Pittsburgh: duquesne university Press, 1995), p. 79.

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but Joan trash’s gingerbread stand, which he describes as “this idolatrous groue of Images, this flasket of Idols! which I will pull downe.”99 likewise, guyon destroys the “groues,” “gardins,” and “arbers” of the Bower of Bliss with “rigour pittilesse.”100 Jonson satirizes the exuberant Protestantism that both Zeal-of-the-land Busy and guyon embody when Busy exclaims in response to the puppet show, “downe with Dagon, downe with Dagon” as if he were a religious reformer (V.v.1). in Book i of The Faerie Queene redcrosse similarly recalls Protestant Edward Vi’s destruction of dagon and the idols in Bateman’s The Traveyled Pylgrime (1569). redcrosse does so when he acts like a Protestant reformer by beheading Error whose “bookes and papers” refer to catholic propaganda in the Wandering Wood. though righteous passion motivates just action in the case of redcrosse, for guyon and Zeal-of-theland Busy too much zeal or a lack of fellow sympathy (either for acrasia in the Bower of Bliss or Joan trash in Jonson’s comedy) leads to a degree of folly. the shared literary, historical, and religious contexts linking Books i and ii of The Faerie Queene and Bartholomew Fair illustrate the dialogic, rather than monologic bent of Jonson’s play as well as his fierce objections to the destructive power of religious enthusiasm. in Bartholomew Fair as well as Timber, Jonson angrily challenges seventeenthcentury notions of inherited wealth, property, and status. he satirizes Bartholomew cokes, an upper-ranking Esquire of harrow, for his foolishness and lack of manhood at the fair. this aristocrat loses his expensive “beauer-hat” and his “cloake” to the cutpurse Edgeworth (iV.ii.63–4). Busy’s manhood is again called into question when he loses his “fine sword” to Edgeworth and even his fiancé, Mistress Grace Welborne, to the gamester Quarlous. Quarlous successfully steals, or acquires and keeps several markers of aristocratic status, including a “beauer-hat” imported from america and an upper-ranking wife. in this city comedy that takes place during the holiday of st Bartholomew’s day Jonson celebrates those who climb the social ladder by virtue of their wits and demeans those who foolishly rely on inherited rank. his anger thereby leads him to envision a more equitable social structure. II in Timber Jonson fashions a method and rationale for his own acquisition of elite status comparable to that of an aristocrat through the virtuous labor of a scholarly writer with a manly rhetorical style. as we know, clothing is widely recognized as a sign of social rank and gender in early modern culture.101 in his educational treatise 99 h & s, Works, vol. 6, Bartholomew Fair, iii.vi.98-9. future quotations from this play are from this edition. 100 spenser, The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, 2: xii.83.2-7. 101 sumptuary laws were intended to enforce differences between men and women of various social ranks. in “the semiotics of Masculinity in renaissance England,” p. 242, Kuchta notes that “no one under the degree of earl ... was permitted to wear cloth of gold, silver, or tinseled satin.” the Puritan, anti-theatricalist Philip stubbes complains, however, that blatant disregard for these sumptuary laws has led to “a confuse mingle mangle of apparell” that makes it “verie hard to knowe who is noble, who is worshipfull, who is a gentleman, who

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Jonson links the motif of elaborate dress with elite masculine and feminine literary styles in particular. he attacks the aristocracy in seventeenth-century England by emphasizing that their style of clothing and language is unmanly. in a passage that alludes to Quintilian’s praise of “direct and natural speech,”102 Jonson objects that “now nothing is good that is naturall: right and naturall language seeme(s) to have least of the wit in it; that which is writh’d and tortur’d, is counted the more exquisite” (575–8). he particularly mocks those gentlemen whose ornate methods of writing are artificial and effeminate: “Nothing is fashionable, till it bee deform’d; and this is to write like a Gentleman. all must bee as affected, and preposterous as our gallants cloathes, sweet bags, and night-dressings: in which you might thinke our men lay in, like Ladies: it is so curious” (583–6; my emphasis). Jonson’s use of the phrase, “night-dressings,” which refers to gowns worn by the aristocracy in renaissance England, indicates that he is targeting their effeminacy in particular.103 By relegating these aristocratic men to the status of “ladies” he places himself above them. his manly style elevates him above those who are effeminate, even though they are of a higher social rank. Jonson demeans the elite status of these aristocrats because it is inherited and based on superficies of effeminate dress alone. throughout Timber Jonson uses the term “effeminacy” in a manner fueled by his anger and disdain for the English social hierarchy that privileges aristocrats by birth over those who distinguish themselves through intellectual labor. in his attack on these aristocrats he states, “looke upon an effeminate person: his very gate confesseth him” (952–3). in these lines he alludes to seneca’s assertion that one can detect “the effeminacy” of a man “by his very gait” (Epistulae Morales cXiV. 3.11). later in this section of Epistulae Morales seneca endorses the virtue of emotional rigorism by similarly warning that “an uncontrolled, passionate, and effeminate soul changes kingship into that most dread and detestable quality—tyranny; then it becomes a prey to the uncontrolled emotions” (cXiV.24.5; my emphasis). in the larger context of this passage seneca reinforces the political status quo by praising a “king” for justly ruling the “populace” as the “soul” presides over the unruly “body” (Episulae Morales VXiV.23–5). seneca also uses the term “effeminate” in a manner that implies his disdain for women whom he assumes are prone to immoderate expressions of emotion (35). all those who fail to control excess passion are womanly in his eyes. Jonson, by contrast, largely directs his apparent misogyny, which surfaces through his repeated criticisms of effeminacy, at members of the ruling elite who have derived their social position from birth rather than virtue, wit, or labor. he thereby undermines the existing hierarchy and glances at his own is not”: The Anatomie of Abuses (1583: reprint, netherlands: de capo Press, 1972), c2vV. Recent studies of the literary and cultural significance of early modern clothing include Ann rosalind Jones and Peter stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000) and laura levine, Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-Theatricality and Effeminization, 1579-1642 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994). 102 The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, 4 vols., trans. h.E. Butler (london: William heinemann, 1920-22), vol. 1, ii.v.11. future translations of Quintilian are from this translation. 103 see h & s, Works, 9: 229.

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vision of a more egalitarian system. ironically, his implied disdain for women is a political tool directed at upper-ranking men. By emphasizing the effeminacy of the aristocracy in contrast to his own manhood Jonson implies that he, too, deserved to be recognized as one of the elite, if not by social rank, then by gender.104 Jonson focuses on the importance of masculine dress and rhetorical style in a decidedly political way. in Timber he mocks gentlemen who wear “Velvets, tissues, imbroderies, laces” by stating that “too much pickedness is not manly” (1398–9, 1422). here Jonson alludes to seneca’s phrase, “elaborate elegance is not a manly garb” (Epistulae Morales cXV).105 Jonson’s emphasis on clothing as a marker of social rank in Timber as well as Bartholomew Fair implies that a gossamer thread holds the existing hierarchy together. alternatively, he argues that an upstart such as himself should be able to earn comparable aristocratic status because of his mighty rhetoric and virtuous labor. In contrast to the effeminacy of the aristocratic figures he critiques, he implies that the matter and style of his texts are virtuous and manly, entitling him to the elite status they enjoy. the ways in which Jonson reads and responds to seneca and Quintilian illustrate that he is in tune with egalitarian issues of social rank and angry about current inequalities in England. throughout Timber Jonson defends his right to the prestigious laurel crown by emphasizing that his rhetoric is masculine rather than feminine. some classical and early modern writers tend to represent femininity as sources of weakness, anxiety, or ambivalence for men. in keeping with cultural perceptions of the weakening, “effeminizing aspects of rhetoric,” cicero and Quintilian (as well as Jonson) counter this preconception by depicting their rhetorical arts as masculine and powerful.106 in Institutio Oratoria Quintilian describes the proper style of an orator as one that combines “smoothness and polish with a general impression of manly vigour” and depicts a “faulty” style of speech as “effeminate” (ii.v.9–10). Jonson similarly emphasizes the virtues of masculine rhetoric in Timber when advising young writers to “behold, what word is proper: which hath ornament: which height: what is beautifully translated: where figures are fit: which gentle, which strong to shew the composition Manly” (793–7; the former my emphasis). in these lines Jonson replaces Quintilian’s word “levis,” meaning “smooth,” with the term “gentle” (Institutio Oratoria ii.v.9.5). Jonson’s interjection of this word underscores the issue of social rank in his discussion of a proper rhetorical style. this word when describing a person has connotations of those who are “well-born” and “belonging to a family of

104 for further discussion of Jonson’s scapegoating of misogyny in terms of issues of rank see Wayne, “Jonson’s sidney”: 243, and Victoria silver, “totem and taboo in the tribe of Ben: the duplicity of gender and Jonson’s satires,” ELH 62 (1995): 730. susanne Woods discusses his “authority of gender, if not of social class” in “aemilia lanyer and Ben Jonson: Patronage, authority, and gender,” Ben Jonson Journal 1 (1994): 15-30. 105 Epistulae Morales, vol. 3, cXV: “not est ornamentum virile concinnitas,” p. 320. 106 rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1995), p. 143.

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position.”107 Jonson thereby implies that a “Manly” composition elevates the writer of it to the status of a gentleman, a title one earns rather than inherits.108 III despite Jonson’s establishing of his laureate reputation on his manly rhetoric, his fame as a writer results in part from his imagination, a dimension of the mind often represented as feminine in the classical rhetorical tradition. like Quintilian, Jonson associates the imaginative process of invention with the female act of giving birth. he recalls closely his classical predecessor’s phrase, “for we love all the offspring of our thought at the moment of their birth” (Institutio Oratoria X.iii.7) when he states, “for all that wee invent doth please us in the conception, or birth” (1719–20).109 although both he and Quintilian exhibit wariness about the power of the imagination, Jonson intensifies the threat it poses to rational self-sufficiency by transforming his classical predecessor’s comparison of it to a “favouring breeze” (l. flatus) leading one to “error” into the more violent phrase, “a faire gale of wind” that can easily deceive one who sets sail (1717–19).110 his anxiety about the passionate whims of fancy and the imagination apparently exceeds Quintilian’s. such metaphors comparing the emotions to severe weather convey the dangerous power of immoderate affection. sir thomas Wyatt’s famous lyric poem “My galley” in which the speaker compares his love for a woman to a tumultuous wind capable of causing a shipwreck is another case in point. Jonson attempts to control the passionate threat of the imagination by coupling it with “Judgement,” which he tends to represent as masculine. after the invention of an idea, which he compares to the feminine process of conception or giving birth, he states that the “safest is to returne to our Judgement” (1721–2). the process of “Judgement” involves laboring to produce a text for a lengthy period of time. in this way Jonson reverses the customary role of mother and father in the biological production of a child. “Judgement,” which is often coded as masculine, performs the protracted labor after imagination, frequently perceived as feminine, aids in the conception of an idea. the writer who follows Jonson’s advice produces a “well-order’d family” as a result of his patience and attention to craft (1729–30).

107 OED, “gentle,” 1.a. 108 in Works, 9: 239, herford and simpson suggest, by contrast, that Jonson uses “gentle” because he misread Quintilian’s “levis,” meaning “smoothness and polish,” as “light,” suggestive of “gentle.” 109 in Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, p. 185, Maus rightly argues that Jonson “depicts his creativity as a maternal function” in this line from Timber. the context surrounding this line, however, emphasizes the paternal function of his creativity as well. 110 crane notes that considerable distrust of fancy or the imagination similarly led “most English educational theorists” to avoid “metaphors of conception and birth ... to represent the workings of the creative imagination in the renaissance”: Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1993), p. 71.

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throughout Timber he uses the term “labor” associated with giving birth in relation to the writing process of revision.111 he advises writers, for instance: No matter how slow the style be at first, so it be labour’d, and accurate: seeke the best, and be not glad of the forward conceipts, or first words, that offer themselves to us, but judge of what wee invent ... (1705–8; my emphasis)

Jonson argues that the best literary style results from “labor,” a term linked in the seventeenth century not only with “the pains and efforts of childbirth” (OED 6.a.) but also with “bodily or mental toil” (OED 1.a.). as a laboring writer who exercises “Judgement,” he assumes the feminine, biological role of producing and giving birth to a child but transforms it into a masculine art. nevertheless, in Timber the alliance of the imaginative “conception” of ideas and rhetorical “labor” with the female body suggests that Jonson’s literary identity as a scholarly writer is dependent on a degree of femininity. in contrast to spenser, who exhibits passionate Protestantism as well as a dialogic, feminine voice in arboreal episodes in Book i of The Faerie Queene, Jonson in Timber values the Roman, stoical virtue of rational self-sufficiency. The stones of the ideal, metaphorical house Jonson imagines in Timber convey his emphasis on this very goal of self-sufficiency. As a writer he aims for a “manly” style in which the “harmonious fitting of parts of a sentence” are “as stones well squar’d, which will rise strong a great way without mortar” (1978–90). interestingly, the stones of this edifice, which are “strong” without mortar, provide an analogue for the virtue of selfsufficiency he admires. In this passage Jonson focuses the reader’s attention on the exterior of a stately edifice. He thereby associates his ideal version of masculinity based on self-sufficiency with a public rather than a private space. In Timber Jonson earlier describes a proper rhetorical style in which there is “a harmonie, and concent of parts” (1754) as “a well-order’d family,” an echo of Quintilian’s phase, “wellordered household” based on the latin word, familia (1729–30).112 in Jonson’s subsequent phrase “stones well squar’d,” which is situated within the larger context of his discussion of masculinity and style, he—unlike Quintilian—noticeably shifts the reader’s attention away from the ordering of household duties within an interior space to the architecture of an exterior façade. throughout Jonson’s career he responds ambivalently to the household and the family because of a man’s dependence on the generative powers of women there.113 in the next section i turn to how his anxiety over conceived threats to the existing gender hierarchy influences not only how he reads and responds to classical and early modern works but also how he conceives of the audience he addresses in his printed Works. 111 in neil Probst’s “topical index to Jonson’s Discoveries,” Ben Jonson Journal 3 (1996): 167, almost all of the fifteen citations of the word “labor” refer to instances of Jonson’s usage of the word in this way. 112 Institutio Oratoria, vol. 4, X.III.9, p. 97: “in familia bene instituta in officio erunt.” 113 in “reconsidering Ben Jonson and the ‘centered self’,” South Central Review 13 (1996): 113, ann c. christensen notes that throughout Timber “Jonson’s sketches of domestic interiors often appear suspect, unstable, uncentered.” she continues that “houses, like wombs and women, are ambiguous for Jonson.”

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IV unlike Jonson, who was writing during the reign of James i and who primarily addresses a male audience as a result, spenser was courting the favor of Elizabeth i and therefore depended on both a male and female readership for his epic romance.114 spenser draws attention to the fact that he intends women as well as men to read The Faerie Queene by invoking the Queen in each Proem and by addressing other female readers in Book iii. he states, for instance, “faire ladies, that to love captivéd are” in the house of Malecaste (iii.i.49.1) and “Well may i weene, faire ladies ... ” at the outset of the garden of adonis (iii.vi.1). in the legend of chastity in which his use of romance conventions are prominent he addresses women in particular about affairs of the heart. Jonson, by contrast, appeals largely to men in his poetry, prose, and plays. he titles his work Timber: Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter, an educational treatise in which he attempts to fashion the next generation of scholarly men. Various forms of the words “man,” “manhood,” and “manly”—the very name of Eustace Manly whom Jonson satirizes in The Devil is an Ass—occur remarkably frequently in Jonson’s corpus. in addition, the Preface to Volpone suggests that men are largely Jonson’s intended audience for that play. he states, a “good Poet ... is said to be able to informe yong-men to all good disciplines, inflame growne-men to all great vertues, keepe old-men in their best and supreme state ... ”115 although Jonson mentions in the Prologue to Epicoene; or, the Silent Woman that the play is appropriate for “ladies,” “waiting wench,” and “city-wires” (22–3), he dedicates it to sir francis stuart and asks him to exercise the “manliest” virtue of “justice” when reading it.116 Even though the self-proclaimed father of the sons of Ben addresses some of his plays and poems to female patrons such as the lady of Bedford, he praises her for her “manly soule.”117 ironically, Jonson’s apparent misogyny in his Works is fueled by his distaste for aristocratic men, including his male patrons. according to don Wayne, Jonson in The Forrest often praises them through their wives or daughters, including “lady sidney of Penshurst, lady Wroth, the countess of rutland, and lady aubingny.” this factor further suggests that Jonson’s criticism of women in The Forrest as well as Timber is actually a veil for his attack on aristocratic men.118 in Timber Jonson directs his misogyny at those male aristocrats who no doubt objected to his presentation of them as “ladies.” he rightly imagines that they “take offence where no name, character, or signature doth blazon them.” to Jonson these overly sensitive people seem as “affected as woemen; who, if they heare anything ill spoken of the ill of their sexe, [they] are presently mov’d, as if the contumely respected their particular: and, on the 114 see Maureen Quilligan’s discussion of “spenser’s audience” and “Book iii and the gender of the reader” in Milton’s Spenser: The Politics of Reading (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1983), pp. 179-208, and lanier’s treatment of Jonson’s audience in “Masculine silence,” p. 2. 115 h & s, Works, 5: 17, lines 23-5. 116 h & s, Works, 5: 161-3. 117 h & s, Works, vol. 8, Epigrammes lXXVi, p. 52, line 13. 118 in “Jonson’s sidney”: 243, Wayne discusses the displacement of Jonson’s aggression toward “male members of a ruling class” onto “the courtly ideal of womanhood.”

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contrary, when they heare good of good woemen, conclude that it belongs to them all” (2319–25). aristocratic men, whom Jonson describes as “affected” numerous times in Timber, are the prime targets of satire in Jonson’s humanistic, educational treatise.119 Jonson attempts to dominate and control the male readership he imagines for Timber by using aggressive and violent rhetoric. like Quintilian and other classical predecessors, he counters the potentially effeminizing aspects of a career devoted to rhetoric by representing his art in masculine terms of invasion and attack. his literary forefathers adopted this conventional manner of depicting rhetoric because men in a Roman context usually defined themselves through action rather than “idle” speech.120 Quintilian, who compares rhetoricians with an ornate and elaborate style to those who display their effeminacy by using a curling iron or cosmetics (ii.v.10– 11), emphasizes the manliness of a direct and natural style by comparing it to the art practiced by gladiators and wrestlers (ii.xii.2). Jonson similarly compares writers to “fencers, or Wrastlers” (635) and furthers this comparison by stating that “there is a difference between Mooting, and Pleading; between Fencing and Fighting” (426–7). Earlier in Institutio Oratoria, Quintilian describes the manly art of rhetoric not only in athletic but also in violent terms: the teacher will proceed further to demonstrate ... how subtle and frequent are the thrusts of argument, what vigour marks the stirring and what charm the soothing passage, how fierce is the invective and how full of wit the jests, and in conclusion how the orator establishes his sway over the emotions of the audience, forces his way into their very hearts and brings the feelings of the jury into perfect sympathy with all his words. (ii.v. 8; my emphasis)

Quintilian defends the manliness of his art by using aggressive phrases such as “thrusts of argument” and “fierce ... invective” and by depicting the orator as one who “forces his way into ... [the] very hearts” of his audience. Jonson also uses violent terms when praising the rhetorician for how he “doth raigne in mens affections; how invade, and breake in upon them; and makes their minds like the thing he writes” (791–3). he implies that a writer should check and restrain the affections of his male readers so that they maintain their ability to reason and are not swayed solely by emotion. Whereas Quintilian focuses on the “emotions,” “hearts,” and “feelings” of the jury listening to the orator, Jonson at first refers to a rhetorician moving the “affections” of his listeners but quickly shifts his focus to their “minds.” as a result, he emphasizes what he perceives as the manly attribute of reason instead of the potentially effeminizing capacity for emotion. his reading of Quintilian deemphasizes the passions and is remarkably stoical. unlike spenser, Jonson believes he can control how his texts will be read by a future, largely male audience. he argues that the rhetorician should aim to make the 119 see, for example, h & s, Works, 5: 574, 581, 585, 612, 626, and 631. 120 see rebhorn’s discussion of the similar tactics used by cicero, Quintilian, and renaissance rhetoricians to counter the claim that their art is feminine in The Emperor of Men’s Minds: pp. 133-96, especially pp. 143-4.

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“minds” of his readers “like the thing he writes” (793). Jonson would like to shape future readings of his works and make them identical to his own intent. at the end of Book Vi of The Faerie Queene, by contrast, spenser displays little faith in his ability to control future interpretations of his texts. he laments that his published documents are vulnerable to the misinterpretation and censure signified by the bite of the Blatant Beast. This monstrous figure with a multiplicity of tongues particularly threatens to “rend” the body of his texts and his very “person,” or in this case his name and literary reputation (xii.40.9). in “an Execration upon Vulcan” Jonson similarly describes the court censorship of his own works in cannibalistic terms by observing Vulcan’s “consuming looks” and by enduring the agony of watching him devour his books “piece, by piece.”121 Jonson, however, acts as his own censor by stating which pieces of his corpus are good and which are bad and in so doing attempts to influence their future estimation.122 although both spenser and Jonson were scholars who consumed and digested numerous literary works, the masculine sensibilities they project as scholarly writers— either passionate Protestant or neoclassical stoic—are strikingly different. samuel taylor coleridge describes spenser’s intellect in terms of “feminine tenderness and almost maidenly purity of feeling.”123 yet the competitiveness, aggressiveness, and even violence of Jonson’s literary persona led Virginia Woolf to remark that he “had a dash too much of the male” in him.124 the relation of masculinity to femininity in Jonson’s Timber, however, is ambiguous. his laureate status depends on the imagination, which a number of roman writers he respected depicted as feminine. Despite Jonson’s self-presentation as a stoical writer influenced by the rhetoricians, seneca, cicero, and Quintilian, his political agenda is fueled by righteous anger. in Timber Jonson directs his anger primarily at aristocratic men whose elite social position is based on birth rather than virtuous scholarly achievement. his defense of his own manhood as a scholar and writer is thus largely motivated by his concern with social inequalities and stems from his relatively egalitarian belief in the availability of reason and intellect for all “good” men, his phrase in the Preface to Volpone.125 although Jonson implicitly excludes women from participating in his humanist project of educating others about the proper methods of reading and writing, freeing such virtues of the mind from possession by the upper ranks creates the possibility of liberating intellectualism from its culturally sanctioned ownership by men during the Jacobean age. such attempts to topple the social hierarchy often weaken the gender hierarchy as well. in Timber Jonson endorses wit, virtuous action, and labor independent of inherited social rank. as a stoical writer he warns about the dangers of excessive emotionalism. the explosive relation of competing versions of 121 h & s, Works, 8: 202-12, lines 17 and 51. 122 for a discussion of how Jonson attempts to act as his own censor see richard Burt, Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourse of Censorship (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1993), pp. 58-9. 123 see “spenser’s art” in Edmund Spenser’s Poetry: Authoritative Texts and Criticism, ed. hugh Maclean and anne lake Prescott (new york: W.W. norton, 1993), p. 671. 124 A Room of One’s Own (new york: harcourt, Brace, and World, 1929), p. 107. 125 h & s, Works, vol. 5, Preface to Volpone, line 17.

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masculinity, ranging from stoical to emotionally expressive, in the context of two history plays—Marlowe’s Edward II and shakespeare’s Richard II—is the subject of the next part of this study to which i now turn.

Part tWo Emotional Kings and their stoical usurpers in Marlowe’s Edward II and shakespeare’s Richard II Masculinity and emotion are closely intertwined in Marlowe’s Edward II (1593) and shakespeare’s Richard II (1595), history plays that emerged in response to a common chronicle tradition.1 Both plays feature a wide variety of masculine figures, ranging from those who are unfeeling, stoical, or emotionally restrained to those who are not afraid to cry. In an age accustomed to imagining men as feudal warriors defined by violent action and bloodshed, men of feeling prone to passivity and tears met with some resistance in the realm of literary politics. Both Edward II and Richard II focus on the deposition and imprisonments of weak kings and their emotional responses to their plights. though Edward loses his crown at the hands of heartless Mortimer and Isabel, he gains public support as a result of his lamenting, groaning, and final cry in prison. in Richard II the deposed King develops legendary status as the victim of the usurper Bolingbroke through displays of emotion that ally him with weeping women in the play. the power of his woeful rhetoric and tears persists throughout the Henriad, as illustrated by a number of figures in Henry IV, Parts I and II that keep richard’s memory alive by continuing to talk regrettably about his deposition. Meanwhile, henry iV’s subjects become increasingly disenchanted with this man of action rather than feeling whose reign bore the scars of illegitimacy. 1 relatively few critics have compared representations of manhood and emotion in Marlowe’s Edward II and shakespeare’s Richard II. alan shepherd, however, deals explicitly with depictions of manliness in Edward II in Marlowe’s Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada (aldershot: ashgate, 2002), pp. 79–112. in Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (new york: routledge, 1997), pp. 137– 59, Jean E. howard and Phyllis rackin consider gender politics, including competing versions of masculinity, in shakespeare’s Richard II. for a useful discussion of the professional rivalry between Marlowe and shakespeare in terms other than masculinity and emotion see James shapiro, Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare. intertextual connections between works by Marlowe and shakespeare are widely recognized. links between works by spenser and Marlowe are also notable but less widely addressed. Patrick cheney considers Marlowe’s fashioning of his professional identity in relation to ovid and spenser in “‘thondring Words of threate’: Marlowe, spenser, and the renaissance idea of a literary career” in Marlowe, History, and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Paul Whitfield White (new york: aMs Press, 1998), pp. 39–58, and in Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession: Ovid, Spenser, Counter-nationhood (toronto: university of toronto Press, 1997).

3.

“Monster of Men!”: androgyny, affect, and Politically savvy action in Marlowe’s Edward II in Edward II Marlowe focuses on politicians who range from emotionally expressive to unfeeling in a kingdom in which social ambition rather than homoerotic desire leads to tragedy. the dramatist presents masculinity and femininity as elastic gender categories that those seeking political power metamorphose into multiple forms and shapes. intertextual allusions to homer, Virgil, and ovid accentuate how the classical, literary tradition informs various gender personae that are performative in Marlowe’s history play. his allusions to ovid’s Metamorphoses in particular shed light on the relation of gender and emotion in Edward II. Edward ii, who laments, weeps, and responds passively to injustice, suffers with his favorite, gaveston, when victimized by those who acquire political leverage through violent action against them. like the brutally violent warrior tamburlaine, Mortimer and isabella are presented as barbaric and uncivilized for cold-heartedly engineering gaveston’s exile and eventual murder and Edward’s tortuous death in prison. ironically, their stoical lack of pity for the King’s suffering deprives them of political power and alienates them from the audience. in contrast to his father, androgynous Edward iii triumphs over Mortimer and isabella because of his ability to feel the loss of his father deeply and act justly in response to it. in this way he combines a moderate and timely expression of feeling with well-timed political action. in Edward II Marlowe critiques the linking of masculinity with cold-hearted violence, a cultural tradition apparently celebrated in his earlier play, Tamburlaine (1587).2 the dramatist’s own untimely death is a prime example of this bloody dimension of early modern culture. Marlowe supposedly died by a dagger thrust over an argument about the bill at a lodging house in deptford in 1593. Ben Jonson’s killing another actor in a duel in 1594 is also suggestive of the extent of bloody violence on-stage and off during the renaissance. in Tamburlaine, one of Marlowe’s most popular plays known for its bombastic conqueror, the playwright showcases the manliness of violent and even savage power. interestingly, tamburlaine’s power is rhetorical as well as physically aggressive. as he exclaims, “will and shall best fittest 2 as Woodbridge notes in Women and the English Renaissance, p. 2, in Tamburlaine, Part I the treatment and reception of its title figure as a “great military conqueror” coincided with a “brief vogue, roughly coeval with the euphoria attending the armada’s defeat, for macho heroes.” in Tamburlaine, Part 2, however, he is increasingly “barbarized” after the death of Zenocrate and his murder of his son calyphas.

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tamburlaine” (iii.iii.41). in Marlowe’s later play, Edward II, words, gestures, and tears are sometimes more powerful than the sword. for the playwright and a number of his contemporaries ideal representations of warriors—like tamburlaine—were becoming fictions of the past. renaissance audiences no doubt recognized the exaggerated, fantastic nature of the warrior, tamburlaine. nevertheless, his heroic bombast continued to shape Marlowe’s literary reputation as a poet and playwright even after his death. in As You Like It shakespeare pays tribute to Marlowe and his “mighty line.” the shepherdess, Phebe, alludes to his narrative poem Hero and Leander by stating, “dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, ‘Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?’”3 the word “shepherd” refers both to tamburlaine, a scythian shepherd and brigand, and to Marlowe, a posthumous writer famous for his “mighty” sayings. in Jonson’s “to the Memory of shakespeare” he recalls “Marlowes mighty line” by referring to his “powerful” and “forceful” verse that he feels is “cumbersome” and “overblown.”4 like Jonson, shakespeare attests to the fact that Marlowe’s contemporary audiences responded to legendary Tamburlaine as if he were a hyperbolic figure of exaggerated proportion. in 2 Henry IV Pistol parodies the exotic militarism of tamburlaine by stating, “shall pack-horses / and hollow pamper’d jades of asia, / Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, / compare with caesars, and with cannibals ... ?” (ii. iv.162–5).5 Pistol’s comments underscore how widely recognizable the figure of tamburlaine was to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. yet these literary recollections of Marlowe’s play emphasize overblown or even comic aspects of this famous warrior. he represents a version of masculinity yoked with violence that was becoming increasingly outdated. Jonson’s own method of reading and responding to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander is suggestive of the degree to which early modern gender roles—masculine, feminine, and androgynous—are mutable and performative. in Bartholomew Fair the Puritanical Zeal-of-the-land Busy objects unreasonably to a puppet show performance of Hero and Leander. he condemns the puppet, dionysius, and his company as an “abomination” because “the Male, among you, putteth on the apparell of the Female, and the Female of the Male” (V.v.99–100). dionysius states in his defense that “it is your old stale argument against the Players, but it will not hold against the Puppets; for we haue neyther Male nor female amongst vs” (103–5). the puppet’s reply to Zeal-of-the-land-Busy emphasizes that gender differences on stage are constituted by clothing instead of biological fact and are relatively unstable 3 The Riverside Shakespeare, iii.v.81–2. future quotations of shakespeare’s plays other than Richard II and The Winter’s Tale are to The Riverside Shakespeare unless noted otherwise and will be cited parenthetically. 4 h & s, Works, vol. 8, “to the memory of my beloved, the author Mr. William shakespeare,” p. 391, line 30. James a. riddell provides these useful glosses on the word “mighty” in his essay “Ben Jonson and Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’” in A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Kenneth friedenreich, roma gill, and constance B. Kuriyama (new york: aMs Press, 1988), p. 45. 5 charles r. forker, “Marlowe’s Edward II and its shakespearean relatives: the Emergence of a genre” in Shakespeare’s English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre, ed. John W. Velz (Binghamton, ny: Medieval & renaissance texts & studies, 1996), p. 56.

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as a result. the puppet reinforces his point by lifting up his garment, revealing that he is neither male or female. in Jonson’s play the foolish character Busy voices the “old stale argument” against the theatrical convention of cross-dressing. in the antitheatrical tract Anatomie of Abuses Philip stubbes calls men who wear women’s clothes “Monsters, of both kindes, half women, half men.”6 similarly, in Edward II Mortimer’s supporter, lancaster, compares Edward’s favorite, gaveston, to helen of troy and insinuates that men who resemble women are monstrous: “Monster of men! / that, like the greekish strumpet, trained to arms / and bloody wars so many valiant knights” (II.v.14–16). The instability and fluidity of gender roles on the Renaissance stage apparently stimulated fears and anxieties in response to androgyny for some of Marlowe’s contemporaries such as stubbes. for others androgyny in literary and cultural contexts was becoming fashionable.7 in Tamburlaine and Edward II Marlowe undermines early modern idealizations of masculinity and violence by depicting those who attack androgynous or effeminate figures as brutally monstrous.8 tamburlaine descends to the level of a beast when he murders his son calyphas, whom he denounces as an “effeminate brat” (2 Tamburlaine iV.i.164). tamburlaine’s rage at his son erupts when calyphas exclaims before battle, “But while my brothers follow arms, my lord, / let me accompany my gracious mother” (i.iii.65–6). calyphas’ rejection of tamburlaine’s heroic, yet violent kind of masculinity based on the bearing of “arms” results in the loss of his life at the hands of his father. tamburlaine’s severe reaction to calyphas exemplifies not only Renaissance anxieties about men becoming like women but also the resulting victimization of those perceived as effeminate.9 similar to how tamburlaine treats calyphas, Mortimer brutally punishes Edward ii for favoring the androgynous gaveston. nevertheless, the usurper’s monstrous behavior ultimately makes him politically ineffective. throughout Edward II Marlowe envisions an alternative kind of man who combines androgyny and affect with politically savvy action.

6 Phillip stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (1583; reprint, netherlands: de capo Press, 1972), sig. f5vV as cited in levine, “Men in Women’s clothing: anti-theatricality and Effeminization from 1579 to 1642,” Criticism 28 (1986): 130. levine notes that stubbes condemns the monstrosity of the androgyne. 7 in Dress and Society, 1560–1970 (new york: Viking, 1974), p. 128, geoffrey Squire remarks that in the Elizabethan period “the androgynous, flattened-out bodice” was fashionable. 8 in “‘this Effeminate Brat’: tamburlaine’s unmanly son,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 9 (1997): 77, carolyn Williams notes that tamburlaine’s murder of calyphas exemplifies the destructiveness of savage versions of fatherhood in the Renaissance. 9 literary and cultural anxieties about effeminacy in men resulted in part from shifting gender roles in the sixteenth century: see Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, pp. 169 and 181. her discussion of Queen isabella in Marlowe’s Edward II centers on her reading of the play as “a direct confrontation between masculine female and effeminate male” (p. 161).

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I in the opening scene of Edward II gaveston reveals that he is using his androgyny for political advancement. he confesses upon returning from france, “What greater bliss can hap to gaveston / than live and be the favorite of a king?” (i.i.4–5). in this scene he imagines manipulating Edward’s favoritism by delighting him with “music,” “poetry,” and “italian masks” (54–5). Edward ii’s taste for these arts allies him with shakespeare’s richard ii, who was well-known for his extravagant expenditures on pageantry and courtly entertainments. gaveston envisions one of his androgynous “men” at court performing the part of diana in a masque based on the ovidian myth of actaeon (59). in ovid’s Metamorphoses actaeon is metamorphosed into a stag and mutilated by his hounds after he spies diana bathing. in Marlowe’s version, however, actaeon peeps at a “lovely boy in dian’s shape,” who erotically conceals “those parts which men delight to see” (i.i.61–5). the effeminate, androgynous boy flirting with Actaeon is suggestive of Gaveston as he enacts his courtship of Edward ii. gaveston’s envisioning of the boy wearing “crownets of pearl about his naked arms” to delight Edward’s sensuous tastes underscores his own political ambitions for a crown (63; my emphasis). interestingly, the audience’s perception of gaveston’s androgyny is based on his clothing, gestures, and overall performance on stage. in this way Marlowe emphasizes the performative dimension of gender roles in Edward II. Marlowe’s adaptation of the myth of actaeon from ovid’s Metamorphoses foreshadows the physical and emotional abuse Edward ii and gaveston will endure throughout this history play. like actaeon gazing at the “lovely boy” that replaces diana in the Marlovian version of the ovidian myth, Edward suffers mutilation in prison in part because of his transgressive relationship with the lowly, androgynous figure of Gaveston. Other characters represent Gaveston in feminine, mythological terms by comparing him to the beautiful Danaë and the notorious figure of Helen of troy. in ovid’s Metamorphoses diana is the “angry goddess” who transforms acteon into a “hart” (68–9). in Edward II isabella’s wrath as a scorned wife leads her to conspire with Mortimer to seek revenge upon Edward as diana does upon acteon. in ovid actaeon longs to tell his own hounds who he is but “words fail his desire” (iii.231); instead, he utters “groans” and “mournful cries” as they mangle him (237–9).10 gaveston’s allusion to actaeon’s suffering of dismemberment anticipates Edward’s, who cries out in pain when lightborn gores him internally with a hot poker in prison. though Edward fails to prevent his own death and gaveston’s, his heroic endurance of an inhuman degree of suffering evokes lasting sympathy from the audience. his ability to move the audience emotionally with his rhetoric and cries is ultimately more powerful than Mortimer’s stoical inhumanity.

10 Because of the association of hunting with “monarchy and manliness” Marlowe’s presentation of Edward as a figure who is hunted and dismembered like Acteon implies his effeminacy: James Knowles, “‘Infinite Riches in a Little Room’: Marlowe and the Aesthetics of the closet,” Renaissance Configurations : voices/bodies/spaces, 1580–1690, ed. gordon McMullan (new york: st Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 20.

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in Edward II the relation of masculinity to femininity is fraught with anxiety. Both Edward and Gaveston identify with feminine mythological figures and are politically ostracized for their transgressive desire that violates boundaries of rank. the feminization of men in Marlowe’s play is often accompanied by their pronounced emotional expressiveness and passivity. Early in this history play Edward depicts himself in terms of the female figure of the volcano Aetna—an explosive figure—from Virgil’s Georgics iV and Aeneid VIII. His identification with Aetna, who “groans under the anvils laid upon her” in Virgil’s Georgics, suggests that he imagines himself as the feminine, passive recipient of violent action inflicted by Mortimer and others who disapprove of his affair with gaveston.11 he bemoans the absence of gaveston during his friend’s exile in terms that recall Virgil’s description of female aetna: “My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow, / Which beats upon it like the cyclops’ hammers” (i.iv.311–12). similarly, Edward compares gaveston to the female, mythological figure of Danaë imprisoned by her father after Mortimer repeals his exile: for, as the lovers of fair danaë, When she was locked up in a brazen tower, desired her more, and waxed outrageous, so did it sure with me: and now thy sight is sweeter far than was thy parting hence Bitter and irksome to my sobbing heart. (ii.ii.53–8)

Despite Edward’s fleeting joy over Gaveston’s return home and subsequent grief over his murder, he remains passive in the face of Mortimer’s and the other barons’ cruel treatment of his friend. foreshadowing shakespeare’s richard ii, Edward depicts himself as a man of feeling when he signs the agreement to banish gaveston by exclaiming, “instead of ink i’ll write it with my tears” (i.iv.86) and when he recalls his own “sobbing heart” during his friend’s departure at their reunion after the repeal of his exile (58). the tragic fates of Edward ii and gaveston underscore the anxieties about male androgyny and affect in early modern literature and culture.12 yet in Edward II passivity in men evokes a far greater degree of intolerance and revulsion than effeminacy or emotional expressiveness, which becomes a means of asserting political agency on stage by the end of the play. fears of effeminacy resulted in part from radical transformations in aristocratic versions of masculinity in the sixteenth century. as Elizabeth i replaced soldiers drawn from the ranks of the nobility with impressed men, those noblemen who were

11 Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, trans. h. rushton fairclough (london: William heinemann, 1930), 1: iV.173, p. 230. see also Virgil: Aeneid VII–XII, The Minor Poems (london: William heinemann, 1930), 2: Viii. 418–53, pp. 89–91. 12 in The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1981), p. 166, Jonas Barish remarks that “the blurring of the distinctions between the sexes” aroused anxiety and protest among the Puritans in particular. stubbes exclaims, for instance, that for one “to weare the apparel of another sex is ... to adulterate the verite of his own kind” (sig. f5vV ).

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once the military elite discovered that they were no longer useful.13 this group of men thereby suffered an identity crisis and struggled somewhat anxiously to adapt their imaginings of the chivalric code to contexts off the battlefield. Those who felt nostalgia for the fading glory of militaristic kinds of chivalry tended to be attracted to classical literary works that celebrate the heroic warrior. in the words of Jennifer low in Manhood and the Duel, these works “endorsed an active heroism resembling the feats of arms that had been the staple of the aristocratic elite” (24). in Edward II Marlowe captures nostalgic impulses for militaristic glory among his on-stage and off-stage audience members by alluding to homer’s Illiad and the heroic, yet passionately violent figure of Achilles—the embodiment of this past, chivalric ideal (23). in contrast to achilles, Marlowe’s tamburlaine is an exaggerated, bombastic kind of warrior suggestive of the dramatist’s and his culture’s growing detachment from such violent and aggressive notions of manhood, particularly among the upper ranks.14 as the aristocracy became decreasingly militaristic in sixteenth-century England, some resisted the resulting pacification of elite masculine identities and reacted zenophobically.15 Continental, Italianate influences were particularly responsible for modernizing English perceptions of masculinity. as a result, those who felt that this modernization was “an attenuation of English sturdiness” tended to represent customs and clothing derived from italy and france as effeminate.16 clothing or other bodily ornaments were focal markers of various kinds of masculinity in the Renaissance and reflected shifts in perceptions of acceptable gender roles. The buckler, or small shield, functioned as a sign of a warrior, whereas ornate, refined dress made of the imported, costly material of silk denoted the elite social status of a nobleman or courtier. a man’s profession exhibited by his clothing exerted a profound impact on the emotional register acceptable for him. Marlowe’s Edward II dramatizes the violent rivalry between different kinds of masculinity in relation to emotion. it particularly focuses on the competition between italianate, “new men” who are pacific, socially mobile, and emotionally expressive and traditionally English, feudal sorts of men who are militaristic, hierarchical, and stoical. The conflict between Edward II and Mortimer over the lowly figure of Gaveston results in part from the competing versions of masculinity these politicians embody. Mortimer is an English nobleman who values heroic action and perceives passivity 13 in Manhood and the Duel, p. 28, low discusses the changing relation of the English aristocracy to military service. 14 Definitions of masculinity—violent or more civilized—were in flux from the perspectives of those representative of various professions and social ranks in early modern England. in “irishmen, aristocrats, and other Barbarians”: 515–16, shuger argues that renaissance utopias “lovingly envision ideal societies where farmers, scholars, merchants, civil servants, humanists, and professionals have usurped the status fields previously held by warlords.” in “‘the Part of a christian Man’: the cultural Politics of Manhood in Early Modern England,” p. 227, susan d. amussen adds that the use of courts to settle disputes and government legislation against duels, which were an elite kind of brawl, gradually separated wealthy from poor men, who continued to resort to violence to settle disputes. 15 shuger, p. 521. 16 low, Manhood and the Duel, p. 10.

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in a man as effeminizing. he thereby criticizes Edward for failing to act like a warrior: When wert thou in the field with banner spread? But once, and then thy soldiers marched like players, With garish robes, not armor, and thyself, Bedaubed with gold, rode laughing at the rest, nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest, Where women’s favors hung like labels down. (ii.ii.179–84)

according to Mortimer, Edward’s wearing “garish robes” instead of “armor” casts him as sensuously indulgent instead of manly. in the eyes of Mortimer, a Machiavellian figure for whom heroic action is a vital sign of manhood, Edward’s inability to channel his grief for gaveston into violent acts of revenge is a further sign of his effeminacy. in contrast to stoical Mortimer, Edward is emotionally expressive, yet relatively passive. in addition to voicing his sorrow over gaveston’s exile, he vents his anger and fury at the barons, Mortimer and lancaster, for their continued criticism of his relationship with gaveston once he returns from exile. he exclaims: My swelling heart for very anger breaks. how oft have i been baited by these peers? and dare not be revenged, for their power is great. yet, shall the crowing of these cockerels affright a lion? Edward, unfold thy paws, and let their lives’ blood slake thy fury’s hunger. (ii.ii.197–202)

unlike tamburlaine, whose “words are swords,” Edward lacks militaristic agency despite his furious rhetoric and fails to seek revenge on behalf of gaveston (Tamburlaine i.i.74). in this way Edward ii differs from Edward iii, who acts in a politically savvy, timely fashion when he revenges his father’s death by executing the traitor Mortimer. his grief for his father motivates him to act severely, yet justly. instead of seeking vengeance for gaveston’s exile, Edward ii urges his friend to sail to Scarborough, while he and Spencer Jr flee by land (II.iv.5–6). Mortimer’s ally, lancaster, uses the heroic term “buckler,” a verb form of the noun referring to a small shield, when describing gaveston’s vulnerability without the protection of the King: “look for no other fortune, wretch, than death. / King Edward is not here to buckler thee” (ii.v.14–18; my emphasis). the word “buckler” is associated with the heroic ideal of the warrior celebrated in the homeric epic. in homer’s Illiad, for instance, ajax “upheld a buckler like a rampart” (OED 1.a.). nevertheless, in this Marlovian context the heroic term “buckler” is a purely imagined rather than materially-embodied object on stage. Like Lancaster, Edward uses heroic rhetoric befitting Homer’s Achilles when imagining how he will seek revenge on Mortimer and Warwick for slaying gaveston. he exclaims, “if i be England’s King, in lakes of gore / your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, / That you may drink your fill, and quaff in blood” (III.ii.135–7). in these lines Edward depicts himself as achilles, who seeks revenge for the death of Patrocles by trailing the body of hector behind his horse. Edward, however,

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imagines this literary version of manhood instead of embodying it. likewise, in Renaissance England the violent, aristocratic warrior was becoming a figment of the imagination divorced from material reality. those living near the time Marlowe was writing increasingly perceived the chivalric warrior as an outdated fiction.17 Edward’s intertextual allusion to achilles and Patrocles also alludes to sodomy, which Mortimer sr does not represent as unmanly or effeminizing as practiced by “great alexander,” “conquering hercules,” or “stern achilles” (i.iv.391–3).18 such commanding adjectives celebrate the heroic manhood of these literary warriors instead. in reference to Edward’s sexual relationship with gaveston, Mortimer Jr states that his “wanton humor” does not bother him; instead, he objects to the fact that the King courts “one so basely born” (401–2). gaveston suffers persecution and eventual death because of his violation of rank barriers rather than his homosexuality. When he imagines, “Were i a king,” Mortimer reacts violently by stating, “thou villain, wherefore talks thou of a king, / that hardly art a gentleman by birth?” (i.iv.27–9). like Jonson in Timber, gaveston redefines the word “gentle” in terms of virtuous, morally upright behavior rather than elite social rank when he exclaims that the “ungentle Queen” is fawning on Mortimer (i.iv.147). Mortimer’s and the other barons’ objections to gaveston’s relationship with Edward are intertwined with issues of rank demarcated by dress. in fact, Mortimer focuses his objections to the “upstart” gaveston on his clothing (i.iv.422). he states, “i have not seen a dapper Jack so brisk; / he wears a short italian hooded cloak, / larded with pearl, and, in his tuscan cap, / a jewel of more value than the crown” (411–14). apparently, the King’s favorite has exceeded his prior, material ambition for a “crown;” the “jewel” he now wears is of greater financial “value.” Mortimer objects in particular to gaveston’s italian or “tuscan” clothing and the “base cullions,” or lower ranking foreigners that follow “at his heels” (408). Male aristocrats in renaissance England similarly considered continental, italianate influences as threats to feudal versions of masculinity that were traditionally based on the ethos of heroic violence. the fact that gaveston’s luxurious, decorative dress is appropriate for a courtier, but not a warrior suggests that he embodies a relatively new version of masculinity that competes with Mortimer’s. Mortimer’s description of Gaveston as “Proteus, god of shapes” befits the performative and masquerading dimension of gender identities—masculine, feminine, and androgynous—in Edward II (410).

17 see, for example, sydney anglo, “introduction” in Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. sydney anglo (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), pp. xi–xiii. 18 in Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (london: associated university Press, 1997), p. 197, sara Munson deats discusses the acceptability of sodomy in terms of the dominant code of manliness in classical and early modern culture.

