Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England 1137035358, 9781137035356

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England David McInnis

Early Modern Literature in History General Editors: Cedric C. Brown, Emeritus Professor, University of Reading; Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Sussex, Brighton International Advisory Board: Sharon Achinstein, University of Oxford; Jean Howard, University of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Michelle O’Callaghan, University of Reading; Cathy Shrank, University of Sheffield; Adam Smyth, University of London; Steven Zwicker, Washington University, St Louis. Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share a historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: John M. Adrian LOCAL NEGOTIATIONS OF ENGLISH NATIONHOOD, 1570–1680 Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox DIPLOMACY AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Jocelyn Catty WRITING RAPE, WRITING WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Unbridled Speech Patrick Cheney MARLOWE’S REPUBLICAN AUTHORSHIP Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime Katharine A. Craik READING SENSATIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Bruce Danner EDMUND SPENSER’S WAR ON LORD BURGHLEY James Daybell (editor) EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER-WRITING, 1450–1700 James Daybell and Peter Hinds (editors) MATERIAL READINGS OF EARLY MODERN CULTURE Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730 James Daybell THE MATERIAL LETTER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512–1635 Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (editors) THE RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK Christian Perceptions, 1400–1660 Maria Franziska Fahey METAPHOR AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA Unchaste Signification Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr (editors) ENVIRONMENT AND EMBODIMENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington (editors) SHAKESPEARE AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer ENGLISH HISTORICAL DRAMA, 1500–1660 Forms Outside the Canon

Johanna Harris and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (editors) THE INTELLECTUAL CULTURE OF PURITAN WOMEN, 1558–1680 Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (editors) THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550–1650 Gregory Kneidel RETHINKING THE TURN TO RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE Edel Lamb PERFORMING CHILDHOOD IN THE EARLY MODERN THEATRE The Children’s Playing Companies (1599–1613) Katherine R. Larson EARLY MODERN WOMEN IN CONVERSATION Monica Matei-Chesnoiu RE-IMAGINING WESTERN EUROPEAN GEOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA David McInnis MIND-TRAVELLING AND VOYAGE DRAMA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Scott L. Newstok QUOTING DEATH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb Patricia Pender EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S WRITING AND THE RHETORIC OF MODESTY Jane Pettegree FOREIGN AND NATIVE ON THE ENGLISH STAGE, 1588–1611 Metaphor and National Identity Fred Schurink (editor) TUDOR TRANSLATION Adrian Streete (editor) EARLY MODERN DRAMA AND THE BIBLE Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625 Marion Wynne-Davies WOMEN WRITERS AND FAMILIAL DISCOURSE IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE Relative Values The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Early Modern Research Centre at the University of Reading and The Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex

Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71472–0 (Hardback) 978–0–333–80321–9 (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England David McInnis University of Melbourne, Australia

© David McInnis 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–03535–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Your quicke imaginations we must charme, To turne that world: and (turn’d) again to part it Into large kingdomes, and within one moment To carrie Fortunatus on the wings Of actiue thought, many a thousand miles. Thomas Dekker, Old Fortunatus, 2.0.5–9

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For Marion Campbell

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Contents Illustrations

xi

Acknowledgements

xii

Introduction Voyage drama Lost plays Vicarious travel The scholarship of sightseeing

1 7 10 11 13

1 The Wings of Active Thought Instructions for travel, or ars apodemica Mind-travelling The imagination and ideal presence Travelling at the theatre

19 20 25 34 38

2 Marlovian Models of Voyage Drama The ‘will to travel’ in Marlovian drama The playwright’s travels in ‘map and card’ Acting on knowledge: Faustus’s journey ‘to prove cosmography’ Fortunatus and the wishing hat

51 52 57 63 71

3 Morals, Manners, and Imagination: Jonson and Heywood Jonson’s moral imperative Heywood and travel as a fantasy of escape Staging travel in Heywood’s plays

83 84 96 107

4 Therapeutic Travel in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes Jonsonian psychology and drama Disdain for the familiar Peregrine as mind-travelling reader The stars change, the mind remains the same ‘Mandeville madness’

123 124 126 129 132 138

5 Davenant, Saint-Évremond, Dryden, and the Ocular Dimension of Travel Davenant and the effects of perspectival scenery on mind-travelling

ix

145 147

x Contents

Sightseeing and morality in Saint Évremond’s Sir Politick Would-be Dryden’s aesthetics and the theatre-as-prospective-glass

164 170

6 Old Genres, New Worlds: Behn Domesticates the Exotic Virginian customs and culture in The Widow Ranter Women, marriage, and slaves A domestic tragedy in the New World

182 184 193 203

Conclusion

210

Bibliography

214

Index

230

Illustrations 2.1

Detail of Folger MS X.d.259, p. 2. Reproduced courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library

5.1

Detail from ‘1. Sceane Rhodes: A Shutter’, designed by John Webb. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees

xi

75

160

Acknowledgements In drafting the dissertation this book is based upon, I was fortunate to have had two of the most dedicated and generous supervisors imaginable: Marion Campbell and Ian Donaldson. Both have been kind, insightful, constructive, and supportive, and I cannot begin to thank them enough. I would also like to thank Peter Otto and Deirdre Coleman, who assisted with supervision at various stages of the project. The following friends and colleagues have offered encouragement, helpful pointers in the right direction, and continued support, for which I’m grateful: Gayle Allan, David Bevington, Dympna Callaghan, Darryl Chalk, Bernadette Cochrane, Rose Gaby, Penny Gay, Brett Hirsch, Laurie Johnson, Bronnie Johnston, Wallace Kirsop, Roslyn Knutson, Emma Koch, John Lee, Jill Levenson, Jeremy Lopez, Larry Manley, Charles Moseley, Michael Neill, Ladan Niayesh, Paul Salzman, Jolynna Sinanan, Matt Steggle, Tiffany Stern, Paul Stevens, and John Sutton. Additionally, the members of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA), the Marlowe Society of America (MSA), and the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) have provided helpful feedback at conferences, as have delegates at conferences held at La Trobe University, the University of Tasmania, and the University of Toronto. For their helpful advice, and for providing access to their own work, I’d especially like to single out Claire Jowitt for providing pre-publication access to a paper she delivered at Montpellier (2007); Lyn Tribble for discussing ideas about cognition and for providing a copy of her Cognition in the Globe manuscript; and Dan Carey for providing access to his Hakluyt society paper and discussing all things ars apodemica. I am also appreciative of the courteous staff and wonderful work conditions at both the British Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library, where much of the research for this study was conducted. The Folger kindly provided permission to reproduce an image of their manuscript fragment of ‘A stately tragedy containing the ambitious life and death of the great Cham’ (MS X.d.259), and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees provided permission to reproduce (from the Devonshire collection, Chatsworth) an image of John Webb’s design for a scene of Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes. The costs of researching both at home and abroad have been defrayed by an Australian Postgraduate Award from xii

Acknowledgements xiii

the government, an Alma Hansen scholarship from the Arts Faculty at Melbourne, and a Macgeorge Travelling Scholarship from the Norman Macgeorge Bequest; I am grateful to all these funding bodies. Parts of this book been published as follows. The mind-travelling material in Chapter 1 originally appeared in ‘Mind-Travelling, Ideal Presence and the Imagination in Early Modern England’, Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 19, ed. David McInnis and Brett D. Hirsch (2009): 7.1–23; a reduced version of Chapter 4 on Brome appeared as ‘Therapeutic Travel in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes’ in SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 52.2 (Spring 2012): 447–69; and some of the Behn material from Chapter 6 also appeared as ‘Virginian Culture and Experimental Genre in Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter’ in Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas, ed. Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011): 89–106. I would like to thank all the readers and editors who looked over these pieces and offered their constructive advice. Thanks also to Jean E. Howard for her comments on this manuscript, and to Felicity Plester, Catherine Mitchell and Barbara Slater at Palgrave Macmillan, all of whom were a pleasure to work with on this project. Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to thank my family – my parents, Murray and Dana, and my brother, Peter – for their love and support.

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Introduction

What did early modern playgoers value in voyage drama? Criticism of early modern travel has produced first-rate studies of the colonial, mercantile, and pilgrimage mindsets, but playgoers did not leave the theatre with material acquisitions or spiritual fulfilment (usually). Moreover, although English theatre was the product of church and trade, the type of travel experience it produced was neither spiritual nor mercantile: playgoing – and voyage drama was no exception – was primarily a pleasurable pursuit, as volumes of antitheatricalist discourse are at pains to stress. Playgoing, like sightseeing, is essentially an act of deviance, or a ‘departure’ from ordinary life: a ‘limited breaking with established routines and practices of everyday life and allowing one’s senses to engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and the mundane’ (Urry 2, writing on tourism). The purpose of this study is to explain how voyage drama works, and why playwrights persisted with writing about travel and exotic settings when (in the Renaissance especially) the theatre lacked the type of realism that twenty-first-century audiences might require. I argue that by treating voyage drama as a kind of vicarious travel experience, we stand to gain new insights into early modern attitudes to travel and into the nature of theatrical representation. Because external evidence of playgoers’ responses to voyage drama is exceptionally rare, this study seeks to construct audience expectations through close reading of under-analysed excerpts from travel documents which reveal a hitherto unacknowledged pleasure in voyaging. When early modern writers do record their enjoyment of voyaging (or imagined voyaging), the enthusiasm speaks volumes: ’Tis a pleasure and felicity when the mind embraces but a glancing thought of the beauteous fabrick of the universe, and is with a kind 1

2 Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

of delight transported to some peculiar part of it, whose felicity and pleasures or wealth, have won upon its running fancy; if this be so in the imagination, what delight and fruition is there, in the corporal view, and passage, and abode in the most remarkable countries of the world. (Argyll 70–1) In this example from the middle of the seventeenth century, the Marquis of Argyll (Archibald Campbell) demonstrates an appreciation of the natural beauty of distant lands. There is no evidence of colonial or mercantile desire here; Argyll simply describes the witnessing of ‘the most remarkable countries of the world’, whether in the imagination or in the flesh, as a ‘pleasure and felicity’, and a ‘delight’. Although he states that the pleasures of ‘the corporal view’ surpass that of the ‘running fancy’, there is no suggestion that the pleasures of the imagination are inadequate per se, only that the delights of actual voyaging exceed all expectations. Early modern playgoers were avid consumers of voyage drama and, like Argyll, enjoyed being ‘transported’ about the universe ‘in the imagination’. When they entered the playhouse they engaged with the players in a collaborative form of what I term ‘mind-travelling’, and the result was an experience of stage-travel that was predicated on pleasure. Mind-travelling readers and playgoers sought a simulation of the travel experience, irrespective of whether they were likely to voyage anywhere physically. Throughout this experience, the reader/playgoer imaginatively constructs a vivid psycho-physiological experience of distant lands without leaving the home/theatre. Establishing this ‘vicarious pleasure’ premise is a significant aspect of this book, and in Chapter 1 I present extensive archival research towards establishing this early modern enjoyment of travel. The theatre exceeded the printed chronicle in bringing foreign shores to life, however. To begin to understand how and why voyage drama worked, and how the theatre nourished this ‘pretourism’ form of vicarious travel, I build on recent work on Distributed Cognition by Evelyn B. Tribble, John Sutton, and Bruce McConachie, to view playgoing as part of the playing system, wherein imaginative work is distributed across the various participants: playwright, player, the physical environment, technologies of the stage, and emphatically in this study, the playgoer. In its discussion of the technologies of the stage and the notion of the theatrical experience as a joint act of meaningcreation between the spectator and the player, this study offers a new and original insight into the operation of the early modern stage, and to the emerging field of audience studies more generally.

Introduction

3

Rather than dwelling on the limitations of the theatre, I argue that the early modern stage was a technologically advanced machine for imaginative travel. During the experience of a performance itself, the physical environment of the playhouse contributed to the illusion of travel, absorbing cognitive and imaginative loads. Thomas Heywood, for example, frequently capitalised on the synergy between stage and ship architecture. His repeated exploitation of the physical resemblance to convey a sense of voyaging on a static stage suggests that the device was effective; Distributed Cognition accounts for this by noting that the cognitively rich environment reduces the demands on the playgoer’s imagination, making it easier to accept the representation of travel. When deployed in conjunction with a veritable arsenal of stage technologies, including elaborate sound effects, appropriate dialogue, costuming, and perhaps even blocks and tackle or other nautically-themed stage properties, the ‘cognitive life of things’ (John Sutton’s term) can help decrease the playgoer’s imaginative labour. In the later seventeenth century (or in court entertainments of the earlier decades) an additional dimension was added to the mind-travelling practice through the provision of perspectival scenery in the public theatres. However, these representational gestures, no matter how detailed, are ultimately dependent on the playgoer’s imaginative activity. Like Wolfgang Iser’s active reader, the playgoer must actively participate in the creation of theatrical spectacle, as choric figures constantly remind them to do through injunctions to ‘work’ their thoughts, to activate their imaginations. Voyage drama provides a severe test case of the early modern theatre’s often problematic negotiation between presentation and representation. More so than with other drama, where the classical unities of time and place are more readily achievable (if the simulation of reality is the playwright’s aim), the imagination is key to the success of voyage drama, which cannot physically transport the audience in the way its plots require. In Thomas Heywood’s The English Traveller (1625), Young Geraldine’s ‘shipwreck by land’ speech about the drunken happenings at Lionel’s house may be suggestive of the potential for ship scenes to fail at the theatre: In the height of their carousing, all their brains Warmed with the heat of wine, discourse was offered Of ships, and storms at sea; when suddenly Out of his giddy wildness one conceives The room wherein they quaffed to be a pinnace Moving and floating, and the confused noise

4 Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

To be the murmuring winds, gusts, mariners; That their unsteadfast footing did proceed From rocking of the vessel. This conceived, Each one begins to apprehend the danger And to look out for safety. ‘Fly’, saith one, ‘Up to the main-top, and discover.’ He Climbs by the bed-post to the tester, there Reports a turbulent sea and tempest towards And wills them, if they’ll save their ship and lives, To cast their lading overboard. At this All fall to work, and hoist into the street, As to the sea, what next come to their hand: Stools, tables, trestles, trenchers, bedsteads, cups, Pots, plate and glasses. Here a fellow whistles; They take him for the boatswain. One lies struggling Upon the floor, as if he swum for life. A third takes the bass viol for the cock-boat, Sits in the belly on’t, labours and rows, His oar the stick with which the fiddler played. A fourth bestrides his fellows, thinking to scape As did Arion on the dolphin’s back, Still fumbling on a gittern. (2.1.133–60) Intentionally ridiculous, the intoxicated revelry may nevertheless approximate a playing company’s attempt to depict shipwreck on stage. On the other hand, despite the potential for farce, the representation of ships on stage was not entirely a dramatic hindrance. Louis B. Wright has convincingly observed that: In representing sea fights, the players achieved more realistic effects than in the portrayal of land battles, for a stage more easily represented the deck of a ship than it did a far flung field of battle. The arrangement of the stage with inner stage, trap doors on the front stage, and upper balcony made ship scenes easier to represent with some degree of realism than is generally realized. (‘Elizabethan Sea Drama’ 111–12) To what extent is the imagination supplemented by on-stage activity and costumes, and to what extent do the aural and oral ‘markers’ control the imagination?

Introduction

5

This book situates voyage drama in its historical and intellectual context somewhere between the individual act of reading in early modern England and the communal act of modern sightseeing. Chapter 1 fleshes out the reasons for these points of reference in more detail, but the reproduction of two salient examples here will help set the tone for what follows. Writing for the page, not the stage, English traveller Thomas Coryate, associated with the birth of tourism by some critics, reflects on the effect of sightseeing (even when the sight itself is in decay, or no longer exists): [The] ruines of the houses wherin those famous men liued, as Cicero, Varro, Virgil, Liuie, &c. that are to this day shewed in sundry places of Italie, strike no small impression in the heart of an obseruatiue traueller. Likewise the places wherein diuers famous battels haue beene fought, so much celebrated partly by the ancient Roman historiographers … when they are suruayed by a curious traueller, doe seem to present to the eyes of his mind a certain Idea of the bloudy skirmishes themselues. (Coryat’s Crudities b3r–v) Analysing tourist behaviour some 350 years later, Dean MacCannell raises the curious example of the ‘Bonnie and Clyde Shootout Area’ in Iowa. Although it ‘amounts to no more than a patch of wild grass’, renewed interest in Bonnie and Clyde (prompted by a motion picture) generated tourist interest in the sight. (There is, of course, nothing to see.) MacCannell observes that those tourists who venture to the area ‘do not arrive expecting to see anything and are content to be involved with the marker’ (114–15) – that is, the sign designating the patch of grass as the site of the shootout. Whilst Coryate’s reason for appreciating the ruins of houses foreshadows a Romantic sensibility, there is something inherently theatrical about his second example of imaginatively reconstructing the violence that occurred at the Roman battlefields. The affinity of this example with MacCannell’s ‘shootout area’ tourists is clear: in both cases, the attraction owes a greater debt to the agency of the viewer than to any physical property of its own, and the extent to which the ‘sight’ is enjoyed depends on the mental activity of the visitor. It might be objected that in the Bonnie and Clyde example there is the aura of actual place – the tourists are standing in situ, at the site where the historical event occurred and so can imaginatively enter the scene; by contrast, the place must itself be imagined by the playgoer. But the tourist’s knowledge of their setting is informed by markers, just

6 Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

as the scene setting at a play is conveyed by markers (expository speech, reference to site-specific features). Moreover, real-world markers can be misleading: for many years, tourists in Stratford-upon-Avon were guided through a house which has recently been discovered not to have been Mary Arden’s; the neighbouring Glebe farm now bears the Arden marker. Hence MacCannell’s ‘shootout area’ and Coryate’s ruins prompt me to reconsider the role of the imagination in the playhouse when a theatrical company performs a travel play: playgoers, like Coryate and like MacCannell’s tourists, deliberately seek out a patch of empty space (the stage) with the intention of experiencing what can only be an imaginatively fabricated ‘reality’. Why and how they do this will be the subject of this study. After constructing from archival material a new concept of what early moderns valued in travel texts (Chapter 1), I turn to the dramatic imaginations of three significant playwrights, Marlowe (Chapter 2), and Jonson and Heywood (Chapter 3), and investigate their attitudes to travel and to travelling at the theatre. Having already flagged characterological study in my discussion of Jonson, I then turn to Richard Brome’s Caroline comedy, The Antipodes (Chapter 4) to examine the psychology of travel in his wanderlust-afflicted protagonist, Peregrine Joyless. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the Interregnum and Restoration periods, considering the effects on voyage drama of new stage technology and rejuvenated genres (especially as they form a contrast with Heywood’s earlier shaping of genres within voyage drama). Students of the early modern period typically posit an absolute divide between Renaissance and Restoration aesthetics, and it is only sensible (given the political instability and the closure of the public theatres) to acknowledge that continuity cannot be assumed. However, by drawing new lines of interconnection between plays not formerly linked as travel dramas, this study implicitly suggests that at least some continuous innovation can be found on the seventeenth-century English stage, where other studies imply only discontinuous innovation across the Interregnum. In attending to what is, dramaturgically speaking, arguably the greatest challenge of the stage – the presentation of travel – my study could easily have concluded in the Renaissance and restricted itself to what is already a complex set of styles in its own right. If I were only interested in the production side of voyage drama, such an approach would have yielded obvious benefits: a (superficially) more homogeneous set of texts (inasmuch as they were produced under similar social and political circumstances), and the opportunity to delve further into the Renaissance offerings and discuss plays like Fletcher’s The Island Princess (1621) or

Introduction

7

The Sea Voyage (1622), which the scope of the present study unhappily could not accommodate. But despite the political instability of the English commonwealth and the temporary hiatus in playing, interest in the exotic did not abate; news from abroad continued to enchant and captivate the English, and voyage drama would be amongst the very first entertainments to return to the public stage. Without wanting to elide the important stylistic differences between early and late seventeenth-century plays, I want to emphasise what I see as the underappreciated continuity in the playgoing public’s engagement with the theatre; especially in conjunction with the sustained demand for a sightseeing experience. The technologies of the stage might have developed, especially in the realm of perspectival scenery and elaborate sets, but these visual aids were not a substitute for the imagination; they merely altered the manner in which playgoers interacted imaginatively with drama. How they altered the playgoer’s engagement with the theatre will be an important facet of my argument in the later chapters of this book, where I consider the reactions to Restoration spectacle and new modes of scenic depiction.

Voyage drama Presumably one of the reasons why voyage drama has rarely been treated as a form of its own is that it frequently defies generic taxonomies: Old Fortunatus proclaims itself a comedy, yet is deeply tragic; Tamburlaine calls itself a tragedy, but barely conforms to any such generic expectations. Yet voyage drama – that is, plays which incorporate scenes of travel, deploy genuinely exotic settings which are not mere foils for London, or are in some way concerned with the motivations and consequences of travel – occupied a consistent (if not always memorable) place in the repertory of most playing companies in early modern England. Although numerous studies of individual travel plays exist, I wish to read each of the travel plays assembled in this book as ‘one of a class of similar forms’ (to borrow Northrop Frye’s terminology [95]), emphasising the external relations of each play to other voyage drama rather than to political contexts. With the exception of Claire Jowitt’s sustained study of voyage drama, Anthony Parr’s Revels Plays edition of Three Renaissance Travel Plays, and Jean Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems’s edited collection on travel and drama, early modern criticism has paid little attention to this body of works as a sub-genre in its own right. Parr’s grouping of three generically disparate plays under the uniting rubric of ‘travel drama’ is very useful for seeing the

8 Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

possibilities of speaking about a set of plays as ‘voyage drama’ rather than individually as ‘contemporary history’, ‘romance’, or ‘comedy with foreign setting’. Maquerlot and Willems’s collection of essays, whilst retaining a tight focus on historicist practices, demonstrates the rich variety of issues deserving attention in this neglected sub-genre: from the generic form of travel narratives and drama (Philip Edwards, Peter Holland), to foreign relations (Anthony Parr, Jonathan Bate, Andrew Hadfield), religious difference (Lois Potter), and cultural fantasies of alterity (Michael Hattaway, Leo Salingar). It is the set of texts that Jowitt assembles for her analysis of travel drama, however, that most closely resembles my own; but Jowitt’s erudite study focuses on ‘the use of allegory in travel drama … as a rhetorical device for accounts of foreign experiences’ in order to expose the topical or politically subversive sentiments about England that she identifies in these plays (1). In her reading of a dozen plays, Jowitt limits the significance of travel to a nominal geographical displacement, an allegory that facilitates discussion of gender construction and imperial politics in England. Furthermore, Jowitt ‘does not fully explore the effect that conditions of performance or staging might have had on the plays’ allegorical meanings’ (Vitkus, ‘Travel Drama’ 330), whereas it is my intention to analyse in greater detail the role of the theatre (and audience expectations) in relation to travel writing. Given this paucity of criticism on the sub-genre, it may be prudent briefly to survey some of the key texts of this field. (For convenience, unless otherwise specified, I follow Harbage’s assignation of dates.) Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays (Admiral’s, 1587, 1588) and his Doctor Faustus (Admiral’s, 1592 or earlier) famously incorporate travel, but the spate of Tamburlainean conqueror plays and Dekker’s Faust-inspired Old Fortunatus (Admiral’s, 1599) are rarely discussed. The Revels Plays series has raised the profile of several travel plays: Captain Thomas Stukeley (Admiral’s, 1596) and Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (Admiral’s, 1589) have begun to receive greater attention following Charles Edelman’s convenient edition, as have Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’s The Travels of the Three English Brothers (Queen Anne’s, 1607), Fletcher’s The Sea Voyage (King’s, 1622), and Brome’s The Antipodes (Queen’s, 1636–38) thanks to Anthony Parr, whilst Selimus (Queen’s, 1592), Massinger’s The Renegado (Lady Elizabeth’s, 1624), and Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk (King’s, 1610) have reached new audiences through Daniel Vitkus’s Three Turk Plays. Clare McManus’s Arden Early Modern Drama edition of The Island Princess (King’s, 1621) will further add to the attention Fletcher’s play has been receiving since the RSC production in 2002. Thomas

Introduction

9

Heywood, best known (perhaps undeservedly) as a ‘prose Shakespeare’ thanks to Charles Lamb, made numerous contributions to this style of drama, most notably The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1 (Queen Anne’s, 1597–1610) and Part 2 (Queen Henrietta’s, 1630–31), Fortune by Land and Sea (Queen Anne’s, 1607–09), and even The English Traveller (Queen Henrietta’s, 1625) to a certain extent. Aside from the choric devices in Pericles (King’s, 1608) and Henry V (Chamberlain’s, 1599), The Tempest (King’s, 1611) and its Restoration rewriting at the hands of Davenant and Dryden (Duke’s, 1667) represent Shakespeare’s foray into the exotica scene. There are also a series of plays which respond to travel satirically, such as Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour (Chamberlain’s, 1599) and Volpone (King’s, 1606), and perhaps most famously, the occasionally seditious trilogy of Westward Ho! (Paul’s, 1604), Eastward Ho! (Queen’s Revels, 1605), and Northward Ho! (Paul’s, 1605). In the Interregnum period, mini-operatics like Davenant’s The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru or The History of Sir Francis Drake (Cockpit, 1658–59) maintained the travel play tradition, and were joined in the Restoration by Dryden’s Amboyna (King’s, 1672), Indian Emperour (King’s, 1665), and (with Howard; or more precisely, Howard with Dryden) Indian Queen (King’s, 1664), amongst others. Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter (United, 1689) and Thomas Southerne’s Oroonoko (Patent, 1695) mark more than a century of voyage drama on the English stage. Whether fantastical, historical, or simply cynical, these plays share an interest in journeys and place, and provide a specific kind of vicarious experience for the London playgoer, which will be examined throughout this study. In deciding which plays would constitute the bulk of my study, I have aimed for a mixture of ‘canonical’ travel plays (if such exist) such as Tamburlaine, Volpone, The Fair Maid of the West, and The Indian Queen, alongside what might better be regarded as obscure titles: The Launching of the Mary, Sir Politic Would-be, The Widow Ranter. In general, my choice of texts was suggested by their explicit thematisation of the pleasure principle in travel; their prominent exhibition of stagecraft issues specific to voyage drama; their interest not merely in the Near East and the known world, but in the exotic (that is, that which requires an imaginative supplement from the playgoer, as opposed to that which is vaguely familiar); and by a desire to devote attention to plays that have hitherto received less attention than the more ‘topical’ race- and/or religion-based plays such as Massinger’s The Renegado (see Neill’s edition) or The City Madam (see Hollis). Although I have been unable to devote attention to such titles within the present study, I do

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

see potential for the ideas I advance here to be applied to these other plays: in Chapter 5, for example, I make passing reference to The Travels of the Three English Brothers in the context of stagecraft and ‘prospective glasses’ – accordingly, I hope that my relative neglect of this play and others like it might be seen as the product of space constraints and the wealth of viable alternatives.

Lost plays In speaking of voyage drama as a sub-genre of early modern plays, I hasten to add the caveat that the surviving corpus of works is incomplete, and that our conception of what constituted ‘voyage drama’ may be distorted (see McInnis, ‘Lost Plays’). The speculations I make about audience response and about the aesthetics of the stage will necessarily be reliant on the knowledge we possess in the form of extant texts, but where possible I will attempt to supplement this information with educated guesses about the influence of lost plays and their potential radically to revise our conception of the genre’s possibilities and of the playgoers’ reactions. (For clarity, I use italics for the titles of extant plays and quotation marks for the titles of lost plays.) The Admiral’s Men, for example, once had in their possession an older ‘Fortunatus’ play (early 1590s) preceding Dekker’s 1599 depiction of the legendary traveller whisked away to exotic destinations by his ‘wishing cap’. Also lost from their repertory were the two part ‘Tamar Cham’ plays (1592 or earlier, revived 1596) which owed a greater debt to Mandeville than Tamburlaine, judging from the extant ‘plot fragment’ and its description of a fantastical procession of pygmies, cannibals, and Amazons. Although Strange’s Men also performed a ‘Sir John Mandeville’ play at least eight times at the Rose, this was more likely a romance set in the East, if we accept Lawrence Manley’s convincing proposal that Book XI of the 1596 edition of William Warner’s Albion’s England contains a redaction of the lost play (see Manley and MacLean). Numerous ‘Turk plays’ also complemented the extant offerings: Stephen Gosson writes of ‘The Blacksmith’s Daughter’, a 1578 play at the Theatre ‘contayning the trechery of Turkes’ (f.23); Henslowe famously recorded receipts for a ‘Mahomet’ play between 14 August 1594 and 5 February 1595, which may well be distinct from Peele’s ‘The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek’ (see Anon., Merrie conceited iests D3v–D4); and the unique extant letter used as a stage-property in early modern entertainments – Folger MS V.a.190, from the Gesta Grayorum at Gray’s Inn, 1594 – is addressed ‘To ye Greate Turke’. At Stationers’ Hall in

Introduction 11

1601, the Earl of Oxford’s players registered their copy of a ‘Scanderbeg’ play (Arber 3.187), which would have portrayed the military exploits of Giorgio Castriota (b. 1403), first for the Turks, then against them as leader of the Albanian resistance (McInnis, ‘Marlowe’s Influence’). A year later, in 1602, Frederic Gerschow, secretary to Duke Philip Julius of StettinPomerania, recorded having seen a performance of a comedy which featured the ‘taking of Stuhl-Weissenberg, firstly by the Turks, and thereafter back again by the Christians’ (Chambers 2.367). Knutson suggests it may have been at the Globe, and hence a Chamberlain’s play (‘Toe to Toe’ 37n), but in his forthcoming book Matthew Steggle makes a convincing case for the identification of ‘Stuhlweissenburg’ with the lost Worcester’s play ‘Albere Galles’, by Thomas Heywood and Wentworth Smith. The ‘marvellous’ travel plays of Faustian voyaging and Mandevillian exotica were also matched by more realistic voyage drama, steeped in recent history. The ‘Stukeley’ plays mentioned above are rare extant examples of this mode. The subject of the Admiral’s lost ‘New World’s Tragedy’ (1595) has eluded scholars, but seems likely to have had its roots in contemporary history, with the Drake-Hawkins expedition of 1595 (Cawley 289; Ramsaram 99) and the lost colony on Roanoke Island (Parr, Three Plays 3) being entertained as possible subject matters. As I have suggested in an entry for the Lost Plays Database, a 1601 offering by the Admiral’s, ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’, was almost certainly a dramatisation of Cortez’s conquest of Mexico, derived from Thomas Nicholl’s The Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the West India (1596). If so, it seems that Aztecs like Montezuma (King of Mexico City) and Qualpopoca (Lord of Nahutlan/Almeria) had graced the London stages as characters. Later plays would also engage the New World, such as the lost ‘Plantation of Virginia’, played at the Curtain. It is difficult to believe that a play of this name, appearing in 1623, could have taken for its subject matter anything other than the 1622 massacre of settlers by Indians in Virginia, which was one of the most historically significant events in England’s New World colonial endeavours and became a turning point in how the natives were treated by the English. To ignore all these moderately successful plays would lead to the misinformed belief that the New World had not been dramatised before Davenant, Howard, and Dryden.

Vicarious travel Despite this wealth of voyage drama, the kind of vicarious travel experience these plays generated for early modern playgoers has been largely ignored by critics. Julie Sanders begins a book chapter with a premise

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

about pleasure that appears to anticipate my own, noting that ‘[w]hat these [travel] plays invariably tell us most about ... are not the locations of travel, the exotic far-off lands, actual or fictional, to which their characters journey, but the fantasies of those doing the travelling and therefore of the theatre audience that shares the experience’ (137). She further notes that ‘[t]he early modern period witnessed many colonial expeditions and displayed great interest in the literature of travel, actual and fictional, for political, commercial and scientific reasons – but also as a source of aesthetic pleasure’ (138). However, Sanders concentrates on ‘the potency of fantasies of travel, their complicity in the colonial desires for power and possession, and the politics of fantasies of this nature in the period’ (138), and has more to say about the social critiques embedded in utopian fantasy than about the analogue between sightseeing and playgoing, which is what interests me. In terms of vicarious travel more particularly, Karen Newman recognises the demand for reading about the exotic in her discussion of ‘armchair travel’, but focuses on the educational importance of travel and the implications of women’s exclusion from travel as analogous to their exclusion from institutions of learning. Rhonda Lemke Sanford acknowledges the possibility, but her interests also lie elsewhere: citing the passage from The Boke Named the Governour (1531) in which Elyot ‘writes of the efficacy of maps for allowing one to see countries that s/he could never visit, as he rhapsodizes as well on the pleasure to be had’, Sanford limits her discussion to ‘the expediency of maps in the functioning of government’, noting that as ‘England emerged from feudalism, it became necessary for the monarch to be able to govern wider areas’ (Maps 17). Accordingly, she notes that: [t]he kind of armchair travel envisioned by Elyot – the pleasure to be had from experiencing, even secondhand, the diversions of foreign lands – is similar to John Norden’s idea about estate surveying, that: a plot rightly drawn by true information, describeth so the lively image of a Mannor, and every branch and member of the same, as the Lord sitting in his chayre, may see what he hath, where, and how it lyeth, and in whose use and occupation every particular is, upon the suddaine view. (18) Liz Horodowich simply assumes the existence of armchair travellers in the Renaissance, claiming that Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s systematic

Introduction 13

collection of exploration documents (his Navigationi e viaggi, Giunti 1550–59) was ‘[s]ignificant for European cosmographers, geographers, humanists, and everyday armchair travelers alike’, and that it paved the way for ‘analogous publications in other countries, such as Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (London, 1582), Samuel del Purchas’s Pilgrimes (London, 1625), and Theodore di Bry’s Grands Voyages (Frankfurt, 1590), all of which followed Ramusio’s model’ (1043). She notes that ‘[a]s an armchair traveller, Ramusio consciously made many of the texts in his collection available to a wide readership for the first time’, and that ‘he suggests that recording and publishing the acts of discovery are as significant as discovery itself since all his readers became explorers themselves through his texts’ (1048). Editors like Ramusio enable ‘textual, virtual discovery’, his readers becoming ‘new Odysseuses through their armchair travels’ (1048). I agree entirely with Horodowich’s premises about the motivations and consequences of the production and consumption of travel literature, but her study differs importantly from my own in that it is ultimately concerned with ‘a particularly Venetian cultural strategy of inserting itself into the age of discovery and exploration in which it had played no formal, active role’, and thus with the construction of ‘a powerful, timeless, and always marvelous Venice’ in the sixteenth century (1062). The perspective on early modern travel offered by this book thus complements and builds upon the work of a number of other critics, extending an underdeveloped line about pleasure and aesthetics without invalidating the excellent scholarship of scholars like Stephen Greenblatt, Peter Hulme, and others who have attended to colonial and mercantile concerns. Although I address voyage drama specifically, it is my hope that the insights I relate about vicarious experiences at the theatre will have applicability to other forms of plays too; history, for example, might be construed as a form of time-travel, and the historical sights and personages represented by history plays arguably amount to a glimpse of the otherwise inaccessible in much the same way that a travel play provides a glimpse of exotica.

The scholarship of sightseeing Given that the mode of travel most relevant to my study involves pleasure, anticipation, and the imagination, the type of contemporary travel criticism most likely to illuminate my chosen subject matter is that which focuses on sightseeing and tourism, despite the apparent anachronism. ‘Tourism’ as the ‘theory and practice of touring; travelling

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

for pleasure’, is dated only as early as 1811 in the OED, and is recorded in a depreciatory sense there; the individual ‘tourist’ as ‘one who travels for pleasure or culture, visiting a number of places for their objects of interest, scenery, or the like’ occurs slightly earlier in 1780, but is equally ahistorical in the context of early modern travel. Nevertheless, the concept was nascent in the seventeenth century, when the concept of ‘an excursion or journey including the visiting of a number of places in a circuit or sequence’ was referred to as a ‘tour’ at least as early as 1643 (OED). Claiming that tourism is ‘distinguishable by its mass character from the travel undertaken in the past’, H. Robinson thinks the phenomenon is ‘very largely, if not entirely, of the period following the Second World War’, although he does concede that something like it began in the mid-nineteenth century (xxi). Most scholars agree that tourism evolved earlier than this, but not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when longer breaks from work, a Romantic sensibility about the pleasure of sightseeing, and the growth of infrastructure would combine to foster an appreciation of spending time abroad (Urry 20–1). Paul Fussell dates the ‘rudimentary phase’ of tourism to the nineteenth century in England where, because it was ‘the first country to undergo industrialization and urbanization’, industrial work necessitated the invention of ‘vacation’ (Fussell 37). Like many critics, Fussell conceives tourism as an activity defined by the historical circumstances that make it possible: ‘Before tourism there was travel, and before travel there was exploration. Each is roughly assignable to its own age in modern history: exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment’ (38). Acknowledging that there are overlaps, Fussell hastens to add that ‘[w]hat we recognize as tourism in its contemporary form was making inroads on travel as early as the mid-nineteenth century, when Thomas Cook got the bright idea of shipping sight-seeing groups to the Continent’ (38). Scholars who date the advent of tourism to substantially earlier periods are careful to acknowledge the limitations of their positions. John M. Theilmann ultimately admits that his proposal of medieval pilgrimages as a ‘convincing origin for present-day tourism’ (93) is ‘in some ways a false beginning’ (100), but he raises interesting points about the motives for travel: Most pilgrims did not consciously take part in a pilgrimage as a holiday, especially peasants who could ill-afford the expense or the time and would have had trouble leaving the manor on such an errand.

Introduction

15

However, from examining what few pilgrim narratives are extant, it seems that even the most devoted pilgrims took notice of the sights along their routes. (94) This is a kind of incidental tourism; sightseeing was not the aim, but it was nevertheless a facet of the pilgrimage journey. Judith Adler dates the origins of ‘sightseeing’ to the early seventeenth century, cautiously distinguishing between sightseeing and earlier sixteenth-century forms of travel which, focusing on education, did not privilege the eye (10). Until the early seventeenth century, travellers sought an education abroad through discourse with wise men; when they ‘rejourneyed’ (a concept coined by Owen Felltham in the early seventeenth century, and discussed further in Chapter 1) over their previous voyages, Adler claims, they accordingly did so not ‘through a store of pretty scenes which have been squirreled away in memory, but through thoughts and discourse’ (10–11) – a claim I will contradict in Chapter 1. Concomitant with the rise of the new empirical science was an emphasis on eyewitness reports and the virtues of ocular proof; ‘sightseeing’, then, belongs largely to a post-Baconian world and does not really become a mainstay of touristic travel until Englishmen begin undertaking educative Grand Tours of the Continent. The period under investigation in this book occurs well before the cheaper, more extensive transportation of the nineteenth century, and largely pre-dates even the Grand Tour – which was restrictive and elitist in any case, in that it was the domain of aristocrats who set out to the Continent for educative and political purposes (see Hibbert). But as this study argues, the concept of pleasure in travel (in an indirect or limited fashion) is demonstrably emergent in the early modern period, and the demand for a mass-market, commodified experience of sightseeing was already present in the English theatre before the physical and financial means for tourism were available to the public. Moreover, I see certain theoretical affinities between contemporary tourism and early modern experiences of travel at the theatre. Chief amongst these are the notion of travel/theatre as a departure from regular work; the opposition between the domestic and the exotic; the ‘mass character’ (Robinson xxi) of both pastimes; and the concept of both theatre and tourism as experiences which are in a large sense ‘produced’ and ‘consumed’. John Urry considers tourism’s defining feature its role as an act of deviance, or a ‘departure’ from ordinary life: a ‘limited breaking with established routines and practices of everyday life and allowing one’s

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

senses to engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and the mundane’ (2). Tourism, he claims, ‘results from a basic binary division between the ordinary/everyday and the extraordinary’ (11). Travel of this kind occupies a position in contemporary culture whose early modern analogue (given the restrictions of physical mobility) is the excursion to the playhouse. Comparing the English public to the French, Dryden declared in his ‘Essay of Dramatick Poesie’ (1668) that ‘we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our Playes’ (48). Playgoing thus provided a ludic departure from work and the domestic routine, serving a similar purpose (albeit for a shorter duration) to modern sightseeing. It shared a structural affinity with idle travel: everyday routine is suspended and for two or more hours, playgoers are transported from their familiar surroundings to an unfamiliar time or place (Caesar’s Rome, a sultan’s court), only to have normality restored at the conclusion of playing. And, like modern tourism, playgoing is almost exclusively an activity of the masses. Tourism is essentially a theatrical experience; it is predicated on acts of performance by those involved in the production side of travel: guides, hospitality employees, locals, tour operators, and so on. It also requires tourists to ‘consume’; that is, to gaze at sights and otherwise experience attractions. In emphasising the aesthetic dimension of tourism, Urry’s argument for ‘the significance of the gaze to tourist activities’ includes the acknowledgement of ‘the complex nature of visual perception’ (128): We do not literally ‘see’ things. Particularly as tourists we see objects which are constituted as signs. They stand for something else. When we gaze as tourists what we see are various signs or tourist clichés. Some such signs function metaphorically. A pretty English village can be read as representing the continuities and traditions of England from the Middle Ages to the present day … Other signs, such as lovers in Paris, function metonymically. Here what happens is the substitution of some feature or effect or cause of the phenomenon for the phenomenon itself. (128–9) In other words, tourism is a game of representations; because the tourist rarely encounters an unexpected landmark or sight, it is safe to say that the tourist is largely preconditioned to anticipate experiences of destination cultures and landscapes. And because there is foreknowledge, satisfaction will be determined by the degree to which

Introduction 17

experience lives up to expectations – that is, the experience itself cannot be considered apart from the context in which the tourist is prepared for the experience. Dean MacCannell notes that usually ‘the first contact a sightseer has with a sight is not the sight itself but with some representation thereof’ (110). He uses the word marker to refer to this pre-contact information: The conventional meaning of ‘marker’ in touristic contexts tends to be restricted to information that is attached to, or posted alongside of, the sight … My use of the term extends it to cover any information about a sight, including that found in travel books, museum guides, stories told by persons who have visited it, art history texts and lectures, ‘dissertations’ and so forth. This extension is forced, in part, by the easy portability of information. (110) Both ‘on-sight markers’ and ‘off-sight markers’ (111) have the power to shape experience and determine satisfaction, because markers imbue sights with significance and meaning that may otherwise escape the viewer’s attention. MacCannell cites the illustrative example of a moon rock on display in New York City; indistinguishable from ‘something you could pick up in Central Park’ (according to a young viewer), the sight itself is only appreciated if there is some level of marker-involvement on the part of the museumgoer (113). It is the accompanying sign (or the promotional material which prompted the visit) designating the rock as something extraterrestrial which causes the sight to be valued: ‘the important element in (pleasant?) sightseeing need not be the sight. More important than the sight, at least, is some marker involvement’ (MacCannell 113). As MacCannell observes, an important implication of this critical reliance on semiotic principles is the recognition of the interchangeability of signifier and signified (118). Ordinarily, the marker is subservient to the sight, although the significance of the sight itself may go unnoticed were it not for the marker: ‘The designation of an object as a sight, a factory process, a bit of moon dust, is most often accomplished without any esthetic assistance from the object. Its elevation to sight status is the work of society’ (119). However, in the case of the moon rock (for example), the marker can obliterate the sight altogether, just as marker-involvement completely displaces the sight at the Bonnie and Clyde shootout area. MacCannell’s theories lead me towards a concept of the theatre which construes theatrical experience

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

as a continual oscillation between marker and site displacements. A study of voyage drama thus provides an interesting opportunity to reconsider the role of signification and representation in the theatre, in the context of determining audience satisfaction. It leads us towards an enhanced appreciation of the theatricality of subsequent tourism, but also towards a recognition of the vicarious desires of playgoers who were intrigued by the exotic long before travel became achievable for the masses.

1 The Wings of Active Thought

In the first section of this chapter, I consider anti-travel polemics and an important strand of early modern travel writing which has only recently begun to receive sustained critical attention: the ars apodemica (or ‘instructions for travel’) treatises. I attempt to establish the propensity for travel to be enjoyable for early moderns by examining the converse position: the moral opposition to travel, as articulated in anti-travel tracts and denied in ars apodemica treatises. At stake is more than a superficial objection to styles of clothing and mannerisms; it is a question of identity, in which cross-dressing, dressing above one’s rank, or affecting Italianate or Frenchified manners was both deceptive and (more alarmingly) destabilising, because constitutive of selfhood. In the second section, I stray from the conventional travel writings of the period and consider some important (though often fleeting) examples of writing which openly celebrate the pleasures of travel. My intention here is to challenge the traditional assumption that early moderns voyaged purely for instrumental purposes and that their written reports of these expeditions were strictly utilitarian and informative. I ask whether travel accounts were read exclusively for facts, and conclude that although not the predominant form of reading in the period, there did in fact exist an important segment of the reading public who practised the art of vicarious travel from the safety of their closets. These readers, it seems, sought a simulation of the travel experience, irrespective of whether they were likely to voyage anywhere physically. Following an instructive instantiation of the term in the early modern lexicon, I refer to this phenomenon as ‘mind-travelling’. Mind-travelling entails a quasi-Kamesian notion of ideal presence (see the third section below), in which the reader imaginatively reconstructs 19

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

a vivid psycho-physiological experience of distant lands without leaving their homes. Importantly, it has little practical utility; it is as idle a pursuit as playgoing, and equally unprofitable if one were to take a pragmatic stance. Yet like the theatre, there was demand for this aesthetic experience. In the final section, I ask how this experience of mind-travelling translates into the realm of the theatre, for it is evident that solitary imaginative rehearsals of reported travels, when experienced from the comfort of one’s room and under cover of darkness, will not necessarily operate in the same manner in the context of a crowded playhouse in broad daylight. The communal nature of the playgoing experience leads me to consider the prospect of collaborative labour shared between player and playgoer; a concept which feeds into recent scholarship on Distributed Cognition, but which also raises the possibility of reconceptualising theatrical experience through contemporary critical work on pleasurable travel (that is, tourism or sightseeing). If the theatre is a form of vicarious experience – vicarious travel, in the context of voyage drama – what can this teach us about the nature of spectacle, of representation, of mimesis? How might we construe the experience of playgoing differently, in light of the mutually illuminating (though not necessarily causative) relationship between travel and the theatre?

Instructions for travel, or ars apodemica It has become a commonplace assumption that travel was purposeful and utilitarian in early modern England. Daniel Carey’s recent characterisation of the period is representative of scholarship on the subject: ‘[t]he sixteenth century constituted a remarkable period of expansion in travel – whether for purposes of trade, education, exploration, or colonial settlement’ (‘Hakluyt’s Instructions’ 167). Conspicuously absent from Carey’s survey of early modern travel typologies is any mention of pleasure. Some early moderns do explicitly discuss the pleasure of travel (Justus Lipsius and Thomas Coryate, both of whom I will discuss below), but these writers are clearly exceptional. Nevertheless, without wanting to stake my argument on the New Historicist equation of absence with presence, I do believe that a prominent strain of travel literature from the early modern period can teach us something (indirectly) about pleasure whilst purportedly instructing the reader on the art of travelling well. I have in mind a specific sub-genre of travel literature that emerged, in England, in the late sixteenth century: the ars apodemica treatises,

The Wings of Active Thought

21

or instructions for travel. Proponents of this literature in England and Europe included Robert Dallington, Philip Sidney, Robert Devereux (2nd Earl of Essex), Justus Lipsius, Albrecht Meyer, Thomas Neale, Thomas Palmer, and Jerome Turler (amongst others). A great many of these texts were written for the benefit of young aristocrats about to embark on a proto-grand tour of the Continent, and contain pragmatic advice drawn from the author’s own experiences and Humanist education. Thus Sir Balthazar Gerbier advises his princely traveller that [t]he best Circuit a Traveller can take, is to go through Holland towards Germany, thereby to satisfie his curiosity by degrees, which will encrease upon him, for Germany will afford more satisfaction than the Low Countries; France more than Germany; Italy more than France; and as for Spain, what it may want of the French Complements, it will make good in matter answerable to the Pirenean Hills… (17) The more usual course, though, was for these texts to instruct the future traveller on how to travel well, rather than simply guiding them through their destinations. Implicit in this focus is a belief that travel could be beneficial; a Humanist reaction against the likes of Roger Ascham (The Scholemaster, 1570) and others who had heartily condemned travel in the later decades of the 1500s. To this end, Carey notes, by printing treatises of this kind, ‘Hakluyt participated in the rehabilitation of travel in several ways. The instructions he printed defined it as a beneficial activity in which observations made abroad contributed to the national good.’ Carey also notes that such tracts were efforts by ‘Humanist authorities and Spanish officials to exert control over travel, to make it a useful and disciplined activity serving national interests’ (‘Hakluyt’s Instructions’ 180, 168). The purpose of methodising (or regularising) travel in the manner insisted upon by these ars apodemica treatises is to maximise the utility of travel through a reliably systematic procedure for information collection; in other words, to define ‘a set of norms and expectations for travel during a crucial era in which it was redefined as a secular activity designed to serve the interests of the state’ (Carey, Continental Travel 2). The documents published by Hakluyt, for example, ‘demonstrate the aspiration to coordinate travel in order to maximise commercial interests’, where ‘the challenge was to identify and exploit the potential of new markets for English goods’ (Carey, ‘Hakluyt’s Instructions’ 171). In an illustrative example, Albrecht Meyer insisted on an exhaustive

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Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England

taxonomy of attributes of a foreign country to be recorded by the traveller, consisting of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Cosmographie, or, the description of the worlde. Astronomie, or, the art of skill, in the course of the starres and planets. Geographie, or, the drawing and proportioning of the earth. Chorographie, or, the demonstration of Cities and Regions. Topographie, or, the protraiture [sic] of particular places. Husbandrie. Nauigation. The Politicall The Ecclesiasticall Literature. Histories. Chronicles. (Meyer B)

As Louis B. Wright observed, Meyer’s ‘was not a guidebook but a syllabus of points to be observed. Its purpose was so to train observers that, in the country visited, they might study intelligently every characteristic which would be of profit or interest to their own people’ (Middle-Class Culture 527). It is in this context that Joan-Pau Rubiés has also demonstrated the contribution of such empirically-oriented travel literature, with its Ramist logic, to the rise of the new Baconian science (139–90). This rigorous gathering of information from first principles, which was becoming the normative role of travel, participated in and accelerated the scientific move away from a reliance on authorities of classical antiquity as the foundation of knowledge. However, there is more at stake in this regularisation of travel than a pedantic desire to standardise the gathering of information. Justin Stagl pays particular attention to the emphasis placed by ars apodemica treatises on the definition of travel, noting that ‘the utility of travel for education and research is stressed. This is done by means of a characteristic distinction: true travel (“peregrinari”) is contrasted with aimless and useless rambling (“vagari”)’ (Stagl 71). To illustrate his point, Stagl translates and cites a 1638 treatise by S. Zwicker, Breviarium apodemicum methodice concinnatum: ‘Travel is thus a certain journey, undertaken by a suitable man out of the desire and wish to wander through, inspect and get to know external places, in order to acquire from there some good or other, which could be useful either to the fatherland and the

The Wings of Active Thought

23

friends or to ourselves’ (71). This emphasis on the usefulness of true travel (peregrinari), especially in stark contradistinction to purposeless vagrancy or wandering (vagari) reveals a deeply embedded concern over the morality of voyaging. Mary Floyd-Wilson has convincingly demonstrated the currency of geohumoral thought in early modern England; for the English, who at this time were struggling to define their national identity, the threat of cultural degeneration (ostensibly posed by exposure to Continental cultures) was a significant concern. To wander aimlessly through a wilderness of vices was not simply to be lazy (idle), but to be susceptible to moral corruption, which in turn could lead to changes in national or cultural identity. Beyond the provision of practical instructions then, these ars apodemica texts promote ‘a strong sense of the moral constraints upon the traveller’ and urge the voyager to document their observations systematically, not simply for the benefit of the state or for educational purposes, but in order to assist the traveller to ‘avoid the perils of aimless curiosity’ (Parr, ‘Coryat’ 581). As Rubiés notes, these texts ‘offered to instruct the traveller in the process of observation and classification, as well as on the moral and educational implications of his activity’ (141). Whilst travel may have been increasingly secularised – the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem being supplanted by a Continental circuit incorporating famous sites from Classical antiquity – the concept of idle travel, of whimsical wandering or relaxation and indulgence, was not yet endorsed. Intemperance threatened to undermine England’s New World colonies (Wilson-Okamura 721), and it was an equally undesirable trait in voyagers who travelled to more familiar regions. If Edward Leigh is to be believed, when young nobles came to take their leave of King Charles, he counselled them to ‘keep alwaies the best Company, and be sure never to be idle’ (Bv). Idle travel was a profitless pursuit, but it could be remedied by keen observation and judicious recording of information, which not only satisfied the state’s need for reconnaissance but served the individual well, by regulating their desires. Justin Stagl and Christian K. Zacher have demonstrated the traditional connection between travel and idle pastimes in an earlier period: Mobility and curiosity had always been seen together. For medieval moralists curiositas was ‘a wandering, unstable state of mind’, which was ‘exemplified in metaphors of motion and in the act of travel’. Curiositas was thus opposed to stabilitas. (Stagl 48, quoting Zacher 21)

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The instructions for travel in the early modern period similarly attest to the potential for moral degeneration whilst abroad, but attempt to neutralise them ‘by assimilating them in the shape of the methodical self-control of the traveller’ (Stagl 73). For example, the Profitable Instructions of Essex, Sidney, and Davison, printed 1633 (but with a terminus ad quem of 1608, when Davison died), raises the possibility of even the noblest of men being corrupted by travel: Some goe ouer full of good qualitie, and better hopes; who, hauing as it were emptied themselues in other places, return laden with nothing but the vices, if not the diseases of the Countries which they haue seene. And, which is most to bee pittied, they are commonly the best wits, and purest receptacles of sound knowledge, that are thus corrupted. Whether it be, that they are more eagerly assaulted with vice then others; or whether they doe more easily admit any obuious impression: howeuer it be; fit it is, That all young Trauellers should receiue an Antidot against the infectious Ayre of other Countries. (A3v–A6) Edward Leigh likewise criticises the traveller who returns ‘leavened with the ill Customes and Manners of the Countries they passed through’ (Bv) and Robert Dallington cautions his travelling reader about the cultural hazards of travel: The hazards are two: of the minde, and of the body: that, by the infection of errors; this by the corruption of manners. For who so drinketh of the poysonous cup of the one, or tasteth of the sower liquor of the other, looseth the true rellish of religion and vertue, bringeth home a leprous soule, and a tainted body… (Bv) It is Justus Lipsius, however, whose reservations about travelling provide the greatest insight here. In claiming that it is easier to sin than to improve virtue, Lipsius intimates even more clearly than these other writers that temptation (and thus, by inference, pleasure) is ubiquitous in travel: we attaine vnto vertue, not without great industrie, but vnto vice we need no schoolemaister. Wherefore, sweete Earle, haue diligent care in this behalfe, least you fall into the naturall faults of those nations where you trauell. (C2v)

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The very existence of these instructional treatises is testament to the presence of pleasure in voyaging: the instructions were composed at least partially in order to restrain the tempted traveller, to regulate travel so as ‘to produce positive effects rather than merely corrupting a country’s nobility and gentry during their time abroad’ (Carey, Continental Travel 4). Or as Judith Adler puts it, ‘[m]oral tracts aiming to establish the utility of travel distinguished serious practitioners from idlers on the grounds of whether more than personal pleasure was their aim’ (18).