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II Like androgynous Gaveston, Queen Isabella is a protean figure who adopts a feminine persona for political gain.19 in the absence of Edward’s affections she laments, “Witness the tears that isabella sheds, / Witness this heart, that, sighing for thee, breaks / how dear my lord is to poor isabel” (i.iv.163–5). references to a breaking “heart” recur in relation to both isabella and Edward. she voices her grief in mythological terms by wishing that circe magically “had changed [her] shape,” an indirect confession of her apparent desire for a masculine form that would attract Edward (172–3). ironically, her later adoption of a masculine persona does attract Mortimer. grieving isabella further exclaims that “like frantic Juno,” the goddess of marriage, she “will fill the earth / With ghastly murmur of [her] sighs and cries” (178–9). these mythological allusions suggest that isabella imagines and represents her gender identity in classical, literary terms. her imagining herself in this way supports Judith Butler’s claim that masculinity and femininity are fictional roles that are performed and constituted through language and gestures, in this case isabella’s lamenting, sighing, and crying. the Queen, of course, is a character in a play for whom every action is performative. nevertheless, her vacillation between masculine and feminine personae throughout Edward II particularly accentuates the fact that she is performing particular gender roles for her on-stage audiences. Even though gender on stage is an illusion, as the puppet dionysius illustrates in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair by lifting its garment only to reveal that there is nothing there, isabella’s histrionics support Judith Butler’s argument that cultural constructions of gender are similarly performative for those beyond the walls of the theater. the Queen mirrors this fact for those audience members watching her performance of woe, on-stage and off. shortly after Edward abandons isabella, her on-stage viewers lancaster and Warwick interpret her woeful gestures as expressive of the conventional, womanly role she plays. they state, “look where the sister of the King of france / sits wringing of her hands, and beats her breast!” (187–8). isabella’s lamentation evokes sympathy for her plight. similarly, Edward’s cry at the end of the play elicits pity for his tortuous death. the sympathetic responses of isabella’s onstage viewers provide clues about how potential off-stage audience members react to her on an emotional level. her displays of affect create the impression—valid or not—that she is an innocent victim emotionally abandoned by Edward. the Queen’s masquerade of femininity and grief is thereby politically useful for her at this point in the play. isabella, who initially assumes a feminine persona by passively wringing her hands and masochistically beating her breast, subsequently assumes a masculine one by actively conspiring with Mortimer to recall gaveston from exile and eliminate him. she alters her demeanor because her woeful utterances and gestures exert little or no influence on cold, unfeeling Mortimer whose political power she envies. When 19 Deats argues that Isabella is “the most protean” figure in Edward II (p. 165). she states that “the feminine persona isabella adopts throughout much of the play would be seen as a disguise assumed by the woman who wishes for masculinity but fears the retributive consequences of taking on this subversive persona” (p. 167).

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she initially entreats Mortimer for the repeal of gaveston’s exile, Pembroke reassures Warwick, “fear not, the Queen’s words cannot alter him” (233). lancaster remarks on Mortimer’s lack of feeling during his dialogue with isabella by exclaiming, “see how coldly his looks make denial” (235). isabella’s and Mortimer’s dialogue in which they presumably agree on a plan to repeal gaveston’s exile only to murder him occurs beyond earshot of both the on-stage and off-stage audience. they talk privately because isabella’s conniving plan is largely unspeakable for a woman as defined in conventional Elizabethan terms. aggression, violence, and revenge are usually associated with men rather than women in renaissance literature and culture, though numerous exceptions to this general rule exist.20 in Titus Andronicus tamora allows her two sons to rape and mutilate Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, out of revenge for his sacrifice of her oldest son, and in Macbeth lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to murder King duncan, though she crumbles psychologically as a result of the bloodshed that taints and ultimately blocks their political ambitions. unlike Mortimer, who wishes that gaveston were as dead as a fish that “floats on the Irish seas,” Isabella refuses to “speak [her] mind” publically as to why she desires gaveston’s return from exile (221–4). her private, interior thoughts on this matter remain largely indiscernible. Mortimer, however, alludes to his and isabella’s plot to murder gaveston when he reassures his fellow conspirators that the repeal of his exile is “not for his sake, but for our avail; / nay for the realm’s behoof, and for the King’s” and Queen’s (242). isabella also transforms herself into the stoical, cold-hearted kind of man Mortimer respects by learning to restrain her passions. When she returns from france with her son, the future Edward iii, she delivers a speech reminiscent of those given by Elizabeth i. isabella begins, “now, lords, our loving friends and countrymen, / Welcome to England all” (iV.iv.1–2) and ends with her criticism of her husband, Edward ii, “patron shouldst thou be, / But thou—” (13–14).21 at this point Mortimer interrupts her and silences her for the rest of the scene. he encourages her to act like a militaristic hero and react stoically by stating, “if you be a warrior, / ye must not grow so passionate in speeches” (iV.iv.14–15). isabella gradually loses her rhetorical agency by allowing Mortimer to speak for her. in answer to her son’s later entreaty that she spare his uncle Kent’s life, she refers to her subordination to Mortimer by stating, “son, be content; i dare not speak a word” (V.iv.95). in this case her silence advances her political agenda to eliminate Edward’s supporters, including gaveston, spencer, and Kent. toward the end of the play isabella’s masculine speech is as plain and unadorned as Mortimer’s. yet she maintains the feminine pose of silence and obedience to secure power through him. this subservient pose provides her with an 20 in Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, p. 127, shephard supports her argument that “fighting was a man’s business” by citing the statistics that 91 per cent of those accused of assault were male and 84 per cent of those accused of homicide were male in seventeenth-century Essex: J.a. sharpe, Crime in Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1983), pp. 117–18, 124. 21 Elizabeth i’s “armada speech to the troops at tilbury, august 9, 1588,” for example, begins with the phrase, “my loving people”: Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. leah s. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth rose (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2000), p. 325.

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excuse for refusing to pardon Kent, who threatens Mortimer’s and, indirectly, her own rule of England through the future Edward iii. she attempts to placate young Edward by stating, “had Edmund lived he would have sought thy death” (111).22 a good Machiavel, isabella uses her stoically masculine and emotionally expressive feminine personae in an attempt to secure political power through Mortimer and her son. III a man of feeling vastly different from stoical Mortimer and isabella, Edward ii laments and weeps in response to the deaths of his favorites, gaveston and spencer, and his own deposition and imprisonment. at Killingworth castle leicester tells Edward to “cease to lament” because words cannot alter the material facts of his predicament (V.i.1). Without faith in the transformative power of language Edward clings to the physical reminder of his position as King—his crown. he states despairingly and nihilistically, “And in this torment comfort find I none, / But that i feel the crown upon my head, / and therefore let me wear it yet awhile” (V.i.81– 3). Edward’s loss of his crown during his deposition at Killingworth leads him to erupt into a rage. his subsequent silence, as illustrated by his utterance “i have no power to speak” (93), attests to his resulting exhaustion, lack of rhetorical agency, and effeminization. isabella similarly resorts to silence in a subsequent scene with Mortimer and Edward’s son. surprisingly, Edward ii’s immoderate expressions of emotions, ranging from despair to anger, become politically powerful tools. While he is imprisoned in the dungeon, on-stage viewers who witness and sympathize with his tragic plight provide clues about how off-stage audience members react to him. Edward, who notices the Bishop of Winchester and the Earl of leicester’s displays of empathy and even tears, exclaims, “What, are you moved? Pity you me?” (102). as a sign of his “grief,” Edward sends isabella his handkerchief, “Wet with [his] tears” (114, 118). this political move accentuates her callousness in contrast to his excess of emotion. he anticipates her lack of feeling by stating, “if with the sight thereof she be not moved, / return it back and dip it in my blood” (119–20). Mortimer and isabella lose the sympathy of their listeners by remaining unmoved in a stoical fashion by Edward’s suffering (V.i.102). the deposed King describes Mortimer as “unrelenting” and notes that isabella’s “eyes, being turned to steel, / Will sooner sparkle fire than shed a tear” (103–5). Both Mortimer and Isabella are dehumanized by their lack of pathos; their lack of emotion makes them appear as bestial and monstrous as tamburlaine after his murder of calyphas. in prison Edward curses them by stating, “inhuman creatures, nursed with tiger’s milk, / Why gape you for your sovereign’s overthrow? / My diadem i mean, and guiltless life. / see, monsters, see, i’ll wear my crown again!” (71–4). Edward expresses his pity for his son whose protector is Mortimer by stating, “more safety is there in a tiger’s jaws” 22 in Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton, sussex: harvest Press, 1986), p. 191, simon shepherd argues that the transformation of isabella’s speech from emotionally expressive to sparse signals her shift from a feminine to a masculine persona.

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(115). in Edward II those who suppress their emotions or lack pity and compassion risk losing their humanity and descending to the level of beasts. in this way Marlowe illustrates the negative consequences of linking masculinity with cold-hearted stoicism and brute violence. not surprisingly, grieving Edward generates more pity and sympathy from playgoers than the emotionally flat character of Mortimer.23 he does so in part by lamenting in prison, “My daily diet is heart-breaking sobs, / that almost rents the closet of my heart” (V.iii.21–2; my emphasis). interestingly, he represents his “heart” in architectural terms that mirror the private interiority of his prison cell.24 his jurisdiction has shrunk from England to this closet-like setting. Mortimer’s and isabella’s continued cruelty toward Edward weakens them politically and further alienates them from their supporters. she implicitly sentences Edward to death by exclaiming, “alas, poor soul, would i could ease his grief” (V.ii.26) and complaining, “But Mortimer, as long as he survives, / What safety rests for us, or for my son?” (42–3). here Marlowe follows in the footsteps of holinshed, who emphasizes isabella’s hypocrisy and feigned sympathy for Edward by stating that the Queen “with the rest of hir confederats had (no doubt) laid the plot of their deuise for his dispatch, though by painted words ... pretended a kind of remorse to him in this his distresses.”25 in holinshed’s Chronicles and Marlowe’s Edward II isabella’s coldness becomes legendary. Marlowe emphasizes the Queen’s hypocrisy when she orders Matrevis to tell Edward that she “labor[s] all in vain / to ease his grief, and work his liberty”—a covert message meaning that she has given birth perversely to his death knell (V.ii.70–71; my emphasis). Mortimer continues to torture Edward by ordering Matrevis and gurney to “speak to him curstly” and to “let no man comfort him if he chance to weep, / But amplify his grief with bitter words” (64–5). in this way Mortimer punishes Edward for his weeping and wailing. Edward iii, however, will imprison isabella and execute Mortimer as a result of their cold-hearted murder of his father. their lack of feeling ultimately deprives them of political power. In the final scenes of Edward II Marlowe focuses on a King whose manhood is based on his heroic, feminine endurance of suffering rather than violent action.26 Matrevis and gurney attempt to emasculate Edward when they act as “barbers” to him (V.iii.28). despite their cruelty, Matrevis notes that Edward “hath a body able to endure / More than [they] can inflict” (V.v.10). His physical, mighty endurance of the tortures he undergoes impresses even his attackers. Marlowe intensifies Edward’s suffering described in holinshed’s Chronicles by placing him in a dungeon where he stands in filthy water up to his knees for ten days without relief. According to 23 shepherd, Marlowe’s Soldiers, p. 101. 24 James Knowles adds that Marlowe’s phrase, “the closet of the heart” provides “a spatial metaphor for interior spaces and consciousness of inwardness”: “‘Infinite Riches in a little room’: Marlowe and the aesthetics of the closet”: 15. 25 Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587; rpt. london: for J. Johnson et al., 1807), 2: 586. subsequent references to holinshed are from this edition. 26 in Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2002), p. xvi, Mary Beth rose describes this quality of endurance as “predominantly gendered female” and increasingly characteristic of male heroes by the end of the seventeenth century.

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holinshed, Edward’s “cry” when he is brutally murdered moves “manie within the castell and towne of Berkeley to compassion” (587). in Edward II Matrevis fears this cry perhaps more than the sword because of its power to “raise the town” and flees (V.v.113–14). Edward’s final utterance of horror and pain exerts a lasting impact on his posthumous legend as a victimized King. in contrast to Edward ii, Edward iii balances his grief for his father with his just course of action as the new King. in this way he combines depth of emotion with political acumen. isabella reports to Mortimer that in response to the loss of his father, Edward iii “tears his hair, and wrings his hands, / and vows to be revenged upon [them] both” (V.vi.18–19). the tearing of the hair and wringing of the hands are conventionally feminine gestures of mourning in classical, medieval, and renaissance iconography.27 isabella herself exhibits similar behavior when lamenting her loss of Edward ii’s affection (i.iv.188). nevertheless, she urges her son to react stoically to his father’s death by stating, “Weep not, sweet son” (V.vi.33). like hamlet, who refuses to restrain his grief and melancholy in response to his loss of a parent, young Edward counters his mother’s admonition by replying, “forbid not me to weep, he was my father” (34). in addition to weeping, he acts justly and exacts revenge for his father’s murder by imprisoning isabella in the tower as a result of the well-substantiated “rumor” that she conspired with Mortimer to have him killed (73). such rumors will similarly threaten the regal authority of henry iV in Richard II and the Henriad. furthermore, Edward iii warns his mother that he will not be “slack or pitiful” as his father was (82). his emotions of grief, sorrow, and anger do not interfere with his capacity to govern reasonably and effectively. unlike Edward ii, Edward iii does moderate his grief by ordering the removal of plaintive isabella, “away with her, her words enforce these tears” (85). recalling Mortimer, he attempts to deny her rhetorical agency by silencing her. although Edward iii curbs his tears when dealing with his treacherous mother, he rejects the violent, tiger-like version of masculinity Mortimer embodies by condemning him for his “monstrous treachery” (97). in this way Marlowe’s Edward II differs from Tamburlaine in which the ethos of the violent warrior is celebrated to an extent.28 Tamburlaine, an extremely popular figure on the Elizabethan stage, becomes less charismatic when he rejects and even murders calyphas because of his refusal to take part in battle (2 Tamburlaine iV.i.27–30, 49–60). as i mentioned earlier, calyphas’ desire to remain with his mother instead of accompanying his father in battle enrages the infamous warrior. Edward II, by contrast, presents the possibility of a ruler successfully yoking androgyny, affect, and politically savvy action. Edward iii exhibits androgyny by combining his feminized capacity for pity with his masculinized regard for justice. In Derek Jarman’s 1992 film adaptation of Marlowe’s play childlike Edward iii wears high-heels and jewelry as he dances with joy on the cage imprisoning Mortimer and isabella. his feminine clothing and ornamentation gesture toward Jarman’s perceptions of the figure’s androgyny in 27 Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art, pp. 57–86. 28 in Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe, p. 176, deats similarly notes that Mortimer, who embodies traditionally masculine, violent attributes, degenerates into a monster.

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Marlowe’s text. despite telling differences between the brief celebration of machismo violence in Part i of Tamburlaine and the sympathetic critique of its inhumanity in Edward II, Edward III unifies these opposite perspectives to an extent. He is a man of feeling who respects the necessity of brute violence in some cases. his severe acts include dismembering and beheading the traitorous Mortimer: sweet father, here unto thy murdered ghost i offer up this wicked traitor’s head; and let these tears, distilling from mine eyes, Be witness of my grief and innocency. (V.vi.99–102)

Marlowe’s Edward II ends with the imagined, instead of materially realized reunion of father and son. throughout the play their weeping and wailing largely depict them as sensitive and civilized, rather than callous and animalistic. these men of feeling set the stage for shakespeare’s Richard II in which the interlacing of masculinity and emotion generates another legendary King of England.

4.

“Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes”: Woeful rhetoric and crocodile tears in shakespeare’s Richard II like Marlowe’s Edward II, shakespeare’s Richard II features competing versions of masculinity and the differing registers of emotional expressiveness that accompany them. in contrast to Bolingbroke, whose manhood is based on stoical restraint of his passions and verbal reticence, richard is prone to displays of affect, rhetorical excess, and theatricality. a man of feeling, he combats his loss of political power through woeful rhetoric and tears that ally him with women who weep and wail in the play. richard delivers affective lyrics, narratives, laments, complaints, and groans in enclosed spaces that become increasingly less public and more private.29 though manhood and the public world of politics are often synonymous in shakespeare’s history plays, Richard redefines his masculine identity in terms of privacy and interiority. despite the King’s deposition and his Queen’s exile, he becomes a memorable, even legendary figure as a result of their emotionally-charged utterances 29 in this section on shakespeare’s Richard II, i use the term “lyric” to denote a passage set off from the surrounding text and framed by a beginning and end, creating a seemingly enclosed textual space. northrop frye emphasizes the contained aspect of a lyric in “approaching the lyric,” in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. chaviva hôsek and Patricia Parker (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1985), p. 34. although i argue that lyrics in Richard II are enclosures in several respects, those i discuss are neither atemporal or ahistorical. on the contrary, time is a critical factor in these lyrics prominent in shakespeare’s history play. other critics who defend the necessity of reading lyrics in relation to their cultural context are Mark Jeffreys in “ideologies of lyric: a Problem of genre in contemporary anglophone Poetics” PMLA 110 (1995): 196–205 and arthur Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1995), pp. 2–10. in addition to the pronounced lyricism in Richard II, this play makes explicit and repeated references to the genre of narrative. the word “tale,” for example, occurs seven times and the word “story” twice. in keeping with the limited scope of this study, i mean by the term “narrative” simply a piece of fiction like a tale, story, legend, or rumor. The relation of shakespeare’s play to narrative is a topic that demands further exploration. Joseph a. Porter states, for instance, that “there is in the criticism of the play a large and rather cloudily suggestive body of discussion of Richard as a poet figure ... Part of the problem with this discussion is that ‘poet’ almost always means roughly ‘lyricist’ (a view based mainly on richard’s aria-like effusions, which are, indeed, in a sense lyric). however, richard’s most explicit and direct references to a literary genre are not to the lyric at all, but rather to the narrative.” see The Drama of Speech Acts: Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetrology (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1979), p. 34.

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within interior, enclosed spaces, such as gardens and recesses of royal houses and castles.30 richard regains a vital, if imaginary, sense of authority and agency by inventing multiple, literary selves in the stories and legends he generates about his reign as the victim of his illegitimate usurper—Bolingbroke. the Queen contributes to the after-life of richard’s “lamentable tale” by promising to retell it during her exile in a french cloister and memorializing him through tears (V.i.53).31 like the rapid flight of the female, many-tongued figure Rumor, his legend escapes from the enclosed space of his coffin and is continually retold and never finished. I shakespeare’s Richard II exhibits an emotionally expressive, masculine identity that includes a dimension of femininity. notable parallels between the King and female figures in the play highlight the affective dimension of his royal persona. In contrast to Edward ii’s alienation from isabella, richard ii’s rhetorical alliance with Queen isabel leads to the memorialization of his woeful legend. their generation of his legendary identity as the abused victim of Bolingbroke potentially intensifies audience sympathies for the fallen King and damages the unfeeling usurper’s reputation. the Queen’s helping to fashion his future reputation in narratives that will move audiences to tears adds a relatively positive dimension to their relationship that challenges the notion that women are necessarily anxiety-provoking, debilitating, or contaminating for men in renaissance literary works.32 Though female figures in shakespeare’s second tetralogy are often relegated to private, interior spheres, there they valiantly defend themselves and their family members through rhetoric and tears rather than by the sword. in Richard II the rhetorical utterances of grieving men and women, including their laments, prophesies, and curses, noticeably shape and influence future memories of past events. 30 richard and his Queen illustrate the hidden power of what rackin and howard describe as “the female genre of domestic oral narrative” in Engendering a Nation, p. 158. 31 although richard B. altick, in “symphonic imagery in Richard II,” PMLA 62 (1947): 339–65, and several others have discussed the prominence of the term “grief” and its many forms in the play, few have observed the extent to which richard uses his own tears to manipulate the sympathies of the audience. he is empowered by this form of expression often associated with the “moist sex.” reinforcing the misleading commonplace that tears are necessarily a sign of weakness for men, altick describes richard “as a weakling, a monarch essentially feminine in nature” because of his “strong predilection for grief” (p. 359). dorothea Kehler observes that richard “breaks down and weeps” during the deposition scene but does not mention that his exclamation, “My eyes are full of tears, i cannot see” is politically motivated and empowering to an extent. this plea during the deposition scene, for instance, allows him to circumvent northumberland’s request that he read a record of his crimes (iV.i.244): “King of tears: Mortality in richard ii,” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 39 (1985): 13. scott McMillin overlooks the possibility that what he refers to as richard’s “real tears” during the deposition scene may in fact be disingenuous: “shakespeare’s Richard II: Eyes of sorrow, Eyes of desire,” Shakespeare Quarterly 35 (1984): 44. 32 cf. Breitenburg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, pp. 5–6; Kahn, Man’s Estate, p. 12; and adelman, Suffocating Mothers, pp. 3–4.

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The widowed Duchess of Gloucester is one of many female figures in Richard II who exhibit emotional complexity. her weeping and wailing in response to the murder of her husband, duke of gloucester, convey her righteous anger and frustration—emotions that are ultimately dignifying rather than merely pathetic and sad. like Margaret avenging the death of her son, rutland, in Henry VI, Part 3, the duchess of gloucester demands vengeance for the death of her husband, thomas of Woodstock. yet she does so indirectly by urging gaunt to take violent action against richard ii for his supposed role in the murder instead of seeking revenge herself. the duchess bases her plea for blood-vengeance on the fact that the same blood that made her husband “a man” still remains in his brother, gaunt (i.ii.24). she thereby defends the feudal view of manhood based on blood relations and urges gaunt to act with this vision of justice in mind. gaunt, however, refuses to “venge” gloucester’s death by lifting “an angry arm” against richard because of his immovable belief in the divine right of kings (36, 40–41). interestingly, shakespeare attributes the angry desire for violent revenge—even upon the divine person of a king—to a woman instead of a man in this opening scene. in response to gaunt’s lack of action the duchess retreats to “Plashy,” a country house in Essex, where few will hear her “groans” (i.ii.66, 70). her groaning in this isolated, private space indicates that she lacks a great deal of agency without gaunt’s support. alone, the duchess withdraws with “her companion, grief” and sees gaunt for the last time with her “weeping eye” (i.ii.55, 74). nevertheless, the duchess’s unrealized cry for blood and vengeance intensifies the impact of her brief presence on stage. Richard II, by contrast, challenges the feudal definition of men as chivalric warriors seeking blood vengeance. he does so by frustrating Bolingbroke’s and Mowbray’s request for a duel to determine who is responsible for the death of richard’s uncle, the duke of gloucester. Bolingbroke adheres to the medieval code that the winner of a duel is the agent of justice in god’s eyes. convinced that Mowbray murdered the duke of gloucester at the request of richard, Bolingbroke threatens, “What my tongue speaks my right drawn sword may prove” (i.i.46). Mowbray similarly demands “blood” instead of a rhetorical resolution to their conflict by exclaiming,“’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war, / the bitter clamour of two eager tongues, / can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain” (48–51). richard implicitly counters Bolingbroke’s feudal view of manhood based on blood relations and inherited privilege by promising Mowbray that he will remain impartial even if his own cousin “were my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir”—the future henry iV (116). he also stymies Bolingbroke and Mowbray’s desire for aggression and violence by exclaiming, “let’s purge this choler without letting blood” (153). fond of pageantry, richard temporarily allows them to proceed with the duel at coventry because their manhood rests on their acting violently in response to emotions of “wrath” (152) and “rage” (173). his act of staging the duel only to interrupt it emphasizes his love of theatricality as well as his pacific desire to avoid bloodshed—at least in public where his apparent guilt for the death of his uncle could be exposed. richard ii wreaks havoc upon the stability of his reign by disregarding Bolingbroke’s compulsion to fight for his family honor. The Duke of Gloucester is his uncle, too. his feudal version of masculinity is founded on his preserving signs of blood relations to other kinsmen. richard acts in a self-destructive fashion

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by exiling Bolingbroke from England instead of allowing him to proceed with the duel against Mowbray and by seizing his cousin’s inheritance once gaunt dies. in response to his six-year sentence of exile Bolingbroke exclaims, “Must i not serve a long apprenticehood / to foreign passages, and in the end, / having my freedom, boast of nothing else / But that i was a journeyman to grief?” (i.iii.271–4). he concludes, “Where’er i wander boast of this i can, / though banish’d, yet a true-born Englishman” (I.iii.308–9). In these lines he defines himself in patriotic, nationalistic terms and in relation to the heroic gesture of the “boast.” richard’s exile of Bolingbroke and appropriation of his inheritance threaten to sever his cousin’s symbolic relation to his nation, his kinsmen, and his father. ross alludes to the threat of the future henry iV’s emasculation (and rage) by stating that richard has “gelded” him “of his patrimony” once he declares his intent to seize gaunt’s property and goods (ii.i.237). richard and his favorites then remove Bolingbroke’s “household coat” of arms from his windows—his feudal link to generations of patriarchs (iii.i.24). immediately prior to his execution of richard’s favorites, Bushy and greene, Bolingbroke exclaims that they have left him “no sign, / save men’s opinions and ... [his] living blood, / to show the world ... [he is] a gentleman” (iii.i.25–7).33 Returning from exile, he fights in part for the “plate, coin, revenues, and moveables” that richard steals from him once gaunt dies in an attempt to regain his symbolic link to his father (ii.i.161). nevertheless, his larger ambition remains becoming King. Bolingbroke and his supporters counter richard’s implied attack on feudal and violent kinds of chivalric manhood by representing Richard and his flatterers as unpatriotic and effeminate. recalling Mortimer’s portrayal of gaveston in Edward II, the duke of york depicts richard’s favorites as effeminate by associating them with “flattering sounds” of those who “report of fashions in proud Italy, / Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation / limps after in base imitation” (ii.i.17, 21– 3). the italianate Englishman was frequently the subject of attack in the sixteenth century. as i discussed in relation to Marlowe’s Edward II, this xenophobia resulted in part from anxieties about the refashioning of aristocratic versions of masculinity during the reign of Elizabeth I. The male aristocracy was no longer defined by military service but rather by courtly display, including dress, gestures, and emotionally moving rhetoric.34 in the sixteenth century many perceived italianate dress and humanistic customs of “reading and writing in classical languages” as contributing to the threatening modernization (and effeminization) of English definitions of manhood.35 in Richard II defenders of Bolingbroke and the older, chivalric version of masculinity he represents baulk in the face of change. they perpetuate the impression of richard as effeminate for his vanity and taste for luxury. his supporters gesture toward the larger cultural tension that emerged because of the fall of feudal, 33 According to Kahn, Shakespeare’s history plays tend to define masculine identity in terms of lineal succession passed on from father to son: Man’s Estate, p. 18. richard ii diverges from this model to an extent. 34 howard and rackin, Engendering a Nation, p. 143. 35 low, Manhood and the Duel, p. 20.

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aristocratic warriors and the rise of couriers or gentlemen of feeling. york continues Bolingbroke’s criticism of Richard’s blind allegiance to his flatterers by exclaiming, “Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity— / so it be new, there’s no respect how vile— / that is not quickly buzz’d into his ears?” (ii.i.24–6). By attacking richard’s imitation of “new” fashions of dress york acts in a manner characteristic of numerous aristocrats who responded anxiously to shifting standards of masculinity in the sixteenth century. Many no longer defined themselves as chivalric warriors but rather as italianate courtiers, English civil servants, humanists, scholars, or those pursuing other non-violent professions or trades. despite richard’s fatal mistake of responding passively to Bolingbroke’s transgressive return from exile (presumably to reclaim his inheritance), the King’s tears, prophesies, and curses make a memorable impression on his listeners onstage and off and bolster his reputation as an abused victim of his future usurper. he realizes that he will be deposed and eventually murdered when he returns from the wars in ireland and discovers that his troops in Wales and England have abandoned him. shortly afterwards, he delivers his famous speech, “for god’s sake let us sit upon the ground / and tell sad stories of the death of kings.” in response to richard’s lament, the Bishop of carlisle exclaims, “wise men ne’re sit and wail their woes, / But presently prevent the ways to wail” (iii.ii.155–6, 178–9). from the Bishop’s stoical perspective excessive expressions of grief are unmanly and characteristic of women. richard’s weeping associates him in particular with the widowed duchess of gloucester, his own Queen, and the duchess of york in later scenes of the play. Overflowing tears, laments, and angry curses grant all of these male and female figures a degree of agency and authority on stage. During his lamentation on the walls of flint castle, richard anticipates an English civil War as a result of Bolingbroke’s deposition of him and ascent to the throne: But ere the crown he looks for live in peace, ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons Shall ill become the flower of England’s face, change the complexion of her maid-pale peace to scarlet indignation and bedew her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood. (iii.iii.95–100)

he represents “mother” England as feminine and the victims of such an English Civil War as “mothers’ sons.” At least rhetorically, Richard fights for the survival of his near and distant “kin” as fiercely as a parent. He knows that only the avoidance of a bloody civil War will spare their lives. in act iV the Bishop of carlisle remembers richard’s foreboding prediction and curse at flint castle when the churchman prophesies that the King’s deposition “will the woefullest division prove / that ever fell upon this cursed earth” (iV.i.146–7). this intratextual memory points to the longevity of richard’s words (not Bolingbroke’s) in the minds of his on-stage and off-stage audience. the lament richard delivers from the walls of flint castle where he retreats once Bolingbroke returns from exile (with a standing army) is a form of political protest

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designed to move the feelings of his audience.36 Without military support he wages war against Bolingbroke on an emotional level through rhetoric. in this way richard follows Aumerle’s advice, “let’s fight with gentle words, / Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords” (131–2). richard delivers his lament, which alludes to the abiding power of a king’s words, after bemoaning the fact that Bolingbroke now demands the repeal of his six-year banishment: o god! o god! that e’er this tongue of mine, that laid the sentence of dread banishment on yon proud man, should take it off again With words of sooth! (iii.iii.133–6; my emphasis)

richard’s delivery of his lament forestalls his surrender to Bolingbroke and buys him some “time” while he waits in vain for military reinforcements (iii.iii.132). interestingly, he represents his grief and despair in a melodramatic style worthy of an allegorical griever like spenser’s fradubio in Book i of The Faerie Queene: o that i were as great as is my grief, or lesser than my name! or that i could forget what i have been! or not remember what i must be now! (iii.iii.136–9).

his frequent use of exclamation points in these lines anticipates those used by sentimental figures—like David Garrick’s Leontes in Florizel and Perdita—in eighteenth-century plays celebrating men of feeling. as harry Berger, Jr. has convincingly argued in his discussion of Richard II, richard’s theatricality suggests that he is more aware of his on-stage and off-stage audience than one would first suppose.37 Bolingbroke draws attention to the King’s showmanship by ordering his men to “mark” how richard “looks” (61). york, who also views richard’s sudden entrance on the castle walls, similarly remarks that the King’s regal demeanor transforms his public appearance into a spectacle: yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye, as bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth controlling majesty; alack, alack for woe that any harm should stain so fair a show! (iii.iii.68–71)

york’s emphasis on richard’s “controlling majesty” and “show” attests to the moving and even manipulative impact of the King’s affective words, gestures, and tears on his audience. 36 stanley Wells demonstrates that the lament is richard’s characteristic mode throughout the play as well as during his defiance of Bolingbroke at Flint Castle: “The Lamentable Tale of ‘richard ii,’” Shakespeare Studies 17 (1982): 1 and 4–5. 37 in “Richard II 3.2: an Exercise in imaginary audition,” ELH 55 (1988): 762, harry Berger, Jr challenges the traditional view that richard ii’s main speeches can be treated as soliloquies isolated from their rhetorical contexts by arguing that the King is surprisingly mindful of his auditors’ responses to his performance.

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richard’s woeful histrionics, accentuated by the interjections of Bolingbroke and york, enable him to shape the emotional responses of his on-stage and offstage audiences to his performance at flint castle. he evokes sympathy from these listeners and viewers by depicting himself as the abused victim and Bolingbroke as the aggressive villain in the lines, “swell’st thou, proud heart? i’ll give thee scope to beat, / since foes have scope to beat both thee and me” (140–41). in this way richard dodges his own responsibility for his loss of political power. the metrical beat of these monosyllabic lines is as unrelenting as the beating he imagines enduring and thereby reinforces the King’s claim of victimization. recalling Marlowe’s Edward ii, richard ii endures his suffering patiently and even heroically. though lyrics are generally thought of as expressive of an escapist impulse rather than a political agenda, richard’s lament is a successful, rhetorical protest against his impending deposition in which he uses his desire to stop time to his advantage.38 his imaginative withdrawal into the enclosed space of a hermitage during his lament is suggestive of shakespeare’s linking of masculinity with privacy and interiority in this history play. his lament is strikingly enclosed as well. Each line of the following tableau in which he ritualistically catalogues the material luxuries he will relinquish is framed by the possessive pronoun “my” and by a prepositional phrase beginning with “for”: i’ll give my jewels for a set of beads; My gorgeous palace for a hermitage My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown; My figur’d goblets for a dish of wood; My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff; My subjects for a pair of carved saints, and my large kingdom for a little grave ... (iii.iii.147–53; my emphasis)

richard’s repetition of “my” and “for” adds to the aural and visual impression that he creates a formal tableau set apart from the rest of the drama. his words thereby reflect his wish to withdraw into a private enclosure. Hedonistically, Richard fashions his insubstantial fortress out of words and phrases like “jewels,” “gorgeous palace,” and “gay apparel,” which are indicative of his feminized desire for those sensuous objects he offers to relinquish and his passion for luxurious language.39 the version of masculinity he embodies is linked to such courtly, theatrical displays of extravagance rather than to militaristic valor. richard claims that he would relinquish these luxuries (except verbally) for the simplicity of a hermitage cloistered from 38 in Passion Made Public, p. 22, diane henderson lists a number of such prior assumptions about lyric in post-romantic culture. 39 richard’s vanity and frivolity throughout the play lead ronald Berman to assert provocatively that the King “is a figure cut from the texture of The Faerie Queene.” his intemperance likens him in particular to “those in the allegory of sir guyon.” see “richard ii: the shapes of love,” Moderna Språk 58 (1964): 2. harold f. Brooks also asserts that shakespeare was well-acquainted with Books ii and iii of The Faerie Queene and demonstrates that clarence’s dream in shakespeare’s Richard III alludes to both the cave of Mammon and Marinell’s rich strand: “‘richard iii’: antecedents of clarence’s dream,” Shakespeare Survey 32 (1979): 148–50.

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worldly cares and responsibilities.40 his delivery of these ritualistic lines that he frames as a tableau enact his wish for cloistering as well. richard repeats the single notion of his desire for privacy within such a meditative space instead of moving beyond it. Paradoxically, he expresses his wish to pare down his store of material possessions in expansive language. richard’s moving lament at flint is potentially endless without interruptions by impatient auditors like northumberland, “My lord, in the base court he doth attend / to speak with you; may it please you to come down?” (176–7) and Bolingbroke, “What says his Majesty?” (184). during it, time seems to stop.41 the King remains keenly aware of how little time he has left, however, and uses his woeful rhetoric as a means of delaying his capture by Bolingbroke. throughout this scene his arresting words, gestures, and tears befit his theatrical persona as a man of feeling. Yet his failure to act decisively in a timely fashion ultimately defeats him. on stage he only resorts to violence to defend himself in prison right before he is murdered. nevertheless, the teary-eyed actor who delivers richard’s lyrical speeches on stage is certainly more memorable (and rhetorically persuasive) than the stoical, reticent one playing Bolingbroke. though tears in the early modern period are often associated with women and commonly misrepresented as a weakness or a sign of helplessness as a result, richard’s woeful rhetoric remains affectively moving, even posthumously. he resists the finality of his impending deposition and death by playing the dramatic part of the “lamentable” King (V.1.44). his adoption of this emotionally expressive persona not only at flint but throughout the play evokes pity for his seeming mistreatment by Bolingbroke rather than shame for his wasteful, careless reign. on the walls of flint castle richard elicits sympathy for his plight by drawing attention to his cousin’s tears prior to his surrender, “aumerle, thou weep’st (my tender-hearted cousin!)” and by emphasizing Bolingbroke’s tacit lack of feeling as he watches their performance from the ground below (iii.iii.160). richard exclaims that he and aumerle will dig “a pair of graves” with their tears and generate the legend that “there lies / two kinsmen [who] digg’d their graves with weeping eyes!” (167–9).42 nevertheless, men who weep and wail are often subject to derision in the early modern period. richard admits this is the case at the end of his revery when addressing his on-stage listeners that include aumerle, “Well, well, i see / i talk but idly, and you laugh at me” (170–71). his affective rhetoric moves audiences to laughter as well as tears. throughout Richard II the King’s emotional appeals to his on-stage and off-stage 40 ostensibly as unworldly as the spenserian hermit on the Mount of contemplation, who is unconcerned with “worldly busines” (i.x.46.7), the reclusive King would alienate himself from his subjects by exchanging his potential colloquy with them “for a pair of carved saints.” 41 cf. Peter lindenbaum on the impression of timelessness in arden: Changing Landscapes: Anti-Pastoral Sentiment in the English Renaissance (athens: university of georgia Press, 1986), p. 107. 42 in “the antic disposition of richard ii,” Shakespeare Survey 27 (1974): 38, lois Potter notes in passing that richard ii’s conceits on tears emphasize “the power of something which is normally taken to be a symbol of helplessness.”

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audiences contribute to his legendary status in narrative accounts about his reign as a pitiable king who is unjustly victimized and murdered by Bolingbroke. richard’s emphasis on his capacity for feeling in contrast to Bolingbroke’s heartlessness continues to work to his advantage on stage. Even though he agrees to follow his opponent to london for his deposition, he exposes the untimeliness and perversity of his abdication by exclaiming, “cousin, i am too young to be your father, / though you are old enough to be my heir” (204–5). the King creates the impression that his cousin has “force[d]” him to surrender the crown (207)—an embarrassing aspect of the usurpation that the lancastrians sought to hide.43 Before withdrawing into flint castle, however, richard offers to “discharge” his “power” voluntarily (III.ii.211), a tactic that also benefits him by making Bolingbroke’s insistence that he surrender “in common view” at Westminster seem unnecessary and cold-hearted (iV.i.155). others who view such demeaning public spectacles cannot help but weep. for instance, the deposed King’s humiliating procession into london behind Bolingbroke makes the duke and duchess of york shed tears (V.ii.2) and grieves the “heart” of the groom of the stable, as he reports during his dialogue with richard in prison (V.v.76). throughout the play richard’s emotional expressiveness contributes to his generation of his legendary identity as the abused victim of Bolingbroke. his melodramatic displays of grief, which ally him with female figures in the play, make his theatrical persona particularly memorable for his on-stage and off-stage audiences.

43 Paul strohm presents evidence that the lancastrians actually fabricated the claim that richard ii abdicated the throne willingly and was not forcibly deposed. he bases his argument on froissart’s Chronicle, which shakespeare was likely to have read, and on adam of usk’s chronicle and The Rolls of Parliament, which were probably unfamiliar to the dramatist because they were unavailable in print at that time. see “saving the appearances: chaucer’s Purse and the fabrication of the lancastrian claim,” in Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. Barbara hanawalt (Minneapolis: university of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 23–5 and 30–31. for a discussion of key intertexts for shakespeare’s Richard II, see Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. geoffrey Bullough (london: routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), 3: pp. 353–82. holinshed’s Chronicles, which was shakespeare’s principal source for Richard II, also suggests that the lancastrians tried to hide the fact that Bolingbroke seized the crown by force and not by right. holinshed reports, for instance, that in order that Bolingbroke “should not seeme to take vpon him the crowne and scepter roiall by plaine extorted power, and iniurious intrusion: he was aduised to make his title as heire to Edmund ... crookebacke ... and to saie that the said Edmund was ... for his deformitie put by from the crowne.” nevertheless, because friends and enemies alike “knew that this was but a forged title ... they advised him to publish it, that he challenged the realme not onelie by conquest, but also because he by king richard was adopted as heire, and declared by resignation as his lawfull successor being next heire male to him of the blood roiall”: Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 2: pp. 3–4; my emphasis.

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II like richard at flint castle, isabel resists her political disempowerment by lamenting within the enclosed space of the duke of york’s garden. this scene marks a pivotal point in the play because it contributes demonstrably to a shift in the audience’s sympathies from Bolingbroke to richard.44 in the garden scene shakespeare elicits pity for the King in a roundabout fashion by using isabel’s state of mind as a mirror for richard’s emotional plight.45 in a dialogue with her attendants in an enclosed garden, she laments the impossibility of escaping from her “care[s],” or anxieties as Queen (iii.iv.1). richard will similarly acknowledge the impossibility of breaking free from his anxieties as King during the deposition scene that follows. there, he exclaims, “the cares i give, i have, though given away, / they ’tend the crown, yet still with me they stay” (iV.i.198–9). in the enclosed garden the attendant’s subsequent suggestion that they “tell tales” to alleviate the Queen’s sorrow and grief foregrounds the possibility of narrative, whether in verse or prose, as a means of release from despair (10). the Queen provides richard with an avenue of escape from the humiliation of his deposition by promising to tell his sad story once he is dead. Queen isabel’s placement within the enclosed space of the English garden serves as an emblem of her imprisonment in a society that not only marginalizes her role in politics, but also prohibits her from speaking publicly on behalf of her own plight as the wife of a soon-to-be deposed monarch. she must eavesdrop on a conversation between the gardener and two servants in order to learn about richard’s future fate. The Queen resists her confining domestic role as the silent wife by voicing her anger immediately after the gardener reports that he has overheard the duke of york discussing the King’s impending deposition with a friend: depress’d he is already, and depos’d ’tis doubt he will be. letters came last night to a dear friend of the good duke of york’s that tell black tidings. (iii.iv.68–71)

Hearing this bleak news for the first time, the Queen emerges from the shadows of the trees and exclaims, “o, i am press’d to death through want of speaking!” (72; my emphasis). Mirroring richard, whom the gardener describes as “depress’d,” isabel feels that her lack of a voice during the dialogue is a form of torture (pressing) to her.46 in this line the pun on torture and printing, hence publishing, also transforms 44 Mildred E. hartsock argues that the garden scene shows the audience “how it is supposed to feel” about richard ii during the second half of the play and evokes sympathy for both richard ii and Queen isabel. see “Major scenes in Minor Key,” Shakespeare Quarterly 21 (1970): 55–6. 45 in “Wasted time in Richard II,” Critical Survey 1 (1989): 40, r.P. draper similarly observes that “the compassion and indignation aroused in Queen isabel” has the effect of enlisting sympathy for richard. 46 in King Richard II, Peter ure, ed., observes that the Queen feels as if she were “pressed” to death with weights, the punishment inflicted on an accused person who refuses

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the body of the Queen into a text and anticipates her future, powerful role as narrator of richard’s woeful tale. the gardener’s revelation that the King’s impending deposition is common knowledge incites the Queen’s anger because until the garden scene she was apparently unaware of her husband’s future deposition. indeed, her outrage is amply justified, for as the Gardener admits subsequently, “I speak no more than everyone doth know” (91). the Queen’s words of protest, accompanied by her tears, serve as an authoritative weapon for resisting her political disempowerment. her anger commands respect, challenging the dismissal of her and other emotionally expressive women in the second tetralogy of shakespeare’s history plays as relatively weak and powerless.47 she vents her anger at the gardener by cursing him: “for telling me these news of woe, / Pray god the plants thou graft’st may never grow” (100–101). By singling out the grafted plants in the garden she also curses Bolingbroke indirectly. unlike richard, who is the son of Edward the Black Prince, Bolingbroke has grafted himself onto that branch of the royal stock by conniving means. isabel’s curse emphasizes the illegitimacy of Bolingbroke’s claim to the throne, and her tears elicit pity for both richard and herself. sympathizing with the Queen’s plight, the gardener plants “rue” near the place where one of her tears fell and cultivates this herb associated with pity “in the remembrance of a weeping queen” (106–7).48 he thereby memorializes her grief. Like the King, the Queen attempts to influence future representations of the history of richard’s reign through her cursing and tears.49 Both she and richard to plead (p. 122). cerasano adds, however, that women could not plead for themselves without a male guardian: “‘half a dozen dangerous Words’” in Gloriana’s Face, p. 169. 47 feminist studies of shakespeare’s history plays often, but not always concentrate on female figures who are marginalized or lack political power. In Man’s Estate Kahn argues that the two history play tetralogies “take place in a masculine world of war and politics in which identity is defined by kinship relations with other men, to the virtual exclusion of women” (p. 18). in “‘a Woman’s War’: feminist reading of Richard II” in Shakespeare Left and Right, ed. ivo Kamps (new york: routledge, 1991), p. 177, graham holderness remarks on the pathos and apparent helplessness of richard’s Queen: “deprived by fate of what is seen as the only kind of power women can possess—the capacity to reproduce powerful men— isabel’s life seems unspeakably and inconsolably sad.” in Engendering A Nation howard and rackin note that the power of women warriors in the Henry VI plays was replaced in Richard III by “the pathetic laments of mourning widows and bereaved mothers” (p. 137). these critics tend to emphasize the powerlessness of women in shakespeare’s second tetralogy. yet in Phillippy’s study of mourning and maternity in Women, Death and Literature in PostReformation England, pp. 109–38, she argues that feminine lamentation can provide a vital source of power in Richard III. as she states, “while reformers ostracize women’s mourning, depicting it as both excessive and incomplete, shakespeare’s maternal mourners deploy the lingering power of women’s lamentation” by enacting “an energetic nostalgia for lost catholic forms of spirituality” (p. 53). in shakespeare’s history play their “excessive grief” becomes “a repository of communal, corporate memory and identity in the face of richard’s Machiavellian rule” (p. 110). 48 Peter ure, ed., in King Richard II explains that the special association of the flower “rue” is “not with rue (repentance) but with ruth (pity)” (p. 123). 49 for a useful discussion of other characters’ attempts to manipulate time through prophecy in Richard II and in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, see Jonathan hart, Theater and World:

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are successful. Exercising a choric function, the gardener transforms isabel into a legendary figure and at least symbolically releases her story of silent suffering from the imprisoning walls of the garden.50 he does so in a play in which storytelling serves the same purpose of release for richard. the emotional dimension of their literary accounts of the past contribute to the enduring qualities of their stories. interestingly, richard’s Queen is one of the few women in shakespeare’s plays entrusted with the task of memorializing another through narrative. the King relies on a largely female network for telling his sad tale. When richard and his Queen exchange farewells in a public thoroughfare on his way to the tower, he resists his impending burial by imploring her to perpetuate his legend in the secluded (though not literally enclosed) setting of a fireside.51 richard’s desire to defer his ending becomes apparent when he urges the Queen not “to make [his] end too sudden” by grieving over her deposed husband as if he were already dead (17). instead, he entreats her to keep his sacred memory alive by continuing to voice her grief in the stories she tells about him. unwittingly and prophetically, the King resembles hamlet, who asks horatio “to tell [his] story” after he is buried (V.ii.349). yet richard relies on a female narrator and thereby attributes authority and agency to her and the other women who hear her tale at the convent in france to which she is exiled. surprisingly, isabel exerts a considerable degree of rhetorical power because she

The Problematics of Shakespeare’s History (Boston: northeastern university Press, 1992), pp. 105–8. 50 gertrude’s lyrical account of ophelia’s death similarly liberates her memory from the “prison” of denmark (iV.vii.165–82). 51 as McMillin argues, the King hopes to become monumental through narrative “in some private place, within the walls of a cloister perhaps, beside a fire, ... removed from the theatricality of politics”: “shakespeare’s Richard II”: 49. The architectural arrangement of fireplaces in early modern houses and palaces vividly conveys the intimacy associated with them. replacing open hearths in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, fireplaces commonly appeared in private chambers like bedrooms, or in the recesses and corners of other rooms set apart from the central hall. Benches or cushions were often arranged in a semi-circle around the fire, creating a mood of closeness and comradery, particularly among the women who tended it. richard similarly imagines isabel sitting beside a fire that is near the bedrooms “in some religious house” in France (V.1.22–3) when he implores her “ere [she] ... bid good night” to tell his “lamentable tale” and “send the hearers weeping to their beds” (43–5). see Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. georges duby, trans. arthur goldhammer, vol. 2 of A History of Private Life, gen. ed. Philippe ariès and georges duby (cambridge: harvard university Press, 1988), pp. 192–5, 354–5, 429, and 500. sir Philip sidney’s description of the poet whose “tale ... holdeth ... old men from the chimney corner” is suggestive of the comparably private location of fireplaces in sixteenth and seventeenth century houses and palaces, though this captivating story draws the listeners away from the warmth of that corner: “a defence of Poetry” in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine duncan-Jones and Jan Van dorsten (oxford: clarendon, 1973), p. 92. in a passage from daniel’s Civil Wars that parallels richard’s intimate conversation with isabel, the King in Pomfret prison envies a peasant, who “sit’st at home safe by [his] ... quiet fire”: III, st. 65. His description of this cloistered space further illustrates its privacy: King Richard II, ure. ed., p. 148.

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tells the King’s story in the relatively private space of a fireside.52 as shakespeare’s history play draws to a close, richard and a number of others similarly tend to display their emotions in private, interior spaces. the oral narrative that the Queen promises to tell about richard in a “religious house” for women is emotionally compelling. The King defers his fictional end by imploring the Queen to recount his personal history in the form of a “winter’s” tale, a kind of story usually narrated by women: In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales of woeful ages long ago betid; and ere thou bid good night, to quite their griefs tell thou the lamentable tale of me, and send the hearers weeping to their beds; for why, the senseless brands will sympathize the heavy accent of thy moving tongue, And in compassion weep the fire out, and some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black, for the deposing of a rightful king. (V.i.40–50)

richard knows all too well that the perception of history is determined in part by the gender and social rank of the narrator. he hopes that isabel will rekindle pity for his loss of political power by retelling his “lamentable tale” and sending the “hearers weeping to their beds” (44–5). he also imagines that the “senseless brands,” or pieces of wood burning in the fireplace, “will sympathize” and “in compassion weep the fire out” (46–8). Richard hopes narcissistically that even their “ashes” will “mourn” his deposition and impending death (49). he appeals on an emotional level to his imaginary audience consisting of animate as well as inanimate listeners. in one of shakespeare’s later plays, lady Macbeth similarly associates an oral narrative with female storytellers by exclaiming that Macbeth’s “flaws and starts” about murdering Duncan “would well become / A woman’s story at a winter’s fire / Authoris’d by her grandam.”53 As Lady Macbeth’s phrase “flaws and starts” suggests, tales told by women are often interrupted, fragmentary, and disjunctive. collectively, these kinds of stories in Richard II undermine Bolingbroke’s political authority on stage: they present him as a cold, power-hungry usurper and richard as a compelling, sympathetic victim whose deposition moves his on-stage and off-stage audiences to tears. the private dialogue between the duke and duchess of york shortly after the King’s intimate farewell to his Queen fulfills Richard’s prophesy that those who hear his “lamentable tale” will pity him (V.i.44). Within the privacy of their house the duchess implores the duke to “tell the rest” of richard’s “sad” story because his “weeping [previously] made [him] break the story off” (V.ii.1–4). richard’s lamentable story is as fragmentary and prone to interruption as his reign. nevertheless, the emotional appeal of a ruler who plays the role of the victim convincingly despite 52 howard and rackin, Engendering a Nation, p. 158. 53 Macbeth, richard Proudfoot, ed., (1951; rpt. new york: Methuen, 1986), iii.iv.62–5.

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his shedding of melodramatic, “crocodile” tears remains moving. the duke of york continues his narrative about richard’s woeful procession into london behind Bolingbroke in this private, interior setting, which allows for the candid expression of emotion between husband and wife. he reveals that the deposed King successfully defended himself from the verbal and physical assaults of the jeering crowd through non-verbal gestures and tears. york concludes that even this steel-hearted crowd should have pitied richard, who shook off the dust that was “thrown upon his sacred head” with “gentle sorrow” and “combat[ed]” his humiliation with “tears and smiles” (30–32). richard’s grief is not only memorable but also makes him heroic in the eyes of york. york’s very use of the term “combating” in relation to the “badges” of richard’s “grief and patience” suggests that he bases his representation of the King’s heroism on emotionally persuasive, rather than militaristic factors (32–3). richard’s evoking pity and sympathy through woeful rhetoric, gestures, and tears allies him in a positive fashion with a number of women in this history play. Parallels between richard ii and the duchess of york when she tearfully entreats Bolingbroke to pardon aumerle for his involvement in the conspiracy to “kill the king at oxford” further highlight the effectiveness of tears as a manipulative tool on stage (V.ii.99). unlike the duke of york, whose “eyes do drop no tears” as he demands justice for his son’s crimes, hers presumably do when she begs for mercy on her knees in Bolingbroke’s chamber (V.iii.98). richard similarly kneels and cries throughout the play, leading the Bishop of carlisle to reprimand him for doing so shortly after he returns from the Irish Wars (III.ii.178–9). Richard again identifies with the female, “moist sex” during the deposition scene by playing the part of the “mockery king of snow, / standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, / to melt [himself] away in water-drops” (260–62). his “water-drops” resemble tears and evoke pity and sympathy from his on-stage audience, as illustrated by aumerle’s and even the stoical Bishop of carlisle’s “tearful eyes” by the end of the deposition scene (332).54 Even the Bishop, one of his more severe critics, is moved to tears in this case. like richard throughout the play, the duchess also brings her on-stage audience to tears. she remarks that Bolingbroke’s “eyes begin to speak,” suggesting that his eyes are moist, if not out of pity for aumerle, then as a result of the hilarity of her excessive plea to pardon her son after he has already been pardoned (V.iii.123).55 at the end of the play the sight of Richard in his coffin causes Bolingbroke to “weep after this untimely bier,” though whether or not his are crocodile tears remains ambiguous (V.vi.52). the duchess of york’s success when lamenting and complaining before the newly-crowned henry iV illustrates that tears are a successful means of manipulation for women as well as men in shakespeare’s play.

54 as ann Pasternak slater observes, the affective response of richard’s on-stage audience guides our own: Shakespeare the Director (new york: Barnes, 1982), p. 103. 55 critics who discuss comedy in the two, consecutive scenes involving the duke and duchess of york, aumerle, the groom, and henry iV are Waldo f. Mcneir, “the comic scenes in Richard II,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972): 815–22; sheldon P. Zitner, “aumerle’s conspiracy,” SEL 14 (1974): 239–57; and leonard Barkan, “the theatrical consistency of Richard II,” Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 5–19.

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Fig. 4.1

William Hamilton, The Duke of York Discovering His Son Aumerle’s Treachery Richard II. Act 5. Scene 2, oil on canvas, late 1790s, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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III richard’s prison cell—the most intimate enclosed space in the play so far—provides him with the privacy he craved in vain when he desired to exchange his “palace” for a “hermitage.” the architectural space of a small room often serves as a metaphor for the interiority of the self in the sixteenth century.56 richard, a prisoner whose only means of escape is imaginative, depicts his private cell as a microcosm of the public domain beyond it: i have been studying how i may compare this prison where i live unto the world; and, for because the world is populous and here is not a creature but myself, i cannot do it. yet i’ll hammer it out. (V.v.1–5)

he compares the interior setting of his cell to the exterior world much as a lyricist, or any other poet or rhetorician, might fashion a metaphysical conceit. richard’s concluding statement, “yet i’ll hammer it out” (i.e. “i’ll work hard at” it or “puzzle it out”) implies that the yoking of such disparate and unlike ideas requires a degree of force and even violence. he channels the violence commonly associated with feudal, militaristic versions of masculinity into a contemplative, rhetorical context in prison. Unlike Bolingbroke, who fights for his rightful inheritance once Gaunt dies, Richard reacts more passively to political conflicts and broadens his opponent’s emphasis on patrilineal connections to include matrilineal ones. in a familial revery he begets a series of thoughts that are substitutes for the children he never had: My brain i’ll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father, and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world, in humours like the people of this world; for no thought is contented. (V.v.6–11)

56 ferry demonstrates that the terms “chamber, closet, or cabinet” were common metaphors for “self-examination” in the sixteenth century: The “Inward” Language, p. 46. Elias further suggests that those in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries envisioned the inner world “as an actually existing cage” and imagined that an “invisible wall” divided the self from the outside world: The Civilizing Process, pp. 190 and 258. see also Knowles, “‘Infinite Riches in a Little Room’: Marlowe and the Aesthetics of the Closet”: 15.

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richard exhibits his androgyny by adopting both the male and female roles involved in conception and “begett[ing]” a fertile, imaginatively rich inner world. he continues to grapple with his identity as a deposed ruler by stating nihilistically, “nor [he], nor any man that but man is, / With nothing shall be pleas’d, till he be eas’d / With being nothing” (39–41). Paradoxically, richard is “eas’d” by the notion of “being nothing” and thus comes to terms with his deposition. he thereby reconceives himself as an isolated individual rather than a king. his self-perception begins to match his on-stage and off-stage audiences’ view of him as rhetorically moving and pitiable, yet self-absorbed and irresponsible. during his prison soliloquy, he garners their sympathy by accepting a degree of responsibility for his mistakes as ruler. imprisoned richard gains an increasing degree of self-awareness within the private, enclosed space of his prison cell. the lyrical, enlightening strains of music he overhears beyond his isolated cell differ dramatically from the monotonous, torturous beat of a drum intended to prevent Marlowe’s Edward ii from sleeping in prison (V.v.60): Music do i hear? ha, ha! keep time—how sour sweet music is When time is broke and no proportion kept! so is it in the music of men’s lives. and here have i the daintiness of ear to check time broke in a disordered string; But for the concord of my state and time, had not an ear to hear my true time broke: i wasted time, and now doth time waste me; (V.v.41–9)

in imitation of the ticking of a clock rather than the beating of a drum, richard uses monosyllables to express perhaps his most important discovery in the play: “i wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”57 in a rhythmically rigid text the trochaic inversion at the beginning of this figure draws particular attention to its importance. the utterance also stands out because it is direct and succinct, a style uncharacteristic of Richard. As illustrated by his prison soliloquy, he is prone to elaborate, figurative language. the lyrical measures of music he overhears remind him of the genuine otherness of the material world beyond himself and lead him to acknowledge his responsibility for his deposition as well as his subjection to the tyranny of time (55). Thanking the musician, self-enclosed Richard finally recognizes someone other than himself: “yet blessing on his heart that gives it me, / for ’tis a sign of love” (64–5). richard perpetuates his legendary reputation as the “lamentable” King during his conversation with the groom of the stable, who grieves over Bolingbroke’s coronation and his usurping of the legitimate ruler. the groom subverts the duke of york’s nationalistic tale about the deposed monarch’s “woeful” procession into london behind glorious Bolingbroke by revealing in his version of the story that the 57 as draper argues in his discussion of this antimetabole, “the change from ‘i’ (subject) to ‘me’ (object) ... highlights richard’s change of role from active agent, ‘i’ to passive sufferer of action, ‘me’.” the rhetorical patterning of the line thereby sums up the crumbling of the King’s career: “Wasted time in richard ii”: 33.

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future henry iV (and thief) rode on Barbary, richard’s own horse. he exclaims, “o, how it ern’d my heart when i beheld / in london streets that coronation day / When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary” (V.v.76–8). york, by contrast, only mentions this detail obliquely when he declares that Bolingbroke was “mounted upon a hot and fiery steed / Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know” (V.ii.8–9). Whereas the Duke portrays Bolingbroke as a triumphant ruler, the groom depicts him as a usurping Machiavel. This lower-ranking figure grieves over the fact that Bolingbroke stole richard’s horse as well as his crown. the considerable difference between york’s and the groom’s narratives demonstrates that representations of history are indeed influenced by the rank as well as gender of the narrator. The Groom’s subversive point of view on the procession demystifies Bolingbroke’s heroic image and evokes pity and sympathy for richard. richard’s dialogue with the groom of the stable ultimately reincorporates the relatively passive ruler into the action of the drama. aware of his impending death when the Keeper of the Prison enters with meat that he refuses to taste because it might be poisonous, Richard finally displays a sense of timing and altruism when he orders the groom kindly, “if thou love me, ’tis time thou wert away” (96). his private meditations in prison contribute to his newfound ability to act on behalf of his subjects.58 Proclaiming “Patience is stale, and i am weary of it,” he resists his impending fate by striking and cursing the murderers (103). like Queen Elizabeth and Margaret in Richard III and Queen isabel in Richard II, King richard resorts to memorable curses motivated by rage as an effective means of political defense. upon murdering richard, Exton feels the lasting sting of his curse when he admits guiltily, “for now the devil that told me i did well / says that this deed is chronicled in hell” (115–16; my emphasis). He confirms the potency of such rhetorical, feminized means of resistance to tyranny and seems to know that richard’s story is not over.

58 in “Wasted time in Richard II”: 42, Draper describes “a new and firmer quality of action” by richard.

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Fig. 4.2

Henry Fuseli, Richard II. Act 5. Scene 5. “I wasted Time and now doth Time waste me, / For now hath Time made me his numbring clock,” engraving, 1803, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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in contrast to richard’s copious lamenting and weeping throughout the play, Bolingbroke’s sparse emotional displays make less of an impression on his on-stage and off-stage audiences.59 after richard’s murder, Bolingbroke declares, “lords, i protest my soul is full of woe / that blood should sprinkle me to make me grow” (V.vi.45–6; my emphasis). the end rhymes of “woe” and “grow” closely recall Queen isabel’s curse in the garden scene: “gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe / Pray god the plants thou graft’st may never grow” (iii.iv.100–101; my emphasis). Bolingbroke’s echoing of these end rhymes confirms that he has become the grafted and growing branch on the royal stock that Queen isabel curses. his subsequent lines, “come mourn with me for what i do lament, / and put on sullen black incontinent” are flat in comparison to Richard’s emotionally compelling lamentations. the deposed King is famous for his laments upon returning from the wars at ireland; at flint castle; during his deposition and his farewell to his Queen; and finally in the prison scene (47–8). At the end of the play Bolingbroke’s expression of grief for his cousin is brief, metrically regular, and uninspiring. the sincerity of Bolingbroke’s promise to “mourn” and “lament” richard’s death is dubious because of his subsequent failure to fulfill his promise of making “a voyage to the Holy land” to wash the blood off his “guilty hands” in I Henry IV (49). his lackluster lines at the end of Richard II illustrate why no acting company would give their most talented actor the role of Bolingbroke instead of richard—he is the “well-grac’d actor” in coronation processions and on the london stage (V.ii.24).60 IV Various chroniclers other than shakespeare as well as rebellious advocates of the deposed King in shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry IV, Parts I and II perpetuate richard’s legendary identity as the abused victim of Bolingbroke. a number of chroniclers present the monarch sympathetically as a result of his heroic battle for his life in prison and his unmatched capacity for feeling evocative of christ. in holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland he praises richard for 59 in Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England Phillippy argues that this final scene marks the play’s shift from Richard’s “feminized grief” to Henry IV’s “stoic manipulation of affect.” she connects the political pragmatism of henry’s relatively empty show of grief over the body of richard to the “hollowing out of sacramental power and ceremonial presence” that accompanies the shift from catholic to Protestant tears in the play. Building on Phillippy’s argument, i contend that the posthumous power of richard’s sacramental body also informs the multiple versions of his “lamentable tale” that remain after his murder. in Richard II not only his corpse, but also the corpus of chronicles, legends, and rumors about his deposition and death are a significant part of the “remains” that Phillippy asserts are “scattered through the rest of the second tetralogy where ... they exert an almost supernatural sway over events” (pp. 71–2). his Queen’s promise to mourn his loss by perpetuating his woeful legend through narrative in the convent in france in Richard II expands on the scope of Phillippy’s argument that women’s lamentations for the dead exhibit their “lingering power” in Richard III, a history play that shakespeare wrote before Richard II: see Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England, pp. 109–39, here p. 53. 60 see howard and rackin, Engendering a Nation, p. 154.

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his “desperate manhood” when fighting Exton in prison, and in Hall’s Chronicle the narrator exclaims that the King “manly defended hymselfe” there.61 holinshed depicts richard as a man of feeling in response to his deposition and imprisonment by stating, “all which befell him to his extreme hart grief (no doubt)” (ii, p. 857). the chronicler also draws attention to the grief that richard’s executioner feels by revealing that “it is said, that sir Piers of Exton, after he had thus slain him, wept right bitterlie” (iii, p. 12). Both the anonymous Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux, Roy Dengleterre and Jean créton’s Histoire du Roy d’Angleterre Richard highlight richard’s ability to feel deeply through parallels between him and an emotionally expressive christ.62 in créton’s Histoire Richard identifies implicitly with christ by exclaiming, “glorious god! who didst die for us, suspended on the cross, look mercifully upon me.” in Richard II the King similarly compares himself to christ betrayed by Judas during the deposition scene (iV.i.170). the widely-cited biblical verse “and Jesus wept” illustrates the general acceptance of Christ-like, emotionally expressive figures like Richard during the early modern period.63 créton’s own pity for deposed richard emerges through his expression of indignation at Bolingbroke for betraying the legitimate ruler: “thus oftentimes spake King richard, sighing piteously from his heart: so that i solemnly protest more than a hundred times i shed many a tear for him. there lives not a man so harthearted or so firm, who would not have wept at sight of the disgrace that was brought upon him” (116). créton’s tears of sympathy for richard authenticate his narrative perspective on the pathos of the King’s reign. in multiple chronicles rumors and tales about richard ii’s fall from power further attest to the King’s reputation as the sympathetic victim of Bolingbroke. in the anonymous Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux, Roy Dengleterre Bolingbroke, the Duke of Lancaster, sends “a hundred and fifty pairs of letters, falsely railing, by different artful fabrications, against King richard and his government.”64 the writer confesses boldly, “if it had not been for the crafty stratagem of the aforesaid forged letters, falsely fabricated against good King richard, the duke of lancaster had never been received in England as king, nor as lord, nor have been emboldened to advance upon london” (183). in the anonymous Chronicque the Earl of salisbury remarks later to richard about Bolingbroke, “‘My lord, in truth, this man, as i have already heard, has already stirred up the people against you by lying tales and artful words’” (191). in froissart’s Chronicle the duke of lancaster also 61 Holinshed’s Chronicles, iii, p.14 and hall’s Chronicle (1548; rpt. london: for J. Johnson et al., 1809), i, p. 20. 62 see lister M. Matheson, “English chronicle contexts for shakespeare’s death of Richard II” in From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama, ed. John a. alford (East lansing: Michigan state university Press, 1995), p. 209. 63 in Jean créton’s Histoire du Roy d’Angleterre Richard in “translations of a french Metrical history of the deposition of King richard the second,” ed. Benjamin Williams Archaelogia 20 (1824), Richard implicitly identifies with Christ by exclaiming, “Glorious god! who didst die for us, suspended on the cross, look mercifully upon me.” 64 Benjamin Williams, ed., Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux, Roy Dengleterre (Vaduz: Kraus reprint, 1964), p. 180. subsequent quotations are from this edition.

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generates the rumor that richard is a bastard. at the King’s deposition he declares, “the common renome rynneth through Englande, and in other places, that ye were never sonne to the prince of Wales, but rather sonne to a preest or to a chanon.” he continues, “for whan ye were gotten and borne at Burdeauz, there were many younge preestes in the princes house. this is the brute in this countrey” (377). in the anonymous Chronicque the narrator similarly notes that richard’s nickname as “John of london” alludes to the rumor generated by the duke of lancaster that “richard was the illegitimate son of the Princess of Wales by a canon of Bordeaux” (248). such rumors are damaging not only to richard but also to Bolingbroke because they present him as conniving and ruthless. in these various chronicles, oral versions of history—rumors, “brutes,” and minstrel songs—contribute powerfully to richard’s legendary reputation as a victim of the Machiavellian, treacherous Bolingbroke. in holinshed’s Chronicles 40,000 Welshmen, who wait fourteen days for richard’s return from ireland, disperse because of the rumor that the King is dead. richard’s lateness allows the duke of lancaster to “bring things to passe as he could haue wished.” as holinshed reports: But when they missed the king, there was a brute spred amongst them, that the king was suerlie dead, which wrought such an impression, and euill disposition in the minds of the Welshmen and others, that for anie persuasion which the earle of salisburie might vse, they would not go foorth with him, till they saw the king: onelie they were contented to staie foureteene daies to see if he should come or not; but when he came not within that tearme, they would no longer abide, but scaled & departed awaie; wheras if the king had come before their breaking vp, no doubt, but they would haue pute the duke of hereford in aduenture of a field. (854)

in the anonymous Chronicque the Welshmen perpetuate richard’s legendary identity even after his death. the Welsh, who often “made the misfortune and deaths of their public men the subjects of minstrelsy,” memorialize his “days of prosperity”—prior to his deposition and murder—in the popular Welsh air, “sweet richard” (212). a number of subversive narrators, including rebels against the crown, women, the lower ranks, and richard himself, generate these oral versions of history and thereby undermine henry iV’s reputation as a legitimate ruler not only in the chronicles but also in Richard II and Henry IV, Parts I and II. throughout Richard II sympathetic responses to richard’s deposition, both spoken and written, continue to haunt Bolingbroke. although his subjects initially applaud henry iV’s ascent to the throne, his claim to it becomes more tenuous as his popularity wanes.65 the letter that the duke of york discovers in aumerle’s pocket attesting to his involvement in the oxford conspiracy to kill henry iV (V.ii.71), along with the groom of the stable’s heart-felt account of Bolingbroke’s humiliation of richard during the procession into london (V.v.76–80), are manifestations of the new King’s relative powerlessness to censor multiple forms of resistance 65 richard abrams notes that henry iV’s reign is precarious because those who elected him are “fickle.” He is an apparently “electoral sovereign” who derives “his authority from others like himself, rather than from an eternal source.” see “rumor’s reign in 2 Henry IV: The Scope of a Personification,” ELR 16 (1986): 472.

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to his reign. though henry iV was a medieval ruler, his plight is illuminated by royal Proclamations on rumor during the latter part of the sixteenth century when shakespeare’s play was written and performed. these documents make clear that the danger of verbal assaults on the reputation of the King is especially great “when the tales ... [speculate upon] the hidden designs or intentions of [a] sovereign.”66 in stark contrast to richard ii, taciturn henry iV refuses to articulate his mind throughout the play and thus invites such speculation about his motives. gaunt remarks on his son Bolingbroke’s tendency to “hoard” his “words” when richard initially exiles him for six years (i.iii.253). Bolingbroke, who is vulnerable to rumors as a result of his emotionally restrained disposition, exhibits fear that the “deed” of richard death will in fact “slander” his reputation and defame him throughout England when he exclaims: Exton, i thank thee not, for thou hast wrought a deed of slander with thy fatal hand upon my head and all this famous land. (V.vi.34–6)

Even though loquacious Richard seems to lie “all breathless” in a coffin before reticent henry iV, the story of his tragic fall from the wheel of fortune continues to speak, both prospectively within and retrospectively without the play (V.vi.31). in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 henry’s fears of rumors, slander, and defamation become a reality. in I Henry IV hotspur inspires northumberland and Worcester to rebel against henry iV by citing emotionally moving accounts of richard’s deposition: shall it for shame be spoken in these days, Or fill up chronicles in time to come, that men of your nobility and power did gage them both in an unjust behalf ... to put down richard, that sweet lovely rose, and plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke? (i.iii.170–76; my emphasis)

in 2 Henry IV the archbishop reports that those who “threw’st dust upon [richard’s] goodly head, / When through proud london he came sighing on / after the admired heels of Bolingbroke” during his coronation procession are “now become enamour’d on his grave” and “cry’st ... ’o earth, yield us that King again / and take thou this!’”—his illegitimate successor.67 haunted by the living memory of richard with his “eye brimful of tears,” henry iV quotes the prior ruler’s prophecy that “‘the time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, / Shall break into corruption’” and bemoans its fulfillment toward the end of his reign (2 Henry IV iii.i.76–7 from Richard II V.i.57–9). henry is wracked by care and battles “inward wars” as a result of the damage the commonly female 66 Kenneth gross, “slander and skepticism in Othello,” ELH 56 (1989): 849. 67 The Second Part of King Henry IV, ed. a.r. humphreys, the arden shakespeare (1966; reprint, london: routledge, 1991), i.iii.102–7. the subsequent quotation from this play is from this edition.

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figure of Rumor “painted full of tongues” has done to his reputation (97–107).68 the rumors that originate in Richard II resist the restraining power of censorship and, for a knowing audience, undermine the play’s sense of closure. these “winged words” escape from the written bounds—the enclosure—of Richard II and take flight throughout the Henriad. ** like Marlowe’s Edward II, shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry IV, Parts I and II point to the gradual crumbling of violent, militaristic versions of masculinity during the reign of Elizabeth i.69 recalling calyphas’ deadly desire to remain with his mother instead of taking part in battle alongside his father in Tamburlaine Part II, the generational conflict between Bolingbroke and Hal underscores the gradual softening and feminizing of versions of masculinity in shakespeare’s history plays. Bolingbroke describes hal as a “young wanton, and effeminate boy,” terms reminiscent of richard (Richard II V.iii.10). yet hal becomes a better ruler than his father because of his ability to empathize with his future subjects at the tavern and seek pacific compromises rather than war whenever possible. He does so by proposing that he fight the rebellious Hotspur alone—an offer that never reaches his opponent but would have made the battle against the armies of rebels unnecessary. in I Henry IV hal’s rhetorical powers of negotiation and empathy function as key aspects of his manhood. he thereby diverges from prior feudal, militaristic generations of men who scorned the replacing of the sword with emotionally-moving language.70 at the beginning of Richard II thomas Mowbray voices his disdain for verbal sparring that overshadows the importance of physical dueling. he exclaims in response to Bolingbroke’s accusation that he murdered the duke of gloucester and richard’s deferral of their demand for a vengeful, bloody contest, “’tis not the trial of a woman’s war, / the bitter clamour of two eager tongues, / can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain” (I.i.48–50). A pacific compromise fails to satisfy Mowbray. nevertheless, richard and his Queen’s perpetuating of their woeful legends as the abused victims of Bolingbroke in private, enclosed spaces illustrates that those who 68 abrams interestingly observes that during his insomnia speech, henry iV “becomes a dramatically effectual version of richard ii in prison”: “rumor’s reign”: 479. see also harry Berger, Jr, “sneak’s noise or rumor and detextualization in 2 Henry IV,” Kenyon Review 6 (1984): 58–78. 69 in a widely-quoted phrase, Elizabeth i points to her famous, androgynous means of self-representation by exclaiming, “i am richard ii, know ye not that?” when objecting to performances of shakespeare’s history play shortly after the Essex rebellion: see William lambarde and John nicols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (london: John nichols and son, 1823; originally published 1783), 3: p. 552. her androgyny recalls that of Marlowe’s gaveston, Edward ii, and Edward iii and shakespeare’s richard ii. in “the terms of gender: ‘gay’ and “feminist’ Edward ii” in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture, ed. Valerie traub, M. lindsay Kaplan, and dympha callaghan (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1996), p. 283, callaghan argues that because “there is an undeniable resemblance between Edward and Elizabeth’s sovereignty” attacks on Edward in Marlowe’s play allude to current assaults on the Queen. 70 shepherd, Marlowe’s Soldier’s, p. 85.

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resist political oppression in such non-violent, emotionally expressive, and feminine terms are often empowered as a result. in I Henry IV Falstaff, Hal’s other father or mother-figure, further highlights the gradual disintegration of militaristic versions of manhood toward the end of the sixteenth century. falstaff mocks the very prospect of henry iV’s battle against the rebels by “playing upon his truncheon like a fife” while Hal and Peto march in the tavern (III.iii.85). In addition, he brings a flask of sack instead of a sword onto the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Shortly afterwards, Falstaff questions the value of the abstract notion of “honor” commonly associated with chivalric warriors (V.i.129– 40). his wounding of dead hotspur on the thigh recalls the unspeakable acts of mutilation and emasculation the women of Wales performed on English soldiers on the battlefield (I.i.43–46). In 2 Henry IV falstaff represents himself in feminine terms when he refers to his belly as a womb by exclaiming, “My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me” (iV.iii.22). here falstaff allies himself with the female body. His rhetorical powers and flair for melodrama remind the audience of Richard. shakespeare’s representation of richard ii as feminine, narcissistic, selfabsorbed, melodramatic, and emotionally compelling for audiences and readers alike parallels depictions of literary men of feeling in the eighteenth century.71 after returning from ireland, the King greets the “earth” as a “long-parted mother with her child”—a distinctly feminine move (iii.ii.6–8). richard is particularly melodramatic and teary-eyed during his performance on the walls of flint castle and during the deposition scene. there, he gazes into the mirror in a narcissus-like fashion, reflecting the frequent narcissism of emotionally indulgent men of feeling in eighteenth-century plays and novels that supposedly made viewers and readers cry. Even though richard’s emotionalism is excessive throughout the play, he evokes a considerable degree of sympathy from his on-stage and off-stage audiences. aumerle’s tears at flint castle (iii.iii.160) and the duke of york’s “weeping” when he tells the “story” of richard’s entrance into london behind Bolingbroke attest to the power of richard’s emotions to move his viewers and listeners (V.ii.2). in prison the groom of the stable feels deeply for richard’s betrayal by his own horse “Barbary” (V.v.78). Even his horse is proud that Bolingbroke instead of the rightful 71 according to Mary chapman and glenn hendler in their discussion of depictions of sentimental men, the figure of the man of feeling so popular in the eighteenth century was constructed as “a male body feminized by affect, a sort of emotional cross-dresser.” they contend that eighteenth-century writers and theorists such as laurence sterne, samuel richardson, J.W. goethe, henry MacKenzie, and adam smith conceived of sensibility in terms of “affective androgyny” that combined “manly virtue and benevolent motherhood.” chapman and hendler further argue that “narcissistic self-absorption” characteristic of richard is often a feature of sentimental masculinity: Sentimental Men, pp. 3 and 13. in “What is sentimentality?” American Literary History 11 (1999): 65, June howard argues that sentimentality is an emotion often conceived in a pejorative sense as “affected and shallow, or as excessive.” in The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in NineteenthCentury America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4, Shirley Samuels defines sentimentality as “a set of cultural practices designed to evoke a certain form of emotional response, usually empathy, in the reader or viewer.” as a sentimental character, richard ii moves his on-stage and off-stage audiences on an affective level.

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King is on his back. in these ways melodramatic richard ii serves as a forerunner of literary men of feeling that dominated the eighteenth-century stage.72 although Bolingbroke is overpowering in terms of physical force, richard competes with him successfully through his affective rhetoric, gestures, and tears that make the former ruler legendary.

72 As Schiesari argues, the melancholic figure of Hamlet similarly points to the rise of sensitive manhood as well as the anxiety about the feminization of emotionally expressive men in the renaissance: The Gendering of Melancholia, pp. 21 and 31.

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Part thrEE chivalric Knights, courtiers, and shepherds Prone to tears in Pastoral romances by sidney and spenser Men who weep and wail abound in sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia) and Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene. these romances feature a variety of men representative of different social ranks—chivalric knights, courtiers, shepherds, and other rustics—in pastoral settings ranging from arcadia to fairyland. sidney and spenser composed their romances—one written mainly in prose with inset eclogues and the other in the form of a long narrative poem—during the reign of Elizabeth i, famous for presenting herself in androgynous terms. in “Queen Elizabeth’s armada speech to the troops at tilbury, august 9, 1588” she exclaims, “i know i have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but i have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too.”1 Both sidney and spenser fashion emotionally expressive male figures whose public or private success depends on their cultivation of the feminine sides of themselves. My pairing of sidney’s New Arcadia and Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene—two of the most popular and widely read prose or epic romances from the end of the sixteenth century—showcases the complexity of literary and cultural responses to various kinds of masculinity in relation to emotion during the reign of Elizabeth i. like the history plays Marlowe’s Edward II and shakespeare’s Richard II, Sidney’s and Spenser’s parallel romances shed light on shifting definitions of manhood toward the end of the sixteenth century.2 as i discussed earlier, aristocratic men at this time tended to define themselves less as warriors and more as courtiers or gentlemen. during a period when feudal notions of the chivalric warrior as glorious were becoming figments of the imagination rather than sustained, physical realities among the aristocracy, Sidney and Spenser create a number of fictional male characters known for attributes other than their skills at combat. in the New Arcadia and Book Vi of The Faerie Queene—romances that allow for a great deal of affective license—a man’s rhetorical ability and capacity to feel deeply rival the 1 Elizabeth I, p. 326. 2 in Women and the English Renaissance, pp. 159–67, Woodbridge discusses the softening definitions of masculinity that resulted from the shift from “military” to “peacetime” values in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. she touches on Pyrocles’s amazon disguise in relation to ambivalent cultural responses to “softened men and toughened women” as either “monsters” or “symbols of human wholeness” (pp. 158–9).

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importance of his desire to fight with arms and armor for justice or nationhood.3 these comparable works feature men of feeling for whom storytelling and the pursuit of love are of highest importance. the suspended animation of such romances often permits behaviors—such as unrestrained expressions of erotic passion or grief—that would otherwise be chastised in the world beyond. in their parallel works sidney and spenser respond variously to the yoking of multiple forms of masculinity in relation to emotion. their responses to chivalric knights liberated from their armor and prone to tears range from anxiety and ambivalence to vigorous support for and championing of men who weep and wail.

3 although sixteenth-century romances remained concerned with knights, ladies, and tournaments, writers of them tended no longer to define masculinity or femininity in terms of the values of a violent feudal culture. in contrast to chivalric tales in which heroes largely establish their manhood on their martial skills, those written during the renaissance age of humanism “shifted the space of trial for masculine virtu from battlefield to text” and presented discourse as the cerebral equivalent of combat: see lorna hutson, The Usurer’s Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England (london: routledge, 1994), pp. 97, 99, and 102. In Society, Politics and Culture, pp. 387–96, James also considers sidney’s Arcadia in terms of the cultural disintegration of the traditionally violent code of honor.

5.

crossdressers in love: Men of feeling and narrative agency in sidney’s New Arcadia Men of feeling in the New Arcadia often tell stories as well as fight and exhibit a broad range of emotions—desire, rage, pity, and grief. nevertheless, sidney tends to place limitations on where, when, and how chivalric knights, courtiers, and shepherds should display emotion without risking emasculation. his literary and cultural sense of decorum for male expressions of emotion is keen.4 sidney alludes to the fading, literary ideal of the aristocratic warrior in a number of cases by exposing the futility rather than glory of armed violence. His surprising number of figurative rather than literal uses of the term “armor” are suggestive of the increasing remoteness of the chivalric world of violent knightly errands and jousts in the later sixteenth century. however, the Elizabethan accession day tilts that featured sidney himself among other aristocrats provided an appropriate symbol for the continuing affection for this chivalric tradition that was revitalized briefly during a national holiday.5 in the New 4 sidney’s rigorous notion of decorum for male expressions of emotion gestures toward a dramatic difference between affective impulse and performance in the early modern period. in Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, pp. 1–2, Maus points to the gap between an “unexpressed interior” and a “theatricalized exterior,” as illustrated by hamlet’s famous lines, “But i have that within which passes show, / these but the trappings and the suits of woe” (Hamlet 1.2. 85–6). In “The Passion Signified: Imitation and the Construction of Emotions in sidney and Wroth,” Criticism 43 (2001): 407–21, Jacqueline t. Miller questions the notion of such disparity between interior emotions and their exterior expression by arguing that the production of passion results from imitation of codes of behavior within social groups. Miller draws on renaissance theories of rhetoric such as Wright’s Passions of the Minde in Generall in which he contends that the orator “imprints” the passion he feels in his audience (413). she thereby emphasizes the extent to which the emotions are externally constructed. in “Passion and reason in sir Philip sidney’s Arcadia” in Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570–1640, ed. constance c. relihan and goran V. stanivukovic (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 61–75, lisa hopkins implicitly extends Miller’s argument about the impact of cultural factors on the expression of emotion. according to hopkins, sidney illustrates in the New Arcadia that passion must be controlled by reason in order for the aristocratic subject to negotiate the sometimes conflicting demands of marriage and romantic love (p. 61). sidney’s anxiety and ambivalence in response to immoderate and untimely displays of emotion by men suggest that he was acutely aware of rigorous codes of behavior imposed on the performance of their affective impulses. 5 James, Society, Politics and Culture, p. 391. see also frances a. yates, “Elizabethan chivalry: the romance of the accession day tilts,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld

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Arcadia aristocratic versions of masculinity remain yoked with intense expressions of violence, anger, and competitiveness despite sidney’s and his culture’s refashioning of the chivalric knight as other than violent warrior. he emphasizes the importance of a man’s commitment to action (militaristic or otherwise) and rhetorical skill. sidney tends to criticize the stoic perspective of withdrawing from the world in an introverted fashion and endorse Protestant humanism and calvinist activism instead.6 thoughtful, articulate men of action who know when and where to cry are ideal in his romance. in the New Arcadia the excessive, erotic passion of aristocratic men is excusable in part because it can lead them to virtuous action. in most other cases, however, men in the romance are expected to exhibit a moderate rather than excessive, or ill-timed degree of emotion. sidney’s attitude toward the emotions is thereby relatively aristotelian.7 Weeping and wailing men who fail to achieve the proper mean or balance between reason and emotion, action and contemplation, and public and private displays of tears are frequently subject to ridicule in his romance. in general, sidney is less tolerant of men who weep and wail and more prone to anxiety about androgyny than spenser in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene.8 I sidney tends to blur the boundaries between masculinity and femininity in the New Arcadia, a work he wrote toward the end of the sixteenth century when the gender system was in transition. In his popular work of fiction he features Pyrocles, a crossdresser in love who wears satin in place of traditional armor in the imaginary setting of arcadia, close to the time when the feminization of masculinity was becoming noticeable (and sometimes subject to derision) during the reign of Elizabeth i. as i mentioned earlier in relation to Marlowe’s Edward II, Phillip stubbes in his anti-theatrical tract Anatomie of Abuses (1583) is infamous for attacking men who crossdress as women on stage. others at that time shared stubbes’ fear of and objection to effeminacy. Barnabe riche, a former soldier who became a writer of prose fiction for women when his military services were no longer needed, voices

Institutes 20 (1957): 4–25. 6 James, Society, Politics and Culture, p. 390. 7 see scodel’s discussion of extreme aristocratic passion in the Arcadia in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature, pp. 155–64. 8 in addition to Mark rose in “sidney’s Womanish Man,” Review of English Studies 15 (1964): 353–63, others who discuss androgyny in sidney’s New Arcadia are constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1990), pp. 220–42; Margaret M. sullivan, “amazons and aristocrats: the function of Pyrocles’ amazon role in sidney’s revised Arcadia” in Playing with Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit, ed. Jean r. Brink, Maryanne c. horowitz, and allison P. coudert (urbana: university of illinois Press, 1991), pp. 62–81; and lisa celovsky, “Pyrocles’ Warlike Peace: sir Philip sidney and androgyny,” Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed. richard c. trexler (Binghamton: Medieval and renaissance texts and studies, 1994), pp. 235–44.

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his disdain for the effete and effeminized courtier lacking actual experience on the battlefield in his Preface Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581) by exclaiming: laie aside your weapons, hang vp your armours by the walles, and learne an other while (for your better aduauncementes) to Pipe, to feddle, to syng, to daunce, to lye, to forge, to flatter, to cary tales, to set Ruffe, or to dooe any thyng that your appetites beste serues you vnto, and that is better fittyng for the tyme.9

in sidney’s romance demilitarized men who are hard to tell from women evoke a degree of anxiety comparable to riche’s response to contemporary men without their swords. in the New Arcadia Pyrocles’ and Musidorus’ famous debate about the similarities and differences between the sexes is further suggestive of the reconfiguring of categories of masculinity in relation to femininity during the sixteenth century. Musidorus responds skeptically to Pyrocles’ crossdressing as Zelmane by exclaiming, “to take this womanish habit ... is wholly vain” (133). Pyrocles counters Musidorus’ fierce objections to his gender-bending by stating that women possess “the same parts of the mind for the exercise of virtue” as men (133, 135). the divided remarks of Pyrocles and Musidorus about the virtues of crossdressing parallel sidney’s and his culture’s ambivalence in response to the blurring of masculine and feminine identities. dressed as a woman, Pyrocles advocates equality among the sexes and argues that women are as capable of virtuous action as men. his feminine disguise brings out the best in him. although sidney endorses a wide range of liberating behaviors and views for Pyrocles, he continues to subject women to the authority of men. gender roles are repressive as well as revisionary in the New Arcadia. Men in his romance maintain their position of power over women through emotionally compelling rhetoric and by interrupting or silencing them. sidney’s own depiction of female figures who are outspoken in public affairs and politically ambitious is ambivalent at times. he presents dominating wives and mothers as usurpers of power belonging to their husbands and sons but maternal men in a relatively positive light. the shift in the bulk of aristocratic men from warriors to courtiers or gentlemen in sixteenth-century England contributed to literary and cultural perceptions of the danger of effeminacy in men.10 in his address to the countess of Pembroke at the beginning of the New Arcadia, sidney exhibits his own fears of effeminization as an aristocratic writer. to his mind the writing of a romance particularly jeopardizes his manhood because readers of them were commonly women. in this address to his 9 Barnaby riche, Riche’s Farewell to Militarie Profession, ed. T.M. Cranfill (Austin: university of texas Press, 1959), p. 13. Woodbridge cites both stubbes and riche as examples of the prominence of cultural hostility to a gender system in transition during the shift from “masculine” military values to “feminine” peacetime ones (pp. 159–60, 162). 10 see Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, pp. 159–68; halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, pp. 243–5 for his discussion of oswald as the effeminate, socially mobile courtier in King Lear; and levine, “Men in Women’s clothing: antitheatricality and Effeminization from 1579 to 1642” for her treatment of the cultural fears of effeminacy in anti-theatrical tracts.

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sister he exposes his ambivalence about devoting much of his time to an “idle work” that is “but a trifle” with “many, many trifles begotten in it” (57; my emphasis). as the term “begotten” suggests, sidney represents his rhetorical “labor” in maternal and paternal terms. When describing his romance dedicated to his sister as a child that he is “loth to father,” he compares himself to “the cruel fathers among the greeks” who cast “the babes they would not foster ... in some desert of forgetfulness.” in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale leontes becomes the kind of “cruel” father to whom sidney refers when he exiles the infant Perdita, whom he mistakes for a bastard, to the shores of Bohemia. like leontes, who doubts that his pregnant wife has remained faithful to him, sidney responds somewhat anxiously to maternity, one way in which early modern women exert considerable authority. he depicts himself as a mother who is relieved after having “delivered” his romance because of his fear that it would have “grown a monster.”11 the fact that sidney wrote the Arcadia for his sister, Mary sidney, “mostly on loose sheets of paper in her presence” adds to the effeminizing threat of his occupation by it (76). in anticipation of the hostile reactions of those who would read his prose romance with “severer eyes” than hers, he depicts it as a work merely fit to be read during his sister’s “idle times” (57). sidney’s self-effacing description of the Arcadia suggests that he was sensitive to public and private accusations that he was wasting his time by idly working on his romance.12 he counters potential attacks upon his manhood for his idleness—a grave sin in sidney’s eyes—by transforming the mental acumen demanded of a sensitive storyteller such as himself into a necessary aspect of chivalric versions of masculinity throughout the Arcadia. in this way he emphasizes the rhetorical and emotional (as well as militaristic) dimensions of the chivalric knights, courtiers, and shepherds he features in his romance. femininity, however, is at the heart of the literary production and readership of sidney’s New Arcadia. in the Preface “to the reader,” hugh sanford—the secretary to the Earl of Pembroke—acknowledges the countess of Pembroke’s vital role in producing the romance. he continues sidney’s comparison of the production of texts to the begetting of children by noting that “the father’s untimely death prevented the timely birth of the child” (60). here sanford is referring to the fact that sidney died unexpectedly in 1586 as a result of an infection from a thigh wound by musket shot during a military raid in spain. in 1578 hubert languet wrote disapprovingly of Sidney’s burning desire to fight with the Low Countries against Spain by stating, 11 sir Philip sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Maurice Evans (new york: Penguin, 1977), p. 57. all future quotations of the New Arcadia are from this version based on the 1593 edition, which was produced under the auspices of the countess of Pembroke and thereby read more widely by the sidney family than fulke greville’s 1590 edition. sidney’s references to pregnant male authors are not limited to his prose romance. in sonnet #1 of Astrophil and Stella he describes himself as “thus great with child to speak”: Major Works, ed. Katherine duncan-Jones (oxford: oxford university Press, 2002), p. 153, line 12. 12 in Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: university of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 27 and 87, Mary Ellen lamb notes that sidney wrote portions of the Old Arcadia in the country during his forced retirement from his courtly duties as a result of his illplaced advice to the Queen about marriage and addressed the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia to his sister during a lengthy sojourn at her estate.

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“you and your fellows, i mean men of noble birth, consider that nothing brings you more honour than wholesale slaughter; and you are generally guilty of the greatest injustice.”13 as languet’s comment suggests, the glory of violent aristocrats was diminishing during the latter half of the sixteenth century. the rhetorical fame of men opting to make writing an integral part of their careers—such as sidney and spenser— was increasing, by contrast. in the wake of sidney’s death sanford describes Mary sidney’s corrections of the errors in the 1590 quarto of the New Arcadia for her 1593 folio compilation of her posthumous brother’s arcadian works that would become popular with subsequent reprintings as “a thank-worthy labour,” resulting in a work that was “done, as it was, for her; as it is, by her” (60). in this way women play a vital role in the writing as well as reading of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia). following conventional expectations for this genre, sidney addresses “fair ladies” at least fifteen times throughout his romance, suggesting that he imagined a relatively intimate, aristocratic circle of readers, consisting mainly of women.14 the role that Mary sidney played in her brother’s literary project is further suggestive of the intertwining of his romance with femininity even after his death. yet the gender transgressions of effeminate men and manly women remain sources of ambivalence and anxiety throughout his prose romance. II Through the figure of Prince Basilius in the main plot of the New Arcadia sidney explores the complex question, “What makes a good ruler or family man?” this foolish prince has retreated to the forest where he lives with his wife, gynecia, and his daughters, Pamela and Philocela, whom he declares will never marry. according to Kalander, Basilius lacks virtues that “get admiration” such as “depth of wisdom” but excels in those that “stir affection” such as “mercifulness” (76). sidney thereby praises “wisdom”—a virtue linked with reason and the mind—while denigrating “affection”—a passion associated with the body. his doing so reinforces the customary hierarchy of reason over emotion in Western culture. in general, Basilius exhibits too little reason and too much emotion, falling short of the aristotelian mean between the two. he particularly demonstrates his lack of wisdom by imprisoning his two daughters, Philoclea and Pamela, like two birds in a cage in the pastoral landscape of arcadia. in his letter to Basilius, his friend Philanax criticizes him for attempting to keep his daughters unmarried by asking whether “any cage can please a bird” (81). 13 Quoted in Kelso, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century, p. 47 and shuger, “irishmen, aristocrats, and other White Barbarians”: 494. 14 as Barbara Bono argues, sidney “seems to have intended [The Arcadia] ... for a discerning coterie audience, largely composed of women”: “‘the chief Knot of all the discourse’: the Maternal subtext tying sidney’s Arcadia to shakespeare’s King Lear” in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, p.117. Katherine duncan-Jones, ed., notes that sidney intended earlier versions of the Arcadia only as family entertainment for the younger sidneys and herberts: sir Philip sidney, The Major Works, p. xi.

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Basilius exhibits the dangerousness of misdirected emotion unchecked by reason. he depicts the idle prince as a buffoon for leaving “the stern of his government” by having him fall in love with a man disguised as a woman—Pyrocles as Zelmane (82). Basilius’ imaginary love affair with the crossdressed knight is both adulterous and comic. the comedy results from the facts that both Basilius and gynecia are in love with Pyrocles, who is simultaneously pursuing their daughter, Philoclea. after Basilius discovers that he has fallen for a man crossdressed as a woman, he resolves to “employ the rest of his old years in doing good, the only happy action of man’s life” (791). action rather than idleness is essential for a man in sidney’s romance. Basilius’ education about the importance of a virtuous mind and body and the balancing of reason and emotion results from a number of soap opera-like plots involving not only crossdressing, but also bed-tricks and a man almost buried alive. throughout sidney’s New Arcadia men representative of different social ranks express a variety of emotions, ranging from desire, melancholy, and grief, to anger, hate, and pity. Pyrocles and Musidorus, the emotionally expressive heroes of the romance, arrive separately in arcadia after a shipwreck and eventually fall in love with Basilius’ daughters. according to Kalander, the “inward melancholies” of “two or three” other travelers “made weary of the world’s eyes” have also led them “to spend their lives among the country people of arcadia” (84). Melancholy is one of several emotional states expressive of sorrow in sidney’s romance. Kalander grieves suddenly when he discovers that the helots have imprisoned his son, clitophon, during a battle. he fears for his son’s life as a result of “the hate those peasants conceived against all gentlemen,” a phrase suggestive of tensions between ranks in arcadia. only the captain of the opposing army, “who seemed to have a heart of more manly pity than the rest,” prevents his death (86; my emphasis). here sidney suggests that “pity” can be “manly.” his use of the adjective “manly” steers the reader away from the false conclusion that the captain’s emotional response to the unjust treatment of clitophon is weakening or effeminizing. in this instance the emotionally expressive man is the most humane and persuasive. sidney’s means of representing men of feeling in the New Arcadia, a widely popular romance that appeared in four different editions by 1605 and inspired a fourteenth edition by 1725, provides clues about the positive response of his contemporary readers to demonstrative men in this fictive context. Readers for over a century found the affective license of pivotal male figures in the romance appealing. yet sidney conveys a degree of ambivalence about emotionally expressive men by limiting where, at what time, and under what circumstances they may express sorrow or pity. in general, men in sidney’s romance are at liberty to cry profusely if they do so in private. in response to the imprisonment of his son, Kalander sheds an “abundance of tears” while he is “alone retired, tearing his beard and hair” (86). similarly, amphialus mourns his unintentional killing of the son of his foster-father by seeking “the most solitary places” to mourn (129). their retiring to private spaces to grieve preserves their manhood. according to Musidorus, Kalander’s excessive and protracted mourning for his son is less than ideal because it prevents him from taking the appropriate action for rescuing him. He finds Kalander “lying upon the ground, having ever since banished both sleep and food as enemies to the mourning which passion persuaded him was

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reasonable.” his passionate grief clouds his capacity for rational thought, another example of a man falling short of the aristotelian mean. Musidorus raises him off the ground and exclaims, “no more, no more of this, my l. Kalander: let us labour to find, before we lament the loss” (94). In this particular instance excessive weeping is unproductive and even dangerous for a man if it leads to idleness rather than virtuous action. nevertheless, tears shed by men and women are often genuine indicators of sincerity in the New Arcadia. later in sidney’s romance Pyrocles tells Philoclea a story about the death of his friend Zelmane, whose name he adopts when disguising himself as a woman. Pyrocles recounts how Zelmane interprets his yielding to what he describes negatively as the “weakness of abundant weeping” as a manly confession of true friendship (366). interestingly, she defends the value of tears so often denigrated by men in early modern literature and culture. Weeping and wailing about selfish concerns, however, can become unmanly in the New Arcadia. the sailors aboard the sinking ship carrying Pyrocles and Musidorus to Arcadia drown as a result of their idle, selfish tears. They sit on the “top of the poop weeping and wailing” (263). unlike the sailors, the princes behave virtuously rather than selfishly when they discover their ship is sinking. Instead of surrendering to selfish emotions, they act rationally and survive by clinging to the mast or a floating chest. according to Musidorus in his account of the shipwreck to Pamela, he and Pyrocles act on “the passions of fearing evil, and desiring to escape only to serve the rule of virtue, not to abandon one’s self,” they leap heroically to a rib of the ship (263). Pyrocles and Musidorus base their manhood on selfless, virtuous action—an ideal quality characteristic of the viewpoints of Protestant humanism and calvinist activism to which sidney is sympathetic in the New Arcadia. gender roles—whether masculine, feminine, or androgynous—and external circumstances largely shape the decorum for expressing emotion in sidney’s romance. although Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane weeps profusely in response to his unspoken, unrequited love for Philoclea, he and Musidorus are dry-eyed during the trial when facing the possibility of their own deaths as a result of their forbidden relationships with Philoclea and Pamela. they act “like men indeed, fortifying courage with the true rampire of patience” and “did so endure as they did rather appear governors of necessity than servants to fortune” (802). like Jonson in Timber: or Discoveries upon Men and Matter, sidney endorses stoicism and rigorism in some cases. here patient endurance characteristic of Job is appropriate for these men facing dire circumstances beyond their control. at their trial Pyrocles and Musidorus remain heroic because of their courage, patience, and endurance. these men of feeling embody a literary model of heroism that includes weeping, wailing, and patient suffering, qualities commonly associated with women in the medieval and early modern periods.15 in chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale griselda, not Walter, weeps and is patient in the face of the supposed loss of her children. in Hamlet laertes refers to weeping as part of the feminine dimension of his masculine identity. he exclaims that once his tears for drowned ophelia are gone “the woman will be out” (iV.vii.189). as illustrated by laertes’ revenging ophelia’s death, coupling grief with violent action wards off the wide-spread anxiety in the renaissance that 15 see rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature, p. xvi.