Mind-travelling Was this the only way that travel was enjoyed – as a transgressive activity? It would be a mistaken criticism that suggested that travel was undertaken purely for the shock value of flirting with immorality. Moral subversion might have held a certain deviant appeal to the early modern Englishman, but the pleasure of travel cannot be reduced to the titillation of the risqué. What of the aesthetic dimension of pleasure? To read these objections to travel, and to witness the growth of documents addressing the need to regularise travel so as to produce profitable results, one might be forgiven for assuming that early moderns never wrote about the pleasures of voyaging – and that if they did enjoy travel, they self-censored when it came to writing about their experiences. Contemporary theorists of travel have characterised late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century travel writing as ‘an exercise in acute eyewitness investigation and detached, enumerative observation’ (Adler 24; see also Frow 143, Urry 4). Equating eyesight with the authority of eyewitness testimony (a crucial point linking travel to the empirical sciences), Adler notes the inability of travel advice manuals to tolerate an eyesight which might in any way be deemed subjective, and thus unreliable. Accordingly, she argues that there was no place for emotional responses in this formative stage of the new travel writing: In contrast to both earlier forms of pilgrimage and later styles of secular travel, the emotions aroused by travel sights received no public elaboration. The ‘eye’ cultivated in this initial period of sightseeing was deliberately disciplined to emotionally detached, objectively accurate vision; its commanding authority could only be jeopardized by evidence of strongly colored emotional response. (Adler 18)

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Adler’s discrediting of the presence or importance of emotions in travel writing is supported by John Frow’s implicit assertion that Bacon’s ‘prescription both of the cultivation of and conversation with good acquaintance, and of the detailed recording of sights witnessed in the course of travel – for didactic, it should be noted, not for aesthetic ends’ was the exclusive position of early moderns on travel (143). But these critical positions are not watertight. In this section, I want to discuss the aesthetic dimension of early modern travel writing, to test the assumptions of contemporary critics about the ‘objective’ and ‘didactic’ eye of early modern travellers. With a view to encouraging travellers to document their journeys, Albrecht Meyer quotes the words of Flemish cartographer, Abraham Ortelius: IF in our peregrinations and trauels, we shal obserue and note in our tables, or papers those things which doo occurre and seeme worthie of regard, we shall make our iournies and voyages in great measure, pleasant and delectable vnto vs: not thinking that our diligence can search & mark any thing in any place, which other men before vs haue not seene, but to discourse and recorde any thing, rather then to passe the way, and spend the time in idlenesse: and with all by this meanes, this commoditie is reaped, that whatsoeuer the eye seeth, is the easier and the better remembred, if it be once written. And when the time commeth, that we make an ende of our trauels, and personall view of forren parts, it will bee a singular pleasure vnto vs, whensoeuer we are so disposed to recognize, and recount those things which we haue seene, quietlie & in our chambers, without any trouble of iournie, or toile of bodie. (Meyer D3v) This extract opens with an interesting conditional: if the traveller makes observations and notes of interesting things whilst travelling, then the journey shall be ‘pleasant and delectable’. Whilst this is a variant of the traditional criticism of spending time ‘in idlenesse’ (thought to lead to incontinence and degeneration, as we have seen), Ortelius is actually encouraging documentation for a different reason. There is, after all, nothing unusual about recording information about foreign countries during one’s travels; the ars apodemica treatises stress the importance of a young nobleman diligently recording information to benefit the state, or improve his education. But these details are factual and informative; the

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impetus for noting these facts was utilitarian and pedagogical. Ortelius, by contrast, emphasises the benefits of inscription in terms of memory (sights are ‘better remembred’ through writing), but not for the purpose of communicating new and practical knowledge to the traveller’s countrymen at home. Ortelius is not discussing exploration voyages; he pointedly dismisses the idea that the traveller will record anything ‘which other men before vs haue not seene’. In fact, the ‘pleasant and delectable’ aspect of the journey is entirely of a private nature, since the abiding memories preserved through inscription are associated with the ‘singular pleasure’ of being able to ‘recount those things which we haue seene, quietlie & in our chambers, without any trouble of iournie, or toile of bodie’. Travel writing, then, can occasionally be directed towards the author’s private benefit: for reminiscing, and emotional (rather than physical) transportation – what William Wood called ‘mind-travelling’.1 In 1634, William Wood published an account of New England that promised on its title page to ‘enrich the knowledge of the mind-travelling Reader, or benefit the future Voyager’. Wood’s text is a promotional work, written to stimulate interest in New England and encourage readers to consider relocating to the colony; his intention, therefore, is to paint an enticing picture of the New England settlement. However, Wood’s separation of the ‘mind-travelling Reader’ from the ‘future Voyager’ is significant in that it distinguishes between two discrete categories of readers with an interest in travel literature,2 suggesting that such texts not only disseminated practical information, but also catered to the desires of readers with little or no prospect of actually voyaging – but who nevertheless enjoyed apprehending exotic shores in their minds’ eyes. The title-page text of Thomas Blundeville’s A briefe description of vniuersal mappes and cardes similarly addresses itself to ‘those that delight in reading of Histories: and also for Traueilers by Land or Sea’. Robert Herrick is a relatively famous example of this category of reader. In his early seventeenth-century poem ‘A Country Life; To His Brother, M. Tho. Herrick’, he writes: …thou at home, without or tyde or gale, Canst in thy map securely saile; Seeing those painted countries, and so guesse By those fine shades their substances; And from thy compasse taking small advice, Buy’st travell at the lowest price. (49)

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In this regard, travel writing was inheriting a role which had been performed more or less exclusively by maps and globes, which ( John Dee informs us) could serve practical purposes or function as a rudimentary form of virtual reality: While, some, to beautifie their Halls, Parlers, Chambers, Galeries, Studies, or Libraries with; other some, for things past, as battels fought, earthquakes, heauenly firings, & such occurentes, in histories mentioned: therby liuely, as it were, to vewe the place, the region adioyning, the distance from vs: and such other circumstances. Some other, presently to vewe the large dominion of the Turke: the wide Empire of the Moschouite: and the litle morsel of ground, where Christendome (by profession) is certainly knowen. … Some, either for their owne iorneyes directing into farre landes: or to vnderstand of other mens travailes. To conclude, some, for one purpose: and some, for an other, liketh, loveth, getteth, and vseth, Mappes, Chartes, & Geographicall Globes. (a.iiij) It seems, then, that the traveller sometimes seeks to communicate the phenomenological experience of voyaging, not merely to the future traveller but to the mind-travelling reader. Early modern travel writing can be about experience as well as empirical facts: it can attempt to convey pleasure alongside information. I do not mean to suggest that this is quite the same as imparting a tale, since the voyage is united only by chronology; there is rarely an organising narrative or rationalisation of episodic events. Furthermore, the affective power of a travel text has less to do with the genius of the author than the talismanic charm of the exotica being described; readers can become enchanted with exciting subject matter tediously told. But inasmuch as Ortelius explicitly rejects the utility to others of the observations recorded, it must be acknowledged that some descriptions held alternative value. Unlike the instruction treatises, instrumentality does not appear to be the motivation here. Despite the apparent pointlessness of this pleasure, it should be noted that even in this ostensibly ‘idle’ form of imaginative travelling, effort was still required. As Francesco Guicciardini’s description of ‘a minde traueling, busie, and ambicious’ reminds us (3), ‘mind-travelling’ was evocative of ‘travailing’. Imaginative effort was an essential component of mind-travelling, even if no physical exertion was required. Even earlier than this 1589 quotation of Ortelius in the English translation of Meyer’s Instructions for trauellers, we find the same collocation

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of writing, pleasure, and future mind-travelling in Jerome Turler’s The Traveiler (1575), where Turler declares: ‘what can be more delectable, then to beeholde the things whereof thou hast read sumthing or heard of other, and againe to beeholde in minde and contemplation those things which thou hast somtime seene’ (113–14). As with Ortelius, in addition to characterising travel as ‘delectable’, Turler celebrates the inherent potential to ‘beeholde in minde and contemplation’ foreign sights from which to derive pleasure at home. We also see this conflation of the ostensibly pragmatic with the ulterior motive of pleasure in Owen Felltham’s Resolves, where the author notes: That a man may better himself by travel, he ought to observe and comment: noting as well the bad, to avoid it, as taking the good into use. And without registering these things by the pen, they will slide away unprofitably. A man would not think how much the charactering of a thought in paper fastens it. Littera scripta manet, has a large sense. He that does this may, when he pleaseth, rejourney over all his voyage in his closet. (194–5) Common to Felltham, Turler, and Ortelius is the individual experience of pleasure in travel, and the conscious foresight that predicts the desire to ‘rejourney’ over a past voyage from the comfort of one’s closet. Although it is plausible that readers other than the author-traveller would embark on a physical voyage as the direct result of reading such memoirs – Felltham urges ‘the couch-stretched man’ to reject idleness and embrace movement, after all (109) – the fact that these writings are pointedly directed at the individual imagination complicates (without invalidating) the notion that the documentation of travels is practised solely for the dissemination of information. Judith Adler appears incorrect in summarily dismissing any notion of this kind of vicarious travel when she claims that early moderns who rejourneyed over their previous voyages did so not ‘through a store of pretty scenes which have been squirreled away in memory, but through thoughts and discourse’ (10–11). As Richard Brome explores the subject in A Jovial Crew (Beeston’s Boys, 1641), it seems that the instructive and pleasurable aspects of travel go hand in hand. Springlove, in this excerpt, is taking leave of his master Oldrents to travel the countryside as a vagabond: SPRINGLOVE.

Oh, sir, y’have heard of pilgrimages, and The voluntary travels of good men.

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OLDRENTS. SPRINGLOVE.

For penance, or to holy ends? But bring Not those into comparison, I charge you. I do not, sir. But pardon me, to think Their sufferings are much sweetened by delights, Such as we find by shifting place and air. (1.2.207–13)

It is in this sense of pleasure as attendant upon though not the primary cause of travel that I wish to pursue the enjoyable aspects of voyaging in this book. Travel can have pleasurable aspects – and the recording of details can serve an aesthetic purpose in invigorating the memory and the imagination so as to permit future mind-travelling. In this specific context, which is admittedly a distinct minority in the early modern period (but a noteworthy one, nonetheless), precise empirical facts are subordinate to the affect engendered by exotic accounts; and the capacity to move the individual, to inspire the faculty of imagination to induce simulations of exotica, is of greater importance to the reader. Judging by the enthusiastic praise showered on authors of texts which enabled mind-travelling, consumers in London valued the opportunity to experience what was otherwise impossible – whether it were because travel anywhere was prohibitive for the mass of individuals, or because of the hardships of the journey (the pun on travel/travail was a popular one), Faustus’s ability to view the entire earth ‘within the compass of eight days’ (3.1.68) was a not uncommon fantasy.3 In his commendatory verse to Richard Zouch’s The Dove: or Passages of Cosmography (1613), Richard Yong praises Zouch ‘who in an houre / Flyest o’re the forrest of the spatious earth’ (in Zouch A3v). In The Gouernour (1531), Thomas Elyot recommends students ‘beholde the olde tables of Ptholemee, where in all the worlde is paynted’ rather than only reading dry histories, and wistfully declares, [W]hat pleasure is it, in one houre, to beholde those realmes, cities, sees, ryuers, and mountaynes, that vneth [scarcely] in an olde mannes life can not be iournaide and pursued: what incredible delite is take[n] in beholding the diuersities of people, beastis, foules, fishes, trees, frutes, and herbes … and that in a warme studie or perler [parlour], without perill of the see, or daunger of longe and paynfull iournayes: I can not tell, what more pleasure shulde happen to a gentil witte, than to beholde in his owne house euery thynge that with in all the worlde is contained. (E5r-v)

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William Cunningham’s The Cosmographical Glasse (1559) similarly waxes lyrical about the convenience and safety of mind-travelling, praising cosmography because ‘she deliuereth vs from greate and continuall trauailes. For in a pleasaunte house, or warme study, she sheweth vs the hole face of all th’Earthe’ (A6) – sentiments echoed by Richard Eden in the preface to his 1572 translation of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia: ‘The worke of itselfe is not greate but the examples and varieties are mani so that in a short and smal time, the reader may wander through out the whole world, and fil his head with many strange and memorable things’ (*iii). It seems, then, that whilst some travellers made notes to assist their own reminiscences, others did so with a more community-oriented mindset, for ‘such as are desirous to know the situation and customes of forraine Cities without trauelling to see them’ (Lewkenor A1). Crucially, this vicarious experience is apparently valued not for any educative, political, or even moralistic purpose, but rather for what Anthony Parr calls the ‘surplus value’ of travel: the excess, pleasure (‘Coryat’ 586). Herein lies an important distinction between mindtravelling and the type of profitable reading advocated by Bishop Joseph Hall, in a frequently quoted passage from his polemical Quo Vadis? A Just Censure of Travel (1617): I haue knowen some that haue trauelled no further then their owne closet, which could both teach and correct the greatest Traueller, after all his tedious and costly pererrations, what doe wee but lose the benefit of so many iournals, maps, hystoricall descriptions, relations, if we cannot with these helps, trauell by our owne fire-side? (33–4) Hall emphasises the instrumental value of reading as a means to knowledge-acquisition – predictable sentiments from the man who attacked the aesthetics of Tamburlaine and similarly licentious indulgences of the theatre, a pastime of which he did not approve. By contrast, mind-travelling was a form of ludic reading, undertaken for pleasure, not education. Furthermore, early modern writers like Lipsius and Coryate begin to encourage a kind of mental ‘salivation’, offering the reader tantalising hints about how moving and affecting a given sight might be. In his 1592 Direction for Travailers, Lipsius asks: [W]ill not he that hath read of the great ouerthrowe of the Romaines at Thrasimenum, and their foule discomfiture at Cannas, when hee

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shall with hys owne eyes beholde the places, where the regentes, and great dominators of the worlde were shamefully foyled, will he not (I say) be greatly affected with a certain compassion? on the other side wil he not be greatly delighted with the goodly view of thos famous, & delicious places of Albania, Tibur, and the renowmed Bathes? What a pleasure will it be to see the house, where Plinie dwelt, the countrey wherein the famous Virgill, or the renowmed Ouid was borne? the signes, and monumentes of the noble conquerours? what a delightfull sight will it be to behold so manie ancient buildinges? so manie stately Churches: so manie huge Theators: so manie high pillers: so manie sumptuous sepulchres? Sureley I knowe not howe, but it is so, the minde of man beginnes to reuiue, and lift vp his selfe aboue it selfe, and to affect and meditate on excellent, and noble thinges, at the verie sight, and consideration of these so great, and glorious monumentes of antiquitie… (B4v–C) Lipsius here links involuntary, positive emotional affects or passions to the experience of first-hand contact with exotic landmarks, in a bid to encourage his reader actually to travel – but it is interesting that his description of this elevation or transportation of the mind is strictly speaking a superfluous detail in a travel book with ostensibly utilitarian aims. Its presence here indicates a desire to revel in the ‘surplus value’ of travel. Lipsius’s comments are noteworthy because they draw attention to what is, in this period of utilitarian and pragmatic travelling, usually only a latent potential for travel (and subsequently, travel writing) to animate the imagination. His words suggest that this superfluous facet of pleasure holds intrinsic value in its own right: for travellers and for readers. Ordinary, factual travel accounts could generate similar effects, for it is the participation of the active reader, more than the instruction of the author, which is of greater importance here. A similar phenomenon is observable in the work of Thomas Coryate, whose Coryats Crudities (1611) ‘played a formative role in the popularisation and novelisation of travel for [the] domestic market’ (O’Callaghan 144), and in whose works Richmond Barbour locates the birth of tourism (115–45). Coryate was humbled in the presence of the houses of Cicero, Varro, Virgil, and Livy, and so moved by the sight of Roman battlefields that he was prompted to fantasise about the bloody scenes that once took place there (Coryats Crudities b3r–v). That Coryate attempts to communicate a personal response to a sight, rather than objectively describing the sight itself, points to an interesting development in travel writing. Surveying

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celebrated sights enables the observer to feel immersed in history; it evokes the ‘phenomenological notion of space’ alluded to by Rhonda Lemke Sanford as she discusses how ‘objects or places perceived become invested by one’s gaze’ (Maps 12). As the Coryate quotation testifies, the mind’s eye is almost involuntarily overwhelmed by the need to reconstruct (imaginatively) the events which lend significance to a site – and this exquisite feeling of transportation and enrapture is singularly difficult to communicate, for it is of necessity a uniquely individual phenomenological response, ‘different for each gazer’ (Sanford, Maps 12). Coryate tries to communicate the essence of this moment though, for he is (perhaps more than any traveller before him) intensely aware of the possibilities of publishing, and of the reading market for his work (Barbour 116). Claiming he is ‘no statesman’ relieves Coryate of the onerous duty of surveying and recording the political state of the destinations he visits, and permits him to make his own ‘hungrie and high reaching desire of Trauell’, his ‘longing appetite to suruey exoticke Regions’, the central focus of his writing (Crudities A2v–A3). Coryate caters for the mind-travelling reader. The experiences of both Coryate and Lipsius share something with the experiences attributed to the tourist by MacCannell and Urry. In celebrating the houses of ‘Cicero, Varro, Virgil, Liuie, &c.’ and ‘the places wherein diuers famous battels haue beene fought’, or in seeing ‘the house, where Plinie dwelt, the countrey wherein the famous Virgill, or the renowmed Ouid was borne’, Coryate and Lipsius (respectively) allude to objects which deserve the tourist gaze because they are extraordinary; and their extraordinariness is based on their historical or literary associations, just like ‘the building in Dallas from which president Kennedy was supposedly shot, or the vicarage in Haworth, Yorkshire, where the Brontës lived’ (Urry 101). This extraordinariness, however, depends more on the marker than the sight. There is thus a strong analogy with the Bonnie and Clyde shootout area in Iowa, mentioned above; there, as MacCannell noted, an area amounting to ‘no more than a patch of wild grass’ generated interest from tourists who ‘do not arrive expecting to see anything and are content to be involved with the marker’ (114–15). Involvement with the marker satisfied the tourists’ desires: there may not have been anything to see, but awareness of the historical significance of the area sufficed. This historical information was either gleaned from an off-site marker (literature read at home; information carried with the tourist) or an on-site marker (a signpost at the site). Although neither Coryate nor Lipsius report the presence of on-site markers, they evidently had prior exposure to off-site markers,

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else they would not have been aware of the historical importance of the sights they viewed. Despite the extraordinary degree of marker-involvement in these cases, satisfaction would not be achieved by the marker alone: to read a brochure or see a documentary about Bonnie and Clyde would not function as a perfect substitute for visiting the site of the shootout, just as knowing where ‘Cicero, Varro, Virgil, Liuie, &c.’ lived would not satisfy Coryate so much as an informed visit to the places where they once lived. What is it, then, that the mind-travelling reader experiences? Marker-involvement without a sight of any description is unlikely to generate the degree of pleasure that historical accounts suggest was experienced by some early modern readers. Something more than passive reading is at play here.

The imagination and ideal presence The foregoing discussion has centred on texts and a process of reading that actively engages the imagination, imposing demands on the reader rather than permitting them to absorb knowledge passively (if there is such a thing as passive reading). Wolfgang Iser calls this phenomenon ‘the performative aspect of the author-text-reader relationship’: It is reasonable to presuppose that author, text, and reader are closely interconnected in a relationship that is to be conceived as an ongoing process that produces something that had not existed before. This view of the text is in direct conflict with the traditional notion of representation, insofar as mimesis entails reference to a pregiven ‘reality’ that is meant to be represented. … [M]imesis, though of paramount importance, cannot be confined to mere imitation of what is, since the processes of elucidation and of completion both require a performative activity if apparent absences are to be moved into presence. (325) In making my case for the documentable phenomenon of mindtravelling in the early modern period, I have thus far found it simplest to avoid the issue of how one writer’s lived or felt experiences are transmuted into another person’s received or read experiences; or in other words, I have yet to disentangle ‘imagination’ from ‘memory’ and give proper consideration to how these faculties operate and interact. But given that at least some mind-travelling readers were not themselves returned travellers, and given the performative nature of mindtravelling, some further explanation is required here.

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Post-Romanticism, imagination is typically regarded as the faculty capable of creating a fabrication in the mind which is independent of reality, whereas memory (by contrast) is that faculty of recall which allows us to reconstitute an image or sense of something previously experienced (that is, something which, at some stage at least, had a corresponding external reality which was apprehended by the senses; see Rather 351). As such, texts written for a mind-travelling readership ought to appeal to the imagination, whereas autobiographical texts written by and for the returned traveller belong to the domain of memory. However, in the early modern period imagination is more closely allied with memory, and I wish to suggest that in the context of mind-travelling, the text being read constitutes a new (or, technically, renewed) stimulus – not a memory already impressed upon the internal senses – and thus can (and does) act as an external stimulant or species (that is, essence, image, phantasma) which must be apprehended by the external senses, processed by the common sense, and thence communicated to the imagination and the memory. The very necessity of a traveller committing notable experiences to paper so as to enable him to ‘rejourney over all his voyage in his closet’ implies that natural memory will not (or perhaps cannot) alone be the stimulus for future mindtravel. Precisely what Felltham means by ‘rejourneying’ over a voyage is debatable – ‘rejourney’ is a hapax legomenon unique to Felltham (OED, ‘rejourney, v’) – but it is evident that the act comprises more than simply reminiscing (a passive act of memory): it is a new experience of the voyage, a paradoxical state of inert activity whereby the mind wanders whilst the body remains stationary. Crucially, mind-travel allowed the reading subject to feel the sensations of travel, as opposed to simply being entertained: as Robert Burton attests, ‘[t]he inspection alone of those curious iconographies of temples and palaces … affect one as much by reading almost as by sight’ (2.78). The exotic was an experience to be felt, not merely read about. A productive (if anachronistic) way to think about this phenomenon might be to consider it in conjunction with Lord Kames’s conception of ‘ideal presence’. In his Elements of Criticism (first published 1762), Lord Kames observes: By the power of memory, a thing formerly seen may be recalled to the mind with different degrees of accuracy. We commonly are satisfied with a slight recollection of the chief circumstances; and, in such recollection, the thing is not figured as in my view, nor any image formed: I retain the consciousness of my present situation,

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and barely remember that formerly I saw that thing. But with respect to an interesting object or event that made a strong impression, the mind, sometimes, not satisfied with a cursory review, chuses to revolve every circumstance: giving way to this inclination, I perceive every particular passing in my presence, in the same manner as when I was in reality a spectator. (80–1) He further notes, as I have been suggesting above, that ‘passions, as all the world know, are moved by fiction as well as by truth’ (79–80). Ideal presence refers to that state of enchantment which so perfectly captivates the subject that their mind is dominated by the imagination, and reason has no opportunity to interject and evaluate the situation: ‘In contradistinction to real presence, ideal presence may properly be termed a waking dream; because, like a dream, it vanisheth the moment we reflect upon our present situation: real presence, on the contrary, vouched by eye-sight, commands our belief, not only during the direct perception, but in reflecting after ward upon the object’ (82). The key attribute is the simulation of reality by the imagination, which need not be anchored in authentic memory: I proceed to consider the idea of a thing I never saw, raised in me by speech, by writing, or by painting … A lively and accurate description of an important event, raises in me ideas not less distinct than if I had been originally an eye-witness: I am insensibly transformed into a spectator; and have an impression that every incident is passing in my presence. (83–4) Kames qualifies his assertion of ‘spectatorship’ in ideal presence by noting that he ‘means not that I am really a spectator, but only that I conceive myself to be a spectator, and have a perception of the object similar to what a real spectator hath’ (81–2). Critics have attended to the possibilities of ideal presence in the context of such eighteenth-century writers as Johnson and Sterne (see Rothstein), but the concept has not, to my knowledge, been applied to late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century texts. Seventeenthcentury readers were not especially disposed towards creating ideal presence; the example of Fitzdottrel in Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass illustrates the commonplace sentiment that a vivid tableau in dramatic form made a keener impression upon the mind of the experiencing subject

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than did the dry tedious facts of the chronicle. Fitzdottrel tells Merecraft that he is not, in fact, ‘cunning i’ the chronicle’, but learns his histories from ‘Play books’, which he thinks ‘are more Authentick’ (2.4.12–14). There is a certain irony in Fitzdottrel’s humble denial of any ‘cunning’, since he is the fool of the play, and unable to recognise the low regard in which he is held by other characters. Nevertheless, as Martin Wiggins notes, ‘it should not be entirely surprising that Fabian Fitzdottrel … has learned his history from plays’, since ‘drama actually showed the people and exploits which history books could only report’ (24). Although the episodic nature of travel narratives invites readers to supply their own bridging details to sustain a narrative, early modern travel writers do not self-consciously attempt to foster ideal presence. Yet it may help to retain Kames’s terminology throughout this study, for even if the producers of literature did not specifically aim to create ideal presence, there remains the possibility that the reception side of textual production functions analogously to Kames’s model: the reader’s imagination supplies what the travel text does not, by virtue of the affective power of the subject matter, if not the author’s skill. Unlike the eighteenth-century texts intentionally written to encourage the creation of ideal presence by ‘controlling the flow of stimuli from which readers will develop images’ (Rothstein 312–13), the travel texts I am concerned with appear primitive in comparison, containing the vaguest of gestures in this direction (they do appear, after all, over a century before Kames’s ideal presence). Nonetheless, there are some examples that demonstrate something approaching ideal presence in early modern reading practices. Robert Burton, for example, prescribes reading as a potential means of soothing a troubled soul: Who is he that is now wholly overcome with idleness, or otherwise involved in a labyrinth of worldly cares, troubles, and discontents, that will not be much lightened in his mind by reading of some enticing story, true or feigned, where as in a glass he shall observe what our forefathers have done, the beginnings, ruins, falls, periods of commonwealths, private men’s actions displayed to the life, etc. (2.87) The phrase, ‘as in a glass’, is particularly suggestive of an ocular virtual reality being presented to the mind’s eye (a point I will return to in the context of Dryden in Chapter 5), as does the adjective ‘enticing’ used to describe the story. Like Kames, Burton does not discriminate between passions moved by something ‘true or feigned’, since the outcome is

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identical. Burton even comes quite close to anticipating Kames’s ‘waking dream’ when he progresses from discussion of sleep-walking and night terrors to note that the ‘like effects almost are to be seen in such as are awake’. He observes that some ascribe vices such as ‘anger, revenge, lust, ambition, [and] covetousness’ to ‘a false and corrupt imagination … which prefers falsehood before that which is right and good, deluding the soul with false shows and suppositions’ (1.253–4). The ideal breeding ground for this phenomenon is the realm of travel, where writers and audiences who appreciated the creation of something akin to ideal presence were beginning to emerge in the early seventeenth century, motivated not by the simple pleasure of animating a tale, but out of the desire to see and experience lands beyond their reach.

Travelling at the theatre What happens when the phenomenon under investigation here is refracted through the prism of the playhouse and theatrical experience? How does the private and solitary act of mind-travelling by reading translate into a collective experience at the theatre? Criticism of the artificiality of stage travel and the perceived inability of a bare stage to present voyaging successfully is as old as the plays themselves. In his Defence of Poesy (c. 1583) Sir Philip Sidney complained that English plays ‘have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so many other underkingdoms, that the player, when he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived’ (65). Sentiments like these led Andrew Gurr to approach the prospect of stage realism with apprehension: Without the proscenium arch to separate players from audience, as it has generally done since the Restoration, the presentation of illusion as reality was inevitably more complicated. The players were closer for one thing, in the midst of the audience, and lacked the facilities for presenting the pictorial aspects of illusion because they were appearing in three dimensions, not the two that the prosceniumarch picture-frame establishes. Awareness of the illusion as illusion was therefore much closer to the surface all the time. It is presumably because of this that so many of the plays begin with prologues and inductions openly acknowledging that the play which follows is a fiction. (180)

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Gurr’s implicit assumption that the Renaissance players were striving towards a Restoration-style ‘presentation of illusion as reality’ is questionable. Urry argues that ‘the mass tourist travels in guided groups and finds pleasure in inauthentic contrived attractions, gullibly enjoying “pseudo-events” and disregarding the “real” world outside’ (7), and it would not be surprising if instead of seeking an illusion of reality, playgoers similarly attended the theatre for its ‘pseudo-reality’ – a vicarious experience of an alternative world. Playgoers seek entertainment and, like tourists, enjoy a ‘departure’ from regular work and established routine (Urry 2). Plays that strain the imagination too much will undermine pleasure, but a simulacrum of reality is another extreme altogether, and does not seem to be an intended feature of Renaissance drama, which would not have tolerated audience passivity. With this in mind, it is worth noting that where Gurr turns to technical or functional concerns of playing by way of broaching the issue of stage realism, Sidney criticises the theatre for the strain it places on the playgoer’s imagination: even Gorboduc, Sidney’s ‘exact model of all tragedies’, is ‘faulty both in place and time’ (that is, it does not observe the classical unities that make an action plausible and simple to conceive) (65). For Sidney, travel plays would be a conceptual nightmare rather than a logistical one. Sidney’s stance is a helpful starting point for my discussion of drama: it opens up issues of theatrical representations of travel, the role of the imagination at the playhouse, and the relationship of these two to pleasure (Sidney does not find voyage drama pleasurable). In acknowledging the reliance of the play on choric instruction, Sidney sets the tone for centuries of criticism to follow. Our concept of choruses (like that of Shakespeare’s Henry V) as a dramatic necessity when staging travel has overdetermined our understanding of the relationship between player and playgoer. Critics typically posit these choric addresses as ‘brief but necessary moments of surrender’ in which the dramatist relinquishes a degree of control over the representational apparatus of the theatre, and such surrender is typically regarded as a negative feature: as an attempt to ‘conceal the medium’s representational failures’ and to ‘constrain what the audience might take it upon itself to imagine’ (Pangallo 4, my emphasis). It is a common tendency to believe that the chorus acts as a perfect substitute for actions that cannot otherwise be represented on stage, and that the flow of dramatic spectacle is temporarily breached by a moment of choric stasis in which words entirely replace the actions described. As Alan C. Dessen describes it (following Sidney), the issue boils down to ‘the difference betwixt reporting and representing’ (47). Sidney and his followers see the use of choric exposition as a failure or

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limitation of early modern drama, but clearly it must have served some acceptable purpose: as Lawrence Danson notes of Henry V, ‘[n]o one, after all, forced Shakespeare to write this play in this particular way. If his flat unraised spirits couldn’t bring forth so great an object on whichever unworthy scaffold, he could have chosen something else to write about’ (27). And as Jeremy Lopez emphasises in his study of theatrical convention, the use of choric exposition is a deliberate choice: Even travel scenes, for which exposition is frequently used, are not so theatrically cumbersome that they cannot be represented: the first scene of The Tempest provides a fine case in point. The Tempest also contains a travel narrative that is not represented on stage: the tediously presented story Prospero tells Miranda in 1.2 of how they arrived on the island. The contrast between these two scenes makes quite clear that exposition is more often a choice than a necessity. (79; see also Wright, ‘Elizabethan Sea Drama’) Why then did playwrights continue to incorporate expository choruses if (as Lopez claims) travel scenes were not so cumbersome, or if (as Danson observes) a playwright who did think them cumbersome was free to choose another subject matter? Dessen solves this dilemma by positing a binary between early moderns sympathetic to Sidney and Jonson, who rejected dramatic conventions like wafting choruses, and the ‘less fastidious playgoers’ (47) who were not troubled by conventions that breached the unities of time and place. (Jonson was vocal in his objections to plays whose choruses waft the playgoer over the seas, but Jonson – as I will discuss in Chapter 3 – was also uncommonly hostile to the notion of voyage drama, and his resistance to choric figures in travel plays may have more to do with the way his imagination worked.) For Dessen, playwrights persisted with ‘reporting’ rather than ‘showing’ because enough playgoers accepted the convention ‘in the spirit of as if ’ (46) – a phrase Dessen uses to describe the synecdochical inference of the whole from a part where actions or scales of actions were not otherwise representable on stage. He argues, for example, that in Henry V the ‘choric spokesman asks the audience to accept a part for the whole, to supply imaginatively what cannot be introduced physically onto the open stage’ (48), and that in the sea battle of Heywood and Rowley’s Fortune by Land and Sea (1609), the ‘players perform as if in such a battle, and (if the sequence is to work) the playgoers suppose or imagine the event’ (52). Dessen refers mostly to space rather than place though; when he suggests that

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the battle of Agincourt can be inferred from four soldiers with bucklers, what he really means is that the battlefield can be inferred – but the specific setting of Agincourt? In terms of place, critics posit an absolute divide between ‘what can be described and what shown’ (Peter Holland 161), but the overlap may be greater than previously suspected. On one level, there is nothing radical about suggesting audience participation: Matteo Pangallo has recently observed that ‘[t]he idea of the theatrical consumer becoming a producer has become a critical commonplace in understanding how playgoers imaginatively participated in plays’, before proceeding to analyse some fascinating instances in which ‘some members of the audience’ elected to venture ‘beyond the bounds of the merely imaginative’ (4). But whereas Pangallo’s brilliant exposition of how ‘playgoers and playmakers in the period habitually viewed audiences as producers rather than merely consumers of dramatic meaning’ attends primarily to the ‘the playgoer’s agency beyond that of the playwright’, I find myself more interested in the harmonious, rather than combative, relations between playgoer and playwright (Pangallo 1 and 10). In particular, the nature of the ‘merely imaginative’ participation warrants further attention, as it has often suffered from the misperception of being an obligatory corrective to the limitations of stagecraft. I argue that more than supplying missing details, choruses actually urge the playgoer to activate their imaginations in a manner conducive to mind-travelling and ideal presence. A salient reminder of the active nature of playgoing comes from Paul Fussell, who describes the advent of television as ‘an interesting moment in the history of human passivity’: It’s the approximate moment when radio narrative and drama, requiring the audience to do some of the work by supplying the missing visual dimension by its own imagination, were replaced by television, which now does it all for the ‘viewer’ – or stationary tourist, if you will. (45) Fussell draws an important distinction between the audience of drama and the viewer of television, attributing a greater degree of passivity (indeed ‘total’ passivity) to the latter. Dessen argues only that playgoers extrapolate the bigger picture from the clues provided by the players, and although this position improves on the neoclassical conservatism of Sidney, it does not yet encapsulate the type of imaginative participation I wish to attribute to playgoers. Dessen retains the assumption of

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unidirectional interaction, whereby the player tells the playgoer what to imagine. But as Bruce McConachie has recently argued, even terms like ‘audience response’ or ‘reaction’ are insufficient, in that ‘[t]hese terms, which derive from behaviourism, assume that the theatre is primarily a one-way delivery system of messages or fantasies that audiences respond to according to their past conditioning and/or psychic life’ (3). McConachie’s own study is predicated on an assumption I share, that ‘spectators are much more proactive than the traditions of semiotics, behaviourism, and Freudianism have generally understood’ (3–4), but he focuses on the ‘conscious, selective effort’ that attention requires cognitively (23–4), and on the ‘conscious decisions’ that spectators make about ‘what they will pay attention to on the stage’ (56). It may be more helpful to posit that the way in which playgoers are active echoes what Iser describes as ‘the performative aspect of the author-text-reader relationship’ (325). Instead of focusing on such famous apologetic instructions as ‘Think when we talk of horses that you see them / Printing their proud hoofs i’th’ receiving earth’ (Henry V, 1.0.26–7), which function as a hiatus in the drama and constitute a bathetic substitute for action, we should locate something dynamic at these choric moments of stasis by considering the associated playgoer activity. Consider the chorus to Act 2 of Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (1599): The world to the circumference of heauen, Is as a small point in Geometrie, Whose greatnes is so little, that a lesse Cannot be made: into that narrow roome, Your quicke imaginations we must charme, To turne that world: and (turn’d) again to part it Into large kingdomes, and within one moment To carrie Fortunatus on the wings Of actiue thought, many a thousand miles. Suppose then since you last beheld him here, That you have saild with him vpon the seas, And leapt with him vpon the Asian shores, Beene feasted with him in the Tartars palace, And all the Courts of each Barbarian kings: From whence (being cald by some vnluckie starre,) (For happines neuer continues long,) Helpe me to bring him backe to Arragon… (2.0.1–17)

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Some of the devices used here are standard choric conceits: apologetic metaphors about the ‘greatnes’ of the world, the injunction to ‘Suppose’, and the substitution of reporting for representation as Fortunatus travels ‘many a thousand miles’. But the pun on ‘quicke imaginations’ (2.0.5) warrants greater attention: quick can mean fast, and allude to the speed of imaginary travel, but it also had the double meaning of ‘characterised by the presence of life’. It takes a lively imagination (a labour/travail of the mind) to make this play possible: it takes ‘the wings / Of actiue thought’ belonging to a mind-traveller (2.0.8–9, my emphasis), not the passivity of Fussell’s television viewer. The final line in the excerpt (‘Helpe me to bring him backe to Arragon…’) reinforces the collaborative nature of the playgoer–player relationship in producing the play. Beaumont addresses the pact between player and playgoer even more explicitly in his Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) when the on-stage audience (the Citizen and his Wife) demand the presentation of a scene at the King of Cracovia’s house ‘covered with velvet’, with the King’s daughter appearing at a ‘window, all in beaten gold’ (4.35–6). To this extravagant request, the boy speaking on behalf of the players retorts: Sir, if you will imagine all this to be done already, you shall hear them talk together. But we cannot present a house covered with black velvet, and a lady in beaten gold. (4.42–4) The player is essentially asking that the audience (both on- and offstage) meet the players halfway: if imagination can supply what the playhouse cannot, the scene may proceed. The Citizen acquiesces: ‘let’s ha’t as you can, then’ (4.45). This episode, occurring relatively late in the play, offers an interesting balance to the more frequently commented upon form of playgoer participation in which the on-stage spectators ‘enact the detrimental extreme of the audience participation called for by the Chorus in Henry V’ (Pangallo 12). Whereas that more celebrated example of on-stage spectators contributing to the shape of the play is used by Beaumont to ‘to train playgoers not to imagine themselves as potential playmakers’ (Pangallo 12), the later injunction to ‘imagine all this to be done already’ (4.42) invokes the more positive face of playgoer participation; indeed, points to its indispensability. More famously, Shakespeare’s Prospero acknowledges being ‘confined’ by the audience or ‘sent to Naples’ with their help, imploring them not to leave him to ‘dwell / In this bare island by your spell’ (The Tempest,

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Epilogue 4–5, 7–8). The actor is confined to the bare stage and the character to the bare island; both depend on the audience for their freedom. If Prospero is to escape, it must be with ‘help’ of the audience’s ‘good hands’ and their ‘[g]entle breath’ in his ‘sails’ (10–11). Whilst this is a standard choric conceit to solicit applause, it also bespeaks a deeper truth about the nature of playing, and of the role of the playgoer in the creation of theatrical spectacle. The player is ultimately beholden to his audience for the success or failure of the theatrical illusion, and the imaginative effort must be shared if the ‘sails’ are to be filled. In this context of collaborative labour, Evelyn B. Tribble’s discussions of Distributed Cognition and ‘the mnemonic demands that the repertory system made on its participants’ provides a helpful theoretical framework (‘Distributing Cognition’ 135). In an article for Shakespeare Quarterly, subsequently revised in her book Cognition in the Globe, Tribble applies to early modern theatre studies a framework propounded by Edwin Hutchins in Cognition in the Wild, in which he discusses the ‘relationship between cognition seen as a solitary mental activity and cognition seen as an activity undertaken in social settings’ (Hutchins xiii) – an issue which is highly relevant to the question of mind-travelling at home and at the theatre. Noting the erroneous critical tendency to ‘view cognition as individual rather than social’ and thus assume ‘that properties of the system as a whole must be possessed by each individual within it’, Tribble introduces cognitive anthropology insights to instead argue that ‘cognition is distributed across the entire system’ (‘Distributing Cognition’ 135). This view situates cognition in its social and environmental context rather than limiting cognitive activity to an individual’s physical body. It considers internal processes like memory alongside physical objects and environments, and argues that ‘[n]o one of these elements, taken alone, has sufficient explanatory power; it is only through examining their interplay that we can come to a satisfactory account of the early modern theatrical system’ (Cognition 7). Accordingly, Tribble considers the cognitive properties of the playhouse as the physical environment in which the individual participates, and thus as part of ‘a system organized to reduce cognitive demands’ (‘Distributing Cognition’ 143). For example, with allowance for exceptions when dialogue activates spatial meaning, she generally supports a hypothesis in which the protocol for players’ entrances and exits usually consists of entering from one door and exiting from the other (as opposed to players remembering which door they had entered from and re-using it to leave the stage): ‘The more thinking that can be offloaded onto the environment, the more mental energy is available for

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the other attentional demands of playing’ (Cognition 33). A strength of Tribble’s model is its capacity to acknowledge greater complexities, such as the potential for dialogue to modify exits. She concludes that [t]he ways in which the dialogue meshes with the constraints of the stage space, the conventions governing it, and the social space of the stage itself must all be taken into account. Dialogue and stage movement can potentiate space, turn it from neutral to highly localized and laden with significance. (Cognition 34–5) In attending to the ‘cognitive life of things’ (as John Sutton calls it), Tribble’s model of the playing system exceeds the limitations of the individual and even that of collaborative interaction, emphasising how technologies and the physical environment can be cognitively rich. Given the overlap between memory and imagination delineated in the previous section, it seems logical to me that Tribble’s framework for cognition be extended to include playgoers in its system too. In the context of a player learning a part, Tribble observes that ‘chunking [dividing and restructuring material] is distributed between the playwright who writes the part, designed to be memorized in this fashion, and the player who learns it’ (‘Distributing Cognition’ 153). I would argue that in the context of playgoers imaginatively constructing an exotic scene, the responsibility for establishing the alternative reality is similarly distributed between the playwright (whose script must entice the playgoer and prompt mind-travelling), the player (who delivers the lines), and the playgoer (who receives and interprets the presented scene according to their own conception of the foreign site). As with mind-travelling, if too much specific detail is provided, less imaginative effort will be required from the playgoer, thus encouraging passivity. Paradoxically, then, the vaguer the playwright’s scene-setting, the greater the potential for stimulating mind-travel amongst playgoers. (I discuss this concept at greater length with the illustrative example of Marlowe’s plays in Chapter 2.) Something stronger than a mere Coleridgean ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ known as ‘poetic faith’ is at play in the Renaissance theatre. The inadequacy of Coleridge’s term is that it suggests that ‘theatrical believability occurs when the spectator willingly surrenders a part of his/her agency’ (McConachie 43), whereas extrapolation of the mind-travelling principles in the context of the theatre would suggest that imaginative activity is maintained throughout a performance; is

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necessary throughout a performance, in fact. Playgoers remain in possession of their senses, and they make sense of a play just as they would make sense of reality: actively. As Samuel Johnson would later observe, it is precisely the awareness of the playgoer, not their suspension of reason, which enables the players to present a change of scene: The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They came to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre? (431) It does not matter if the stimulus is fictional, for as Burton and Kames noted, artificial stimuli still produce real physical effects. Moreover, playgoers did not simply ignore the bare stage and accept, for the sake of the play, an exotic location described to them as precisely as Edgar describes the Dover cliffs to the blind Gloucester. Detailed descriptions of the scenery are rarely (if ever) included in voyage drama, and the playgoer is provided less with a painted picture than with a framed canvas which they paint together with the players. Through actions and words, players can attempt to set the scene with what William Prynne carefully distinguished as ‘lively, if not reall pictures and representations’ (94), but it is left to the playgoer to complete the fiction. Of demonstrable benefit to this process is the playgoer’s ability to meet the players halfway, to become enrapt by the players’ actions or immersed in them rather than assessing their speciousness. The vicarious travel experience is ‘a dynamic imaginative action, if static in terms of physical location’ (Sanders 147). Stephen Orgel provides contextual early modern support for this hypothesis, noting that for the English, ‘fantasy is the faculty that receives images; it is also the power to create them. It thus combines the meanings of both perception and imagination; in contenting his fantasy, the spectator is both passive and active’ (375). Moreover, through attention to a variety of recent scholarship, Marie-Laure Ryan purports to show that ‘far from promoting passivity … immersion requires an active engagement with the text and a demanding act of imagining’ (15). She refutes the ‘allegedly passive

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character of the experience’ and points out ‘the complex mental activity that goes into the production of a vivid mental picture of a textual world’, thereby arguing that ‘immersion can be an adventurous and invigorating experience’ as well as a ‘lowbrow, escapist gratification’ (11). Ryan’s sentiments, formulated in the context of reading, apply equally well to the stage, where the only qualification I would add is to insist again that the emphasis should fall on collaboration, for the players contribute as much to the experience as the playgoers, and the balance is delicate: over-strenuous activity on the one hand, and boredom at the opposite end of the spectrum, can both cause the dissolution of ‘poetic faith’ in whatever is being read or watched (Norman N. Holland 73–4). The players and the playwright must provide the right level of stimulus: enough detail to excite the playgoers’ imaginations, not so much as to do all the work. Choruses frequently invoke this collaborative pact when they acknowledge that the playgoers must do their share of the work if the play is to succeed. In this regard, the chorus–playgoer relationship mimics the playing system that fosters novices by providing small parts for experience and by lessening his cognitive tasks in general through what Tribble calls explicit embedded instructions: ‘A boy who is told “here, sirrah, approach” knows what he is to do’ (‘Distributing Cognition’ 154). In the same way, choruses coax the playgoers into playing their allotted parts in the overall system. The chorus of Act 3 in Shakespeare’s Henry V is unusually direct in its injunctions to activate the imagination: it urges the playgoer to ‘Play with your fancies, and in them behold / Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing’ (3.0.7–8); to ‘Follow, follow! / Grapple your minds’ (3.0.17–18); and perhaps most tellingly, to ‘Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege’ (3.0.25). Evident in these examples is the collaborative labour of travel, certainly; but also ideal presence in that the playgoer is not being urged to pretend or to accept that certain actions have occurred. They are urged to actually see, by imaginative participation, and ‘eke out our performance with your mind’ (3.0.35). Similarly, in describing Fortunatus’s arrival at the Turkish court, the chorus of Dekker’s play issues the curious command, ‘Thither transport your eyes, and there behold him, / Reuelling with the Emperour of the East’ (2.0.31–2). ‘Transport your eyes’ is suggestively active; instead of ‘see him there’ (a passive act), a better approximation of the chorus’s meaning may be ‘move your eyes to there to see him’. The playgoers are not simply being brought up to date on Fortunatus’s movements; they are being asked to journey with him. They are not provided with the ‘presentation of illusion as reality’

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that Andrew Gurr (180) describes occurring in the Restoration (with the implication that the Renaissance theatre craved this type of realism, but could not achieve it). Playgoers must travail at the theatre in order to travel at the theatre. Although this is true of all Renaissance drama, the collaborative labour of playgoer and player comes into sharpest relief in the context of travel plays, where the setting is harder to convey and the imagination is exceptionally piqued by what would be, for the untravelled majority of the playgoing public, unfamiliar and exotic stimuli. To adapt Edwin Hutchins’s language, when the chorus provides the cue to activate the playgoer’s imagination, much of the organization of behavior is removed from the performer [that is, playgoer] and is given over to the structure of the object or system with which one is coordinating. This is what it means to coordinate: to set oneself up in such a way that constraints on one’s behavior are given by some other system. (200) Since ‘[w]atching a performance of an unknown play is a complex cognitive process, with many demands upon the attention of the audience’ (Tribble, Cognition 36), the introduction of an element of voyaging will undoubtedly benefit from involving choric figures in the audience’s imaginative participation, to reduce the cognitive demands and facilitate the collaborative production of exotic space. To achieve the mind-travelling experience in broad daylight and in a communal forum, imaginative effort must be distributed across the playing system rather than remaining restricted within the individual. For the theatrical ‘ship’ to sail, the entire crew must play their part, and when they do the burden is lessened for all participants. Although being surrounded by fellow playgoers might seem like a hindrance to imaginative immersion, Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac comments on the remarkable phenomenon of the individual’s immersion in the fiction of a play actually being augmented in direct proportion to the size of the surrounding audience: [E]veryone has had the occasion to remark that one is never more apt to believe oneself the only witness of an interesting scene, than when the theatre is filled to capacity. This is perhaps because the number, the variety, and the magnificence of the objects stir up the senses, heat up and lift the imagination, and thereby make us more susceptible to the impressions the poet wants to arouse. Perhaps, too,

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the spectators mutually prompt each other, through the examples they give each other, to fix their gaze on the stage. (Qtd in McConachie 28–9) In the solo case of closeted reading, the active reader brings the fiction to life; in the distributed situation of the playhouse, the experience of a play is in part shaped (augmented, but sometimes, by the same logic, diminished) by the audience. The behaviour of playgoers is shaped by and itself helps shape the theatrical experience. Because this is not an individual’s imaginative adventure, but a collective imaginative adventure, individual playgoers must play their part in the system and coordinate their activities with the other participants (the players, other playgoers, and the playwright). When they do so, the fact of their being surrounded by other playgoers in broad daylight does not detract from the imaginative experience of the fictional voyage. Returning to MacCannell’s terminology of tourism, in voyage drama the chorus is a marker akin to the road sign ‘Rue de Rivoli’ (as opposed to the road itself), but what is the accompanying theatrical representation that the chorus marks/describes? Is it the sight? No: the sight is merely being represented on stage. The simulation is two-steps removed from reality: the expository chorus signposts the presentation of a sign of exotica, not the exotica itself. But for many early moderns, such theatrical representations of abroad were the closest approximation of the travel experience available, and to imply that the experience is somehow diminished or less enjoyable because the marker marks a ‘false’ sight is somewhat misleading. (Burton and Kames were not troubled by the ability of false stimuli to legitimately affect the imagination.) Like the playgoer, tourists who physically visit the Bonnie and Clyde shootout area (for example) imaginatively reconstruct the climactic episode from the notorious criminals’ careers because the marker gives them the cue and the setting provides the atmosphere. The marker combines with an empty space as a foundation for the creation of something like ideal presence. (This need not be a solitary experience: conceivably, one tourist would point to part of the landscape and share with other tourists their supposition that a certain action happened at that particular spatial location.) In the theatre, the imaginative reconstruction is presented by the players in conjunction with the travails of the playgoer-tourist, who follows the cues of the chorus-as-marker and relies on the conventions of the stage environment, but who also brings their own imaginations to the table. Attention to the marker–sight relationship and extension of the Distributed Cognition view of theatrical practices to cover the activity

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of playgoers thus complicates Sidney’s supposed dichotomy ‘betwixt reporting and representing’ on the Renaissance stage. A travel play is neither sight nor marker but both, and something oddly in between. Creating a pseudo-reality with provision for individual imaginative input, voyage drama activates the playgoer’s imagination in a manner redolent of solitary mind-travelling and solicits active participation (Dekker’s ‘wings of active thought’) in the production of an alternative reality – just as in the realm of reading, the ‘closely interconnected’ author, text, and reader’s ongoing relationship produces something new through its ‘performative aspect’ (Iser 325). Unlike the practice of solitary, silent reading, however, the theatrical vicarious travel analogue is comprehensible only if we stress the concept of playing as a system where cognition and imagination are distributed, and playgoers have a socially integrated role to play in mind-travelling.