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tears shed by men are effeminizing, a literary and cultural dictate to which sidney and his contemporaries were sensitive.16 in the New Arcadia men often express their grief over the loss of another in terms of anger and aggression. they exhibit jealousy or competitiveness in response to threats of losing the one they love. When Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane falls in love with Philoclea, he becomes angry when another man acts as the champion for Basilius’ daughter during a tournament. in response to Phebilus, “a gentleman of the country,” displaying Philoclea’s picture at this tournament, Pyrocles is “so full of grief and rage withal that he would fain with the sword have revenged it” (164). in a later episode of the New Arcadia cecropia imprisons Pyrocles in a tower to prevent him from obstructing her son amphialus’ marriage to Philoclea. there, he is “able to help as little as anybody” yet “wail as much as anybody.” his wailing is indeed competitive. Pyrocles’ idle grief develops subsequently into “raging sorrow,” a phrase indicating that too much solitude or inactivity can lead to danger in sidney’s romance (518). yet rage makes his display of sorrow manly, if not virtuous. although men often ally themselves with the “softer” and “moist” sex in the New Arcadia, violence remains a crucial dimension of manhood in sidney’s romance. imprisoned in the tower, Pyrocles becomes violent as a result of his separation from Philoclea. he directs his violent impulses toward both himself and others. When he hears of the supposed deaths of Philoclea and Pamela, a ruse orchestrated by cecropia, he attempts to brain himself in prison and then seeks revenge by determining to “destroy man, woman and child that were any way of kin to them that were accessory to this cruelty” (564). Pyrocles weeps angrily and competitively (and to the reader a bit comically) by exclaiming, “there is nothing now left to become the eyes of all mankind but tears; and woe be to me, if any exceed me in woefulness” (564–5). Pyrocles’ capacity for pity and sorrow degenerates into violence and even contempt for women in the absence of Philoclea. Without the full, androgynous psyche that crossdressed Pyrocles achieves as a result of his love affair with Philoclea he becomes less fully human and more like a beast. he laments disdainfully in response to the supposed death of Philoclea and Pamela, “o noble sisters ... now you be gone who were the only exalters of all womankind, which is left in that sex, but babbling and busyness?” (566–7). Even though Pyrocles is dressed as a woman, he voices the anti-feminist sentiment that the “other” sex is overly talkative and meddlesome. nevertheless, his reunion with Philoclea enables him to achieve the masculine ideal of yoking a body devoted to virtuous action with an emotionally expressive mind. although sidney was certainly aware of positive and ideal representations of androgyny in classical, biblical, and early modern contexts, a noticeable trace of his and his culture’s anxiety and ambivalence in response to this fluid, hybridized model for masculine identity

16 sidney’s contemporaries responded ambivalently to weeping men. Woodbridge notes that “shakespeare agrees that weeping is a feminine trait but does not necessarily despise male characters who weep” (p. 170). in The Anatomy of Melancholy, by contrast, Burton remarks that socrates called those who wept at his deathbed women “upon which words of his they were abashed, and ceased from their teares,” 2:180.

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surfaces throughout the New Arcadia. 17 Musidorus’ initially skeptical response to Pyrocles’ crossdressing is a case in point. in sidney’s romance mourning rituals further illustrate that male grief often leads to violence or the desire for revenge. after amphialus commits suicide upon discovering cecropia’s machinations to procure him a bride, the “choice men of the place” grieve by throwing “themselves upon the ground, some tearing their clothes and casting dust upon their heads, and some even wounding themselves, and sprinkling their own blood in the air” (579). Philanax, who plans the funeral for Basilius under the false impression that the Prince is dead, similarly declares that it is more honorable for his “tomb to have the blood of [his] murderers sprinkled upon it than the tears of [his] friends.” from his perspective “revenge” rather than “womanish complaints” befits a male mourner (735). Sidney’s own funeral procession featured a close circle of male, aristocratic friends that included fulke greville, Edward dyer, and the Earl of Essex.18 as his funeral procession illustrated, men from sidney’s generation reenacted the glory of chivalric knighthood during such grand, public ceremonies. nevertheless, the aristocracy possessed increasingly 17 Positive and even ideal representations of androgyny are common during the early modern period. in The Sacred Marriage (lewisburg: Bucknell university Press, 1987), pp. 40–49, lockerd demonstrates that the notion that people were originally androgynous derives from Plato and the Book of genesis. in Plato’s Symposium aristophanes remarks that god cut each person in half as punishment for attempting to dethrone him, leading each person to seek his or her other half as a result. Even the creation of Eve from adam in genesis is suggestive of his original androgyny. lockerd concludes that “the psychological integration of masculine and feminine”—a form of androgyny—in works by spenser and other Elizabethan writers “intersects with the divine” (p. 185). in the New Arcadia Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane achieves this ideal state of androgyny to an extent. in Renaissance Feminism Jordan argues that Pyrocles’ impersonation of a woman makes him more sensitive and more valiant. sidney thereby presents the feminine dimension of Pyrocles’ masculine identity in positive terms (p. 222). in “Pyrocles’ Warlike Peace,” pp. 235–44, Celovsky similarly highlights the benefits of androgyny. She contends that “Pyrocles has learned that the union of the two sides of his inner self—masculine reason and martial skill and feminine passion and peace-promoting skill—allows him to participate in a reciprocal relationship with Philoclea” (p. 244). in terms of biblical, humanist depictions of marital harmony, the union of man and wife is the fulfillment of this androgynous state. steven Mentz, by contrast, emphasizes the ambiguity of Pyrocles’ crossdressing as Zelmane in “the thigh and the sword: gender, genre, and sexy dressing in sidney’s New Arcadia in Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570–1640, ed. constance c. relihan and goran V. stanivukovic (new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 77–91. other modern critics consider the ambiguity of Pyrocles’ crossdressing by stressing that renaissance readers either despised or praised him for posing as distaff-bearing hercules. cf. Mark rose, “sidney’s Womanish Man”: 354, and John f. danby, Poets on Fortune’s Hill: Studies in Sidney, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher (london: faber & faber, 1952), p. 57. in “the thigh and the sword” Mentz shows that clothing is intimately tied to constructions of gender—masculine, feminine, and androgynous—and by extension to gendered discourse on the emotions in the renaissance. 18 Jon connolly, “the sword and the Pen: Militarism, Masculinity, and Writing in Early Modern England.” Phd dissertation, university of california santa Barbara, 1998, p. 41.

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little military power. The feudal ideal of the chivalric warrior was resurrected briefly during rituals and ceremonies such as the accession day tilts but was becoming remote from everyday life in the sixteenth century.19 in an age when the English nobility and upper ranks were largely pursuing nonviolent professions, sidney illustrates the ineffectiveness of showy or mindless violence but continues to value the use of well-considered force in the New Arcadia. in episodes involving Basilius’ favorite courtier, dametas, sidney mocks the shallowness of theatrical, militaristic displays. shakespeare’s richard ii exhibits fondness for this aspect of chivalry by staging the duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray only to interrupt it. in his romance sidney parodies the showiness of chivalric combat during the “combat of cowards” involving dametas, whose “clashing of his own armour strik[es] miserable fear into him” as he anticipates his encounter with clinias (513). sidney also pokes fun at the vanity of chivalric displays of glory when foolish dametas is “with much mirth and melody received into the camp as victorious, never a page there failing to wait upon this triumph.” he does not deserve such a victory celebration because he has violated the chivalric “law of arms” by attempting to cut the throat of his unarmed, mercy-seeking opponent (515). shakespeare’s richard ii similarly violates the laws of chivalry by ordering the murder of his own uncle, the duke of gloucester—the issue over which Bolingbroke and Mowbray come to blows at the beginning of the play. in the New Arcadia the celebration of dametas’ victory during this “combat of cowards” is shallow and empty (516). this episode is one of many in sidney’s romance that diminish the glory of battle. Sidney undercuts the grandeur of the battlefield and exposes the emptiness and cruelty of the existing military code in other episodes of his romance as well.20 Blind physical force proves to be futile when Basilius and his knights conduct a military siege on the castle of amphialus in an attempt to release Philoclea and Pamela from imprisonment by his conniving, controlling mother cecropia. reacting 19 the accession day tilts provide an example of an annual celebration that resuscitated and preserved the romance of chivalry. this celebration was held each year to commemorate the anniversary of the accession day of Queen Elizabeth i on november 17, 1558. sidney alludes to his own participation in the Accession Day Tilts through the figure of the Shepherd Knight, Philisides, in the iberian jousts in Book ii of the New Arcadia (p. 353). spenser refers to sidney as Philisides in the Ruins of Time as does lodowick Bryskett in an elegiac poem on sidney’s death: frances a. yates, “Elizabethan chivalry: the romance of the accession day tilts”: 5. yates concludes that “though feudalism as a working social or military structure was extinct, its forms were still the vehicle of living emotions” in sixteenth-century England and Europe (p. 22). the jousts focal in the accession day tilts were largely ceremonial, nonviolent, mock combats in which aristocratic courtiers displayed their chivalric prowess before Elizabeth i: see Paul E.J. hammer, “upstaging the Queen: the Earl of Essex, francis Bacon and the accession day celebrations of 1595” in The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. david Bevington and Peter holbrook (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1998), pp. 42–3. on sidney’s legendary appearance as Philisides in the accession day tilts in 1577 see yates, Astrea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (london: routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 88–94 and roy strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (london: thames and hudson, 1977), p. 149. 20 lamb, pp. 106–7.

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violently, Basilius and his entourage fail to give sufficient forethought as to how they will free the two daughters. sidney implicitly praises the prince and his knights for refraining from fighting once they retreat by stating that they “drew back their swords, though hungry of more blood ... knowing that courage without discipline is nearer beastliness than manhood” (525). in this episode chivalric violence without forethought is useless. Pyrocles, by contrast, successfully rescues Philoclea because he makes her liberation “his mind’s labour” (560). his herculean labors, which are mental as well as physical, highlight the androgynous figure’s embodiment of an ideal mind and body. throughout the New Arcadia sidney emphasizes that strength of mind, including the capacity to feel deeply, is as important for a chivalric knight as a powerful body and its war-like adornments. He reflects his culture’s shifting attitudes toward violent, chivalric versions of masculinity by focusing on male figures who remove their militaristic garb and by redefining what constitutes effective armor for a knight who is not necessarily a warrior.21 in sidney’s romance men sometimes cast off their armor as a sign of their emotional vulnerability. amphialus, for instance, throws “away his armour” when mourning his accidental killing of Philoxenus, the son of his foster-father (128). like amphialus, Pyrocles sheds his armor when he disguises himself as Zelmane in an effort to woo Philoclea. he now wears a doublet “of skycolour satin, covered with plates of gold and, as it were, nailed with precious stones” so that he might “seem armed” (130). Pyrocles appears to be wearing the armor of a warrior but is in fact dressed more like a courtier. yet the sword Pyrocles conceals on his thigh indicates that preparation for combat remains a necessity for men in the New Arcadia. ironically, sidney died from a thigh wound in battle because he lacked his full suit of armor. as fulke greville reports in his Life of Sir Philip Sidney, his dear friend honorably “cast off his cuisses” when he encountered a “lightly armed” opponent.22 during his career, sidney wielded a sword as well as a pen for writing romances. The amorous, sometimes tearful figure of Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane in the New Arcadia mirrors the historical fact that the aristocratic warrior in sixteenth-century England was gradually metamorphosing into that of the courtier or gentleman dressed elaborately in silk or satin.23 The figure of Hercules that Pyrocles wears on his clothing exemplifies his successful balancing of the masculine and feminine dimensions of his psyche into an androgynous whole. the mantle he is wearing is fastened with a rich jewel featuring “a hercules made in little form, but set with a distaff in his hand, as he 21 in Manhood and the Duel low argues that by the end of the seventeenth century the terms “knight” and “warrior” meant very different things (p. 5). the fact that lists of professions and psychological types in widely-circulated books such as sir thomas overbury’s Characters (1615) do not present a knight as “a skilled mounted warrior” as ramon llull would have done in his thirteenth century Book of the Order of Chivalry indicates how familiar the diverse reading public was with the demilitarization of the aristocracy: see sydney anglo, “introduction” in Chivalry in the Renaissance, pp. xi–xii. 22 sir fulke greville, Life of Sir Philip Sidney (oxford: clarendon, 1907), p. 127, as quoted by rebhorn, “the crisis of the aristocracy in Julius Caesar”: 76. 23 As Kuchta reminds us, “silk and satin were noble, flannel and fustian were humble”: “the semiotics of Masculinity in renaissance England,” p. 235.

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once was by omphale’s commandment” (131).24 the jewel, which depicts hercules dressed as a woman, is an apt symbol of the androgyny of Pyrocles crossdressed as Zelmane. as nancy lindheim argues in her discussion of the Arcadia, hercules is “the exemplar of ideal mankind.”25 the legend of hercules dressed as a woman under the tyranny of omphale, however, also serves as a reminder of the danger of effeminacy in men. sidney’s inclusion of this effeminizing incident in hercules’ brawny past is suggestive of how literary and cultural notions of manhood were softening when he was writing his romance. toward the end of the sixteenth century English aristocrats and gentlemen were gradually becoming less violent and more civilized. Interestingly, the figure of Hercules on Pyrocles’ jewel is carrying a distaff, a symbol of female authority, rather than a sword.26 like hercules, who was once enslaved by Queen omphale and forced not only to wear women’s clothes but also to carry a distaff, the majority of English noblemen who were previously employed as warriors were now becoming courtiers under the control of a Virgin Queen—an undercurrent source of anxiety for sidney that surfaces in a veiled fashion in the New Arcadia.27 Nevertheless, Sidney features a number of Herculean, militaristic figures whose feminine clothing or tears soften their aggressive dimension to a considerable 24 in “hercules in sidney and spenser,” Notes and Queries 27 (1980): 306–10, Victor skretkowicz traces the classical, medieval, and renaissance literary traditions of representing the legend of hercules and omphale, sometimes referred to as iole. Versions of the tale of hercules dressing as a woman and spinning appear in works by a variety of writers including ovid, Boccaccio, tasso, lydgate, gower, ronsard, sidney, and spenser. for a number of these writers hercules’ relationship with omphale serves as “an example of the debilitating power of passionate love” and emphasizes her “effeminating influence” over him (pp. 307–8). skretkowicz argues that sidney and spenser allude to the “post-classical tradition” of hercules and omphale in ways that provide “ironic contrasts” to such legendary interpretations of these figures (310). In the New Arcadia sidney “no longer” presents Pyrocles as a “slave to passion; rather, by associating Pyrocles with omphale, it is made clear that he has been compelled by a stratagem to appear in a manner incompatible with his heroic nature” (309). sidney emphasizes the vast difference between hercules’ deadly love affair with iole and Pyrocles’ ultimate marriage to Philoclea—a goal he achieves as a result of his temporary, somewhat effeminizing disguise as Zelmane. in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature, p. 157, scodel argues that Pyrocles’ and Musidorus’ “love-inspired heroism” of killing a lion or bear on the verge of attacking Philoclea or Pamela subverts the potential effeminacy of their excessive love for women. in Society, Politics and Culture, p. 389, James similarly remarks on the positive dimension to their love affairs that provide both Pyrocles and Musidorus with a beneficial “education sentimentale.” 25 nancy lindheim, The Structures of Sidney’s Arcadia (toronto: university of toronto Press, 1982), p. 45. in Renaissance Feminism, pp. 229–30, Jordan remarks that Zelmane’s “herculean distaff” is “emblematic of the intellectual faculty of the governor which permits her to rule by telling tales, by weaving benign fictions to trap and contain within the law those who break it.” 26 Oxford English Dictionary, “distaff,” 3.b. 27 in “Jack of Newberry and drake in california: domestic and colonial narratives of English cloth and Manhood,” ELH 59 (1992): 36, Joan Pong linton notes that the Merchant adventurers represented Elizabeth i as omphale, “the female tyrant who undermines the trade of the clothiers.”

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extent with largely positive consequences. Emotional expressiveness remains vital for aristocratic men (militaristic or not) in sidney’s romance. in the New Arcadia Sidney pays considerable attention to noble, male figures who lack armor during a period in history when the decreasing emphasis on militarism for aristocratic men was pronounced. he describes Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane as dressed in a “doublet ... covered with plates of gold and ... nailed with precious stones that in it she might seem armed” (130; my emphasis). in this passage the word “armed” brings to mind the “armor” worn by chivalric warriors in various narratives about their adventures. Nevertheless, the glorified notion of the aristocratic warrior was becoming a figment of the imagination in sixteenth-century, literary and historical texts. throughout the New Arcadia sidney’s multiple uses of the word “armor” accentuate the various ways in which he imagined and transformed this conventional trapping of knighthood. in the tale that Philoclea tells Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane, Princess Erona has “no armour nor weapon but affection.” yet her “affection” rather than “armor” provides her with a surprising degree of agency. despite King tiridates’ objections to his daughter Erona’s relationship with a man of “mean parentage,” she displays her love for amphialus by “weeping, sighing, wringing her hands and tearing her hair” (305–6). Moved by her “affection,” the Princes Pyrocles and Musidorus rescue amphialus from imprisonment and prevent King tiridates from executing him. he subsequently marries Erona. in this instance her weeping and wailing win her a virtuous husband. Sidney’s repetition of the word “armor” in figurative rather than literal terms when describing emotionally expressive Pyrocles in his romance is further suggestive of the increasing remoteness of aristocratic warriors from material fact in the sixteenth century. Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane makes “a womanish habit to be the armour of her boldness” when she steals a kiss from Philoclea (327). sidney’s metaphorical use of the term “armor” in this case associates this chivalric trapping of knighthood with the distant past. the metaphor, “armour of her boldness,” evokes the idea of chain mail but describes an emotion attributed to a man dressed as a woman instead. the physicality of the chivalric world of knightly errands and jousts seems remote in this case because Pyrocles’ “armor” leads the reader to imagine the lover’s “bold” state of mind rather than the material properties of the clothing usually worn by a knight. ironically, this knight is dressed as a lady. though aristocratic men toward the end of the sixteenth century continued to imagine themselves in chivalric terms as illustrated by their (and sidney’s) participation in the accession day tilts, their rhetorical skills and emotional expressiveness were increasingly important aspects of their masculine, professional identities as courtiers or gentlemen rather than warriors. Pyrocles embodies this relatively new, affective version of masculinity so appealing to readers of the popular prose romance, the New Arcadia, by wooing Philoclea through storytelling while displaying his grief over his unrequited love for her to Musidorus and others. sidney, however, continues to respond ambivalently to some men who weep and wail in the New Arcadia. in his romance he conveys such ambivalence by defending but sometimes mocking those who grieve excessively. Pyrocles demonstrates his anguish over his unrequited love for Philoclea to Musidorus by “gushing out abundance of tears, and crossing his arms over his woeful heart, as if his tears had

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been out-flowing blood” (138). Sidney guards against charges of the effeminacy of weeping Pyrocles by describing his response as “manlike tears” (139). Pyrocles’ reference to his “blubbered face” is suggestive of the mild contempt with which he perceives his own “copious tears and sobs” (326).28 in the New Arcadia sidney similarly presents excessive grief as a potential source of comedy. the lowly courtier dametas, who is “not so sensible in anything as in blows,” inspires laughter when he turns up “his blubbered face like a great lout new whipped” in response to the disappearance of Pamela with Musidorus (720). the general acceptance, but occasional contempt or satirical bite with which sidney presents weeping and wailing men is suggestive of his double-edged, ambivalent response to male tears. although moderate expressions of grief tended to be acceptable for all kinds of men in sixteenth century-, fictive works, excessive or ill-timed grieving continued to elicit a degree of anxiety and potential criticism from readers and writers alike. yet aristocratic status grants Pyrocles rather than dametas greater latitude to weep and wail without reproach.29 in the New Arcadia sidney’s ideal man exhibits an aristotelian balance of rational and passionate capacities. those who fail to achieve this proper balance often suffer ridicule as a result. in one of the many tales Pyrocles tells Philoclea, he explicitly condemns the notorious lover, Pamphilus, for weeping excessively out of self-centered cowardice. Nine ladies seek revenge for his infidelity to them by tying him up with “garters” and “prick[ing]” him with “bodkins,” an effeminizing predicament. Pyrocles pronounces in response to Pamphilus’ grieving that “it were a very unmanlike voice so to cry” (334). the literary and cultural threat of a man’s effeminization by excessive grief, sorrow, or pity results from the predominant association of reason with men and emotion with women in the renaissance.30 in a number of cases in his romance sidney questions the validity of such rigid, gender dichotomies by featuring not only overly emotional men, but also rational women guided by the principles of stoicism and rigorism. the trial of Pyrocles and Musidorus at the end of the New Arcadia illustrates that the lack of pity—a sign of the loss of one’s humanity—can lead to tyranny in a man. Philanax appears ridiculous at this trial for his enforcement of “dead pitiless laws” demanding their deaths for their love affairs with Philoclea and Pamela (752).31 28 OED, “blubber,” v. 1–4 .“to blubber” means to cry copiously, noisily, and profusely in an unrestrained fashion. 29 on literary and cultural anxieties in response to excessive grief see Pigman, Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 2, and houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750 (oxford: clarendon, 1998), p. 221. in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature, p. 156, scodel argues that excess passion provides the mark of nobility for Pyrocles and Musidorus but that moderate behavior serves as the ideal for a husband among the lowly pastoral shepherds of the Old Arcadia. 30 see Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, pp. 236–7. 31 Jordan demonstrates that sidney presents equity and pity as the female equivalent to justice during the trial of the princes: Renaissance Humanism, pp. 237 and 239. she argues that sidney’s text is feminist because it “gives a positive value to the feminine aspect of male behavior in private life” (p. 222). in “‘transformed in show’: the rhetoric of transvestism in sidney’s Arcadia,” ELR 28 (1998): 324, robert h.f. carver doubts the degree of Jordan’s

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Pyrocles condemns Philanax’s mercilessness by comparing him to a “crocodile” that sheds “bloody tears” of revenge for the supposed death of Basilius, who is still asleep after drinking the poison that makes him appear lifeless (826). Philanax’s pitiless, legalistic response to Pyrocles’ and Musidorus’ love affairs with Philoclea and Pamela is unwarranted and becomes laughable when the man he thought they had killed awakens from his “deadly sleep” by the end of the romance (846). in the end Philanax’ lack of pity makes him appear monstrous. Both aristotle and st augustine similarly emphasize the dehumanizing effect of failing to express the proper emotion at the right place and time. in contrast to Philanax, Pyrocles and Musidorus exhibit intense passion for Basilius’ daughters that contributes to their humanity. their liberation from prison and double marriages to Philoclea and Pamela (plus their assuming of their princely duties) reaffirms the necessity of yoking manhood and emotional expressiveness in sidney’s New Arcadia. III together, Philoclea and Pamela present a balanced view of the wide gamut of possibilities for how aristocratic ladies ought to express the emotions of joy, sorrow, or grief in a romance. in response to the supposed death of Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane (a ruse orchestrated by cecropia to rid her son, amphialus, of his rival for the love of Philoclea), one sister is emotionally effusive and the other restrained. Philoclea weeps, beats her breast, tears her hair, and grovels on the ground (607). Pamela, by contrast, reacts stoically to the shocking, yet mistaken news of Zelmane’s execution. she remains as tearless as Pyrocles and Musidorus at their trial facing the possibility of their punishment by death: Pamela (like a rock amidst the sea, beaten both with the winds and with the waves, yet itself immovable) did receive this rigorous charge with a constant, though sad, countenance, and with fixed eyes witnessing the moving of her mind, yet neither uttering word nor tear, as disdaining to employ their weakness in so great a grief. such might have been the gesture of niobe hearing the news of her children’s death, ere she was metamorphosed into stone; like one (majesty triumphing over misery) who would rather burst strongly within than be disburdened by bursting in an abject manner. (606–7)

By silently internalizing her grief Pamela responds in a manner similar to the classical figure of Niobe, whose name means “all tears” and who metamorphoses into stone at the news of her children’s death. like niobe in ovid’s Metamorphoses, the stoical figure Hermione in The Winter’s Tale responds to the loss of her children by turning to stone, though figuratively rather than literally (II.i.109). She does so by withdrawing from leontes for sixteen years. sidney’s Pamela and shakespeare’s hermione illustrate that women facing adversity in early modern texts do not necessarily adhere to the commonplace assumption that their sex tends to weep positive representation of sidney’s feminism in the Arcadia. i agree with carver in a number of respects. Within the frame of his prose romance sidney often excludes women from assuming prominent positions in public life or criticizes them for exhibiting the ambition or aggression oftentimes necessary for acquiring such positions.

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and wail (or express themselves in an emotionally demonstrative manner). as we might expect, gender identity does not determine whether literary figures are prone to stoicism or overt displays of affect. Although Sidney imagines a number of admirably strong female figures whose properly directed emotions will contribute to their narrative agency, he tends to curb female opportunities for speaking and writing, as illustrated by the scarcity of women who tell men their joyful or lamentable stories. cultural associations of rhetoric and talkativeness with femininity remain a source of anxiety for men in sidney’s romance.32 he voices his own anxieties about fathering romances in the country in the opening pages of the New Arcadia addressed to his sister, the countess of Pembroke.33 yet her literary expertise as editor will notably contribute to her brother’s future fame. as i mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, sidney retreated from Elizabeth i’s court to his sister’s country estate shortly after he angered the Queen for advising her about whom to marry. in his romance he counters his own fears of effeminization for his “idle work” of writing the Arcadia in the country by presenting the art of rhetoric and storytelling as manly. he does so in part by restricting female characters from participating in public discourse or by criticizing them for doing so. unlike Pyrocles and Musidorus, whose abilities to tell stories serve as critical aspects of their manhood, women often suffer silencing or interruption in the New Arcadia. sidney implicitly presents silence as a virtue for women in the moving tale Kalander tells the princes shortly after they arrive in arcadia. in his ideal portrait of femininity Kalander describes Parenthia’s lips that “were kept close with modest silence” during her marriage ceremony to his son, argalus. Parenthia’s “cheeks blushing” and her subtle “smiling” convey her affection for her husband more dramatically than words (109). in a later episode of sidney’s romance Pamela’s very thought of Musidorus, her secret love, silences her when Philoclea asks why she is crying. Pamela, who draws “the curtain that the candle might not complain of her blushing,” was “ready to speak, but the breath, almost formed into words, was again stopped by her and turned into sighs” (245). in this case overpowering emotion prevents her from speaking. Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane indirectly and unintentionally silences Philoclea when he stops her mouth with a kiss after entreating her to “bestow [her] voice” upon him by telling the story about Queen Erona, who suffered for marrying the lowly son of her nurse. as sidney states, “while she spake, he kissed, and it seemed he fed upon her words” (376). though Pyrocles merely acts on his passion for Philoclea by stopping her mouth with a kiss, he unintentionally prevents her from telling her tale. she protests to Pyrocles, “how will you have your discourse ... without you let my lips alone?” he steals a kiss as well as her words. shortly thereafter, Philoclea is silenced and interrupted once again when “her tale” and Pyrocles’ “delight were interrupted by Miso,” a male rustic (376). 32 see rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds, pp. 143–4. 33 in “‘the chief Knot of all the discourse’”: 105, Bono argues that the maternal subtext in these two works by Sidney and Shakespeare is a reflection of “a masculinist anxiety about the rival reproductive power of women,” an anxiety that similarly appears in leontes in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.

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despite enduring numerous attempts to silence them, Philoclea and Pamela exhibit narrative agency by writing emotionally compelling letters. the sisters refuse to remain silent when Pyrocles and Musidorus are facing their death sentences at the trial and write letters praising the men’s virtues in an attempt to free them. yet blots on the letters from their tears threaten to erase what they have written. the fact that the letters have been “altered, many times torn and written anew” further suggests that the sisters’ texts are subject not only to erasure but also to fragmentation and revision (829). nevertheless, Philanax suppresses these letters out of fear of their emotionally persuasive potential to urge listeners to free the princes. after Philanax receives the letters during the trial and understands “to what they tended by the first words,” he: was so far from publishing them (whereby he feared in Euarchus’ just mind either the princesses might be endangered or the prisoners preserved, of which choice he knew not which to think the worst) that he would not himself read them over, doubting his own heart might be mollified, so bent upon revenge. (829)

fearing the power of their letters to move his own emotions, he refuses to read any further. the sheer number of women who suffer silencing, interruption, or the erasure or censorship of their written texts in the New Arcadia suggest that female narrative agency—and perhaps even the publication of texts by women—posed a genuine threat to an emerging group of aristocratic men pursuing careers in the rhetorical rather than militaristic arts. their masculine identities as elite professionals largely depended on the pen rather than the sword in the sixteenth century. the cultural coding of rhetoric as feminine rather than masculine generated a degree of anxiety among such members of the aristocracy who were in the process of redefining themselves and their occupations as a group. as i mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, sidney features crossdressed Pyrocles in a romance written at a time when definitions of masculinity in relation to femininity were in flux.34 despite sidney’s relative tolerance for, but residual anxiety toward feminine or androgynous men, the authoritative, literate, and politically ambitious women he imagines in his work of fiction pose an even greater threat to the gender status quo in his romance. in the New Arcadia sidney subtly reinforces the conservative gender hierarchy of men above women that was still dominant in sixteenth-century England. Most women in sidney’s romance are relatively passive listeners to whom men tell their stories. the few who do act as narrators suffer the limiting of their literary authority or endure derision. Pamela and Philoclea do not participate fully in the intellectual life Pyrocles and Musidorus enjoy because they are seldom storytellers in their 34 Woodbridge discusses the repeated emphasis on “effeminacy in men” and “mannishness among women” in canonical, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature in Women and the English Renaissance, pp. 152–83. she contends that renaissance literature provides useful “evidence of attitudes” toward men and women in the “real world” (p. 3). in “‘the Part of a Christian Man,’” p. 215, Amussen’s findings about the prevalence of crossdressing among men and women in literary and cultural forms as diverse as ballads and riots supports Woodbridge’s argument about a gender system in transition.

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own right. only two women—Queen helen and dido—tell men stories. although Queen helen exhibits narrative agency by telling her story to Musidorus, she is an unrequited lover whose happiness depends on a man. such dependence diminishes her authority as a storyteller. her asking for Musidorus’ judgement: “now weigh my case, if at least you know what love is” at the end of her tragic tale about amphialus further accentuates her reliance on a male listener (127).35 When Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane reports the story that dido tells him, he mentions parenthetically that dido acts “over-boldly for her weak sex” shortly after she threatens to put out the eyes of Pamphilius for his inconstancy to numerous women (338, 346). Pyrocles thereby implies that her violent imaginings of revenge are unwomanly. in the New Arcadia sidney tends to belittle women for speaking in public or acting aggressively, courses of action that he presents as acceptable for men. in Pyrocles’ story about the King of iberia and his second wife, Queen andromana, the King pays tribute to the memory of his first wife by exhibiting an androgynous, “fatherly and a motherly care towards” Plangus, his only son (312). this King makes a serious mistake, however, by placing “the reins of the government into ... the hand” of Queen andromana, who circulates a rumor that Plangus is a murderer and makes her own son, Palladius, successor to the throne instead (320). sidney presents this Queen as a woman with a meddling tongue who steals her husband’s proper authority as ruler. cecropia is the best (or worst) example of his presentation of authoritative woman as conniving in the New Arcadia. When she fights to advance her son, amphialus, and troubles the arcadians as a result, Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane chastises them for allowing a woman to give “public counsel to men” and exclaims that “a woman may well speak to such men who have forgotten all man-like government” (384). in this case the King of iberia’s dependence on an authoritative woman threatens to undermine the stability of his kingdom. sidney’s depiction of wives and mothers as inappropriately ambitious or conniving is suggestive of the cultural anxieties that surrounded the anomaly of an authoritative, female ruler during the age of Elizabeth i.36 nevertheless, he praises the virtues associated with motherhood and thereby complicates the customary, yet misleading assumption that femininity is necessarily a source of anxiety for men during the renaissance. in the New Arcadia some maternal qualities become virtues for men. Musidorus, for instance, has the “look of a she-tiger when her whelps are stolen away” as he prepares to defend Pamela from villains (654). this chivalric knight appears valiant and manly because he acts on his emotion of “violent rage,” which is as intense as a female animal’s desire to defend and protect its young. sidney similarly compares Pyrocles to a mother who weeps after punishing a child when he tricks Philoclea into thinking that he loves gynecia. he feigns affection for her in order to facilitate the bed-trick involving Basilius, gynecia, and himself that he hopes will expose the infidelity of Philoclea’s parents and free him to marry her. Pyrocles’ series of virtuous actions in response to his strong feelings for Philoclea lead him to gain both a wife and a kingdom by the end of the romance. 35 lamb, pp. 92–3. 36 celovsky, “Martial and Marital: representing Masculinity in ‘the faerie Queene and the ‘new arcadia’” (Phd dissertation, university of toronto, 1997), p. 295.

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as sidney exclaims, “there was never foolish soft-hearted mother (that, forced to beat her child, did weep first for his pains, and doing that she was loth to do, did repent before she began) did find half that motion in her weak mind as Zelmane did” (664). he suggests that Pyrocles feels regret for his and Philoclea’s predicament much more intensely than a “foolish soft-hearted mother” with a “weak mind” ever could. although tears are sometimes represented as a sign of weakness in women in early modern literature and culture, they exhibit Pyrocles’ strength of mind.37 in fact, the chivalric knight’s excessive passion and grief in this instance prove to be ennobling. as Pyrocles in sidney’s New Arcadia illustrates, men of sentiment were gaining prominence in popular literary works during the sixteenth century, a trend that continues throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene spenser similarly addresses the yoking of masculinity and emotional expressiveness. in these parallel romances by sidney and spenser that feature episodes set in pastoral locales, male crossdressing and the removal of armor highlight the blurring of gender boundaries and the decreasing militarism of literary representations of masculinity in this genre. these works by sidney and spenser focus on men of different social ranks and upbringings—princes, chivalric knights, courtiers, shepherds, and other rustics—who express emotion with varying degrees of liberty. sidney’s New Arcadia and Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene suggest that in a number of cases, tears are decorous and humanizing sources of power for upper-, middle-, and some lower-ranking figures in works written during the golden age of Elizabeth i. in Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene men are not only emotionally expressive, but also associated to a surprising extent with private, interior spaces. in sidney’s and spenser’s parallel romances they feature men prone to tears who exhibit numerous qualities associated with the literary figure of the man of feeling, which was prominent in the eighteenth century but emerging in poetry, plays, and prose long beforehand.

37 in The Gendering of Melancholy, p. 18, schiesari argues that “when melancholia is considered undesirable it is stereotypically metaphorized as feminine.”

6.

“to sing like birds i’ th’ cage”: lyrical, Private Expressions of Emotion in Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene spenser fashions a variety of emotionally expressive men from different social ranks and backgrounds, ranging from chivalric knights, courtiers, shepherds, and poets to wild, primitive men. a number become courteous by balancing the masculine and feminine dimensions of themselves. in the legend of courtesy an androgynous psyche is often an ideal state of mind for gentlemen and shepherds alike.38 Men in Book Vi tend not only to express intense affect but also to occupy private spaces—glades, hermitages, or intimate circles of dancing ladies on Mount acidale. Male displays of emotion in the legend of courtesy are often strengthening rather than weakening, and the timely retreats (or intrusions) of men into secluded enclosures are frequently healing or educative instead of emasculating.39 their masculinity remains unthreatened as long as they 38 the topic of androgyny in spenser’s works has generated considerable critical discussion. in The Poem’s Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1988), pp. 28 and 215–81, david lee Miller contends that masculinity reinforces itself through definition against the female other and through assimilation of androgynous or feminine challenges. in Transforming Desire: Erotic Knowledge in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1995), pp. 49–70, silberman focuses on the hermaphrodite as an image of ideal romantic love. in Translations of Power: Narcissism and the Unconscious in Epic History (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1992), pp. 200–3 and 210–11, Elizabeth J. Bellamy also discusses androgyny in relation to Books iii and iV of The Faerie Queene. lockerd examines androgynous identities in terms of Jungian theory throughout The Faerie Queene in The Sacred Marriage. 39 in contrast to george rowe, who argues that men in the legend of courtesy are feminized and weakened by their shedding of tears and desire for privacy, in this chapter i argue that displays of affect are often depicted positively in Book Vi: “Privacy, Vision and gender in spenser’s legend of courtesy,” Modern Language Quarterly 50 (1989): 317. in keeping with my argument Pigman states that spenser is much more sympathetic toward excessive displays of grief, provided they are temporary, than surrey or Jonson: Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, pp. 76–7. a number of critics have intriguingly discussed the topics of affect and privacy in Book Vi. Pivotal studies of privacy and interiority in The Faerie Queene are Krier’s Gazing on Secret Sights, pp. 222–40, in which she discusses the abashment that results from violations of privacy in Book Vi and dorothy stephens’s The Limits of Eroticism in Post-Petrarchan Narrative. stephens points out that the interiority that would become the modern private self was often represented by male poets as a female figure. she discusses “productive exchanges

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continue to act virtuously on their feelings. in Book Vi numerous chivalric knights shed their armor with relatively few repercussions and often excel without it. a wide range of men with honey-toned, lyrical voices retreat or retire into private, interior spaces with relatively few, negative consequences. the interlacing of masculinity with emotional expressiveness and privacy thereby functions as a source of strength and renewal in the legend of courtesy.40 interestingly, spenser represents expressions of emotion and the desire for privacy as vital for both men and women in Book Vi. affairs of the heart sometimes lead women in the legend of courtesy to defy the cultural imperative that they remain “chaste, silent, and obedient.” The defiant who do so are often chastised as a result. While some women who act boldly on their desires suffer the invasion of their privacy, others are attacked for venturing into public spaces unaccompanied by men. ironically, several women in Book Vi resist entrapping cultural norms by weeping and wailing, conventionally feminine modes of expression in the genres of epic and romance that they manipulate for their own ends.41 such expressions of emotion are often empowering for women in the legend of courtesy. a few women, however, suffer to a greater extent than men for their indiscrete passions. Privacy and secrecy are thereby essential for the reputations of these women in particular. although there are a few demonstrative men in Books iii and iV of The Faerie Queene, the most noticeable of which are Marinel, timias, and scudamour, spenser forges a relatively new breed of passionate men whose alliances with women are largely positive in Book Vi.42 Men in the legend of courtesy often exhibit a conspicuous emotive dimension, define themselves in pacific rather than military terms, and occupy relatively private, interior settings. calepine, for one, bears a name (pine) that associates him with lamenting and grieving. Book Vi features several men who are unwilling or ill-suited

... between that which renaissance culture labels masculine and that which it labels feminine” in The Faerie Queene and argues that spenser “positively courts gender confusion,” pp. 13– 14. 40 see lisa celovsky, “Early Modern Masculinities and The Faerie Queene,” ELR 35 (2005): 210–47, for a discussion of artegall, Marinell, timias, and scudamour as men “negotiating transitions from knight errantry to householding” (221). 41 in The Gendering of Melancholia, pp. xi and 209–210, schiesari discusses “the fear of women’s tears, and ultimately of the feminization that tears might bring about in men” in tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata, a principle source for The Faerie Queene. spenser, however, does not belittle men who lament or shed tears, provided that they do so moderately and in a timely fashion, and in this way distinguishes his epic from tasso’s. 42 a. Kent hieatt notes spenser’s negative, though affectionately comic portrayal of scudamour wallowing and blubbering on the ground outside the temple of Venus in “Male Boldness and female rights: What the isle of Venus Proposes,” Spenser Studies 13 (1999): 269. in “Petrarch’s Mourning, spenser’s scudamour, and Britomart’s gift of death,” Comparative Literature Studies 42 (2005): 24–49, Joseph Parry reads scudamour as a Petrarch lover whose mourning in response to his alienation from amoret amounts to a crisis of selfhood and faith. throughout Book iii spenser explores “the problems and the possibilities of mortal love” within a Protestant, humanist context characteristic of augustinianism (47).

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to fight and other warriors who battle overzealously.43 such episodes in the pastoral romance suggest that the prominence of the literary image of the ideal chivalric warrior was fading and becoming part of the antique past in the minds of many Elizabethans. in an age when a large number of elite men were pursuing professions at court rather than on the battlefield, Spenser appropriately focuses on the rhetorical displays of acumen by emotionally expressive, male figures even more than their militaristic feats of chivalric prowess. in the legend of courtesy he depicts private spaces as acceptable for habitation—however temporarily—for a wide variety of men with public obligations, including chivalric knights, courtiers, statesmen, and poets. in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene male figures noted for their lyrical expressions of emotion in secluded spaces, ranging from hidden bowers to mountain tops in pastoral landscapes, provide evidence of the prominence and acceptability of men of feeling in sixteenth-century literary texts. I in the Proem to Book Vi spenser reveals that courtesy originates within a secluded space associated with a feminine body and mind. recalling the womb-like garden of adonis in which seeds develop into progeny, “the sacred noursery” of courtesy contains “heauenly seedes” that are derived “of bounty soueraine” and with “labour nurst” (Vi.iii.7–8). in early modern architecture the nursery within a household was frequently occupied by women and children.44 spenser emphasizes the privacy and femininity associated with this “siluer boure” by stating that it is “hidden ... / from view of men, and wicked worlds disdaine” (3–4). the source of courtesy is relatively invisible because the virtue lies “deepe within the mynd, / and not in outward shows” (v.8–9). Both sexes, however, acquire access to this virtue in Book Vi. spenser’s opening description of the private enclosure that nurtures the seeds of courtesy indicates that this setting fosters the transgression of gender roles and the fashioning of ideal, androgynous identities. he likens the “pure minde” of the “soveraine lady Queene” from which the virtue particularly originates to an “ocean” from which “all riuers spring” and “tribute backe repay as to their King” (6–7; my emphasis).45 in this simile suggestive of Elizabeth i’s androgyny the curious insertion of the word “King” referring to the Queen suggests that she occupies the dominant position traditionally held by a man and has thereby inverted the established power structure.46 as a number of subsequent episodes in the legend of courtesy illustrate, 43 see hutson, The Usurer’s Daughter, pp. 99 and 115. 44 see OED “nursery,” 1.a.: “a room or area of a house set aside for babies and young children, especially for those in the care of a nursemaid; a child’s bedroom or playroom” and 1.b.: “a room reserved for women.” 45 humphrey tonkin adds that the location of the Queen (in antiquity or in early modern times) is ambiguous: Spenser’s Courteous Pastoral: Book Six of The Faerie Queene (oxford: clarendon Press, 1972), p. 24. 46 see leah Marcus, “shakespeare’s comic heroines, Elizabeth i, and the Political uses of androgyny” in Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth rose (syracuse: syracuse university Press, 1986), pp. 135–53.

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retreats into hidden enclaves like this one frequently relieve knights of their prior militaristic, chivalric duties. some of these men featured in Book Vi even refuse to chase public markers of fame and glory. such pastoral romance settings enable them to fashion more androgynous or feminine sensibilities. in the legend of courtesy spenser tends to focus on emotionally expressive, male figures who shed their armor and desire privacy. Like Mars dallying with Venus, calepine has cast off “his warlike armes” within a “couert shade” where he passionately embraces serena. they both assume falsely that they are invulnerable to attack by “enuious eyes” (Vi.iii.20). in contrast to conventional descriptions of chivalric heroes that de-emphasize the body and describe the armor or shield instead, calepine’s removal of his armor subjects his “selfe”—including his psyche—to the gaze of calidore (20.6).47 caught with his cuisses down, calepine is “abasht” when calidore interrupts his private tryst with serena by mistake (21.3).48 such embarrassment and shame suggest that he possesses a vital, affective dimension that is relatively unemphasized in male figures in earlier books of The Faerie Queene.49 in a later episode of Book Vi calidore will temporarily shed his armor when he falls in love with Pastorella and become physically and emotionally vulnerable as a result. calepine’s dalliance with serena in a secluded glade illustrates that knights as well as ladies value privacy. in the legend of courtesy the sheer number of accidental intrusions into private, intimate spaces accentuate the scarcity of secrecy and the dangerousness of indiscretion for men and women in the legend of courtesy. the Blatant Beast that breaks free from calidore’s “yron chaine” and escapes “into the world at liberty againe” particularly emphasizes the vulnerability of both sexes to slander (Vi.xii.38.8). spenser’s men of feeling exhibit an unusually high degree of emotional expressiveness that allies them with women for whom matters of the heart are central in the legend of courtesy. indiscretion, however, poses a greater risk to the reputations of women than men in Book Vi. not surprisingly, they remain more vulnerable to sexual slander than men in a world in which privacy and secrecy are increasingly scarce. serena violates the conduct-book stricture advising women to remain discrete and cautious in their love affairs by boldly expressing her affection for calepine.50 in the “couert shade” where calepine seeks “solace with his lady 47 clare Kinney argues that in literary representations of chivalric heroes the body is usually de-emphasized and the armor or shield is described instead: “the (dis) Embodied hero and the signs of Manhood in sir gawain and the green Knight” in Medieval Masculinities, pp. 49–51. 48 cf. Krier, Gazing on Secret Sights, p. 157. 49 in Book Vi calidore empathizes with Priscilla, who grieves for tristram after he is slain. calidore views the pathetic couple “with heavie eyne, from teares vnearth refrayning” (ii.41.7). as rowe points out in “Privacy, Vision and gender in the legend of coutesy,” men in Book Vi “pity and weep to a degree certainly not present or desirable in Book 5”: 316. in contrast to Mark archer, who reads calepine’s affectiveness negatively in “the Meaning of ‘grace’ and ‘courtesy’: Book Vi of the faerie Queene,” SEL 27 (1987): 27, i focus on the ways in which displays of emotion by men are healing or educative. 50 Vives, for instance, instructs a woman not to show affection for the man she is going to marry: “for if she love him afore she have him, what shall he think but that she will as

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in delight,” serena “was full faire to see” (Vi.iii.20.3–4, 8). the poet mutes the transgressiveness of his voyeurism by noting that she was “courteous withall, becomming her degree” (20.9). in an early modern text such amorous boldness by a lady jeopardizes her reputation. spenser’s subsequent description of the Blatant Beast’s attack on Serena while she is gathering flowers reveals that she pays a greater penalty for the public exposure of their private affair than calepine. Meanwhile, he and calidore exchange chivalric narratives about their adventures. gender roles for women are relatively restrictive not only in sidney’s New Arcadia but also in Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene. flower-gathering serena’s wander “lust,” a phrase with sexual resonances, points to the damaging of her chaste reputation as a result of the exposure of her private tryst with calepine. she wanders away from Calidore and Calepine while collecting flowers “as liking led, / Her wauering lust after her wandring sight ... / Without suspect of ill or daungers hidden dred” (Vi.iii.23.6–9). the Blatant Beast subsequently catches her “loosely wandring here and there” (24.3). like the word “lust,” “loosely” similarly casts doubt on serena’s chastity. such erotic nuances in spenser’s representation of serena provide clues about how early modern writers and readers of romances responded to a lady’s “indiscrete” dallying with a knight. the Blatant Beast’s attack upon serena once she ventures beyond the purview of calepine and calidore highlights her vulnerability to slander, even in a private glade.51 although the two knights display their manhood through storytelling and enjoy an increase in rhetorical as well as martial agency as a result, she becomes the victim of the violence displaced by their heroic masculinity.52 in addition to enduring public exposure and shame, serena falls prey to the power of language to enforce gender propriety as part of social constraint. the ovidian myth of Proserpina, who is similarly abducted by dis when she gathers a bouquet of flowers, provides the script for the Blatant Beast’s attack upon her.53 spenser focuses on serena’s vulnerability to the literary and cultural fashioning of a lady’s prudent or emotionally-restrained behavior in his adaptation of the Proserpina myth in ovid’s Metamorphoses. in contrast to innocent Proserpina, who fills “her basket and her bosom ... with girlish eagerness,” Spenser depicts Serena as an unwary, careless woman partly to blame for the Blatant Beast’s attack.54 in this way the poet reflects his audience’s prudish reaction to her affair with Calepine. The lightly love another as she hath done him:” “the instruction of a christian Woman,” trans. richard hyde, in Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, ed. foster Watson (london: Edward arnold, 1912), p. 114. 51 sheila cavanagh proposes that knights in spenser’s epic secure homosocial bonds through narratives about their conquests and rescues of ladies, who remain prey to rumors about their virtue and infrequently exhibit agency: Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires: Female Sexuality in the Faerie Queene (Bloomington: indiana university Press, 1994), pp. 76, 101, and 108. 52 Cf. Hutson’s discussion of the violence displaced from militaristic conflicts between men into vengeance on women in the prose fiction of the 1560s and 1570s in The Usurer’s Daughter, p. 112. 53 Krier notes this similarity between serena and Proserpina in Gazing on Secret Sights, pp. 122–3. 54 Metamorphoses, vol. 1, Books I–VIII, trans. Miller, V.393, p. 265.

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Beast and his bite implicitly reprimand serena for her indiscrete love affair with calepine. the extremity of the attack suggests that their dalliance is tantamount to a punishable act of rebellion against social mores. By deviating from the cultural expectations of a “lady,” serena crosses the bounds of her “proper” domain. she does so literally in this episode by leaving the “couert shade,” which is seemingly protected by calepine and calidore (iii.20.3). unlike men in the legend of courtesy, who sometimes wander carelessly into private spaces, those women who dare to enter public territory alone suffer humiliation and rebuke as a result. above all, serena’s abduction by the Blatant Beast points to the limited powers that early modern women possessed to modify the restrictive social expectation of chastity for married and unmarried women. calepine, by contrast, breaks away from militaristic expectations placed on chivalric knights in a similarly wild, unpredictable landscape. on foot he successfully pursues a bear, who is carrying an infant in his mouth, because of his freedom from his “heauy armes” (iv.19.1).55 in a curious simile comparing calepine to a female hawk that feels “her selfe freed / from bels and iesses,” the poet hints that the shedding of clothing, such as the knight’s armor, can lead to the transformation of gender categories (19.7–8).56 likewise, the gradual shift in the English aristocracy from warriors to courtiers or gentlemen frequently resulted in the exchanging of armor for silk and the redefining of prior concepts of masculinity in more androgynous, less militaristic terms. the simile identifying calepine with the liberated, she-bird accentuates his feminine sensibility beneath his masculine armor. in this episode calepine embodies spenser’s vision of the ideal, androgynous gentleman. calepine exhibits behavior typically masculine by throwing a rock down the bear’s throat in a herculean fashion and then typically feminine by wiping away tears from the child’s “soft eyes” (23.4) and struggling to appease his “crying for food” (25.8). in Book Vi spenser’s courteous knights tend to exhibit a balance of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics. a full, androgynous psyche results in success for a number of heroes in the legend of courtesy. Militarism and aggressiveness as well as the bearing and nurturing of children remain key characteristics for chivalric knights in Book Vi. calepine’s shedding of his “warlike armes” in the “couert shade” with serena is potentially dangerous because it contributes to their vulnerability to unintentional intrusion by calidore (iii.20.3, 5). calidore, who is armed and “more light of foote and swift in chace,” is better prepared than calepine to pursue the Blatant Beast that attacks serena (iii.25.2, 4). although calepine’s lack of armor facilitates his quest to save the mysterious child from the bear, it indirectly contributes to serena’s vulnerability to the Blatant Beast. in Book Vi men sometimes need their armor. in a dream-like fashion spenser’s intriguing description of the infant that unarmed calepine rescues from the bear 55 spenser borrows the motif of calepine’s shedding his armor from hector’s stripping away of his in homer’s Illiad. i am grateful to carol Kaske, Professor Emerita of English at cornell university, for mentioning this connection to me at a meeting of the spenser society at the international congress on Medieval studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2003. 56 cf. Butler’s discussion of gender, and even one’s biological sex as performative, cultural constructions in Bodies That Matter, pp. 1–23.

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presents the possibility that he and serena have produced an illegitimate offspring, a possible cause of her damaged reputation signified by the slanderous Blatant Beast’s assault on her. the severity of the punishment serena endures is proportionate to the degree of literary and cultural anxiety or ambivalence her sexuality evokes. intriguing parallels between spenser’s descriptions of serena after the Blatant Beast strikes and the mysterious infant calepine discovers point to the interlacing of these two episodes, the second of which emphasizes the importance of men and women raising civilized children in the legend of courtesy. after the Blatant Beast releases Serena, Calidore finds her “all in gore bloud there tumbled on the ground, / hauing both sides through grypt with griesly wound” (iii.27.4–5). in the latter episode calepine encounters a male bear carrying a baby “betwixt his bloodie iawes, besprinckled all with gore” (iv.17.8–9).57 Both these passages contain the terms “blood,” “bloodie,” and “gore” and versions of the word “bear.” spenser, for instance, repeats the verb “to bear” in phrases describing the Blatant Beast’s abduction of serena: “in his wide great mouth away her bare” as well as “into the wood was bearing her apace / for to have spoyled her” (iii.24.4, 25.2; my emphasis). these puns on “bearing” metamorphose into an actual bear in the episode involving Calepine and Matilde. Tellingly, Calepine finds the mysterious child a foster family with Matilde and sir Bruin, another reference to a bear. as illustrated by the “sacred noursery” in which the virtue of courtesy originates, childbearing and the nurturing and education of the next generation are central concerns for both knights and ladies in Book Vi.58 after calepine discovers the bear-baby, Matilde’s weeping and wailing provide her with a degree of agency by alerting calepine to her and sir Bruin’s predicament of lacking an heir. her lament indirectly results in their adoption of this bearbaby. the end result of her lament suggests that emotional expressiveness can be empowering for women in the legend of courtesy. Matilde reveals that without an heir Sir Bruin is in jeopardy of losing his lands to Cormorant, an allegorical figure representing the greedy jaws of time.59 her “lamenting loudly” not only eases her “sorrowes of the mynd” but also produces a viable solution to her childlessness, for which Bruin holds her responsible, even though he is “growing farre in yeares” (26.7, 28.7). Matilde exhibits covert power over sir Bruin by secretly presenting him with an adopted son that he assumes is his biological child. spenser asserts that from such foundlings “More braue and noble knights haue raysed beene” than from those who “haue bene dandled in the lap” (36.3; my emphasis). 57 i am indebted to caroline McManus for her permission to cite “childbirth, Bears, and the negotiation of shame in The Faerie Queene Book 6 and The Winter’s Tale,” a paper in which she argues that bears represent maternal nurture. her paper was submitted as part of the 1995 shakespeare association of america seminar on “spenser and shakespeare: gender and sexualities” led by Katharine Eggert in chicago. McManus expands on her discussion of the significance of bears in both works in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and the Reading of Women (newark: university of delaware Press, 2002), pp. 201–7. 58 lockerd, The Sacred Marriage, p. 152. 59 hamilton, ed., The Faerie Queene, p. 652. in shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost the King of Navarre similarly identifies this Crow of the Sea, a traditional symbol of greed, with “cormorant devouring time” (i.i.4).

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in this episode nobility is a learned virtue rather than an innate trait associated with the aristocracy. spenser thereby emphasizes the necessity of nurturing and educating the next generation of men and women in the ways of courtesy. Matilde agrees to adopt the child after listening to calepine’s “sensefull speach”—a phrase that aptly describes the intellectual and affective dimensions of numerous men of feeling in Book Vi (iv.37.1).60 he proposes that she adopt the child “whose linage [is] vnknowne” and emphasizes the adaptability of the child to training in fields as various as “cheualry” or “Philosophy” (35.8–9, 36.2). though the sources of courtesy and gentleness—whether nature or nurture—remain ambiguous throughout Book Vi, here spenser emphasizes that young children as well as men and women can adopt and develop such virtues through education. Jonson agrees with this egalitarian idea in Timber, a work in which he repeatedly uses the word “gentle” in terms of moral virtues, wit, and labor instead of inherited social rank. Both literary works reflect the larger cultural movement toward perceiving aristocratic men as civilized courtiers and gentlemen rather than warriors defined by blood relations and military obligations to the crown.61 II like Matilde, the salvage Man’s delivery of demonstrative laments in Book Vi counters the early modern misperception that women are by nature the more emotive sex.62 his unrestrained behavior suggests that civilizing factors of decorum play a large role in moderating how men express the emotions of joy, sorrow, or grief. unable to speak English, the salvage Man conveys his good intentions and pity for calepine and serena through gestures and outcries after sir turpine rudely refuses them lodging for the night. ironically, this uncivilized, immoderately emotional figure fights for their civil liberties. He voices his sympathy for Calepine’s injuries by making “great mone” (iv.11–12) and welcomes calepine and serena into his humble abode “by signes, by lookes, and all his other gests” (14). after he and 60 likewise, Melibee, who adopts the foundling Pastorella, moves calidore with his “sensefull words” (ix.26.3). 61 Although knights were traditionally defined by their military duties to a ruler, annual income from their estates became the factor that determined their aristocratic status in the later half of the sixteenth- through the seventeenth century: see sir thomas smith, The Commonwealth of England (london: Will stansby for i. smethwicke, 1635), p. 43 and stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641, p. 71. The significant decrease in the number of older families that owned a great amount of land resulted in an unprecedented degree of social mobility: stone pp. 156–64 and low, Manhood and the Duel, p. 172. cf. halpern’s discussion of oswald’s “aggressive upward mobility and desperate desire for aristocratic legitimation” that “invoke the class wishes of a wide range of parvenus” in King Lear in The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, p. 246. 62 as i discussed earlier, galen’s theory of the humoral body in which women are imagined as colder and moister than men led some early modern writers to assume that they are more prone to tears and less able to control their emotions by nature. in The Secret Miracles of Nature (1658) lemnius’ assertion that a woman cannot “rule her passions, or bridle her disturbed affections” is a case in point (pp. 273–4).

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serena search for calepine in vain once he pursues the bear-baby, he “lament[s]” by making “exceeding mone,” “speaking signes,” and “beating his hard head vpon a stone” (v.4.2–6). in earlier books of The Faerie Queene spenser tends to reserve such passionate and even violent displays of grief for women with the noticeable exception of scudamour outside the house of Busirane.63 the salvage Man’s sign language, which approximates a pantomime, anticipates more sophisticated forms of affective expression like dance and music that become focal during the spectacle atop Mount acidale. his non-verbal displays of feeling in response to sir turpine’s discourteous refusal to house calepine and serena for the night indirectly highlight the limitations of the English language—both spoken and written—for expressing extreme kinds of emotion. Presumably, any other linguistic form of communication is limited in this respect as well. silence sometimes conveys intense feeling more effectively than words. When words fail to signify, alternative means of communication with heightened visual and aural dimensions—such as tears, sighs, and gestures—provide glimpses of the mysterious, inward terrain of the psyche.64 like the salvage Man, arthur and timias similarly express intense feeling through non-verbal gestures and tears. after arthur rescues his squire in the nick of time from the cruel trio of despetto, decetto, and defetto, he addresses him as his “lifes desire” and “sigh[s] deepe” during their intimate embrace. lacking words to express his prior suffering, timias plays the woman’s part by remaining silent and shedding “few soft teares from tender eyne.” instead of articulating his near despair in a complaint, timias “his deare affect with silence did restraine, / and shut vp all his plaint in priuy paine” (Vi.v.23–4; my emphasis). subjecting such intense emotion to public scrutiny—even the readership of spenser’s romance—would violate the fragile boundary protecting the interior region of his psyche. the squire’s tears, however, are visually imagined icons that provide his ineffable pain escape. although spenser’s representations of emotionally expressive men emerge out of a rich, classical, medieval, and Renaissance heritage, they exhibit a distinctive flavor nonetheless. like timias, his literary predecessor odysseus weeps abundantly by 63 see, for example, abessa’s and corceca’s reaction to Kirkrapine’s death (i.3.22). scudamour, who beats his head and breast on the ground out of frustration over his inability to rescue amoret, provides an example of a man who grieves openly and violently in Book iii. interestingly, daniel albright uses terms similar to spenser’s depiction of the salvage Man’s language in Book Vi when describing the lyric form in general as “a wordless language of cries” and as “a primal tongue where words mean more intensely than is a possibility today.” see Lyricality in English Literature (lincoln: university of nebraska Press, 1985), pp. 254 and 257. 64 the salvage Man’s visual and aural means of self-expression anticipate francis Bacon’s argument in The Advancement of Learning that “the motions and gestures of the countenance and parts ... disclose” the “state of mind.” Quoting the proverb, “‘as the tongue speaketh to the ear so the gesture speaketh to the eye,’” Bacon concludes that the power of the body to communicate is well-known “to a number of cunning and astute persons; whose eyes dwell upon the faces and gestures of men”: The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James spedding, robert leslie Ellis, and douglas denon heath, vol. 9 (Boston: taggard and thompson, 1860– 64), p. 19. cf. francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body: Essays in Subjection (london: Methuen, 1984), pp. 36–7.

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himself on the island of calypso, and aeneas grieves profusely when he meets the silent, “fierce-eyed” Dido in the Underworld.65 not surprisingly, the great warrior ajax sheds no tears when he silently encounters his enemy ulysses in hell. in epics such as homer’s Illiad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid men tend to weep alone or with women but less commonly with one another. spenser’s epic romance The Faerie Queene, which features weeping timias and arthur in this episode of Book Vi, is exceptional in this respect. in the legend of courtesy emotional expressions of sympathy and grief function as vital sources of power for even the most aggressive warriors. Both calepine and the salvage Man act publically on their fellow sympathy for others. Because of his outrage and pity calepine is victorious over the bear carrying the infant in its mouth. similarly, the salvage Man’s distress over calepine’s unintentional abandonment of serena, which results from him chasing the bear instead of protecting her, compels him to act virtuously on the lady’s behalf. in response to serena’s distress, the salvage Man: ... shewed semblant of exceeding mone, By speaking signes, as he them best could frame; now wringing both his wretched hands in one, now beating his hard head vpon a stone, that ruth it was to see him so lament. (V.4.2–6)

the salvage Man not only laments serena’s plight by wringing his hands and beating his head on a stone but also dons calepine’s armor in an attempt to help her find him (8.4–7). Spenser’s resulting juxtaposition of the characteristics of “savage” and “civilized” in the image of the well-suited salvage Man suggests that these seemingly opposing traits are often closely allied.66 This figure exhibits a striking balance of unrestrained aggression with fellow sympathy. although many warriors in earlier books of The Faerie Queene act on strong emotions, those in Book Vi openly express their erotic or more generally affective motives for battle. in the legend of courtesy the number and variety of men of feeling—ranging from chivalric knights to courtiers, shepherds, and poets—are striking. throughout Book Vi spenser presents androgyny as ideal for gentlemen and rustics alike. sir turpine, however, fails to exhibit a balance of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics by acting first in too little-womanly a manner when he refuses sympathy and fellow feeling to calepine and serena after they ask for lodging and then as less than a man by running from battle with arthur. When the Porter at the entrance to his house exclaims that turpine is “one of mickle might, / and manhood rare” (iii.40.2–3), calepine replies that he should then welcome him 65 the editors of the Variorum, pp. 207–8, cite these parallel episodes involving silence from the Odyssey 11.544 ff and the Aeneid 6. 469 ff. i am quoting here from Virgil, vol. 1, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, trans. h. rushton fairclough, Vi.469. 66 William M. hamlin argues that the exploration of america lent new urgency to the cultural debate about civility and savagery: The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare: Renaissance Ethnography and Literary Reflection (new york: st Martin’s Press, 1995), p. xx.

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and serena into his house “for seldome yet did liuing creature see, / that curtesie and manhood euer disagree” (8–9). during arthur’s battle with turpine, he denounces the coward’s lack of “manly heart” when he retreats into Blandina’s chamber and “cr[ies] in vaine to her” for help, only to have her hide him beneath “her garment” (vi.30–33). Turpine’s refusal to fight and “crying” shame him. Although Turpine does not literally wear a skirt in this episode, his hiding beneath the one worn by his wife pokes fun at his cowardice. turpine’s cowardly act also parodies calepine’s similar retreat from battle when he hides behind serena in a previous episode: But his best succour and refuge was still Behinde his ladies backe, who to him cryde, and called oft with prayers loud and shrill, as euer he to lady was affyde, to spare her Knight, and rest with reason pacifyde. (iii.49.5–9)

spenser’s comic treatment of both turpine’s and calepine’s cowardliness places limitations on the acceptability of men shying away from battle in a chivalric romance. despite the fact that the poet features numerous men without their armor in Book VI, their willingness to fight when necessary remains a key part of their manhood in a civilization devoted to the fostering and defense of courtesy. although turpine’s cowardliness casts doubt on his manhood, the salvage Man’s battle with turpine’s entourage illustrates that the vigorous or excessive bearing of arms does not necessarily make the man either. his extreme aggression rather than cowardliness during battle is reprehensible and befits a wild animal (or cartoon-like automaton) rather than a chivalric knight. an epic simile comparing him to “a fell lion” that “rudely rent” his prey “all to peeces” emphasizes that his excessively bloody acts dehumanize him as well as his victims (22.6). though a coward, Turpine is justified when he exclaims that the Salvage Man has “slain [his] men” in an “vnmanly maner” (25.2). anticipating the hermit in Book Vi, who relinquishes his “armes” and “warlike spoyle” when it is time for him to retire, arthur immediately urges the salvage Man to lay “downe his weapons” when he discovers him “enuironed about / With slaughtred bodies, which his hand had slain” (v.37-9). Arthur realizes that a courteous warrior must not only fight for justice but also know when to stop. a sense of timing with respect to violent action is key for a courteous gentleman in Book Vi. neither militarism in men, nor emotional expressiveness in women is necessarily a defining aspect of their gender identities. As we know, the perception of one sex as more violent or emotional than the other is relatively arbitrary and depends largely on how a culture defines masculinity and femininity during particular moments in history. as i mentioned in the prior chapter, Elizabeth i’s employing aristocratic men as well-dressed courtiers rather than blood-stained warriors during a period of relative peace rather than war contributed to the fluidity of gender categories toward the end of the sixteenth century. in Book Vi spenser presents a number of male and female figures who similarly challenge and subvert conventional forms of behavior and gender categories. sir turpine’s wife Blandina manipulates the sixteenth-century literary and cultural perception that women tend to be the more emotive sex for her

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own (and her husband’s) advantage.67 Blandina releases turpine from arthur’s grasp through her seductive, yet empty displays of affect. as Blandina’s name suggests, her words are “allur[ing]” and her gestures “flatter[ing]” and “smooth” (42.4–6).68 she persuades arthur to spare turpine’s life with utterances that are “but wynd” and tears that are “but water” (42.9). in contrast to Matilde and the salvage Man, whose laments express genuine grief or frustration, Blandina utters sweet nothings. her affective utterances are false indicators of her private life. she convinces arthur to overlook turpine’s inexcusable acts of violence against calepine and serena by “pacify[ing]” the gullible knight with “her pleasing tongue” (43.5). her disingenuous signs of grief prey on arthur’s emotions and lure the unsuspecting victim into her “trap” (42.8). in this way Blandina’s crocodile tears serve as a powerful, manipulative tool. III in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene spenser responds ambivalently (or in a doubleedged fashion) to emotionally expressive men with public obligations who desire privacy. he depicts private enclosures like Blandina’s chamber as either perilous or restorative for chivalric knights. Even glades like the “covert shade” in which Calidore first discovers Serena and Calepine embracing (without his armor) prove to be dangerous for those who are careless or unwary.69 But the potentially healing dimension of such recesses also illustrates the legitimacy of privacy for a variety of men as well as women in Book Vi. calepine, for example, is “recured well, and made ... whole againe” as a result of his short stay with the salvage Man, who inhabits a “hollow glade” in a part of the forest that is rarely visited (13.5). likewise, the Hermit teaches Timias and Serena the benefits of withdrawing into a private space representative of the interior region of the mind and thereby heals the psychic wounds that the slanderous Blatant Beast inflicts on them.70 at the hermitage he advises timias to “auoide the occasion of the ill” by restraining his sensual desires (vi.14.2). the hermit also teaches timias and serena that secrecy is one of the few ways for figures in the public eye to avoid slander. Yet a secret marriage did not prevent sir Walter raleigh and the Queen’s maid of honor, Elizabeth throckmorton, from enduring royal disfavor. relevant to Book Vi of spenser’s Faerie Queene, raleigh refers to this particular lady as serena in the poem “now serena bee not coy.”

67 Early modern women writers similarly subvert the cultural expectation that they are prone to emotional hysteria by de-emphasizing tears in their own accounts of grief and mourning: Telling Tears in the English Renaissance, p. 3. Margo swiss and david a. Kent argue that analyses of how early modern women transform the conventions of elegy support lange’s point: Speaking Grief in English Literary Culture, pp. 16–17. 68 John d. Bernard, “Blandina, turpine” in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. a.c. hamilton et al. toronto: university of toronto Press, 1990, p. 96. 69 cf. rowe, p. 315. 70 cf. Krier, p. 121.

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like spenser, his literary contemporaries responded somewhat ambivalently to the association of masculinity with privacy. in shakespeare’s Richard II a hermitage is desirable, but deadly for an emotionally expressive King obligated to fulfill his god-given role within public life. he laments at flint castle, “i’ll give my jewels for a set of beads; / My gorgeous palace for a hermitage” (iii.iii.147–8). in the Legend of Courtesy, by contrast, Spenser features a number of male figures who fulfill their public obligations despite their well-timed, moderate desire for privacy. nevertheless, men and women in Book Vi who wander haphazardly into private enclosures risk intruding upon others at the wrong time. as calidore’s extended stay with Melibee, Pastorella, and the other shepherds illustrates, those who remain there for too long can subject others to violent attacks by those such as the brigands. the hermit, whose retirement from his public duties as chivalric knight is timely, teaches timias and serena how to cultivate discretion in a society in which those occupying privates spaces are prone to such intrusions. the hermit’s dialogue with the two, weary travelers attests to spenser’s belief in the value of privacy or secrecy for men as well as women. This figure abides in a private, enclosed space after his “timely” retirement (vi.4.6). like the house of holiness in Book i, his hermitage is spiritually and mentally purifying. spenser emphasizes the inward, enclosed dimension of the hermit’s dwelling in describing it: small was his house, and like a little cage for his owne turne, yet inly neat and clene, Deckt with greene boughes, and flowers gay beseene. (v.38.3–5; my emphasis)

in an allegorical poem this “cage” is a physical manifestation of the hermit’s pure body and mind. on a symbolic level the prison cells in which Marlowe’s Edward ii and shakespeare’s richard ii contemplate their past mistakes and future doom as rulers represent their physical and mental isolation from others. in all three cases the hermit’s “cage” and the King’s cells provide architectural embodiments of the interior, psychic spaces of their inhabitants. although spenser’s hermit abides in a small house “like a little cage” that could be mistaken for a prison, the flowers adorning it suggest instead that it is actually a garden-like chamber depicting the mind. this private space becomes manly because it is intellectualized. in contrast to contemplation in Book i, who grows “agrieued sore” when redcrosse and his guide Mercy interrupt his “heauenly thoughts” at a “litle hermitage” (i.x.46, 49), the hermit is more hospitable and entertains the travelers “with curt’sie” and “with entire affection and appearaunce plaine” (Vi.v.36, 38). the communal virtue of courtesy he represents requires emotional engagement with others and a sense of responsibility for their welfare. in contrast to Blandina, whose tears are deceptive, the hermit expresses his “affection” for the travelers in a genuine fashion. timias’s and serena’s timely exit from the hermit’s “little chappell” distinguishes them from the wise and kindly old man by emphasizing that it is too early in their lives for them to withdraw from the public sphere (35.1). Good timing is key for male figures who retire in Spenser and Shakespeare. spenser’s hermit, who retreats to the outskirts of society because he is “weary” of

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“worlds contentious toyle” (v.37.5–6), serves as an analogue for shakespeare’s King Lear, who suffered for his premature retirement from his regal duties. shakespeare borrowed the plot of Gloucester’s conflict with Edmund and Edgar from Sidney’s New Arcadia, which features a number of emotionally expressive men, as i discussed in the prior chapter.71 throughout shakespeare’s play lear sheds an abundance of tears and endures seemingly endless grief inflicted on him by Goneril and Regan. in a passage from the play that recollects spenser’s hermit, who lives alone “like carelesse bird in cage” (vi.4.9), lear entreats faithful cordelia, “come let’s away to prison: / We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage” (V.iii.8–9; my emphasis).72 the dimension of birdsong implicit in the spenserian line becomes explicit in the shakespearean passage. Both spenser’s hermit and shakespeare’s lear are “mocking birds” who critique courtly mores within the privacy of enclosed spaces. the hermit eschews the insincerity of courtiers by refusing to participate in the “forged showes” of “courting fooles, that curtesies would faine” (Vi.v.36, 38) and by removing himself from the court after a “timely” retirement from his public duties as a knight (vi.4). lear comparably imagines that while he and cordelia are in prison they will “laugh / At guilded butterflies,” “hear poor rogues / Talk of court news,” and speculate on “who’s in, who’s out” (V.iii.13–15). in retirement lear comments in particular on the triviality and ephemerality of favor at court. famous for his howling on the heath, he ultimately goes mad as a result of his untimely relinquishing of his public position as King. through their lyrical words or deeds these “caged birds” in spenser and shakespeare mock the restrictiveness of life at court and physically or imaginatively escape from it. in contrast to the hermit, who is relatively content as a recluse, lear suffers betrayal by goneril, regan, and their husbands, albany and cornwall, once he relinquishes his crown. the end results of the hermit’s and lear’s retirements are attributable to the fact that they are timely or untimely. retiring from the court at the right time, the hermit suffers no negative consequences for disavowing “the name of knighthood” as signified by his “hanging vp his armes and warlike spoyle” or for absolving himself of “this worlds incombraunce” (37.7–9). lear, by contrast, retires prematurely and endures begrudgingly the reduction of the number of his knights from 100 to 25 (ii.iv.248). his early retirement contributes to his eventual madness and death. in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene, however, spenser focuses on a number of chivalric knights whose quests are successful despite their laying down of their arms and armor. in this way he (perhaps more than shakespeare in this case) glances 71 in “‘the chief Knot of all the discourse’”: 105, Bono notes the well-known parallel between shakespeare’s gloucester plot in King Lear and the blinding and deposition of the King of Paphlagonia by his bastard son Plexirtus and his rescue by his legitimate son leonatus in sidney’s Arcadia. 72 in “‘come, let’s away to Prison’: fortune and freedom in The Faerie Queene, Book Vi,” The Journal of Narrative Technique 2 (1972): 133–4, anderson remarks on the significance of this intertextual connection between Spenser and Shakespeare. In “The conspiracy of realism: impasse and Vision in King Lear,” Studies in Philology 84 (1987): 13 and 20, she further demonstrates that the Hermit’s dwelling “distinctly and significantly informs the content and imagery of lear’s lyric speech to cordelia.”

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at the sixteenth-century trend for aristocratic men to redefine themselves in other than feudal, militaristic terms. calidore, a chivalric knight in pursuit of the Blatant Beast, makes the mistake of withdrawing from the public eye at court for an extended period of time. for a knight on a quest intended to benefit the common good his desire for this degree of privacy and seclusion is excessive. the literary landscape that calidore discovers when chasing the Beast from the court to the “priuate farmes” and “open fields” where Melibee and the other shepherds are tending their flocks fosters unworldliness amongst its inhabitants, a peril of their relatively isolated existence in a pastoral setting right out of an old romance (ix.3–4). When calidore inquires about the Beast, the shepherds reply that they have seen “no such beast ... / nor any wicked feend, that mote offend / Their happie flockes nor daunger to them draw” (5–6). The poet further demonstrates their innocence and naiveté about outsiders by interjecting, “(as none they kend)” (6.4). outside threats like the Blatant Beast and the brigands are unimaginable for them. the ease with which calidore, followed by the brigands and merchants, enter this idyllic, pastoral setting indicates that the boundary of this secluded landscape is fragile and merely provides them with an illusory sense of security (ix.3–4). calidore’s encroachment on this relatively private space distantly recalls the cannibals’ raids on “their neighbours borders” (viii.35.4) and anticipates the brigands’ invasion of “their neighbours, which did nigh them border” (x.39.6–7). he inadvertently brings the Blatant Beast into their midst. this episode illustrates that privacy and secrecy are rare and fleeting in the Legend of Courtesy. like redcrosse on the Mount of contemplation, calidore is tempted to forgo his quest for the Blatant Beast and remain in the pastoral landscape for a dangerously long period of time. the seemingly idyllic setting becomes imprisoning, or binding for calidore when he spies Pastorella and is caught in the “subtile bands” of cupid. instead of continuing his active pursuit of the slanderous Blatant Beast, he remains “still” while gazing on the shepherdess and conversing with Melibee (ix.11–12). listening to the shepherd’s monologue, he assumes incorrectly that the tranquil setting is free “from all the tempests of these worldly seas” and untouched by time (19.3–4). this false impression leads him to underestimate the importance of timing for a courteous gentleman. in this way calidore endangers his future as a chivalric knight committed to performing valiant deeds that often require a sword and shield rather than a sheep-hook or distaff, the symbol of female authority. in Book Vi representations of masculinity are intertwined not only with emotional expressiveness but also with privacy and familial responsibilities, for better and for worse. recalling calepine, who cares for the baby that the bear drops from its mouth until Matilde relieves him “of his young change” (iv.38.1–2), Melibee finds Pastorella “in th’open fields an Infant left alone ... and nourse[s her] well / As his owne childe” (ix.14.6–8). in the legend of courtesy men tend to play a relatively active role in the nurturing and educating of children. like the hermit, Melibee exhibits courtesy by welcoming calidore into his house. yet in contrast to the hermit, the honey-tongued rhetorician indulges in an untimely withdrawal from the court. He exemplifies the potential dangers of a man withdrawing from public affairs into a private setting, in this case the house and landscape where he entertains calidore. he endangers not only himself but also calidore, who is tempted to remain there with Pastorella.

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above all, calidore jeopardizes the safety of all the inhabitants of this idyllic place by staying there too long. in this highly conventional landscape characteristic of other pastoral romances such as sidney’s New Arcadia Melibee defines himself in terms of rhetorical displays of acumen— however flawed—rather than his military prowess more appropriate for calidore. the retired courtier-turned-shepherd has deluded himself into believing that he abides in an isolated, private landscape in which neither time or money matters, a false notion that exhibits his desire to withdraw from such worldly realities in a stoic fashion.73 Likewise, at first glance Spenser’s pastoral romance appears set apart from such political-historical realities. Melibee’s disdain for those whose anxieties increase with “riches store” suggests that he is unconcerned with the accumulation of wealth and thinks he does not need it. When Melibee exclaims nonchalantly that his flock grows “without [his] care, but only to attend it” (21.4–6), his use of the word “attend,” which means in this context “to await, expect” rather than “to tend,” is indicative of his passive attitude toward time.74 he has withdrawn from public affairs into a private enclave and is either unprepared for the impending battle with the brigands or unwilling to fight. In Book VI unarmed men who unreasonably resist the sword endanger themselves and others. in contrast to Jonson in Timber, who grounds his notion of masculinity on emotional restraint and stoical self-sufficiency, Spenser presents self-sufficiency rather than dependency in a negative light during Melibee’s dialogue with calidore.75 Melibee mistakenly believes that he is self-sufficient as a result of the kinship he feels with nature, which has “litle need / of forreine helps to lifes due nourishment” (20.6–7). this view, however, makes him complacent and vulnerable to the threat of marauding intruders such as the brigands. Melibee’s endorsement of self-sufficiency particularly recalls the philosophy of stoics such as Boethius and Juvenal.76 like lady Philosophy, who teaches Boethius that he can mentally withstand any adversity in The Consolation of Philosophy, Melibee instructs calidore about the power of the imagination to transcend imprisoning material conditions: “it is the mynd, that maketh good or ill, / that maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore” (30).77 73 in “home-Making in ireland: Virgil’s Eclogue i and Book Vi of The Faerie Queene,” Spenser Studies 8 (1987): 128–9, Julia reinhard lupton asserts that “Melibee stresses the individual’s autonomy over against material conditions” but that his “murder and dispossession reveal the insufficiency of Stoic self-sufficiency.” 74 OED, “attend,” 13. see anderson, “Prudence and her silence: spenser’s use of chaucer’s Melibee,” ELH 62 (1995): 31, and The Growth of a Personal Voice (new haven: yale university Press, 1976), p. 179, for insights on the comic nuances of Melibee’s complacency. 75 in Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind, p. 5, Maus mentions that Jonson’s favorite authors are roman moralists who emphasize the virtue of self-reliance. commenting on Jonson’s belief in the value of stoical restraint, Pigman states, “Jonson’s concern with manhood goes hand in hand with his fear of the emotions”: Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 85. 76 Boece, in The Riverside Chaucer, Book i, Prosa 6, line 60, p. 407. 77 Boece, Book iV, Prosa 7. on Melibee’s Boethian philosophy cf. Kenneth Borris, “fortune, occasion, and the allegory of the Quest in Book Vi of The Faerie Queene,” Spenser

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Melibee’s philosophy distantly recalls homer and Plato in his dialogues as well and is particularly based on the stoic Juvenal’s tenth satire: “Pray for a brave spirit that stands not in fear of death” and “that can bear any toils ... if we are but wise, o chance, thy potency is vanished.”78 Both sidney in the New Arcadia and spenser in The Faerie Queene suggest that rhetorical displays of intellectual prowess—in this case the stoical wisdom that both Juvenal and Melibee praise—legitimize a man’s retreat from public affairs to a certain extent. in these pastoral romances privacy and intellectualized retreats from public life are acceptable for early modern men, who sidney and spenser believe should otherwise remain devoted to virtuous action or contemplation in some way beneficial for the common good. Rhetorically skillful and emotionally expressive men in these parallel works are powerful, though not invulnerable, without military arms. interestingly, spenser yokes masculinity with dependency rather than independence in Book VI. In contrast to the self-sufficient Stoics to which Melibee alludes, spenser indicates that a man should depend not only on himself, but also on the support of a community. Parallels between Melibee and despair, both of whom appear in cantos ix of the first or last book of The Faerie Queene, suggest that a man is doomed to despair if he relies solely on himself instead of placing his faith in divine grace and the courtesy of others. Melibee’s praise of pastoral living alludes both to the Proem to Book Vi and to the beguiling rhetoric of despair in Book i: Me no such cares nor combrous thoughts offend, ne once my minds vnmoued quiet grieue, But all the night in siluer sleepe i spend, and all the day, to what i list, i doe attend. (22.6–9; my emphasis)

the “siluer sleepe” Melibee enjoys glances foremost at the “siluer boure” where the seeds of courtesy originate in the Proem to Book Vi (3.3). as anderson notes in her discussion of spenser’s use of chaucer’s Melibee in her essay entitled “Prudence and her silence,” the shepherd’s description of his own equanimity, “ne once my minds vnmoued quiet grieue” also alludes to despair’s portrayal of death as that which “layes the soule to sleep in quiet graue” (i.ix.40.7; my emphasis). Melibee’s speech in its entirety tends to ally him with despair, suggesting that the shepherd’s lack of “cares” may be potentially deadly as well as irresponsible for himself and his family.79 the episode as a whole indicates that a man’s recognition of his vulnerability to material contingency is prudent rather than emasculating. despite Melibee’s refusal of calidore’s gold, which might make him “safer live,” his untainted vision of a Studies 7 (1986): 118–19 and 143, and tonkin, Spenser’s Courteous Pastoral, pp. 118–19. 78 in the Variorum osgood cites the Odyssey 1.32–5: “how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! for from us they say comes evil / Whereas they even of themselves, through the blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained” and Republic 10: “the blame is he who chooses: god is blameless.” for a complete list of Melibee’s sources see Variorum 6: 240–42. 79 “Prudence and her silence”: 34–5. for more general discussions about parallels between Melibee and despair see tonkin, Spenser’s Courteous Pastoral, p. 115, and James carlson nohrnberg, The Analogy of The Faerie Queene, pp. 717–19.

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golden, utopian world amongst the shepherds is itself valuable and is appropriately followed by the spectacle of communal harmony on Mount acidale (32.8). in contrast to the Melibee episode, which glances at the dangers of a lengthy pastoral retreat, calidore’s ecstatic vision of the graces and dancing ladies on Mount acidale highlights the value of a man’s temporary withdrawal from the world into a private realm.80 on this Mount colin clout’s dialogue with calidore educates the bold knight about the multiple meanings of courtesy. Prior to their dialogue, calidore exhibits only a limited understanding of the vision of the graces he interrupts. after spying on the dancers from “the couert of the wood,” another private space occupied by a man in Book Vi, he seeks “what it was, to know” (17.8). such a reductive mode of inquiry results only in the vanishing of the ladies “which way he neuer knew” (18.3).81 initially, calidore attempts to limit the meaning of their dance by reducing it to the rational terms he brings with him. spenser implicitly challenges the privileging of reason over emotion by illustrating that intellectual understanding, which Jonson values highly and represents as manly in Timber, is insufficient for apprehending the full significance of the vision of the feminine Graces on Mount acidale.82 calidore, who apologizes for rudely interrupting the dance and causing the ladies to disappear, entreats colin clout to “tell ... what were they all, whose lacke [him] ... grieues so sore” (20.8–9). as colin illustrates in these lines, shepherds as well as knights are prone to violent, moving displays of their feelings in Book Vi. admitting that he “rashly sought that, which [he] mote not see,” calidore begins to realize that courtesy necessitates both a good sense of timing and discretion (29; my emphasis). his spying on and interruption of the dance highlight how fragile and fleeting privacy and secrecy remain for both men and women in the fallen world of fairyland. shortly after viewing the ladies on Mount acidale, calidore exhibits a degree of androgyny, a key aspect of spenser’s vision of the ideal gentleman in Book Vi. In stark contrast to the lyrical interlude he witnesses there, Calidore finds himself in a wild, uncivilized landscape devoid of song after the brigands abduct the innocent shepherds and Pastorella. his reaction to the abduction of Pastorella by the brigands is particularly impassioned. calidore becomes as inarticulate as the salvage Man and “fare[s] like a furious wyld Beare, / Whose whelpes are stolne away, she being otherwhere” (xi.25.8–9). this simile recalls spenser’s comparison of calepine unburdened by his armor to a “female hawk ... freed / from bels and iesses” when he is unburdened by his armor as he pursues the bear carrying the baby (iv.19). Both of these similes highlight the many transgressions of rigid gender 80 cf. susanne lindgren Wofford on the visionary powers of allegory in “Britomart’s Petrarchan lament: allegory and narrative in The Faerie Queene iii, iv,” Comparative Literature 39 (1987): 33. 81 see anderson, The Growth of a Personal Voice, p. 194. Krier adds that calidore modulates “the bliss of vision into the pleasure of knowing” and thereby emphasizes “the artist’s recognition of the ultimate impossibility of subjecting even one’s own creations to one’s knowledge” (p. 234). 82 in his dedication of Epicoene to sir francis stuart Jonson indicates that he considers those who exhibit the “manliest” virtue of “justice,” a largely rational capacity, to be the best audience for his play: h & s, Works, 5: 161.

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boundaries throughout Book Vi. implicitly, calidore’s dialogues with Melibee and colin clout and his vision of the dancing ladies on Mount acidale have contributed to his newfound ability of conceiving of traditionally feminine traits in himself like nurturing and protecting the young—a virtue calepine to some extent and Melibee exhibit previously. this cross-gendered simile comparing calidore to a mother bear separated from her cubs (after failing to protect them) further suggests that he is partly to blame for the disappearance of the shepherds, including Pastorella, because he has left them unguarded. in this way he fails to maintain a balance between the masculine and feminine, or hard and soft sides of himself. yet calidore largely achieves this balance by acting on his intense feelings of grief for Pastorella. he does so by hiding a sword beneath his shepherd garments and attacking the captain of the brigands who has captured her (xi.42). in the legend of courtesy those who achieve such a balance—between reason and emotion, action and contemplation, justice and mercy, as well as masculinity and femininity—are often the most successful at negotiating the ways of fairyland. like calidore, spenser at the beginning of the legend of courtesy is himself faced with the problem of whether or not to continue his quest for public recognition and fame. in the Proem to Book Vi he admits that his “steps” are “weary” and his “trauell” is “tedious” (1.1, 7). toward the end of Book Vi he voices his fear that readers will misinterpret his poems after they are published and circulated in a literary market. nevertheless, he resists the temptation to withdraw from the public sphere into anonymity—an extreme form of privacy—in response to the potential slandering of his texts.83 his published documents are especially vulnerable to misinterpretation and censure signified by the bite of the Blatant Beast, who “spareth [not] ... the gentle Poets rime, / But rends without regard of person or of time” (xii.40.8–9; my emphasis). spenser skeptically hopes that his “homely verse” and “former writs” will withstand this threat of misreadings. Even though the poet may be “cleare of crime” and his works “clearest / from blamefull blot,” readers and censurers beyond the bounds of his poems are at liberty to distort his intent. the slanderous “bite” of the Beast particularly threatens to ruin his name and literary reputation. despite the risks inherent in the poet’s subjecting his texts to public scrutiny, the alternative of escaping into the private chamber of the mind isolated from others is even more perilous. The silencing of Melibee’s voice of stoical self-sufficiency by the brigands is a case in point. Both a secretary and poet, spenser the Protestant humanist resisted the threat of silence by remaining actively involved in public affairs and by fashioning a dialogic voice in response to his literary predecessors that develops into his trademark throughout The Faerie Queene.84 83 cf. Miller’s treatment of the end of Book Vi, particularly his discussion of spenser’s use of the word “threasure,” an allusion to the royal treasure, or treasury: “the Earl of cork’s lute” in Spenser’s Life and the Subject of Biography, pp. 169–71. as Miller points out, we know relatively little about “the production and circulation of texts attributed to spenser” (p. 162). We do know, however, that they were published by William Ponsonby, who was also the sidney-family publisher. 84 in “spenser’s late Pastorals,” ELH 56 (1989): 810, alpers argues that spenser increasingly entertained alternatives to life at court and pondered “what constitutes true

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the poet’s emphasis on men of feeling in Books i and Book Vi provides a vital, innovative contribution to the development of the English epic romance. in the legend of courtesy spenser’s placement of knights, courtiers, shepherds, and wild men who display intense affect in hidden, secluded enclaves is suggestive of the increasing literary and cultural acceptance of the emotions as private property in the early modern period.85 as Joshua scodel argues in Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature, both late seventeenth-century writers aphra Behn and John dryden celebrate “a private sphere of extreme passion against a degraded public realm where base interest reigned” (15). as early as the sixteenth century spenser anticipates the intellectual development of viewing the passions less as mechanisms in the declining humoral theory of personality and more as private property.86 focal in my next chapter are demonstrative family men in shakespeare’s romance The Winter’s Tale and garrick’s popular, eighteenth-century adaptation, Florizel and Perdita—parallel works that accentuate the linking of masculinity and affect in familial contexts.

service.” on the poet’s trademark of dialogism see my essay “spenser’s dialogic Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene,” SEL 41 (2001): 71–89. 85 cf. Just Anger, p. 3, and naomi scheman, “anger and the Politics of naming,” p. 179, in which she links the view of people as “agents entering the marketplace freely” with “a view of emotion as one’s personal property to which the individual has privileged access”: in Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. sally Mcconnell ginet, ruth Borker, and nelly furman (new york: Praeger, 1980). 86 in A Treatise of Melancholy (1586) timothy Bright’s own negative reaction to galenic materialism mirrors and predates spenser’s. in “sadness in The Faerie Queene,” pp. 243–4, douglas trevor discusses Bright’s rejection of hydraulic theories of the passions and his contention that “the spiritual essence of a person” is not determined by “humoral makeup.” Bright criticizes galenists who “haue accompted all maner affection thereof, to be subiect to the phisicians ha[n]d, not considering herein any thing diuine”: A Treastise of Melancholie, “the Epistle dedicatorie,” iii verso as cited by trevor.

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Part four demonstrative family Men: Masculinity and sentiment in Works by shakespeare, lanyer, cary, donne, Walton, and garrick in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (1612), izaak Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne (1640), and david garrick’s reinvention of shakespeare’s play entitled Florizel and Perdita (1756) issues of masculinity and sentiment are pivotal. these works largely focus on family men—fathers, sons, and lovers—and their expressions of a wide variety of emotions, including jealousy, grief, and remorse. Both shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne include grieving fathers and mothers and reflect the gendering of mourning practices during the seventeenth century. Garrick’s sentimental adaptation of shakespeare’s play highlights literary and historical shifts in representations of masculinity, femininity, and emotion and changing power relations between husband and wife in the domestic sphere. in their respective plays shakespeare and garrick also include undomesticated rogues and outlaws whose commercial success gestures toward class as well as gender hierarchies in transition.1 the affective rhetoric, gestures, and tears of family men in shakespeare’s domestic tragicomedy and Walton’s prose biography make them precursors of literary men of feeling like the figure of Leontes performed by Garrick in Florizel and Perdita.2 The Winter’s Tale features a number of men and women who are emotionally expressive as well as stoical. this play, in which the word “affect” is central, points to radical transformations in the hierarchical structure of the family that resulted from metamorphosing gender roles. More specifically, the play reflects the cultural 1 for an exemplary collection representative of recent critical interest in rogue studies, see Rogues and Early Modern Culture, ed. craig dionne and steve Mentz (ann arbor: university of Michigan Press, 2004). 2 in Shakespeare on Masculinity, pp. 81 and 201, Wells discusses hamlet and The Tempest’s ferdinand as forerunners of eighteenth-century men of sensibility. although the term “sensibility” is usually associated with an eighteenth-century literary movement beginning with shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinion, Times first published in 1711, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century traces of this movement in works by spenser, shakespeare, and their contemporaries suggest that the cult of sensibility began earlier than we might assume and that the movement is not necessarily limited to one, specific historical period. see Ellison, Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion, p. 9, for a useful discussion of the elusive beginnings of the age of sensibility.