Notes 1. As opposed to ‘mind-travelling’, which was apparently part of the early modern lexicon, the use of ‘vicarious’ to connote that which is ‘[e]xperienced imaginatively through another person or agency’ (OED) is not recorded before 1929. 2. In fact, Wood addresses a third category of reader in the final chapter of his work (on the women of New England), which was purportedly added ‘To satisfie the curious eye of women-readers, who otherwise might thinke their sex forgotten, or not worthy a record’ (94). Wood’s aim, of course, is to promote a New England life as a desirable possibility for English women, and he attempts to show this by illustrating how English women can help New England’s native women, whose employments are arduous yet undervalued by the men of New England. 3. Reflecting on the ‘sight of some relics of the ship of the famous Captain Drake’, the Venetian Ambassador Horatio Busino’s enthusiasm for adventure was tempered by his almost immediate recognition of its hardships: ‘Truly such gain and glory sound highly attractive, but when one reflects upon the dangers of the sea the desire vanishes’ (152).

2 Marlovian Models of Voyage Drama

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays (1587, 1588), if not the first exotic voyage dramas, were certainly the most influential and successful of the early exponents of the form. Of these fabulous texts, it is mostly the bombastic rants of the protagonist, and the potential (more generally) of blank verse and Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’ that critics are quick to acknowledge as having influenced subsequent playwrights – along with a healthy dose of what James Shapiro calls ‘the kind of geographic sweep of which Tamburlaine is so fond’ (36). Marlowe’s imitators also appropriated the visual images of these exotic plays (commonly referred to as Tamburlaine’s ‘sights of power’); the most notable being the image of Tamburlaine’s chariot drawn by emperors, and Tamburlaine’s use of the conquered Bajazeth as an imperial footstool (Thurn 3–21; Sales 54). But what I wish to consider in this chapter is another aspect that characterises Marlowe’s aesthetics; one that, although hardly new to Marlowe studies, does possess a certain novelty when considered in the context of Tamburlaine and travel plays. I refer to the Marlovian emphasis on desire. Whilst the spectacles of violence and conquest that are most commonly associated with the Tamburlaine plays might have had a significant impact on the design and aesthetics of the slew of imitators in the 1590s, such influence had largely exhausted itself by the turn of the century. The delight or pleasure associated with travel, however, which Marlowe was also the first to introduce to drama, proved a considerably more far-reaching influence on the English stage. To gauge the extent of Marlowe’s impact on voyage drama, we ought to look not just to Tamburlaine, but to Faustus as well. By discussing (in the final section) plays that conflate the Tamburlaine and the Faustus traditions, I hope to prompt consideration of how Marlovian desire and Faustian 51

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curiosity left an indelible print on subsequent voyage drama of the early modern stage.

The ‘will to travel’ in Marlovian drama Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays are widely regarded as the locus classicus in terms of origins for voyage drama or, more precisely, for the spate of ‘conqueror’ plays that followed in their wake. Peter Berek has claimed that ‘[o]f the 38 extant plays for the public theater first performed in England between 1587 and 1593, 10 show clear debts to Tamburlaine’ and has demonstrated that in the immediate wake of Marlowe’s innovative conqueror plays, playwrights sought to imitate the formal features (language, spectacle) whilst offering a more conservative moral framework (58). Whilst the Tamburlaine plays are undoubtedly a form of voyage drama, they are typically classified according to one of two rubrics: ‘military’ or, as is becoming increasingly common, ‘mercantile’ – neither of which is completely satisfactory in my reckoning. Martin Wiggins has summarised the prevalent critical opinion in claiming that ‘[b]oth landscape and people [in Tamburlaine] are figured as things to be dominated, and the audience is imaginatively aligned with the hero who grasps so eagerly for dominion: part of the play’s appeal is that of a fantasy of power’ (37). He also pointedly distinguishes travel and conquest when he discusses Zanzibar: In Marlowe’s sequel, The Second Part of Tamburlaine, one of the subject kings, vassals and emulators of Tamburlaine himself, revealingly describes his adventures in Africa, which have included a trip to Zanzibar, The western part of Afric, where I viewed The Ethiopian sea, rivers, and lakes, But neither man nor child in all the land. Therefore I took my course to Manico. (1.3.195–98) This is no travelogue fired by the thrill of discovery: the new geography of the region seems incidental, and the absence of any population moves the explorer on. He conquers the rest of the dark continent; Zanzibar escapes only because there is not a human soul there for him to subjugate. (36–7) Wiggins’s reading finds support in Mark Hutchings’s claim that ‘Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is driven by a desire to conquer. The Tamburlaine

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plays, figuratively speaking, are perhaps the most geographically and geopolitically extensive of the era’ (‘walles of Rome’ 190), and in Johannes H. Birringer’s argument that ‘[t]he play’s rhetoric, verbal and visual, becomes one great gesture of Tamburlaine’s creative and destructive will to power, and many of the references to “hunger” or “thirst” function as primal metaphors for the relentless, all-consuming thrust of Tamburlaine’s imaginative desire’ (223). But I see scope to enlarge Wiggins’s reading, in that it is not necessary to impose a separation between ‘colonisation’ and ‘travel’ on a period when the two were often conflated or synonymous: the primary, official purpose of expeditions to the New World may have been colonial or imperial, but this need not exclude the possibility that the individual adventurers were captivated or enchanted by the exotic lands they visited. The leap from ‘will to power’ to colonialism has been more cautiously made by critics such as Catherine Belsey and Lisa Hopkins. Belsey suggests that whether Tamburlaine was ‘a popular hero or an imperialist tyrant’ is the type of question that Marlowe does not answer, but poses ‘with a certain sharpness to an Elizabethan society preparing to embark on a series of colonialist adventures’ (29). Hopkins provides a measured counter to Wiggins’s narrow definition (‘this is no travelogue’) with the observation that: Marlowe himself would have been aware of the development and ramifications of imperialist colonialism as practised by the English; as Thomas Healy remarks, Tamburlaine coincides almost exactly with the first edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages, and the world the playwright depicts is typically that of the exoticism and abundance figured in travel narratives. (5) Yet for all her sensitivity to the complexity of this issue, the focus of Hopkins’s essay remains firmly Marlowe’s ‘inverted colonialism’, and Hopkins retains an emphasis on colonial paradigms in Marlowe’s work where I see travel of another sort and of another significance: the ‘will to travel’, for want of a better term. Wanderlust or the desire to travel, especially when considered in conjunction with its imaginative counterpart (the indulgence in vicarious travel through page and stage), has a demonstrable history in the early modern period which is typically neglected in the critical work on travel in this period. We see such wanderlust exemplified in Peregrine Joyless, a character in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes (1638), but interestingly,

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we can trace it all the way back (in the theatre) to Marlowe, despite his being more commonly known for his dramatisation in Tamburlaine of the will to power. Marlowe criticism has complicated the simple identification of Tamburlaine as ‘conqueror’ in recent decades; most notably in Greenblatt’s attention to ‘the acquisitive energies of English merchants, entrepreneurs, and adventurers’ (Renaissance Self-Fashioning 194); Richard Wilson’s contextualisation of the play within the Muscovy Company’s shipping trade; Roger Sales’s characterisation of Tamburlaine as ‘a masterless man who haunts the margins and borders of civilised society’ (54); and Mark Thornton Burnett and Thomas Cartelli’s readings of Tamburlaine alongside ‘the Elizabethan concern with vagrancy’ (Burnett 310; see also Cartelli, Marlowe 71). Reconnecting this restless ‘vagabondism’ with exotic travel and the New World, Cartelli revisited his original thesis on ‘Tamburlaine’s radical exercise in social mobility in relation to the specifically English phenomenon of the masterless man’, and evocatively suggested that ‘Tamburlaine may also be modelling the exploits of another kind of masterless man, particularly, the opportunistic conquests of the conquistador’ (‘New World’ 114). But all these critics retain a focus on the mercantile or colonial concerns of travel, no matter how ingeniously they are synthesised. What we do not have is an analysis of travel for its own sake, despite the impetus Burnett provides with his description of Tamburlaine’s ‘restless movement’ and ‘wanderlust’ (319), and his observation that ‘[t]here are no descriptions of the insatiable desire for movement’ in Marlowe’s principal sources: Petrus Perondinus’s Magni Tamberlanis Scythiarum Imperatoris Vita (1553) and George Whetstone’s The English Myrror (1586) (Burnett 320). This chapter reads the Prologue’s injunction to ‘[v]iew but his picture in this tragic glass’ (1 Tam. Prol. 7) alongside the print history of cosmographies and similar texts which stimulated the reader’s desire for vicarious pleasure, as in a glass. William Cunningham’s 1559 text uses precisely this metaphor: But least these my wordes, should stirre vp the greadye appetides of diuers to this knowledge, & then to wante herein that mighte satisfie the same, beholde I haue compiled this my Cosmographical glasse. By which, such as are delighted in trauailing as well by land, as water, shal receiue no small comfort (If I be not deceiued) & th’other sort, by it may also protract, & set out perticuler cardes for anye countrye, Region, or prouince: or els th’vniuersall face of th’earth in à generall Mappe. ([Av]v–[Avi])

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My suggestion is that readers who travelled by looking in a ‘Cosmographical glass’ were equally likely to do so in Marlowe’s ‘tragic glass’. The glass metaphor relates to the issue of perspective, the enabling of an artificial sight through conventionalised representations of distant objects and themes (see the Dryden section of Chapter 5). In this regard, the aim of stage and page is constant: to depict what the individual in England could not otherwise see, and to deliver pleasure in the process. The chief obstacle to demonstrating the pleasure of mind-travelling in the Tamburlaine plays is the protagonist himself, and the perception of him by playgoers and by critics. Amongst the most frequently imitated scenes are the abjection of Bajazeth, the chariot of ‘pampered jades of Asia’, and the three-stage siege of decreasing clemency signalled by red, black, and white flags (Levin 57). Since power and spectacle seem to define the most memorable scenes, critics have speculated that what most appealed to playgoers was the inversion of hierarchy that sees traditionally powerful figures forced into abjection by the shepherd-turned-conqueror. Where vicarious pleasure is addressed in Marlowe criticism, it seems to be in terms of power dynamics and class struggles, as when Cartelli finds in Tamburlaine ‘a source of transgressive pleasure for an audience whose more mundane ambitions are recast in the form of heroic aspiration’ and argues that Marlowe ‘appears to have made the vicarious empowerment of audiences for whom subjection was a political fact of life too attractive a prospect for playgoers to resist’ (Marlowe 67, 93). Tamburlaine’s exploits thus become an outlet through which the average disenfranchised Elizabethan could indulge fantasies of power and liberty, inverting class structures and temporarily enjoying the excesses of fame and fortune. So long as criticism maintains its focus on Marlowe’s protagonist, there will inevitably be difficulties seeing past Tamburlaine’s driving ambition for acquisition and rebellion, and with good cause. An unequivocal example of the protagonist’s materialistic desire is found early in Part 1, when Meander assumes that Tamburlaine’s men will be so distracted by gold strewn on the battlefield that they can easily be defeated: Then noble soldiers, to entrap these thieves That live confounded in disordered troops, If wealth or riches may prevail with them We have our camels laden all with gold,

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Which you that be but common soldiers Shall fling in every corner of the field, And while the base-born Tartars take it up, You, fighting more for honour than for gold, Shall massacre those greedy-minded slaves; And when their scattered army is subdued And you march on their slaughtered carcasses, Share equally the gold that bought their lives And live like gentlemen in Persia. (1 Tam. 2.2.59–71) The trial of treasures has a literary history dating back at least as far as Mandeville, who on his journeys in the Far East encountered a ‘perilouse vale’ (perilous valley) and ‘founden therinne gold and syler and precious stones and riche iewelles gret plentee bothe here and there as vs semed’ (204–5). Mandeville resisted the temptation to gather the fabulous riches: I touched none, because that the deueles ben so subtyle to make a thing to seme otherwise than it is for to disceyue mankynde, and therfore I towched none; and also because that I wolde not ben put out of my deuocoun, for I was more deuout thanne than euere I was before or after, and alle for the drede of fendes that I saugh in dyuerse figures, and also for the gret multytude of dede bodyes that I saugh there liggynge be the weye be alle the vale… (204–5) In a more contemporary analogue to Marlowe, Book 2 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene depicts Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, travelling through ‘wide wastfull ground’ with ‘nought but desert wildernesse’ all around, where he encounters the Plutonic Mammon, sitting in his cave, surrounded by ‘[g]reat heapes of gold, that neuer could be spent’ (FQ 2.7.2, 7). Guyon resists the ‘rich heapes of wealth’ (FQ 2.7.7) – although he faints from weakness immediately thereafter. Just as Mandeville ‘recognizes the link between the sin of greed and the punishment of death in the Vale Perilous’ (Verner 142), Guyon rejects the temptations of Mammon’s cave and its riches. Tamburlaine and his men survive the trial too, but hardly with such nobility and virtue as Guyon’s temperance or Mandeville’s devotion: the ‘greedy-minded slaves’ led by the Scythian do not reject the riches so much as defer acquisition of them, exercising temperance of a

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utilitarian kind which ultimately yields the greatest good. They win the battle, then collect the spoils. Resistance is only temporary, the riches never absent from their strategy and calculations. Tamburlaine wins his first significant battle, and his men reap the financial benefits. Thus even when a Mandevillian rejection of acquisition is ostensibly exercised by the vagabond army and their leader, it turns out to be a means to consolidating future prosperity and acquisition. Unlike Mandeville, Tamburlaine’s travels are pointedly not about ‘circulation or wandering as an alternative to ownership, about a refusal to occupy’ (Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions 27). However, Tamburlaine-the-protagonist is only one of the possible points of identification for the playgoer. Critics have considered the audience’s identification with the protagonist, but Tamburlaine is a warlord and the playgoer cannot share his material acquisitions. Pleasurable travel, as it occurs in Tamburlaine, is a function of the imaginative experience shared by the playgoers witnessing the plays and Marlowe-as-playwright whilst penning the texts.

The playwright’s travels in ‘map and card’ There are two travellers of significance in Tamburlaine: the eponymous protagonist, whose adventures of a military/mercantile type have been well documented, and the playwright himself. For the playgoer, the protagonist is the vehicle that takes him/her on the adventure through foreign lands; for the playwright, the protagonist is the thread that ties together the author’s imagination of place. In her classic essay on ‘Marlowe’s Map’, Ethel Seaton demonstrated Marlowe’s indebtedness to Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) for the contemporary names of exotic towns and countries in the second part of Tamburlaine, thereby revealing Marlowe’s interest in contemporary geography. Unfortunately Seaton’s attribution of a definite source for Marlowe’s play (Ortelius’s map) has overshadowed other important contributions that her essay makes to our appreciation of the drama. For example, as early as 1924, Seaton was exploring alternative approaches to Tamburlaine, ones which were able to see in the play more than the violence of conquest: As we follow these tracks through the Theatrum, the conviction grows that Marlowe used this source at least with the accuracy of a scholar and the common sense of a merchant-venturer, as well as with the imagination of a poet. The assurance is all the more welcome as it supports the growing belief … that he was something more than a

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dramatist of swashbuckling violence and chaotic inconsequence – a Miles Gloriosus of English drama. Here we find order for chaos, something of the delicate precision of the draughtsman for the crude formlessness of the impressionist … We do him wrong, being so majestical, to see in him only this show of violence. (54–5) I find it surprising that more hasn’t been made of both Seaton’s ability to see past Marlowe’s ‘show of violence’ and her observation that Ortelius was a fantastic stimulus for Marlowe’s imagination: It has been said that the Second Part [of Tamburlaine] is a mercenary afterthought, that the parade of geographical terms covers a weakening of poetic impulse. Yet at the least it was a final effervescence of boyishness, of satisfaction in youthful cleverness, in ‘pulling the thing off,’ pardonable in a young graduate of twenty-four. At most, it was something more. Even in this his poetic power found outlet. Even here, from the bare outlines of maps, and perhaps from the dry statements of cosmographers, he ‘bodied forth the forms of things unknown.’ He saw the Polar cliffs as ‘rocks of shining pearl’; he heard the boisterous waves of raging Lantchidol beat on an uncharted coast. He pored over this great atlas until the countries ‘came alive,’ and the creatures of his brain went through such adventures as fell to the lot of many an Englishman of his time. (55–6) This suggestive case for Marlowe’s imaginative engagement with the possibilities of exotic travel is strengthened by David Keck’s more recent claim that that ‘the imagery in [Ortelius’s] Theatrum provided a stimulus for Marlowe’s dramatic imagination’ as well as a source for ‘countless place names and geographic features’ (189). His exposition of Marlowe’s debt to ‘both word and image’ (190, emphasis added) in the Theatrum is indicative of the extent to which Marlowe’s desire and imagination were engaged by the marvels recorded by Ortelius. As Seaton and Keck imply, Tamburlaine can be seen as a record of Marlowe’s travelling ‘in map and card’ as Robert Burton claimed to do in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1.18) – thus offering us a tantalising connection between travel, knowledge, desire, and drama. For Burton, ‘[r]ather than be, one is to read about being: the preferable mode of existence is that of a reader’ (Barczyk-Barakonska 216), for to remain physically stationary whilst studying maps is to exercise the mind, to

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encourage ‘unconfined thoughts’ to become ‘freely expatiated’ (Burton 1.18). There are disjunctions between the experiences of Marlowe and Burton though: Describing his travels on card, Burton evokes names of far-off places, as well as listing names of travellers into the unknown and outlying regions of the world (which is a gesture similar to that of quoting, of summoning words that come from afar, from other books). Thus, by probing into the remote, fathoming it by means of names and naming, Burton endeavours to negotiate, mitigate, obviate its distance and inscribe it in familiar and domestic terms. (Barczyk-Barakonska 217) Despite his emphatic declaration, ‘What greater pleasure can there now be, than to view those elaborate maps of Ortelius, Mercator, Hondius, etc.?’ and his assertion that ‘[m]ethinks it would please any man to look upon a geographical map, suavi animum delectatione allicere, ob incredibilem rerum varietatem et jucunditatem, et ad pleniorem sui cognitionem excitare [which insensibly charms the mind with the great and pleasing variety of objects that it offers, and incites it to further study]’ (2.89), Burton’s reconnaissance of the unknown world in ‘map and card’ is primarily an attempt to bring the ineffably alien and incommensurable under control. As Liliana Barczyk-Barakonska argues, Burton is really attempting to incorporate its otherness into a domestic economy or subsume its alterity under a familiar rubric: ‘the Renaissance maps of Ortelius, Mercator and Hondius which Burton chooses to travel in yield a world that presents itself as a potentially knowable totality capable of being fully mastered by means of a new perspective whose fixed viewpoint “is elevated and distant, completely out of plastic or sensory reach”’ (217). Marlowe, we sense, approached Ortelius’s map somewhat differently, simply revelling in the thrills of exotica. In the process of bringing the factual place-names of Ortelius’s map to vivid life in Tamburlaine’s (or Edward Alleyn’s) bombastic rants, Marlowe was essentially ‘expatiating’ his own exotic thoughts and indulging in what William Wood would later call ‘mind-travelling’. Anticipating Owen Felltham’s epigrammatic assertion that ‘[t]here is no Map like the view of the Country’ (B), Marlowe brought a view of Ortelius’s mapped East to the playgoing public in the form of theatrical spectacle. It is left to his fictionalised protagonist to demarcate territory in a retrospective materialisation of his terrestrial acquisitions, calling for a map to ‘see how much / Is left

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for me to conquer all the world’ (2 Tam. 5.3.23–4), an act that foreshadows Burton’s quest for knowledge. My argument, then, is that the audience’s experience is analogous to the playwright’s in the context of Tamburlaine: Marlowe and his audience ‘share not a common visualization but a common process of visualization’ (to appropriate a phrase from Peter Schwenger’s discussion of the author–reader relationship) (Schwenger 4). Witnessing a play is a creative act that requires imaginative effort (a travail of the mind), not passivity. Hence I agree with Lisa Hopkins that a ‘marked element of Marlowe’s plays is the exuberant sprinkling of exotic, alien names’, but believe a more positive emphasis can be placed on her conclusion that ‘[t]hey fill up the mighty line with rolling syllables which convey little but a sense of glamour’ (8). Hopkins argues ‘that the audience’s inability to decode the myriad place-names’ leads to those names being perceived ‘only as random collections of syllables’, with the effect that ‘very few of them acquire any real solidity or sense of specific location. They blend into each other, and our sense of Tamburlaine’s actual achievements is apt to melt away as we experience repetition rather than movement or progression’ (8). But mightn’t Marlowe’s exotica possess a generative potential rather than a restrictive one? With no point of reference to assist in decoding the place-names, there are no preconceptions to limit interpretation. The place names are a tabula rasa, especially in the second part of Tamburlaine when Marlowe departs from familiar provinces like Tartary and towns like Damascus to situate his adventures in farflung ‘Natolia’ and ‘Balsera’ (that is, Passera; 2 Tam. 3.3.3). In his dying speech, Tamburlaine traces his conquests on a map, from his ‘march towards Persia, / Along Armenia and the Caspian Sea, / And thence unto Bithynia’ where he took the Turk and his empress prisoner (2 Tam. 5.3.126–8), and proceeds to describe his journeys even further afield. He lists almost twenty exotic proper nouns in his catalogue of conquests, and yet his insatiable desire permits him to continue fantasising about the regions beyond his voyages: Lo here, my sons, are all the golden mines, Inestimable drugs and precious stones, More worth than Asia and the world beside; And from th’Antarctic Pole eastward behold As much more land, which never was descried, Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright As all the lamps that beautify the sky: And shall I die and this unconquerèd? (2 Tam. 5.3.151–8)

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This is perhaps the most famous of Tamburlaine’s lists of locations, but this conflation of obscure contemporary geography with fictional mythological geography is evident throughout the plays, as for example in Techelles’s report on the progress of his own men: And I have marched along the river Nile To Machda, where the mighty Christian priest Called John the Great sits in a milk-white robe, Whose triple mitre I did take by force And made him swear obedience to my crown. From thence unto Cazates did I march, Where Amazonians met me in the field, With whom (being women) I vouchsafed a league, And with my power did march to Zanzibar, The western part of Afric, where I viewed The Ethiopian sea, rivers and lakes, But neither man nor child in all the land. Therefore I took my course to Manico, Where unresisted I removed my camp, And by the coast of Byather at last I came to Cubar, where the negroes dwell, And conquering that, made haste to Nubia; There, having sacked Borno the kingly seat, I took the king, and led him bound in chains Unto Damascus, where I stayed before. (2 Tam. 1.6.59–78) As befits the King of Fez’s report to his emperor Tamburlaine, there is an Adamic conferral of authority and possession through naming the conquered townships in this passage. However, in amongst the dozen exotic place-names fired off in rapid succession there are also references to the mythical Prester John and the Amazons. That Marlowe did not expect his audience necessarily to know the location of these various sites is evident from such qualifying comments as ‘[t]he western part of Afric’ (68). In this lack of a concrete, tangible reality to which Marlowe’s exotic nomenclature might correspond for the average playgoer, we have not (necessarily) confusion, but rather an opportunity to unleash the imagination (precisely because of the failure of these locales to ‘acquire any real solidity’). Eric Rothstein observes that [a]ny theory of ideal presence must accept imaginative expansion of the text. No poetic description, after all, can be as detailed as a

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present object in its particularity and within its context. The reader’s imagination supplies what the poet can not, and different readers are likely to be as far apart as different illustrators of a given poetic passage or episode. (312) It is this tendency of imaginative expansion to which Theseus refers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he says: Such tricks hath strong imagination That if it would but apprehend some joy It comprehends some bringer of that joy. (5.1.18–20) Supplied only with the description of ‘some joy’, the imagination extrapolates and infers the context (its ‘bringer’) too. By analogy, the unfamiliar place names ‘from Persepolis to Mexico’ (1 Tam. 3.3.255) invite the audience to imagine locations about which they have no factual knowledge, thereby providing the potential for ‘mind-travelling’ as each individual supplies their own fantastical meaning. (See Maclean 3 on such ‘blanks’ in narrative sequences.) The immediate success of Tamburlaine’s imitators may have been short-lived, the mode of voyage drama with a ‘conquest’ theme largely dissipating within a decade, but to gauge Marlowe’s influence on travel drama we need to maintain the distinction between the playwright’s and the protagonist’s legacies. As concerns the protagonist, it is surely significant that Tamburlaine only calls for a map at the very end of the two plays, when it is used by the dying king to demarcate his acquisitions retrospectively and lament that he shall die with so much territory ‘unconquerèd’ (2 Tam. 5.3.158). Tamburlaine does not use the map to plan his adventures – indeed, he cannot: the map still needed to be traced in Part I, when Tamburlaine boasts that he will confute those blind geographers That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen reduce them to a map… (1 Tam. 4.4.74–7) Maps do not stimulate Tamburlaine in the way they stimulated Marlowe and Burton; they are indices of power and acquisition, descriptive

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rather than prescriptive, charting the past instead of paving the way for the future. There are no blanks in Tamburlaine’s map, for it is an inventory of what has already been acquired. As with Lear’s use of the map to illustrate the division of his kingdom (a parallel observed by Mark Hutchings), the map connotes accumulation and signifies wealth. It describes what is already known and experienced by the reader, rather than leading the reader to unknown shores for the first time. Marlowe’s use of Ortelius’s map was enabling; Tamburlaine’s use of the map merely reduces his experiences to quantifiable abstractions. To the extent that we associate Tamburlaine’s influence with the relatively short-lived vogue for conquest plays, we must conclude that its legacy was limited. But if we consider instead the degree to which the audience shared Marlowe’s own propensity to travel vicariously, rather than Tamburlaine-the-protagonist’s will to subjugate the lands he traverses, a different picture emerges of Marlowe’s influence on travel drama. And even if the audience’s identification with a central protagonist were deemed to be of greater import and significance, we need only turn to another Marlovian text for an example of this same influence I have here described. By travelling ‘in map and card’ like Burton, Marlowe in his work habits demonstrates an attitude to travel founded on desire and imagination that he would later embody in the insatiable desires of Faustus to ‘search all corners of the new-found world’ (B-text 1.1.83) and actually to see the exotic destinations about which he has read.

Acting on knowledge: Faustus’s journey ‘to prove cosmography’ Although Peter Holland describes Faustus as ‘the greatest of all Elizabethan plays of travel’ (161), scholars rarely treat Faustus as a travel play. Early modern playgoers thought differently however, and one of the few documented early modern responses to the play indicates that Faustus’s voyaging made a deep and favourable impression. In The Unlucky Citizen (1673), described by Louis B. Wright (Middle-Class Culture 86) as ‘a story purporting to be the autobiography of the son of a London merchant’ in which the author ‘describes his first book purchases and his reading’, Francis Kirkman provides a late seventeenth-century account of what made the reading of Fortunatus and Faustus pleasurable: Once I happened upon a Six Pence, and having lately read that famous Book, of the Fryar and the Boy, and being hugely pleased with that, as also the excellent History of the Seven wise Masters of Room

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[sic], and having heard great Commendation of Fortunatus, I laid out all my mony for that, and thought I had a great bargain … now having read this Book, and being desirous of reading more of that nature; one of my School-fellows lent me Doctor Faustus, which also pleased me, especially when he travelled in the Air, saw all the World, and did what he listed. (10–13, qtd in Wright, Middle-Class Culture 87) It should not be surprising, then, that Henslowe’s diary tells us that Faustus appeared within a day or two of a travel play on almost half its recorded ‘revival’ stagings: on 5 November 1594, for example, Faustus followed Tamburlaine and preceded ‘Mahomet’. In proposing ‘a way to assess the continuing influence of Marlowe’s plays as they were returned to the stage in revival’, Roslyn L. Knutson has noted that ‘[t]he frequency with which Marlowe reruns appear in co-ordination with similar or counteractive plays suggests not mere coincidence but an industry-wide marketing strategy by which companies used the repertory both to promote their own offerings and to capitalize on each other’s successful fare’ (‘Marlowe Reruns’ 25–6). Following Knutson’s logic, the elements of travel in Faustus apparently made it conducive to repertorial pairings with such plays as The Jew of Malta (three times), 1 & 2 Tamburlaine, ‘Mahomet’, and ‘1 & 2 Tamar Cham’. Its pairing with ‘The New World’s Tragedy’ in September 1595 forms part of an observable pattern in which travel plays found a running partner in the exploits of the German magician and his diabolically-enabled journeys. Of course, caution must be exercised when dealing with the repertory partners of plays which were immensely popular on their own account: continuing plays could fill out weekly schedules while the company rehearsed new offerings. This function is obvious in the early months of a fall season. In 1595–96 the Admiral’s men gave performances of four continuations while they were preparing to introduce Longshanks, four more before the debut of Crack Me This Nut, and four more before the debut of The New World’s Tragedy. (Knutson, Repertory 38) Whilst this may be the case with Faustus, its interest in travel, coupled with the sheer number of travel plays which accompanied it in repertory, should not simply be ignored. Tamburlaine and Faustus have both been considered as marginal figures, as vagabonds or masterless men, and as aspirant protagonists or ‘overreachers’. They have not, to

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my knowledge, been considered in terms of their attitudes to travel. In order to fully appreciate Marlowe’s legacy we need to consider the wanderlust which operates so powerfully in Faustus, and which we have already seen the playwright himself engage with in Tamburlaine. Our first glimpse of Faustus occurs ‘in his study’ (B-text Prol. 27), the site where Burton would have his followers conduct their travels exclusively. As the Prologue tells us (‘Not marching in the fields of Trasimene’, B-text Prol. 1), the setting constitutes a deliberate departure from the heroic mode of Tamburlaine and its imitators, signalling a focus on interiority and the internalisation of the travel impulse. The mind is privileged as possessing an expanse that rivals and even exceeds the boundless plains that the likes of Tamburlaine enjoyed. Faustus is surrounded by knowledge from the start, when he is immersed in the works of Aristotle, Galen, and Justinian, but whereas for Tamburlaine the map (that quintessential icon of travel) is a retrospective, descriptive catalogue of accomplishments and conquests, recorded knowledge is the impetus for movement for Faustus, who (the Chorus tells us) goes ‘to prove cosmography’ by travelling: Learnèd Faustus, To find the secrets of astronomy Graven in the book of Jove’s high firmament, Did mount him up to scale Olympus’ top, Where, sitting in a chariot burning bright Drawn by the strength of yokèd dragons’ necks, He views the clouds, the planets, and the stars, The tropics, zones, and quarters of the sky, From the bright circle of the hornèd moon Even to the height of Primum Mobile; And, whirling round with this circumference Within the concave compass of the pole, From east to west his dragons swiftly glide And in eight days did bring him home again. Not long he stayed within his quiet house To rest his bones after his weary toil, But new exploits do hale him out again, And, mounted then upon a dragon’s back, That with his wings did part the subtle air, He now is gone to prove cosmography, That measures coasts and kingdoms of the earth… (B-text 3.Chorus 1–21)

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Early modern travellers certainly visited sites about which they had previously read: Thomas Platter describes seeing in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral ‘an uncommonly imposing monument to Christopher Hatton, which Camden describes’ (176). In the hands of Lipsius, this process of verification by travel becomes singularly inspiring: In this countrey [Italy] where shall you set your feet, or cast your eie: but you shall haue occasion to call into remembrance, that which is set downe in Livie, Salust, Polibius, Plyny, Tacitus, Dion, and Dionisius, in whome who so hath read heeretofore sondrie matters of worth … and shall in trauailing see before hys eies the trueth of their discourses, and the demonstration of their descriptions: in trueth if he be not rauished with delight, I shall take him but for some stocke, or stone… (B4–B4v) When Faustus, claiming to have ‘attained’ (B-text 1.1.10) the end of logic, physic, law, and so on, exhausts the possibilities for mentally testing the knowledge recorded in his books, he is inspired – in an act that anticipates Bacon’s emphasis on empiric verification – to see the things he reads about, to verify their wonder first-hand where abstract rules cannot yield the verification he craves. He becomes a learned traveller like Platter or Lipsius, recognising and appreciating the sites he sees, armed with foreknowledge provided by his books, and ‘rauished with delight’ at the spectacles. Whilst the moments of past tense (or present historical) descriptions of travel in Faustus are a typical choric device for conveying movement on the early modern stage, they are atypical in their emphasis on the protagonist’s desire to see and enjoy the exotic, and, what is more, to actively participate: FAUSTUS. Thou know’st within the compass of eight days We viewed the face of heaven, of earth, and hell. So high our dragons soared into the air That, looking down, the earth appeared to me No bigger than my hand in quantity. There did we view the kingdoms of the world, And what might please mine eye I there beheld. Then in this show let me an actor be, That this proud Pope may Faustus’ cunning see. (B-text 3.1.68–76, emphasis added)

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This desire to witness and to act, rather than passively to absorb information, is important. It is not enough to be rapt in secret studies in hermetically sealed libraries; vicarious travel is an alternative but not a perfect substitute for physical voyaging. Immersion in travel narratives – or, for that matter, attendance at a travel play – can afford the individual temporary satisfaction in the glimpse of exotic alterity it conveys, but such second-hand experience, such ‘performances of reality’ (ideal presence) are always less than reality itself (real presence). Part of the appeal of Faustus for an audience might have been the fact that, unlike them, he is not restricted to second-hand experience, though it takes the infernal transportation provided by Mephistopheles’s dragons for Faustus to voyage round the world. This point was probably underscored quite ostentatiously in production, given that the inventory of properties for the Lord Admiral’s men on 10 March 1598 records the ‘dragon in fostes’ (Henslowe 320), which Emily C. Bartels proposes was ‘brought onstage (or suspended above it) to show Faustus “whirling around” the universe in a “chariot burning bright, / Drawn by the strength of yoked dragons’ necks”’ (16). Peter Holland asserts that whereas ‘[t]he journeyings of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine are constricted by the limitations of terrestrial geography’, the ‘journeyings of Faustus have no such limitation: their boundary is unimaginable, “Even to the height of Primum Mobile”’ – though as the properties list shows us, Holland may have been too quick to dismiss Faustus’s travels as ‘certainly theatrically unrepresentable’ (162). In this desire for ocular proof of the marvels related by text, Marlowe’s Faustus provides a precursor for Richard Brome’s Peregrine, who has not only read ‘such books / As might convey his fancy round the world’, but has actively sought to be on any ‘voyage or foreign expedition’ that might permit him to glimpse the Mandevillian exotica he fetishises (The Antipodes 1.1.136–7, 141). Faustus’s pleasure also recalls the declaration in Jerome Turler’s precepts for travel: ‘what can be more delectable, then to beeholde the things whereof thou hast read sumthing or heard of other’? (113–14). The key word is ‘delectable’ – the OED’s first citation of which, appropriately, is Mandeville’s adjectival use in praise of an exotic country – which here reveals that this process of verification is not simply a scholastic exercise in data comparison between knowledge acquired through abstract reasoning and through experience; the sensorial act affords delight (it is ‘delectable’). Not only is Faustus able to travel to an unprecedented extent with Mephistopheles’s aid, but he cherishes the possibility of such indulgence. Faustus ‘delights’ in seeing

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the world and the heavens; he is not merely ‘satisfied’ in the confirmation of his abstract knowledge. There may be historical reasons for this emphasis on pleasure. In Marlowe’s primary source, the English Faust Book, there is significantly more attention given to the protagonist’s travels than in the German Faustbauch, including an exhaustive catalogue of some sixty or more ‘kingdoms, provinces and countries he passed in 25 days’ (128) before the arrival in Rome that is dramatised in Marlowe’s play. Some of these additional details (primarily anecdotal, not always correct) on Naples, Venice, and Rome in particular, were used by Marlowe, and suggest that ‘PF Gent’ (probably Paul Fairfax) travelled widely, and drew on personal experience in creating the English Faust Book. Towards the end of his 25-day tour ‘through the principal and most famous lands in the world’ (127), Faustus leaves Rome and makes a tour of Europe and the near East, with pleasure clearly being his guiding principle: Not far from that town is a new town, wherein is a nunnery of the order of St Dioclesian, into which order may none come except they be gentlewomen and well formed and faire to look upon, the which pleased Faustus well: but having a desire to travel further, and to see more wonders, mounting up towards the East, over many lands and provinces, as into Hungary, Transilvania, Shede, Ingratz, Sardinia, and so into Constantinople, where the Turkish Emperor kept his Court. (139; emphasis added) This emphasis on Faustus’s ‘desire to travel further, and to see more wonders’ translates, in Marlowe’s adaptation, into Mephistopheles’s temptations and Faustus’s eager participation in the diabolical travels. Upon their arrival in Rome, Mephistopheles guides Faustus through the city’s features, telling him ‘thou mayst perceive / What Rome contains for to delight thine eyes’ (B-text 3.1.30–1). Faustus readily accedes to this offer, swearing ‘by the kingdoms of infernal rule’ that ‘I do long to see the monuments / And situation of bright splendent Rome’ (B-text 3.1.46 and 49–50). Here again, Henslowe’s papers provide a clue, for he lists ‘the sittie of Rome’ amongst those properties itemised in the abovementioned 1598 list (Henslowe 319). Precisely what this ‘sittie’ might be remains ambiguous. The Revels accounts for court performances frequently make mention of similar stage properties which appear to have been canvas paintings erected on the side of the stage (Graves 52; Astington 191). In 1581–82, for example, the lost ‘History of Ferrar’ was furnished with ‘diverse newe thing[s], as

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one Citty, one Battlement of canvas, iij Ells of sarcenet and x paire of gloves’, and the lost ‘History of Telemo’ similarly included ‘one Citty one Battlement of canvas, iij Ells of sarcenet and viij paire of gloves’ (Peter Cunningham 177). Whether Henslowe’s ‘sittie of Rome’ was constituted of one or more of these painted canvases or something else altogether (possibly even for another play), the audience were encouraged to travel vicariously with Faustus, as Mephistopheles guides them through the city of seven hills, pausing to point out the river ‘Tiber’s stream’, ‘the bridge called Ponte Angelo’, and ‘the gates and high pyramides [obelisks] / That Julius Caesar brought from Africa’ (B-text 3.1.34, 38, 44–5). In its provision of local details, this presentation of an Italian city is radically different from the largely generic and indistinguishable Verona presented by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, for example. In the A-text we learn from the Chorus that this episode in Rome concludes and Faustus returns home only when he ‘had with pleasure ta’en the view / Of rarest things and royal courts of kings’ (A-text 4.Chorus 1–2). Clearly Marlowe preserves and foregrounds the same wanderlust he inherited from the English Faust Book’s description of Faustus’s travels. Faustus apparently revels in all his flights of fancy and all the indulgences granted to him by Mephistopheles; his practical joke on the horse-courser, his ‘resurrection’ of Helen of Troy, his empowering invisibility at the Vatican, and his procuring of out of season grapes from across the world all please him as much as his travels. All these feats are manifestations of the protagonist’s desires, however ridiculous and petty. But these representations of Faustus’s whims can also be viewed as Marlowe’s metatheatrical meditation on drama’s gratification of audience desires. As Roger Sales notes of Faustus’s conjuration of the ‘merry Greek’: ‘It is a dumb show that strikes the students momentarily dumb with admiration for Helen. They are spectators whose voyeuristic desires are gratified by Faustus’s demonic theatrical powers’ (154). The conjuration is the very essence of theatrical spectacle: this is not Helen, for we are told the bodies of the dead lie so decomposed in the earth that Mephistopheles can only supply spirits or devils in lieu of the original persons. In theory this representation of Helen is no more distant from the real Helen than the written representations of her in books, but clearly there is something about the visual depiction – even when acknowledged to lack authenticity – that nevertheless captivates the audience. Faustus’s audience is shown history in just the way that Jonson’s Fabian Fitzdottrel (The Devil is an Ass) preferred to learn about history at plays: ‘he thinks them more authentic than the

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chronicles: drama actually showed the people and exploits which history books could only report’ (Wiggins 24). In just this vein, I argue, early modern audiences were shown exotic lands not merely ‘in map and card’ like Robert Burton, but in theatre and spectacle. If Faustus’s audience is struck dumb by the spectacle despite their knowledge of the performance’s true nature, Marlowe’s audience (by analogy) would probably have revelled in the spectacles provided in Faustus (what else is theatre if not an ingenious illusion akin to Mephistopheles’s conjurations?): As Faustus’s ‘history’ develops, the principal use of his powers is to gain a reputation for his conjuring (e.g., the scenes with the Emperor, the Duke of Vanholt, and the students) … If Faustus is a victim of illusion, many of the play’s characters, including the Emperor, also prefer Faustus’s illusions to reality … Faustus comes increasingly to perform what the commercial drama generally was seeking to offer its spectators – that which produces contentment or wonder. (Healy 187) It is worth noting a crucial disparity between Faustus’s travels and the various other feats he performs, for however prohibitively expensive or exclusive exotic travel might have been to the average playgoer, it was decidedly in a different ‘league’ of impossibility from raising the dead or regenerating limbs. Estimates of the costs for exotic travel vary: Robert Dallington’s ‘yearelye expence’ for continental travel in 1598 amounted to ‘fourscore pounds sterling’ without allowing for the costs of riding, or keeping a servant; these expenses (if indulged) pushed the real cost up to ‘no lesse then one hundred and fiftie poundes’ (C). In his ‘Letter to Maister L.W.’ prefacing Thomas Coriate Traueller for the English Wits, by contrast, Coryate mentions as ‘a matter verie memorable’ that he subsisted on next to nothing for his ten months in the East: I spent in my ten moneths trauels betwixt Aleppo and the Moguls Court, but three pounds sterling, yet fared reasonable well euerie daie; victuals beeing so cheape in some Countries where I trauelled, that I oftentimes liued competentlie for a pennie sterling a day; yet of that three pound I was cousened of no lesse then ten shillings sterling, by certaine lewde Christians of the Armenian Nation: so that indeed I spent but fiftie shillings in my ten moneths trauailes. (28–9)

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Travel, then, may not have been as far beyond the reach of the average citizen as we often assume; though even if it were, in the bustling metropolis of London, on any given day a playgoer could nevertheless either chance to encounter a sailor who had ventured forth into the unknown, or could at least read about such voyages which had actually taken place and which had been undertaken by men not unlike themselves in terms of birth or physical ability. Hence even if it were not probable that a playgoer could voyage to the New World, it was known to be a good deal more possible than that he could perform a resurrection or become invisible and box the pope’s ears. Faustus’s necromancy might attract condemnation, but his peregrinations escape reproof, and remain (I argue) more than tacitly accepted. Marlowe, and the theatre he influenced, was supplying a greatly sought after experience of transportation, which at this historical juncture was tantalisingly close to becoming a genuine possibility for the general public. The sustained and commercially significant demand for mind-travel, which the theatre continued to cater for throughout the entire seventeenth century, appears to have originated in Marlowe, and his emphasis on the pleasures of voyaging.