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anxiety surrounding the increasing authority of wives in the household and the growing importance of mothers in the education of children.3 The Winter’s Tale features a variety of authoritative women who express their grief, anger, or desire in commanding ways. husbands and fathers in the tragicomedy are prone to outbursts of jealousy and violence in part because they perceive femininity as a threat to their masculinity. shakespeare’s representation of men enraged to the point of madness and women who remain stoical in the face of adversity challenges the limiting cultural association of masculinity with reason and femininity with excessive emotion in the early modern period. the destructive emotions of jealousy and rage are overcome by patience, endurance, and joy by the end of the play. over the course of The Winter’s Tale men and boys learn to respond affectionately instead of anxiously to women and their bodies.4 Both shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne include fathers who mourn for family members and nightmarish visions of grieving mothers bereft of their children. in Walton’s biography donne’s grief is epitomized by his haunting vision of his wife with a dead child in her arms. Walton captures the degree to which those in the seventeenth century largely admired male expressions of affect by linking donne’s vision of his grieving wife to those by st augustine and his mother Monica. in aemilia lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) christ’s holy tears accentuate his alliance with his bereaved mother, the Virgin Mary, and with a female community of saints who mourn his death.5 Mourning practices that are psychologically regenerative and spiritually ennobling are similarly focal in shakespeare’s domestic tragicomedy and Walton’s biography. Both shakespeare 3 for the increasing prominence of women in home teaching in England from 1700– 1770, see Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, p. 102. 4 critics who discuss the issue of masculinity in The Winter’s Tale include Peter Erickson, “the limitations of reformed Masculinity in The Winter’s Tale” in Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare’s Drama (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1985), pp. 148– 72; david lee Miller in “the father’s Witness: Patriarchal images of Boys,” Representations 70 (2000): 121–4; and his Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father’s Witness (ithaca: cornell university Press, 2002), pp. 92–112. although women are often considered to be contaminating, debilitating, and anxiety-provoking for men during the early modern period, I focus on male figures in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale who ultimately relate to the female members of their families, including mothers, wives, and daughters, in positive ways. for prior discussions of men in shakespeare who fashion their identities through separation from the largely negative figure of the mother, see Kahn, Man’s Estate, p. 12, and adelman, Suffocating Mothers, pp. 3–4. in contrast to Breitenberg,who rightly argues that female sexuality was a source of male anxiety in the renaissance in Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, i contend that men in The Winter’s Tale overcome this anxiety to an extent. adelman similarly points out that florizel’s relationship with Perdita recovers “the benign maternal body as a source of life” (p. 230). 5 i am generally indebted to Phillippy’s discussion of christ’s feminizing, communal bond with women who weep and wail at his crucifixion in Lanyer’s poem. See her “Sisters of Magdalene: Women’s Mourning in aemilia lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeroum,” ELR 31 (2001): 106 and her discussion of lanyer’s poem in relation to empowering female mourning practices in Women, Death, and Literature in Post-Reformation England, pp. 39–48.

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and Walton were writing during a period when excessive, immoderate expressions of emotions—desire, anger, and grief—evoked a considerable degree of literary and cultural anxiety. stoics continued to view the emotions as a disease that could become deadly. in Elizabeth cary’s Tragedy of Mariam (1613), a closet drama written from a stoical, senecan perspective, herod’s unrestrained fury leads him to accuse his innocent wife of plotting to kill him and his undying remorse for ordering her execution ultimately drives him mad. herod’s personally inscribed funeral monument, which immortalizes his despair and lack of grace, befits a stoical work that emphasizes the lack of pity for those who descend to the level of extreme, brute passions. in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne, by contrast, life-like, individualized statues memorializing the dead are expressive of forgiveness and redemption. Men who weep and wail in shakespeare’s tragicomedy and Walton’s biography set a precedent for men of sensibility in vogue in popular literary works during the eighteenth century. shakespeare’s men of feeling attracted eighteenth-century audiences—hence the keen interest that the shakespearean actor and playwright david garrick (1717–79) showed in the figure of Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. leontes’ heart-felt repentance for suspecting his wife of adultery and exiling his daughter to Bohemia appealed to this actor, whose tearful gestures on stage immortalized him during the height of the age of sensibility. in Florizel and Perdita garrick, who left the wine trade to become an actor, successfully markets his adaptation of shakespeare’s play for a largely middle-class audience.6 his version of the play opens with the entertaining figure of the rogue and pedlar Autolycus. This businessman was no doubt attractive to numerous self-made tradesmen in garrick’s audience. he further adapts shakespeare’s play to suit the tastes of eighteenth-century audiences by foregrounding sentimental fathers and mothers, a number of whom are more subservient and less outspoken than female figures in The Winter’s Tale. as we know, gender roles do not necessarily become more liberating over time. the fashioning of memorial statues of garrick in the likeness of shakespeare not only befits an age prone to Bardolatry, but also accentuates Garrick’s own popularity and fame as an emotionally expressive playwright and actor. shakespeare’s treatment of masculinity and affect in The Winter’s Tale sets an important precedent for the cultural ideal of sentiment celebrated in garrick’s plays and in popular novels like henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). certainly, garrick’s 1756 adaptation of shakespeare’s play and samuel taylor coleridge’s response to The Winter’s Tale in his literary criticism attest to their sensitivity to, and sustained interest in, its affective dimension.

6 in The London Stage, 1747–1776: A Critical Introduction (carbondale: southern illinois university Press, 1968), p. cxci, george Winchester stone states that h.W. Pedicord estimates that garrick’s audience, though heterogenous, was composed mostly of the upper middle class.

7.

“‘affection! thy intention stabs the center’: Male irrationality vs. female composure in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale the recurrence of the word “affection” at key points in The Winter’s Tale suggests that the theme of affect is in fact focal in shakespeare’s tragicomedy. its various uses of the term shed light on the relation of masculinity to emotion in the early modern period. This word first occurs when Camillo declares that the boyhood “affection” between leontes and Polixenes “cannot choose but branch now,” an allusion not only to their friendship but also to their future, physical separation and psychic alienation (i.i.22–4). camillo’s benign prediction takes on tragic implications when the word recurs during leontes’ monologue “affection! thy intention stabs the centre” in which leontes reacts passionately to the imaginary notion that hermione is guilty of adultery with Polixenes. like leontes, enraged Polixenes sullies the word sixteen years later in Bohemia when he denounces his “sceptre’s heir” florizel for “affect[ing] a sheep-hook,” a phrase referring to the shepherdess Perdita whom leontes exiled from sicilia when she was an infant (iV.iv.420–21). yet florizel uses the term “affection” in a pure, innocent context when he opposes the will of Polixenes by exclaiming that he is “heir to [his] affection” for her (iV.iv.421). his comment is a radical one, for it substitutes “affection” between a man and woman for the more usual patrilineal basis of masculine identity. florizel’s feelings for and commitment to his future wife, Perdita, take precedence over his duty to his father and potentially redefine the existing social and gender hierarchies. throughout the early modern period gender categories were shifting in dramatic ways. during the English renaissance, female authority in domestic settings gradually increased. Mark Breitenberg attributes this increase of female authority within the family circle to the Protestant emphasis on marriage as a “companionate partnership.”7 as gouge argues in Of Domesticall Duties (1620), the husband “ought to make [his wife] a joint governor of the family with himself, and refer the ordering of many things to her discretion.”8 as we might expect, such authoritative women often evoked anxiety from men because they challenged the more traditional patriarchal order. Breitenberg notes that this anxiety sometimes surfaced “among men toward the fidelity of their wives” (26). Ultimately, the increased authority of 7 8

Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, p. 25. William gouge, Of Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises, 3rd ed. (london, 1634), p. 3.

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women at home gestured toward a newer relationship between husband and wife based on friendship.9 This redefinition of domestic roles notably contributed to the refashioning of gender categories of masculinity and femininity in sixteenthand seventeenth-century England. as david underdown indicates, between about 1560 and 1640 there was an intense preoccupation with authoritative women. he further asserts that “the popularity of advice manuals and conduct books in the period suggests that people were having to work out a new relationship between the spouses, one that could no longer be taken for granted.”10 a number of early modern courtesy books attempted to reinforce the fading assumption that a wife should remain “silent” and “shamefast” in the presence of company.11 such efforts at reinforcement are further signs of a gender system in transition or even rebellion. in The Winter’s Tale hermione and her daughter, Perdita, implicitly challenge this conservative model of womanhood through their outspokenness and sexual candor when entertaining guests, either in the wintry clime of sicilia or the summer, pastoral setting of Bohemia. I in The Winter’s Tale hermione and her loyal friend, Paulina, are impressive, authoritative figures that threaten to overturn the domestic hierarchy of husband over wife. convinced that hermione is an adulteress, leontes irrationally depicts both hermione and Paulina as unruly wives. he exclaims to antigonus about Paulina, “What! canst not rule her?” out of fear that he lacks supreme authority over his wife (ii.iii.46). leontes’ imagining of hermione and Paulina as “unruly” is a manifestation of the larger, cultural anxiety in renaissance England about new models of marriage that elevated wives to the status of friends, though still subordinate to their husbands. interestingly, his initial outburst of jealousy and suspicion of hermione’s affair with Polixenes occurs when she uses the word “friend” to refer to their houseguest (i.ii.108). she states in reference to her wedding vow to leontes and her success at persuading Polixenes to remain in sicilia that she has “spoke to th’ purpose twice: / the one, for ever earn’d a royal husband; / th’other, for some while a friend” (i.ii.106–8). hermione, who is neither “silent” or “shamefast” in the company of Polixenes, conveys her rhetorical authority by convincing him to extend his visit after leontes fails. subsequently, leontes becomes convinced that hermione is guilty of adultery.12 his calling Paulina a “lewd-tongu’d wife” after she defends 9 catherine Belsey, “love in Venice,” Shakespeare Survey 44 (1992): 52. 10 david underdown, “the taming of the scold: the Enforcement of Patriarchal authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. anthony fletcher and John stevenson (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1987), pp. 119 and 136. 11 Vives, “the instruction of a christian Woman” in Daughters, Wives, and Widows, p. 102. 12 Enterline points out that both hermione’s language and her pregnant body are anxiety-provoking for him: The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000), pp. 198–9.

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hermione’s chastity emphasizes that such outspoken women in the renaissance were considered to be sexually as well as rhetorically dangerous (ii.iii.171). Paulina serves as the talkative alter ego for hermione, who resorts to silence for sixteen years after Mamillius dies and Perdita is exiled from sicilia. at the beginning of the play hermione conveys her domestic authority through playful, sexualized rhetoric. she threatens to “thwack [Polixenes] hence with distaffs” (or urge him to return home) if his primary motive for doing so is to see his young son, florizel (i.ii.37). her imagined use of the “distaff,” which is a symbol of female dominion and of the female branch of the family, is both forceful and comical and hints at her role as powerful matriarch within the household.13 hermione’s subsequent statement to Polixenes that “a lady’s Verily’s / as potent as a lord’s” further underscores her rhetorical authority (i.ii.50–51). her authoritative words of advice to husbands about their wives contain a number of bawdy innuendos, indicative of her candid view of sexuality:14 ... cram’s with praise, and make’s as fat as tame things: one good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that. our praises are our wages. you may ride’s With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an acre. (92–6)

hermione’s argument that wives readily yield to a “soft kiss” but balk at the “spur” playfully evokes the common, misogynistic association of women with beasts that are ridden. othello, for example, imagines cassio riding desdemona while listening to iago’s lies about her. these lies recall the perverse narrative iago tells Brabantio about his daughter and the Moor “making the beast with two backs” (i.i.116–17). like othello and iago in some respects, leontes fabricates a scenario of affection between hermione and Polixenes as a result of her aural cues—“cram’s,” “make’s ... fat,” and “ride’s”—which refer to the female body and evoke the notion of pregnancy. although hermione does not intend for leontes to misconstrue her authoritative, unruly words, their bawdy nuances innocently contribute to his imagining of her affair with Polixenes. othello’s and leontes’ overpowering emotions of jealousy and rage make them vulnerable to misreadings of verbal, visual, and aural signs of affection. shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale challenges the stereotypical association of masculinity with reason and femininity with hysteria. ironically, men in the play are more prone to excessive demonstrations of emotion than women. leontes’ jealousy overwhelms his rational faculties once be becomes convinced that hermione is

13 OED, “distaff,” 3.b. 14 on innuendo in this play, see carol thomas neely, “The Winter’s Tale: the triumph of speech,” in The Winter’s Tale: Critical Essays, ed. Maurice hunt (new york: garland, 1995), p. 325. cf. howard felperin, “‘tongue-tied our Queen’: the deconstruction of Presence in The Winter’s Tale” in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. geoffrey hartman (new york: Methuen, 1985), pp. 8–10.

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guilty of adultery. during his famous monologue “affection!”, he addresses this personification representing the tumult within his own mind: affection! thy intention stabs the centre: thou dost make possible things not so held, communicat’st with dreams;—how can this be? With what’s unreal thou coactive art, and fellow’st nothing ... (i.ii.138–42)

affect, or emotion, is central to the form as well as the content of leontes’ speech. the intensity of his “affection,” a word meaning either “jealousy” or “lust” in this context, results in the incoherence of his monologue, as the elusive meaning of the particular phrase “thy intention stabs the center” demonstrates.15 leontes diagnoses the destructive course of his own passionate suspicions by admitting that the joining of “affection” with “dreams” is unproductive and “fellow’st nothing.” unlike hermione, who gives birth to an infant who is “lusty, and like to live,” he generates a monstrous conception of her infidelity out of nothing (II.ii.27). Yet the merging of affect with “something” in him has resulted in the “infection” of his “brains / and hard’ning of ” his “brows”—a progressive disease over which he attempts, but fails to gain control by analyzing its cause rationally (i.ii.138–46). Even the source of his intellectual faculties—his “brains”—has become infected by “affection,” meaning in this context an overpowering and debilitating kind of emotion. literary and cultural perceptions of the affections as a feminine disease were widespread during the renaissance.16 in The Merchant of Venice Shylock’s definition of “affection” as “master” or “mistress of passion” (a textual variation of the line) emphasizes the sexual ambiguity and potentially feminine dimension of the word “affection” (iV.i.50–51). in sonnet 20 shakespeare similarly describes the concept of affection in terms of both genders when he addresses the young man as “the master mistress of my passion” (2). throughout shakespeare’s canon the term “affection” has both positive and negative connotations. too much affection can prove debilitating for a man, as illustrated by antony’s line, “my sword, made weak by my affection” (Antony and Cleopatra iii.xi.67). Because the word “affection” in shakespeare’s English had these various connotations—as dignifying, dangerously powerful, effeminizing, weakening, or a source of disease—leontes’ outpouring of 15 for an analysis of shakespeare’s use of the term “affection,” which can mean “lust, jealousy, affliction, imagination” in The Winter’s Tale and his other plays, see W. thomas Maccary, Friends and Lovers: The Phenomenology of Desire in Shakespearean Comedy (new york: columbia university Press, 1985), pp. 196–8. on the elusiveness of leontes’ monologue see david Ward, “affection, intention, and dreams in The Winter’s Tale,” Modern Language Review 82 (1987): 552. 16 in Microcosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man (london, 1616), p. 276, helkiah crooke states that anger is commonly experienced by “women, children, and weake and cowardly men” and is “a disease of a weake mind which cannot moderate it selfe but is easily inflamed.” In Passions of the Minde in Generall, p. 209, Wright argues that this disease can also infect men. as he states, “a personable body is often linked with a pestilent soule; a valiant Captaine in the field, for most part is infected with an effeminate affection at home,” referring to his passion for women.

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emotion during his famous “affection! thy intention stabs the centre” monologue presents him in a sexually ambiguous and potentially negative, feminine light. he is plagued by the false, but pervasive early modern cultural assumption that women are more vulnerable to the irrational effects of passions such as lust, anger, or grief than men guided by reason.17 furthermore, leontes’ attempt to suppress the affective dimension of his and his son’s relationships with women proves fatal. Bonds of affection are critical for the emotional as well as intellectual development of boys in The Winter’s Tale. leontes and Polixenes enjoyed such an “affection” for one another when they were children (i.i.23). leontes, however, makes a tragic mistake when he violently separates Mamillius from hermione in the nursery and severs his affective ties with his mother.18 he exclaims, “give me the boy: i am glad you did not nurse him” out of fear that hermione’s body supposedly tainted by passion for Polixenes will contaminate their son (ii.i.56). leontes’ abrupt entrance into the nursery interrupts Mamillius while he is telling hermoine a “sad tale ... best for winter,” a story with an affective dimension (ii.i.25). this kind of oral narrative, to which the title of the play alludes, was commonly associated with women. nevertheless, for Mamillius telling a winter’s tale in his mother tongue comes naturally to him.19 What Shakespeare presents as artificial is leontes’ separation of his son from hermione. this brutal act also highlights the potentially damaging, psychological effects of the common, male puberty rite in the renaissance— of removing young boys from the care of women at home and sending them to exclusively male grammar schools. the latin texts that they read there would have seemed more alien to them than the women’s stories that Mamillius shares fondly with his mother in his native English.20 in the absence of hermione Mamillius suffers from an affective disease akin to melancholy, which also afflicts Renaissance male figures as varied as Hamlet and donne in Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne. leontes remarks on Mamillius’ decline in isolation from his mother by stating:

17 in the homily Against Strife and Contention (1547), for example, the writer states that “he that cannot temper ne rule hys awn yre is but weake and feble, and rather more lyke a woman or a child than a stronge man. for the true strength and manliness is to overcome wrath, and to despice injury and other mennes folishness”: Against Strife and Contention in Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570), ed. ronald B. Bond (toronto: university of toronto Press, 1987), p. 195. 18 in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800, p. 253, stone notes that aristocratic houses commonly included “the nursery area for children.” 19 in The Body Embarrassed Paster argues, “It is significant that Mamillius is as yet ‘unbreeched,’ still in the world of women and wearing the skirts of infancy” (p. 265). 20 Enterline develops this idea in her essay “Mamillius,” p. 5, which she delivered as a panelist for the special session on “grief and gender in Early Modern England” that i organized for the 2000 meeting of the Modern language association in Washington, d.c. see also Walter J. ong, “latin language study as a renaissance Puberty rite,” Studies in Philology 56 (1959): 105.

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to see his nobleness, conceiving the dishonour of his mother! he straight declin’d, droop’d, took it deeply, Fasten’d and fix’d the shame on ’t in himself, threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, and downright languish’d. (ii.iii.12–17)

Mamillius’ affectionate bond with hermione prior to leontes’ separation of them differs in tone from hamlet’s relationship with gertrude. it is widely recognized that the Prince of denmark depicts his mother as sullied by her speedy remarriage and infidelity to the memory of his father. By contrast, the unique connection between hermione and Mamillius in shakespeare’s romance is nourishing, generative, and free of disease until leontes ruptures it out of jealousy. the brief, playful dialogue between hermione and Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale attests to their affectionate relationship and gestures toward the increasingly important role of women in the education of children in the seventeenth century.21 though hermione jests that her son “troubles” her so “’tis past enduring,” his intimate whispering of a tale in her ear creates a benevolent portrait of mother and son that differs radically from hamlet’s cynical view of his mother as contaminating and false (ii.i.1–2). he exclaims infamously in response to gertrude’s precipitous marriage to claudius, “frailty, thy name is woman!” (i.ii.146). in contrast to Mamillius, hamlet’s fond memories are of yorick, a male caretaker who has “borne” him “on his back a thousand times” (V.i.185–6). close, positive relationships between mothers and boys in Shakespeare are rare and fleeting and often end with violent intrusions, as illustrated not only by hermione and Mamillius but also by lady Macduff and her young son in Macbeth. she discusses with ross the unnaturalness of a father leaving his wife and children unprotected and then debates with her son whether or not Macduff is a traitor to his family for having done so (iV.ii). Macduff jeopardized the safety of his wife and children by leaving them in scotland while he joins Malcolm in England to assemble an army to depose Macbeth. in The Winter’s Tale as in Macbeth, efforts to separate mothers and fathers from their children lead to tragedy.22 Bonds of affection between family members are essential for the maturation of boys into men in a number of shakespeare’s plays. throughout The Winter’s Tale Paulina serves as leontes’ primary educator and gradually reforms him into the kind of family man that appealed to garrick in his adaptation, Florizel and Perdita. the epitome of the active woman in The Winter’s Tale, she is determined to counter leontes’ rejection of the infant Perdita shortly after hermione gives birth to her in prison. When Paulina presents leontes with the infant in his “private chamber,” a masculine space functioning as counterpart to the feminine nursery, he reacts to this intrusion as if it were a personal violation by exclaiming, “out of the chamber with her!” (ii.iii.121). his hysteria adds to the 21 in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800, p. 247, stone discusses “the more [openly] affectionate and egalitarian relationship with children” that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if not earlier. 22 according to rose, Macbeth “succeeds in excluding the female from his identity” with tragic consequences: Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature, p. xx.

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impression of his feminization by excessive emotion. as illustrated by garrick’s career as an actor and playwright, such demonstrations of emotion were positive qualities for men during the eighteenth century when the literary figure of the man of sensibility flourished on stage and page. shakespeare’s Paulina, whose rhetoric and deeds transgress patriarchal bounds, is more unconventional and androgynous than garrick’s imagining of her as submissive and prone to tears in Florizel and Perdita, as i will discuss more fully in the next chapter devoted to his adaptation. in The Winter’s Tale she is a sign of shakespeare’s movement toward what Marilyn Williamson describes as “a more androgynous vision” of men and women.23 Paulina adopts a traditionally masculine role when she serves as “minister of honour” on behalf of hermione (ii.ii.50) and when she assures leontes that hermione is a “good queen, my lord, good queen: i say good queen, / and would by combat make her good, so were i / a man, the worst about you” (ii. iii.59–61). she stops just short of seizing the masculine privilege of proving one’s word by one’s sword—a largely medieval practice performed by chivalric warriors. this practice is focal toward the beginning of shakespeare’s Richard II when the King interrupts the trial by combat between Bolingbroke and thomas of Mowbray that these two enemies hope will determine who is the slandering party. In the first half of The Winter’s Tale the kind of androgyny embodied by Paulina terrifies Leontes. He exhibits anxiety that his masculinity will become tainted by the disease of the sexualized female body. he projects this fear onto Mamillius when he exclaims to hermione, “give me the boy: i am glad you did not nurse him” (ii.i.56). in his private chamber Paulina’s insistence on Perdita’s physical resemblance to Leontes further inflames him. He continues to despise and distrust the female body—first his wife’s and now his daughter’s. Paulina’s emphasis on the physical similarities between leontes and Perdita calls attention to the ways in which his daughter’s features mirror his own and thereby intensifies his anxieties of effeminization: Behold, my lords, although the print be little, the whole matter and copy of the father: eye, nose, lip; the trick of’s frown; his forehead; nay, the valley, the pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles; The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger . . . (II.iii.98–102)

Paulina mentions the same parts of Perdita’s face and body—“nose,” “lip,” “cheek,” “smiles,” “hand,” and “finger”—that Leontes previously read as signs of Hermione’s adultery. Earlier, he convinces himself that hermione and Polixenes were “paddling palms, and pinching fingers, / ... and making practis’d smiles / as in a looking-glass” (i.ii.115–17; my emphasis). he had even thought that they were “leaning cheek to cheek,” “meeting noses” and “kissing with inside lip” (285–6; my emphasis). leontes’ anxiety in response to hermione’s pregnant female body now extends to Perdita. as a result, he becomes enraged not only at his wife but also at his daughter. in contrast to leontes’ violent rejection of hermione and Perdita, a rash move that threatens the 23 “doubling, Women’s anger, and genre,” Women’s Studies 9 (1982): 117.

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continuation of his lineage, his embracing them at the end of the play signifies the diminishing of his anxiety toward the feminine dimension of his masculinity. Unlike Leontes, who displays uncontrolled affect in the first half of the play, hermione reacts stoically and does not shed a tear when he accuses her of committing adultery and sends her to prison. she remains as patient as griselda and states, “there’s some ill planet reigns: / i must be patient till the heavens look / With an aspect more favourable” (ii.i.106–7). hermione grieves over the loss of her family in a remarkably composed manner; her behavior thereby challenges the commonplace association of femininity with hysterical expressions of emotion. a comparison of shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale with ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which the separation of ceres from Proserpina parallels that of hermione and Perdita, highlights the selfcontrol and fearlessness of shakespeare’s heroine. like Proserpina, who is raped by dis, hermione is subjected to leontes’ abrupt entrance into a private chamber reserved for women and children, a violation in its own right.24 yet unlike ovid’s young girl, who lets the flowers from “Dis’s waggon” fall because she is “frighted,” or “terrified,” the Queen remains visibly unaffected by the King’s attempt to terrify her.25 hermione’s playful response to Mamillius’ ghost story, “do your best to fright me with your sprites” anticipates her exclamation to leontes during the trial, “the bug you would fright me with, i seek,” and distinguishes her from “frighted” Proserpina (ii.i.27–8, iii.ii.91–2; my emphasis). neither Mamillius’ ghost story, nor leontes’ nightmarish imaginings (with fatal consequences) shake hermione’s composure. in further contrast to ceres, who expresses her grief over the loss of her child in terms of the conventional, feminine gestures of tearing her hair and beating her breast (V.472–3), unconventional hermione restrains her emotions heroically. in this case, ovid to a greater extent than shakespeare associates women with the cultural stereotype of unrestrained and even violent expressions of grief common from the classical through the early modern period.26 Dignified Hermione seeks to distinguish herself from early modern women who weep when she proclaims, “i am not prone to weeping, as our sex / commonly are ... but i have / that honourable grief lodg’d here which burns / Worse than tears drown” (108–12). like ceres, who stands “as if turned to stone” when she first hears of Proserpina’s abduction into Hades (V.509), Hermione figuratively metamorphoses into stone—and into a statue at the end of the play—as a result of leontes’ casting the infant Perdita out of the kingdom and triggering the death of Mamillius. yet unlike ceres, who is “bereft of reason” (V.510), hermione remains in control of her rational, intellectual faculties, as her rhetorical dominance during the trial scene suggests. she delivers the bulk of the lines during this scene and interrupts leontes with the authoritative phrase, “sir, spare your 24 Janet s. Wolf associates leontes’ abrupt entrance with rape in “‘like an old tale still’: Paulina, ‘triple hecate,’ and the Persephone Myth in The Winter’s Tale” in Images of Persephone, ed. Elizabeth t. hayes (gainesville: university Press of florida, 1994), p. 41. My discussion of inter- and intratextual connections linking Proserpina to both Perdita and Hermione builds on Wolf’s more general point that figures in this myth parallel all three of the dominant women in shakespeare’s play, including Paulina. 25 Ovid describes Proserpina as “territa,” or terrified after her abduction by Dis, in Metamorphoses, vol. 1, trans. Miller (V.396), pp. 264–5. 26 see Kennedy, Just Anger, pp. 5 and 9.

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threats” (iii.ii.91). nevertheless, she faints when she hears that Mamillius is dead. This tragic event shakes even her composure. It leads her to “die” figuratively for sixteen years and to withdraw from leontes for this period of time. Far from a stoical masculine figure, Leontes is similarly overcome with emotion as a result of the death of Mamillius. in the wake of hermione’s silence Paulina angrily seeks retribution for the King’s destruction of his family by falsely reporting that the Queen is dead. as a result, he becomes the grieving man who “dwelt by a churchyard” in the tale that Mamillius tells hermione earlier in the nursery. leontes fulfills Mamillius’ inadvertent prophesy about his father by ritualistically visiting the grave of the “dead bodies” of his wife and his son: “once a day i’ll visit / the chapel where they lie, and tears shed there / shall be my recreation” (iii.ii.235–6, 238–9).27 he sheds tears beside the grave of hermione and Mamillius for sixteen years. the performance of this mourning ritual was traditionally associated with women supposedly prone to excessive grief in the early modern period. nevertheless, men who display intense affect in public as well as private contexts were becoming increasingly acceptable and even fashionable in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.28 leontes’ daily, ritualized expressions of grief recreate him and in time liberate him from his bear-like hibernation during which he “shuts himself up” (iV. i.19). he vows to continue his daily ritual of visiting their grave “so long as nature / Will bear up with this exercise” (240–41; my emphasis). interestingly, patience and endurance as well as emotional expressiveness become virtues for men in shakespeare’s domestic tragicomedy. throughout The Winter’s Tale the linking of versions of the word “bear,” “bearing,” and “barren” with both men and women is indicative of the blurring of categories of masculinity and femininity in this seventeenth-century work. repeated puns on the noun or verb form of “bear,” “bearing,” and its homonym “barren” highlight not only the centrality of pregnancy in the play but also male anxieties about lineage (i.e. barrenness). the repetition of these words further emphasizes the patient enduring and stoical “bearing” of suffering attributed to both sexes in the play. such endurance of trials is characteristic of the biblical suffering of Job, the original source for the stoic moral philosophy characterized by words such as “bear” and “forbear.”29 in anticipation of camillo’s revelation of the cause of leontes’ “sickness” (i.ii.384), Polixenes prepares to “bear it” (406) and then entreats camillo to help him escape 27 in Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare’s Drama, p. 158, Erickson states that leontes mourns “the symbiotic unity” of mother and son that he sacrificed earlier by separating Mamillius from hermione. 28 in Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, p. 228, houlbrooke argues that “from the sixteenth century onwards the expression of grief, as well as other personal feelings, became fuller, more explicit, and more prominent in both private writings (letters, diaries, meditations) and in more public testimonies (funeral sermons, elegies, epitaphs, and works of art).” By the restoration tears at funerals were fashionable. as William Blundell wrote in his commonplace book during the restoration in lancashire, “soon cry, soon dry. see how mourning and tears are commended at funerals, as if it were for fashion’s sake and to satisfy others”: Crosby Records: A Cavalier’s Note Book ... of William Blundell, ed. t. Ellison gibson (1880), p. 211, as cited in cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 395. 29 Kraye, Moral Philosophy, pp. 364 and 373.

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from sicilia: “i will respect thee as a father if / thou bear’st my life off. hence! let us avoid” (460–62; my emphasis). later, leontes commands antigonus to “bear” the infant Perdita “to some remote and desert place” (ii.iii.174–5). antigonus’ name, which means against generation or childbearing, befits his appointed task of abandoning the infant Perdita on the shore of Bohemia where he is devoured by a bear, a nominative form of the recurrent verb.30 As a result of sacrificing his children, leontes remains barren for the sixteen years that hermione denies him the possibility of fatherhood.31 in antigonus’ vision of hermione she reacts as angrily and violently to the loss of Mamillius and Perdita as a bear separated from her cubs. in his dream her stoical perspective in sicilia metamorphoses into anger in Bohemia.32 interestingly, hermione only adheres to the early modern stereotype of the weeping, wailing woman in the eyes of the male figures, Antigonus and Leontes. after abandoning Perdita in Bohemia, antigonus confesses that he is skeptical that “the spirits o’ th’ dead / May walk again” but reports that he has seen hermione’s ghost (iii.iii.16–17). in his vision she bows before him three times and “gasping to begin some speech, her eyes” become “two spouts” (25–6). his imagining of a tearful and inarticulate hermione offers a sharp contrast to the poised and eloquent figure that the audience witnessed during the trial. Antigonus not only depicts Hermione as a leaky “vessel” of tears but also attributes to this figure a desire for vengeance: as punishment for abandoning Perdita, the hermione he imagines proclaims that antigonus will never see Paulina or his three daughters again (21, 35– 6). The bear, a species known for savagely defending its cubs, is a fitting expression of hermione’s anger over losing her children.33 she directs her anger at leontes as well as antigonus. hermione allows him to mourn her supposed death for sixteen years, an act befitting the “fury” of the ghost Antigonus imagines (26). Recalling antigonus’ vision of ghostly hermione, leontes pictures her with “full eyes” in the context of a ghost story at the end of the play (V.i.53). he imagines that if he were to remarry, hermione’s spirit would “again possess her corpse” and “appear soul-vex’d” (58–9). Even in the imaginations of antigonus and leontes, hermione’s grieving is an active rather than a passive condition that includes the possibility of anger and vengeance. her emotion of grief is indeed empowering.

30 Margreta de grazia, “homonyms Before and after lexical standardization,” Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West: Jahrbuch (1990): 145. 31 Krier, Birth Passages, pp. 243–4. 32 in “untimely Monuments: stoicism, history, and the Problem of utility in The Winter’s Tale and Pericles,” ELH 70 (2003): 922, amelia Zurcher describes “passionate anger and stoic resignation” as “two sides of the same coin.” in Stoicism, Politics, and Literature in the Age of Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 3, Andrew Shifflett similarly defines Stoicism as “the manipulation of anger for political ends.” 33 see McManus in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and the Reading of Women, pp. 204–5.

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Fig. 7.1

John James Halls, Winter’s Tale. Antigonus—“This is the chase— Well may I get aboard!” Act 3, Scene 3, engraving, 1807, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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II in The Winter’s Tale men of feeling are often associated with domestic spaces—a castle, a nursery, a private chamber, or a shepherd’s cottage. the notion of domesticity commonly refers to one’s family, house, or country. throughout shakespeare’s play a number of men long for their family members or homeland. similar to leontes, who grieves over the loss of hermione and Mamillius through daily visits to their grave and no doubt for the missing Perdita, Polixenes and camillo feel the sentiment of nostalgia as a result of separation from their families and homes in Bohemia or Sicilia. The phenomenon they experience had no specific name when the play was written because the medical term “nostalgia,” which contains the roots nostos meaning “the return home” and algos meaning “pain,” was not introduced until the late seventeenth century.34 recalling Polixenes’ desire to go “home” to Bohemia at the beginning of the play (i.ii.165), camillo voices his nostalgic wish to return to sicilia in order to alleviate leontes’ “feeling sorrows” (iV.i.7).35 Both Polixenes and camillo articulate a sense of absence or lack generally characteristic of men and women of feeling in shakespeare’s domestic tragicomedy. like camillo, Perdita conveys her intuitive sense of alienation from her royal origins in act iV. she does so while thinking that she was born a shepherdess in Bohemia rather than a princess in sicilia. alienated from her royal family at birth, Perdita develops into an authoritative figure like Hermione on her adopted “father’s ground” and cheerfully acquiesces to his “will” that she play the celebrated part of mistress for the sheep-shearing feast (iV.iv.16, 71). this title, which is an honor and a sign of maturity for a shepherdess, endows her with the authority to give her stepbrother an extensive shopping list and to make elaborate flower and music arrangements for the mid-summer feast (IV. iii.41–2). her step-brother hints unknowingly at the amusing inappropriateness of a princess performing this role by muttering, “What will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on” (iV.iii.38– 40). the phrase, “she lays it on” indicates that Perdita performs her domestic tasks royally and perhaps overdoes it.36 unlike the old shepherd’s wife, who energetically fulfilled her duties as “pantler, butler, cook” for the feast, once it begins Perdita in the eyes of her father is “retired, / as if [she] were a feasted one”—a betraying sign of her royal origins (iV.iv.56, 62–3). overshadowed by the Queen, who is hibernating like a bear in sicilia, her adoptive mother in Bohemia is tellingly missing. like hermione, Perdita’s use of rhetoric underscores the increase of female authority within the seventeenth-century household. Prior to her famous, heated debate with Polixenes about grafted flowers during which she triumphs, Perdita notes that her garden is “barren” of “carnations and streak’d gillyvors, / Which some call 34 lowell gallagher, “‘this seal’d-up oracle’: ambivalent nostalgia in The Winter’s Tale,” Exemplaria 7 (1995): 465. 35 as Wayne argues in his discussion of the country–house poem “Penshurst,” such an “idealization of home ... marks the beginning ... of a self–conscious preoccupation with alienation in the modern world,” a term denoting “estrangement” from others in the seventeenth century: see Penshurst, p. 16. 36 J.h.d. Pafford, ed., The Winter’s Tale, p. 84.

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nature’s bastards” (iV.iv.82–4; my emphasis). her use of the term “barren” recalls the repetition of the words “bear,” “bearing,” and “barren” in the first half of the play. shortly before Perdita delivers her apostrophe to Proserpina, she refers unknowingly to her loss of hermione by mentioning in the above lines that her garden is lacking “carnations,” the flower that Robert Greene associates with Ceres, the mother of Proserpina, in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.37 although Perdita is an infant when leontes brands her a “bastard” in sicilia, she defends her sex authoritatively by refusing to plant “gillyvors,” which were associated with unchastity, in her garden.38 Her address to Proserpina, occasioned by her lack of spring flowers appropriate for a man of florizel’s age, alludes particularly to the loss of her birthright through the shepherdess’ inclusion of the phrase, “crown imperial”: o Proserpina, For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall from dis’s waggon! daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes or cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, that die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady Most incident to maids): bold oxlips and the crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack, to make you garlands of; and my sweet friend, to strew him o’er and o’er! (iV.iv.116–29; my emphasis)

When Florizel suggests that Perdita’s desire to “strew” him with flowers likens him to a “corpse,” she transforms his allusion to this renaissance mourning ritual into her own imagining of vital pleasure: “not like a corpse; or if—not to be buried, / But quick, and in my arms” (129–32). here her pun on the notion of dying is implied. although Perdita’s frank attitude toward sexuality recalls hermione’s, her relationship with florizel redeems the female body from the imaginary taint that the tyrannically suspicious leontes placed on it sixteen years ago. unlike leontes and Polixenes, florizel responds affectionately rather than anxiously to Perdita and her authoritative rhetoric. He defines his own identity in terms of his relationship with her: “for i cannot be my own, nor anything to any, if / i be not thine” (iV.iv.43–5). he thereby fashions a version of masculinity that embodies a dimension of femininity. later, florizel confesses that were he “crown’d the most imperial monarch” and “had force and knowledge / More than was ever man’s,” he “would not prize them / Without her love” (373–7; my emphasis). as illustrated by his intratextual allusion to her earlier phrase “crown imperial” (126), the interconnectedness of his verse and Perdita’s points to the mutuality of their relationship. although camillo remarks on the “sound affection” between florizel 37 thomas greene associates the carnation with ceres in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay V.iii.2085. see Pafford, ed., The Winter’s Tale, p. 83. 38 OED, “gillyflower,” 2.b.

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and Perdita (380), Polixenes becomes enraged at the notion of florizel marrying a lowly shepherdess: and you, enchantment,— ... if ever henceforth thou these rural latches to his entrance open, or hoop his body more with thy embraces, i will devise a death as cruel for thee as thou art tender to ’t. (435–42)

Polixenes perceives florizel’s affection for Perdita as a threat to the class and gender hierarchies. Embodying a new generation of manhood, Florizel attempts to redefine the existing system of patrilineal inheritance by exclaiming, “from my succession wipe me, father; i / am heir to my affection” (481–2). the more equitable model for marriage he imagines is based on the value of individual feeling between relatively equal partners, despite their inherited social rank.39 nevertheless, he falls in love with a young woman of aristocratic birth whose lowly status as a shepherdess is temporary. his feelings for her are less radical than they might appear and ultimately reinforce the early modern notion that a man should marry a woman from his own social rank. like florizel, the rogue autolycus anticipates the rise of lower- and middleranking Englishmen no longer dependent on the dominant, economic system of patrilineal inheritance. These types of men tended to define their worth in terms of income rather than rank by birth. in J. g.a. Pocock’s Marxist account of the rise of the bourgeoisie in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, he argues that “roving masterless men” as early as the thirteenth century were the “pioneers” of these largely middle-class men in England, who participated in an increasingly “entrepreneurial and market society.”40 in The Winter’s Tale autolycus, who “served Prince florizel” but is “now out of service,” epitomizes this type of masterless man (iV.iii.14). he becomes a “gentleman” by exchanging clothes with florizel to facilitate florizel’s and Perdita’s escape from Bohemia (iV.iv.636). as a result, autolycus rises in social status with relative ease. in his borrowed robes he exclaims, “Whether it like me or no, i am a courtier” (730). likewise, courtiers in the sixteenth century exhibited a remarkable degree of social mobility, a trend that continued among other types of lower-, middle-, and upper-ranking men throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.41 in 1748 a reporter on The Present State of Great Britain stated that “the title of gentleman is commonly given to all that distinguish themselves from the 39 in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800 stone notes that seventeenthcentury nonconformists demanded “freedom for children in the choice of spouse” because of the emphasis on greater display of affection between marriage partners (p. 263). in The Culture of Sensibility Barker-Benfield uses the phrase “alternative hierarchy” to describe the social and political impact of sensibility in richardson’s Clarissa (p. 289). 40 Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1985), p. 53. BarkerBenfield elaborates on how these masterless men transformed the economy, pp. 83–4. 41 see stephen greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1980), p. 46.

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common sort of people, by a genteel dress and carriage, good education, learning, or an independent station.”42 in Timber Jonson heartedly encourages such social mobility. as i mentioned earlier, he argues that the status of “gentleman” should result from virtuous action, wit, and labor rather than inheritance. like autolycus, the old shepherd and clown who originally discover the infant Perdita on the shores of Bohemia become socially mobile, emotionally expressive gentlemen as a result of the fine clothes they wear. Their elevation in social status toward the end of the play results from their providing material proof of Perdita’s royal origins such as “the mantle of Queen hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, [and] the letters of antigonus found with it” (V.ii.32–5). the following dialogue between the Shepherd and Clown illustrates how the clothing they wear defines their social status instead of visa versa: shep. come, boy; i am past moe children, but they sons and daughters will be all gentlemen born. Clo.

You are well met, sir. You denied to fight with me this other day, because I was no gentleman born. see you these clothes? say you see them not and think me still no gentleman born: you were best say these robes are not gentleman born ...(V.ii.127–33)

the old shepherd’s and clown’s rise in social status, which is signaled by their fine clothes, results in a shift in their emotional expressiveness as well. The Clown subsequently remarks in response to the sentimental family reunion of leontes, Polixenes, and Perdita toward the end of the play that “there was the first gentlemanlike tears that ever we shed” (V.ii.144–5). here the clown suggests that a greater latitude for displaying emotion accompanies their rise in social status. david garrick’s shedding of tears when he performed the part of repentant leontes in the commercially successful Florizel and Perdita provides further evidence that demonstrations of affect are not only acceptable, but in vogue for middle- and upperranking men in eighteenth-century England. This entrepreneur presented the figure of leontes on stage as an eighteenth-century man of sensibility. at the end of The Winter’s Tale Leontes acts as a man of feeling defined by domestic concerns. fleeing Polixenes’ wrath in Bohemia, florizel entreats leontes to intercede compassionately on his behalf: Beseech you, sir, remember since you ow’d no more to time than i do now: with thought of such affections, step forth mine advocate ... (V.i.217–20)

Prior to their arrival, Leontes exhibits his remorse over doubting the fidelity of hermione years ago by stating, “Whilst i remember / her, and her virtues, i cannot forget / My blemishes in them, and so still think of the wrong i did myself” (V.i.6–9). florizel and Perdita, however, alleviate his guilt by providing him with the opportunity 42 Quoted in Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), p. 327, and Barker-Benfield, p. 86.

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for making amends for prior mistakes. Leontes finds his own doubting of Hermione unforgivable. at the beginning of the play he voices his lack of faith in her when he asks Mamillius skeptically, “art thou my calf? ... they say we are / almost as like as eggs; women say so, / that will say any thing” (i.ii.127–31). although tyrannical leontes failed to read the faces of Mamillius and Perdita as “cop[ies]” of his own (ii.iii.99), he now recognizes that florizel’s “mother was most true to wedlock ... for she did print [his] royal father off, / conceiving [him]” (V.i.123–5). he imagines this mother figure as faithful and generative rather than contaminating, a sharp contrast to his earlier perspective on the matter of the female body. in response to florizel’s request that leontes mediate between him and Polixenes in sicilia, the King takes action by vowing, “upon which errand / i now go toward him” (V.i.230–31). though a knight errant from the romance tradition traditionally fights in a militaristic context, leontes uses the term “errand” to describe the familial, private challenge of pacifying Polixenes. he thereby embodies a relatively new kind of non-violent, feminized hero increasingly characteristic of the seventeenth century and the cult of sensibility in the eighteenth century.43 in the climactic scenes at the end of The Winter’s Tale Paulina further attests to the increase of female authority in domestic settings by educating leontes in preparation for his reunion with Hermione. Leontes confirms Paulina’s authority over him when he swears “never to marry, but by [her] free leave” (V.i.70). authoritative women, like Paulina and hermione, pose less of a threat to leontes at this point in the play. his sense of his masculinity is no longer paralyzed by false imaginings of their femininity tainted by sexual infidelity. Paulina, who controls the future of his lineage and even his power to reproduce by deciding when (and if) he will remarry, plays an active role in leontes’ newfound respect for femininity, an aspect of himself that he rejected when he imprisoned his wife and exiled his daughter, even though the infant’s body was a “copy of the father” (ii.iii.100). When hermione descends from the statue pedestal, Paulina teaches leontes to believe in the power of a winter’s tale, a discounted kind of story usually told by women. the sentimental reunion of Leontes, Hermione, and Perdita defies reason and is as marvelous and unbelievable as “an old tale” (V.iii.117). leontes’ ecstatic vision of hermione’s return to life as orchestrated by Paulina at her house thereby inverts the customary hierarchy of reason over emotion and masculinity over femininity for a time. although she is in charge of leontes for sixteen years, she ultimately relinquishes her power over him. as a result of leontes’ educative dialogue with Paulina, he acknowledges the limits of reason and empiricism and the corresponding boundlessness of familial affection and faith. although leontes “saw” hermione “as [he] thought, dead,” the inexplicable fact that she is now living awakens his “faith” in what he cannot see (V.iii.95). initially skeptical, Polixenes and camillo are unsettled by hermione’s return to life. they attempt to control the seeming apparition by demanding (in vain) a rational explanation for it from Paulina: “make it manifest ... how stolen from 43 see rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature, pp. xii–xiii and xx–xxi. Barker-Benfield argues that sentimental reformers targeted in particular “the dueling warrior mentality of an earlier aristocracy” (p. 248).

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the dead!” (114–15; my emphasis). leontes, however, confronts the limitations of human knowledge during the reawakening scene without lapsing into disbelief, as he did previously when he doubted the paternity of his children. He also affirms the inestimable value of affection within a family. When leontes pairs Paulina with camillo, he exhibits respect for what lies beyond rational comprehension by explaining that he “partly know[s] his mind” (142). By silently accepting the partner he chooses for her, Paulina relinquishes her power over leontes and his lineage and submits to his controlling hand in the matter of her remarriage. nevertheless, she challenges the existing social structure for a time in a romance that envisions the possibility of relatively fluid gender identities—those that allow for the blurring, transgression, or reinvention of early modern categories of masculinity and femininity.

8.

nightmarish Visions of grief: lamentable Men in shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne exhibit a number of connections in relation to shifting categories of masculinity and the emotion of grief in the seventeenth century. Both these works include nightmarish visions experienced by grieving fathers or mothers bereft of their children.44 Walton conveys his culture’s increasing tolerance of demonstrative mourning in bereaved men and women by fashioning a saintly figure with a heroic capacity for suffering, enduring, and articulating his grief.45 his linking of donne’s prophetic vision of his wife, anne More, with a dead child in her arms to those by st augustine and Monica reinforces the ideal, saintly image he projects for his subject. in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum aemilia lanyer similarly presents christ as the epitome of the emotionally expressive saint whose mother sheds an abundance of holy tears in response to his crucifixion. Likewise, in Donne’s own poems and sermons he commonly yokes masculinity to positive displays of emotion. in Walton’s biography his emphasis on donne’s grief coincides with a lively, literary tradition of the humanist scholar prone to melancholy such as hamlet. he transforms donne’s familial grief into a masculine, intellectual virtue. yet in Elizabeth cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, a stoic closet drama, herod goes mad as a result of his excessive, immoderate grief in response to his execution of his innocent wife for her supposed infidelity. He is an exemplum of the vice of emotional excess in men. the tragic plot of cary’s play fulfills Leontes’ worst nightmare. The Winter’s Tale and The Life of Dr. John Donne include not only demonstrative family men subject to such grievous nightmares but also personalized, individualized memorials for the dead. the affective responses these memorials evoke from fictive men and women testify to the notable degree 44 Pafford in his edition of The Winter’s Tale, p. xxv, cites antigonus’ vision of hermione in The Winter’s Tale together with donne’s vision of his wife in Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne when arguing that those in the seventeenth century believed that it was possible to see the spirit of a living person. 45 in Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 2, Pigman argues that “by the first decades of the seventeenth century total condemnation of mourning entirely disappears from the moral and theological tracts, while increasingly more tolerant conceptions of moderation take its place.”

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of respect for the emotional lives of both sexes in a variety of seventeenth-century, literary works. the potential dangerousness but ultimate dignity of the emotions are focal in this domestic tragicomedy and biography. I Both shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne refer explicitly to parents who mourn for their loss of children. in The Winter’s Tale composed in 1611–12 antigonus experiences a haunting vision of grieving hermione when he abandons the infant Perdita on the shore of Bohemia. as a result, he falsely concludes that hermione has died in sicilia and believes he has seen her ghost. antigonus is subsequently devoured by a bear and never sees his wife and three daughters again. in The Life of Dr. John Donne Walton recounts donne’s similarly nightmarish vision of his wife in february 1612 after she had suffered a miscarriage and previously endured the deaths of four out of twelve children. according to Walton, donne experiences this vision while he is in Paris and his wife is living during the outbreak of the plague in london, though she was actually on the isle of Wight at the time.46 like leontes and antigonus, donne becomes a father deprived of family members. although the direct, intertextual connection between shakespeare’s and Walton’s representations of fathers who experience visions of grieving mothers is difficult to prove, their works emerge out of a common literary heritage and in response to similar cultural practices of gendering grief and mourning. hermione in The Winter’s Tale and anne More in the Life of Dr. John Donne exhibit comparable, affective gestures characteristic of mourning women in the classical, medieval, and early modern periods. these gestures often include weeping eyes, an open mouth for unrestrained lamentation, hair hanging down to the shoulders, and outstretched arms. In medieval and early Renaissance art common gestures of self-inflicted violence among grieving women are the pulling of the hair and the tearing of the face with the fingernails.47 in ovid’s Metamorphoses ceres exhibits a number of these gestures of grief when Proserpina is abducted by dis: she tears her hair and beats her breast (V.472–3). traditionally, women enact these highly ritualized mourning practices. in florence from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, women of the family and neighborhood would gather around the corpse laid on a low bier and begin the ritualized practice of loosening their hair from their headdresses, crying loudly, and tearing their hair and faces.48 nevertheless, bodily gestures evocative of intense emotion are not necessarily limited to women in the early modern and modern periods. in Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” (1893) a male figure holds his head in his hands and stares ahead with eyes wide and mouth gaping. Munch translated this painting into a lithograph in 1895 so that the image could be easily reproduced. in the entry in his diary dated January 22, 1892 he attributes this painting to the sudden “breath of melancholy” he experienced in Nice when he “sensed a great, infinite scream 46 r.c. Bald, John Donne: A Life (new york: oxford university Press, 1958), p. 114. 47 Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art, pp. 57–86. 48 Barasch, p. 88.

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pass through nature.” as Munch’s painting and diary entry suggests, transforming grief into melancholy in response to a horrific experience of loss makes such intense expressions of feeling culturally acceptable in a man living in nineteenth-century Europe. like the painter Munch, Walton the biographer similarly translates donne’s grief into the culturally-sanctioned emotion of melancholy for men.

Fig. 8.1

Edvard Munch, Geschrei (The Scream), lithograph, 1895, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Both shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne include similar visions of grieving mothers facing the loss of their children. their works reflect seventeenth-century attitudes toward the prophetic power of these maternal visions. antigonus recounts his vision of hermione in the following manner: ... to me comes a creature, sometimes her head on one side, some another; i never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill’d, and so becoming: in pure white robes, like very sanctity, she did approach My cabin where i lay: thrice bow’d before me, and, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes Became two spouts ... (iii.iii.19–26)

recalling a ship under full sail, this iconographic “vessel ... in pure white robes” is overflowing with grief.49 hermione bows before anigonus three times in a ritualized fashion. the intensity of her sorrow renders her inarticulate, as his phrase describing her as “gasping to begin some speech” illustrates. she subsequently delivers a commanding, vengeful speech in which she proclaims that antigonus will never see Paulina and his children again as a result of “the ungentle business” of abandoning the infant Perdita in Bohemia (34). antigonus believes that his vision of hermione is prophetic. he concludes, “dreams are toys: / yet for this once, yea, superstitiously, / i will be squar’d by this” (39–41). although hermione weeps and wails in a highly ritualized fashion and is initially inarticulate in his vision, she ultimately wields a considerable degree of rhetorical agency when she prophesies correctly that he will never see his family again. immediately after hermione appears before antigonus, he is devoured by a bear. in the Life of Dr. John Donne Walton attests to the prophetic power of donne’s vision of his grieving wife as well. according to Walton, donne says to his friend, sir robert drury, “i have seen a dreadful Vision since i saw you: i have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders and a dead child in her arms.”50 her passing by him “twice” suggests that her mourning gestures are ritualistic or at least repetitive. though she remains silent, her hair “hanging about her shoulders” conveys her grief for the “dead child” she cradles in her arms. robert drury replies that donne’s vision of his wife is “the result of some melancholy dream.” The female figure Donne envisions exhibits a number of signs of grief and mourning, including hair hanging down to the shoulders, ritualized movements, and silence that speaks more loudly than a scream. Walton intensifies the fictional credibility of Donne’s vision by noting that a messenger reports fourteen days later that Mrs. donne in fact delivered a “dead child ... about the very hour” of donne’s vision (40, 42). 49 Pafford, ed., The Winter’s Tale, p. 67. 50 izaak Walton, The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson (1929; reprint, london: oxford university Press, 1950), p. 40. future quotations of Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.

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Walton includes donne’s vision of his wife for a number of narratological and psychological reasons. as both shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne illustrate, tales of apparitions and stories about the supernatural appealed to seventeenth-century audiences and readers. Walton’s inclusion of Donne’s vision may also reflect the historical fact of his subject’s ill-health in Paris during which he could have experienced such an hallucination of his wife.51 Whether fictional or not, Donne’s vision of his wife holding a miscarried child in her arms is most likely a projection of his own fears and anxieties about her pregnancy at a time when her health was precarious and after a number of their other children had died. in Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne the figure of Donne he imagines describes the cause of his “sadness” in a letter dated fictitiously as August 10 and sent from his hospital in Micham: i have already lost half a child, and with that mischance of hers, my wife is fallen into such a discomposure, as would afflict her too extreamly, but that the sickness of her other children stupefies her ... and these meet with a fortune so ill provided for Physick, and such relief, that if god should ease us with burials, i know not how to perform even that: but I flatter my self with this hope, that I am dying too: for I cannot waste faster then by such griefs. (36; my emphasis)

interestingly, donne refers to the burial of his children as a performance, which he is reluctant to undertake because of the emotional strain and his lack of money. in this context the word “perform” means “to do, go through, or execute formally or solemnly (a duty, public function, ceremony, or rite).”52 the performance of some kind of mourning ritual is often essential for the grieving process. from a psychological standpoint donne mourns the loss of his children by imagining his wife in terms of her ritualized gestures of grief. in this way her weeping and wailing are empowering for him. Visions of grieving women who weep, wail, shriek, and tear their hair often contribute to male performances of ritual acts of mourning in early modern works as various as these by shakespeare and donne. in The Winter’s Tale leontes ritually mourns the loss of his family by shedding tears beside the supposed grave of his wife and son for sixteen years until Perdita returns to sicilia as a young women. he vows to begin performing this ritualized expression of grief shortly after Mamillius dies: “once a day i’ll visit / the chapel where they lie, and tears shed there / shall be my recreation” (iii.ii.238–40). recalling antigonus, leontes experiences a brief, but haunting vision of weeping hermione that expresses his own sorrow over the loss of his wife and children. as i discussed earlier, he envisions hermione’s “sainted spirit” possessing “her corpse” and imagines looking upon her “full eyes,” presumably of tears (V.ii.53, 57–8). hermione states, however, that she is not prone to tears (ii. i.108). in leontes’ vision the tears he attributes to her are a projection of his own contrition and remorse for doubting her fidelity to him and triggering the destruction of his family. likewise, donne’s vision of his wife with her hair at her shoulders and 51 see Bald, John Donne, pp. 114–15, for a discussion of the possible, historical facts surrounding anne donne’s miscarriage. 52 OED, “perform,” 7.a.

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an infant in her arms is a manifestation of his own grief for the child he fears is dead. this lamentable, maternal vision is psychologically regenerative for him. Walton’s presentation of donne as a melancholic, saintly man vulnerable to prophetic visions is suggestive of the increasingly positive association of masculinity and affect in the seventeenth century. his synthesis of a number of letters by donne into extracts dated fictitiously as Aug. 10 and Sept. 7 contributes to the reader’s impression of donne’s gloom and despair at Micham. in the letter dated sept. 7 he focuses on donne’s melancholy by cutting the following phrase from one of the original letters, “in a place and season where i see every thing bud forth” and retaining “’tis now Spring, and all of the pleasures of it displease me; every other tree blossoms, and I wither.” Walton also replaces donne’s “elaborate expression of gratitude” in one of his original letters with “an unmixed cry of woe” and adds the phrase “in this time of my sadness.”53 The biographer’s intensification rather than suppression of his subject’s grief and melancholy is suggestive of his and his culture’s tolerance and even celebration of demonstrative men of feeling in the seventeenth century.54 although it is debatable whether or not donne actually experienced such an affective vision of his wife’s miscarriage, Walton depicts him as a religious man worthy of sainthood by including it in his 1675 revision of the 1640 version of the Life of Dr. John Donne.55 he refers to donne’s vision as one that “will beget some wonder” at a time when many think that “Visions and Miracles are ceas’d” (40–41). Walton cites Brutus’ vision of Julius caesar and Monica’s visions of st augustine’s conversion as legendary precedents for the fact that donne indeed saw this vision of his wife (41). he emphasizes donne’s holiness by inserting the episode of his nightmarish vision of grief immediately prior to his decision to leave “secular employment” and “to enter into the Ministery” (45). Walton further underscores the saintly dimension of the future dean of st Paul’s church by stating, “now the English Church had gain’d a second st. Austine, for, i think, none was so like him before his conversion: none so like st. Ambrose after it: and if his youth had the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellencies of the other; the learning

32.

53 r.E. Bennett, “Walton’s use of donne’s letters,” Philological Quarterly 16 (1937):

54 in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800, pp. 246–7, stone discusses the cultural tolerance for men and women displaying grief for their children and mourning spouses in the seventeenth century. tombs at this time emphasized such tolerance for grieving family members by featuring widows mourning the effigies of their husbands. In Grief and English Renaissance Elegy, p. 3, Pigman adds that this increase of tolerance for mourning by the seventeenth century does not suggest that those in the sixteenth century felt the loss of loved ones less deeply. 55 in Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor–Stuart Writing (new haven: yale university Press, 1974), p. 3, Judith h. anderson discusses Walton’s Life of Donne in relation to the hagiographic tradition. she notes that Walton’s unusual number of sacred analogies comparing Donne to biblical figures and saints are unprecedented since Bede’s Life of Saint Cuthbert (p. 65). see david novarr, The Making of Walton’s Lives (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1958), p. 111, for a discussion of the relation of donne’s vision of his wife to those experienced by st augustine and Monica.

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and holiness of both” (47–8). Walton similarly stresses the holiness of the “tears” donne sheds during his own funeral sermon by comparing him to st augustine, who “towards his dissolution wept abundantly” (62). the biographer’s emphasis on the dignity of tears is in keeping with spenser’s augustinian view of the emotions in Books i and Vi of The Faerie Queene rather than Jonson’s stoical, rigorous attitude toward them in Timber. in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum aemilia lanyer presents christ as the ideal fulfillment of the saintly, emotionally expressive man whose mother mourns his death with holy tears. lanyer bases her poem on Matthew 26:30–28:10, the only biblical version of the Passion of christ that includes the prophetic dream of Pilate’s wife in which she foretells that her husband “should’st have nothing to doe at all / With that just man.”56 By emphasizing Pilate’s wife to an unusual degree lanyer, who was Jewish through her father’s side of the family, implicitly allies herself with a female prophet. she underscores the prophetic dimension of her own poem by including a dream-vision dedication to Mary sidney, whose mourning for her brother, sir Philip sidney, was culturally prominent (137–43). Mourning women in lanyer’s poem display their potential agency by attempting to use their tears to dissuade christ’s tormentors from crucifying him. despite christ’s own “great grief and pain” during the Procession to Mount calvary, he turns and speaks words of comfort to those “poore women” whose “tears powr’d forth apace / on Flora’s bankes, like shewers of aprils raine” (972–94, 981). although the “teares,” “sighes,” and “cries” of the female mourners cannot persuade “spightfull men” to cease their cruelty, the women’s displays of affect ally them with the son of god (996). the poet thereby inverts the conventional gender hierarchy by presenting empathetic women as ultimately more powerful than these heartless men crucifying christ. dedicated to nine noble women, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is protofeminist in part because lanyer presents weeping and wailing as god-given strengths for women rather than weaknesses. unlike donne and Walton, lanyer conveys little fear or anxiety in response to excessive demonstrations of grief by both sexes.57 the Virgin Mary’s grief for her 56 susanne Woods, ed., The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaerorum (new york: oxford university Press, 1993), p. xxxvi. Quotations of lanyer’s poem are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. 57 lanyer’s tolerance of immoderate mourning is somewhat unusual in post-reformation England. in Telling Tears in the Renaissance lange argues that donne was convinced that “to mourn passionately for love of this world, like immoderate grief for anyone’s death, is not the right use of tears” (p. 181). in “sisters of Magdalene” Phillippy demonstrates that for lanyer “excessive mourning is both desirable and spiritualized” (p. 105). see also hodgson, “Prophesy and gendered Mourning in lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum”: 101, for a discussion of how lanyer presents herself as a prophetic poet in the elegiac mode by defending the affective displays of biblical female mourners. i am generally indebted to hodgson’s study as well as to several others that address lanyer’s radical undermining of the existing gender and social hierarchy: see, for example, lisa schnell, “‘so great a difference is there in degree’: aemilia lanyer and the aims of feminist criticism,” Modern Language Quarterly 57 (1996): 23–35 and catherine Keohane, “‘that blindest Weakenesse be not over-bold’: aemilia lanyer’s radical unfolding of the Passion,” ELH 64 (1997): 359–89.

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son with his “bleeding body” is so extreme that she “all comfortlesse in depth of sorrow drowned” (1010, 1012). her cleansing tears, which she does not shed in vain, “wash away his pretious blood” so that future sinners do not “tread it under feet” when worshiping him (1017–19). in this way her weeping is spiritually useful. likewise, the feminine “teares” christ sheds on the cross metamorphose into purifying agents of grace and reveal his divinity. lanyer describes the “holy rivers” of his grace as “pure celestiall springs,” “clear christall streames,” and “faire floods” that are redemptive and “purging” for sinners (1729–33). In Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum christ becomes feminized in a positive sense through his alliance with a community of saintly women who weep and wail. lanyer defends the role of mourning traditionally ascribed to women and at the same time presents herself as a prophetic poet writing in an elegiac mode, which is conventionally associated with moving displays of affect. the empowering tears focal in her devotional poem become the keystone for building her literary reputation. like Jonson, lanyer attempts to gain the rights and privileges of the exclusive, aristocratic coterie she addresses through the art of writing. she, too, argues for social equity during her dedication to Queen anne among others by describing christ as “the hopefull haven of the meaner sort” (50). donne’s own secular and sacred poetry lends further support to Walton’s emphasis on his subject’s kinship with St Augustine, who stresses the dignified humanity of intense affect and tears embodied in perfect form by lanyer’s christ. in “a nocturnal upon saint lucy’s day, Being the shortest day,” a secular love poem that possibly memorializes the death of his wife, donne attests to the violent, all-consuming nature of his grief in response to “her death” by stating, “Oft a flood / have we two wept, and so / drowned the whole world” (22–4, 28).58 here his grief is potentially self-destructive. in holy sonnet iii donne describes his remorse for his prioritizing of erotic love, a type of “idolatry” that included his passion for anne More that eventually led to their marriage, as “vehement griefe.” this phrase emphasizes the force and intensity of the passionate “sinne” itself as well as its “punishment.” the augustinian conception of the psyche includes such inner conflicts characteristic of those Donne recounts in these poems. Both St Augustine and donne believe that they cannot overcome such destructive impulses and that they are in dire need of grace.59 yet in the context of donne’s sacred poetry his tears of remorse are a gift from heaven and far from self-destructive. in holy sonnet V he asks god to “pour new seas” in his eyes so that he can weep “earnestly” as a sign of his contrition, cleansing, and “heal[ing].” in holy sonnet Xiii donne’s description of christ on the cross includes “tears in his eyes” that “quench the amazing light.” 58 The Complete English Poems of John Donne, ed. c.a. Patrides (london: dent, 1985), p. 91. future quotations of donne’s poetry are from this edition. see also louis l. Martz, “donne and herbert: Vehement grief and silent tears,” John Donne Journal 7 (1988): 22. Martz argues that Donne’s poetics displays an affinity with Roman Catholicism that was revitalized “under the impact of the renaissance and counter-reformation in spain and France and Italy.” He concludes that Donne “seems to show a special affinity with Spain— with the vehement grief of its bleeding statues and the strenuous, anxious art of El greco” (pp. 33–34). 59 Bouwsma, A Usable Past, p. 56.

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Here Christ’s tears provide those who view his crucifixion with access to otherwise inapproachable celestial power. donne, who was reportedly a popular preacher as dean of st Paul’s church, was the only one during the sixteenth- or seventeenth-century in England to deliver a sermon based on the biblical verse “and Jesus wept” (John 11.35). this sermon is based on st augustine’s original, “allegorical rendering” of christ’s tears in response to the death of lazarus and his raising him from the dead. donne argues in the sermon that Jesus’ tears represent his humanity in a positive sense and reveal that he was a “true man.”60 in an augustinian fashion the preacher emphasizes the virtues of the emotions that can become dangerous if misdirected. he states, for example, that “inordinateness of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts; but indolence, emptiness, privation of affections, makes any man at all times, like stones, like dirt” (300). in Deaths Duel, the final sermon that Donne preached five weeks before his death, he demonstrates that weeping and wailing are integral to the human life cycle. one begins with “cryes” at birth, begs for “Baptisme” with “teares,” and ends with “cryes” at funerals memorializing one’s death (X.11.233). in keeping with donne’s own poems and sermons, Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne reflects the gradual, literary and cultural shift from predominantly stoical, neoclassical models of manhood to those that were increasingly tolerant of expressions of feeling from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth century in England. after anne More dies, donne buries with “his tears, all his earthly joys in his most dear and deserving wives grave; and betook himself to a most retired and solitary life.” according to Walton, donne grieves privately and without limit over the loss of his wife. like a “Pelican in the wilderness,” he retires from society where “he might bemoan himself without witness or restraint, and pour forth his passions like Job in the days of his affliction” (51). Donne’s grief for his family is as intense and openly demonstrative as leontes’ in The Winter’s Tale. When donne incorporates Prophet Jeremy’s lamentation: “Lo, I am the man that has seen affliction” into the sermon he delivered at st clement’s church where his wife was buried, Walton exclaims that “his very words and looks testified him to be truly such a man.” he thereby links donne’s affective version of masculinity with the endurance of suffering that was becoming increasingly characteristic of seventeenthcentury literary heroes.61 Walton also notes that donne’s “sighs” and “tears” during this sermon moved the “affections” of “his hearers, as melted and moulded them into a companionable sadness” (52). like donne’s expressions of affect from the pulpit, which reportedly made him a memorable and inspiring preacher, garrick’s shedding of tears as leontes in Florizel and Perdita increased his ticket sales at the Drury Lane theater he managed in London. Walton’s saintly figure of Donne exhibits 60 The Sermons of John Donne, ed. Evelyn M. simpson and george r. Potter, vol. iV.13 (Berkeley: university of california Press, 1952–62), p. 327. future quotations from his sermons will be cited parenthetically by volume. lange notes the reported popularity of donne’s preaching and the augustinian source for this particular sermon in Telling Tears in the English Renaissance, pp. 161 and 173. i am generally indebted to her discussion of tears in donne’s poetry and sermons in Telling Tears, pp. 156–204. 61 rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature, p. xvi.

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a moving, emotional dimension characteristic of popular men of sensibility during the eighteenth century. although Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne casts men who weep and wail in a positive light, this prose biography also illustrates that the association of masculinity with affect continued to evoke a degree of literary and cultural anxiety in the seventeenth century. fearing the danger of excessive emotionalism, Walton counters the potential impression that his own “affection to [his] friend” donne “hath transported [him] to an immoderate commendation of his Preaching.” his downplaying of the role of enthusiasm in his description of donne preaching “like an angel from a cloud” makes his lavish, yet well-considered praise of his rhetorical gifts more convincing (49). Walton thereby confirms his belief in the power of the emotions to move as well as mislead audiences and readers. later in the Life of Dr. John Donne Walton represents immoderate expressions of emotion by a man as dangerous for the body as well as the mind. donne’s friends worry that the widower’s extreme capacity for grief will overtake him. they fear in particular that “immoderate study, and sadness for his wives death” added to the loss of five out of twelve children would “as Jacob said, make his days few.” Mortality reports in seventeenth-century london listed grief as the cause of death for 279 men and women.62 the fact that donne’s “health improved” fourteen months after his wife’s death as “his sorrows moderated” indicates that immoderate expressions of grief were indeed imagined as dangerous for men (and women) in the seventeenth century (54).yet literary representations of men grieving for vast periods of time were not necessarily unusual in the renaissance. leontes’ mourning his wife and children by shedding “tears” for sixteen years at the “chapel where they lie” is a case in point (iii.ii.239). in Elizabeth cary’s Tragedy of Mariam Herod exemplifies the potentially fatal dangers of unbridled passion, anger, and grief. this closet drama, which is the only surviving, printed play written by a woman, is profoundly stoic and closely follows the neoclassical, senecan tradition. cary, whose full title after an arranged marriage at age fifteen or sixteen was Lady Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, Viscountess Falkland, was largely self-educated and wrote this play about the tragic consequences of tyranny near the time that she married. like shakespeare’s hermione, cary’s Mariam is subject to her husband’s nightmarish fury and exclaims disbelievingly, “is this a dream?” when Herod accuses her not only of infidelity but also of conspiring to kill him.63 similar to hermione, Mariam responds stoically to her husband’s false accusations and her impending death. as nuntio reports, “ev’ry eye was moist but Mariam’s there” at the public spectacle of her execution (V.i.1935). herod’s impassioned desire to punish Mariam for her supposed deceit and treachery ultimately 62 anne laurence provides this useful statistic in “godly grief: individual responses to death in seventeenth-century Britain,” in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, ed. ralph houlbrooke (london: routledge, 1989), p. 75. 63 The Tragedy of Mariam in Renaissance Women: The Plays of Elizabeth Cary and the Poems of Aemilia Lanyer, ed diane Purkiss (london: William Pickering, 1994), p. 49, iV.iv.1398. future quotations of this play are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically.

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results in the widower’s immoderate, excessive grief and remorse that drive him to madness.64 in contrast to leontes, whose sixteen-year period of mourning ends when Paulina magically restores the statue of hermione to life, herod implores in vain, “is there no trick to make her breath again? ... / Why, yet methinks there might be found by art / strange ways of cure” (1966–9). in the stoic Tragedy of Mariam the consequences of herod’s furious lack of emotional restraint are irrevocable and reduce him to a “monster” subject to ignoble, bodily passions. he vows to withdraw into “some vault or den” where his “tears” may “beget a flood” that “in time” may “drown” him (2126–30). Yet Herod’s flowing tears offer the promise of redemption for his kingdom purified through the Christ-like death of the innocent Miriam. The confessional inscription on his monument, “‘here herod lies, that hath his Mariam slain’” serves as the tyrant’s woeful epitaph and outcry for grace (2135).65 cary’s own conversion to roman catholicism after twenty-three years of marriage—an independent act befitting Mariam’s willingness to confront Herod about his murder of her relatives—permanently separated her from her Protestant husband. in Walton’s biography that is dramatically more augustinian than stoic, he counters his readers’ potentially negative impressions of donne’s excessive emotionalism by presenting him as a melancholy scholar whose means of grieving for his family members is both holy and humane. linking familial grief to scholarly achievements tends to increase the acceptability of male demonstrations of emotion in seventeenth-century literary works. hamlet, who is famous for his sustained melancholia and grief for his father, is a scholar at Wittenberg before the play begins. only claudius, who is guilty of fratricide and eager to transform hamlet into the stoical man gertrude hopes will act as a “friend” and ally to the new King of denmark, refers to his step-son’s relatively brief, two-month period of mourning for his father as “unmanly grief” (i.ii.69, 94). interestingly, Walton refers to donne’s early, secular poetry—intellectual milestones—in terms reminiscent of his sustained grief for his wife’s miscarriage in 1612. according to Walton, “it is a truth, that in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been loosely (god knows too loosely) scattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short liv’d that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals” (61). Walton’s use of the term “abortive” emphasizes his view of the relative unproductiveness of donne’s career as a secular poet in comparison to his sacred calling as a preacher. his denigration of donne’s secular works, though an obvious misevaluation of their literary merit, 64 see Kennedy, Just Anger, p. 61. 65 in stoical writings “impetuous, theatrical, and effeminate men” such as herod share a number of traits with tyrants: see Marta straznicky, “‘Profane stoical Paradoxes’: The Tragedie of Mariam and sidnean closet drama,” ELR 24 (1994): 130 and rebecca W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (ithaca: cornell university Press, 1990), p. 31. i am indebted to sandra K. fischer’s reading of Miriam as a Christ figure whose death offers the possibility of the redemption of Herod’s kingdom through his flowing tears: see “Elizabeth Cary and Tyranny, Domestic and Religious” in Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson hannay (Kent: Kent state university Press, 1985), pp. 225– 37.

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furthers the biographer’s cause of presenting his subject as a holy man known for his sacred poetry and preaching. Walton perpetuates the masculine image of donne as a scholar by noting that from youth until age he “was employed in study” and by reporting further that his funeral portrait was painted in the intellectualized, private space of his “study” (78). donne’s donations to “poor scholars” were one of many signs of his generosity (70). Like the figure of Donne that Walton imagines, Jonson presents his familial grief in a scholarly, intellectual fashion. in “on My first son” published in 1616 the poet, playwright, and prose writer, whose means of representing the emotions is largely stoical, refers to the son he lost during the plague in london in the scholarly terms of “his best poem.”66 familial loss becomes personal and intellectual matter for Jonson and the figure of Donne that Walton fashions in his biography. II shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne not only include grieving men but also accentuate various ways in which forms of memorializing the dead—portraits, busts, statues, and funereal rituals—were becoming increasingly individualized, personalized, and sentimental in the seventeenth century. as lawrence stone notes in his pioneering discussion of affect and the individual during the early modern period, effigies on “sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries tombs” commonly exhibited coats of arms, which proclaimed the status of families, and other stock features that were more focal than personalized reminders of the deceased.67 in Walton’s biography donne’s orchestration and performance of his artful death highlight the somewhat more individualized dimension of public and private mourning practices in the later seventeenth century. he sends his friends “Seals, or Rings ... as memorials of him, and of his affection to them.” these mementoes bear “a figure of the body of Christ extended upon an anchor” and resemble paintings of “Christ crucified on the Cross” (63). In his discussion of mourning practices in the seventeenth century, ralph houlbrooke remarks that “the gap left by the abolition of catholic intercessory rites ... help[s] to explain the growth of private rites of 66 h & s, Works, 8:41. 67 The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800, p. 225. in Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000), pp. 49–52, nigel llewellyn reminds us that the prominent display of passion in the design of funeral monuments from the 1630s does not imply that those living prior to this time did not feel the emotional loss of a loved one as intensely. he urges that we “carefully distinguish between emotion felt and emotion displayed” (p. 50). llewellyn notes that “poignant images of loss” such as shrouded effigies on the titles pages of Donne’s Devotions (1634) and Death’s Duel (1631) suggest a “coincidence between the design of monuments” and lawrence stone’s discussion of the rise of affective relationships within families (p. 289). nevertheless, llwellyn remains skeptical that this transformation occurred within a limited period of time without a number of exceptions to the general rule and warns that adopting this view uncritically has the potential to distort our impressions of the emotional experience of individuals in prior centuries: see The Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual, c. 1500–c.1800 (london: reaktion Books, 1991), p. 28.

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commemoration and the increasing popularity of personal mementoes of the dead such as rings and lockets.”68 donne is exceptional, however, because he gives his friends these memorials in anticipation of his death. he demonstrates his affection for them while he is still living and implicitly takes part in their performance of mourning rituals for him. the famous painting of donne in his winding-cloth is characteristic of personalized, affective tributes to the deceased individual in the seventeenth century. at this time portraits of the dead were becoming increasingly accurate.69 as helen gardner argues, the painting of donne in a shroud provides “a striking and realistic portrait of [him].”70 nevertheless, this portrait is heroic and ideal as well. according to Walton, donne removed his clothes and replaced them with a winding-cloth knotted at his head and feet as dead bodies are usually prepared for “their Coffin, or grave” (78). Walton undoubtedly diverged from the facts of donne’s sickness and impending death by depicting him as standing on a wooden urn until the painting was finished. A man in a weakened condition would surely find it difficult to preach “his own Funeral Sermon” shortly before his death much less pose on an urn for this length of time. nevertheless, realism was not Walton’s ultimate goal. he presents the ideal figure of Donne in scholarly as well as heroic terms by placing the dramatic event of him posing for this portrait “in his large study,” a private and intellectualized space. he portrays his subject as a divine by emphasizing that part of the windingsheet was turned aside to reveal that his face “was purposely turned toward the East” in anticipation of “the second coming” of christ (78). in this well-known portrait donne symbolically emerges out of the ashes of the urn like a Phoenix, a christian symbol of resurrection. the statue of donne awaiting spiritual liberation in Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne further emphasizes how representations of the dead were becoming increasingly individualized and evocative of feeling in the seventeenth century. intriguingly, the marble statue of donne commissioned by dr fox in 1632 for the poet and preacher’s monument in st Paul’s church where he was buried resembles the life-like “stone” statue of hermione standing on a pedestal prior to her reunion with her family at the end of shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (V.i.37–8). according to Walton, the statue nicholas stone carves is “as lively a representation ... as Marble can express; a statue indeed so like dr Donne that ... it seems to breath faintly; and posterity shall look upon it as a kind of artificial Miracle” (270). in The Winter’s Tale leontes exclaims in response to the living statue of hermione before she descends from the pedestal when reunited with Perdita, “Would you not deem it breath’d?” (V.iii.64).71 the life-like statues in The Winter’s Tale and the Life of Dr. John Donne 68 houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, p. 254. 69 houlbrooke, p. 348. 70 helen gardner, “dean donne’s Monument in st. Paul’s” in Evidence in Literary Scholarship: Essays in Memory of James Marshall Osborn, ed. rene Wellek and alvaro ribeiro (oxford: clarendon, 1979), p. 35. 71 in Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, p. 348, houlbrooke remarks that shifts in the “styles and types of memorial” in the early modern period resulted in part from the influence of Renaissance artists on the Continent. The Dutch sculptor, Nicholas stone, to whom Walton refers in the Life of Dr. John Donne and the fictional, Italian sculptor

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provide examples of the increasing number and kind of personalized memorials of the dead, including busts, portraits, and statues in the seventeenth century. in these parallel works shakespeare and Walton focus on the potential dangerousness, but ultimate dignity of the emotions—jealousy, rage, grief, and affection—shared among members of a family or congregation. Emotionally-compelling memorials for family and friends pay tribute to the lasting power of such communal affection. in his biography Walton’s presentation of donne as a scholar, hero, and saint who grieves for his family and whose death bereaves his many friends accentuates his and his culture’s admiration of emotional expressiveness in men.72 he underscores donne’s wide-spread reputation as a scholar by remarking that his funeral was attended by “many persons of nobility, and of eminency for learning” despite his desire to be buried privately (82). their strewing donne’s grave “with an abundance of curious and costly flowers” recalls the mourning ritual that Gertrude performs for ophelia in Hamlet and to which Perdita alludes in The Winter’s Tale.73 in the Life of Dr. John Donne, however, men rather than women perform this ritual. this brief incident gestures toward the prominence of men as well as women in sustained, ritualized expressions of grief in the seventeenth century. Walton presents donne in heroic terms by noting that the warrior, Alexander the Great, similarly strewed flowers over the grave of mighty achilles. he also remarks that some of those who attended the funeral “continued morning and evening for many days” (82). his implicit pun on “morning” and “mourning” emphasizes donne’s christ-like resurrection from the grave. Walton represents this hope earlier in his biography through donne’s gesture of facing East in the portrait of himself in a shroud that he placed beside his deathbed in anticipation of the rising sun that represents christ (270). the biographer leaves a lasting impression of donne’s sainthood by comparing him to st stephen, who reportedly experienced such a vision of god after he died (75, 81). Walton captures the degree to which those in the seventeenth century admired the dimension of affect in men by exclaiming that donne “was by nature highly passionate, but more apt to reluct at the excesses of it. A great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit, that he never beheld the miseries of Mankind without pity and relief” (84). here Walton reinforces the notion that male demonstrations of emotion should be moderate instead of prone to “excesses.” In his final words about donne’s death, Walton emphasizes that the poet and preacher’s capacity for the emotions of passion, mercy, and pity is ennobling and saintly rather than weakening or effeminizing. as Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne illustrates, the ideal man in the seventeenth century was increasingly characterized by his affective rhetoric and and painter Julio romano in The Winter’s Tale exemplify the prominence of continental artists in these literary works. 72 cultural art forms in addition to literature provide further evidence of this shift in emotional registers. in Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, p. 227, houlbrooke argues that “a posture of contemplative melancholy became popular in portraitpainting and effigies.” He cites Roy Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (new york: routledge, 1969), pp. 21, 35–6, 352–3 and B.r. Kemp, Church Monuments (Princes risborough: shire, 1980), p. 99. 73 in Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 454, cressy discusses in further detail the mourning ritual of scattering flowers on the grave.

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tears. in short, Walton’s subject is an augustinian hero. like shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne, garrick’s Florizel and Perdita features numerous men of feeling particularly in vogue during the eighteenth century.

9.

fathers and rogues: Peddling Middleclass Values by shedding tears on stage in david garrick’s Florizel and Perdita throughout his career as actor, adapter, and manager of the drury lane theater in london from 1747–76, david garrick helped to popularize the notion of shakespeare as a man of feeling during an age in which the Bard was becoming a national icon. garrick produced twenty-six shakespeare plays, adapted twenty-two of them for the stage, and performed seventeen roles in original and adapted versions of his plays at drury lane and other venues. he was particularly good at eliciting affective responses from audience members as a result of the depth of feeling he conveyed through his eyes, vocal intonations, bodily gestures, and choreographed movements on stage. his shedding of tears when performing roles ranging from King lear to Leontes generated considerable revenue at the box office. As James Boswell recorded in his london journal in the early 1760s, he arrived two hours early to get a seat to see garrick play the role of lear: “i kept myself at a distance from all acquaintances, and got into a proper frame. Mr. garrick gave me the most perfect satisfaction. i was fully moved, and i shed an abundance of tears.”74 Boswell’s journal entry highlights the increasing acceptability (and financial marketability) of weeping and wailing men close to the time when garrick performed the role of teary-eyed leontes in Florizel and Perdita in 1756. throughout the eighteenth century shakespeare was becoming what Jonson describes as “soule of the age!” (or Man of the hour) in a poem commemorating the playwright. his works were increasingly available in printed editions by nicolas rowe, alexander Pope, and lewis theobald and through numerous performances of his plays and their adaptations on stage.75 shakespeare’s plays and poems appealed to male and female readers and audience members in the eighteenth century. in 1726 theobald notes that “there is scarce a Poet that our English tongue boasts of, who

74 London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. frederick a. Pottle (new york: Mcgraw-hill, 1950), p. 257 as cited in Woods, Garrick Claims the Stage, p. 141. 75 Ben Jonson, “to the memory of my beloved, the author Mr. William shakespeare: and what he hath left us,” h & s, Works, 8, p. 391, line 17. in “improving shakespeare: from the restoration to garrick” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, ed. stanley Wells and sarah stanton (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2002), p. 30, Jean i. Marsden notes the increasing availability of editions of shakespeare’s works in the eighteenth century.

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James McArdell after a picture by Benjamin Wilson, Mr. Garrick in Hamlet. Act 1. Scene 4, engraving, 1754, Folger Shakespeare Library

is more the subject of the ladies’ reading.”76 in the 1730s the shakespeare ladies’ club helped restore performances of his plays to the stage. they hoped to revive “the 76 lewis theobald, Shakespeare Restored (1726; reprint, new york: aMs Press, 1970), v–vi as quoted in Michael dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769 (oxford: clarendon, 1992), p. 147.

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manly genius of Eliza’s days ... by Shakespeare’s nervous lays,” a phrase found in the Epilogue to george lillo’s play Marina (1738). these lines from lillo’s adaptation of shakespeare’s Pericles are characteristic of idolatrous praise of the Bard during the eighteenth century. like garrick in Florizel and Perdita, lillo focuses in particular on the middle ranks in his popular tragedy, The London Merchant: or, The History of George Barnwell (1731), the title of which indicates that the subject of trade appealed to audience members at the time.77 during the 1740–41 london theater season one out of four plays performed on stage was by shakespeare—an impressive statistic highlighting how popular the Bard had become.

Fig. 9.2

James McArdell after a picture by Benjamin Wilson, Garrick as King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1, engraving, 1754, Folger Shakespeare Library.

although the original stage version of shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale did not generate substantial ticket sales in the 1740s, garrick was successful at marketing shakespeare as a man of sentiment for a middle-class audience in Florizel and Perdita. from 1740–41 henry giffard performed The Winter’s Tale in its entirety at the theatrical venue at Goodman’s Fields for nine nights for the first time since Shakespeare’s death. it was then revived at covent garden in 1741 but performed only four

77 dobson, The Making of the National Poet, p. 154.

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times and then dropped from the repertoire of all theaters in 1742.78 nevertheless, garrick’s Florizel and Perdita was wildly successful. it was based on Macnamara Morgan’s afterpiece entitled The Sheep Shearing: or, Florizel and Perdita first performed in 1754 at covent garden, a venue that competed with garrick’s drury lane. from 1754–1800 audience members most frequently saw The Winter’s Tale in its severely cut version as adapted by Morgan and garrick and later by george colman in The Sheep-Shearing: A Dramatic Pastoral (1777).79 garrick and colman followed Morgan’s lead by excising most of the first three acts of Shakespeare’s play set in Sicilia. All three adaptations begin in Bohemia where the pedlar figure autolycus is central. in garrick’s Prologue to the Winter’s Tale and Catharine and Petruchio, double features performed on the same evening, he represents the theater as a tavern advertised by a sign featuring “shakespeare’s head” and where “to draw in customers our bills are spread; (shewing a playbill)” (8–9). garrick, who left the wine trade to become an actor, anticipates criticism of his adaptation when he confesses to having compressed “five long acts” into “three” but vows to “lose no drop of that immortal man” (55).

Fig. 9.3

William Hogarth and Charles Grignion after a painting by William Hogarth, Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III: Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 7, engraving, 1746, Folger Shakespeare Library.

78 Garrick’s Adaptations of Shakespeare, 1744–1756, ed. William Pedicord and frederick louis Bergmann, vol 3. of The Plays of David Garrick, ed. harry thwaites Bergmann (carbondale: southern illinois university Press, 1981), p. 435. 79 dobson, p. 188.

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Even critics who responded negatively to garrick’s Florizel and Perdita implicitly remarked on the suitability of his adaptation for a socially mobile, upper middle-class audience interested in trade. theophilus cibber criticizes garrick for excising “in the alteration, many of the most interesting circumstances, the most affecting Passages” (my emphasis).80 like a number of shakespeare critics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cibber is struck in particular by the affective dimension of The Winter’s Tale. as the son of actor / adapter colley cibber, he was prone to despise garrick because he replaced his father as shakespeare’s richard iii on the eighteenthcentury stage. as a result, he depicts garrick as a “pilfering Pedlar in Poetry who thus shamefully mangles, mutilates, and emasculates his play.”81 he implicitly equates garrick with autolycus, a “pedlar” of ballads and other trinkets in The Winter’s Tale (iV.iv.183). captain thomas Morrow similarly writes in his journal in 1764 that garrick’s acting—in his Florizel and Perdita among other plays—is “fit only for a booth at a fair, not for royal theatres of the metropolis.”82 Morrow is referring to the type of booth at which london theater companies commonly performed plays during Bartholomew Fair, the final Wednesday through Saturday in August, before large, socially diverse crowds that sometimes included the Prince of Wales or the duke of cumberland.83 at these kinds of booths in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair fair workers sell pork, gingerbread, and perform ballads as well as puppet plays. the social mobility of ballad-toting autolycus in Florizel and Perdita makes him emblematic of such lower-, middle-, and upper-ranking tradesmen and merchants in the eighteenth century. He mirrors the financial state of those audience members who were no doubt attracted to the central figure of Autolycus in Garrick’s popular adaptation. garrick replaces the traditional class hierarchy based on inherited rank in The Winter’s Tale with one based on a market economy in Florizel and Perdita.84 this innovative, more equitable class system groups individuals according to income, regardless of birth. royal status and bonds of kinship are deemphasized as a result. in contrast to shakespeare, whose list of characters designates leontes and Polixenes as Kings, florizel as a Prince, and camillo and cleomines as lords of sicilia, Garrick lists these characters by their first names only, instead of by their rank within a royal hierarchy. in Florizel and Perdita cleomines exclaims to leontes as they arrive on the shore of Bohemia, “Bear up, my liege;—again welcome on shore,” 80 Garrick’s Adaptations of Shakespeare, 1744–1756, p. 432. 81 theophilus cibber, Two Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects (1756), pp. 36–7 as quoted in Marsden, “improving shakespeare,” p. 31. 82 Journal of Capt. Thomas Morris, dated “detroit, sept. 25, 1764” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846 (cleveland: a.h. clark, 1904–07) as quoted in Woods, Garrick Claims the Stage, p. 19. 83 arthur h. scouten, The London Stage, 1729–1747: A Critical Introduction (carbondale: southern illinois university Press, 1968), p. xlii. 84 dobson, p. 194, also notes garrick’s emphasis on a hierarchy based on income rather than rank. the playwright’s rewriting of shakespeare’s phrase describing Perdita as “not so rich in worth as beauty” (The Winter’s Tale V.i.213; my emphasis) as “not so rich in wealth as beauty” (Florizel and Perdita ii.i.538; my emphasis) suggests that social rank and income does not necessarily equate with a person’s worth.

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and leontes replies in an egalitarian vein, “flatter me not—in death distinctions cease—” (i.ii.39–40). in both shakespeare’s and garrick’s plays wealth rather than inherited rank makes the Old Shepherd who finds and adopts Perdita the envy of his neighbors. in The Winter’s Tale Polixenes describes the old shepherd as “grown into an unspeakable estate,” a word suggestive of a feudal hierarchy (iV.ii.41; my emphasis). yet in Florizel and Perdita Polixenes reports that the old shepherd is “a man, they say, that from very nothing, is grown rich beyond the imagination of his neighbors” (i.i.93–5; my emphasis). By opting for the phrase “grown rich” instead of “estate” the playwright denotes a lucky, yet lowly individual who acquires wealth within an increasingly mercantile economy. Garrick’s adaptation reflects the fact that an Englishman’s social class was increasingly tied to the kind of clothing and other luxuries his income enabled him to buy in the eighteenth century. autolycus can move from servant (to florizel at court), to thief, to pedlar, to balladeer, to courtier with a mere change of clothes. his becoming a courtier toward the end of Florizel and Perdita highlights the relative fluidly of the ranking system when Garrick—formerly a vintner—was producing plays with great financial success at Drury Lane. In Garrick’s adaptation Autolycus’ response to his change in social status is telling: “how fortune drops into the mouth of the diligent man! see, if i be not transformed courtier again—” (iii.i.1–2). he is now wearing silk, which was often a sign of elite social standing, through ingenuity and persistence rather than inherited rank. he confesses that his good fortune results from his exchanging garments with one of the “four silken gamesters” who attended the king (2). the clown subsequently remarks to the old shepherd about their transformations into courtiers by virtue of their clothing alone: “see, see, what a man you are now” (iii.ii.29). the clown refers explicitly to the importance of dress as a marker of social rank when he exclaims, “i must be gently consider’d—am not i a courtier? seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings?” (iii.iii.37–40). in Florizel and Perdita clothing often makes the man. in The Winter’s Tale autolycus exclaims to the old shepherd and clown while they are wearing their borrowed silk clothing, “let me have no lying: it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the lie” (iV.iv.722–3; my emphasis). in Florizel and Perdita, by contrast, garrick retains autolycus’ phrase referring to “tradesmen” but excises the pedlar’s phrase describing himself as a “soldier” (iii.i.65). in general, the commercially successful versions of masculinity garrick imagines are less feudally hierarchical and militaristic than shakespeare’s.85 garrick appeals to his middle-ranking audience members by making the egalitarian dimension implicit in The Winter’s Tale more explicit in Florizel and Perdita. in both plays Perdita and florizel express their vision of a society based on equality for men and women. in The Winter’s Tale Perdita does so by exclaiming in response to Polixenes’ rage over florizel’s proposed marriage to a lowly shepherdess: “the self same sun that shines upon his court / hides not his visage from our cottage but / looks on alike” (iV.iv.445–7). similarly, garrick’s Perdita uses the almost identical 85 in The Culture of Sensibility, p. xxvii, Barker-Benfield notes that in the eighteenth century “manhood” was “now expressing itself more immediately in commerce rather than war.”

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phrase, “the sun ... looks on all alike” when reacting to Polixenes’ rejection of her (II.i.474–6; my emphasis). The playwright’s addition of the word “all” intensifies the impulse for equity Perdita expresses. in garrick’s adaptation florizel voices his egalitarianism when he exclaims to Perdita in defiance of Polixenes’ wrath over their engagement: nor for Bohemia nor the pomp that may Be there out-gleen’d; for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide in unknown fathoms, will i break my oath to thee, my fair betrothed. With thee I’ll fly from stormy regions and low’ring sky; Where no base views our purer minds shall move; and all our wealth be innocence and love. (ii.i.583–90; my emphasis)

florizel’s emphasis on his and Perdita’s “wealth” independent of Polixenes’ is original in garrick’s version. likewise, in a merchant economy individuals accrue wealth through their wit and good fortune instead of their reliance on inherited bonds with kinsmen. at the end of the play Perdita’s reluctance to wear “this novel garment of gentility” when she prepares to marry florizel further indicates that clothing functions as a sign of social rank (iii.iv.253). its exchangeability makes it a marker of economic mobility as well. In Garrick’s adaptation he fashions male and female figures who largely conform to eighteenth-century, slightly prudish family values. his replacing florizel’s description of Perdita as his “belov’d” in The Winter’s Tale (iV.iv.493) with “betrothed” in Florizel and Perdita (ii.i.587) subdues their passion outside the bounds of engagement and marriage. overall, garrick’s version of the play is much less bawdy than Morgan’s The Sheep Shearing. Morgan adds the following “course jest” spoken by Polixenes when the King of Bohemia first sees Perdita with Florizel near the old shepherd’s house: this is the prettiest low-born lass, that ever ran on the green swerd; nothing she does, or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself, too noble for this place—had florizel But thought of bedding without wedding her, i well cou’d like his liking.86

although garrick bases most of his Florizel and Perdita on Morgan’s afterpiece, he cuts this passage that violates standards of decency for audience members uncomfortable with the candid, sexualized rhetoric denoting both hermione and Perdita as authoritative in shakespeare’s play. he not only cuts hermione’s bawdy talk that occurs during the omitted scenes in sicilia but also eliminates Perdita’s famous debate with Polixenes about grafted flowers during which she describes carnations as “bastards” in The Winter’s Tale iV.iv.83. garrick also excises her implicit erotic 86 Macnamara Morgan, The Sheep-Shearing: or, Florizel and Perdita. A Pastoral Comedy (london, 1762), p. 13, as cited by dobson, pp. 190–91.