Fortunatus and the wishing hat Before leaving Tamburlaine behind altogether, it is worth noting that in addition to prompting the spate of conqueror plays unfairly known as the ‘weak sons of Tamburlaine’ – Alphonsus, King of Arragon; Selimus; Wounds of the Civil War, and so on – which appear to have mimicked Marlowe’s new hero, language, or sense of spectacle, Marlowe seems to have attracted imitators who conflated elements of Tamburlaine and Faustus. For example, from what we can glean from the extant ‘plot’, the lost ‘1 Tamar Cham’ play (Strange’s c. 1588; reprised by Admiral’s in 1596) had as much in common with the fantastical and magical elements of Faustus as it had an affinity with the Tamburlaine phenomenon (see Fleay 141; Jowett 38–40; and Foakes’s dating of the plot to a c. 1602 revival in Henslowe 332). Although it was ostensibly another eastern conqueror play recounting the exploits of a great Tartar king (Tamar Cham, played by Edward Alleyn), a ‘Persian Shah’, and ‘Mango Cham’ (best known at the time of ‘Tamar Cham’ for his conversion to Christianity; see Heywood, Troia Britanica 448; Knolles 113), there is also evidence to suggest a fabulous dimension to the play. In addition to the inclusion of Ascalon (a spirit) and Linus (a satyr) in the dramatis

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personae, the plot reveals that the play concluded with a procession of distinctly exotic peoples: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

The Tartars The Getes The Amazons The Negars The olive colord Moors The Cannibals The Hermaphrodites The Bohars The Pigmies The Crymms The Cathayaus The Bactrians (Fleay 141)

The participants in this procession belong more to Mandevillian fantasy than chronicle history; their prominence in the denouement of the play suggesting that the allure of the exotic was (for the audiences of ‘1 Tamar Cham’) as much of a draw as the adoption of subject matter overtly reminiscent of Marlowe’s hugely successful conqueror plays. If the staging of ‘1 Tamar Cham’ was part of what Knutson and others call the ‘industry-wide marketing strategy by which companies used the repertory both to promote their own offerings and to capitalize on each other’s successful fare’ (‘Marlowe Reruns’ 25–6) – and I agree that it probably was – it may be significant that although it ‘had probably been originally written as a rival to Tamburlaine [an Admiral’s play]’ (Greg 156), when the Admiral’s acquired the play from Strange’s and revived it in 1596, it followed a revival staging of Faustus (5 May 1596), not Tamburlaine (whose last performance had occurred the previous year, 1595, on 12–13 November). It more than doubled the takings of Faustus on that occasion (Henslowe 36). Perhaps the desire for exotic sights epitomised in Marlowe’s magician ultimately struck a greater chord with playgoers than the presentation of sights of power. If so, Knutson may well be right in finding ‘recreations rather than combat’ in another possible Tamburlaine spin-off: the lost ‘Famous Tragicall history, of ye Tartarian Crippell Emperour of Constantinople’, entered in the Stationers’ Register on 14 August 1600 (Arber 3.63) (‘Tartarian Crippell’ referring to ‘Timur the Lame’, better known to English playgoers as ‘Tamburlaine’). In her Lost Plays Database

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entry for this title, Knutson asks whether this might have dramatised the historical episode (subsequently recounted by Knolles 222) in which Tamburlaine was said to have visited Constantinople for pleasure. In the Folger Shakespeare Library’s manuscript fragment of ‘A stately tragedy containing the ambitious life and death of the great Cham... ca.1590’ (compare Harbage’s seventeenth-century dating in Annals), exotic eastern settings are likewise combined with Faustian devils and magic. In addition to the Great Cham’s history, the fragment’s title reveals that the lost play concerned itself with the ‘inchantments of Bagous the Brachman[,] wth the straunge fortunes of Roxen[;] the Captiuity[,] release and death of his brother Manzor the Turchestan King[;] and [the] happy Fortunes of the Sophy of Persia[,] with the loue of Bargandell his sonne’. Here again are the makings of a typical eastern play: a captivity narrative, a Persian Sophy and Turkestan King, and an all-powerful Cham, Velruus, whose wife Drepona declares ‘other courtes are cottages to this / Mayntained by my Lord the mighty Cham’ (Anon., ‘A stately tragedy’ 45–6). In her speculation that her husband’s displeasure stems from ‘our vassayles the Tartarians’ having ‘Bessegd or sackt some of our fronter townes’ (57–8), Drepona hints at the possibility that the Cham of the lost play had even greater analogy with the allconquering Tamburlaine of Marlowe’s creation; Drepona’s hyperbolical (and typically Marlovian) solution to the dilemma is for ‘our army far more great’ to ‘Waste all Tartaria to the Northren [sic] Seas’ (59, 61). But whereas the title of this lost play would suggest an imitation of Tamburlaine on par with the ‘weak sons’ and, to a lesser extent, of ‘Tamar Cham’, an engagement with Faustian magic is evident even from the fragment’s two extant leaves. When Bagous the Brachman (an eastern priest figure; possibly a eunuch – see Elyot, Bibliotheca Eliotae f.i) enters the stage alone, he is joined by Aldeboran, a spirit or ‘deuill’ who the stage direction explains ‘must rise from vnder the stage in a flash of fier’ (17 SD) (see Figure 2.1). Aldeboran wastes no time establishing a Faustian pact with Bagous, offering him diabolical temptations: Fiendes of Auernus shall attend on thee And tremble at thine incantations Thou shalt haue power to countermand the fates And to presage of future accidents To rise Latonas daughter from her spheare And blindfold Phœbus with æternall might To walke about the worlde with a wish And dart destruction and deserued death

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On those who manage enmities with thee If you plot your ententions with mee. (17–26) The Faustus and Tamburlaine traditions seem to be merging, perhaps (we might cynically suggest) in a bid to capitalise on both. Significantly, the allure of travel is prominent, as in Aldeboran’s enticing offer of the power to ‘walke about the worlde with a wish’ (23), which is reminiscent of Faustus’s infernal transportations. This fantasy of instantaneous transportation receives its fullest treatment with the highly coveted ‘wishing hat’ of Thomas Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (1599); a hat which ‘clapt’ upon the owner’s head, transports the wearer ‘through the ayre … in a moment ouer Seas, / And ouer lands to any secrete place’ of their volition (2.1.87–9). Dekker’s play has more in common with Faustus than the morality play inheritance and its imitation of the Faustian pact. Old Fortunatus embodies and exemplifies the Marlovian ‘will to travel’ so evident in Faustus’s heavenly voyages, which is probably why one of Francis Kirkman’s ‘School-fellows’ thought to lend him Faustus after Kirkman declared his enjoyment of Fortunatus. If this is, as Homan and others have claimed, Dekker ‘offering his version of Marlowe’s Faustus’ (501), it is significant that Old Fortunatus foregrounds the travel aspects of Marlowe’s tragedy – which, as this chapter has been arguing, were more prominent and influential than is typically recognised. The precise nature of the relationship between Old Fortunatus and Faustus is unclear, primarily because an earlier ‘1 Fortunatus’ play predates the text known to be Dekker’s. The earlier ‘Fortunatus’ play appears as part of the Admiral’s repertory in 1595–96, initially yielding strong returns (£3 on 3 February 1595, when it followed The Jew of Malta, and 40s on 10 February, for example), though these takings fell off later (Henslowe 34). The string of entries detailing Henslowe’s payments to Dekker in 1599 are on a par with the fee usually extended to an entirely new play (Henslowe 126–8), but the likelihood that the Fortunatus folk story in the German Volksbuch was the common source would limit the potential for Dekker’s version to diverge significantly from this earlier play. Albert Feuillerat contends that ‘[t]he 1596 play must have contained only the life of Fortunatus; thus Dekker’s task was to abbreviate this subject and in the space thus gained to introduce the lives of Andolosia and of his brother Ampedo’ (18), but there is no convincing evidence for such claims. There was, at any rate, a ‘Fortunatus’ play introduced into the Admiral’s repertory at about the same time as Faustus was enjoying

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Figure 2.1

Detail of Folger MS X.d.259, p. 2

Source: Photograph by David McInnis, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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its re-run season from 1594–97. (This ‘Fortunatus’ play, incidentally, twice preceded ‘Tamar Cham’: on 11 and 24 May 1596.) In this decision to mount a Fortunatus story in conjunction with Marlowe’s play we find further evidence to corroborate the suspicion, based on repertorial pairings and Knutson’s ‘marketing strategy’ theory of Marlovian reruns, that Faustus was as notable for its stimulation of vicarious travel as it was for its supernatural solicitations and tragic hubris. As with ‘A stately tragedy … of the Great Cham’ and ‘Tamar Cham’, we find in Old Fortunatus a convergence of Tamburlainean and Faustian elements. The emblematic Fortune figure seems to refer to Tamburlaine explicitly when demonstrating her power over mighty rulers: Behold these foure chain’d like Tartarian slaues, These I created Emperours and Kings, And these are now my basest vnderlings: … Here stands the verie soule of miserie Poore Baiazet old Turkish Emperour, And once the greatest Monarch in the East; Fortune her selfe is sad to view thy fall, And grieues to see thee glad to licke vp crommes At the proud feete of that great Scithian swaine, Fortunes best minion, warlike Tamberlaine: Yet must thou in a cage of Iron be drawne In triumph at his heeles, and there in griefe Dash out thy braines. (1.1.172–4, 186–95) Fortune in Dekker’s play, however, will prove the undoing of Old Fortunatus, rather than propelling him to a meteoric rise on a par with Tamburlaine. She confronts him with a choice of ‘[w]isedome, strength, health, beautie, long life, and riches’ (1.1.211), and when Fortunatus opts for riches, he is provided with a magical, self-replenishing purse: FORTUNE: Still when thou thrusts thy hand into the same, Thou shalt draw foorth ten pieces of bright gold, Currant in any Realme where then thou breathest… (1.1.300–2) His wish for riches is granted; but the fact that the riches will be in the appropriate currency for wherever Fortunatus is when he draws gold

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from his purse suggests that an expectation of travel is inextricably bound up in any fantasy of wealth. Indeed, Fortunatus’s primary intention is to use the wealth for travel. After issuing his sons with sufficient funds to ‘Shine in the streetes of Cyprus like two starres, / And make them bow their knees that once did spurne you’ (1.2.192–3), Fortunatus declares his own intentions to assume power on the world stage, living it up with exotic royalty: Ile trauell to the Turkish Emperour: And then ile reuell it with Prester Iohn, Or banquet with great Cham of Tartarie, And trie what frolicke Court the Souldan keepes; Ile leaue you presently: teare off these rags. Glitter, my boyes, like Angels, that the world May (whilst our life in pleasures circle ronnes) Wonder at Fortunatus and his sonnes. (1.2.196–203) Whilst other characters see the potential of money to consolidate domestic, political power – the English king plans to ‘circle England with a wast of gold’ (3.1.389) much like Faustus hoped to ‘wall all Germany with brass’ (B-text 1.1.87) – money breeds a desire to travel for Fortunatus, and an expectation of the permissive possibilities that a combination of wealth and foreign climes might deliver. He is thrilled to feast with semi-mythical figures of royalty whose reputations preceded them in early modern English travel literature. The desire here is for exotic sights and for status, rather than the type of Tamburlainean power, which involves control and subjugation. When next we see Fortunatus, at the Souldan of Egypt’s court, we learn that he has indeed successfully made suit to dine with ‘the Turkish Soliman’, ‘Prester Iohn’, and ‘the great Tartarian Cham’ (2.1.10–12), and that the prestige bought with his magical purse has led to quasi-Faustian travels in ‘christall Charriots drawne by Vnicornes’ (2.1.15). His son Andelocia will similarly recognise (later) that ‘gold is an Eagle, that can flie to any place’ (2.2.389–90). If fabulous riches have opened many an exotic door for Fortunatus, the ‘precious Jewell’ (2.1.71) about to be shown to him by the Souldan constitutes the zenith of all travellers’ fantasies: a magical ‘wishing Hat’ (2.2.306) which transports the bearer anywhere in the world. A less diabolical analogue to Faustus’s dragon-driven chariot, the wishing hat of vague origins (the milliner who made it is ‘[d]ead, and the whole world / Yeelds not a workman that can frame the like’

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[2.1.99–100]) comes with no strings attached. Far from selling his soul to attain it, Fortunatus merely tricks the Souldan into letting him test its weight by wearing it, whereupon Fortunatus is instantly transported back to Cyprus (2.1.101–11). This Faustian desire to travel magically means the wishing hat is valued above mere riches and power: the Souldan describes it as an ‘inestimable ornament’ that ‘the wide world’s wealth’ would not buy; a jewel not to be exchanged for ‘ten diadems’ (2.1.76, 85, 72). Yet in the hands of the Souldan, the hat is used with temperance and restraint, not idle indulgence: By this I steale to euery Princes court, And heare their priuate councels and preuent All daungers which to Babylon are meant. By helpe of this I oft see armies ioyne, Though when the dreadfull Aluarado sounds, I am distant from the place a thousand leagues… (2.1.90–5) The Souldan uses travel pragmatically for statecraft. His behaviour corresponds to the prescriptions of the ars apodemica treatises on the art of travelling well which, as Daniel Carey has recently noted, flourished in the late Elizabethan period, when travel was ‘redefined as a secular activity designed to serve the interests of the state’ (Continental Travel 2). Through the hat’s magical properties, the Souldan can maintain active surveillance of his kingdom and protect its interests. His travelling is political and utilitarian in its aims. By contrast, when Fortunatus acquires the hat, he embarks on frivolous personal indulgences: his travel is an idle pursuit that the conduct books would find morally reprehensible and ultimately useless, leaving him liable to corruption and cultural degeneration. His sons recognise the folly of his travels, characterising their father as a Sir Politic Would-be figure, fit to be mocked for his adoption of foreign affectations: ANDELOCIA:

…when the old traueller my Father comes home, like a young Ape, full of fantasticke trickes, or a painted Parrat stucke full of outlandish feathers, heele leade the world in a string… (2.2.24–7)

But for all the criticism of such travellers – not only here, but in the ars apodemica treatises and in the works of more cynical authors like

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Jonson – Fortunatus’s impulsive, fantastical travels clearly held appeal for a paying, playgoing public who also attended Faustus and numerous other exotic travel plays. In a commendatory verse to Coryate’s The Odcombian banquet (1611), a writer identified as Joannes Iackson recalls and celebrates Fortunatus’s fabulous abilities: Can it Be possible for A naturall man To trauell nimbler then Tom Coryate can? No: though You should tie to his horne-peec’d Shoes, wings fether’d more then Mercury did vse. Perchance hee borrowed Fortunatus Hat, for wings since Bladuds time Were out of date. (N) Obviously hyperbole, the comparison of Coryate with Fortunatus nevertheless shares the emphatic enthusiasm of Fortunatus’s declarations that ‘[i]n a minute am I come from Babylon, I haue beene this half howre in Famagosta … I have cut through the ayre like a Falcon’ (2.2.124–8). That this desire to travel for pleasure is peculiarly Marlovian is evident from the very insatiability of the desire: ‘desire to see you, brought me to Cyprus’, Fortunatus tells his sons, before hastily adding ‘ile leaue you more Gold, and goe visite more Countries’ (2.2.134–5). Pleasurable travel was the exception, not the norm in the period – which is precisely why it was coveted. In an instructive passage on the tensions inherent in early modern attitudes to travelling, Fortunatus has to justify his indulgences to his sceptical sons. Andelocia, for example, responds cynically to news of his father’s swift transportation, invoking a popular proverb: ‘How? in a minute, father? Ha, ha, I see trauellers must lie’ (2.2.26). His cynicism is quickly transmuted into a Desdemona-like rapture though, as he listens to accounts of the exotic ‘pleasure’ (2.2.148) his father has experienced revelling with kings, wearing ‘straunge attires’, and seeing ‘fantasticoes’ (2.2.149–50). ‘Oh rare: this was heauenly’, Andelocia replies, ‘Sweeten mine ears, good father, with some more’ (2.2.153, 163). When Fortunatus’s other son, Ampedo, accuses his father of indulging in ‘vanities’ (2.2.157), Fortunatus’s response gives voice to what is, in the period, an unusually forthright defence of the benefits of pleasurable travel in terms of spiritual nourishment: ‘Vanities? Ampedo, thy soule is made of lead, too dull, too ponderous to mount vp to the incomprehensible glorie, that trauell lifts men to’ (2.2.158–60). Travel is here presented as positively beneficial rather than simply a harmless but idle pursuit; but nowhere is it praised for its colonial or mercantile benefits.

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Fortunatus is privileged in his ability to travel without purpose, and moreover he is unashamedly elitist, as suggested earlier by his desire to dine with royalty, and as confirmed here by his disdain for the common people abroad: For still in all the Regions I haue seene, I scorn’d to crowd among the muddie throng Of the rancke multitude, whose thickned breath, Like to condensed Fogs doe choake that beautie, Which els would dwell in euery kingdomes cheeke. No, I still boldly stept into their Courts, For there to liue is rare, O tis diuine… (2.2.172–8) But whilst the appeal of Fortunatus’s travels to the average playgoer was predicated on its extraordinariness, playgoers could probably identify with the principle of desiring to see beyond one’s immediate surroundings. Underpinning Fortunatus’s fantasies of regal entertainment in foreign courts is a relatively more common desire to expand his view of the world beyond local shores: When in the warmth of mine owne countries armes We yawn’d like sluggards, when this small Horizon Imprison’d vp my body, then mine eyes Worshipt these clouds as brightest; but, my boyes, The glistring beames which doe abroad appeare, (In other heauens) fire is not halfe so cleare. (2.2.164–9) His sentiments amount to a benevolent form of Faustian insatiability, or a Baconian quest for knowledge; where others are content to persist with their ignorance (or are unaware of the limitations of their knowledge), Fortunatus seeks to know further. In just this way, his son Andelocia responds to Shadow’s belief that ‘its better staying in your owne countrie’ with the sharp retort, ‘like a Cage-birde and see nothing?’ (2.2.397–400). This argument about the benefits of travel to knowledge (for personal satisfaction) was utilised by travel’s apologists in the period: like Fortunatus, William Wood presented an account of his first-hand experience of New England in direct contrast to those sluggardly writers in England who think themselves qualified for ‘voluminous discourse’ on distant lands though they ‘have travailed no

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further than the smoake of their owne native chimnies’ (A3). Although Shadow remains unconvinced (‘what can you see abroad that is not at home?’, 2.2.401–2), Andelocia ignores his protestations and resolves that they both shall travel to England. Such desires to learn from observation and first principles for the satisfaction of personal curiosity were rapidly becoming widespread. Also suggestive of the value Fortunatus places on his personal experience of the exotic is the posthumously related fact that he kept a travel diary, a ‘Storie of all his trauels’ (2.2.369). What purpose could this memento of his voyages have served, if not as a stimulus for rejourneying over his travels, for mind-travelling? Whereas Coryate desperately sought the approval of the London elite through publishing various accounts of his travels (often at a loss), Fortunatus, by contrast, appears to have concealed his travelogue from others until the moment of his death: ‘Peruse this booke: farwell’ (2.2.313). His gift of the book is also the gift of travel, Fortunatus presumably hoping to infect his sons with a wanderlust like his own through reading the account of his voyages. For as one of Coryate’s panegyrists, Gulielmus Baker, recognised, ‘such an itch of trauell is begotten’ through reading accounts like that by ‘Sir Iohn Mandeuil’ that the reader will inevitably yearn to venture forth themselves (Coryate’s book, supposedly, shall ‘vent the kingdome better far / Then erst the Irish or Lowcountrie war’; g3). Despite his apparent aim of befriending mighty rulers and winning their allegiance with his purse, Fortunatus does not seem to have travelled merely for fame (though his fame does precede him: the Souldan asks, ‘Art thou that Fortunatus, whose great name, / Being carried in the Charriot of the winds, / Hast fild the Courts of all our Asian Kings, / With loue and enuie …?’, 2.1.1–4). Fortunatus travels to satisfy personal desires and curiosity. If his son, Andelocia, becomes misguided in the second half of the play, blinded by love and objectifying the world as a mere possession (‘Agripyne, / Loue me, and I will make the whole world thine’, 4.1.55–6), he at least reverts to his father’s position on the virtues of the wishing hat when he loses it, and recognises its true worth: I have abuzde two blessings, welth and knowledge, Wealth in my purse, and knowledge in my Hat, By which being borne into the Courts of kings, I might haue seene the wondrous workes of Ioue, Acquirde Experience, Learning, Wisdome, Truth... (4.1.101–5)

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A wishing hat – like the ability to travel widely in general – might serve the interests of the state when possessed by a politician or ruler (the Souldan, for example), but in the hands of the common man (arguably a better approximation for the average playgoer), the supreme benefit of fanciful transportation is the satisfaction of curiosity and wanderlust. The fantasies of power embodied by Tamburlaine were evidently entertaining, but the success of these plays was also inextricably bound up in the host of other innovations (meter, style, subject) that Marlowe introduced to the stage in telling the story of the Scythian tyrant. Faustus, and plays like Old Fortunatus, showed the playgoing public what they could only otherwise read about: it transported them to exotic shores and satisfied (vicariously) desires for travel which were unlikely to be sated with travail-intensive physical voyaging. For the playgoer, the experience of alterity that voyage drama provided was a better proxy for its corresponding reality in distant lands – and was thus more satisfying in terms of the evaluation of experience – than the sublimated and ultimately limited experience of excessive power and spectacular social climbing that the Tamburlaine plays and their weak sons offered.

3 Morals, Manners, and Imagination: Jonson and Heywood

Precious little has been written about Jonson and travel. In the first section of this chapter, I examine the concerns over the fluidity of national identity which may have occasioned Jonson’s wariness of travellers, and consider Volpone as a means of illustrating the humorous (in both senses of the word) consequences of adopting foreign affectations. I do so with a view to establishing the reasons for Jonson’s negative attitude to voyaging as manifested in his writings (though not, apparently, his personal convictions), and question whether his public preference for the domestic was a widely embraced value in his age. Although Jonson is known for his attention to London life, his perspective on domesticity was at odds with the less cynical views of voyaging presented in a number of plays by another prolific dramatist, Thomas Heywood. Wary of the danger of making generalisations about a man who claimed to have ‘had either an entire hand or at the least a main finger’ in composing two hundred and twenty plays (English Traveller, ‘To The Reader’ 4–5), I turn to Heywood for a counterpoint to this Jonsonian cynicism. Although in plays like If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2, Heywood presents a negative view of travel to France, the picture he paints of domesticity in his travel plays (1 & 2 Fair Maid of the West, Fortune by Land and Sea, and The English Traveller) is a dark and restrictive one, compared to which the prospect of voyaging abroad seems an enticing option. I thus argue in the second section that for Heywood, unlike Jonson, the foreign can offer the distinct possibility of pleasure, if only as a fantasy of escape. In his Apology for Actors (1612) Heywood entered into a moral debate on the merits of playing which has a strong affinity with the logical grounds of Jonson’s objections to travel; but in the context of his travel plays at least, Heywood adopts a position at the opposite end of the moral spectrum to Jonson, 83

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perceiving the pedagogical value of negative moral exempla. Trusting his readers’ ability to distinguish between behaviour fit for emulation and behaviour to be shunned, Heywood envisages an entirely positive possibility for playing, and consequently for voyaging. The debate about travel thus becomes a debate about the moral integrity of Englishmen. Whereas Marlowe’s celebration of voyaging was predicated on the absolute pleasures of wanderlust and an unbridled imagination, Heywood’s voyage dramas posit travel as a relative good. Exposing a discomforting undercurrent in domesticity and proposing an escapist solution in romantic voyaging, Heywood conceptualises travel as a ‘departure’ from the everyday (to adopt Urry’s description of tourism). By exploring these contrasting perspectives on the theatre and travel I hope to develop a better understanding of playgoers’ attitudes to the nexus of these activities, travel plays. Inasmuch as Heywood and Jonson form a neat contrast in moral terms, the disjunctions between the aesthetics (and ethics) of these playwrights’ voyage dramas reveal the difficulty in establishing conclusions about the role and reception of travel plays in England.

Jonson’s moral imperative In stark contrast to Marlowe, Jonson was exceptional amongst the Renaissance dramatists for his ostensibly conservative beliefs about travel. He did not celebrate the ‘exotic’ as the glamorous attraction of the strange or foreign; he described it, rather more warily, in the negative sense of that which is introduced from abroad, is not indigenous, and is thus an intruder in the home culture. (The OED cites Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour as its first example of ‘exotic’ in this negative sense of ‘Magick, Witchcraft, or other such exotick arts’.) When he engages with Otherness, it is usually as a derogatory metaphor for the state of London society.1 The frivolous pursuit of pleasure in travel that I have associated with an insatiable Marlovian desire was decidedly unJonsonian. Publicly the stern moralist, Jonson (in his writings, at least) was cynical about the merits of voyaging and found more to mock than to admire in the figure of the traveller. Jonson had been to the Netherlands but not much further; in around 1612 he travelled to France and Belgium (but never as far as Italy), and in 1618 he embarked on a foot journey to Edinburgh. James Loxley’s recent discovery of the Chester manuscript account of this walk to Scotland, written by an unknown travelling companion, reveals a Jonson who thoroughly enjoyed his travels to Edinburgh, ‘revelling in

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his life on the road and embracing Scotland with enthusiasm’ (Wade n.p.; see Donaldson, Ben Jonson 34–51).2 Certainly Jonson’s literary fame (which preceded him) contributed to the carnivalesque nature of his journey, as in West Yorkshire where Jonson was forced to take ‘the backe way because all the towne was vp in thronges to see vs’, or in a field near Berwick where adulatory shepherds ‘circled him and daunc’d round about him’ (qtd in Wade), but none of this commotion seems to have detracted from the general positivity of Jonson’s travel experience (the throngs of supporters who turned out to see the celebrity traveller were probably quite gratifying, after all). In his recent biography of Jonson, Ian Donaldson describes the voyage as ‘leisurely’ (39), noting that the two months and ten days taken by Jonson and his companion to complete their journey ‘was hardly record-breaking speed’, and adding that ‘the pair had been pleasurably detained along the way’ (38). Moreover, for someone who supposedly did not approve of voyaging, Jonson had a remarkably vivid sense of distant lands like Venice, which suggests many a detailed conversation with close acquaintances like Father Thomas Wright, John Florio, Inigo Jones, and William Roe, who all travelled. How do we account for this apparent discrepancy between Jonson’s public and personal views on travel? In what follows, I want to draw a parallel between moral attitudes to travel and to the theatre. The common element underpinning each, I argue, is the potential spread of corruptive knowledge and the need to teach and learn how to participate in these ‘departures’ from everyday life (travel and playgoing) without infecting the mind. Understanding the logic behind these concerns can shed light on the uses of travel in the theatre. Such an approach illuminates not only the apparent discrepancy between Jonson’s public and personal views on travel, but also that between Jonson and other playwrights who adopted a less conservative view of travel, such as Thomas Heywood. In his Epigrams, Jonson praises the young William Roe by asserting that the man who ‘hath travailed well’ is the man who survives his experiences of ‘[c]ountries and climes, manners and men’ and comes back ‘untouched’ (Poems 74; see also McRae 10 on Roe’s travels). Conversely, Jonson mocks the ‘English Monsieur’ for feigning foreign affectations: ‘Would you believe …. / That he, untravelled, should be French so much, / As Frenchmen in his company, should seem Dutch?’ (Poems 45). The stereotypical proof of an unprofitable voyage was the voyager’s apish adoption of foreign affectations and clothing to the exclusion of any genuinely beneficial transformations. Without the advice of the ars apodemica, the foolish traveller ‘gains nothing but the gay sights,

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vices, exotic gestures, and the apery of a country’, according to Owen Felltham (194): the traveller Amorphous in Cynthia’s Revels is thus appropriately named, for he is ‘one so made out of the mixture and shreds of forms that himself is truly deformed’ (Q 2.3.66–7). To travel well is to improve oneself whilst remaining true to oneself, rather than adopting affectations – for as one ars apodemica text puts it, ‘[a]fter returning the traveller is advised to resume his native dress and customs, not to show off with foreign expressions or make himself ridiculous by telling incredible stories and not to despise his old friends at home’ (qtd in Stagl 77). If a returned traveller, like Jonson’s Asotus (in the Folio version of Cynthia’s Revels) ‘doth learne to make strange sauces, to eat anchouies, maccaroni, bouoli, fagioli, and cauiare’ (F1, f.202), then he is fit for ridicule.3 By contrast, if the traveller returns ‘untouched’ by vices, like Roe, but (like Ulysses) can see ‘[c]ountries and climes, manners and men’ and ‘extract and choose the best of all these known’ to internalise, to ‘turn to blood and make thine own’ (Poems 74), then travelling has been profitable. It comes as no surprise that the figure of the affected traveller, in Jonson’s cynical hands, could exceed even the theatre’s bounds of believability – for as the veteran traveller Peregrine says of Sir Politic Would-be in Volpone: O this knight, Were he well known, would be a precious thing To fit our English stage. He that should write But such a fellow should be thought to feign Extremely, if not maliciously. (2.1.56–60) Sir Pol is the embodiment of the idle traveller in an age in which ‘[t]ourism was being born, although the ‘Grand Tour’ of some decades later was still embryonic’ (Creaser 51). He proudly declares that it is no salt desire Of seeing countries, shifting a religion, Nor any disaffection to the state Where I was bred and unto which I owe My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less, That idle, antique, stale, grey-headed project Of knowing men’s minds and manners, with Ulysses; But, a peculiar humour of my wife’s,

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Laid for this height of Venice, to observe, To quote, to learn the language, and so forth – (2.1.4–13) Jonson mocks the parroting Englishman and his wife for their whimsical travelling and incontinent receptiveness to Continental habits. The Lady Would-Be is said to lie in Venice ‘for intelligence / Of tires, and fashions, and behaviour, / Among the courtesans’ (2.1.27–9). Sir Pol, on the other hand, believes he is following the standard advice of the ars apodemica yet the result (that is, his behaviour) casts doubt over the conventional wisdom of travelling well. Sir Pol notes his activities and surroundings with due diligence, but his diary is a catalogue of the banal and mundane: ‘Notandum, A rat had gnawn my spur leathers; notwithstanding, I put on new, and did go forth; but, first, I threw three beans over the threshold. Item, I went and bought two toothpicks, whereof one I burst, immediately, in a discourse With a Dutch merchant, ’bout ragion’ del stato. From him, I went and paid a moccenigo, For piecing my silk stockings; by the way, I cheapened sprats; and at St Mark’s, I urined’. (4.1.135–44) He plays into Peregrine’s hands when the veteran traveller pretends to seek ‘instruction / For my behaviour, and my bearing, which / Is yet so rude, and raw’, exclaiming to Peregrine ‘Why, came you forth / Empty of rules for travel?’ (2.1.109–12). Sir Pol is surprised that Peregrine is not equipped with an advice manual for travelling well (the ‘rules for travel’), but it is not quite true to say that Sir Pol is an apologist for the ars apodemica. Learning that Peregrine has had some ‘common’ rules for travel ‘from out that vulgar grammar, / Which he that cried Italian to me taught me’, Sir Pol seizes the opportunity to elevate experiential knowledge (such as he has supposedly acquired) over printed wisdom: ‘Why, this it is that spoils all our brave bloods, / Trusting our hopeful gentry unto pedants’ (2.1.113–16). The message seems to be that booklearning has limited value, and that knowledge gained through experience will serve the traveller (and the ‘hopeful gentry’) better. England’s ‘brave bloods’ have foundered on the Continent because the advice

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manuals have failed to prepare them for the lessons of voyaging that only travail can teach. As ever, Jonson’s tongue is firmly in his cheek; if Sir Pol is the paragon of experiential wisdom, perhaps the pedants are to be trusted with the hopeful gentry after all. As it happens, Jonson invests little faith in the traveller or the pedant. Despite his preference for first-hand experience, Sir Pol also tries to school Peregrine with received wisdom, delivering conventional ars apodemica lines about the need for a traveller’s garb to be ‘grave, and serious; / Very reserved, and locked’ (4.1.12–13); sentiments which echo Polonius’s advice to Laertes to ‘Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy / But not expressed in fancy – rich, not gaudy’ (1.3.69–70).4 The advice sounds prudent, if superficial; it offers little by way of moral prescriptions, but it does resonate with the advice offered by historical travellers like Horatio Busino during his 1617 visit to England: Foreigners are ill regarded not to say detested in London, so sensible people dress in the English fashion, or in that of France, which is adopted by nearly the whole court, and thus mishaps are avoided or passed over in silence. The Spaniards alone maintain the prerogative of wearing their own costume, so they are easily recognised and most mortally hated. (116) But Sir Pol’s unwitting self-mockery in the warning, ‘You shall have tricks, else, passed upon you, hourly’ (4.1.21), exposes the fallibility of his advice: Sir Pol is, at the very moment he delivers this speech, having tricks passed upon him by Peregrine. Sir Pol’s inability to travel well, regardless of whether he embraces the pedants’ advice or seeks out his own knowledge in a strange land, paints a telling picture of Jonson’s expectations of Englishmen abroad. Sir Pol’s travels are motivated by ‘a peculiar humour’, and playgoers attending this play less than a decade after Every Man In His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour would know enough about Jonson’s style to expect a purgation of this psychophysiological fancy. The benefits of travel are further questioned when Peregrine weighs up his options for embarrassing Sir Pol, and briefly considers having him shipped to Zant or Aleppo. The realisation dawns on Peregrine that such punishment would ironically affirm Sir Pol’s belief in the glory of voyaging, his ‘Adventures put i’ th’ Book of Voyages’ and his ‘gulled story registered for truth’ (5.4.5–6). In drawing an analogy between Sir Pol’s humiliation and the feats of travellers recorded in voyage narratives,

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Jonson reveals a general scepticism over the purported utility of travel for the average man; a scepticism that also manifests itself in his earlier plays, Eastward Ho (in collaboration with Chapman and Marston) and Every Man Out of His Humour, where Jonson’s narrative method punishes the would-be travellers for their follies. Determining the precise attribution of scenes to Jonson in Eastward Ho is problematic (a theory of collaborative revision being most recently proposed, by Suzanne Gossett and David Kay in their Cambridge Works edition), but the Jonsonian anti-travel sentiment remains clear throughout the play. Security, Winifred, Quicksilver, and Sir Petronel Flash set out for Virginia on a fortune-finding project under the auspices of Captain Seagull and crew, but through a combination of tempest and liquor are cast ashore whilst still on the Thames, where ‘the glorious voyage ends ingloriously before it has begun’ (Van Fossen 20). In part this failed journey is a conscious and playful response to the amusingly short voyage from London to Brentford that featured in Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho (1604); the protagonists of Eastward Ho managing to accomplish even less than their theatrical precursors. In satirically insisting ‘on the unchanging mores of the main characters, the essential unchangeability of their situation’ (Leech 16), Westward Ho was satirising the old journeying plays in which physical progression mirrored development of character. With its even shorter voyage, Eastward Ho was thus ‘mocking fairly overtly the old idea of transformation’ (Leech 16). The satire of this play has social targets: individuals might change, but societal types remain constant, especially in their foolish ambitions. As with Bartholomew Fair and The New Inn, the relevance of the New World in Eastward Ho is as a point of comparison to London society; it is a crutch for Jonson’s satire. When the sea captain, Seagull, relates his naive utopian dreams of Virginia as a land of riches where ‘all their dripping pans and their chamber pots are pure gold … and for rubies and diamonds, they go forth on holidays and gather ’em by the seashore’ (3.3.29–30 and 33–4), his ambitions for wealth are mocked for their conventionality as get-rich-quick schemes: as Theodore B. Leinwand has argued, in Eastward Ho the characters’ desires are ‘less their own than those of their types, and … it is these “species-specific” desires which constitute the men’ (114). In the context of Jonson’s imagination and his attitude to travel, it is worth noting (as John Lee has done) that ‘[t]he use of Virginia as the archetype of vain, secular yet unworldly dreams is of a piece with Jonson’s valuation of the Americas as a whole’ (7). The ‘value’ of America in Eastward Ho is as an apposite signifier of vain ambition, not as a Marlovian enabler of imaginative expansion. Characters who stake

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their hopes of pleasure and riches on the New World are abruptly cast ashore at the appropriate location for an admonitory lesson: ‘Security at Cuckold’s Haven, Winifred at Saint Katharine’s (a reformatory for fallen women), Quicksilver by the gallows in Wapping, Sir Petronel on the Isle of Dogs (a refuge for debtors)’ (Van Fossen 32). In Every Man Out of His Humour, Puntarvolo – whom H.L. Snuggs convincingly suggests is modelled on English traveller Fynes Moryson – has a weakness for ‘dealing upon returns’ (wagering money on his successful returns from journeys abroad; a form of insurance).5 A type of gambling addiction, his humour is also a contemporary travel-related vice (Snuggs 233). Having declared his intention to travel this coming year, Puntarvolo reveals that so as not to voyage at his own expense, he is determined to put forth some five thousand pound to be paid me five for one upon the return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk’s court in Constantinople. If all or either of us miscarry in the journey, ’tis gone. If we be successful, why, there will be twenty-five thousand pound to entertain time withal. (2.1.527–32) The irate Macilente, who schemes to purge the ill-humoured cast of their afflictions, accordingly takes it upon himself to have Puntarvolo’s dog poisoned, thus causing Puntarvolo to forfeit his money by the terms of the current wager and realise that ‘his speculative scheme is ruined before he has begun his journey to Constantinople’ (Snuggs 231). By this act Macilente hopes that ‘Sir Puntarvolo and his dog are both out of humour to travel’ (5.2.215–16). In the fates of Puntarvolo, Sir Pol, and the Virginian voyagers, Jonson’s moral objection to frivolous travel is readily apparent. But so too is Jonson’s attitude to the playgoing public’s ability to learn from theatrical exempla: Jonson presents the playgoer with traveller-figures, but pointedly does so in such a way that the playgoer could not miss the lesson. As Ian Donaldson emphasises in his discussion of Jonson’s ‘moral and formal ends in writing Volpone’ (Magic Houses 122), Jonson was keen to ensure that ‘the restive or ignorant playgoer’ would not ‘seize on “the wrong end” of the comedy, failing to observe its larger narrative and moral design’ (122). It is not that Jonson objected to travel, or even shied away from presenting it on stage, but rather that he appears to have taken care to fashion a stern and conservative attitude to travel in the public arena. As a purveyor of otium in the form

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of public entertainment, Jonson appears to have perceived a need to regulate theatrical ‘departures’ from negotium (just as travel had been subjected to the rigorous demands of the ars apodemica). Playgoers had a certain affinity with travellers, and the concern about idleness in travel resonates strongly with common objections to the pastime of playgoing. As I mentioned earlier, Urry’s concept of a ‘departure’ from everyday life, formulated with tourism in mind, appears relevant to the theatre in early modern England, for both activities constitute ‘a limited breaking with established routines and practices of everyday life and allowing one’s senses to engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and the mundane’ (2). That playgoing was a diversion from work is evident from the letter to the Privy Council (dated 28 July 1597), in which the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London claimed that plays ‘maintaine idlenes in such persons as haue no vocation & draw apprentices and other seruantes from theire ordinary workes … to the great hinderance of traides & prophanation of religion’ (qtd in Chambers 4.322). As Louis Montrose notes, early moderns like Sir John Harington acknowledged the perception of playgoing ‘as diversion or recreation, as a gratuitous and unproductive pastime, defined in antithesis to the practical realities of negotium that constitute everyday life’ (41). Harington explains that stage plays are commonly regarded as ‘unseemly pleasures, provoking to wantonnesse’, whose ‘onely end ys a delyght of the mynd or the speryt’ (188–9); yet he ‘commend[s] not such sowere censurers’, thinking that ‘in stage-playes may bee much good, in well-penned comedies, and specially tragedies’ (191). But whereas the likes of Harington were beginning to excuse some time spent in idleness at the theatre, idle travel was not yet an acceptable pastime. Purposeless movement (vagari) was still closely associated with the vagabond, or at best the Politic Would-be types. As a form of otium, travel was yet to be recognised as a valid excursion from negotium in the way that playgoing had begun to be more than tacitly tolerated. One reason why travel lagged behind playgoing in acceptability was the perceived risk of incontinence and the possibility of moral corruption. In the letter cited above, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen objected to the Privy Council that stage plays are a speaciall cause of corrupting their Youth, conteninge nothing but vnchast matters, lascivious devices, shiftes of Coozenage, & other lewd & ungodly practises, being so as that they impresse the very qualitie & corruption of manners which they represent … Whereby such as frequent them, being of the base & refuse sort of people or

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such young gentlemen as haue small regard of credit or conscience, drawe the same into imitacion and not to the avoidinge the like vices which they represent. (Qtd in Chambers 4.322) The reaction to spectacle is crucial: as the letter to the Privy Council puts it, it is a question of ‘imitacion’ versus ‘avoidinge the like vices which they represent’. Implicit in the concern about the corruption of identity through temptation is an emphasis on spectatorship as a signal not merely of passivity, but of receptivity – to vice. Jean E. Howard discusses the iconoclastic elements of John Northbrooke’s 1577 diatribe, A Treatise wherein Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine Playes or Enterluds … are reproved: ‘Like many antitheatricalists, Northbrooke attacks the stage in part because it allures the senses, particularly the eye. It invites its spectators to love outward spectacles and turn aside from the inner illuminations of faith’ (The Stage 28). This is the kind of superficial spectatorship that the ars apodemica treatises tried to guard against in the realm of travel; to travel well was to look past the superficial and record cultural insights of greater depth. Yet the continued instances of foolish travellers aping Continental fashions would have reinforced the speculative correlation between seeing and doing which so troubled the antitheatricalists: Laura Levine observes that ‘for Gosson, the process of watching a play involves a physical transformation. The “impressions” in the actor’s mind are mysteriously transferred to the gazer. In this way the spectator quite literally takes on the identity of the actor.’ She concludes not only that ‘watching leads inevitably to doing’, but that ‘watching leads to taking on the identity of the person watched’, as Gosson construes it (13). Howard draws a similar conclusion, noting that ‘the antitheatricalists obviously regarded the entire playhouse – pit, galleries, and stage – as an arena of visual display encouraging transgressive transformations of identity’ (The Stage 34). In the theatre of the world, travel, as we have seen, posed analogous risks in terms of seeing and doing; just as the playgoer would be infected by the sight of subversive playing, the unadvised voyager was liable to affect those foreign customs and dress which he saw whilst abroad, to his country’s cultural detriment. Lipsius also saw the connection between a player’s and a traveller’s affected mannerisms, even though he was an apologist for travel: It is out of question, that in trauell you shall see sundrie and strange manners, with varietie, elegancie, neate, and goodly behauiour, but

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here we must take heed least hand ouer head, and without choise wee imitate all fashions, and frame our selues to al fancies, rather like toying apes, then sober men. He proceeds to observe how ‘most trauailers’ adopt such mannerisms ostentatiously: For as many countries as they haue trauailed, so manie gestures shall you see them vse, as plaiers on the stage, which perhaps in one houre chaunge themselues into a dosen kindes of gestures. This mimicall, and miserable affecting (as in all things els it is grosse, and absurd) so in the carriage of the body, it is most vile, base, and of all least beseeming a noble personage: wherefore eschewe it (good my Lord) and especially my Lord, auoid by all meanes, the vicious carriage (as I may so say) of the mind… (Cv–C2) The concern over appearances and mannerisms extends beyond fashion to the very essence of identity and the ‘vicious carriage’ of the mind. For antitheatricalists like Philip Stubbes, ‘costume is constitutive’ (Levine 22): ‘Our Apparell was given to us as a signe distinctive to discern betwixt sex and sex, and therefore one to wear the Apparel of another sex, is to participate with the same, and to adulterate the veritie of his owne kinde’ (Stubbes F5v). For actors to fashion themselves after personages of different rank or gender was regarded as destabilising for identity; the same held true on the cultural plane, in the context of travellers imitating the many gestures of foreigners ‘as plaiers on the stage’. As Stephen Orgel notes of Gosson’s antitheatrical stance, ‘[i]t is the fragility, the radical instability of our essence, that is assumed here’ (27); but the nascent concept of Englishness was a fragile and mutable phenomenon in this period, and the instability of identity which underpins antitheatricalist discourse was also underwriting anti-travel polemicists – hence Lipsius’s condemnation of ‘mimicall, and miserable affecting’ as ‘least beseeming a noble personage’. It is because travellers disrupt the essence of Englishness and English character that Jonson praised the Englishman Roe for returning ‘untouched’ from his travels. The danger in travel lies in the traveller’s reaction to temptation, for as Aristotle puts it, ‘pleasure induces us to behave badly’ (95). Such is the logic behind Amorphous’s false declaration in Cynthia’s Revels (Q 1601), ‘I am virtuous, being altogether untravelled’ (1.4.93). Lest that lesson be missed at the theatre,

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characters who voyage in Jonson’s drama are usually the objects of scorn. Accordingly, like the ars apodemica authors, Jonson was prepared to regulate his audience’s desires and impose his own moral framework on their (vicarious) view of the world, because even ostensibly harmless jokes about foreign fashions and manners contain deeper moral and social concerns about identity that could otherwise pass unnoticed by the restive or ignorant playgoer. Jonson’s vast dramatic output is testament to the fact that he believed that playgoing could serve an acceptable purpose if conducted properly, and his conservative public approach to travel appears consistent with his position on playing. Jonson evidently felt a responsibility to educate his audience; a fact that is not incompatible with his private attitude to voyaging as evidenced in the Chester manuscript, for presumably he felt he was travelling well. The emphasis on providing moral lessons through drama is a consequence of Jonson’s respect for the Horatian ideal, to instruct and delight. On a formal level, Jonson’s neoclassicism (like that of Sidney) also required that the ‘laws of time, place, persons’ be observed (Volpone Prol.31) so that his drama would be believable, and would not unduly burden playgoers in their attempt to conceive the action of the play and thus – in the Horatian vein – its message. The Prologue to Every Man In His Humour criticises plays in which the ‘chorus wafts you o’er the seas’ (15), and Jonson is at pains to have Mitis and Cordatus emphasise that Every Man Out of His Humour will deploy no such scene-shifting: MITIS: …what’s his scene? CORDATUS: Marry, Insula Fortunata, sir. MITIS: Oh, the Fortunate Island? Mass, he has bound himself to a strict law there. CORDATUS: Why so? MITIS: He cannot lightly alter the scene without crossing the seas. CORDATUS: He needs not, having a whole island to run through, I think. MITIS: No? How comes it then that in some one play, we see so many seas, countries, and kingdoms passed over with such admirable dexterity? CORDATUS: O, that but shows well the authors can travel in their vocation and outrun the apprehension of their auditory. (Induction 266–81)

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Jonson’s play will remain firmly within the apprehension of his audience, and there is no danger that his moral evaluations will go unnoticed. In addition to his wariness of travel’s potential immorality, then, Jonson was also bound to exclude voyaging from his drama on the basis of the aesthetic ideals to which he subscribed. Jonson’s imagination was free-ranging in its own way, however. John Lee relates how early twentieth-century critics unjustly characterised Jonson as a conservative figure: the suggestion was that if ‘Roe is the traveller who travels well … because he never really travels at all’, Jonson was ‘an equivalent literary traveller’ (Lee 4). But as Lee makes clear, this is not an accurate assessment. Lee interrogates the assumption of earlier Jonson critics (Herford and Simpson, Greene) that ‘Jonson’s travels among his age and its literature, as well as the literature of past ages … have left the central values of his work unchanged’ and that ‘Jonson is seen to have travelled in literary realms as he urged William Roe to do in life’ (that is, to return ‘untouched’) (Lee 3–4). Following the leads of Ian Donaldson and Anne Barton in attending to Jonson’s ‘desire for, and wholesale lack of, boundedness’, Lee draws attention to the Senecan motto appropriated by Jonson as part of his signature – Tanquam explorator – which ‘pictures Jonson as the lightly-armed scout (an explorator) leaving his own literary world to explore the heart of the unknown territories of his rivals’, and notes that ‘[t]his Jonson travels to strange and hostile lands on voyages of literary discovery, searching for advantages over his literary rivals’ (6). Jonson’s idea of travel, then, is predicated on utility and education, and his imagination was stimulated by the prospect of learning from the rich details of history, not by the vague possibilities of unchartered terrain (see also Dryden, ‘Essay’ 21, on Jonson’s imagination and influences). Discussing Drummond’s anecdote of a delighted Jonson revelling in a whole night spent looking at his big toe ‘about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination’, Lee relates ‘a picture of a learned Jonson whose imagination, even when journeying around his great toe, is innately scholarly’: Jonson’s use of America as the land of profitless imagination is not, then, a product of his resistance to an imaginative response to far away places. It is rather that Jonson’s imagination looks eastward and to a past emerging in the present, to Tartars and Turks that is, and not westward to a poorly known present and future. For the east is full of histories, of discourses of authority. Within such givens, Jonson’s imagination could play happily throughout the night. The

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Americas, by contrast, offered none of this. They were indeterminate lands, lands of the future. (10–11) Jonson’s imagination was not captivated by the unknown (in Lee’s example, America) in the way Marlowe’s was; his experience of a Marlovian play would probably resonate with Lisa Hopkins’s otherwise questionable assertion that ‘the audience’s inability to decode the myriad placenames’ in Tamburlaine means that ‘very few of them acquire any real solidity or sense of specific location’ (8). Whilst in Chapter 2 I took issue with Hopkins’s generalisation as it is applied to the masses, it is possible to see its relevance to the Jonsonian imagination, which differs significantly from that of the groundlings. Jonson’s imagination is original where Marlowe’s is aboriginal; Jonson is very much concerned with rebirthing the classics and returning to origins, where Marlowe bodied forth the forms of things unknown. Jonson’s imagination was no less powerful, it simply had a different focus – neoclassically inspired, moralistic, historically informed, and purposeful.

Heywood and travel as a fantasy of escape Heywood, like Marlowe, but unlike many of the other dramatists treated in this study, did at least travel on the Continent: Allan Holaday proposes that Heywood accompanied the Earl of Southampton to the Low Countries in a voyage of 1614. Although, like Jonson, he had a keen sense of morality and an interest in discussing travel on stage, Heywood produced a markedly different type of voyage drama which contrasts sharply with Jonson’s plays and the sentiments they express. As an apologist for the theatre and the writer of many a travel play, Heywood was eternally optimistic about the benefits of theatrical exempla: ‘If wee present a forreigne History, the subiect is so intended, that in the liues of Romans, Grecians, or others, either the vertues of our Country-men are extolled, or their vices reproued’ (Apology F3v). Here and throughout his Apology for Actors, Heywood (notes Montrose) ‘proclaims that London’s public and professional theatre is to be construed as a source of civic and national consciousness and pride, and as a most effective instrument for the inculcation of virtuous knowledge and the fashioning of obedient subjects’ (44). It does so by replicating the wilderness of vices encountered by the traveller, and its success depends on the playgoer’s ability to discern which behaviours are worthy of emulation. Apologists for travel, such as James Howell in his Instructions and

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Directions for Forren Travell (1650), advocated the acquisition of positive traits from Continental neighbours, appealing to the traveller’s judgement in the same way that Heywood had earlier assumed the playgoer’s ability to distinguish the right moral path: From the French his Horsemanship and gallantnesse that way, with his Confidence, and nothing else: From the Spaniard his Sobriety, not his lust: From the German (cleane contrary) his Continency, not his Excesse, the other way: From the Netherland his Industry, and that’s all: His heart must still remaine English. (Howell 103) Lipsius offered similar sentiments: Italie (I graunt) and France, will teach vs fine, and faire cariage of our body, good, & discreet deliuerie of our minde, ciuill, and modest behauiour to others, but yet as we are to like, so wee are not straight to affect euerie countrey fashion: wee are to vse them seasonably, and soberly and modestly, not with thrasonicall [that is, bragging after the manner of Thraso in Terence’s Eunuchus], and presumptuous ostentation… (Cv–C2) Heywood had no reservations about serving up exotic adventures in plays like the two-part Fair Maid of the West because he believed that playgoers could be relied upon to identify and choose profitable pursuits over more tempting indulgences and vanities, and that they could judge for themselves which examples to follow, and to what extent. Jonson apparently did not trust his audience with this responsibility, remaining circumspect about the possibility of travelling usefully and taking every opportunity to humiliate the figure of the traveller on stage. This is not to suggest that Jonson was restrained merely by his morality; it is surely his imaginative preferences, and not his ethics or pedagogic drive alone that guide his apparent aversion to travel on stage. We have already seen the hold that neoclassical aesthetics had over Jonson, and Jonathan Haynes notes that for Jonson’s realism (which he identifies as a type of ‘social realism’), [t]he crucial elements are a dramatic tradition of social criticism, a set of stage techniques for analyzing social behavior, the topic of fashion associated with the issue of social mobility, and the gradual appearance of London as a dramatic scene – a concrete and extended

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secular space where social conflict and competition were most highly concentrated. Jonson inherits all these elements quite directly, but they are fused together into a new and more powerful whole in the pressurized situation of the London theaters. (12) Although Jonson’s aesthetics were thus a product of his interests and the tradition within which he worked, they were not an inevitable product. Heywood shared Jonson’s interest in public morality to a significant extent: in his Apology he celebrated the moral force of plays like the lost ‘Friar Francis’ (1593?) and ‘The Four Sons of Aymon’ (1602) (see Lost Plays Database), which could so move an audience by the depiction of crimes that they could trigger confessions of similar crimes from guilty playgoers (in the style of Hamlet’s ‘Mousetrap’ play). Yet Heywood managed to produce markedly less conservative depictions of travel whilst operating in the same theatrical world as Jonson. The image of domesticity envisaged by Heywood is in turns ‘polluted’, corrupt, or custodial; rarely is it to be preferred to life abroad as the dramatist imagines it. The main plot of A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) puts extreme pressure on the notion of domestic happiness, where ‘domestic’ refers both to the local English setting (the play’s actions occur in Yorkshire) and to ‘domesticity’ in the sense of the household and family. The play relates the adulterous interference of the intruder, Wendoll, in the marriage of his friends, John and Anne Frankford. What begins with courteous hospitality quickly degenerates into household disorder. Taking his host’s invitation to ‘be a present Frankford in his place’ a little too literally (6.78), Wendoll abuses his friend’s trust and seduces Frankford’s wife. When Frankford uncovers the adultery, he is moved to isolate Anne: both to prevent re-offending, and to minimise the impact on his reputation. The domestic space, which previously constituted a barrier against the outside world, is transformed into a prison to retain its occupants (Webster’s Duchess of Malfi is subjected to similar treatment). The irony of Frankford’s ‘kindness’ is that the generous gift of his ‘manor seven mile off’ for Anne to live in is not a luxury but an imposed banishment and imprisonment (13.166). The wife who cannot be trusted (to wander is to err) is securely fastened in the husband’s house where not even he will interact with her. She is given neither the chance to re-offend, nor (significantly) the chance to reform: [Frankford’s sentence] does not allow Anne a chance to renew her social identity through total relocation (as Wendoll intends to do),

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nor to return to her former state. Removed from her social world, she must go to a house which is a sterile double of her past home, where in solitude she will be unable to regenerate her name. (Henderson 287) In A Woman Killed with Kindness, the disruptive energies of adulterers pose so significant a threat to domestic harmony that social order can only be reconstituted via the expulsion (Wendoll) or demise (Anne) of the transgressing agents (see Wall 212). Whether or not Frankford is ‘kind’, the play is interested in the dissolution of social bonds in the wake of immoral acts, and subsequently focuses on the reconstitution of society in the denouement. The comparison of A Woman Killed with Kindness with Jonson’s works is potentially misleading inasmuch as domestic tragedies are inevitably darker than city comedies or comedies of humours (a better comparison would be with the lost Jonson-Dekker collaboration, ‘Page of Plymouth’, 1599; also a domestic crime play), but my point here is simply that A Woman Killed with Kindness demonstrates Heywood’s keen interest in morality, even if the play’s conclusion is ultimately ambiguous. This quasi-Jonsonian attention to morality is of interest because Heywood’s depictions of travel, unlike those of Jonson, are not bound by this conservative morality. Indeed, Heywood seems particularly willing to endorse the notion of travel as a fantasy of escape or indulgence: in The English Traveller (1625), Fortune by Land and Sea (1609), and The Fair Maid of the West, Parts 1 and 2 (1597–1610; 1630–31), not only are Heywood’s protagonists seen to benefit from excursions abroad, but their home societies are consistently depicted in such a way as to make departure seem a blessing. In the case of voyage drama, the fantasy being indulged consists of witnessing an alternative reality which would otherwise be unavailable to playgoers with limited geographic mobility. As Wincott’s wife tells the returned traveller, Young Geraldine, in Heywood’s The English Traveller: Sir, my husband Hath took much pleasure in your strange discourse About Jerusalem and the Holy Land, How the new city differs from the old, What ruins of the Temple yet remain And whether Sion and those hills about With their adjacent towns and villages Keep that proportioned distance as we read.

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And then in Rome, of that great pyramis Reared in the front, on four lions mounted, How many of those idol temples stand, First dedicated to their heathen gods, Which ruined, which to better use repaired, Of their Pantheon and their Capitol What structures are demolished, what remain. And as the husband himself adds: …what more pleasure to an old man’s ear, That never drew save his own country’s air, Than hear such things related? (1.1.108–25) The ‘old man’s ear’ differs importantly from Desdemona’s ‘greedy ear’ (Othello 1.3.149) in that Othello was deliberately seducing Brabantio’s daughter with his tales of Anthropophagi (just as, in recounting the seduction, he wins over the audience). The stories told by Young Geraldine gratify the husband by virtue of their content, by relating ‘[w]hat structures are demolished, what remain’; the success of Othello’s stories rely more on his Orphic ability to enchant. For those bound by English soil, a glimpse of the exotic was a momentary indulgence to please the imagination. The potential for enjoyment in hearing ‘such things related’ is often disparaged and, as a result, its significance is not recognised. In the case of Heywood, whose plays exemplify this kind of pleasure, the problem is exacerbated by his critical reception. It would be helpful for early modern scholarship if we were finally to do away with the outdated assumption, perpetuated by so many critics of Heywood, that his plays cater exclusively to a lower-middle-class audience with unrefined tastes. This notion is especially prominent in older monograph studies of Heywood, like that of Mowbray Velte, whose Bourgeois Elements in the Dramas of Thomas Heywood (1966) is littered with comments about appeals to ‘the bourgeois taste’ (98), the ways in which ‘Heywood was willing to pander to their coarse tastes’ (98), and characterisations of Heywood’s plays as ‘the sort that the ordinary citizen would appreciate’ (99). It is also implicitly present in critical editions of Heywood’s plays, as with Robert K. Turner’s Regents Renaissance Drama edition of The Fair Maid of the West: Adventure drama is always with us even though it gets low critical marks for being a fundamentally unserious form of art. Instead of

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asking us better to understand ourselves and our world by seeing through experience, it invites us to reject reality as commonplace and deep concerns as troublesome, and temporarily to substitute for them a fantastic world of simple, straightforward emotions, black and white morality, absolute poetic justice, and, above all, violent rapidity of action. (Turner xv) The ‘low critical marks’ Turner refers to, and his labelling of adventure drama as an ‘unserious form of art’ hint at an underlying assumption about the target audience that concurs with Velte’s study. Whilst I agree with some of Turner’s characterisations of adventure drama, I think these should be read positively and appreciated for the pleasure they provide. To imply (however subtly) that adventure drama appeals only to the baser sort of playgoers is to commit what Victor Nell calls the elitist fallacy – ‘the belief that as sophistication grows, coarser tastes wither away’ (4). Nell’s observations about readers can easily be modified to apply to playgoers: Critics and literary historians have traditionally subscribed to the view that readers are either lowbrow or highbrow and, as a corollary, that trained and untrained minds do not share the same tastes … On the contrary: though sophisticated readers have the capacity and the desire to enjoy deeply felt and delicately wrought literature, and habitually do so, they continue, on occasion and if their consciences allow them, to delight in … the stereotyped narratives that recount the endless victories of invincible heroes and heroines. (4) In an age when travel was restricted if not prohibitive, the desire for adventure often transcended class boundaries. So-called ‘elite’ or ‘cultured’ playgoers were as liable to entertain fantasies of escape as the common sort: the mind-travelling readers of Chapter 1 were, after all, not the great unwashed, but the literate members of society. Adventure plays like Heywood’s traded on the imaginative possibilities that the foreign might hold, in direct contrast to what is domestic and known. The movement from the local to the foreign is often sparked by domestic disappointment or a desire for greater freedom. For example, as Peter Holland notes, in The English Traveller – a tragicomic rewriting of A Woman Killed with Kindness – ‘Young Geraldine’s only course of action is travel, offering the Renaissance equivalent of the Victorian

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gentleman’s decision to bury himself in darkest Africa’ (175). Entreated to spend the night at his friend Wincott’s house, he decides to visit Wincott’s young wife in her chamber (the two are friends and have in fact compacted to marry when she is widowed; her present relationship being a January-May marriage). Upon approaching the lady’s chamber, however, Young Geraldine overhears the wife and Dalavill apparently engaged in a tryst. The sordid affair so disgusts Young Geraldine that rather than dealing with the problem, he vows to leave England altogether: You have made me To hate my very country, because here bred Near two such monsters. First I’ll leave this house And then my father’s; next I’ll take my leave Both of this clime and nation, travel till Age snow upon this head. My passions now Are unexpressable. I’ll end them thus: Ill man, bad woman; your unheard-of treachery This unjust censure on a just man give, To seek out place where no two such can live. (4.3.148–57) Old Geraldine attempts to dissuade his son from embarking on these further travels (not knowing the impetus for the voyage): Son, let me tell you, you are ill advised And doubly to be blamed, by undertaking Unnecessary travel, grounding no reason For such a rash and giddy enterprise. What profit aim you at you have not reaped? What novelty affords the Christian world Of which your view hath not participated In a full measure? Can you either better Your language or experience? Your self-will Hath only purpose to deprive a father Of a loved son, and many noble friends Of your much wished acquaintance. (5.1.1–12) His son has already travelled extensively, hence Old Geraldine’s scepticism about there being anything new left to learn. But as the playgoers

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know, ‘profit’ is not the end at which Young Geraldine is aiming when he formulates his plan to flee and ‘seek out place where no two such can live’. The purpose of travel he has in mind is entirely distinct from the utilitarian betterment of the mind advocated by the ars apodemica: it is emotionally motivated escapism. Heywood was fully aware of the standard line of thought about the benefits of travel, but chose to dramatise alternatives. The English Traveller opens with a discussion between Dalavill and Young Geraldine about the purpose of travel for the individual: DALAVILL. O friend, that I to mine own notion Had joined but your experience. I have The theoric, but you the practice. YOUNG GERALDINE. I Perhaps have seen what you have only read of. DALAVILL. There’s your happiness. A scholar in his study knows the stars, Their motion and their influence, which are fixed And which wandering, can decipher seas And give each several land his proper bounds, But set him to the compass, he’s to seek, When a plain pilot can direct his course From hence unto both th’ Indies, can bring back His ship and charge with profits quintuple. I have read Jerusalem, and studied Rome, Can tell in what degree each city stands, Describe the distance of this place from that – All this the scale in every map can teach – Nay, for a need could punctually recite The monuments in either, but what I have By relation only, knowledge by travel, Which still makes up a complete gentleman, Proves eminent in you. YOUNG GERALDINE. I must confess I have seen Jerusalem and Rome, have brought Mark from the one, and th’ other testimony, Know Spain and France, and from their airs have sucked A breath of every language… (1.1.1–26)

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Knowledge by travel makes up ‘a complete gentleman’: unlike the Faustian ‘scholar in his study’, or Dalavill, both of whom know the theory but have no experience with the practical reality, Young Geraldine has seen the world and been educated in the school of travel. As Wincott notes, Young Geraldine’s ‘riper growth’ has been ‘bettered by travel’ (1.1.87). He has seen men and manners, and returned from foreign climes untouched, just as Jonson would have advised. To Prudentilla’s inquiry, ‘[O]ut of which / Of all these countries would you choose your wife?’ (1.1.148–9), Geraldine replies in patriotic fashion: ‘being an Englishman / ’Mongst all these nations I have seen or tried / To please me best, here would I choose my bride’ (1.1.170–2). More importantly for early moderns who shared Jonson’s concerns about travel, Young Geraldine’s morality has remained intact. Moral education was a prerequisite for foreign travels, not an outcome; the peregrinating Englishman was required to maintain his English morality abroad rather than gain his moral education there. James Howell, for example, urged his reader to retain ‘the integritie of our maners’ whilst in foreign countries and ‘be well grounded & setled in his Religion’ before exposure to ‘the hazard of Forren Travell’ (9). Young Geraldine’s conduct throughout Heywood’s play suggests an appropriate reverence for morality. As Norman Rabkin remarks, Young Geraldine and Wincott’s wife, conscious of a deep and longlived mutual attraction, both show an impressive self-restraint and concern for honor as they pledge never to deceive Wincott; their vow to marry each other a suitable period of time after the expected death of old Wincott – an event which they anticipate with muted sadness – is thoroughly virtuous, and involves renunciation by young Geraldine of interest in any other woman. (5) Although Wincott’s wife will be shown to have acted deceitfully even in this instance, her immorality only brings the virtue of Young Geraldine’s conduct into sharper relief. Peter Holland, however, believes that ‘the educative function of the journey is not seen to be noticeably efficacious’ in Heywood’s play (174). His evaluation of travel in the play depends on a common misconception that the sole purpose of travelling abroad is to improve oneself in a utilitarian manner, to assist with everyday life upon returning to England. Hence he argues that the play is ‘a sustained and vicious

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mockery of the assumption that observation of that which lies out there, in some cultural other world across the channel, helps one cope with life at home’ (175). But as befits a traveller, Young Geraldine was already firm in his moral convictions before he ventured abroad: if on his return he finds himself ill-equipped to cope with English society, this should be regarded as an index of the corruption of domesticity, not of any corruption by travel. This point about domestic corruption is reinforced by the subplot, in which Old Lionel returns from his mercantile travels, vowing ‘[a]fter this hour no more to trust the seas’ (2.2.128), only to find his household in drunken disarray. The parallel between a tempestuous sea and the wild carousing of the ‘rude multitude’ (2.1.161) having been established previously for the audience by a speech of Young Geraldine’s (2.1.133–60), a neat irony is made out of Old Lionel’s bidding ‘farewell to travel’ and his relief to be safe from ‘danger’ (2.2.127, 129): ‘Old Lionel has weathered the storms of the world’s seas only to return to seas far more evil. Heywood seems to be presenting the world as a sea in which what appears to be a safe harbor may not necessarily be so’ (Rabkin 15). Heywood paints an image of domesticity which incorporates adultery and betrayal in the main plot and reckless abandon and drunken revelry in the subplot. The unsettling domestic images extend even into the comedy of the play, as with Roger the Clown’s report of ‘a spectacular battle at a neighbor’s house, one that involves mutilation, maiming, and even cannibalism’ (Wall 189) but which turns out to be but a ‘massacre of meat’ (2.1.82). To claim (as Holland does) that travel has failed its practitioners by not preparing them for this sordid and debased society is to miss Heywood’s point about the state of domesticity. Moreover, it is to misunderstand the nature of the knowledge acquired through voyaging: the guidebooks examined at the start of this chapter in relation to Volpone, and analysed more generally in Chapter 1, encouraged acquisition of political and scholarly knowledge, but not interpersonal social skills. Holland claims that while Young Geraldine ‘may have seen the monuments, played the cultural tourist as efficiently as, say, Antipholus of Syracuse, he is no more ready to deal with women at home than Antipholus is to deal with women abroad, since his practice was assiduously to ignore people’ (175). He raises Prudentilla’s inquiry, In your travels Through France, through Savoy and through Italy,

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Spain and the Empire, Greece and Palestine, Which breeds the choicest beauties? (1.1.132–5) and reads Geraldine’s response as an admission of failure, that knowledge gained through travel has no application at home: I never cast on any in those parts A curious eye of censure, since my travel Was only aimed at language, and to know. These passed me but as common objects did, Seen, but not much regarded. (1.1.136–40) There is no reason to believe that Young Geraldine ought to be ready to ‘deal with women at home’ as a consequence of travelling. Nowhere does the ars apodemica tradition claim that travel will help one ‘cope with life at home’ in a social sense; it sought to produce model citizens to serve the state, the instructions pointedly discouraging travellers from the temptations of fraternising with locals whilst abroad. In the case of socialising with foreign nationals, such advice was prudent (given fears of disease and religious persecution and the ubiquitous suspicions of espionage) – as Lipsius recommended, ‘Be friendlie to al, familiar to a few, and speake but sildome’ (C3v; see also Neale 38–9). If foreign beauties were ‘[s]een, but not much regarded’, it was probably a good thing for the English traveller. Travel may be irrelevant to social life at home, but it cannot be said to be ‘ineffective’, because it has not failed at what it set out to do: educate. Young Geraldine’s academic focus whilst voyaging (‘language, and to know’) accords well with the practices espoused by the ars apodemica. At the end of the play, Young Geraldine is ultimately persuaded to stay, and becomes Wincott’s heir in the wake of the wife’s death. It is the adulterous Dalavill who departs, ‘becoming a traveller away from the forms of social control and punishment that the dramatic form conventionally demands’ (Holland 176). The parallel between the course of action wished for by Young Geraldine, and taken by Dalavill, is left for the playgoer to ponder, but Heywood appears confident that he need not explain to the restive or ignorant playgoer the important differences in the two men’s use of travel. After all, as Rabkin notes, ‘the only characters in the play whose fortunes are worse at the end than they were at the beginning are those who violate the moral law, who deceive’

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(16). Or perhaps the unjustness of Dalavill’s escape (as with Wendoll’s) is meant to move the audience to a moral outrage where Jonson’s neater moral resolutions merely leave an audience suitably appeased by the purgation of outlandish humours: Heywood not only compounds the discomfort audiences experience at witnessing the destruction of his female characters by ensuring that their seducers, putative and actual, emerge unscathed, but he frequently and flagrantly contradicts his sources in order to do so. (Rowland 17) Either way, the interest in morality introduced in A Woman Killed with Kindness also occurs in The English Traveller, but the alluring possibilities afforded by travel as an alternative to stifling domesticity are introduced for consideration.

Staging travel in Heywood’s plays From the foregoing discussion it appears that even though Heywood is aware of the ars apodemica school of thought on the benefits of travel, he typically portrays travel as a fantasy of escape from the complications and ugly reality of domestic society (which he is adept at presenting). He is often sympathetic to travelling figures, and even in his comedies his domestic scenes are frequently ambivalent or unsettling. Although The English Traveller gives us a sense of the ‘pleasure to an old man’s ear’ that hearing the ‘strange discourse’ of travel can bring (especially if, like the majority of playgoers, the old man ‘never drew save his own country’s air’), it did not attempt to present travel on stage. Young Geraldine’s famed voyaging occurred in the play’s pre-history and his plans for self-imposed exile are aborted; Old Lionel’s mercantile pursuits are made known only upon his return; and Dalavill’s departure signals the end of the play. In this final section, I wish to consider two of Heywood’s plays in which travel is actually portrayed on stage (Fortune by Land and Sea and The Fair Maid of the West) and the pleasure these staged voyages ostensibly provide for the audience. Criticism of Heywood has predictably focused almost exclusively on his contribution to dramatic depictions of middle-class domesticity (Mowbray Velte; Otelia Cromwell). Whilst Fortune by Land and Sea and The Fair Maid of the West begin with scenes of domesticity under threat, the subject of these plays is less the reconstitution of the domestic sphere they leave behind than the renewal of the protagonists’ identities

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ensuing from their movement. Far from exemplifying a Faustian desire to see what was previously known through study, Heywood’s heroes in Fair Maid and Fortune embark on adventures which are most notable for simply being exciting. The ‘sea plot’ of Heywood and Rowley’s Fortune by Land and Sea (1609) opens with an act of filial disobedience culminating in a tavern murder: when Old Forest reluctantly consents to let his elder son Frank go drinking with Rainsford and his cronies, Rainsford insults and then kills Frank. Young Forest (Frank’s brother) challenges Rainsford to a duel to avenge his brother’s death, and (surprisingly) is successful in killing him. Left with ‘no safety but by flight’ (386), Young Forest flees the scene of his righteous crime, taking refuge at the Harding’s property until Anne Harding can arrange for him a ‘suddain expedition’ to France, under the auspices of her brother, ‘an Owner and a Merchant’ (396).6 Couple this with the events of the ‘land plot’, which begin with a wedding (usually the epitome of domestic bliss) that causes a father great unhappiness, and the play’s portrayal of the domestic is again decidedly unsympathetic. In what seems to me a move typical of the voyage drama of Heywood (with Rowley, in this case), travel proves a restorative solution to domestic turmoil. Escape seems to be the key again, though it should be noted that this is not precisely the same as evading responsibility. Unlike a fleeing Dalavill or Wendoll, Young Forest’s situation is morally complex but arguably defensible, and presumably Heywood and Rowley trusted their audience to perceive the difference. Importantly, Young Forest makes something of himself whilst abroad; he does not merely lie low until the heat’s off. Hence Barbara Fuchs regards Young Forest’s ‘use of piracy to make his fortune’ as an ‘interesting twist’ (53), describing him as ‘the young upwardly mobile pirate’ (55). In the fantasy world of this play, Young Forest dares not trust his ‘native country’ with his ‘forfeit life’ (403), but instead of vanishing into the ether once he has been smuggled aboard the Merchant’s France-bound ship, he instead enjoys a meteoric rise in fortune. Despite his self-professed lack of ‘ability and knowledge / In navigation and exploits at sea’ (413), the mariners aboard the Merchant’s ship make Young Forest their captain. (We are told that their previous captain had been slain in a fight, but Young Forest’s bravery had emboldened them to overcome their adversaries and claim the enemy ship amongst their spoils.) With him as their good luck charm, the mariners ‘took many a rich prize from Spain’ (413), but Young Forest is quick to assert that they are more honourable

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than pirates because they maintain loyalty to their homeland: ‘We dare do any thing that stands with justice, / Our countries honour, and the reputation / Of our own names’ (414). The distinction in actions is slight – as Jowitt notes, privateering was ‘essentially piracy performed with state permission’ (Voyage Drama 142) – but the difference in reputations and morality is great. Pirates are said to pursue a ‘desperate course of life’ (412), and disavow any claim to Englishness: PURSER. Nay since our country have proclaim’d us pyrats, And cut us off from any claim in England, We’l be no longer now call’d English men... (412) When the pirates Purser and Clinton (the only historical figures in Heywood and Rowley’s historical fiction) intercept the Merchant’s ship and hold him hostage, the Merchant’s objection is not that they practise piracy but that they practise it on their compatriots: ‘Yet since the seas afford such choice of store, / You might methinks have spar’d your own country-men’ (411). As Barbara Fuchs notes in her study of renegadoes: The concept of loyalty to England, and the possibility of defining that Englishness by a subject’s behavior at sea, runs through these lines. What makes the mariners loyal English subjects is their stipulation that the ‘real’ pirates are un-English, precisely because they will not recognize English ships and consequently spare them. (54) Because they appear to have lost their Englishness, and because they indulge in hedonistic vice, the pirates provide a counterpoint to the man who does travel well, Young Forest. Despite his obvious success in plundering (legitimate) targets, Young Forest retains a focus on reclaiming his ‘peace and pardon’ (414), which he hopes to do by capturing wanted men – like the pirates. Jowitt remains circumspect about the moral superiority of Young Forest’s position, but she too acknowledges that the audience nevertheless finds itself complicit in his actions: ‘The emotional register of the play is such that the audience is not encouraged to wish young Forrest punished either for killing the dissolute Rainsford or for bravely besting Spanish ships’ (Voyage Drama 154–5). As a younger son who stands to inherit little

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or nothing of his father’s estate, the allure of ‘a thousand pounds reward’ would also presumably interest Young Forest (414). Returning untouched by the vices abroad, Young Forest gains riches, respect, and not only a pardon but a knighthood for his services in capturing the notorious pirates (431). Like Young Forest, Bess’s lover Spencer in Heywood’s two-part The Fair Maid of the West (c.1597–1610 and 1630–31) is effectively expelled from his homeland when he kills Carrol (a gentleman) in a tavern altercation in Plymouth. Fortunately, he is afforded an opportunity to escape his situation, and his experience of voyaging is largely celebrated by Heywood’s plays. Spencer joins an expedition to the Azores, where he sustains an injury in a fight. By coincidence, another Englishman named Spencer dies, and news of ‘Spencer’s’ death eventually reaches Bess back in England. With money left to her by Spencer, she purchases a ship and sets off to find her lover’s body, partaking in adventures along the way, narrowly missing out on recognising Spencer en route, and ultimately landing at the Barbary Coast in search of water, where she is finally reunited with Spencer at the King of Fez’s court. Jean E. Howard claims that ‘[n]ot surprisingly in a post-Armada text, Fair Maid from its opening moments defines the English as the moral and religious antithesis of their great European rivals, the Spanish’ (‘English Lass’ 102). Whilst this is undoubtedly part of the story – the Chorus pointedly declares of Bess’s privateering: ‘The French and Dutch she spares, only makes spoil / Of the rich Spaniard and the barbarous Turk’ (4.5.7–8) – the emphasis on morality is probably also Heywood’s attempt to justify the staging of frivolous adventure. Travelling well was possible if, as Jonson would have it, the traveller remained the paragon of morality and returned untouched. To this end, Heywood seems at pains to stress the virtuousness of his travelling protagonists, as one of his most recent editors, Robert K. Turner Jr, argues: Because there is something immoral about one’s enjoying himself at the expense of reality, the dramatist must provide compensation, and this Heywood does by incorporating, particularly into Part I, great slices of bourgeois morality. We need not feel guilty about participating in Bess’s adventures when she and her companions are so clearly on the right side, such paragons of thrift and benevolence, such respecters of law and order, such models of the decent Protestant virtues. (Turner xvii)

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For example, Spencer had intended to venture abroad before the manslaughter, and his reasons were pointedly honourable: GOODLACK: Pray resolve me, Why, being a gentleman of fortunes, means, And well revenu’d, will you adventure thus A doubtful voyage, when only such as I, Born to no other fortunes than my sword, Should seek abroad for pillage? SPENCER: Pillage, captain? No, ‘tis for honor; and the brave society Of all these shining gallants that attend The great lord general drew me hither first, No hope of gain or spoil. (1.2.3–12) Spencer continues to be a rousing example of English morality throughout his ordeal. When he is captured by a Spanish captain who threatens to kill the English captives, the contrast in morality is plain: SPENCER: Degenerate Spaniard, there’s no noblesse in thee, To threaten men unarm’d and miserable. Thou might’st as well tread o’er a field of slaughter And kill them o’er that are already slain, And brag thy manhood. (3.4.14–18) Spencer’s courage in the face of torture subsequently prompts the Spaniard to exclaim, ‘These Englishmen! / Nothing can daunt them. Even in misery / They’ll not regard their masters’ (3.4.26–8). The action of the play is set after the Cadiz Raid (1596) and Islands’ Voyage (1597), the former having secured immense popularity for Essex at home, the latter fiasco marking the beginning of his downfall. English heroism thus forms an important backdrop to Heywood’s plays, which explicitly reference ‘English Raleigh’ (4.4.31) and ‘Famous Elizabeth’ (4.4.122). The dating of the play is disputed: Harbage assigned it a date-range of 1597–1610 but listed it in his entries for 1610; Turner argues for a late Elizabethan date in his critical introduction to the play (xi–xiii). Either way, by 1604, and certainly by 1610, audience

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enthusiasm must have been muted in light of the failed Essex rebellion and the conclusion of the Anglo-Spanish War. In terms of his audience’s expectations then, Heywood appears to be playing on nostalgia and a yearning for adventure. The evocation of Essex’s voyages might even constitute an appreciation of ‘fallible’ heroism, Heywood perhaps hoping to create everyday heroes out of Bess and Spencer – heroes that his audience could relate to – rather than lofty figures of perfection. Louis B. Wright has asserted that: Incalculably influential in the awakening of the middle class was travel; but much of the travel that molded Englishmen’s thinking was vicarious, done through the pages of Hakluyt, Purchas, Sandys, Coryate, Lithgow, or some other of the infinite multitude who made it possible for tradesmen to see through the mind’s eye the wonders of the Indies, the glamour of Cathay, or the power of the Great Turk. The common man found in the narratives of travel not only a romantic literature more fascinating than fiction, but a call to personal adventure. These were stories, not of King Arthur or of fabulous knights, but of men who lived and had their being in Elizabethan England. To any apprentice might come adventures that would have dazzled even Guy of Warwick... (‘Elizabethan Sea Drama’ 547–8) Wright’s point about the identification of such travelling heroes with the ‘common man’ is directly relevant to Heywood’s plays. By the time Fair Maid was staged, the once exalted figures of Essex, Elizabeth, and Raleigh had been superseded or fallen out of favour altogether; though possibly still admired by many of the playgoing public, these ‘heroes’ had lost their elevated status, their imperfections arguably deconstructing their aura and ‘humanising’ them for the common man. Though there are Eastern kings in the play, the heroes are the working-class English characters. Spencer is not the true hero of the plays though: Fuchs notes that ‘whereas Forest was both fugitive and hero, the heroics here [that is, in Fair Maid] are left to Bess’ (59). She is the ‘girl worth gold’ (4.5.19), whose name evokes that of the virtuous Virgin Queen. Ever faithful to her beloved Spencer, despite the advances of numerous suitors and the rumours of his death, Bess traces her lover’s journey abroad to find him, dead or alive. Although she leads the crew of her ship, the Negro, on privateering excursions along the way, the romantic adventure is more important than any material gains. Upon arriving at Mamorah in

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Barbary, Bess is received by Mullisheg, the King of Fez, where surprisingly, it is he who is enchanted by her: MULLISHEG. I am amaz’d! This is no mortal creature I behold, But some bright angel that is dropp’d from heaven, Sent by our prophet. – Captain, let me thus Embrace thee in my arms. – Load him with gold, For this great favor. BESS. Captain, touch it not. – Know, King of Fez, my followers want no gold. I only came to see thee for my pleasure And show thee what these say thou never saw’st, A woman born in England. MULLISHEG. That English earth may well be term’d a heaven, That breeds such divine beauties. Make me sure That thou art mortal by one friendly touch. (5.1.33–45) Bess’s refusal of riches and her insistence that she came to Mamorah ‘for my pleasure’ sits uncomfortably with criticism of the play which focuses exclusively on ‘its relation to the spirit of colonialism’ and foreign trade (Courtland 91). For Howard, who sees Bess as ‘a device for defining English values and for uniting men of different classes into a homosocial community of brothers, into a nation’, the Moors’ reaction to Bess’s beauty is consistent with the reactions of Englishmen earlier in the play, when Bess works at the tavern, and contributes to the creation of Bess as an ‘emblem of England’ (‘English Lass’ 102). Alcade’s reaction, ‘I ne’er beheld a beauty more complete’ (5.1.3), like Mullisheg’s, could be read as promoting ‘Western superiority’, as in the example Ladan Niayesh cites from Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’s Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607) in which the Sophy of Persia is so amazed by an English cannon that he tells Sir Anthony Shirley, ‘I more and more doubt thy mortality … Tell us thy precepts and we’ll adore thee’ (Travels 1.121, 127): Western superiority here takes the form of a cannon, that fabulous invention which the Sophy apparently sees for the first time and which causes him, in the manner of allegedly more primitive New World embodiments of alterity, to worship both the object and the man who wields and masters it, Sir Anthony. (Niayesh 141)

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However, there is also a degree of affinity between the Moors’ amazement and the amazement more generally of a first contact encounter, as with Ferdinand’s Virgilian exclamation, ‘Most sure the goddess’ upon sighting Miranda (Tempest 1.2.422). In addition to Bess’s emblematic role as focal point in the play’s contribution to the creation of an imagined community of English nationhood (Anderson; Howard, ‘English Lass’ 101), the play’s treatment of an Englishwoman as exotic Other emphasises the universality of curiosity and wonder in this age of travel; a curiosity presumably shared by playgoers paying to see Heywood’s drama. Indeed, in his address to the reader prefacing Part 2, Heywood emphasises the vicarious travel experience generated by his plays. He tells his readers that they may ‘accompany’ Bess and Spencer ‘on land without the prejudice of deep ways or robbers and by sea free from the danger of rocks or pirates, as neither using horse or ship more than this book in thine hand and thy chair in thy chamber’ (95) – in short, that they may enjoy the adventure through the relative safety of mind-travelling. Logistically and imaginatively, the plays are demanding (but also, conversely, rewarding): from Plymouth, the audience is transported to the Azore Island of Fayal (where Spencer is wounded in a fight), and thence to the Barbary Coast and the court of Mullisheg, King of Fez and Morocco – with voyaging and sea fights along the way. Turner draws attention to the unusual stage direction at the end of 4.3 which calls for ‘Hautboys long’: ‘This notation and Act long at IV.v.19.1 probably indicate that Heywood anticipated the use of elaborate props in the representation of the court of Fez. These presumably would require extra time for arrangement’ (4.2.113.1n). It should not be surprising that considerable effort was expended in presenting Mullisheg’s court; Heywood, as Dessen has observed, was not shy about displaying ‘theatrical range and inventiveness’ in the staging of dramaturgically difficult scenes (55). His Chorus to Act 4 might famously lament: Our Stage so lamely can express a sea That we are forc’d by chorus to discourse What should have been in action. (4.5.1–3) But as Wright notes (‘Elizabethan Sea Drama’ 113n), ‘no apology is made for the preceding scene of battle’ in which a cannon is fired

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at Bess’s ship, Clem falls onto the stage from his watch on the topmast, ensigns featuring St George’s Cross are hoisted, Goodlack is shot on the deck and a veritable cacophony of naval battle sounds are heard: BESS: Trumpets, a charge; and with your whistles shrill, Sound, boatswains, an alarum to your mates! With music cheer up their astonish’d souls, The whilst the thund’ring ordnance bear the bass. (4.4.95–8) Alarms sound, shots are fired, and the English crew board the Spanish ship, returning on stage moments later, victoriously, with the Spanish captain their prisoner. The English heroes have in fact intercepted an enemy ship holding English prisoners, and the rescuers turn the seized Spanish man-of-war over to the captives in compensation for the earlier loss of their own vessel: BESS. Whence are you, sir, and whither were you bound? MERCHANT. I am a’ London, bound for Barbary, But by this Spanish man-of-war surpris’d, Pillag’d, and captiv’d. BESS. We much pity you. What loss you have sustain’d, this Spanish prey Shall make good to you to the utmost farthing. (4.4.124–9) The sequence of events is virtually identical to the action of Fortune by Land and Sea, in which a sea fight occurs and Young Forest intercepts pirates who have imprisoned the Merchant’s crew, relieving them of their captivity and restoring their losses by redistributing the pirates’ spoils. (In Fair Maid of the West, resolution is postponed because Bess, believing Spencer to be dead, swoons upon seeing amongst the captives his familiar face – which she discredits as a ghost – and Spencer does not quite recognise Bess in her sailor’s attire.) Why would Heywood twice undertake the presentation of a sea battle if the early modern stage were so ill-equipped for the task? Contrary to Peter Holland’s belief that ‘[p]lacing a voyage on stage is a direct route to dramaturgical difficulty’ (160–1), the inclusion of a sea voyage is potentially an effective utilisation of early modern theatrical

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space, especially in the public, outdoor theatres. Holland rehearses a commonplace observation when he remarks: The readiest way to demonstrating the limitations of the stage is to try to move spaces. For all the vaunted flexibility of the Elizabethan stage’s response to place it is always liable to appear only too well aware of its own limitations when a journey is at issue. (161) His subsequent discussion of the use by choric figures of ‘the vocabulary of the unactable journey’ – ‘Imagine this, suppose that, think the other…’ (161) – contains a degree of truth, but is also a very conservative estimation of the theatre’s capability. In separate plays, Fair Maid and Fortune, Heywood twice presents his audience not just with a voyage by sea, but with an elaborate battle at sea: if the ‘dramaturgical difficulty’ had been such that Heywood had merely gotten away with such an enterprise the first time, is it likely that he would have tempted fate by repeating this event, and so soon? A more logical inference would be that experience had taught him that sea battles could in fact be successfully staged. Private theatres had advantages over public playhouses in the staging of elaborate scenes like these. Company records relate that at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall in Threadneedle Street, Jonson’s entertainment for King James on 16 July 1607 featured ‘three rare men and very skilful’ who sang to the king from ‘the shippe which did hang aloft in the Hall’ (Clode 154). Apparently the ship was ‘hung on the ceiling and the rope and pulleys listed in the accounts suggest it may have been lowered, either to allow the singers easier access or as part of the performance’ (Heaton and Knowles 589–90). Yet even in this elaborate example, it should be noted that the ship appears to have been a permanent fixture of the hall – the entertainment being built around the permanent property. In all likelihood, such extravagance was not possible in public theatres like the Rose, Curtain, and Red Bull, where Heywood’s plays were probably performed (although, as discussed in Chapter 2, the items in Henslowe’s property lists pertaining to Faustus are suggestively elaborate). How, then, did these theatres manage the staging of sea voyages? The Distributed Cognition model of playing would stress the need for all parts of the system to reduce the cognitive demands of staging such a scene. This extends beyond the active participants like players and playgoers to include the cognitive properties of the physical and social

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environment, since as Tribble notes, the ‘structuring of the space shapes what can be done within it’, and the ‘expertise and experience in shaping and exploiting their environment were among the many crucial skills possessed by early modern players’ (Cognition 30 and 29). Tribble focuses on the vexing question of entrances and exits, offering a fresh perspective on the number and use of stage doors, and comments on ‘the use of space to simplify choice’ (Cognition 29). Beyond simplifying the actor’s task, the architecture of the stage can facilitate the creation of meaning for the playgoer. John Sutton argues that essentially incomplete creatures like us naturally parasitize, lean on, and incorporate ‘external’ tools for thinking. In trying to understand particular episodes or activities of remembering, we often need to refer to disparate features of the history and characteristics of many parts of the current context, enduring features which can span brain, body, and world. (24) Given this cognitive importance attached to the way space affects thought, I propose that Dessen’s recent analysis of Heywood’s dramatic style should be considered in conjunction with Wright’s much earlier observations about the synergy between theatrical and nautical space. Because the audience ‘must rely upon short term or working memory to make sense of the action’, the portrayal of voyaging, like the decision about entrances and exits, must capitalise on ‘the cognitive capacities and constraints of the audience’ (Tribble, Cognition 35). Dessen draws attention to the many audio-visual cues in the Fortune by Land and Sea battle scene which combine to create the required effect: The key to the effect lies in the combination of alternating scenes and appropriate signals: the boy above, nautical language, costume (e.g., Forrest ‘like a Captain of a ship’), and sound effects, along with the reported action. There is no evidence that shots are actually fired on stage (although there is considerable talk of guns and gunnery), but there is frenzied activity, much noise, and presentation of ‘Sea devices fitting for a fight,’ all appropriate for two ships in battle at sea. The players perform as if in such a battle, and (if the sequence is to work) the playgoers suppose or imagine the event. (52)

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Reported action (Peter Holland’s ‘vocabulary of the unactable journey’) is thus only one minor part of a complex and dynamic dramaturgical effort, and whilst the playgoer is active, the burden is distributed much more evenly across the playing system than Holland implies with his unidirectional chorus–playgoer model. But Dessen’s theory benefits from the additional consideration of the physical environment, for as Tribble notes, ‘[t]he management of spatial environments, whether consciously planned as such or not, is a key mechanism for distributing cognitive burdens’ (Cognition 29). Here, more could be made of Wright’s observation that: In representing sea fights, the players achieved more realistic effects than in the portrayal of land battles, for a stage more easily represented the deck of a ship than it did a far flung field of battle. The arrangement of the stage with inner stage, trap doors on the front stage, and upper balcony made ship scenes easier to represent with some degree of realism than is generally realized. The upper stage or balcony was sometimes used as an upper deck or a look-out. Sailors sent ‘aloft’ called down from the upper stage. In all probability in a few plays, simple rigging, rope ladders, etc., ran from the lower to the upper stage. At any rate, in several sea plays, the dramatists contrived to achieve realistic nautical settings and atmosphere. (‘Elizabethan Sea Drama’ 111–12) The similarities reduce the imaginative demands on the audience, but are not sufficient in themselves to convey the concept of sea voyaging. Voyaging involves movement, which is probably what Holland has in mind when he comments on the difficulties of staging: sea battles offset this inability to move by substituting the excitement of frenzied activity. We thus have an approximation of environment coupled with the animation of battle (which replaces the animation of movement) – and consequently, a theatrical combination that worked well enough to warrant repeated use. The structural analogy between stage and deck, balcony and mast, tiring house and cabin, is readily exploitable, lending itself well to the depiction of sea journeys, especially when accompanied by appropriate action. The public stages, though not equipped with suspended ships like the Merchant Taylors’ Hall, did have their own unique physical environments, and in all likelihood took advantage of the latent potential of their playing spaces to approximate sea vessels. A fine case in point is The Launching of the Mary, or The Seaman’s Honest Wife (1633), by

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amateur playwright and East India Company official Walter Mountfort. This tedious but historically interesting play centres around the construction and launch of the Company’s ship, the Mary. Written en route back to England from India, the play survives in the author’s holograph manuscript, but whether or not it was ever staged is uncertain (Bawcutt 53). The fact that Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, censored the manuscript (for political reasons pertaining to its discussion of the Amboyna massacre) suggests that it probably was performed, but at the very least Mountfort evidently intended it for staging. The challenges of staging the play are evident from the opening lines: ‘The lanchinge of a shippe? this moderne age / hath seldome seene such action on a stage’ (1.1, TLN 1–2).7 Perhaps surprisingly, a direction added to the manuscript by the prompter reveals that reported action played only a minimal role in the performance of the elaborate staging of a ship launch in Act Five, ‘the first sceane Consistinge more in action then speech’ (5.1, TLN 2669–70). As Wright correctly speculated (without knowledge of this play), the action includes ‘the settinge of the Crabbs, & bendinge of the / Cables’ (5.1, TLN 2676–7), and a good deal of heaving as the ship is launched:

BOTE: wthin – BOTE: wthin – BOTE. whistles wthin. BOTE: whist:

}

}

Enter boteswayne whistlinge. Man Capsten, good fellowes, man Capsten,: wthin bord. Ho. Holla./. what shall wee heavue, shall wee haue. Hold fast a while. (pause) Heaue, a gods name, heaue. Heaue, good men heaue, Cherily, Cherily good fellowes, Lanch Ho. Heaue agen, men heaue agen, the west ermost Capsten the best, Heaue, heaue, heaue good fellowes heaue, give her but a start, & wee are made men, well heaud of all, well heaud of all yfaythe (a greate shout wthin) round, round, round good men, lustily, lustily, there she goes./ Launch Ho. what a gods name is the matter. (wthin) Heaue agen./

wthin. BOTE: – whist:/. BOTE./ Heaue agen good fellowes. Cherily. Cherily, good boyes. (a great shout wthin) Bote) there shee goes, there shee Goes a gods name, goinge, goinge, goinge, goinge, goinge, Well heaued yfayth, well heaud./. (a greate shout of all) there[s] there shees awaye, shees awaye.

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God preserue the Mary./. God preserue the Mary, god preserue the Mary, God preserue the Mary./. God bless the Mary. &c./ (5.1, TLN 2726–47)

All this labour eventually leads to the desired outcome, for as the Governor of the East India Company announces, ‘at last our shippe / ys lancht, & moored’ (5.2, TLN 2785–6). Did the ship itself ever ‘appear’ on stage, in semi-constructed or fully-completed form? The first scene opens with Lord Admiral Hobab telling Naupegus (a shipbuilder, and the OED’s first example of such) how much he admires the latter’s model ship, but it is unclear whether ‘model’ refers to a scale-model or simply to the type (model) of full-sized ship: NAUP: how likes my Lo: the model? HOB: wondrous well; A stately modell, second vnto none, Of any merchant that ere Crost the seas. oh, such a shippe well furnisht, riggd, & mand [wo ] would well beseeme the nauie of a prince (1.1, TLN 1–6) The venue for performance would have affected the dramaturgy; critics are divided over whether the play was intended for a private theatre (possibly subsidised by the East India Company; see Walter xi or Jones 492) or for a public venue resembling the Swan (see Hosley 17). If the play were sponsored by the Company, it might even have been performed aboard one of their ships; after all, on 5 September 1607 Hamlet was performed on board the Red Dragon while off the coast of Africa (see Taylor). If this were the case, the physical environment would have been an ideal aid to the players. If a regular playhouse was the intended performance space, the launching might have taken place offstage, with ropes, tackle-blocks, and other nautical equipment assisting with the illusion as the labourers heaved on cords originating in the tiring house, with the stage direction ‘there must appeare aloft, as many gallants & ladies as the roome Canne well hold’ (5.1, TLN 2677) implying that the gentry stood in the balcony, looking into the tiring house to look ‘at’ the ship, their backs turned to the audience. The possibilities for staging elaborate ship-based scenes are considerably greater than critics have often imagined; whilst not every stage could employ all

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the alternative techniques described here in the context of Mountfort’s play, irrespective of which stage they played on players would have been able to offload some of the imaginative burden of ship-scenes onto their physical environment. Like Jonson opportunistically taking advantage of the permanent nautical fixture of the Merchant Taylors’ Hall, playwrights could build their entertainments around the stages to which they had access, making the most of their surroundings to assist in their presentation of travel. This discussion of Jonson and Heywood and their attitudes to voyaging reveals the constraints but also the opportunities that the staging of travel plays afforded. In expounding the perceived dangers of travel, as promulgated in the advice literature, I drew attention to a moral dimension of voyaging which functioned, particularly for the English, as a significant deterrent for many would-be travellers. The risk that a traveller would emulate vice rather than repudiate it dichotomised the English public. As with the concern about indulging in pleasure without travail, this moral dilemma was a feature of both anti-travel and anti-theatrical discourse. Heywood appears to have circumvented the problem by imbuing his travelling characters with at least a superficially admirable morality, thereby purporting to justify the indulgence of enjoying the representation of their exotic wanderings. If his experiment in escapist travel was a theatrical failure, it is odd that he repeated it several times in his oeuvre. An immensely prolific writer – even if his claim of having ‘had either an entire hand or at the least a main finger’ in the composition of two hundred and twenty plays cannot be substantiated (English Traveller, ‘To The Reader’ 4–5) – Heywood knew what his audience wanted. Yet as the cynicism of Jonson and Sidney (mentioned in Chapter 1) demonstrates, for voyage drama to work, the audience must be willing and enthusiastic participants. It is unlikely that the finest of travel plays would win over the likes of a neoclassicist like Sidney. A rapid succession of action-filled scenes, exploitation of the full gamut of theatrical resources available to the playwright (costumes, properties, authentic dialogue, sound effects), the offloading of cognitive effort onto the playing environment (the theatre as ship; or possibly the ship as theatre), and the distribution of imaginative work across the entire playing system (including playgoers) are all ways to improve the probability of success at a travel play. But as the next chapter on the wanderlust-afflicted protagonist of Richard Brome’s The Antipodes reveals, the illusion of travel and exotica is most effectively created when the spectators give themselves wholeheartedly to the project and bring to the theatre a pre-existing desire for voyaging.

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Notes 1. The closest Jonson comes to engaging meaningfully with the New World, for example, is through metaphor – but hardly a flattering one. As Rebecca Ann Bach notes, ‘[a]lthough both Virginia Company documents and Bartholomew Fair and The New Inn share a vocabulary of otherness, they employ those stereotypes to different ends. Both identify London and the colonial world; but where the Virginia Company hoped to reproduce an ordered England, these plays reveal and at times revel in the disorder that shaped London as well as England’s colonial efforts’ (‘Ben Jonson’ 290). 2. James Loxley and Julie Sanders are editing the MS for the forthcoming electronic version of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. 3. The CWBJ edition of Cynthia’s Revels, edited by Eric Rasmussen and Matthew Steggle, uses Q as the copy-text, arguing that it represents the play as originally written; the corresponding line in their edition is ‘He doth learn to eat anchovies and caviar because he loves ’em’ (2.3.80–1). These foods were considered exotic: Cynthia’s Revels is the OED’s earliest example for ‘macaroni’; ‘anchovies’ were first mentioned only slightly earlier, in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV (1596). 4. The probability that Wright’s The Passions of the Mind in generall (1604) was influential on Jonson as manifested in Sir Pol’s advice to Peregrine is considered in Donaldson, ‘Jonson’s Italy’ 452. 5. Jonson appears to glance again at Moryson and this form of travel wager in his ‘Famous Voyage’, where Shelton and Heyden venture forth ‘in worthy scorne / Of those, that put out moneyes, on returne / From Venice, Paris, or some in-land passage’ (31–3). Jonson also had contact with Coryate, having publicly derided Coryate’s adventures in a prefatory poem to Coryate’s Crudities (1611). As Andrew McRae notes, ‘Coryate clearly hoped for fame and reward’ and ‘Jonson’s efforts to belittle the author and his work in this respect are therefore cruel, but not without a personable humour, which Coryate himself appears to have accepted’ (11). 6. Citations are by page number because the lines are not numbered in this edition. 7. The Malone Society editor demarcates Act and Scene divisions but uses through line numbers (TLN) across the entire play instead of beginning the line count anew with each scene; my in-text citations reflect this practice.

4 Therapeutic Travel in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes

The matters explored in the preceding chapters – the concept of mindtravelling at the theatre and the staging of voyage drama – are addressed most explicitly in Richard Brome’s Caroline comedy, The Antipodes (1636–38). The play revolves around the ironically named Peregrine, who unlike his Jonsonian namesake (the veteran traveller of Volpone) has yet to undertake any peregrinations, but has since ‘tender years’ always ‘loved to read / Reports of travels and of voyages’ and been consumed with ‘travelling thoughts’ (1.1.131–2 and 124). Peregrine’s monomaniac obsession with travel writing (his ‘humour’) leads to antisocial behaviour and complete estrangement from his wife. With Peregrine’s wanderlust diagnosed as mental illness, the characters Letoy and Doctor Hughball devise a proto-psychotherapeutic plan to ‘soothe him into’s wits’ through the elaborate charade of staging an imaginary voyage to the Antipodes (4.401). Peregrine, whose life is focused exclusively on his desire to travel, is explicitly identified as an armchair traveller; he thus forms a contrast with Faustus, who enjoyed actual travel as one of many indulgences made possible by his infernal pact. Benevolently duped by players who exploit his desire to travel, Brome’s character can be taken as representative of the members of the audience. As a point of identification for the average London playgoer, he surpasses travelling protagonists like Faustus or Fortunatus, and mindtravelling playwrights like Marlowe and Heywood. Understanding his condition, his desires, and his treatment is accordingly of great significance for the subject of this study. When Brome, one of the ‘sons of Ben’ (see Davis) suggests that Peregrine’s exotic malady can be cured, critics readily recognise the debt to Jonson’s humoral comedies (1.3.52).1 In Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), for example, resolution is achieved not through the 123

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traditional comedic tropes of marriage or felicitous revelation, but through the machinations of the irate Macilente, who schemes to purge the ill-humoured cast of their afflictions so that every man is eventually brought out of his humour through an ironically apposite humiliation or ‘correction’ to their humoral excess. Although critics like Julie Sanders have noted that ‘Jonson was Brome’s theatrical mentor and directly influenced many of his plays’ (138), the extent of Brome’s debt to Jonson is not limited to the method of resolution; the psychological dimension of Jonson’s comedies has an equally significant bearing on our understanding of Brome’s play and its concerns (see Davis for a rare consideration of psychology in providing catharsis). In light of its conformity to the Jonsonian model, The Antipodes can be seen to engage with the psychology of travel and, more specifically, the pleasures of vicarious travel. Brome foregrounds travel tropes within the framework of Jonsonian comedy not merely for the sake of producing yet another entertaining quirk or eccentricity, but to examine the psychology of travel writing and critique the experiences of playgoers.