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pun on “die” in response to Florizel’s remark that strewing him with flowers likens him to a “corse” (FP ii.i.115). in Florizel and Perdita she speaks “apart to florizel,” a stage direction original with garrick that emphasizes the importance of secrecy and discretion during their “private dalliances and love-whisperings” (ii.i.116, 1456). garrick, however, preserves the erotic nuances in autolycus’ ballads containing phallic metaphors such as “Pins and poaking-sticks of steel, / What maides lack from head to heel” (ii.i.251–2). in Florizel and Perdita only he speaks in such a sexually unrestrained fashion. autolycus exhibits this verbal freedom because he is an outlaw, a man not bound by rhetorical limitations placed on more “civilized” members of eighteenth-century society. unlike leontes, Polixenes, and florizel, autolycus is not domesticated. II in garrick’s Florizel and Perdita he focuses intently on sentimental fathers and sons. When the old shepherd and clown discover leontes cast ashore on Bohemia, the clown repeatedly addresses the old shepherd as “father”—a term that highlights the centrality of affection between parents and children in garrick’s adaptation (i.ii.29, 37). the playwright depicts both leontes and Polixenes as previously enraged but now contrite fathers. garrick emphasizes leontes’ contrition instead of his destructive jealousy by excising most of acts i–iii of The Winter’s Tale and by assigning him the famous speech that shakespeare’s Paulina delivers at the court in sicilia when she falsely reports that hermione is dead (iii.ii.207–14). in Florizel and Perdita leontes, not Paulina, exclaims on the shore of Bohemia: ... i must betake me to nothing but despair—a thousand knees ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, upon a barren mountain, and still winter, in storms perpetual, could not move the god to look this way upon me. (i.ii.82–7)

in The Winter’s Tale Paulina uses the second person and an accusatory tone when she exclaims to leontes, “therefore betake thee / to nothing but despair” (iii.ii.209–10). Garrick’s Leontes, however, uses the first person when expressing heart-felt guilt for suspecting hermione of adultery: “i must betake me / to nothing but despair.” he evokes sympathy from the audience as a result of the contrition he demonstrates. likewise, garrick highlights Polixenes’ remorse when he “burst[s] out by intervals paternal love and sorrow” at the palace even before leontes acts as mediator between him and florizel on behalf of Perdita (50). the sentimentality of both fathers stirs the audience’s emotions. in garrick’s adaptation he diminishes the power of mothers, daughters, and their female friends at home. the authority of hermione, Perdita, and Paulina so pronounced in acts i–iii of The Winter’s Tale is largely missing in garrick’s play. Paulina functions as a relatively independent woman who manages her own household servants in shakespeare’s tragicomedy (as illustrated by the goaler’s

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request that she “put apart these your attendants” when she visits hermione in prison in II.ii.14). In Garrick’s version she flees “with her effects, for safety of her life, to Bohemia” under the protection of Polixenes after hermione supposedly dies (i.i.55– 6).87 in contrast to shakespeare’s Paulina, who refers to leontes’ “by-gone fooleries” and calls him a “tyrant” for suspecting hermione of adultery (The Winter’s Tale iii. ii.175, 184), garrick’s Paulina describes herself as the “fool” for reminding leontes in Bohemia that he “kill’d” hermione and apologizes, “What, my dear sovereign, i said not well, / i meant well; pardon, then, a foolish woman” (Florizel and Perdita iii. iv.15, 23–4). lewis theobald, an eighteenth-century editor of shakespeare’s plays, objected explicitly to her outspokenness by stating, “it is certainly too gross and blunt in Paulina, tho’ she might impeach the King of fooleries in some of his past actions and conduct, to call him downright a fool.”88 garrick virtually eliminates Paulina’s combativeness by excising her command to leontes in his chamber, “i say good queen, / and would by combat make her good, so were i / a man, the worst about you” (The Winter’s Tale ii.iii.59–61). he also cuts a gentleman’s line referring to Paulina’s battle-like memories of antigonus, “But o, the noble combat that ’twixt joy and sorrow was fought in Paulina!” during the reunion of leontes, Polixenes, florizel, and Perdita (V.ii.72–4). finally, Paulina does not dictate when leontes will remarry or “hastily lead away” the royal troupe as she does at the conclusion of shakespeare’s play (V.iii.155). the gender roles garrick imagines for women are largely more restrictive than shakespeare’s. he downplays both Paulina’s and hermione’s rhetorical authority by emphasizing their emotional expressiveness instead of their rational composure. in Florizel and Perdita the news of leontes’ arrival in Bohemia leads Paulina to shed “tears ... of joy”—a far cry from the stoicism and anger she exhibits in The Winter’s Tale (1.1.115). shakespeare highlights her stoicism by giving her the same name as the wife of the stoic seneca.89 garrick’s Paulina, by contrast, sheds an abundance of tears when she grieves for hermione despite the consoling words of Polixenes, “Weep not now, Paulina, so long-gone-by misfortunes; this strange and unexpected visit, from Leontes, calls all your sorrows up a-new” (i.i.68–70). garrick’s hermione is similarly prone to weeping. in Florizel and Perdita leontes explains why she does not speak to him when they are first reunited by stating, “these tears that choke her voice / are hot and moist—it is Hermione!” (iii.iv.180–81). yet their joyful reunion ends with her exclaiming, “My husband!” and leontes responding with contrition, “o my Hermione!—have i deserv’d / that tender name?” (217–18). in The Winter’s Tale hermione embraces leontes affectionately when she descends from the pedestal but reserves her first and last words for Perdita: “Tell me, mine own, / Where hast thou been preserv’d? where liv’d? how found / thy father’s court?” (V.iii.123–5).

87 irene g. dash, “a Penchant for Perdita on the Eighteenth-century English stage,” in The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. carolyn ruth swift lenz, gayle green, and carol thomas neely (urbana: university of illinois Press, 1980), p. 275. 88 lewis theobald, ed., The Works of Shakespear (london: n.p., 1733), vol. 3, p. 106 as quoted by dash, p. 273. 89 Zurcher, “untimely Monuments”: 911.

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in garrick’s adaptation he emphasizes the sentimental reunion of chastened husband and wife instead.

Fig. 9.4

Simon François Ravenet, Mrs. Pritchard as the Character of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale in Garrickiana, engraving, 1754, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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in Florizel and Perdita garrick transforms shakespeare’s hermione into a saintly figure and thereby adds to the conventionality of this emotionally expressive, idolized wife. Mrs Pritchard, the actor who performed the role of hermione in 1757, is weeping and wears a cross suspended from a chain of beads in a portrait of the Queen of sicilia as a statue.90 in English productions of the play at this time Hermione is most likely wearing a Protestant “cross” rather than a Catholic crucifix; this suitable, theatrical property makes her look like an anglican nun.91 such a chaste representation of the Queen renders her sexually unthreatening to a husband who once suspected her of adultery. hermione’s standing on a pedestal further transforms her into a holy icon suitable for worship. garrick’s florizel conveys his perception of Hermione as a saintly figure when he exclaims to Perdita after her mother descends from her pedestal to bless her: rise not yet; i join me in the same religious duty; Bow to the shadow of that royal dame, Who, dying, gave my Perdita to life, and plead an equal right to blessing. (iii.iv.79–83; my emphasis)

interestingly, Perdita’s reply to florizel emphasizes her own “meekness” and submissiveness to him (84). in comparison to shakespeare’s rendition of these women as somewhat transgressive in The Winter’s Tale, Perdita’s conventionality and relative lack of familial and rhetorical authority are as notable as hermione’s and Paulina’s in Florizel and Perdita. surprisingly, gender roles in this case become significantly less liberating with the passage of almost one hundred and fifty years. in contrast to leontes’, florizel’s, and Perdita’s worshiping of hermione on a pedestal in this climactic scene in garrick’s adaptation, shakespeare emphasizes the observers’ suspicions of magic or witchcraft—a transgressive form of masculinity or femininity. during the early modern period a witch represented a category of independent women (or men) who rebelled against the existing gender and social hierarchies.92 in The Winter’s Tale leontes admits once hermione returns miraculously to life: “if this be magic, let it be an art / lawful as eating” (V.iii.110–11). garrick, by contrast, excises these lines and thereby deemphasizes the dimension of magic implied by Polixenes’ subsequent inquiry about the possibility of witchcraft in Florizel and Perdita: “Where has she lived? / or how so stolen from the dead?” (iii. iv.182–3). leontes reiterates florizel’s conventionally religious view of hermione as an idol by stating, “thou matchless saint!—thou paragon of virtue!” (221). a saintly figure rather than a ghost befits the ideal of domestic virtue in this mid-eighteenthcentury play. unlike shakespeare’s leontes, who matches widowed Paulina with 90 Garrick’s Adaptations of Shakespeare, ed. harry William Pedicord and fredrick louis Bergmann, p. 263. 91 Judith Barbour, “garrick’s Version: the Production of ‘Perdita,’” Women’s Writing 9 (2002): 127. 92 Underdown describes the early modern figure of the female witch in these terms in Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (oxford: oxford university Press, 1985), p. 40.

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camillo in The Winter’s Tale, in Florizel and Perdita garrick’s leontes attempts to console her lamentations for the loss of antigonus by stating, “live bless’d with blessing others” (241). from his point of view hermione is dressed like an anglican nun and Paulina should act like one.

Fig. 9.5

Caroline Watson after a painting by Robert Edge Pine, Garrick Delivering the Ode to Shakespeare at the Jubilee, engraving, 1783, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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like the statue of hermione in Florizel and Perdita, stone memorials of shakespeare in the eighteenth century similarly promoted idolatry of him and his works, the adaptations of which differed dramatically from the original versions of them. in addition to the national monument of shakespeare erected in 1741 that still exists at Westminster abbey today, in 1755 garrick commissioned his own personal statue of the Bard for his temple of shakespeare at his villa on the thames at hampton. this statue of the upwardly mobile, renaissance playwright whose father was a glover bears a striking resemblance to garrick with beginnings in the wine trade. supposedly, garrick not only gave detailed instructions for the posture of shakespeare but even posed as the Bard for the sculptor, louis-francois roubiliac.93 as garrick’s wealth illustrates, the actor, adapter, and manager of drury lane whom theophilus cibber calls a “Pedlar” akin to autolycus successfully markets his plays for a socially diverse, but mainly upper-middle-ranking audience. garrick, who buys into the English national idolatry of the Bard during the eighteenth century, becomes an idol in his own right as a result of the financial success of Florizel and Perdita among his other, many successful adaptations and performances of shakespeare’s plays. the tears he sheds on stage are gold. ** Parallels between shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, garrick’s Florizel and Perdita, and henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling (1771) highlight the ways in which this seventeenth-century domestic tragicomedy and its eighteenth-century adaptation anticipate the conventions of literature of sensibility.94 in The Man of Feeling the protagonist harley frequently “burst[s] into tears,” the exact stage direction original with garrick that describes leontes before the statue of hermione in Florizel and Perdita (iii.iv.75, 86). like leontes, who reconciles contrite Polixenes with florizel in both shakespeare’s play and garrick’s adaptation, harley entreats a father to accept “the contrition” of his estranged child now “restored” to him. recalling the family reunion scenes in The Winter’s Tale and Florizel and Perdita, the emotional tableaux in The Man of Feeling include on-lookers sobbing and swooning in response to the 93 dobson, pp. 179–80. 94 reaching the height of its popularity between the 1740s and the late 1770s, literature of sensibility, including drama, commonly includes the following motifs also found in The Winter’s Tale and Florizel and Perdita: the innocent, yet injured woman resembling griselda, the long-lost child, a father-daughter reunion, and in the words of Janet todd in her discussion of sentimental drama, a “tableaux of familial sorrow and joy” involving “weeping and kneeling”: Sensibility: An Introduction (london: Methuen, 1986), pp. 9, 43–4, and 46–7. The Winter’s Tale and eighteenth-century sentimental plays in particular share a number of these conventional motifs because of their common link with tragicomedy as described by the italian giambattista guarini in 1601. in his discussion of tragicomedy guarini emphasizes the importance of actions set in private spaces and the emotional participation of the audience. in “‘gentleman-like tears’: affective response in italian tragicomedy and shakespeare’s late Plays,” Comparative Literature Studies 33 (1996): 333, robert henke notes a degree of sentiment in “the pathetic responses to the narrated and enacted recognitions in The Winter’s Tale.”

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Fig. 9.6

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John Saunders after a picture by Benjamin Van der Gucht, Mr. Garrick as Steward of the Stratford Jubilee, engraving, 1769, Folger Shakespeare Library.

reunion of a father with his child in a passage demarcated by numerous exclamation points (132, 135–6). like nicolas rowe in his widely-known 1709 edition of The Winter’s Tale, garrick similarly enhances the emotional intensity of climactic scenes in shakespeare’s play by adding exclamation points to speeches delivered by male figures.95 during harley’s journey in The Man of Feeling, he hears a tale about the 95 nicholas rowe, ed. The Works of William Shakespear (london: tonson, 1709), ii as quoted in irene g. dash, “a Penchant for Perdita on the Eighteenth-century English stage,” p. 273.

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burial of a boy beside his mother in the “old churchyard.”96 likewise, in The Winter’s Tale hermione and Mamillius supposedly share the same grave that leontes visits on a daily basis. at the end of Mackenzie’s novel the demonstrative charles mourns for harley, who is buried beside his mother, while sitting in the hollow of a tree in that very graveyard (267–8). surprisingly, leontes’ sixteen-year-long mourning ritual is more sustained than harley’s or charles’ demonstrations of affect in a sentimental novel. the affective dimension of shakespeare’s play continues to impress critics as well as novelists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. during the romantic period, samuel taylor coleridge transformed shakespeare into a man of feeling in the lectures he delivered on his plays in 1818.97 reading both The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest in terms of sentiment and pathos, he describes Prospero as an “affectionate” father who tells Miranda a story that “deeply affects” her. coleridge also notes shakespeare’s “tenderness ... in all his scenes with children,” mentioning lady Macduff and her son and citing hermione’s dialogue with Mamillius.98 in contrast to the playful interchange between hermione and Mamillius, whose very name is a reminder that the bond between mother and child is nurturing, coleridge describes leontes’ earlier interchange with Mamillius as “a soliloquy in the mask of dialogue.” during it, leontes asks his son, “art thou my boy?” and “art thou my calf?” (i.ii.120, 127).99 interestingly, coleridge’s infant son functions as a stimulus for his own meditations in his dramatic monologue “frost at Midnight” and bears the name of hartley, an Enlightenment philosopher. coleridge thereby remarks on a dimension of shakespeare’s play, namely leontes’ presentation of his monologue as a dialogue, that mirrors a feature of his own work. as garrick’s and coleridge’s varied responses to The Winter’s Tale illustrate, readers tend to notice aspects of a text that reflect the interests and concerns of their age. Both these eighteenth and nineteenth-century readers are sensitive to the relation of masculinity and emotion in shakespeare’s romances. in our own time twentieth-century critic stanley cavell proposes that “The Winter’s Tale is understandable as a study of skepticism” akin to the philosophical thinking of descartes and hume during the Enlightenment and Kant in the romantic period. he bases this particular interpretation on leontes’ doubting that Mamillius is his son in the line, “art thou my calf?” though cavell’s reading of the play diverges from garrick’s and coleridge’s, he, too, notices its pathos by responding to it affectively; confronted with Leontes’ conviction of Hermione’s infidelity, Cavell claims that “one may feel mere sadness enough to fill an empty world.”100 today, critics continue to be struck by the apparent irrationality of events in this 96 henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (new york: garland, 1974), pp. 200–1. future quotations from this novel are to this facsimile edition. i have modernized the spelling used in this edition for ease of reference. 97 stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800, p. 238, describes the “Man of feeling” as “the prototype of the late eighteenth-century romantic.” 98 Coleridge’s Criticism of Shakespeare: A Selection, ed. r.a. roakes (london: athlone Press, 1989), pp. 159, 165, and 175. 99 Coleridge’s Criticism of Shakespeare, p. 174. 100 Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1987), pp. 198 and 203.

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play and attest to their sense of wonder by proposing compelling, psychological reasons for why leontes becomes jealous and enraged at hermione. few of the reasons they propose, however, are completely satisfying.101 a question that critics ask less frequently is why hermione forgives leontes, either in shakespeare’s or garrick’s version of the play. this miraculous event elevates the audience from the doubt and skepticism characters experience on stage to faith in affection between individuals and their families. as suggested by responses to The Winter’s Tale from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries through the romantic period and today, the affective dimension of the tragicomedy continues to make audiences and readers marvel.

101 for examples of highly regarded, psychoanalytical studies of leontes’ jealousy see Murray schwartz, “leontes’ Jealousy in The Winter’s Tale,” American Imago 30 (1973): 250–73 and “The Winter’s Tale: loss and transformation,” American Imago 32 (1975): 145– 99; Kahn, Man’s Estate; and ruth nevo, Shakespeare’s Other Language (london: Methuen, 1987), pp. 103–5.

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Postscript in this study i argue that weeping and wailing and other displays of extreme emotion are often empowering for men and women in literary genres ranging from the epic, lyric, and drama to pastoral romance and prose biography. i counter the commonplace, critical assumption that demonstrations of excess emotion are inherent signs of weakness for both sexes and that male alliances with women are necessarily sources of anxiety, debilitation, or contamination during the renaissance and restoration. i do so by illustrating that emotional expressiveness in general and tears in particular provide sources of spiritual regeneration, legendary power, humanizing dignity, and financial prosperity for men in numerous literary works representative of different genres during the early modern period. In these literary works men benefit in multiple ways from their alliances with women in religious, political, chivalric, and familial contexts. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, manifestations of a wide range of emotions—grief, sadness, anger, despair, and joy—become increasingly acceptable for men in numerous fictive works. I trace rhetorical signs of the tolerance and respect for literary men of feeling in poetry, prose, and plays as early as the sixteenth century. Though the popular figure of the man of sentiment is usually associated with the restoration and the long eighteenth century, i highlight the sustained emphasis on the power of male emotional expressiveness for two centuries beforehand. My study of masculinity and emotion in early modern English literature challenges more contemporary, modern prejudices that men who weep and wail are inherently weak. Twentieth-century American radio, film, and news media provide an intriguing barometer of the variety of positive and negative responses to such demonstrative men in recent history. in 1937 radio announcer herbert Morrison was fired for sobbing during a live broadcast after he witnessed the crash of the hindenburg. his unrestrained, public display of emotion shattered his career as a radio announcer. Male tears, however, do not always evoke such negative responses in modern american culture. in Adam’s Rib, a 1949 film in which Spencer Tracy and Katharine hepburn are playing husband and wife dueling in the courtroom, he confesses to using crocodile tears to manipulate her emotions when they are alone in the accountant’s office by stating, “I can turn ’em on any time I want to. Us boys can do it, too, you know.”1 in this private setting his weeping is contrived, yet persuasive. in 1972 Edmund Muskie, who was a frontrunner for the nomination for the democratic party, suffered the collapse of his campaign when he cried at the new hampshire primary in response to a newspaper article that attacked his wife. His justifiable crying undermined his public image as a strong, stoical leader. nevertheless, emotional expressiveness and empathy in other modern american 1 Adam’s Rib, videocassette, directed by george cukor (1949; Burbank, ca: Warner home Video, 2002).

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contexts can be trendy and fashionable for men. christine lavin’s song “sensitive new age guys” released in 1990 pokes fun at a popular breed of men who “are hard to tell from women,” “cry at weddings,” and have “‘Baby on Board’ stickers on their cars.”2 during the same decade, Bill clinton became legendary for his convincing use of the phrase, “i feel your pain.” in twentieth-century america, men who weep and wail can suffer professional disasters and political setbacks or enjoy popularity and even presidential leverage for cultivating their emotionally expressive, sensitive, and androgynous sides. in the early modern period literary and cultural reactions to men who weep and wail vary just as widely and are shaped in part by the competing, intellectual traditions of stoicism and augustinianism. the works i examine by spenser, shakespeare, sidney, Marlowe, lanyer, donne, Walton, and garrick—a number of which were popular among readers or viewing audiences and are now considered canonical— tend to emphasize the positive value of tears in an augustinian fashion or exhibit aristotelian tolerance for moderate expressions of emotion at the right time and place.3 yet for Jonson in Timber, a humanist treatise resembling a commonplace book, and cary in The Tragedy of Mariam, a closet drama aimed at an elite, aristocratic readership, stoicism linked to righteous anger is considered the best response to class or gender inequalities. such factors of class, gender, profession, age, time, and place shape the decorum for where, when, and how male and female figures tend to express emotion in a variety of literary works during the early modern period. as we might expect, gender identity does not dictate whether a figure is prone to emotional hysteria or stoicism. in the works i examine by spenser through garrick both sexes display a wide variety of emotions with a great deal of latitude and without suffering derision. throughout early modern English literature men who weep and wail are often represented as towers of strength celebrated for their dignity and heroism. the possibilities for future, interdisciplinary work on the topic of masculinity and emotion are multiple and varied. a number of disciplines offer a wealth of documents and artifacts that further substantiate when, where, and how the emotions function as sources of power for men of various ranks in early modern England and Europe. These possible fields of inquiry include history, art history, philosophy, medicine and physiology, religion, economics, and studies of popular culture and folklore. theater portraits of david garrick performing the roles of richard iii, hamlet, and lear included in my last chapter highlight the vital connection between masculinity and emotion in the complementary fields of drama and art history. Like garrick himself, artists of these paintings such as William hogarth were familiar with lectures on physiology and expression by charles le Brun, a french artist and

2 christine lavin and John gorka, “sensitive new age guys,” Attainable Love, Philo, 1990. 3 in A Usable Past, p. 54, Bouwsma relevantly notes that “augustinian humanism attacked the spiritual elitism of the stoic tradition” and that “it was thus more sympathetic to those populist movements that found religious expression in the dignity of the lay piety, [and] political expression in the challenge of republicanism to despotism.”

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art theorist (1619–90).4 such interest in how emotional expression can impress and even contort the body became popular in seventeenth-century france and coincided with a lecture by an anonymous speaker on the hellenistic statue of laocoon (circa second century B.c.) featured on the cover of this book. the anonymous lecturer remarks on the range of passions this chiseled figure captures—anguish, fear, sorrow, pain, horror, misery, and a plea to heaven for help—as he and his sons are about to be devoured by a sea serpent.5 Poseidon, who favors the greeks, uses these snakes to punish laocoon, a trojan priest and seer, for forewarning his people about the danger of bringing the wooden horse into troy. Book ii of Virgil’s Aeneid includes a graphic description of laocoon’s heroic struggle against these deadly vipers. this statue was unearthed in 1506 in rome and became the inspiration for renaissance artworks such as Michelangelo’s statue, Bound Slave, in 1513–16 and El greco’s painting, Laocoon, in 1608–14. in the statue of Laocoon extreme emotion coincides with masculine athleticism and power in the face of defeat. a far cry from the elite, classical text of Virgil’s Aeneid but relevant to the interdisciplinary subject of masculinity and emotion are the cultural phenomena of popular festivals during the early modern period. although a great deal of research has focused on male expressions of emotions such as melancholy among the upper ranks during the early modern period, there remains much less work and attention devoted to lower ranking figures and their expressions of intense passion. As illustrated by Pieter Bruegel’s Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559), hedonistic joy, gluttony, sexual license, and aggression run rampant in the marketplace during holiday celebrations. such popular displays of emotional excess that sometimes develop into rebellions and riots are indeed powerful because they can lead to political activism and change.6 Excavating prior notions about emotion in relation to masculinity and femininity is essential for reevaluating (and changing) our own, sometimes misguided assumptions about the passions. as revealed by writers ranging from st augustine through garrick, men who weep and wail are not synonymous with weakness, as we might initially assume. on the contrary, such demonstrations of intense feeling often provide avenues leading to multiple sources 4 see stuart sillars, Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic, 1720–1820 (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2006), p. 46–7, for his discussion of hogath’s Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III in relation to le Brun’s Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière. i am grateful to stuart sillars for mentioning the link between garrick, hogarth, and le Brun to me at the folger shakespeare library in January 2007. 5 Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles Le Brun’s Conferénce sur l’expression générale et particulière (new haven: yale university Press, 1995), pp. 75–7. Montagu cites andré félibien’s Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ourvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes (Paris: trevoux, 1725) in which the art theorist refers to this anonymous speaker’s remarks on the figure of Laocoon (v, p. 362–6). 6 for examples of carnivalesque celebrations that become riotous and rebellious in early modern England and france see natalie Zemon davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (stanford: stanford university Press, 1975), pp. 97–123; Emmanuel le roy ladurie, Carnival in Romans, trans. Mary feeney (new york: george Braziller, 1979), pp. 229–63; and david underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, pp. 44–72, esp. 47–8.

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of strength—religious, political, psychological, and even financial. Reimagining and reenvisioning commonplace assumptions about emotion in relation to class as well as gender promises to contribute to the affective liberation of all ranks of men and women—past, present, and future.

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tonkin, humphrey. Spenser’s Courteous Pastoral: Book Six of The Faerie Queene. oxford: clarendon Press, 1972. trevor, douglas. The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England. cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2004. -----. “sadness in The Faerie Queene.” in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, edited by gail Kern Paster, Katherine rowe, and Mary floyd-Wilson, 240–52. Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. underdown, david. Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660. oxford: oxford university Press, 1985. -----. “the taming of the scold: the Enforcement of Patriarchal authority in Early Modern England.” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, edited by anthony fletcher and John stevenson, 116–36. cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1987. Vaught, Jennifer c. “spenser’s dialogic Voice in Book i of The Faerie Queene,” SEL 41 (2001): 71–89. Vaught, Jennifer c. with lynne dickson Bruckner. Grief and Gender: 700-1700. new york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Virgil. 2 vols. translated by h. rushton fairclough. 1916. reprint, cambridge: harvard university Press, 1930. Vives. “the instruction of a christian Woman.” translated by richard hyde. in Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, edited by foster Watson, 29–136. london: Edward arnold, 1912. Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. ithaca: cornell university Press, 1993. Walton, izaak. The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. 1929. reprint, london: oxford university Press, 1950. Ward, david. “affection, intention, and dreams in The Winter’s Tale.” Modern Language Review 82 (1987): 545–54. Watkins, John. The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic. new haven: yale university Press, 1995. Wayne, don E. “Jonson’s sidney: legacy and legitimation in The Forrest.” in Sir Philip Sydney’s Achievement, edited by M.J.B. allen, dominic Baker-smith, and arthur f. Kinney, 227–50. new york: aMs Press, 1990. -----. “Mediation and contestation: English classicism from sidney to Jonson.” Criticism 25 (1983): 211–37. -----. Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History. Madison: university of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Weever, J. Ancient funerall monuments within the united monarchie of Great Britain, Ireland, and the islands adjacent (1631). Wells, robin headlam. Shakespeare on Masculinity. cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000. Wells, stanley. “the lamentable tale of ‘richard ii.’” Shakespeare Studies 17 (1982): 1–23.

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index references to illustrations are in bold accession day tilts, and romance of chivalry 117, 126, 129 affection 12 as female disease 163 and masculinity 22, 155 The Merchant of Venice 163 in shakespeare 163–4 The Winter’s Tale 157, 160, 163–4, 165, 172–3, 176, 207 see also emotions androgyny 7 Edward II 20, 74, 76–7, 78, 81, 86 Elizabeth i: 115, 138 Faerie Queene 34, 136, 141, 145–6, 153 New Arcadia 118, 124–5, 128, 134 The Winter’s Tale 166 see also crossdressing anxiety of influence theory, Bloom 31–2, 32–3, 45, 55 ariosto, Orlando Furioso 34 Faerie Queene allusions 35, 49, 50, 51 women’s role 46 aristocracy attack on, Timber 65–6, 69–70, 71 effeminacy 65–6, 69–70 warriors to courtiers, transition 2, 7, 8, 21, 115, 119, 141, 143 aristotelianism, New Arcadia 118, 130 aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 13 armor and emotional vulnerability, Faerie Queene 139, 141 New Arcadia connotations 129 and emotional vulnerability 21, 117, 127, 129 augustine, st City of God 13, 14, 49 on confession 51 donne, kinship 184

augustinianism, Faerie Queene 28, 42, 56 see also under stoicism Bacon, francis, Novum Organum 38 Bakhtin, Mikhail, dialogism 16 “bear/barren” puns, Winter’s Tale 168–9, 172 Behn, aphra 155 Benson, larry 45 Berger, harry Jr. 93 Bloom, harold anxiety of influence theory 31–2, 32–3, 45, 55 on spenser 31–2 Boccaccio, giovanni, Teseida Faerie Queene allusions 43, 44, 46 women’s role 46 bodies, male/female, ambiguities 9–10

see also female bodies

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 151 booths, theater 196 Boswell, James, on garrick’s performances 192 Breitenberg, Mark 160 Bruegel, Pieter, Battle between Carnival and Lent 211 Bruns, gerald, on intertextual rivalry 32 “buckler”, connotations 80 calvin, John, stoicism, criticism of 14 cary, Elizabeth 14 see also Tragedy of Mariam castiglione, Baldesar, The Book of the Courtier 9 cavell, stanley, on shakespeare 206 chaucer, geoffrey Clerk’s Tale 123 Faerie Queene, imitations in 40, 45, 61 Parliament of Fowls 38 catalogue of trees 40, 44–5 children, grief for

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Life of Dr. John Donne 22, 158, 180–1, 182 Winter’s Tale 22, 158, 178, 180 chivalry, accession day tilts 117, 126, 129 christ, tears of 22, 184 donne on 14–15, 184–5 cibber, theophilus, on garrick 196, 204 clinton, Bill, ability to empathize 210 clothing see dress coleridge, samuel taylor on shakespeare 206 on spenser 71 confession, augustine on 51 courtesy, Faerie Queene 138, 152 crane, Mary thomas 33 crossdressing Bartholomew Fair 75–6, 82 New Arcadia hercules 127–8 Pyrocles 21, 118, 119, 122, 124 see also androgyny dante alighieri, Divine Comedy 46 death, grief as cause of 186 dialogism 17 Bakhtin 16 vs monologism 32 see also anxiety of influence theory; intertextuality; see also under Faerie Queene; Timber donne, John augustine, kinship 184 on christ’s tears 14–15, 184–5 Deaths Duel, sermon 185 grief for wife 184, 185 mourning practices, for own death 188–9 painting, in winding-cloth 189 see also Life of Dr. John Donne dress italianate, as marker of effeminacy 65, 79, 81, 91 and masculinity 79, 80, 81 as social marker 64–5, 174 and social mobility, in Florizel and Perdita 197 violations, Edward II 81 drury, sir Kenelm 59 drury, sir robert 180

dryden, John 155 Edward II (Marlowe) 17 androgyny 20, 74, 76–7, 78, 81, 86 gaveston 76, 77, 78 “buckler”, connotations 80 effeminacy 76, 78, 79–80, 84 gaveston, dress violations 81 interiority 85 intertextuality 20, 74, 81 isabella, masculine/feminine personae 81–4 masculinity and emotion 73, 79, 84 Metamorphoses, allusions 74, 77 movie adaptation 86 rhetoric, power of 74–5 Tamburlaine, comparison 86 warriors vs courtiers 20 weeping and wailing Edward ii 20, 73, 77, 84–5, 87 Edward iii 86, 87 effeminacy 9 of aristocracy 65–6, 69–70 attack on Epistulae Morales 65 Timber 65–6, 69–70 and dress 65, 79, 81, 91 Edward II 76, 78, 79–80, 84 New Arcadia 119–20, 128, 130, 132 Richard II 91–2, 94, 112 Tamburlaine 76 Timber 65 see also masculinity egalitarianism Bartholomew Fair 64 Florizel and Perdita 197–8 Timber 58, 59, 71 El greco, Laocoon cover, 211 Elizabeth i androgyny 115, 138 Faerie Queene allusions 44 dedication 34 reign, feminization of masculinity 21 spenser, patronage 27, 43, 44 Ellison, Julie, Cato’s Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion 19 emotions expressions of gendering 1, 2–3, 65

Index restorative 5 power of 18 scholarly interest in 12 terms describing 12–13 and virtuous deeds 14 vs reason 28, 121 see also affection; masculinity and emotion Erasmus, desiderius, Praise of Folly 14 Faerie Queene (spenser) 4, 17 Aeneid allusions 34, 39, 49, 50 reworking of 34–5 androgyny 34, 136, 141, 145–6, 153 as ideal 145–6 arboreal episodes 26, 29, 30, 41–2, 44–5, 48, 49, 51–2, 56, 68, 141 armor connotations 139 and emotional vulnerability 139, 141 augustinianism in 28, 42, 56 bear-baby episode 141–3, 153 and British identity 43 caged birds, imagery 148 catalogue of trees 37, 39–42, 45 allusions 40–1, 60, 61 “laurel” reference 43–4 memorial to prior writers 39–40, 45 chaucer, imitations 40, 45, 61 colin clout, allusions 35, 46–7, 153 courtesy, origins 138, 152 despair episode 52–6, 57 dialogism Bartholomew Fair 64 with earlier texts 20, 25, 30, 32–3, 33–4, 35–6, 45, 56–7, 57, 60, 61, 154 feminine dimension 19, 40 with poetic forefathers 45 uniqueness 40–1 duessa 49, 50 etymology 34 roman catholicism, representative 38, 50 Elizabeth i allusions 44 dedication 34

237 Error figure catholic propaganda 43, 46, 64 cleopatra allusion 46 and spenser’s poetics 32, 46, 47–8 femininity glorification of 27–8 lyrical voice 36 nuances 36 fradubio 38, 48–9 weeping and wailing 51 gender categories, fluidity 141, 146–7, 153–4 Georgics, allusions 39 grief 144 interiority 21, 137 intertextuality 26, 29, 31, 32, 46–7, 55 laura (Petrarch) allusions 43–4 lyrical voice 35–6, 138 male, female, cooperation 35–6, 39 masculinity and affection 22, 155 and child rearing 150 and dependency 152 and gentleness 41 and privacy 147–8, 150, 152, 153, 154 masculinity and emotion 137, 144, 150 men, depending on women 19, 27 Metamorphoses allusions 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 46, 60, 140 Myrrha allusion 42 narrative 140 nile, as creative source 46 Orlando Furioso allusions 35, 49, 50, 51 structure, similarities 34 orpheus allusions 36, 37, 38, 41, 47, 48 male friendship 45 Pharsalia allusions 42–3, 44 “piler elm” allusion 44–5 polyvocality 33–4 Proserpina myth 140–1 Protestantism 38, 58–9 readership inability to control 71, 154 male, female 69 redcrosse Knight 19, 35 aeneas, comparison 50

238

Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

despair, entrapment attempt 52–6, 57 duessa, passion for 49–50 immobility episode 49–50 military virtues 43 as Protestant reformer 43, 49 tears 27, 49 una, abandonment of 50 secrecy 147–8 self-sufficiency 151, 152 Shepheardes Calendar allusions 35, 43, 46–7 spanish armada, defeat 43 spenser’s poetic progress 47 Teseida allusions 43, 44, 46 Thebaid, allusions 44 Timber, comparison 59–61 una abandoned by redcrosse 50 as dante’s Beatrice 46 as Protestant truth 37–8 saves redcrosse from suicide 56 voyeurism 139–40 Wandering Wood 29, 38, 39, 43, 57 warriors to courtiers, transition 21, 138, 141, 143 weeping and wailing 4, 17, 19, 30, 48, 143–5 as restorative 27, 39, 41–2, 49, 51 female authority, in New Arcadia 21 female bodies male anxieties 10–11 sentiment, link 10 femininity devaluing of 19 lyric, in Faerie Queene 36 feminization, of masculinity 21 Florizel and Perdita (garrick) 17, 63, 185 criticism 196 egalitarianism 197–8 family values, 18th century 198 fathers, sons, focus on 199 female authority, deemphasis 199–201 market economy 159, 196 popularity 195, 196 social mobility 196 and dress 197 source 195 weeping and wailing 22, 200

Winter’s Tale, modifications 198–204 fuller, thomas, on richard ii 4–5 fuseli, henry, Richard II 106 gardner, helen 189 garrick, david cibber on 196, 204 delivering ode to shakespeare 203 hamlet 193 King lear 194 memorial statues 159 performances, Boswell on 192 richard iii 195 steward of the stratford Jubilee 205 tearful rhetoric 22, 159, 174, 185, 192 see also Florizel and Perdita gender categories fluidity, Faerie Queene 141, 146–7, 153–4 inversion, in The Winter’s Tale 21–2, 162–3, 166, 168–9, 176 giffard, henry 194 golding, arthur 37 gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties 160 greene, thomas 30–1 greville, fulke, Life of Sir Philip Sidney 127 grief bodily gestures 178 as cause of death 186 donne 184, 185 Faerie Queene 144 gendering 178 hamlet 187 herod 22, 177 Life of Dr. John Donne 177, 187 for children 180–1 masculinity and emotion 22, 177 New Arcadia 123, 124, 125 Richard II, occurrences of word 17, 91 Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum 158, 183–4 stoicism in 2fn3 Winter’s Tale 168, 169, 181 for children 180 see also mourning practices grignion, charles see hogarth, William hall, Edward, Chronicle 108 halls, John James, Winter’s Tale, Antigonus 170

Index hamilton, William, The Duke of York 103 hamlet, grief 187 henderson, diane, Passion Made Public 36 Henriad 73, 86 hepburn, Katharine 209 hobbes, thomas 27 hogarth, William 210 and charles grignion, Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III 195 holinshed, raphael, Chronicles 85, 107–8, 109 homer Iliad 80, 145 Odyssey 41, 145 houlbrooke, ralph, on mourning practices 188–9 hubbard, thomas 33 interiority Edward II 85 Faerie Queene 21, 137 masculine 15 Richard II 20, 88–9, 94, 102, 103 intertextuality Edward II 20, 74, 81 Faerie Queene 26, 29, 31, 32, 46–7, 55 Jenny 33 Kristeva 16, 40 rivalry 32 weeping and wailing 16–17 see also anxiety of influence theory; dialogism irigaray, luce 34, 35 Jarman, derek 86 Jenny, laurent, intertextuality theory 33 Jonson, Ben 14 Faerie Queene, annotated copy 63 influences on 19–20 on silva 26, 59 on truth 62–3 Woolf on 71 works Bartholomew Fair 63–4, 66, 196 crossdressing 75–6, 82 egalitarianism 64 Faerie Queene, dialogism 64 Epicoene 69 “on My first son” 188

239

The Devil is an Ass 69 The Forrest 61, 69 “to the Memory of shakespeare” 39, 75 Volpone 69, 71 see also Timber Juvenal 152 Kierkegaard, søren, on orpheus 37 Kristeva, Julia, intertextuality 16, 40 languet, hubert 120–1 lanyer, aemilia, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum 18, 22, 177 grief 158, 183–4 mourning practices 183 laocoon, images, emotion cover, 211 laqueur, thomas 9 lavin, christine, “sensitive new age guys” 210 le Brun, charles 210–11 lees, clare a. 7 lemnius, levinus, The Secret Miracles of Nature 10 Life of Dr. John Donne (Walton) 17, 158 affection, and masculinity 182, 186, 190–1 donne funeral 190 statue of 189 grief 177, 180–1, 187 for children 22, 158, 178, 180–1, 182 for wife 184, 185 masculinity 188 mourning practices 180, 181 visions 180–1, 181–2 weeping and wailing 22, 159, 185, 186 lillo, george Marina 194 The London Merchant 194 lindheim, nancy 128 low, Jennifer, Manhood and the Duel 79 lucan, Pharsalia, Faerie Queene allusions 42–3, 44 Mcardell, James Garrick as King Lear 194 Mr Garrick in Hamlet 193

240

Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

Mackenzie, henry, Man of Feeling 22, 159 weeping and wailing 204–5 man of feeling, antecedents 19, 23 market economy, Florizel and Perdita 159, 196 Marlowe, christopher As You Like It, allusion to 75 violent death 74 works Hero and Leander 75 Tamburlaine 74–5, 75 Edward II, comparison 86 effeminacy, fear of 76 see also Edward II masculinity and affection 22, 155 and dependency, Faerie Queene 152 and dress 79, 80, 81 early modern conceptions 26, 115–16 feminization of 21 and privacy Faerie Queene 147–8, 152, 153 Richard II 148 in rhetoric 66 and sentiment 157 Timber, ideal version 68 varieties of 26–7 see also effeminacy masculinity and emotion 1, 2, 8, 11, 116 approaches 16–17 definitions, shifting 17, 22, 177 development 23 Edward II 73, 79, 84 Faerie Queene 137, 144, 150 as feminist topic 6–7 grief 22, 177 modern examples 209 New Arcadia 122, 135 popular festivals, images 211 Richard II 20, 90 studies interdisciplinary 210–12 lack of 12 significant 18–19 The Winter’s Tale 162–3, 168 Maus, Katharine Eisaman 60 melancholia gendering 19 New Arcadia 122

The Winter’s Tale 164–5 memorials, personalized 188–90 Michelangelo, Bound Slave 211 More, anne (donne’s wife) 177, 178, 184 death 185 Morgan, Macnamara, The Sheep Shearing 195, 198 Morrow, capt thomas 196 mourning practices 3 donne, for own death 188–9 gendering of 51, 157, 178 houlbrooke on 188–9 Life of Dr. John Donne 180, 181 Metamorphoses 178 Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum 183 see also grief Munch, Edvard, “the scream” 178, 179 music, Richard II 104 Muskie, Edmund, weeping and wailing 209 narrative Faerie Queene 140 New Arcadia 133–4 Richard II 88fn29, 89, 99–101, 104–5, 108 The Winter’s Tale 164 New Arcadia (sidney) 17, 115 androgyny anxieties about 118 Pyrocles 124–5, 128, 134 aristotelianism 118, 130 armor connotations 129 and emotional vulnerability 21, 117, 127, 129 crossdressing hercules allusion 127–8 Pyrocles 21, 118, 119, 122, 124 effeminacy, fear of 119–20, 128, 130, 132 female authority 21, 128 anxieties about 134 female figures, strong 131–2 female readership 121 gender blurring 118, 119 hierarchy, reinforcement 133–4 roles 123 grief 123, 124, 125, 131

Index masculinity and emotion 122, 135 melancholia 122 militarism, mocking of 126 mourning excessive 122–3 rituals 125 narrative 133–4 pity 122, 130–1 publication history 122 readership, imagined 121 reason vs emotion 121 silence, as feminine virtue 132–3 stoicism 123 violence 124, 126 warriors to courtiers, transition 21 weeping and wailing 118, 123, 129–30, 132, 135 nostalgia, Winter’s Tale 171 “one-sex body” theory 9–10 orpheus allusions, Faerie Queene 36, 37, 38, 41, 48 Kierkegaard on 37 ovid, Metamorphoses 36, 37, 38, 41 actaeon myth 77 Edward II, allusions 74, 77 mourning practices 178 Proserpina myth 140, 167 “passion” 12 Pembroke, Earl 120 Percy, c.h. herford 60 Pigman iii, g.W. 27 Grief and English Renaissance Elegy 18 pity, New Arcadia 122, 130–1 Pocock, J.g.a. 173 polyvocality, Faerie Queene 33–4 Pope, alexander 192 Pritchard, Mrs, as hermione 201, 202 Protestantism, Faerie Queene 38, 58–9 Quintilian 65, 67 Institutio Oratoria 66, 70 on rhetoric, manliness of 70 Timber, allusion in 65 ravenet, simon françois, Mrs Pritchard as...Hermione 201

241

reason, vs emotion 28, 121 rhetoric manliness of, Quintilian on 70 masculinity in 66–7, 70 Richard II (shakespeare) 4, 4–5 androgyny, richard 104 Bolingbroke (henry iV), unpopularity 109–10 christ, richard, comparison 108 duke of york 103 effeminacy, richard 91–2, 94, 112 emotion Bolingbroke 107, 110 richard 96, 108, 112–13 grief isabel’s 97–8 occurrences of word 17, 91 histrionics 17, 93–6 interiority 20, 88–9, 94, 102, 103 kings, divine right 90 masculine/feminine personae, richard ii 89 masculinity 90 feminizing of 111–12 and privacy 148 masculinity and emotion 20, 73 meditation 102, 104 on time 104, 106 music 104 narrative references 88fn29, 89, 99–101, 104–5, 108 revenge, as gendered issue 90 stoicism, Bolingbroke 88 sympathetic victim, richard 108–9 weeping and wailing 17 duchess of gloucester 90 duchess of york 101 duke of york 112 richard 4, 88, 92–3, 95, 96, 100–1, 107, 113 riche, Barnabe, Farewell to Militarie Profession 119 riddell, James 63 rowe, nicolas 192, 205 sanford, hugh 120 saunders, John, Mr Garrick as Steward of the Stratford Jubilee 205

242

Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

schiesari, Juliana, The Gendering of Melancholia 18, 19 scodel, Joshua, Excess and the Mean 155 seneca, Epistulae Morales 66 attack on effeminacy 65 sensibility 13, 22 18th century, cult 175 men of 18, 155 in renaissance literature 19 sentiment 13, 22 and masculinity 157 men of 23, 135 sentimentality, first use 13 shakespeare, William 18th century man of feeling 206 memorials 204 revival 63, 192–4 statues 204 affection in 163–4 cavell on 206 coleridge on 206 works As You Like It, Marlowe allusion 75 Hamlet 123 Henry IV, Part I 107 Henry IV, Part I and II 73, 107, 110, 111 masculinity, feminizing of 112 Henry IV, Part II 75 Henry VI, Part III 90 King Lear caged birds imagery 149 weeping and wailing 149 Merchant of Venice, affection 163 Richard III 105 Titus Andronicus 83 see also Richard II; Winter’s Tale sidney, Mary 120, 183 sidney, sir Philip death 120 funeral 51, 125 see also New Arcadia silva, Jonson on 26, 59 simpson, Evelyn 60 social mobility and dress, Florizel and Perdita 197 Florizel and Perdita 196 Timber 174

Winter’s Tale 173–4 sons of Ben poets 59 spanish armada, defeat (1588) 43 spenser, Edmund Bloom on 31–2 coleridge on 71 Elizabeth i, patronage 27, 43, 44 fame, quest for 154 influences on 26 poetics 32, 45, 46, 47–8 Shepheardes Calendar 35, 43, 46 Woolf on 71 see also Faerie Queene statius, Thebaid, Faerie Queene allusions 44 stewart, stanley 63 stoicism calvin’s criticism of 14 New Arcadia 123 Richard II 88 Timber 20, 27, 28, 59, 60, 123, 210 Tragedy of Mariam 186, 210 vs augustinianism 13–15, 18, 26–7, 28, 183, 210 stone, lawrence 188 stubbes, Philip, Anatomie of Abuses 76, 118 text, as work in progress 32 theobald, lewis 192–3, 200 Timber (Jonson) 17, 19 arboreal episodes 26 aristocracy, attack on 65–6, 69–70, 71 chaucer allusions 40 as commonplace book 33, 59, 60 competitiveness 58, 62, 63 dialogism, with earlier texts 19–20, 25, 60–1 dress, attack on 66 effeminacy, attack on 65 egalitarianism 58, 59, 71 emotions distrust of 60, 71 as effeminacy 63 Faerie Queene, comparison 59–61 femininity, threat of 28, 37, 59 imagination, as feminine 67 judgment, as masculine 67 lyrics, denigration of 37 masculinity

Index aggressive persona 44, 59, 61 ideal version 59, 68 monologism, desire for 61–2 musicality, as effeminacy 37 Quintilian allusion 65 readership, control of 58, 69, 70–1 rhetoric family comparison 68 masculinity in 66–7, 70 self-sufficiency 68 shakespeare, criticism of 63 social mobility [more] 58, 174 sources classical 58, 60 use of 33 Vives 58, 60, 62 spenser, criticism of 44, 63 stoicism 20, 27, 59, 60, 123, 210 on truth 62–3 writing, labor of 68 tracy, spencer, Adam’s Rib, weeping and wailing 209 Tragedy of Mariam (cary) 18, 177 herod, excessive grief 22, 159, 177, 186–7 stoicism 186, 210 truth, Jonson on 62–3 underdown, david 161 violence, New Arcadia 124, 126 Virgil Aeneid Faerie Queene allusions 39, 49 laocoon cover, 211 spenser’s reworking of 34–5 Georgics 78 Faerie Queene, allusions 39 Vives, Juan luis 20, 25 In Libros de Disciplinis Praefatio 62 source for Timber 58, 60, 62 Walton, izaak, sir see Life of Dr. John Donne warriors, to courtiers, transition 2, 7, 8, 21, 115, 119, 141, 143 Watson, caroline, Garrick Delivering the Ode to Shakespeare 203 Wayne, don 69

243

on Jonson’s dialogism 60–1 weeping and wailing 17 20th century examples 209–10 ambivalent attitudes to 13 duchess of gloucester 90 duchess of york 101 duke of york 112 Edmund Muskie 209 Edward II 20, 73, 77, 84–5, 86, 87 as effeminizing characteristic 123–4 empowerment of 209 Faerie Queene 4, 17, 19, 30, 143–5 as restorative 27, 39, 41–2, 49, 51 Florizel and Perdita 22, 200 intertextual connections 16–17 King Lear 149 Life of Dr. John Donne 22, 185, 186 literary 7–8 Man of Feeling 204–5 New Arcadia 123, 129–30, 135 Richard II 17 duchess of gloucester 90 richard 4, 88, 92–3, 95, 96, 100–1, 107, 113 as source of male strength 1, 2, 211–12 spencer tracy, in Adam’s Rib 209 Winter’s Tale 17, 22, 159, 169 women 2–3 Wells, robin headlam 43 Williamson, Marilyn 166 The Winter’s Tale (shakespeare) 5, 17, 46 adaptations 195–6 affection 157, 160, 163–4, 165, 207 family members 165, 172–3, 176 androgyny 166 antigonus 170 “bear/barren” puns 168–9, 172 dress, as social marker 174 female authority 158, 160–2, 171–2, 175 flowers rhetoric 171–2 gender categories, inversion 21–2, 162–3, 166, 168–9, 176 gentleman status 173–4 grief 168, 169, 177, 181 for children 22, 158, 178, 180 masculinity and domesticity 171, 174 feminization 166–7, 172, 175 and reason, challenges to 162

244

Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature masculinity and emotion 162–3, 168 melancholia 164–5 men, and domesticity 171, 174 Metamorphoses, allusion 167 mourning practices 180, 181 narrative 164 nostalgia 171 performances, 18th century 194–5 social mobility 173–4 statue of hermione 189 visions 181

weeping and wailing 17, 22, 159, 169 women emotional excess 27, 65, 123 emotional expression 2–3 violence 83 Woolf, Virginia, on Jonson 71 word, literary and Bakhtin 16 Wright, thomas, Passions of the Minde in Generall 27, 38 Wyatt, sir thomas, “My galley” 67