Jonsonian psychology and drama Critics typically regard Brome’s play as belonging to a satiric tradition of travel writing in the vein of Joseph Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem (‘The Other and Same World’, 1605), arguing that it creates an imaginary Antipodes simply to expose the follies of contemporary London through an inversion that is at once ridiculous and ironically familiar (Peter Holland 177; Shaw 122; Jowitt, Voyage Drama 220). By contrast, this chapter problematises the usual conclusion of Brome critics that The Antipodes is ‘purely allegorical’ and ‘travel drama that is not about travel’ (Jowitt, Voyage Drama 12, 222). I argue that The Antipodes should be regarded as one of the most accomplished early modern travel plays because it utilises the strengths of the early modern theatre (rather than its restrictions) to broach the travel theme, and it anticipates modern perspectives on travel. The ostensible constraints of the early modern stage are cast into sharpest relief when we deal with travel plays (see Peter Holland 160–1), but The Antipodes does not fall into the usual dramaturgical traps. Instead of trying to convey a sea voyage on stage, Brome circumvents the problem of representing travel by emphasising the theatricality of the voyage: the staging of Peregrine’s supposed journey is precisely a staging. The trip to the Antipodes is designed to appease Peregrine without the inconvenience of actually transporting him anywhere. The

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staged ‘journey’ is facilitated by the participation of Letoy’s professional actors, who masquerade as Antipodeans and lead Peregrine to believe that he has reached the furthest limits of the world. Brome clearly never intended the audience at Salisbury Court to believe that a ‘real’ journey was being represented, and it is not this ‘journey’ which makes The Antipodes a travel play. Rejecting the possibility of presenting a realistic voyage on stage, Brome focuses on the pleasure of vicarious experience, which, as I have been arguing throughout this study, is what the theatre itself is in the business of providing when it stages a travel play. The Antipodes is very much ‘about travel’, but specifically about the psychology of travel, not the physicality of voyaging. Beyond claiming Doctor Hughball as one of the first psychiatrists on the English stage (Haaker xvi; Kaufmann 65), Brome critics could do more to emphasise the psychological dimensions of the play. It is often noted that Peregrine’s ‘much troubled and confusèd brain’ is symptomatic of his being in a humour (4.509). For Jonson, though, a humour is ‘not a matter of trivial eccentricity’ leading to a superficial caricature (as Peregrine’s wanderlust often appears to critics); it is the metaphorical determinant of characterisation (Leggatt 191; see also Wiggins 74). In Every Man Out of His Humour, Jonson theorised humoral comedy in the play’s lengthy Induction, wherein Asper (the ‘stern faultfinder’) disagrees with Mitis’s too casual, bandying use of ‘humour’, and hastens to ‘give these ignorant well-spoken days / Some taste of their abuse of this word humour’ (Induction 77–8). Asper argues that ‘humours’ as they are presented on stage ought to be something like what we would now call a psychological condition, the bodily humours applying ‘by metaphor’ to ‘the general disposition’. When ‘one peculiar quality’ so possesses a man that it ‘doth draw / All his affects, his spirits, and his powers’ one way, this, claims Asper, ‘may be truly said to be a humour’ (Induction 91–7). The ‘author’s friend’ Cordatus expresses similar condescension when he notes, ‘if an idiot / Have but an apish or fantastic strain, / It is his humour’ (Induction 113–15). Helen Ostovich, in her edition of Every Man Out of His Humour, notes that Jonson is here distinguishing between ‘a physiological disruption in the four humours … that may distort personality, and the superficial love of “singularity”, affectation in dress or manner’ (Induction 86–112n). Jonson’s conception of humorally affected behaviour depends on something stronger than a quirk of character: it is ‘an obsession, a psychic imbalance comparable with Renaissance medicine’s conception of mental illness’ (Wiggins 74). Given this Jonsonian psychology, it is significant that Brome signals that his play will be an experimental fusion of forms that will ‘keep

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the weakest branch o’th’ stage alive’ – that is, those plays modelled after ‘[t]he poets late sublimèd from our age’, especially Jonson – whilst injecting these forms with ‘worthy subjects’ fetched ‘from far or high’ (Prologue 20, 12, 24, and 25). The psychological insights of Jonsonian comedy (not just its framework) thus afforded travel drama the opportunity and the technique for a self-reflexive, satirical critique of itself – a chance to reflect on the psychology of travel. The seeds of this thought were already planted in the Puntarvolo episodes of Every Man Out of His Humour (see Chapter 3), but in The Antipodes Brome theorises a common travel concern which had never before received such full attention on stage: a humour which can best be described as a combination of wanderlust and vicarious travel.

Disdain for the familiar Peregrine yearns to travel. His parents tell us that: when young boys like him would tire themselves With sports and pastimes, and restore their spirits Again by meat and sleep, he would whole days And nights (sometimes by stealth) be on such books As might convey his fancy round the world. (1.1.133–7) More particularly, we are told that his affliction derives from pointedly exotic fantasies which are influenced by reading Mandeville. Take for example Barbara’s pleading with Doctor Hughball to ‘[p]lay the manmidwife’ and deliver Peregrine of his ‘huge tympany of news’: of monsters, Pygmies and giants, apes and elephants, Griffins and crocodiles, men upon women, And women upon men, the strangest doings – As far beyond all Christendom as ’tis to’t. (1.1.178–82) By reading Mandeville, Peregrine has become utterly absorbed in a world of fictional travels, to the point that he has not even consummated his marriage of three years. Certainly there is an element of the melancholy scholar about him: Peregrine has obvious affinities with Faustus, and even Prospero for that matter – rapt in secret studies as the

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latter is. But whilst ‘[e]xcessive bookishness’ was, as Anthony Parr notes, ‘a proverbial cause of melancholy’ (Antipodes I.i.127n), Peregrine’s condition appears to owe more to the nature of his readings, and to the effects of his fetishised texts (primarily Mandeville’s Travels) on both his body and soul. Burton would classify him amongst ‘such inamoratoes as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, etc.’ (Burton 2.92–3). Those engrossed in such romances and fantasies suffer delusions of the mind in addition to the excess of black bile which inactivity generates, but Burton further observes that these fantastic readers ‘many times prove in the end as mad as Don Quixote’, as indeed Peregrine is later seen to be when he takes part in Doctor Hughball’s fiction of the Antipodes with something stronger than mere delusion.2 Doctor Hughball – described by Parr as ‘the first travel snob in English drama’ (Three Renaissance Travel Plays iv) – engages Peregrine on their first encounter by affecting a similar wanderlust, refusing to recount his own travels to the continent and the East with the wonderfully dismissive declaration: Of Europe I’ll not speak; ’tis too near home. Who’s not familiar with the Spanish garb, Th’Italian shrug, French cringe, and German hug? Nor will I trouble you with my observations Fetched from Arabia, Paphlagonia, Mesopotamia, Mauritania, Syria, Thessalia, Persia, India, All still is too near home. Though I have touched The clouds upon the Pyrenean mountains, And been on Paphos Isle, where I have kissed The image of bright Venus, all is still Too near home to be boasted. (1.3.63–74) Hughball’s scorn is predicated on the general and widespread knowledge of the customs and characteristics of the countries typically included in any traveller’s itinerary. Early modern plays frequently assumed audiences possessed such knowledge of other countries. In Barten Holyday’s Technogamia, or The Marriages of the Arts (1618), when Phantastes tells Poeta that he ‘met with a Trauailour that could speake some sixe languages at the same

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instant’, the seemingly wondrous spectacle turns out to be a joke whose mirth relies on audience familiarity with cultural stereotypes: PHANT. Nay, Sir, the actualitie of the performance puts it beyond all contradiction. With his tongue hee’d vowel you out as smooth Italian, as any man breathing: with his Eye he would sparkle forth the proud Spanish: with his Nose blow out most Robustious Dutch: the Creaking of his High-heel’d Shoo would articulate exact Polonian: The knocking of his shin-bones Fœminine French: and his Belly would grumble most pure and Scholer-like Hungary. POET. How? his Belly speake? PHANT. Alas, that’s the least wonder, for at what time Pythagoras flourish’d, that was a familiar thing with his Scholers… (F2) Phantastes displays a scholar’s glee in wittily demonstrating his familiarity with geography and the customs of foreign cultures, and invites his interlocutor (and by extension, the play’s audience) to laugh knowingly. In The Comedy of Errors, a similar joke is made by Dromio of Syracuse at the expense of boggy Ireland, barren Scotland, and garrulous France amongst others, in the passage in which he describes the spherical Nell (3.2.111–38). Playwrights could expect their audiences to have at least a basic familiarity with the stereotypes of countries frequented by English travellers; Hughball distinguishes himself precisely by moving beyond the usual suspects and setting his sights on far distant horizons. Peregrine is quick to join him: his first response to Hughball’s disdain for the familiar is to ask whether Hughball has been as far as the Antipodes. Peregrine’s conception of the Antipodes is not the satirical antithesis of familiar society frequently alluded to by dramatists (and, indeed, later ‘created’ in Brome’s play by the Doctor and Letoy), but rather the furthest point of travel, and hence the marker of the seasoned adventurer; it is ‘[t]hat which is farthest distant, foot to foot / Against our region’ (1.3.86–7). It is not surprising, then, that when Doctor Hughball explains that every country has its own equal and opposite antipodal point, and asks Peregrine to which Antipodes he most desires to travel, the ‘mad young traveller’ answers: ‘The furthest off’ (2.1.30, 1.3.115). Peregrine has been so immersed in his extensive reading that he has not only neglected his conjugal commitments, but has also come to disdain the domestic and the familiar in general; only the most exotic of experiences might

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satisfy him now. The Antipodes therefore functions as a symbolic destination in Brome’s play, standing for exoticism par excellence. It is in its complete removal from home, from the familiar – being both geographically and culturally ‘[a]s far beyond all Christendom as ’tis to’t’ (1.1.182) – that the topsy-turvy land at the furthest extremity of the world acquires its significance in The Antipodes. But given that Peregrine is consumed not so much by the exotic as by his yearning for the exotic, my argument is that Brome’s play is interested in how exotic travel had captured the English imagination, not in the details of actual travel or the political context in which most early modern travel occurred – and not (only) in satirising London society. Although Jonson’s city comedies share with The Antipodes the theme of exposing the vices of London (The Devil is an Ass, for example, achieves its end through a metaphysical displacement akin to the imagined geographical displacement of The Antipodes), it is the psychological dimension of the humoral comedies that is immediately relevant to Brome’s play, and it is the question of the ‘mind-travelling reader’ that is of most immediate relevance to Peregrine’s predicament.

Peregrine as mind-travelling reader As an Englishman, the ‘[r]eports of travels and of voyages’ which Peregrine read to ‘convey his fancy round the world’ (1.1.132, 137) could have been drawn from a large pool of texts, ranging from compilations of first-hand exploration accounts to cosmographies of geo-cultural information comprised of short, often paragraph-length chapters. English readers practically devoured these travel texts, as Richard G. Cole notes when he writes that ‘[t]he most extensive collecting and editing of travel books was done in England’ (63). Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (Basel, 1544) – an immensely popular compendium, which enjoyed at least forty-six editions in six languages – was one such travel text. It reached English readers via the translations of Richard Eden (see Hodgen 507), whose prefatory comments reveal how easily Peregrine might have been conditioned to desire exotic travel. Eden announces that his redaction of Münster will be characterised by diversity and marvels; he assumes that ‘oure mindes take the greateste pleasure, and are most earnestlye moued with straunge nouelties and meruailous thinges’ (*iiv), and excises passages of Münster’s text deemed to be of little interest, on the grounds that such abbreviation improves the economic viability of the publication: ‘The wholle woorke of Munster I haue abridged into this little manual,

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because to haue translated so large a volume, would haue ben tediouse to my selfe, superfluouse to the reader, and very chargeable to the byer’ (*iii). Such editing decreased the cost of the book and favoured the inclusion of the marvellous over the mundane. The book was intended for mass dissemination, accessible to all at an affordable price – and unlike the medieval cosmographies, which were primarily intended for navigators, explorers, and travellers, this ‘Englished’ text pandered to the voracious appetites of mind-travelling readers. Eden’s targeting of the English-reading segment of the market is important. In his examination of the ‘nation’ as ‘an imagined political community’ (15), Benedict Anderson has persuasively argued that print capitalism ‘made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways’ (40).3 Importantly, Anderson observes that when the Latin reading market was exhausted, the demands of print capitalism led the book market to focus on consumers whose reading was restricted to the vernacular; hence the promulgation of ‘Englished’ texts, which had broader market appeal. This increased access to the printed text, and hence to exotic information, undoubtedly encouraged the reading of travel texts for pleasure in addition to scholarly information. When Anderson wryly notes of the Latin language, ‘[r]elatively few were born to speak it and even fewer, one imagines, dreamed in it’ (42), he inadvertently gestures towards a significant aspect of publishing in English – namely, that readers dreamed in English; they fantasised and imagined in English. The provision of travel texts in the vernacular no doubt multiplied these dreams and fantasies and the desires that informed them. It is not surprising therefore that travel literature geared towards these vicarious pleasures flourished. Actual travel in early modern England, with none of the advances made by industrial capitalism (trains, cars, planes), was necessarily both arduous and restrictive; mind-travelling was the great equaliser, facilitating enjoyment of exotic lands without the hardships of actual voyaging. Mind-travelling was not a perfect substitute for physical voyaging however, and Swiss tourist Thomas Platter was surely being too glib when he claimed (of travel plays) that ‘[w]ith these and many more amusements the English pass their time, learning at the play what is happening abroad … since the English for the most part do not travel much, but prefer to learn foreign matters and take their pleasures at home’ (Platter 170). In fact, the English were renowned for their restlessness and propensity to venture abroad. Thomas Palmer, for

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example, writes in his 1606 manual for making travel ‘the more profitable and honourable’ that the people of great Britaine (of all other famous and glorious Nations separated from the maine Continent of the world) are by so much the more interested to become Trauailers, by how much the necessitie of euerie seuerall estate of men doth require that, for their better aduancement. (A2v) James Howell would later comment similarly on the fact that ‘[a]mongst other Nations of the world the English are observed to haue gained much, and improved themselves infinitely by voyaging both by land and Sea’ (8). Platter’s glib remarks nevertheless point to an interesting paradox: in the midst of England’s greatest period of exploration and imperial expansion, writers seemed to be encouraging their readers and spectators to stay at home to learn about foreign countries rather than to travel. Why? One explanation for this curious phenomenon lies in the recognition that concomitant with the rise of the English nation state was an attendant fear over the fragility of English identity. In his polemical Quo Vadis? A Just Censure of Travel (1617), Bishop Joseph Hall argues against the need to travel, claiming that God ‘hath placed vs [England] apart, for the singularity of our happinesse, not for restraint’ (the insula fortunata trope) (Hall 1–2). The fact of England being an island (and therefore autonomous) had contributed to England becoming a nation state. For patriotic writers like Hall, England’s natural fecundity obviated the need for travel altogether. Writes Hall: The double praise which was of old giuen to two great nations, That Italie could not be put down for armes, nor Greece for learning, is happily met in one Iland. Those therefore that crosse the seas to fill their braine, doe but trauell Northward for heat, and seeke that candle which they carry in their hand. (27) Travel was not only unnecessary, but also positively harmful to the cultural integrity of the traveller. Hence Hall fears the detrimental influence of foreign soils (‘Doe wee send our sonnes to learne to be chaste in the midst of Sodome?’ 12). In the context of an emerging national consciousness, there was an additional reason for this caution: as

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Wayne Franklin observes, ‘[t]he sense of community does not necessarily require a high degree of literal stability in a population. But a high level of movement certainly is not the best condition under which to develop sustained and sustaining values’ (12). Consequently, in the eyes of English nationalists, the traveller’s promiscuous cultural intermingling makes him an undesirably iconoclastic figure. Peregrine’s obsession with travel texts should thus be understood within the context of a rapid growth in English-language based, massmarket publications concerned with voyaging. By fostering a sense of English nationalism, these texts simultaneously celebrated ambitious English expeditions and drew attention to the cultural dangers of travel for a young nation that was still forging its identity. Readers like Peregrine had unprecedented access to information about exotic lands, but this information was accompanied by heightened anxieties about the detrimental effects exposure to such lands might bring, as I discussed in the context of Jonson (Chapter 3).

The stars change, the mind remains the same The locus classicus of this anxiety for early modern writers was Horace’s discouragement of travel, which is neatly encapsulated in the adage, caelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt [they change their clime, not their mind, who rush across the sea] (Epistle 1.11, Horace 324–5). Horace’s lines urge readers to confront their problems directly rather than merely avoiding them with a change of scene (see Skalitzky 322), but in the early modern period, when anxieties flourished over the common belief that racial identity was fluid, malleable, and subject to external influence (see Floyd-Wilson), the aphoristic appeal of Horace’s words led to their invocation as an injunction against adopting foreign customs whilst abroad. Travellers could change the sky above their heads, but should not change their minds. Horace’s sentiments clearly conditioned Jonson’s opinion of travel, inasmuch as Jonson maintained the necessity of returning from one’s travels unchanged (see Chapter 3). In just this vein, James Howell, in his Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell (1650), praises the traveller who can ‘return home an untainted English Protestant’ (11), and explains that although the traveller is encouraged to pick up the finer qualities of his destination’s culture (‘From the Spaniard his Sobriety, not his lust’), the traveller’s ‘heart must still remaine English, though I allow him some choyce and change of Habit, Coelum, non animum mutet –’ (103).4 Whatever its

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original significance, then, in the early modern period Horace’s epistle had clearly become a warning to travellers to retain the purity of their cultural identity whilst abroad, and was accepted as such by some of the greatest minds of the period as they assessed the effects of travel upon those returning home from exotic adventures. Mind-travelling, whether through reading or playgoing, was the safest means of experiencing alterity, and it was certainly all that Hall deemed necessary for a native-born Englishman, whose country was so rich in resources and culture. Travel, for Hall, is purely an information gathering exercise: dry, tedious, factual, and scientific. But Hall’s utilitarianism misses a crucial aspect of travelling: there is no hint in Hall that one might find travelling pleasurable, or indeed that reading about exotic countries is an enjoyable vicarious experience. The act of travel becomes redundant for Hall after an initial, cursory inspection of other lands by England’s representatives: A good booke is at once the best companion, and guide, and way, and end of our journey; Necessity droue our forefathers out of doores, which else in those misty times had seene no light, we may with more ease, and no lesse profit sit still, and inherit, and enioy the labours of them. (36–7) Responding to the proposition that an Englishman might, by travelling, learn about foreign states and government, manners and customs, Hall notes: Hee that trauels into forraine countries, talkes perhaps with a Peasant, or a Pilgrim, or a Citizen, or a Courtier; and must needs take such information as partiall rumour, or weake coniecture can giue him; but hee that trauels into learned and credible Authors, talkes with them who haue spent themselues in bolting out the truth of all passages; and who hauing made their labours publike, would haue beene like to heare of it, if they had mis-reported. (33–4) As a source of reliable information, travel (for Hall) pales into insignificance compared with the accumulated wisdom of ‘credible Authors’. Better to stay home, and read, as Peregrine has been doing. But vicarious travel has not served Peregrine well: none of the attempts by his parents that ‘[m]ight have restrained his travelling

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thoughts’ have succeeded, and Peregrine has travelled ‘[s]o far beyond himself’ that ‘his mind / Is in a wilderness’ (1.1.124, 149, and 192–3). Hall’s conservative position was not the only view available when The Antipodes was first performed; Jerome Turler, for example, is highly critical of reading as a substitute for lived experience. In The Traveiler (trans. 1575), he acknowledges that ‘it is the peculier nature of mankind to be euermore desirous of knowlege’, but cites Horace as a precedent for the belief that this thirst for knowledge is best slaked with first-hand experience: The things we heare, les cause the minde and sences to arise: Then doe the thinges in presence whiche are subiect to the eies. (112)5 Seeing is believing for Turler; the authority of books cannot replace the credibility of personal verification. In this, he anticipates Howell’s argument that ‘to run over and traverse the world by Hearesay, and traditionall relation, with other mens eyes, and so take all things upon courtesie, is but a confused and imperfect kind of speculation, which leaveth weake and distrustfull notions behind it’ (2). To this end, Turler casts aspersions over those who refrain from travelling, derisively suggesting that it can only be because they are deterred by fear: they deserue none excuse, whose lyfe is only to think ... [and] get all their wisdome at home, being much affeard lest if they traueilled: the skie woulde fall on their heades, or the earth sinke vnder them: when as they might learne that which they seeke for, better and with greater profite of straungers, and alliens. (114–15) Peregrine does not entertain fears of the sky falling in on him: on the contrary, his parents have resorted to everything – even arranged marriage – to prevent him from travelling abroad. This desire to act on his fantasies is an important distinction between Peregrine and the would-be traveller mocked by Turler. Peregrine’s experience of the exotic might be limited to that of the philosopher whose ‘lyfe is only to think’, but Peregrine, unlike Hall, is not content to continue merely reading about the exotic; the information he absorbs generates a desire actually to see the places and peoples described in the literature. Peregrine’s enthusiasm for adventuring simply does not register for writers like Hall, who reduce travel to purely instrumental purposes.

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The key assumption of Brome’s play is that there is more to travel than trade, colonialism, or the collection of practical information. Brome reconfigures the ostensibly dichotomous relationship between learned, vicarious travel on the one hand, and experiential (though possibly flawed) information-gathering on the other hand, and collapses the artificial division between the two by acknowledging their symbiotic relationship. The legendary English fondness for travel and Platter’s claim that the English enjoy travelling at home need not be mutually exclusive: the model Brome establishes sees Peregrine spurred on to actual travel through the initial stimulation of vicarious travel. The relationship between travel and travel writing has been misunderstood by polemicists who argue exclusively for either reading or physical exertion; Brome presents an arguably more natural model whereby reading about a destination piques the individual’s interest in travel. In a panegyric verse prefacing Coryate’s Crudities Gulielmus Baker draws precisely this connection between reading and travelling, framed in a jest about the ensuing mass exodus of Englishman being comparable to the depopulation resulting from Irish and Dutch wars: Ovr trauelling frie, liquorous of Nouelties, Enquire each minute for they Crudities; And hope, that as those haddocs tooke refection, Cast from thy sea-sicke stomacks forc’t eiection, And straight grew trauailers, & forsook our Maine, To frolicke on the grau’ly shelues of Spaine: So they by thy disgorgement, at their will Shall put downe Web, or Sir Iohn Mandeuil. For such an itch of trauell is begotten, (To the states good, and thy praise be it spoken) Thy booke shall vent the kingdome better far Then erst the Irish or Lowcountrie war. (g3) Peregrine’s illness stems from his inability to actualise the desire to bring his reading into practice: the ‘itch of trauell’ he has ‘begotten’ is not satisfied. Howell would designate him as a ‘Sedentary Traveller’ who, ‘penn’d up between Wals, and … poring all day upon a Map, up[on] Artificiall Globes or Planisphares, upon imaginary Circles and Scales, is like him, who thought to come to be a good Fencer, by looking on Agrippa’s or Don Lius de Nerviu’s booke-postures only’ (2). It is the unnatural stasis, not any unnatural desire, that seals Peregrine’s descent into madness.

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As an instructive parallel to Peregrine (who has never travelled), Brome presents Joyless’s young wife Diana, who twice tells us, ‘I never saw a play’ (1.3.200). After having learnt about playing from Letoy, Diana cultivates a desire actually to see a play in performance: ‘I never saw a play, and would be loath / To lose my longing now’ (2.1.160–1). Peregrine too, presumably, would be ‘loath’ to lose his longing to travel without having satisfied his wanderlust, but he was restrained by Joyless, just as Joyless attempts to restrain Diana. With respect to his attempted deterrence of Diana, Joyless voices his fears in an aside: The air of London Hath tainted her [Diana’s] obedience already, And should the play but touch the vices of it, She’d learn and practise ’em. (2.1.161–4) His fear probably derives from William Prynne’s Histrio-mastix (1633), in which the author declared that all (good) Christians ‘keepe their wives and children from them [plays] … for feare they should corrupt their chastity and draw them on to publike lewdnesse’ (433–4, qtd in Parr, Travel Plays 245n). Nevertheless, Joyless’s jealousy is completely unwarranted, and Diana, a model of chastity (as her name suggests), survives her playgoing experience unblemished. The fears associated with Diana’s desires are proven to be unfounded, and she achieves satisfaction through her experience without detriment to her character or well-being, thus illustrating (in an example that has implications for Peregrine’s analogous position) that Joyless’s restraint was unnecessary. The lesson is clearer if one considers the paradigmatic parallel which the play provides in the character of Martha, Peregrine’s neglected wife. Having informed the doctor of Peregrine’s condition and secured Hughball’s services, Joyless hastens to add, ‘Yet there’s more: his wife, sir’ (1.1.152). Martha’s malady is discussed in the same dialogue in which Peregrine’s affliction is first described, and the parallel between the two illnesses is surely deliberate.6 Peregrine’s preoccupation with travel reports has meant that although he and Martha ‘have been three years wed, / They are yet ignorant of the marriage bed’ (1.1.157–8). Consequently, Martha is ‘full of passion’ and suffers from a ‘wand’ring fancy’ (1.1.160, 162) – clearly a form of hysteria (the feminine condition supposedly caused by a wandering womb), which has some analogy with Peregrine’s wandering mind. Like Peregrine reading about travel instead of actually travelling, the sexual abstinence inflicted on Martha

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constitutes another form of physical stasis, but it is significant that this stasis is explicitly condemned as unnatural throughout the text. Barbara, for example, expresses sincere sympathy for Martha: ‘To keep a maidenhead three years after marriage / Under wedlock and key! Insufferable, monstrous!’ (1.1.203–4). In the absence of experiential knowledge, Martha relates the preposterous myths of child-bearing that she is forced to entertain, each as incredible as the myths of Mandeville onto which Peregrine fastens: I am past a child Myself to think they [babies] are found in parsley beds, Strawberry banks, or rosemary bushes, though I must confess I have sought and searched such places, Because I would fain have had one. (1.1.241–5) These myths of ‘cabbage patch babies’ reveal that Martha is as ignorant of the reproductive process as Peregrine is of foreign lands (though this ignorance does not deter either character from pursuing their desires). Martha even confirms her lack of knowledge: ‘were I now to die, I cannot guess / What a man does in child-getting’ (1.1.252–3). That Martha’s sexual ignorance is significant is intimated by Barbara’s renewed sympathy: ‘Was ever / Such a poor piece of innocence three years married!’ (1.1.258–9). A married woman ought to have proper ‘knowledge’ of her husband, and the characters of Brome’s play unanimously strive to bring Martha to the real knowledge of her spouse. The lesson may be construed thus: Martha’s unnatural stasis has facilitated the perpetuation of absurd myth which, uncorrected by the necessary experiential knowledge, has led to madness and to the ‘young distracted / Gentlewoman’ being in the ridiculous position of being ‘sick of her virginity / Yet know[ing] not what it is’ (2.1.39–41). Peregrine’s illness, by analogy, might have been avoided if – as his parents realise ‘too late’ – he had ‘gone abroad to meet his fate’ instead of persisting in his belief in unverified myths (1.1.149–50). The fact that the women suffer as much as Peregrine from involuntary stasis is important. According to the Galenic theory adopted by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), which informs a great deal of Brome’s play, women’s bodies are characteristically ‘cold’ and passive; men, by contrast, are ‘hot’ in composition, and therefore active (see Parr, Travel Plays 40; Ian Maclean 30 and 89). It might at first seem that Peregrine is simply feminised in his passivity, and that the cure

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for his illness could be obtained through the restoration of masculine characteristics (which the resumption of his role as husband purports to provide). According to this theory, all that the situation demands is the proper channelling of Peregrine’s energy into appropriate activities at home, in the domestic sphere. But the benefits accruing to Martha and Diana from activity clearly signal that the issue is more than a temporary disintegration of the normative female/passive, male/active dichotomy – and besides, as Katharine A. Craik observes, ‘[a]n excessive interest in sex was popularly supposed to effeminize the male subject by rendering him subordinate to female will’, whereas Peregrine (by contrast) is completely uninterested in sex (89, emphasis added). The maladies I have identified in Brome’s play all stem in some way from deprivation of movement, irrespective of the gender of those afflicted. Marriage has failed to cure Peregrine, but Brome’s appreciation of the psychology of travel can lead to an alternative cure based on the benefits of travel itself.

‘Mandeville madness’ Throughout this chapter I have retained the implicit assumption of other Brome critics that Peregrine’s ‘humour’ is simply the product of excessive reading, but now I want to ask whether the type of excessive reading that he undertakes might hold significance. Given that Peregrine reads an edition of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville on stage (1.3.24–32), it is surprising that only Claire Jowitt has asked why Brome singled out Mandeville as the specific cause of Peregrine’s ‘much troubled and confusèd brain’ (4.509; see Jowitt, ‘Politics’ 197, who examines the ‘implications of Brome’s choice of Mandeville as his source for Peregrine’s information about foreign locations’ but reaches a different conclusion from mine). Why does Peregrine fetishise Mandeville’s Travels as his sacred text? Why Mandeville, and not other notable writers such as Richard Hakluyt, Münster, or Peter Martyr)? Why not Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins, or Frobisher (all examples that Peregrine himself provides)? One answer is that an interest in Mandeville signals an interest in the literariness of travel writing, for Mandeville was not a genuine traveller. We now know (and it is very probable that Brome, too, knew) that, unlike these other writers, the furthest Mandeville travelled was to his local library: his fantastic Travels were entirely the embellished appropriation of other, genuine travellers’ texts (see Tzanaki 275). To call Mandeville a fraud, however, is to make a categorical mistake about

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medieval modes of authorship; it is anachronistic to impose modern understandings of ‘originality’ on to a culture in which the very concept of an ‘author’ was barely nascent, and the role of the ‘compilator’ was prominent (see Donald R. Howard 1). Nevertheless, it can be said with certainty that in the early 1600s the authenticity of Mandeville’s travels had begun to be questioned, and his proclivity for the fantastic was both widely noted and detrimental to his reputation. A scholar may hold greater authority than a traveller, as Hall argued, but an increasing awareness of the ubiquity of the ‘fantastic’ in Mandeville, coupled with the moderate success and subsequent derision of a stage adaptation, ‘Sir John Mandeville’ (1592), meant that Mandeville’s credibility was already discernibly on the wane by 1598, when Hakluyt dropped the Travels from his second edition of the Principal Navigations (see Moseley, ‘Lost Play’). By 1605, Jonson could use ‘Mandeville’ as a ‘cant term for a liar’ (Moseley, ‘Metamorphoses’ 21) when the Host in The New Inn refers to his wife as a ‘she-Mandeville’ (5.5.101). One might conclude that Mandeville’s credibility had by this point been dismissed, were it not for a handful of contrary examples. For instance, in Thomas Tomkis’s university play, Lingva: Or, The Combat of the Tongue, and the fiue Senses For Superiority (1607), Mandeville’s text is apparently held in the same regard as Eden’s Decades of the New World when the two texts are mentioned in the same sentence by the allegorically named Mendacio (that is, ‘Liar’), whose series of outrageous boasts includes that ‘Sir Iohn Mandeuills trauells, and a great part of the Decads were of my doing’ (D). Such doubts over Mandeville’s possible veracity clearly persisted, since it is in the sense of the ‘probably fantastical’ but ‘possibly true’ that Jonson refers to Mandeville again, in the recently discovered The Entertainment at Britain’s Burse (1609), where the Shop Master ‘expresses admiration for the renowned traveller John Mandeville’ (Scott 14), declaring: ‘Sir Iohn Mandeuill was the first, that brought scyence from thence into our clymate, and so dispensed it into Europe and in such Hieroglyphicks as these’ (ll. 146–9). James Knowles glosses these lines with the cautious observation that ‘[t]he choice of Mandeville as one of the Master’s authorities possibly suggests the fantastic nature of his knowledge’, and Alison V. Scott adds that ‘[c]learly the Master either fails to realise that Mandeville’s Travels was a fictional account, or else chooses to exploit the fact that public belief in its truth persisted’ (14). Mary B. Campbell concludes that Mandeville’s name ‘came to signify “traveller” (as well as “liar”) for European culture’ (149n); as we see in the case of Jonson’s usage, both resonances could paradoxically co-exist

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on the early modern stage. Hence Jowitt has claimed that the ‘fantasy of the Antipodean, Mandevillian inspired New World is, in this drama, filled solely with the Old World; there is nothing new about it’, and tentatively suggested that ‘Brome’s choice of Mandeville’s Travels for Peregrine’s reading matter ... is deliberately designed to emphasise this paradox, since its ambiguous and contradictory status in the seventeenth century perfectly encapsulates the complexities of The Antipodes’ attitude to travel writing’ (‘Politics’ 207). Jowitt’s position is helpful, but given this chapter’s insights, Mandeville’s text might better be differentiated on the grounds that it attaches significance to the experiencing and verification of cultural difference through travel. Like Eden, Mandeville recognises that ‘men seyn alleweys that newe thinges and newe tydynges ben plesant to here’ (228), but whereas for Eden the fascination with the exotic was the ‘hook’ to hold the reader’s attention throughout a compilation which elsewhere contained ‘hard facts’, with Mandeville the interest in recording cultural difference is apparently the extent of the text’s purpose. ‘Mandeville-the-narrator’, Campbell notes, ‘emerges … as a pure wanderer, and travel as an activity in and of itself. Thus, if we are naming fathers, we can call Mandeville not only the “father of English prose” but the father of modern travel writing’ (149). Mandeville’s justification of the digressive nature of his narrative reveals an interest in recording difference: And alle be it that theise thinges touchen not to o way, neuertheles thei touchen to that that I haue hight you to schewe you a partie of custumes and maneres and dyuersitees of contrees … For many men han gret likying to here speke of straunge thinges of dyuerse contreyes. (15) As Donald R. Howard has observed of Mandeville and travel, ‘things are other than what we expect at home, and the contrast turns us back upon ourselves. Mandeville grasped this instructive feature of travelling better than previous authors’ (10). One aspect of Mandeville’s text that distinguished him from his predecessors, then – an aspect which we might expect to have remained associated with him, given Mandeville’s sometime-status as ‘archetypal traveller’ – is the fact that his supposed journey is a circular system of affirmation, whereby the eye-opening experience of encountering the utterly alien leads to a renewed appreciation of the home culture.

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When we are told that Peregrine ‘talks much of the kingdom of Cathaya, / Of one Great Khan and goodman Prester John’ (1.1.188–9), Brome relies on the episode in which Mandeville serves the Great Khan for fifteen months – an episode that is salient to the present discussion. Mandeville’s purpose in seeking the Great Khan was to establish the correlation between expectations and experience; to determine whether the hyperbolic stories about the ruler were an accurate reflection of reality: ‘the cause was for wee hadden gret lust to see his noblesse and the estat of his court and alle his gouernance, to wite yif it were such as we herde seye that it was’. It was as majestic as they had heard it said; the experience of exotic alterity was thoroughly satisfying in that it lived up to expectations. Mandeville’s conclusion is that reports of the marvellous can never substitute for actual experience: ‘we wolde neuer han leved it, had wee not a seen it. I trowe that no man wolde beleve the noblesse, the ricchesse, ne the multytude of folk that ben in his court but he had seen it’ (158). Contra Joseph Hall’s ardent protestations, second-hand reports and travellers’ tales are no substitute for lived experience according to Mandeville’s Travels (Peregrine’s sacred text). It is significant in the context of European travel writing that lived experience is the end-goal of Mandeville’s project (despite the irony of Mandeville not actually having travelled). The persona of ‘Sir John Mandeville’ does not travel for instrumental purposes, to acquire land, commodities, or any other utilitarian gains (see Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions 26). He travels to travel (Zacher 130–57), just as ‘Nothing but travel still was all his aim’ since Peregrine was young (1.1.140). The apprehension of an exotic East is a sublime moment of self-definition and affirmation for Mandeville; it is not merely a stepping stone on the path to imperial or mercantile expansion. The culmination of the Great Khan episode for Mandeville is the overwhelming recognition that ‘it is not there as it is here’ (158). Centuries later, Turler would express similar sentiments: whoso traueilleth with discretion, and conferreth strange kingdomes with his owne natiue soyle … shall moreouer bringe away this with him, the better to be able to discerne what is good and bad in his owne Cuntrey. (37) Hence Peregrine will not be satisfied with merely reading about the ‘Great Khan and goodman Prester John’ (1.1.189), but has ‘made suit’ to be on any ‘voyage or foreign expedition’ that he had heard of since the

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age of twenty (1.1.189, 142 and 141). If Peregrine is restless on account of his mundane life in England, it may be that he needs an exotic adventure to inspire an appreciation of home, and that is precisely what Letoy and Doctor Hughball claim to provide with their ‘Anti-London’, the Antipodes to ‘the grand city of our nation’ (2.2.38–9). In his yearning for the exotic, Peregrine would have been content with apprehending the Mandevillian monstrous, the people ‘without heads or necks’ with ‘[t]heir mouths amidst their breasts’ (1.3.99 and 101). Hughball, however, has envisaged an even more perfect corrective measure to purge Peregrine’s humour – he will create the quintessential antithesis to the world Peregrine knows, where All Degrees of people, both in sex and quality, Deport themselves in life and conversation Quite contrary to us. (1.3.130–3) The Antipodeans are similar but opposite, their culture a distorted mirror of the English social order. Initially this antithesis amuses Peregrine, but when he crowns himself ‘King of the Antipodes’, Peregrine’s first act is ‘to govern / With purpose to reduce the manners / Of this country [the Antipodes] to his own’ (3.316 and 320–2). He quickly learns from observing the Antipodeans that there is ‘much to be reformed’ in their kingdom (4.104). After witnessing such anathemas to his English sensibility as a woman fencer and her husband who teaches needlework (4.123–5), a courtier who can only afford to eat ‘pompions baked with onions’ whilst clowns can afford exotic ‘musk-melons’ (4.170–1), and a ‘sick man giving counsel to a physician’ (4.269), Peregrine is finally provoked to outrage by the Antipodean practice of punishing the ‘robbed, and not the thief’ (4.345) and finding ‘relief for cheaters, bawds, and thieves’ (4.369) (see Clark 190). Letoy and Hughball have pushed the limits of absurdity in their fantasy world of the Antipodes in order to push Peregrine ‘[b]eyond the line of madness’ (4.281), for the great truth of Brome’s play is that it does not matter if the journey to the Antipodes is staged or genuine (though of course it is a charade); the exposure to a perceived alterity which compares poorly to the home Peregrine knows is sufficient to bring him out of his humour. Peregrine has travelled ‘[s]o far beyond himself’ that the only antidote with genuine potential for success must

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have an experiential basis offering a corrective counterpoint to expectations (1.1.149). The fact that Peregrine and Martha finally consummate their marriage precisely at the culmination of Peregrine’s outrage with Antipodean society potentially obfuscates the true cause of Peregrine’s relief, but as I have demonstrated, there is good reason to disagree with critics who suggest that Peregrine’s ‘love of travel was nothing more than an untreated species of erotomania’ (Leslie 66) or that ‘[i]t is actually the “real knowledge of a woman” that will prove to be Peregrine’s cure’ (Sanford, ‘The Antipodes’ 575). I have argued instead that Brome’s play is actually interested in the psychology of travel, in the reaction to alterity. It is the contrast in societies which, for Peregrine, leads to a renewed appreciation of home, and travel (whether real or imagined) has played an instrumental part in his cure: Peregrine and Martha have ‘been in th’ Antipodes to some purpose, / And now are risen and returned themselves’ (5.2.264–5). In The Antipodes, Brome departs from the Horatian thinking of his immediate predecessor Jonson and embraces a more Mandevillian thought, showing that the behaviour-modifying potential of travel can actually have a therapeutic effect. This point is illustrated, in a neat irony, through the use of the Jonsonian technique of humoral comedy. Mandeville’s basic model of social comparison encouraged a critical appreciation of home, and the recognition that changing one’s habitation can lead to changing one’s life. Brome shares Mandeville’s insight into the value of intercultural experience, and dramatises the process in the purgation of Peregrine’s humour. Rather than retaining the Horatian adage about changing skies but not minds, Brome’s protagonist unwittingly keeps his skies unchanged whilst advantageously altering his mind: Peregrine’s voyage to the Antipodes is fictitious, but the resulting alteration of his temperament is very real, and testifies to the psychological benefits of (in this case, imagined) travel. In 1650, Howell was at pains to stress that all the marvels of travel are ‘but vanity and superficiall Knowledge, unlesse the inward man be bettered hereby’ (109). Accordingly, Peregrine has travelled well – without even moving – since the ‘inward man’ has been bettered through the experience. Howell concludes his tract with a pertinent meditation on the ultimate effect of the traveller’s adventures: My Traveller having now breath’d the fiery aires of Afric, with the sweete breezes of Asia, and Europe; having beheld such a multitude of strange objects and all this, not by hear-say only, or through the mist of other mens breaths, but through the cleere casements of his

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own optiques, I say having seen all this, and being safely returned to his Mother soile, he may very well acquiesse in her lap, and terminat his desires from further travel abroad, but be contented to live and dye an Islander without treading any more Continents. (139–40) Brome’s Peregrine conforms perfectly to Howell’s model: travelling the world over, to its utmost extremes (at least, in his estimation), Peregrine returns to ‘his Mother soile’ and ‘terminat[es] his desires from further travel abroad’, contenting himself with living once more in England, where he will resume his domestic duties and cherish his familiar surroundings, having successfully been purged of the need to travel. As Howell and Mandeville each recognise in their own way, and as even the Horace-inspired Jonson would agree, the supreme benefit that accrues to the traveller from his voyages abroad is simply this: ‘At his returne home, hee will blesse God, and love England better ever after’ (Howell 115).

Notes 1. Whilst Jonson exemplified the form of humoral comedy, the style actually originated in Chapman’s A Humorous Day’s Mirth (now more commonly referred to as The Comedy of Humours), which was an instant success in the summer of 1597 (see Wiggins 68). 2. Peregrine’s behaviour would certainly have been recognised as Quixotic by early modern audiences. For an examination of the allusions to Don Quixote in early modern England and a theory on how Cervantes’s material was transmitted to the English prior to Shelton’s 1607 translation (printed 1612), see Ardila 2–31. On the reception of the Quixote figure in early modern England, see Mayo and Ardila 54–5, and Colahan 62–3. Thomas D’Urfey’s Comical History of Don Quixote (1694) appears to have been the first English stage adaptation of Cervantes’s novel (Ardila 8). 3. Note, however, that Anderson locates the emergence of nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century (19). 4. The aphoristic tag with which Howell concludes is of course a direct quote from Horace’s epistle quoted above. 5. In a passage underlined by Gabriel Harvey in the copy of The Traveiler given to him by Spenser, Turler repeats these sentiments: ‘they are of greater force and efficacie, and are more firmely reteyned in memorie which wee se before our eies: then the report or only hearesay of any thinge’ (Turler 112–13). 6. Shaw notes that ‘Peregrine is not the only one suffering from a fixation malady. His wife, Martha … is in a frenzy of child-longing’, but does not pursue the comparison further (125).

5 Davenant, Saint-Évremond, Dryden, and the Ocular Dimension of Travel

The closure of the public theatres in 1642 and the political discontinuity of the Interregnum necessarily affected the production of drama in England. Whilst aesthetic continuity cannot by any means be assumed, in this chapter I trace new lines of interconnection between Interregnum entertainments not formerly linked (as voyage dramas) to the other plays of this study, in order to ask whether there may be value in seeing some kind of continuous innovation in the theatre, however limited that might be. I interrogate the effects of the hiatus in playing and of the altered conditions that accompanied the reopening of the theatres, and in particular I am interested in how changing stage technologies affected the playgoer’s experience of voyage drama. Categorical distinctions between Renaissance plays and Restoration plays are predicated on the assumption that these periods possess substantial aesthetic differences, and it is not my intention to deny that such differences exist. Rather, I take these differences as the impetus to investigate the concomitant alteration (if there were any) of imaginative activity and mind-travelling at the theatre. Although I believe the Renaissance/Restoration divide is relatively artificial in terms of aesthetics, and that ‘continuous evolution’ would be a more appropriate description of theatrical activity across the century, I do of course recognise that important changes occurred. Chief amongst these is an unprecedented (though not, it should be noted, altogether new) emphasis on sight, and this interest in the ocular appears to have arisen simultaneously in both travel and drama. As the visual spectacle of Court entertainments and masques trickled through to the public theatre, perspectival scenery became an established feature of playhouses, and this demanded that the playgoer engage with drama differently. At approximately the same time, young aristocrats ‘touring’ the Continent 145

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were seeking out ‘sights’ to enjoy, where previously the systematic collection of knowledge was the ostensible aim of travel. The ways early moderns travelled and enjoyed drama were changing. In tracking these important visual changes, this chapter will maintain a tight chronological focus on the 1650s and 1660s, whilst examining a diversity of texts including mini-operatics by William Davenant, a French comedy in the Jonsonian style by Saint-Évremond (and others), and heroic tragedies with New World settings by Sir Robert Howard and John Dryden. To circumvent the closure of the theatres, a moral strain was emphasised in Davenant’s hybrid entertainments of the Interregnum; the moral imperative underpinning early modern drama (already so forcefully propounded by Heywood in his Apology) was thus intensified throughout this period, for new and previously unforeseeable political reasons. How and why it did so will be addressed in the first section of this chapter, where in the context of Davenant’s entertainments I discuss how this renewed emphasis on morality was enabling for the development of voyage dramas like The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and The History of Sir Francis Drake. I then begin to consider the impact painted scenery had on the act of mind-travelling. By demonstrating that cognitive activity was spread differently, but not diminished, I pre-empt any suggestion that this added visual dimension might (as with Fussell’s television viewers) decrease the imaginative load. Tracing Renaissance origins for supposed novelties such as scenery and printed texts at the playhouse helps demonstrate that the English theatre and the principles of mind-travelling were evolving continuously, not radically. Emphasis on the ocular is also significant because coinciding historically with this introduction of painted scenery to the public theatre was a gradual increase in travel undertaken for sightseeing. The second section of this chapter demonstrates that even when the establishment of the Grand Tour enabled many more English to venture abroad (albeit with putatively educative aims), the merits of travel were still being debated in plays of the period, as the collaboratively authored Sir Politick Would-be (c. 1662–65) so beautifully attests. In Dryden’s The Indian Emperour, as with Davenant’s entertainments, the changed aesthetics of the theatrical experience made new demands on the mind-travelling playgoer. In the final section of this chapter, I thus complete this investigation into the ocular by turning to Dryden’s theories of playing aesthetics and the imagination, and proposing that the staging of exotic lands can best be understood via the helpful metaphor (inspired by Dryden) of the theatre as a ‘prospective’ or ‘perspective’ glass, and all that this image entails.

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Davenant and the effects of perspectival scenery on mind-travelling Davenant’s complex and ambivalent engagement with Cromwellian politics in his American entertainments has tended to overshadow the pivotal role that voyage drama has played in the resurrection and technological development of playing in the Interregnum period. Given Cromwell’s colonial agenda and the anti-Spanish atmosphere of Interregnum England, the foreign subject matter of Davenant’s entertainments was an attractive proposition for the authorities. As Heidi Hutner observes, in Davenant’s entertainments: The natives war among themselves, and this civil conflict leaves them weakened and susceptible to the Spanish. In this instance, Davenant, a royalist who loathed the rebellion against Charles I, may be displacing England’s factionalism and civil unrest onto the Indians: their internal war invites and demands the force of an external ruler. (70) But this point could have been made in any number of settings, and whilst I agree with Hutner’s analysis, I would also hasten to add that the New World settings were no mere superficial addition. Unlike certain Renaissance plays, such as Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, wherein a geographical displacement occurs for socio-political reasons (that is, issues too sensitive to be represented in domestic settings are staged in Catholic Verona or Medieval Denmark as foils for England), in The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and The History of Sir Francis Drake there is a genuine interest in depicting the exotic details of the foreign setting, right down to the ‘coco trees, pines and palmitos’ of the scenery (Peru 1.9–10) and the Indians in their ‘feathered habits of Peru’ (Peru 3.67). As the following discussion illustrates, Davenant’s travel entertainments were instrumental in facilitating the adoption of perspectival scenery and in guiding playgoers through a period of aesthetic change in the theatre. It is exceptionally difficult to avoid the political context surrounding the composition and performance of The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1658–59): Davenant’s operas were written and produced at a critical juncture in England’s colonial history: Oliver Cromwell’s Western Design, an imperial initiative to seize Hispaniola in the Caribbean, had recently

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failed, and the reasons for its failure were being publicly debated in 1656 and 1657. (Frohock, ‘American Operas’ 323)1 The significance of the political context is reinforced by documentary evidence such as Davenant’s 1656 letter to Cromwell’s Secretary of State, John Thurloe, in which the playwright advocates the revival of public entertainments. The letter, as Janet Clare notes, ‘was firmly rooted in, and designed to appeal to, the anti-Habsburg colonialist policy of the Republic’ – Cromwell having utilised anti-Spanish rhetoric in his plans to attack the Spanish West Indies, ‘the source of Habsburg wealth’ (Clare, Drama 235). Davenant’s letter appeals on economic and moral grounds for a revival of certain dramatic entertainments, culminating in a final plea about ‘moral representations’ which is redolent of Heywood’s much earlier appeals to the moral virtues of the theatre in his Apology for Actors: If morall representations may be allow’d (being without obscenenesse, profanenesse, and scandal) the first arguments may consist of the Spaniards’ barbarous conquests in the West Indies and of their severall cruelties there exercis’d upon the subjects of this nation: of which some use may be made. (Davenant qtd in Firth 321) Abraham Cowley, in a letter of 3 April 1656, confirms Davenant’s plans to justify the staging of moral entertainments by presenting a contention ‘for and against the right of the Spaniards to the West Indies, in the person of a Spaniard and an Indian’ (qtd in Clare, ‘Production’ 834). The entertainment in question is The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru; a moral entertainment which of necessity defies categorisation, for as Dryden was later to write (in attributing the innovation of heroic plays to Davenant): It being forbidden him in the Rebellious times to act Tragedies and Comedies, because they contain’d some matter of Scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful Sovereign than endure a wanton jeast; he was forc’d to turn his thoughts another way: and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and perform’d in Recitative Musique. (‘Of Heroique Playes’ 9)

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The hybrid form of this and Davenant’s other Interregnum entertainments, ‘part debate, part opera, part masque, and part play’, was a necessity, because as Clare notes, it ‘enabled them to circumvent the prohibition of 1642, subsequently reinforced, on the presentation of plays’ (‘Production’ 832).2 The aesthetics of Davenant’s entertainments are notoriously complex: Clare refers to Peru as a masque, ‘conscious of the inexactitude of the definition’ and aware that ‘[i]t would have been invidious to refer to his entertainments as masques, evoking associations with Stuart court culture’ (‘Production’ 832). Kevin L. Cope uses the term ‘entertainments’ because it was ‘an Interregnum code-word for otherwise illegal dramas’ (2). The significance of the generic form, though often cited as the origins of English opera (Mark; Frohock, ‘American Operas’), lies in its political consequences. As Jeffrey Mark observes, ‘the Puritan leaders, while strongly disapproving of dancing and music in principle, were nevertheless disposed to think that musical plays were incapable of embodying any seditious sentiment against the Government’ (248). Technically not ‘plays’, Davenant’s ‘moral entertainments’ thus gained approval for performance largely on the basis of inculcating virtuous knowledge and appearing incapable of sedition. Davenant’s move to ingratiate himself with the authorities inevitably incurred objections. Sir Henry Herbert complained: Sr William Dauenant … wrote the first and second parte of Peru, Acted at the Cockpitt, in Oliuers Tyme, and soly in his favour; Wherein hee sett of the Justice of Oliuers Actinges by Comparison with the Spaniards And Endeavoured thereby To make Oliuers Crueltyes appeare Mercyes, in Respect of the Spanish Crueltyes. But the Mercyes of the wicked are Cruell. (Qtd in Bawcutt 264) But as Clare notes, ‘Herbert’s imputations have to be read against his personal interest in denigrating Davenant’, whom Herbert perceived to have been encroaching on his own privileges (as former Master of the Revels) when Davenant sought autonomy from official censure and permission to regulate his own company’s performances (‘Production’ 833). Davenant’s petitions appear to indicate his compliance with the Protectorate’s foreign policy agenda, but the entertainments themselves, when he had secured permission to produce them, were morally

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complex, as numerous critics have observed. Clare takes a Jamesonian stance in distinguishing ideological subtext from the preconditions of the text and arguing that although the ‘enabling preconditions of The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru rest in Davenant’s willingness to write a masque for the Protectorate deploying hostile images of the Spanish … this should not prompt an easy acceptance of the work as simply propaganda for Cromwell’ (‘Production’ 840). More recently, Richard Frohock has emphasised the dialogic nature of Davenant’s works, indicating the dissonances as well as the compatibility between the texts and Cromwell’s policies: In some respects, Davenant’s operas ‘harmonize’ with Cromwellian foreign policy: the vision of supplanting the cruel and devilish Spanish, and liberating Native Americans, is a common accent. Yet clearly there is dissonance also, most notably in Davenant’s avoidance of overt and deductive providentialism to sanction English empire. In place of this providentialism, Davenant substitutes a heroic discourse of honour and fame, and these ideals, woven into his representations of the Americas and English empire, form a significant part of Davenant’s ‘stylistic profile’. (‘American Operas’ 333) Thus although Davenant had implied that his works, if granted performance, would essentially be propagandistic, the final products were considerably more ambiguous. The aesthetics of post-Renaissance voyage drama were therefore substantially affected by the political context. Generic form had to be altered to circumvent Puritan objections to stage plays, while the exotic colonial subject matter had to be presented in ways that provided a politically relevant topic for ostensibly moral entertainment. These are the pragmatic reasons underlying Davenant’s decision to stage stories about the conquest of the New World and Sir Francis Drake’s voyaging; there may also have been personal reasons. Unlike many of the Renaissance dramatists, who if they voyaged at all made it only as far as the Continent (Thomas Lodge, who sailed to Brazil with Cavendish, was a notable exception), Davenant actually attempted a voyage to the New World. In 1649, Davenant became Treasurer of Virginia by appointment of Charles II; shortly thereafter, in 1650, he became Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, just before departing for the colonies. Unfortunately, he never made it past the Channel; his Royalist ship was captured by a privateering Commonwealth frigate, and

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Davenant’s New World expedition ended almost before it had begun (Frohock, Heroes 36; Lewcock 23–4). Accordingly, the playgoing public were not to benefit from a playwright’s first-hand experience of the New World on this occasion, but they were at least treated to the mindtravels of a dramatist who was genuinely interested in travel: ‘Prevented from making his journey, Davenant was left to imagine affairs in the colonies’ (Frohock, Heroes 36). In The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, a Cockpit entertainment structured by six ‘Entries’ rather than Acts, Davenant presents a series of glimpses of Peruvian historical fiction, interspersed with acrobatics (1.45), rope climbing, and dancing apes (1.78–84), and even the simulated spitroasting of an Indian over an artificial fire (5.1–10). The entertainment, framed by painted perspectival scenery, traces the trajectory from a supposed pre-conquest state of innocence to the Spaniards’ discovery and conquest of the Incan empire, and then to the (fanciful) arrival of the English army to save the Indians from the cruelty of their Iberian captors. Davenant justifies his wilful anachronism as poetic prolepsis, though evidently its primary value lay more in terms of its ideological utility: These imaginary English forces may seem improper, because the English had made no discovery of Peru in the time of the Spaniards’ first invasion there; but yet in poetical representations of this nature, it may pass as a vision discerned by the Priest of the Sun before the matter was extant, in order to his prophecy. (6.7–11) The historically inaccurate presence of the English army can be accounted for only if Davenant were at least superficially endorsing Cromwell’s foreign policy. Influenced by Bartolomé Las Casas’s famed accounts of Spanish atrocities in the New World (Brevissima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, 1652; translated by John Phillips as The Tears of the Indians, and dedicated to Cromwell, in 1656), Davenant’s entertainment ostensibly celebrated Cromwell’s Western Design and encouraged England’s participation in New World colonisation. However, in 1656 (two years before the first performances), when Davenant was proposing his idea to Thurloe, England’s West Indian venture could already be considered an ‘abject failure’ (Clare, Drama 236). By the time Peru was actually performed, international relations had changed significantly: The masque which Davenant had implied would serve the propaganda war against Spain was eventually produced during the last

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months of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, when the attack against Spain was located not in the New World but in the Spanish Netherlands. Davenant dislocates the scene of colonization, suppresses the rhetoric of nationhood, and omits the nationalistic and providential dimension of the English expedition. The masque is thus ideologically and aesthetically distanced from Cromwell’s colonial enterprises. (Clare, ‘Production’ 836) Thus whilst Peru clearly serves the national interest, it is less clear how, precisely, it relates to the colonial agenda (see Clare, Drama 235–9 and 263–7; Frohock, Heroes 35–44; Stevens 9; and Cope 7–10). The History of Sir Francis Drake was performed at the Cockpit in 1659, the year after Peru’s premiere. Whilst it retains many of the formal features of the earlier American entertainment (such as painted scenery, Entrances rather than Acts, rhyming couplets, and an emphasis on music and dance), Drake is notable for its shift away from expository speeches towards dramatic dialogue and greater emphasis on character. It depicts Drake’s third voyage to the New World (1572–73), in which Drake raided the Spanish at Panama. Davenant again takes historical liberties, moulding the narrative he received from Philip Nichols’s Sir Francis Drake Revived (1628) to fit his requirements for a heroic and honourable account of English colonial activity (see Frohock, Heroes 40–2). Most famously, in the denouement of the entertainment, Drake and his men successfully stage an attack on a recuas (Spanish mule train), ‘not for gold, but fame’ (6.28). Historically, Drake cooperated with French allies in this endeavour (it was not solely an English operation), and the project was a spectacular failure: instead of ambushing a recuas laden with Peruvian riches, his men mistakenly confronted a mule train en route to Panama, and thus as yet not carrying any gold (Clare, Drama 6.1–6n). As with the arrival of the red-coated New Model Army to save the Incas in Peru, Davenant takes liberties with historical material to limn Drake as unequivocally heroic and successful (see Frohock, Heroes 40). Unlike the earlier entertainment, though, Drake cannot purport to promote Cromwell’s Western Design, since this entertainment was produced during the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, after Oliver Cromwell’s death. Instead, it appeals more broadly to ‘notions of the superiority of English honour’, reinventing history ‘so that the English take up the cause of, or identify with, the peoples oppressed by the Spanish’: the Cimarrons (negro slaves) in the case of Drake (Clare, Drama 263; see also Frohock, ‘American Operas’ 324–5).

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Both of these entertainments were available as printed texts to purchase concurrently with performances. The function of the printed text was partly promotional: the title pages of both texts describe how the entertainments are ‘[r]epresented daily at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, at three after noon punctually’ (Clare, Drama 241, 269), and the text of Peru is followed by a brief note: ‘Notwithstanding the great expense necessary to scenes and other ornaments in this entertainment, there is a good provision made of places for a shilling’ (6.85–7). The printed versions of Davenant’s entertainments thoroughly familiarised the playgoer with the entertainment prior to the performance. Significantly, they contain exegetical text not actually spoken by the players, thus explicating some of the more elaborate and symbolic stage activity. For example, the fanciful arrival of the red-coated English army to save the Incas is explained as poetic prophecy in Peru (6.7–11), and the first appearance of the Cimarrons in Drake is glossed with the explanation, ‘the Symerons, who were a Moorish people, brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards as their slaves, to dig in mines; and, having lately revolted from them, did live under the government of a king of their own election’ (2.3–6) – information that helps make sense of why the English take up their cause. Print conceivably served as what MacCannell called an ‘off-site marker’: information read prior to sightseeing or carried with the tourist to the sight. MacCannell notes that ‘the first contact a sightseer has with a sight is not the sight itself but with some representation thereof’ (110). As in the example of the Bonnie and Clyde shoot-out site, markers provide the informational cues which combine with the in situ atmosphere to bring a scene to life. Davenant’s explanatory texts perform this role in the playhouse, conditioning the viewers’ expectations of his exotic sights and preparing them to appreciate aspects of his spectacle which are not immediately obvious. Such ‘preparation’ assists in minimising the cognitive/imaginative effort required during the actual performance, for the audience will already have some conception of the strange lands and peoples depicted on the stage. Like the elaborate scenery, the provision of printed ‘markers’ in the public theatre appears to have had its origins in Court entertainments and masques during the Renaissance. Tiffany Stern has noted that: For particularly important and visual productions, additional playspecific texts might be supplied for audience members. These documents, sometimes called ‘plots’, sometimes Arguments, were summaries of the entertainment, and they accompanied productions thought to need extra elucidation: court entertainments, academic

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entertainments, masques, puppet-shows, and, occasionally, public theatre performances. (Documents 65) Such ‘paratexts’ performed a function similar to that of Davenant’s printed texts, acting as a marker or guide for the playgoer’s imagination. They ‘mediated theatrical performance’ for the playgoer and ‘were designed to be disseminated before production and read during it’ (Stern, Documents 66). In the Renaissance, itinerant booksellers appear to have capitalised on the need to provide pre-performance entertainment to those literate playgoers who arrived early at public playhouses to secure seats. It seems unlikely that printed versions of the day’s entertainments would be sold (companies tending not to print their plays until such a time as the performances themselves ceased to be profitable), but it is particularly attractive in the context of travel plays to entertain Stern’s suggestion that these booksellers circulated texts whose subject matter related to the day’s performance. Stern notes that it is ‘unclear what control, if any, the theater had over the contents of the merchants’ tray’ and provocatively asks: Did traders agree to promote useful or significant texts to the performance? Alternatively, might they acquire ‘relevant’ texts themselves as part of good-salesmanship? In other words, was there a direct relationship between performance and playhouse-books or a casual and random one? (‘Watching’ 140) The possibilities are intriguing: did playgoers at performances of The Travels of the Three English Brothers have the opportunity to purchase Anthony Nixon’s pamphlet The Three English Brothers, which recounted the Shirleys’ exploits and was the principle source used by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins? Were playgoers at The Tempest able to read accounts of New World expeditions before the play commenced? We cannot be sure, though we can at least suppose that if Arguments circulated at private entertainments, and vaguely relevant texts circulated at public entertainments, then a proportion of Renaissance playgoers (however small) had their experience of the theatre shaped in part by printed text. When Davenant issued scripts and exegeses of his entertainments as a promotional strategy and an aid to the imagination, he was building on a convention that had already been established to some extent in the Renaissance.

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In addition to the printed texts, Davenant makes extensive use of another kind of ‘marker’ in establishing his setting: the title pages of Peru and Drake intimate that they were ‘[e]xpressed by instrumental and vocal music, and by art of perspectives in scenes’ (Clare, Drama 241, 269). The issue of scenic representation and stage technologies holds obvious importance for my argument about mind-travelling at the theatre, because the nature of theatrical engagement must have shifted somewhat with the introduction of such visual augmentations. Peru opens with a ‘landscape of the West Indies’ which Davenant is careful to distinguish from other regions ‘by the parched and bare tops of distant hills, by sands shining on the shore of rivers, and the natives, in feathered habits and bonnets carrying, in Indian baskets, ingots of gold and wedges of silver’ (1.3–6). This same frontispiece was recycled for Drake, in which Davenant notes ‘it was convenient to continue it, our argument being in the same country’ (1.7–8) – despite the fact that much of the entertainment is set in Panama, as well as Peru. As Jeffrey Mark observes, The significant point to notice, in connection with these plays, is the part which stage machinery and scenic effect played in them. This would be due, in some measure, to the successful precedent already established by Inigo Jones in the Court masques of the early Stuart Kings, but Davenant himself, was naturally in favour of the innovations, and no doubt felt that they were completely in accordance with certain growing symptoms in the popular taste. (248) Whilst it would be foolish to deny that such advances had an impact on aesthetics and imaginative activity, caution should be exercised in describing the degree of novelty attributable to such changes. The impact of scenery must have been felt most keenly in the public theatres, which had not been treated to the extravagances routinely involved in Court masques. Nevertheless, tantalising evidence suggests that even the public theatre was not altogether void of visual effects. We have already seen that Henslowe’s 1598 properties list included ‘the sittie of Rome’, probably for use in Marlowe’s Faustus. This same list also included an item called ‘Belendon stable’ (Henslowe 319) apparently associated with horse thieving and evidently belonging to the lost Admiral’s Men play of 1594, ‘Bellendon’ or ‘Belin Dun’. Roslyn Knutson has plausibly suggested that this item may actually be Malone’s mistranscription for ‘Belendons table’, and hence evocative of the town

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‘Dunstable’ which was named after the thief, Belin Dun (see Lost Plays Database). But how were the city of Rome and the town of Dunstable depicted on stage? One explanation conceivably lies in the use of periaktoi: stage machinery of the revolving, prism-shaped type, with each of the three sides depicting a different scene as befits the action on stage. Citing a marginal note (‘this deuise was not vnlike the motion of late yeares to be seene in the black friers’; 61n) from Abraham Fleming’s translation of Virgil’s Georgics (1598), William E. Miller concluded long ago that ‘Inigo Jones was not the first in England to make use of periaktoi, and that in fact the old Blackfriars Theater was furnished with one or more of them’ (65). Unfortunately a dearth of evidence makes it difficult to decide whether the small number of references to them were because the spectacular periaktoi were not actually used or because they were used so frequently that playgoers failed to comment upon them. Stephen Orgel suggests that periaktoi were deployed at the Oxford entertainments of August 1605, when the lost plays ‘Alba’ (Robert Burton) and ‘Ajax Flagellifer’ (Anon.), and the extant Vertumnus (Matthew Gwinne) and The Queen’s Arcadia (Samuel Daniel), were performed for a royal visitation: For these classical texts [Inigo] Jones created what he understood to be a classical stage, with periaktoi and other scenic machines, so that (a spectator records) ‘not only for separate performances given on different days, but for a single play, new settings of the entire stage were made to appear with a diversity and suddenness that astonished everyone.’ … Jones used his periaktoi to create a realistic Italian setting for the tragedy [‘Ajax Flagellifer’] and an emblematic Elizabethan one for the comedy [Vertumnus]. What was similar about them was the really crucial innovation, the use of perspective for both. (376–7) But another spectator, Sir Isaac Wake, provides a more detailed account of the performance of ‘Ajax Flagellifer’ which apparently undermines Orgel’s inference, in that it suggests the use of scenic hangings rather than periaktoi: [O]n account of the variety of the matter, the whole fabric of the stage and the artful apparatus of the embroidered hangings were renewed again and again to the amazement of all. Where just now you had gazed on the living image of Troy and the Trojan shore, soon afterward

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you would see woods and deserts, horrific caves and the dwellings of the Furies, and while these were immediately vanishing, (you would see) unexpectedly the very agreeable appearance of tents and of ships. (1023) Wake’s account of ‘hung’ stage scenery is supported by John Corye’s The generous enemies, or, The ridiculous lovers a comedy (1672), in which the Prologue reminds his Restoration playgoers that: Your Aged Fathers came to Plays for Wit, And sat Knee-deep in Nut-shells in the Pit. Course Hangings then in stead of Scenes were worn, And Kidderminster did the Stage Adorn. (A3) Gurr does not comment on the use of such scenic hangings or carpettapestries (‘Kidderminster’) beyond commenting on their function in concealing inner spaces onstage, and noting that ‘[a]tmospherics in a metaphorical sense appeared in the stage hangings, which might be black for a tragedy’ (Shakespearian Stage 186). His scepticism about the use of scenery on public stages is based on pragmatic concerns: elaborate Court scenery was costly to make, took too long (days) to set up to be a viable option for public playhouses, and would seem to be dispensable given that many Court plays migrated to the commercial theatres where they were performed without such visual trappings (Shakespearean Stage 200–2). Yet presumably there was some truth to Corye’s claim, and some explanation is still required for the presence of Rome and Dunstable in Henslowe’s papers. Whether periaktoi, cloth hangings, or something else entirely, changeable scenes may well have adorned the Renaissance stage even at public theatres – though Court performances were the more usual domain for lavish scenery. The use of scenery in the later seventeenth century should therefore be treated as a proliferation or expansion of techniques already somewhat familiar to the playgoer of the earlier seventeenth century, and not as something wholly new. Renaissance playgoers had already experienced such stage apparatus in some limited capacity, and their imaginative engagement with plays must have already been conditioned to include such stimuli, at least in a primitive form. The Restoration stage aesthetics thus form a continuity with the Renaissance, an evolution. The widespread introduction of scenery in the public theatre was a significant change, but not a sudden and discrete change.

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What effect did this stage technology have upon the mind-travelling playgoer’s imagination? How did scenery or visual aids (elaborate or vague) affect the distribution of cognitive and imaginative labour at the theatre? Evidently there was some difference between Renaissance and Restoration experiences, for as the Prologue to Thomas Rawlins’s Tunbridge-Wells: or, A Dayes Courtship (1678) exclaims: …[S]ince th’invasion of the foreign Scene, Jack pudding Farce, and thundering Machine, … With what strange Ease a Play may now be writ, When the best half’s compos’d by painting it? (3–4 and 14–15) If Rawlins’s cynicism is taken to be representative, we must conclude that whatever scenic hangings or other perspective devices were used in the Renaissance were exceeded by the painted scenes gracing the later seventeenth-century stage. But what needs to be stressed is the danger of assuming that as more detailed scenery was introduced, audiences became more passively entertained and contributed less imaginative input to the creation of theatrical alterity. It is too easy to assume that scenery did the work for playgoers, just as the visual dimension did for television viewers, and that the collaborative labour of mind-travelling at the theatre consequently diminished. As Dryden makes clear in his ‘Essay of Dramatick Poesie’ painted scenery assists the imagination – but it also has the potential to hinder the illusion if it is not carefully managed: [W]e sufficiently understand that the Scenes which represent Cities and Countries to us, are not really such, but onely painted on boards and Canvass: But shall that excuse the ill Painture or designment of them; Nay rather ought they not to be labour’d with so much the more diligence and exactness to help the imagination? since the mind of man does naturally tend to Truth; and therefore the nearer any thing comes to the imitation of it, the more it pleases. (67) Thus whilst settings were becoming more elaborate, vicarious tourism at the theatre was still a labour-intensive experience for the playgoer. Visual scenery was a supplement but not a substitute for the imagination.

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In Davenant’s The First Days Entertainment at Rutland-House (1655), we have a concise summary of the theatrical mind-travelling experience as formulated by Davenant himself. The cynic Diogenes objects to scenic ‘deception of motion, and transposition of Lights’, ‘imaginary Woods and Meadows’, and ‘Seas, where you have no ships’ (17). The poet Aristophanes retorts, in defence of Davenantian scenery, that it is not deception ‘where we are prepar’d and consent to be deceiv’d. Nor is there much loss in that deceit, where we gain some variety of experience by a short journey of the sight’ (38). Dryden concurs: ‘I will not deny but by the variation of painted Scenes, the fancy (which in these cases will contribute to its own deceit) may sometimes imagine it several places, with some appearance of probability’ (‘Essay’ 18).3 The playgoer is prepared and consents to be deceived; in return for which they gain valuable experience from their ‘short journey of the sight’. As with Dekker’s choric injunction, ‘Thither transport your eyes, and there behold him, / Reuelling with the Emperour of the East’ (Fortunatus 2.0.31–2; see Chapter 2), Davenant’s Aristophanes is hinting at the active nature of playgoing, as the audience is asked to make a journey of the sight (if not the body). Such activity is necessary because whilst Davenant’s scenery was realistic and detailed, it was not entirely congruous with the scene it accompanied, and nor was it always sufficient to neatly contain the action of the entertainment. Referring to John Webb’s scenery for Act 1, scene 1 of Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes (1656), which depicts a panoramic view of the city and harbour, with the Turkish fleet visible in the distant background (see Figure 5.1 below), William Grant Keith observes that: ‘The whole of the action here takes place within the city, but Webb’s scene is of Rhodes seen from without, for in this instance, as in all, save one, of the later acts, the scenery serves simply as an illustration of the action, and not its actual setting’ (91). Paradoxically, scenery may thus have been a hindrance to realism, incongruous as it often was with the scene itself, even if it imparted a flavour of exoticism to the entertainment. The opening scenery of Peru included an arch ‘upon the top of which is written, in an antique shield, Peru’ (1.1–2); a device not unlike the boards sometimes hung above the Renaissance stage to indicate the location of the scene (see Stern, ‘Watching’ 148–51). As Davenant explains, ‘[t]he design of the frontispiece is, by way of preparation, to give some notice of that argument which is pursued in the scene’ (1.6–7). In other words, the scenery prompts the audience – much like an expository chorus figure – to engage imaginatively with the general

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Figure 5.1

Detail from ‘1. Sceane Rhodes: A Shutter’, designed by John Webb

Source: © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

locality of the scene; it does not purport to simulate the precise surroundings of the action: These blaring geographical escutcheons remind members of Davenant’s audience that they bear a higher burden than most spectators when it comes to recognizing and reconciling gaps and incongruities. They point up the immense, even absurd, chasm dividing the modest theater buildings of the Interregnum and the grand international pageants that Davenant tried to stage within them. (Cope 13) Thus whilst this new, perspectival stage is still cognitively rich (like the physical environment of the Renaissance stage), it is a different type of richness and it makes new and different demands on the audience’s imagination. On the one hand, it purports to provide a higher degree of realism in spectacle and thus absorb the cognitive effort required of playgoers to imagine the exotic scene; but on the other hand, it

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specifies to an unprecedented extent the basis of the location without then providing an accurate depiction of the setting for each and every scene. More than that, individual scenes themselves are not constrained by the painted scenery, as the Siege of Rhodes example above intimates. The playgoer is forced to imaginatively construct the absent settings by inference. Sir Francis Drake provides excellent examples of this extra-perspectival scenery in action, revealing the limitations of the physical stage relative to the unbridled imaginations of the playgoers: Sir Francis Drake opens with ‘Drake Jr.’ sending his bosun climbing up a pinnacle so as to get a better view of the oncoming ships in the painted scene than that afforded to the audience. Drake Jr.’s posture implies the reality rather than the mere ocularity of the scene, as if young Drake could really get a better look from above. Davenant implies that the scene is actually in motion, that there are events happening within as well as upon it. A few lines later we shimmy up to ‘the top-Gallant of that Tree’ to experience an even more esoteric prospect: a stunningly complex real-life view, in realtime motion, from a remote vantage point, of a scene painted in a fixed-perspective for a fixed audience [1.41]. Drake Senior soon clambers up yet another tree to view the undiscovered oceans of the west, as though one could actually see beyond and travel through the painted scene, beyond the immediate vista, to peer into Drake’s future real discoveries [4.1–50]. (Cope 10–11) The scope of the action exceeds the physical bounds of the stage, even when that stage is augmented with perspectival scenery. Dessen argued (of the Renaissance stage) that playgoers had to infer actions synecdochically in the spirit of ‘as if’, but it seems that Restoration audiences also had to infer the settings, albeit in a slightly different manner. Scenery acts as a form of external memory, a scaffolding to facilitate the playgoer’s creation of meaning, but not as a replacement for that meaning creation. Scenery provides a concise summary of location in picture form (for example, ‘tropical’, ‘Edenic’), which reduces the cognitive load associated with imagining a setting, but it is only a transitory step in the creation of mental images. The imaginative burden remains with the playgoer; scenery is simply another form of stage technology and another cognitive artefact.

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Similar extra-perspectival episodes also occurred in Renaissance plays, where players gestured beyond the empty stage to describe sights unseen by the audience. In Eastward Ho, the butcher’s apprentice Slitgut explains that he is climbing ‘up to the top of this famous tree ... to advance this crest of my master’s occupation’ when he ‘discover[s] from this lofty prospect what pranks the rude Thames plays in her desperate lunacy’ in the wake of the ‘furious tempest’ (4.1.7–8, 22–3, 12). Van Fossen suggests that the tree was ‘probably a pole erected for the scene, possibly a column that was a permanent feature of the upper stage’ (227). Like Davenant’s characters relating the view beyond that afforded to the audience by the painted scenery, Slitgut describes the struggles of Security to reach the shore at Cuckold’s Haven. Of course, Security may be forcing his way through the groundlings towards Slitgut (Van Fossen 227), in which case the description of his struggle is accompanied by a visual depiction, but Slitgut might also be looking off stage, thus forcing the audience to imagine what he describes. As the scene progresses, Slitgut provides a panoramic view of the Thames and London, from Security on the south bank, to Winifred (at Saint Katharine’s) and Quicksilver (at Wapping) on the north bank. Winifred and Quicksilver’s rescues are not shown on stage, but are instead described by Slitgut in vivid detail: O, how she swims like a mermaid! Some vigilant body look out and save her! That’s well said; just where the priest fell in, there’s one sets down a ladder, and goes to take her up. God’s blessing o’ thy heart boy; now take her up in thy arms and to bed with her. She’s up, she’s up! She’s a beautiful woman, I warrant her; the billows durst not devour her. (4.1.75–82) The rescues of Petronel and Seagull at the Isle of Dogs are not described, but Slitgut declares ‘yet will I keep my prospect a while, to see if any more have been shipwrecked’ (4.1.132–4). He later describes his post the ‘farthest-seeing sea-mark of the world’ and claims he can ‘see two miles about me’ (4.1.316–17). The principle of describing for the audience a view they cannot see is common to Eastward Ho and Sir Francis Drake, but in Drake the painted scenery introduces an intermediary step – the scenery does not relieve the player of the need to articulate what he ‘sees’ beyond the confines of the stage. Counter-intuitively, then, whilst it might be expected that a sceneryrich stage would alleviate the imaginative burden of the playgoer,

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during the later seventeenth century it actually continued to encourage activity, albeit in new ways. Whilst the playwright could now present the audience with an exotic vista to dazzle the senses, this enabling innovation created new demands of its own. A ‘landscape of the West Indies’ replete with exotic vegetation and peoples might afford a more realistic glimpse of the New World than an untravelled playgoer could imagine unaided, but this glimpse is literally a ‘background’: it gestures to the world surrounding it and demands further interpretation and engagement, unlike television, which Fussell notes ‘does it all for the “viewer” – or stationary tourist’ (45). Seemingly to ease the audience into their new imaginative/ cognitive roles (relative to the new scenery), the playgoers are provided with cues by the players to learn how to participate effectively in the playing system, just as an apprentice player ‘who is told “here, sirrah, approach” knows what he is to do’ (Tribble, ‘Distributing Cognition’ 154). In the Second Entry of Peru, ‘a fleet is discerned at distance, with a prospect of the sea and Indian coast’ (2.2–3). Two Indians enter and instead of facing the audience, gaze ‘on the face of the scene’, admiring ‘the sight of the ships’ and beholding with lament the (painted images of) their countrymen ‘in deep affliction’ over the arrival of the Spaniards (2.68–72). The Indians are both actors in the drama and figures for the audience, teaching playgoers how to respond affectively and imaginatively to the painted scenery. The playgoers must follow the players’ examples and actively participate in the action of the story. They are thus inducted into the modified playing system and taught how to use the imaginative technology of perspectival scenery. In Peru and Drake, the playgoers are prepared by the off-site marker of the exegetical printed text, by the cues given by the players who interact with the ‘reality’ rather than the ‘ocularity’ of the scenery, and by the expository speeches which have assisted the distribution of cognition and imagination in the theatre in virtually all travel plays. That they consent to be deceived is evident from their very presence at the theatre, which signifies their willingness to be immersed in exotic subject matter. What they gain from their ‘short journey of the sight’ can only be the pleasure of experiencing a foreign shore; for as Davenant’s Diogenes correctly notes, ‘you are sure to get nothing by the Victory’ in a great battle seen at the theatre (17) – just as audiences of Tamburlaine gained none of his spoils yet travelled imaginatively with Marlowe. Playgoers can expect only a profit of the imagination from an excursion to the playhouse, and clearly this sufficed.

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Sightseeing and morality in Saint-Évremond’s Sir Politick Would-be Although earlier Renaissance travel plays had overtly dwelled on the exemplary morality of their voyaging protagonists, for political reasons the moral emphasis in Davenant’s texts shifted away from the individual’s method of travel to the virtues of the drama’s ostensible message. With the rise of the Grand Tour and the decreased attention paid to the morality of voyaging per se, it might be expected that the path was clear for idle sightseeing to become a defensible rather than exceptional activity. However, it is in the collaboratively authored Restoration comedy, Sir Politick Would-be (c. 1662–65), that we find the most sustained debate about the conduct of travellers and the merits of travel. Composed in French c. 1662–65 but first published in the Œvres Meslées of Charles de Saint-Denis, Sieur de Saint-Évremond in 1705, Sir Politick Would-be has been ascribed to Saint-Évremond, Buckingham, and Ludovic Stuart (Seigneur d’Aubigny) since the 1705 edition of SaintÉvremond’s Œvres Meslées, where a note affirms that ‘Le dernier Duc de Buckingham & Mr. d’Aubigny ont eu beaucoup de part à la Composition de cette Piéce’ (i.253, qtd in Hall and Kirsop 124). The collaborative nature of the composition was subsequently reinforced in Pierre Des Maizeaux’s biography of Saint-Évremond (1714), which explains that all three men ‘clubb’d part of the Characters, which Mr. de St. Evremond reduc’d into Form’ (Des Maizeaux xl, qtd in Hall and Kirsop 124). Whether Buckingham actually had a hand in composing the text is unknown, but as Hall and Kirsop observe, ‘Buckingham’s enthusiasm for Ben Jonson is well documented and the probability is good that he was the source of Saint-Évremond’s interest in writing a Jonsonian comedy’ (125). It is unknown whether the play was ever performed (Hall and Kirsop 125), and even its most recent editors note that ‘Sir Politick Would-be remains almost totally unknown to English-language readers and critics’ (Hall and Kirsop 123).4 As with Jonson’s Volpone, from which the titular character of Sir Politick Would-be is borrowed, character takes precedence over plot in this spinoff play. Sir Politic and his wife have barely aged since their Jonsonian adventures, but the Restoration play is set ‘at least a generation later: around 1628, the year in which the first Duke of Buckingham was assassinated and the second duke was born’ (Hall and Kirsop 125). Of Jonson’s original dramatis personae, only Sir Pol and Lady Would-be are reincarnated in the new play. The revived Sir Politic is even more Quixotic than his Jonsonian predecessor; an English traveller, Lord

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Tancred, describes him as ‘an English knight, whom books on politics have made mad and who for ten years has been a source of merriment at the English court’ (5.3.17–19). Sir Politic’s Wife is ‘serious, demure, blundering in speech and in politics; in discretion, foolishly mysterious’ (3.7.9–10). The remaining characters include Monsieur and Madame de Riche-Source (a scheming French businessman and his wife), a German Traveller, Le Marquis de Bousignac (a French traveller), the aforementioned Lord Tancred (an English traveller), and various Venetians. The plot is suitably Jonsonian: Sir Politic and Monsieur de RicheSource have their conversation about Venetian politics and business schemes mistaken for conspiracy, are spied upon, and eventually brought before the Senate; meanwhile the women take pity on domestically imprisoned Venetian housewives, plan a ball for them, and extend an invitation to the Doge’s wife and the Senators’ wives. At the ball, the men substitute a Madam for the Doge’s wife and her girls for the Senators’ wives. In terms of setting, the newer play paints a picture of a Venetian society that is superficial and indulgent, a place of leisure and vice redolent of Coryate’s famed reports of Venetian courtesans and idle pleasures. Lord Tancred asks his Italian friend Antonio to procure ‘some pretty whores’ for him (1.4.43) (‘You mean courtesans’, Antonio quickly replies; 1.4.44). Antonio proceeds to invite Tancred to a Venetian banquet, which he explains is all about appearances: Your lordship is speaking still in the rude manner of France and England, where friends are invited to a repast to drink and to eat. Our nation has manners more refined. You will eat at home beforehand, or upon your return, as you think best. Our banquets here are fashioned for visual delight. (1.4.63–7) Antonio’s plans for the feast include napkins folded like ‘all sorts of fish and various birds’ (1.4.77) and a spectacular pastry, ‘at the opening of which a thousand birds emerge and fly about the room, to the great satisfaction of spectators, delighted by something so surprising’ (1.4.80–2). Tancred is struck by the Venetian manner: ‘I am delighted by all your curiosities. That is how to dine urbanely: not like our boors, who find in the repast the mere pleasure of eating’ (1.4.99–101). Venice also remains a setting of dangerous Italianate immorality; Le Marquis de Bousignac (a French traveller) ultimately resolves to leave for France where he has ‘always got off with a duel’ – in Venice, by contrast,

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underhand tactics are sanctioned, and ‘it’s a dagger or poison – all with honour and according to the rules’ (5.5.20–2). More importantly for this study, much of the dialogue of this play is concerned with the art of travelling well; more so, even, than in Jonson’s Volpone. We learn very early in the piece that the German Traveller is a keen sightseer, unlike the French Marquis de Bousignac, who prefers the older mode of travel structured around meeting and conversing with wise men: THE GERMAN. THE MARQUIS.

THE GERMAN. THE MARQUIS.

Let us not waste time, I beg you, and today see some attraction. And I, let us walk about, I beg you. We shall have only too many opportunities in Venice for seeing attractions. A little conversation. What do you call conversation? Time spent in talking! I have not come from Germany simply to talk. All your attractions are not worth fifteen minutes of colloquy. (2.1.1–9)

It is revealed that the Marquis’s reason for travel is escape. He explains that he visited England once to flee scandal and heartbreak at home in France: ‘Inconsolable in the commotion, I decided to travel during her absence and went to England intending to remain there for some time’ (2.1.121–3). The insults of the Englishmen proved too much for the Marquis to endure, however, and he soon departed for Italy instead. Tancred, whom the German tells us ‘has travelled a lot’ (2.1.160–1), praises this as a prudent choice, noting that ‘[t]here is a big difference between England and Italy to satisfy a traveller’s curiosity’ (2.1.149–50). Nevertheless, the German and the Marquis continue to fight throughout the play over the best way to travel: THE GERMAN.

You spoke many useless words just now to the Duke of Buckingham’s cousin. Did a simple greeting not suffice? If you wish to extend your acquaintance, you have to go out and drink with folk. That is how you make friendships, and it is not by babbling on in public piazzas. But for you, I should have seen at least four churches and more than twenty tombs with epitaphs.

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THE MARQUIS. By God, you do go on at me! And did I not prefer association with a gentleman to having seen the entire Arsenal of Venice? I say the Arsenal; for if perhaps I have any curiosity, it is for things concerned with war. To see you, you Messieurs the Germans, solemn and serious as you are, one would take you for Catos; and you are a hundred times madder than we are, or I’ll be damned. To come two hundred leagues to fill a notebook with inscriptions and epitaphs! Fine curiosity! I have not said to you anything about it, but you have been pestering me for a long time with your clocks. I don’t give a damn, Messieurs, for your little masterpieces; and indeed I hold all the curiosities of Italy beneath the notice of a man of honour. What do I care about knowing the original, the copy; the ancient, the modern; and a hundred other sorts of such claptrap? Would I be better placed at Court if I knew which is the greater master, Michael or Angelo? Raphael or Urbino? If I returned to Paris with a knowledge of such stupidities, may God never pity me if the ladies wouldn’t drive me from their alcoves and the courtiers from their private rooms. Ours is a refined country; and there, there is no way that one could be knowledgeable about anything at all and not be taken for a pedant. I mean in polite society. (3.1.2–25) Unable to resolve their differences, the German and the Marquis turn to Sir Politic’s wife to adjudicate ‘which is the better way to travel’ (3.2.17–18). Initially hesitant about her qualifications for such a task, Sir Politic’s wife attempts to recall her husband’s insights on travel: ‘Firstly, one must know the laws and customs of the countries where one goes. I am always hearing Sir Politic say so’ (3.2.24–6). Tellingly, the Marquis retorts: ‘Let’s leave that to Sir Politic. We are simple travellers who do not care to muddle our heads with very difficult things’ (3.2.27–8) – sentiments scarcely heard of, let alone articulated, in the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1611, Coryate was exceptional in absolving himself from the task of documenting political details of foreign countries by claiming he was no statesman; now the Marquis confidently declares, ‘For my part, I want no affairs of state: neither in Venice, nor in Paris upon my return’ (3.2.32–3).

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The Marquis’s sentiments should probably be taken with a grain of salt though, designed as they are to create a favourable impression with Sir Politic’s wife. If anything, the Marquis’s preferred activities when travelling seem perilously close to the ‘affairs of state’ he claims to shun. Shortly after these comments, he declares: ‘Curiosity to see marbles, tombs, statues, such was never the point of my travels. One seeks acquaintance with foreign courts in order to see whether one can achieve anything there. One seeks the acquaintance of gentlemen, and ladies’ (3.2.164–7). The Marquis ingratiates himself with local dignitaries by dining at local taverns and joining their conversations by flattering their tastes: ‘I stuff myself with pudding to my heart’s discontent in order to win theirs’ (3.2.230–1). He seeks to make acquaintances and advance himself in the host society; this is not quite the same as talking to wise men for intellectual profit, and probably not what Thomas Neale had in mind when he wrote: ‘Let therfore a wise man abstaine from the ordinary and confused company of men, and let him endeavour to consort himselfe with those, from whom he may receave profitable information’ (49–50). The Marquis rather prefers to make himself ‘master of the conversation’ (3.2.240–1) by speaking louder and louder until someone notices him. The German’s position, however, does reveal some substantial changes in acceptable attitudes to travel, and does virtually eschew politics. It has now become possible to assert that ‘It is the usual custom in Germany to travel’: As soon as we have learned the Latin language, we get ready for the tour. The first thing to be acquired is an itinerary which shows the routes; the second, a little book with information on the curiosities in each country. Whenever our travellers are men of letters, they are equipped on departure with a well-bound book of blank pages called an Album Amicorum and do not fail to visit the scholars in all the places they go and present it for them to sign their names, which normally they do with the addition of some sententious words and an expression of good will in all sorts of languages. There is nothing that we do not do to obtain that honour, believing that it is a thing as unusual as it is instructive to have met those learned men, who are so much acclaimed in the world, and to possess a specimen of their handwriting. (3.2.40–52) The German’s mode of travel is clearly indebted to the ars apodemica tradition, even though it has progressed to a more widespread affair

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with the advent of the Grand Tour. His claim that learned Germans travel to seek wise men resonates with standard advice like that of Essex – that a traveller should ‘rather go an hundred miles to speake with one wise man, than fiue miles to see a fair Towne’ (Essex E8; see also Felltham 195–6; Lipsius B3v) – but it is now the domain of ‘men of letters’ rather than of all travellers, and the scholars are attractions whose signatures become souvenirs (see Schlueter). In fact, the German subsequently undercuts this assertion further when he admits ‘[i]t is not our custom to meet the people of the countries we visit, except a teacher to teach us the language’ (3.2.98–9). It appears the Germans are more interested in sightseeing than in learning. An itinerary and a book of information on the curiosities abroad are the only staple requirements for travellers, which suggests a routinised method of travel (it is a pre-planned and tested circuit, advertised en masse and attempted by the multitude) and the secular nature of the activity (now based on idle curiosity). The learning of Latin appears more a pragmatic prerequisite for travel than a noble pedagogic aspiration. As with Ortelius and Felltham (see Chapter 1), the German takes great pleasure in recording his daily activities (a character trait taken directly from Sir Pol in Volpone): ‘We have also a diary, in which we write our remarks as soon as we say them. We seldom wait until the evening, but no German traveller has ever gone to bed without committing to paper what he has seen during the day’ (3.2.58–61). And here, with his perhaps accidental emphasis on eyesight (‘what he has seen during the day’), the German reveals an important shift in travel – the personal diary now frequently records sights rather than wisdom, and it does so obsessively: ‘There is no edifice, no monument’ that escapes the voracious appetite of the German Traveller (3.2.70), whose itinerary is so exhaustive that he admits, ‘On our tours we do not dine’ (3.2.78). He is, as Quentin Manning Hope observes, ‘one of the first tourists to appear in satiric literature anywhere’ (241). The purpose of travel for the German is simply ‘Looking abroad for the curiosities which we do not have at home’ (3.2.100–1), and instead of receiving censure, as it was likely to have done earlier in the century, he receives the endorsement of Sir Politic’s wife: ‘It is a splendid occupation to be a traveller, when it is done as you do it’ (3.2.143–4). To her observation that ‘it is laborious’ to fit so many sights into an itinerary, the German responds, ‘No profit without labour’ (3.2.145), ironically adopting what was originally an anti-sightseeing sentiment and deploying it in defence of sightseeing. The ‘infinite curiosity which does not neglect the slightest thing in an entire nation’ (Sir Politic’s wife, 3.2.258) has been normalised where

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once it was derided if not coupled with intellectual rigour and an awareness of Classical history. Perhaps it is coincidental that this emphasis on sight in travel is concomitant with the popularisation of perspectival scenery in public playhouses, but I suspect these developments both derive from the same shift in taste and norms in early modern society. Empirical science’s emphasis on ocular verification had become firmly established, and larger numbers of the English public were ‘touring’ the Continent on a secular pilgrimage to the sites of Classical antiquity. Typically they were accompanied by a tutor or guide from England, which raises questions about how, precisely, they hoped to improve their education by touring, unless it was by seeing what these tutors could otherwise describe to them at home. The value accorded to sight and to spectacle appears to have undergone significant reappraisal in the mid- to late seventeenth century, especially in the context of ‘leisure’ activities or ‘departures’ (the theatre, touring) from negotium.

Dryden’s aesthetics and the theatre-as-prospective-glass It is in this climate of a re-established theatrical scene in London, coupled with the rise in leisure travel and the attendant debates over the merits of such pastimes, that we find the most sustained theoretical treatments of the role of the stage in creating a vicarious travel experience. Historical and political forces clearly affected the production of this drama, and Hutner has brilliantly illustrated how for Dryden, the Spanish conquest of the Americas functions in part ‘as a royalist allegory of Charles II’s restoration’, and that ‘[f]oreign adventure is depicted as a means to overcome internal divisions at home and secure an unprecedented and cleansed English prosperity’ (76). She thus locates important ideological points of difference between Dryden and his predecessors, including (most immediately) Davenant. However, I want to turn to Dryden and Howard’s writings to emphasise the aesthetic continuity in voyage drama over the course of the seventeenth century, and to examine the theory underpinning such representations of the exotic, as expressed self-consciously in the playwrights’ own words. Montezuma’s epilogue to Sir Robert Howard’s The Indian Queen (1664) provides a concise metatheatrical summary of the role of voyage drama in the early Restoration.5 It bears quoting at length: You see what Shifts we are inforc’d to try To help out Wit with some Variety;

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Shows may be found that never yet were seen, ’Tis hard to finde such Wit as ne’re has been: You have seen all that this old World cou’d do, We therefore try the fortune of the new, And hope it is below your aim to hit At untaught Nature with your practic’d Wit: Our naked Indians then, when Wits appear, Wou’d as soon chuse to have the Spaniards here: ’Tis true, y’have marks enough, the Plot, the Show, The Poets Scenes, nay, more, the painters too: If all this fail, considering the cost, ’Tis a true Voyage to the Indies lost: But if you smile on all, then these designs, Like the imperfect Treasure of our Mindes, Will pass for currant wheresoe’re they go, When to your bounteous hands their stamps they owe. (1–18) The speech begins by explaining that the exotic subject matter of the just-concluded play was chosen in the hope of tapping into a rich and original vein of narrative, much as William Prynne had earlier criticised playwrights for doing: Doe not Play-Poets and common Actors (the Divels chiefest Factors) rake earth and hell it selfe; doe not they travell over Sea and Land; over all Histories, poemes, countries, times and ages for unparalleld villanies, that so they may pollute the Theater with all the hideous obscenities, with all the detestable matchlesse impieties, which hitherto men or Divels have either actually perpetrated, or fabulously divulged? (92) But even if it was only necessity that had driven the authors to choose a foreign setting, the mind-travelling principles remain constant. The playgoers have ‘marks enough’ (a term uncannily anticipative of MacCannell’s ‘markers’) in the provision of ‘the Plot, the Show, / The Poets Scenes, nay, more, the painters too’ (11–12), and the distribution of labour at the theatre is still clearly shared with the active playgoer, even though (as Montezuma hastens to add) the painters are now providing some of the markers that the playgoer relies upon. Evidently the addition of painters’ scenes (that is, perspectival scenery) to the playwrights’ lyrical scene was an expensive inclusion: ‘If all this fail,

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considering the cost, / ’Tis a true Voyage to the Indies lost’ (13–14). Samuel Pepys, too, famously commented on the fact that The Indian Queen exceeded even Henry the Eighth for show (345). Yet as the final quatrain of the epilogue reiterates, despite these attractive augmentations of the stage the success of Howard’s representation of the exotic ultimately still depends on the activity of the playgoers: only if they ‘smile on all’ (15) will these designs ‘pass for currant’ as lively depictions (17), rather than static friezes. In 1665, Dryden produced The Indian Emperour, a sequel of sorts to The Indian Queen, set twenty years after the earlier play’s events and with only two of the original characters, but evidently intended as a continuation nonetheless. As with Davenant’s reuse of Peru scenery in Drake, Dryden’s Prologue informs the playgoers that ‘The Scenes are old, the Habits are the same / We wore last year, before the Spaniards came’ (5–6). The physical markers of the stage (the painted scenery and the actors’ costumes) were thus the same, and included such genuinely New World articles as the ‘glorious wreaths’ of feathers used by Indians for ‘their heads, necks, arms, and legs’, brought back from Surinam by Aphra Behn, and given by her to the King’s Theatre for The Indian Queen (Behn, Oroonoko 7). The reuse of costumes and scenery in The Indian Emperour had the advantage not only of minimising expenses, but of activating exotic associations already fixed in the playgoers’ imaginations by the previous play, and thus lowering the imaginative burden for this new performance. Despite the implicit claims of distinctive originality that Dryden makes in his prefatory letter to Princess Anne – namely, that Montezuma’s story is ‘perhaps the greatest, which was ever represented in a Poem of this nature; (the action of it including the Discovery and Conquest of a New World)’ (25) – there were theatrical precursors dramatising the conquest of the New World. Davenant’s aforementioned Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, which premiered in 1658, had recently been reprised as a self-contained Act in Davenant’s The Playhouse to be Let (August 1663) at Lincoln’s Inn Fields – just months before The Indian Queen debuted at the Theatre Royal, and around a year and a half before The Indian Emperour (April 1665). The California editors (Harrington Smith et al.) note that Dryden’s audience ‘could be expected to notice these similarities’ in subject matter and setting, especially in the Prologue (Indian Queen 302), and MacMillan goes so far as to propose Davenant’s entertainment as a source for Dryden (357). Hutner accounts for the narrative differences between Dryden and Davenant’s retellings of Mexican history by noting the influence of their differing political

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climates: ‘In Dryden’s plays the Spanish and the English are not pitted against one another; instead, English politics are symbolically grafted onto the Spanish and native wars’ (75). She further notes that ‘Dryden’s positive treatment of Cortes’, which contrasts so strikingly with Davenant’s depiction of the cruelty of the Spanish, ‘may be the result of Charles II’s relationship with Spain’ during his exile (75). Whilst the politics might change and influence the dramatists’ narratives, the staging of alterity continued to be predicated on a pact of collaborative labour with the playgoer. Though neither Davenant nor Dryden acknowledge it (perhaps they were unaware), there was also an anonymous Latin manuscript play, Montezuma sive Mexici Imperii Occasus, in the repertory of the English College of St Omers, Pas de Calais, which dealt with Cortez and Montezuma – possibly written by Jesuit playwright Joseph Simons (1594–1671; alias of Emmanuel Lobb). Even more intriguing is the evidence for a lost Admiral’s men play, ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ (1601), by John Day, William Haughton, and Wentworth Smith. From Samuel Rowley’s letter to Henslowe (in which he claims ‘I dow not doute but It wyll be a verye good playe’; Henslowe 294), it appears that five sheets of the play had been written by 4 April 1601, but Henslowe was still paying for properties nine months later, on 21 January 1601/2, thus the performance dates remain uncertain.6 The likely source for the play, entered in the Stationers’ Register as The Conquest of the West Indies by HERNANDO COURTIS on 28 January 1596, is Thomas Nicholls’s reprinted translation of Lopez de Gomara’s The Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the West India, which details Hernando Cortez’s conquest of Mexico and the Aztec empire (see Lost Plays Database). Lopez de Gomara was also one of Dryden’s known sources, though probably in French.7 Just how the Admiral’s men play approached the same subject matter so artfully manipulated to different ends by Davenant and Dryden remains an elusive mystery, but in the context of post-Armada and pre-Jacobean England, it would seem likely that the Spanish conquerors were the object of scorn. Dryden’s Indian Emperour thus had a demonstrable stage history as one of a number of dramatisations of the conquest of the New World. As such, it must be understood as innovating within an established field spanning the seventeenth century, rather than as a completely novel theatrical experience localised entirely in the 1660s. The typically ‘Restoration’ elements of his play are largely confined to the plot; the process of representing his exotic setting still relies on techniques established by earlier voyage drama.8

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Accordingly, whilst Dryden’s play does exhibit traits peculiar to the time of composition, none of these radically affect the principles of travelling at the theatre. In depicting the story of Cortez and Montezuma, Dryden maintained an exotic flair throughout the five Acts but followed historical records closely only in 1.2 (the Spaniards’ arrival) and 5.2 (the torture of Montezuma). Even in these ostensibly historical scenes, he took considerable liberties, conflating the historical persons of Montezuma (Mexico) and Atahuallpa (Peru), and transposing Pizarro from Peru to Mexico so as to depict the Spaniards’ notorious cruelty to the New World natives whilst maintaining the heroic nature of his Spanish protagonist, Cortez. He justifies his handling of historical narratives by appealing to Aristotelian thought: I have neither wholly follow’d the truth of the History, nor altogether left it: but have taken all the liberty of a Poet, to adde, alter, or diminish, as I thought might best conduce to the beautifying of my work; it being not the business of a Poet to represent Historical truth, but probability. (Preface to Indian Emperour 25) Dryden’s aesthetics call for a compelling but not necessarily truthful depiction of events; his intention is ‘to delight the Age in which I live’ (Preface to Indian Emperour 7) – sentiments that accord with Aristotle’s empirical theory of the artistic ideal, which ‘maintains that the models and forms for artistic imitation are selected or abstracted from the objects of sense-perception’ (Abrams 36; see 31–42 more generally). Dryden thus depicts the ‘veridical’ rather than the ‘real’; la belle nature, or ‘nature improved’, rather than ‘real nature’ (Abrams 35). In drawing more heavily on the romance tradition than on historical narrative when crafting his heroic tragedy, Dryden does not appear concerned to help playgoers learn ‘at the play what is happening abroad’ as Swiss tourist Thomas Platter had suggested (Platter 170). Dryden is more concerned with handling Montezuma’s story in an engaging and entertaining fashion. Despite having collaborated on The Indian Queen, Howard and Dryden were soon to enter into a printed dispute about the underlying principles of staging foreign scenes and travelling at the theatre. The most pertinent part of the Dryden–Howard exchange is found in Dryden’s preface to the second edition of The Indian Emperour (1668), ‘A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie, being an Answer to the Preface of The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma’. Responding to Howard’s concerns

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about the unities of time and place, Dryden observes that ‘though the Stage cannot be two places, yet it may properly represent them, successively, or at several times’ (17). To prove this, Dryden distinguishes ‘place, as it relates to Plays, into real and imaginary’: ‘The real place is that Theater, or piece of ground on which the Play is acted. The imaginary, that House, Town, or Country where the action of the Drama is supposed to be; or more plainly, where the Scene of the Play is laid’ (17). Dryden does admit that ‘the imagination being Judge of what is represented, will in reason be less chocqu’d with the appearance of two rooms in the same house, or two houses in the same City, than with two distant Cities in the same Country, or two remote Countries in the same Universe’ (17–18), but maintains that these are all nevertheless viable possibilities, given the appropriate cognitive scaffolding: That the imagination of the Audience, aided by the words of the Poet, and painted Scenes, may suppose the Stage to be sometimes one place, sometimes another, now a Garden, or Wood, and immediately a Camp: which I appeal to every mans imagination, if it be not true. Neither the Ancients nor Moderns, as much Fools as he is pleased to think them, ever asserted that they could make one place two; but they might hope by the good leave of this Author, that the change of a Scene might lead the imagination to suppose the place alter’d. (17) In arguing for the successive representations of various places, Dryden clearly emphasises the collaborative nature of the endeavour. A negative corollary is found in fellow playwright Elkanah Settle’s 1687 objection to the scene changes in The Indian Emperour. Referring to the scene transition between 3.2 and 3.3, from a camp to the Indian country, Settle writes: What a mighty leap is here. Pray let me know how Cortez when he found Orbellan in his Tent, could be supposed with only changing the Scene, and not one word spoken to go out of his Pavilion, and reenter farr enough from the Camp for a General to fight a Duel; especially when ’tis supposed a Generals Tent lyes in the heart of the Camp, and the Taxallans Army was so numerous. (94–5) Clearly Settle was an uncooperative playgoer, whose passivity and refusal to travail at the theatre led to theatrical failure (in terms of his

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personal experience of Dryden’s play). Dryden no doubt had playgoers like Settle in mind when he cautiously stated the ‘restriction’ that the less extreme the scene change, the more convincing the experience for the audience: ‘the nearer and fewer the imaginary places are, the greater resemblance they will have to Truth: and Reason which cannot make them one, will be more easily led to suppose them so’ (19). Whilst Dryden might have claimed that ‘[n]either the Ancients nor Moderns … ever asserted that they could make one place two’ (17), Day, Rowley, and Wilkins apparently thought that they could make one place two – make one place three, in fact – when at the end of their The Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607) the Chorus appears as Fame, and gives each of the Sherley brothers a ‘prospective glass’ so that they ‘seem to see one another and offer to embrace’, despite Robert being in Persia, Sir Anthony in Spain, and Sir Thomas in England (13.11–12). The vague term ‘prospective’ (or ‘perspective’) glass pertains to a variety of optical equipment utilised and studied by crystallomancers like John Dee (see Shickman). Certainly the term ‘prospective glass’ could be used synonymously with ‘telescope’ – Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1661) defines ‘telescope’ as ‘Telescope (Gr.) an instrument enabling one to see afar off; a Prospective glass’ (n.p.) – but there appear to be a variety of alternative meanings attached to the term. The specific glasses used by the Sherley brothers in Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’s play seem less like telescopes than crystal balls which permit the viewers to see distant lands and people; a possibility which figured earlier in Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589–92), where Friar Bacon instructs Edward to look into a ‘prospective glass’ and see ‘what’s done in merry Fressingfield / ’Twixt lovely Peggy and the Lincoln earl’ (6.5–7). Sidney (to recall his objections to plays which ‘have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other’) would certainly have been troubled by the Sherleys’ dumbshow, but as I have been implicitly arguing throughout this study, the theatre itself essentially functions as a prospective glass which allows playgoers to ‘seem to see’ distant lands, just as mind-travelling readers see exotic shores through a cosmographical glass like that of William Cunningham. The aptness of this metaphor of the theatre-as-prospective-glass is reinforced by the frequent recourse made by early moderns to prospective glasses and crystal balls as reference points in metaphorical language. For example, in his instructional Words of advice… (1668), Thomas Vincent urged his reader to ‘[l]ook into the Gospel, which like a Prospective-glass will give you some view of the glory which is

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above; there you may perceive that Heaven’ (17). The Bible here is said to function analogously to a prospective glass in enabling the reader to comprehend that which cannot be seen without assistance: Vincent obviously does not mean to say that heaven can be viewed with a telescope; his metaphor appeals to the cognitive or imaginative benefits of assisted perception, not literally to the science of optics. Thomas de Laune makes the same comparison, stating more clearly that ‘[t]he Gospel or Word of God is a spiritual Perspective-Glass, as well as a Looking-Glass’ (64). Importantly for the application of this metaphor to the theatre, de Laune notes that ‘[i]f a Man looks into a Glass, he sees there but the Image, Resemblance, or Representation of a Person or a Thing, not the Person or the Thing it self’ (64). ‘N.H.’ similarly comments on the disjunction between presentation and representation in The ladies dictionary (1694): ‘The heart of man is deceitful, which like a Magick Glass, represents the Form of things which are not’ (517). The stage functions precisely in this manner, offering an image, resemblance, or representation of people and places rather than the people and places themselves. Its function is prospective too in the sense that it enables the playgoer to see what they would see if they were in the country depicted. To gaze at or through the theatrical glass is to see the likeness of exotic lands and peoples, historical events, or future possibilities. On a microcosmic scale, prospective glasses are introduced on stage as properties that enable the representation of people and places that are absent for geographical or historical reasons. The Sherley brothers see one another in this manner. Pope Alexander (Roderigo Borgia) in Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter (1607) sees both his murdered son (the Duke of Candy) and his son’s murderer (4.1), thus demonstrating that such glasses can portray the living and the dead, the present and the past. The prospective property of the glass is what disturbs Macbeth when he witnesses a ‘show of eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand; BANQUO following’ (SD, 4.1.111).9 Imploring the infernal procession to halt, Macbeth dolefully laments, ‘And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass, / Which shows me many more’ (4.1.119–20). Contra Richard Flatter, who thinks the glass is merely a mirror in which James I would have seen his likeness reflected at the Hampton Court performance of Macbeth (181), the glass is clearly a prospective glass in which Macbeth was supposed to see James’s descendants (‘many more’), as Peter Ure has argued in an explanation subsequently adopted by most critics (213). Playgoers, then, were demonstrably familiar with the uses – literal and metaphorical – of prospective glasses.

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Dryden availed himself of a remarkably similar metaphor when explaining how the stage could depict subject matter and scenes that exceed the bounds of the physical playhouse: I am almost fearful of illustrating any thing by similitude, lest he should confute it for an Argument; yet I think the comparison of a Glass will discover very aptly the fallacy of his Argument, both concerning time and place. The strength of his Reason depends on this, That the less cannot comprehend the greater. I have already answered, that we need not suppose it does; I say not that the less can comprehend the greater, but only that it may represent it: As in a Glass or Mirrour of half a yard Diameter, a whole room and many persons in it may be seen at once: not that it can comprehend that room or those persons, but that it represents them to the sight. (‘A Defence’ 19) The world can accordingly fit into the theatre; a snapshot of its vast, exotic lands being captured on the stage just as a relatively small ‘Glass or Mirrour’ displays a representation of its substantially larger surroundings. The theatrical glass, however, like a prospective or cosmographical glass, represents foreign lands as well as immediate surroundings. On what might be dubbed the ‘macrocosmic’ level (as opposed to the ‘microcosmic’ inclusion of prospective glasses as stage properties), the theatre itself thus functions as a prospective glass for the playgoers. Here the meditations of Thomas Forde provide a valuable link between my potentially digressive discussion of glasses and my more central concern with the nature of audience engagement with theatrical representation. In the letter ‘To Mr. C.F.’ prefacing Thomas Forde’s Virtus rediviva: a panegyrick on our late King Charles the I (1660), the author expresses his desire to visit his patron ‘by a more real Proxie than my rambling fancie’ (27). After repeating the scientifically-dubious anecdote of a churchgoing man who, using a prospective glass to draw ‘the Preacher nearer to his sight (to prove a communitie of the Senses)’, not only saw the speaker more clearly but ‘heard him audibly’ (28), Forde declares that ‘by the Perspective-glass of Fancy, I have both visibly and audibly enjoy’d your wished presence’ (28). In Forde’s formulation we have a synthesis of the main tropic imagery of this book: a Kamesian ideal presence that wills the object of desire to appear before the mind’s eye; a prospective glass of ‘Fancy’ which enables super-sensorial experiences if used properly by the beholder; and an emphasis on vicarious pleasure and the active imagination,

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which harkens back to my discussion in Chapter 1 of active engagement and immersion. That discussion can now be supplemented with a Restoration perspective on the audience’s imaginative response to fiction (the phenomenon Coleridge attempted to capture in his phrase, ‘suspension of disbelief’), as articulated by Dryden: Imagination in a man, or reasonable Creature, is supposed to participate of reason, and when that [imagination] governs, as it does in the belief of fiction, reason is not destroyed, but misled, or blinded: that [imagination] can prescribe to the reason, during the time of the representation, somewhat like a weak belief of what it sees and hears; and reason suffers it self to be so hoodwink’d, that it may better enjoy the pleasures of the fiction: but it is never so wholly made a captive, as to be drawn head-long into a perswasion of those things which are most remote from probability: ’tis [reason] in that case a freeborn Subject, not a Slave, it will contribute willingly its assent, as far as it sees convenient, but will not be forc’d. (‘A Defence’ 18) It is clear from this excerpt from Dryden’s preface to The Indian Emperour that the experience of voyage drama is not a passive one: ‘reason is not destroyed’ but suffers the imagination to reign for a time so that ‘it may better enjoy the pleasures of the fiction’. Reason contributes ‘willingly its assent’ without being ‘forc’d’ – it agrees (as it were) to participate in the experiment, knowing it is an illusion or a prospective glass of Fancy; a form of ideal presence rather than real presence. Yet it is an enjoyable fiction, and for this reason alone Reason consents ‘to be so hoodwink’d’. Ultimately, then, elaborate perspectival scenery and special effects from the new technologies of the Restoration stage do not constitute sufficient cause for the successful mind-travelling of the playgoing public; such ‘markers’ contribute to the experience and condition the audience’s expectations or affects, but for the theatrical event to succeed the active participation of the playgoer in the playing system remains essential. There are, then, a number of metaphors purporting to describe the role of the theatre in vicarious travel. The theatre functions as a marker; a source of information about the sight which conditions the playgoeras-sightseer’s expectations and experience of the foreign, but it also functions as a representation of the exotic sight itself. This is perhaps most evident in the second half of the seventeenth century, with the

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introduction of perspectival scenery as a form of cognitive scaffolding which informs the audience about the general location of the action without altogether relieving them of the need to imaginatively construct the setting. Settle’s complaint reveals that this provision of visual aids retains the potential for dramatic failure if the individual playgoer’s imagination does not govern their reason in the belief of fiction. The prospective glass provides a further metaphor for the trajectory I have been tracing. It suggests that the theatre is a tool which enables playgoers to exceed their natural ocular abilities, permitting not just the technical gains of a scientific instrument like the telescope, but a quasimagical experience akin to that provided by a magician’s prospective glass. The theatre can ‘represent’ distant lands which it cannot, in its limited physical bounds, ‘comprehend’.

Notes 1. See Frohock (‘American Operas’ 287) on the ‘atmosphere of questioning, doubt, and blame’ in England following the failure of the 1654 English expedition against Spanish America, which only managed to secure Jamaica. Other critics, such as Paul Stevens have similarly situated Davenant’s work in the context of the ‘continuous tradition of national propaganda from the 1580s to the late 1650s’ in which ‘the rhetoric of Spanish colonial abuse was redeployed in a concerted effort to justify Cromwell’s Western Design – that is, his plan to carve out a colonial empire in the Caribbean. In Sir William Davenant’s 1658 masque, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, for instance, the New Model Army, complete with red coats, arrives to rescue the racked and tortured Incas in a vision of things to come’ (9). 2. Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmoreland, appears to have taken a similar approach with a lost entertainment of his own: under his entry for manuscripts in the hand of Fane, Harbage lists ‘Ladrones, or The Robber’s Island’ (given a 1658 date in Annals), of which he notes ‘Drake, Cavendish, and Magellan figure in the dramatis personae’ (690); the fuller title provided by Tom Cain is ‘Ladrones or the Robbers’ Iland, an Opera in a Romansike Way’ (27), thus revealing its similar incorporation of music. Cain relates that it was ‘lot 1,054 in the 1887 Sotheby’s sale’ and that ‘[i]t was bought by Toovey for £3 3s, but has since vanished’ (27). 3. Dryden does subsequently add a caveat in his ‘A Defence’ (1668), that ‘it still carries the greater likelihood of truth, if those places be suppos’d so near each other, as in the same Town or City; which may all be comprehended under the larger Denomination of one place’ (‘A Defence’ 18). 4. The English translation (listed in the Bibliography under Saint-Évremond) cited in this chapter is by H. Gaston Hall, included as Appendix V in Vol. 2 of the Oxford works of Buckingham (Hume and Love, eds). The French original, edited by Wallace Kirsop, is included in Vol. 1 of that edition (151–230). 5. On the now once again disputed authorship of The Indian Queen, see Spielman’s excellent historical survey of attributions and his convincing suggestion that

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6.

7.

8.

9.

Dryden’s role in the collaboration was minimal. The play is listed under both Howard and Dryden in the Bibliography because the authoritative edition of The Indian Queen is still the California edition of Dryden’s works. On Rowley’s authorisation, Henslowe (on behalf of the Admiral’s men) paid amounts totalling £6. 15 to Day, Haughton, and Smith for this play between 4 April and 1 Sept 1601, and an additional £15. 5. 9 for properties including suits, stockings, and copper lace (see Henslowe 167–98). On Dryden’s sources, see the California edition of the play, 307–18, and MacMillan. Gomora’s analogue of Dryden’s torture scene (5.2) does not appear in Nichols’s English translation, but it does appear in the French (see MacMillan 368). Another of Dryden’s more famous exotic plays, Amboyna (1673), was similarly preceded by a lost play on the same topic (c. 1625) and should thus also be seen as participating in a stage history rather than displaying groundbreaking originality. The lost play was scheduled for performance on or around Shrove Tuesday, the traditional day for apprentice rioting, and was suppressed by the Privy Council following a request by the Dutch East India Company (see Lost Plays Database entry for ‘Amboyna’). In Measure for Measure, Angelo refers to how ‘a prophet / Looks in a glass that shows … future evils’ (2.2.95–6), thus similarly laying a claim to the glass’s ability to see prospectively into time. A similar prophetic trait is evident in Chapman’s The Gentleman Usher, when Strozza claims that humility has raised him to the stars, from whence ‘(as in a sort of cristall globes) / I sit and see things hidde from humane sight’ (4.3.62–3). This meaning was still current in 1684 when the titular character of Edward Ravenscroft’s Dame Dobson, or, The Cunning Woman declares, ‘I have found by looking in my Magick Glass, / that your old Knight is as good as a dead man’ (5.2; p. 62).

6 Old Genres, New Worlds: Behn Domesticates the Exotic

This final chapter serves almost as a coda to the rest of the book, in that the plays it discusses – whilst an integral part of the voyage drama tradition which I have been sketching throughout my argument – differ significantly from their dramatic predecessors in their use of the exotic. The representations of the New World in Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter (and Thomas Southerne’s Oroonoko, which is also briefly considered here) are conditioned by historical circumstances and eyewitness evidence that was unavailable to earlier dramatists. Behn and an increasing number of her playgoers now had first-person eyewitness accounts (what Kames would call ‘first order presence’) against which the ideal presence of the theatre could be tested. Hence whilst the mindtravelling phenomenon is still at play in these examples, its novelty and significance are gradually becoming subservient to the interest in depicting a genuinely New World story for its own sake. The Widow Ranter and Oroonoko allow a local politics to emerge, and foreground the ethics of domesticity in colonial life rather than retaining an epicentre in London society. As one of the earliest extant plays to be set in British colonial America, and the first travel play to have been written not only by a woman, but by a playwright who had actually travelled to the Americas, Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter occupies a unique place in the sub-genre of early modern voyage drama, bringing an altogether unprecedented perspective on American life to its English audience. With a probable composition date of 1687–88 – eighty years after the English settlement at Jamestown was founded, and over a century after the first English circumnavigations of the globe – Behn’s American play was written late enough for the adventuring spirit of Renaissance travel plays to have 182

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subsided and to have been replaced by a sense of a normalised English presence in Virginia. In this first section I will claim that The Widow Ranter is also arguably the first extant play purporting to represent colonial New World culture in and of itself.1 Behn’s play has received little scholarly attention: critics such as Margo Hendricks and Margaret Ferguson have attended to the representations of race and miscegenation, whilst Heidi Hutner has elucidated the historical context in terms of the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution in order to demonstrate ‘that Behn’s play discloses the ambiguities and tensions of the colonial project in Virginia’ (89). It is not my intention to replicate these fine scholars’ studies. Without denying the political resonances of pre-Williamite England in the play, and without attempting to resolve the critical debate over the text’s position on slavery, I want to complicate Behn criticism by adding a perspective that situates the play in its historical and intellectual context as part of a century of English travel drama with origins in Marlowe. Central to my claim is the way Behn’s gender inflects her use of the travel play form, not only on the characterological level of the ‘complex interrelationship of white women and native women, and the oppression of women in general in a colonial context’ (Hutner 90), but by incorporating unusual genres to foreground and accentuate concerns with social relations and women’s roles, thereby constructing an account of colonial and indigenous authority through female eyes. The single most significant and distinguishing feature of Behn’s foray into voyage drama, I will argue, is her innovative return to older genres through which to engage New World concerns. Brandon Chua has touched on the problematic relationship between the ‘largely sympathetic’ portrayal of Bacon and the blunting of the ‘pathos his tragic death is able to generate’ by the tragicomedy’s ‘generic structure ... which privileges reconciliation and accommodation over tragedy’s insistence on insurmountable conflict between competing social values’ (175). This chapter will show how Behn’s experimental use of the tragicomic form is integral to the success of her unique inflexion of New World voyage drama in terms of critiquing both Virginian culture (in the comic plot’s interest in societal relations) and colonial endeavours (in the tragic plot’s reactivation of the dynamics of late Elizabethan domestic tragedy). In tracing historical developments in England’s knowledge of the New World and depiction of it on stage, I will also implicitly be attending to the role of genre in shaping the mind-travelling habits of Restoration playgoers.

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Virginian customs and culture in The Widow Ranter Behn’s tragicomic play, The Widow Ranter, or The History of Bacon in Virginia, presents the English colony of Jamestown in a state of disarray. The comic plot relates the exploits of a rich widow (the titular Widow Ranter) seeking marriage in Virginia, and introduces the audience to a series of characters, variously motivated by love or financial necessity, who harbour similar nuptial ambitions, thus presenting a state of social turmoil which only marriage will resolve. The tragic plot centres on the other eponymous protagonist, the English settler Nathaniel Bacon. It presents a state of political disorder, and engages with issues of authority and government by focusing on recent historical events: the political rebellion and armed uprising led by Bacon in 1676. In Behn’s dramatisation, Bacon leads an attack against the American Indians without the approval of the governing council in Virginia, whilst the English settlers await the arrival of their new governor by sea. Primarily on account of this latter, political dimension of the play, Behn critics tend to view the Virginia of Bacon and the Widow Ranter as a reflection of 1680s England. Hence Janet Todd has claimed that ‘no one could fail to see that the Virginia of the 1670s spoke to the England of 1688’ (412), whilst Elliott Visconsi has written that ‘Behn’s American settings serve a typically colonial purpose – they are at once allegories of and foils for representations of the metropole’ (674), and has identified a reflection of English political concerns in Behn’s Virginia: Caught between Bacon and the rabble, the future security of the Virginia colony depends upon the lukewarm promise of a good governor in transit from England. In keeping with Stuart mythography, the only hope is a sovereign across the water who will reinstate civic obligations and bring about peace. (691) These issues of ‘rebellion and the rule of law’ were indeed salient for an English audience in 1689 (Visconsi 691), and the transition from Charles II’s restoration to James II’s demise may indeed explain why Behn is ‘far less optimistic’ than Dryden about ‘English colonial nationhood or divine royal power’ (Hutner 90), but emphasising the political dimensions of Behn’s play – however fascinating – runs the risk of obscuring the significance of the exotic locale. To be commercially viable, a play needs as wide an appeal as possible, hence political undertones and resonances would be a welcome addition for the playwright depicting foreign shores,

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but to dwell on these undercurrents to the exclusion of the pointedly Virginian setting is to miss a vital aspect of the play as it relates to other drama of the period – especially when we consider Behn’s privileged position as a playwright who had actually visited the New World.2 Why have critics not attended more closely to the authenticity of Behn’s setting? To a certain extent, Behn’s treatment of Virginia, and in particular the Virginian Indians, can appear artificial. Margo Hendricks draws attention to what she calls the ‘problematic idealization of American Indians’ in the play (‘Civility’ 226), wherein the exotic Others (the American Indians) are both extraneous and homogenised in a classic example of the Orientalist thinking critiqued by Edward Said; but the American Indians are also generically marked as inferior to the English, as in the stage direction for the opening of Act IV: ‘Priests and Priestesses Dance about the Idol, with ridiculous Postures.’ This crude depiction of the Indians as either ideal or inferior is all the more troubling when we consider that on account of her first-hand experience, Behn was perfectly capable of nuanced descriptions of New World oddities. In Oroonoko (1688), for example, although Behn begins her descriptions of Surinam with the contrived pastoral conventions that were, at the time, the standard approach to describing alterity, she progresses (or attempts to progress) beyond this convention with an unprecedented interest in New World details, where her precursors opted to elide difference or graft it onto romance and monstrous Otherness. Behn’s inclusion of an electric eel (‘a numb eel’) and an armadillo (‘armadilly’) (51), and her recognition that these are ‘diverse wonderful and strange things’ (48) whose difference cannot simply be forced into an Old World taxonomy, signals a willingness to engage the New World from first principles, accurate observation, and first-hand reporting. I see nothing paradoxical about acknowledging the pastoral elements of Oroonoko whilst simultaneously highlighting Behn’s descriptions of unusual indigenous animals; this approach to capturing New World alterity is what might be called a case of ‘continuous innovation’ rather than ‘discontinuous innovation’: rather than a complete break with tradition, it constitutes innovation that grows out of tradition. Behn moves beyond standard tropes and conventions, but does not start from scratch. The generic platform from which she begins is necessarily still pastoral. By contrast, The Widow Ranter, with its crude depiction of American Indians – who are romanticised, Westernised, and idealised in the text – lacks Oroonoko’s sensitivity to difference. However, my claim is that The Widow Ranter strives to produce a portrayal of the Virginian English in their own right, not the American Indians. Unfortunately for modern

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scholarship, it is in this focus on the English (rather than the Indians) that Behn’s text most reads (misleadingly) like a play exclusively concerned with England. I believe The Widow Ranter occupies a far more interesting and sophisticated place in the generic trajectory of seventeenth-century travel drama. There is of course a darker side to this interest in the prosaic happenings of New World society, for Behn’s naturalisation of the English settlement is always operating in the shadow of the slow and tragic demise of native culture; a fact that registers in the contrasting representational strategies deployed in the comic and tragic plots. Bridget Orr has noted that although The Widow Ranter ‘exploits the exoticism of its setting to the hilt’, it also bears ‘traces of an awareness that just as the Stuarts were passing into history, so too certain modes of heroic representation, in which the colonizer and colonized figured in equally “Romantick” terms ... were becoming less and less viable as vehicles for figuring the interaction of Europeans and Indians’ (238). She suggests that by the time Behn dramatised the New World, the natives were already ‘engaged in a hopeless struggle against impossible odds’, and are thus depicted as ‘cut off from history, sutured from the quotidian moment, the present so forcefully evoked in the play’s comic action’ (237). Hence ‘unlike Bacon the Indians are not simply compared to Roman figures, but instead are fully characterized as noble primitives’ with ‘Latinized names’ (237). The ‘ennobling classical tropologies’ deployed in the stage representations of New World characters like Cavernio and Semernia ‘serve more and more to mark off the archaism of the “Indian” while the colonizer adopted and was figured in the prosaic terms of a Crusoe, a Cotton, a Hazard or a Timorous’ (238). I agree with Orr’s insightful analysis of representational strategies, but in what follows I attend to the ‘present so forcefully evoked’ in the comic plot’s depiction of settlement life in order to read it more positively as a deliberate engagement with the reality of New World life for its own sake, rather than as a wry counterpoint to the pointed archaisms of the natives’ story. Unlike any of its existing dramatic predecessors on the early modern stage, Behn’s play presents a perspective of colonial life from the viewpoint of an established colony rather than a fledgling settlement. (The English camps would presumably have been portrayed in an embryonic state in the lost play of 1623, ‘The Plantation of Virginia’, which probably dramatised the massacre by Indians of 347 English in dispersed settlements on 22 March 1622.) Rather than giving a sense of the English invading the Indians’ land – of an impenetrable wilderness, of the hardships of voyaging or conquering, and so forth – Behn’s play portrays the Indians invading the English settlement, as if it were the

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English whose native soil was being invaded.3 Friendly intimates as much in the opening scene, when he declares: at this time the Indians by our ill Management of Trade, whom we have Armed against Our selves, Very frequently make War upon us with our own Weapons, Tho’ often coming by the Worst are forced to make Peace with us again, but so, as upon every turn they fall to Massacring us wherever we ly exposed to them. (1.1.104–9) A further reminder of the garrison mentality of the Virginian English is provided by a soldier’s report to Bacon in the third Act: The Truce being ended, Sir, the Indians grow so insolent as to attack us even in our Camp, and have kill’d several of our men. (3.2.256–8) The only reminder that it is the English who are the intruders comes, appropriately enough, from the Indian Queen, who refers to Bacon as ‘this English Stranger’ (2.1.44), but her sentiments do not figure prominently in the text. Behn presents a normalised English presence in the New World, an English society that has flourished in the colony and established itself as a microcosm of home, as was historically the case: ‘The colonial elite was made up of influential families whose arrival in Virginia dated to the 1640s and 1650s and who identified themselves as natives of the colony’ (Hutner 94). So normalised is the play’s Virginian microcosm that it naturally encourages analogies with late 1680s England; but I contend that there are important distinctions to preserve (as many of the characters themselves purport to do) between English and Virginian culture, and that Behn’s contribution to a developing literary tradition of ‘voyage drama’ should not be overlooked in attempts to analyse the political significance of The Widow Ranter. The distinctions I have in mind pertain to almost every aspect of customs and manners, whether they be linguistic or culinary, or aspects of work and the social order. Colloquial language, for example, is figured as a marker of difference between English and Virginian cultures in Behn’s play: RANTER: Why you Son of a Baboone don’t you know me? BOY: No Madam, I came over but in the last Ship.

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RANTER: What from Newgate or Bridewell? from shoving the Tumbler, Sirrah, Lifting or filing the Cly? BOY: I don’t understand this Country-Language forsooth, yet. RANTER: You Rogue, ’tis what we transport from England first... (1.3.10–15) The English boy’s inability to comprehend Virginian systems of signification designates Virginian slang and hence Virginian culture as alien to the English norm. The Widow Ranter’s retort that language is ‘what we transport from England first’ echoes Wayne Franklin’s observation that as the ‘most portable and most personal of cultural orders’, language was relied upon by New World explorers ‘as a means of symbolic linkage with their homes’ (5). But the observation jars with the boy’s ignorance of her meaning, suggesting that although the imposition of the coloniser’s language may form a key component of the colonising endeavour, isolation from the colonisers’ mother tongue – both in terms of geographical proximity to the mother country, and lack of exposure to England’s English on a regular basis – can lead to a ‘branching off’ of the language into disparate dialects (Franklin 5): VirginianEnglish and English-English evolve simultaneously but independently. If language is the coloniser’s ‘symbolic linkage with their homes’ and an ‘emblem of identity’ (Franklin 5), the boy’s incomprehension of the Widow Ranter’s slang suggests that Virginian culture is taking on an identity of its own, even though the Widow has yet to recognise this fact. In the culinary realm, the play’s numerous references to punch and tobacco are more than superficial markers of the exotic. These gastronomic habits are demarcated as peculiarly American: implicitly, when the Widow Ranter invites Friendly to her house, where her guests ‘are to eat a Buffalo’ (1.3.125) – as Behn herself is said to have done in Surinam;4 and explicitly, as when Hazard declines the invitation to smoke a pipe (‘I never do Madam –’), and the Widow Ranter chides him, ‘Oh fy upon’t you must learn then, we all smoke here, ’tis a part of good breeding’ (1.3.83–5).5 These culinary details contribute to the picture of the hardiness and robust nature of Virginian English relative to their cousins back home. The consumption of punch and tobacco is regarded as a sign of the strength and fortitude necessary to endure the rugged New World conditions. When Dullman denounces Burgundy Claret as a ‘Paulter [that is, worthless] Liquor’, and an ‘English French Wine’ (a local vintage bottled as French import, as

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Aaron R. Walden glosses it), and wonders ‘how the Gentlemen [back in England] do to drink it’ (1.1.177–9), Timorous responds to this observation of the English lack of refinement by quipping, ‘’tis for want of a little Virginia Breeding: how much more like a Gentleman ’tis, drink as we do, brave Edifying Punch and Brandy’ (1.1.180–2). Indeed, the Virginian English frequently assert their superiority to their counterparts back home. Setting the world to rights, Timorous, Dullman, and Friendly remark that if the current fears of political instability in Jamestown were laid to rest and ‘Bacon were hang’d’, they’d ‘look upon Virginia to be the happiest part of the world’ (2.2.80–1): TIMOROUS:

DULLMAN: TIMOROUS: FRIENDLY:

… TIMOROUS:

…why, there’s England – ’tis nothing to’t – I was in England about six years ago, and was shew’d the Court of Aldermen, some were nodding, some saying nothing, and Others very little to purpose, but how could it be otherwise, for they had neither Bowle of Punch, Bottles of wine or Tobacco before ’em to put Life and Soul into ’em as we have here: then for the young Gentlemen – Their farthest Travels is to France or Italy, they never come hither. The more’s the Pitty by my troth. [Drinks. Where they learn to swear Mor-blew, Mor-dee. And tell you how much bigger the Louvre is than WhiteHall, buy a suit A-la-mode, get a swinging Clap of some French Marquis, spend all their money and return just as they went. …now Judge you what a Condition poor England is in: for my part I look upon’t as a lost Nation gads zoors. (2.2.82–94 and 100–1)

Dullman proposes that England be saved by exporting the men of ‘great Experience and Abillity’ from Virginia to ‘supply all places, and Offices, both Civill and Military’, whilst the ‘young [English] Gentry should all Travell hither for breeding, and learn the misteries of State’ (2.2.104–8). They are all drinking when they propose these amendments to ‘preserve that great Kingdom’ (14–15), but clearly the Virginian English resent the supposed superiority of the English at home, and desire to elevate their own reputation through a corrective inversion of the implied

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hierarchy. The folly of such inversion registers ironically when Whiff first pleads drunkenness as an excuse for calling Bacon a traitor, then desires Benefit of the Clergy when Whimsey is not moved to clemency, and finally begs for ‘Transportation’ – to which Whimsey wryly replies, ‘It shall be to England then’ (4.2.106–7). Instead of England exporting its ne’er-do-wells to the New World colony, Virginia would punish their trouble-makers by banishing them to England, under Whiff’s proposed penalty. Interestingly, the comedic elements of the plot enable a sustained interest in domestic details of social interaction that is unlikely to have occurred in the lost American plays of the Renaissance, which appear (from their names) all to have been tragedies: ‘The New World’s Tragedy’ (1595), ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ (1601), and ‘The Plantation of Virginia’ (1623) (see Lost Plays Database). J. Douglas Canfield has observed that although ‘tragicomedy was a popular and thriving genre during the Restoration, particularly in the period 1660–1671, when most of it was either written or produced’, by the 1670s and 1680s only ‘[s]poradic examples occur’, and by the 1690s ‘the plays seem anachronistic’ (448). Clearly, though, something about the tragicomic form lent itself to representations of the New World, given its experimental use in The Widow Ranter and the enduring success of Southerne’s tragicomic stage redaction of Oroonoko (1695). Why did these writers fuse low comedy onto the high-romance or tragedy of their heroic plots? With its interest in domesticity and the lower classes, and its privileged role as a site for safely exploring irregularities or inversions in the social hierarchy, comedy was a genre well suited to staging the concerns of English Virginia. As Rebecca Ann Bach observes, ‘[t]he American colonies became a site for English dreamers who saw colonization as a chance to transform their social status and material conditions’ (Colonial Transformations 192). Behn’s characters hint at the commonplace nature of social climbing in Virginia when Mistress Flirt seizes the opportunity of a fresh start in Virginia, claiming gentility in her new surrounds: ‘I my self am a Gentlewoman; my Father was a Barronet, but undone in the late Rebellion – and I am fain to keep an Ordinary now, Heaven help me’ (1.1.207–9). Timorous accuses Mistress Flirt’s father of being a tailor who ‘but trusting for Old Oliver [Cromwell]’s Funerall, Broke, and so came hither to hide his head’, to which Flirt retaliates, they say your Honour was but a broken Excise-man, who spent the King’s money to buy your Wife fine Petticoats, and at last not worth

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a Groat, you came over a poor Servant, though now a Justice of the Peace, and of the Honourable Council. (1.1.211–18) This exchange, characterised by fabricated claims to respectability and derisive remarks intended to undercut the authority of these illegitimate boasts, belongs to the world of Twelfth Night festivity where a topsy-turvy society is sanctioned for a time and the subversion of social norms contributes to the merriment. However, in Virginia there is a sense that social positions can be independent of birth status, and that this situation is sustainable rather than a festive aberration.6 As Hazard observes, newly off the boat from England, ‘You are full of your Madams here’ (1.1.160): there are no lower-class ‘mistresses’, only women with the (self-fashioned) elevated social status of ‘madam’ in Virginia. In keeping with the inversion of normative English society, the opening scene’s exchange between Timorous, Dullman, and Hazard in the tavern establishes a different and peculiarly colonial social order, wherein an expectation is established that even legitimate gentlemen must work for their living in Virginia: TIMOROUS: … HAZARD: DULLMAN: TIMOROUS:

HAZARD: TIMOROUS:

HAZARD:

What have you brought over any Cargo Sir, I’le be your Customer. I was not bred to Merchandizing Sir, nor do intend to follow the Drudgery of Trading. Men of Fortune seldom travel hither Sir to see fashions. Why Brother, it may be the Gentleman has a mind to be a Planter, will you hire your self to make a Crop of Tobacco this year? I was not born to work Sir. Not work Sir, zoors your betters have workt Sir, I have workt my self Sir, both set and stript Tobacco, for all I am of the Honourable Councill not work quoth a – I suppose Sir you wear your fortune upon your Back Sir? Is it your Custom here Sir to affront Strangers? I shall expect [Rises. satisfaction. (1.1.246–60)

After the altercation, Timorous implies a marked difference between English and Virginian social mores when he defends Hazard to the

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agitated Boozer: ‘Let him alone, let him alone Brother, how should he learn manners, he never was in Virginia before’ (1.1.268). Delineating a typology of American travellers, Wayne Franklin posits the figure of the renegade (the ‘denier of home order’) as antithetical to that of the pioneer, ‘whose primary interest supposedly lay in the almost holy replication of social form’ (12). Whilst the residents of Jamestown do not quite ‘deny’ their home order, they are renegades of sorts; or at least, they are not entirely pioneers. Their society, whilst recognisably modelled in part on English domesticity, is marked by a yearning for differentiation, for a fresh start and new opportunities.7 The depiction of Virginian culture might generically conform best to festive comedy, but an important exception occurs in Behn’s play: the resolution. Earlier travel plays utilising the comedic genre – The Tempest, for example – incorporate a return journey into their resolution; the restoration of social order is achieved by return to the home society and normativity. Significantly, Behn’s play both begins and ends in the New World. Hence although the tragic plot ends conventionally in death (though an unnecessary one, with Bacon’s suicide ironically coming after his forces win the battle, unbeknownst to him), and the comic plot ends in multiple marriages (an appropriately domestic concern for a play which domesticates the exotic), all is not quite as it was at the beginning in terms of social climbing and proper class roles, because traditional English society is never reconstituted – it is superseded by Virginian society, with all its permissive possibilities. Timorous might abrogate the positions of legal and political authority he had illegitimately aspired to and temporarily held, and ultimately fall back on tobacco farming (‘I never thriv’d since I was a States-man, left Planting, / and fell to promising and Lying, I’le to my old Trade again’; 5.5.66–7), but in the New World he remains a free man with a fresh start, no longer ‘a broken Excise-man’ who had spent the king’s money and left England ‘a poor Servant’ (1.1.216 and 218). Similarly, the Widow Ranter, who owes her social elevation and economic independence to having been bought and married by Colonel Ranter, ought to return to her lowlier status and fortune, if the bounds of comedy were strictly observed; but instead she not only retains her considerable wealth, but successfully remarries (thus superficially conforming to the generic resolution of comedy) (Todd 416).8 In response to Parson Dunce’s objections to marrying Flirt on the grounds that she is but a ‘brandy-Munger’, Colonel Wellman replies: ‘She’l leave her Trade – and spark it above all the Ladies at Church … take her and make her honest’ (5.5.39–42). Viola’s successful wooing of Olivia in Twelfth

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Night proves not only that a gentleman can be made instead of being born, but that a woman is capable of being a gentleman; however, Viola’s social transgressions constitute part of the play’s revelries, and order is ultimately restored. In The Widow Ranter, the social transgressions constitute part of the resolution – for despite its resemblance to England as the play construes it, Virginia has its own distinct identity as land of opportunity, and comedic resolution in an American play entails a new set of generic possibilities which reflect historic reality. To paraphrase C.L. Barber, in his seminal study of Shakespeare’s ‘Festive Comedies’, the social form of Virginian society (rather than ‘Elizabethan holidays’) contributes to the dramatic form of The Widow Ranter (compare Barber 4). Behn’s play reveals a complex appreciation of domestic life in the New World, thus presenting the project of English colonisation from a new perspective, namely that of the domesticated exotic, not the colonised exotic.

Women, marriage, and slaves The comic plot of Behn’s text concerns itself not with adventurers braving previously unexplored terrain, but with the lower-class masses who emigrated to America (or were deported thence) after the colony at Jamestown was properly established. In Oroonoko Behn had earlier described New World settlers as ‘rogues, runagades that have abandoned their own countries for raping, murders, theft and villainies’ (62), but when Hazard arrives at Mrs Flirt’s house in Jamestown, and felicitously encounters his old friend from England (Friendly), he provides another standard explanation for venturing to the New World: Ill Company, and that Common Vice of the Town, Gaming, soon run out my Younger Brothers Fortune, … My Elder Brother an Errant Jew, had neither Friendship, nor Honour enough to Support me, but at last was mollified by perswasions and the hopes of being for ever rid of me, sent me hither with a small Cargo to seek my fortune – (1.1.42–9) Friendly anticipates Hazard’s conclusion, interjecting with the supposition that Hazard seeks to ‘begin the world withal’ (that is, to start over again) in Virginia (1.1.50).

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Unlike first-born sons, who inherited their fathers’ wealth and title, younger sons had to secure their own fortunes. The potential riches of the New World held allure for these young men and for the disenfranchised lower classes alike, as I discussed above in the context of Eastward Ho and the £1000 reward available to Young Forest in Heywood and Rowley’s Fortune by Land and Sea. It is in this context that Friendly offers the example of Colonel John Surelove, ‘a Lester-shire younger Brother, [who] came over hither with a small fortune, which his Industry has increas’d to a thousand pounds a year’ (1.1.154–6). In Behn’s Virginia, though, the fortune sought by these men is often of a pointedly domestic type. Friendly proposes (as a solution to Hazard’s financial needs) that Hazard should secure an introduction to a young gentlewoman of Jamestown (Madam Surelove) who it appears is on the verge of inheriting her rich husband’s assets; he being ‘Old and Sick, and now gone into England for the Recovery of his Health, where he’l e’en give up the Ghost’ (1.1.66–8). In the unlikely event that the ailing husband should recuperate and return to Virginia, Friendly maintains that Hazard can still profit by an alliance with the young wife: if thou canst not Marry her, thou mayst lye with her, (and Gad) a Younger Brother may pick out a Pritty Livelyhood here that way, as well as in England… (1.1.83–5) In addition to this young, soon to be widow, Friendly identifies the Widow Ranter as a possible source of income for Hazard, and Colonel Downright’s daughter as the object of his own amorous/economic desires in the New World (1.1.95–100). Where once the fear of Englishmen becoming romantically entangled in miscegenous relationships with exotic women constituted a genuine concern, in Behn’s American play the Englishmen seek Englishwomen abroad, and they do so because of the economic advantages such alignments afford. The marriages sought by these younger sons are of a specific, financially motivated kind. As Behn’s play makes clear, women have a great deal of money in Virginia, and are acutely aware both of the power this economic independence provides, and of the type of attention it solicits. The Widow Ranter, who arrived in Virginia as ‘an indentured servant off a ship from England’ and was bought by Colonel Ranter, who subsequently ‘married her, and conveniently died’ (Todd 416), praises her dead husband for dying ‘in good time’ and leaving her ‘young enough to spend this fifty thousand pound in better Company – rest his Soul

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for that too’ (1.3.52–3). She concedes, however, that as a consequence of her newfound wealth, men court her merely for her riches: RANTER:

my money makes me an Infidel. [That is, an unbeliever, in love.] CRISANTE: You think they all love you for that. RANTER: For that, Ay what else? if it were not for that, I might sit still and sigh, and cry out, a Miracle! a Miracle! at sight of a Man within my doors. (1.3.59–64) In an interesting exchange about fortune seeking in the New World, the Widow Ranter further intimates the normality of men seeking wealth through marriage abroad, and even recommends the pursuit: RANTER: What you are like all the young Fellows, the first thing they do when they come to a strange place, is to enquire what Fortunes there are. HAZARD: Madam I had no such Ambition. RANTER: Gad, then you’re a fool, Sir, but come, my service to you; we rich Widdows are the best Commodity this Country affords, I’le tell you that. (1.3.90–6) Gold and exotic spices are no longer the richest commodities of America: marriageable women (and ‘rich Widdows’ in particular) have taken their place. The transition in motives for travel is encapsulated in the exchange between Surelove and Hazard at the Widow Ranter’s banquet. Surelove implies that Hazard is ‘infected’ with love for an English beauty back home, and that he ‘came abroad for cure’ (2.2.16), but Hazard assures Surelove that he has come abroad ‘[r]ather to receive my wounds’ (2.2.17) – that is, to find love, not escape it. Earlier in the century, English men might have ventured abroad in search of exotic distractions from their domestic concerns at home, but now (as Hazard’s response suggests), they travel in search of marriage, and the wealth they associate with it. The exotic has become domesticated. By the time Behn was writing her American texts, younger sons were not the only ones seeking fortune abroad: women were also chasing ‘domestic’ riches in the New World. Both Behn and Southerne (in his 1695 stage adaptation of Behn’s Oroonoko) depict English women who travel across the Atlantic in search of husbands. In these plays, the role

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of women is crucial in collapsing the exotic back into the domestic, thus effecting one of the most significant developments in over a century of voyage drama. Contextualising Southerne’s Oroonoko in this tradition of travel plays elucidates a critical crux of the play; namely, its commentary on the role of women in society. In her observation that ‘[t]he search for parallels between the two parts of a split-plot tragicomedy does not … always produce satisfactory results’, Julia A. Rich has already steered Southerne criticism toward the significance of genre for understanding Oroonoko, but Rich’s thoughtful engagement with the play could benefit from extension and supplementation. Rich proposes that the relationship between the two plots of Oroonoko can better be understood by concentrating on ‘the context of the dramatic fashions prevalent at the time of Oroonoko’s première and audience awareness of them’ (Rich 188). She argues that ‘[f]rom this perspective Oroonoko falls clearly into the renaissance of the heroic mode which began at the very end of the 1680s and often took the form of a split-plot tragicomedy’ (188). I would qualify Rich’s observation of genre by framing it in terms of travel plays, the form of which had (since Dryden) largely been dictated by heroic drama. Hence instead of positing origins in the resurgence of heroic tragedy that occurred at the end of the 1680s, we might alternatively see an unbroken tradition of travel plays moulded by heroic drama, which extended back to the 1660s, when Dryden and Howard’s plays set in Central America took voyage drama in new directions generically. Viewing the play in the context of the travel play form (as it has been inflected by heroic drama) means that certain developments in the representation of women and domesticity are emphasised. Restoration criticism which attends to Southerne’s text in isolation from the travel play tradition tends to produce discernibly negative readings of the role of women. Taking its cue from Behn’s novella, which (as Laura J. Rosenthal has noted) confronts the ‘ownership of Africans by the British, the ownership of American land by European colonists, and the ownership of women by men’, Southerne’s Oroonoko compares the marrying off of women with the slave trade – most explicitly when Charlot Welldon, disguised as a man, attempts to marry off her sister Lucia Welldon to the Captain (Rosenthal 25). The following passage implicitly sets up a parallel between women travelling to America to find husbands and slaves being transported to America for waiting masters; a parallel in which (according to Srinivas Aravamudan) the ‘depiction of each group’s vicissitudes assumes the existence of the theatrical spectator, whose comparative assessment

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measures the relative success of one group alongside the failure of the other’ (49–50): CAPT.

I don’t know whether your Sister will like me, or not: I can’t say much to her: But I have Money enough: And if you are her Brother, as you seem to be a-kin to her, I know that will recommend me to you. WELL. This is your Market for Slaves; my Sister is a Free Woman, and must not be dispos’d of in publick. You shall be welcome to my House, if you please: And, upon better acquaintance, if my Sister likes you, and I like your Offers, – CAPT. Very well, Sir, I’ll come and see her. GOV. Where are the Slaves, Captain? They are long a coming. BLAN. And who is this Prince that’s fallen to my Lot, for the Lord Governor? Let me know something of him, that I may treat him accordingly; who is he? (1.2.109–21) In Southerne’s account, women are traded by intermediaries or brokers (here a sibling) who negotiate ‘offers’ for their exchange, thus establishing what Jacqueline Pearson pessimistically describes as a ‘symbolic equivalence between women and slaves’ (114). Pearson’s equation is probably too strong an assertion, suggesting as it does that Southerne’s ostensible exposure of the denigration of women through marriage is ‘one of the most challenging and subversive presentations of women in the period’ (145). Lucia’s claim that ‘I don’t know what confinement marriage may be to the men, but I’m sure the women have not liberty without it’ (2.1.76–7) might be used as evidence from the text that marriage is not necessarily oppressive. Susan B. Iwanisziw has more cautiously deflated the supposedly ‘subversive feminist protest that has often been attributed to Southerne’s play’ (66), even whilst maintaining the importance of the marriage/ enslavement juxtaposition. Noting the complacency of women in the marriage market depicted by Southerne, Iwanisziw argues that ‘the radicalism of Southerne’s equation of marriage and slave markets comes under scrutiny in the last act of the play’, where ‘[o]nce they are all comfortably married, these women are no longer concerned with their status as “slaves”’ (66). This apparent complacency on the part of the female characters does not completely invalidate the parallel between the plights of women and slaves, for the thrust of Iwanisziw’s

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argument pertains to the gloomy prospects of marriage in the world of Southerne’s play: Southerne avoids constructing Surinam as a place of potential economic or political power for women outside of conventional marriage arrangements. In fact, his play reifies the ‘marriage market’ of London and limits women’s choices. Unlike Behn’s narrator in Surinam, the sole reason for the presence of Charlotte and Lucy in Surinam is ‘a-husband-hunting’ (1.1.4); here, there is no possibility of an independent existence outside of marriage. And, in fact, marriage spells the end of the kind of power Charlotte exerted in her days masquerading as Welldon. (Iwanisziw 65) The point I wish to make is an altogether simpler one. Iwanisziw correctly notes that the ‘sole reason’ for the Welldon women being in Surinam is ‘a-husband-hunting’, and that by contrast, what we might call the ‘colonial tourism’ experienced by Behn’s narrator is not available to them – but then, was it ever a common experience for early modern women? Behn’s female narrator (and indeed, Behn herself) occupied a privileged and somewhat unusual position in her first-hand exposure to the New World. When English women eventually did emigrate and settle in the colonies, it was invariably under domestic auspices – to assist with household duties, to provide companionship for male settlers, to breed and thus sustain the colony – rather than for exploration or touring purposes. Whilst there may be ‘no possibility of an independent existence outside of marriage’ for English women in the New World, it is worth pausing over the fact of these women being in the New World at all. For example, despite describing this ‘slave–woman thematic axis’ as ‘shaky’ (191), Rich nevertheless reaches a decidedly negative evaluation of the comic plot which, I argue, critics are prone to do if they do not contextualise the play within voyage drama traditions: By dehumanizing the comedy, [Southerne] demonstrates the results of the rejection of conservative heroic values: in the world of the Welldons and the planters, love and honor have become sex and chicanery, reputation has been exchanged for profit. These are the qualities of the hard comedy of the 1670s which Southerne makes even ‘harder’ by stripping from it the sophisticated veneer of a London setting. (Rich 194)

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Rich seems to be implying here that Southerne’s meditation on ‘the modern loss of values’ is intended as a social commentary on contemporary London, and that the geographical displacement to Surinam serves only to emphasise a point that might otherwise have been at least partially mitigated by ‘the sophisticated veneer of a London setting’ (194). But if we accept that Oroonoko is genuinely about the New World, it can be seen that although independent existence outside of marriage would have to wait, for now the mere fact of women travelling to America en masse represented a significant development in English colonial history, signalling as it did the establishment of an English domesticity abroad. I therefore share with Aravamudan a relatively positive evaluation of the ‘split-plot treatment of Englishwomen and slaves’ and Southerne’s ‘analogical use’ of slavery in the context of women’s rights, in that Aravamudan arrives at a considerably less pessimistic conclusion than Pearson when he writes that ‘the play juxtaposes the success of the English-women with the failure of the slave rebels’ (59).9 For all the mercantilism of matrimony, women in the New World are at least upwardly mobile; slaves remain slaves when all transactions are said and done. Importantly, men too are affected by the marriages of convenience that seemingly become institutionalised in late Restoration stage depictions of America – the reach of matrimonial unions even extends to the ignorant and unwilling males who had no intention of marriage. In Southerne’s play, Daniel, the new conjugal candidate for Lucia (after Lucia’s dislike of the Captain forces Charlot to make alternative arrangements), is shown to be ignorant of what it is that a husband does: WID. You must marry this Fine Woman, Daniel. DAN. Hey day! marry her! I was never married in all my life. What must I do with her then, Mother? WID. You must live with her, eat and drink with her, go to bed with her, and sleep with her. (2.1.120–4) Daniel’s ignorance of a husband’s duties resonates with Peregrine’s neglect of conjugal commitments on account of his exotic obsessions in Brome’s The Antipodes. But whereas Peregrine remained at home in the domestic sphere of England and only lusted after exotic shores, Daniel has reached the New World, where domestic responsibilities are still catching up with him. This ‘mercenary’ domestication of the exotic through exploitation of the institution of marriage has a romantic obverse which complicates

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my argument but ultimately confirms the conclusion that the New World of the early modern stage had, by the end of the century, become a safe site of normative eroticism rather than subversive exoticism. In both Behn’s novella and Southerne’s redaction of Oroonoko, the exotic comes to figure as a privileged site of fantastical erotic possibilities, providing exotic resolutions for domestic crises. In Behn’s text, Oroonoko and Imoinda are married in Africa, although the situation is admittedly complex: the narrator tells us that ‘contrary to the custom of his country, [Oroonoko] made [Imoinda] vows she should be the only woman he would possess while he lived’ (17), and ‘she condescended to receive him for her husband; or rather, received him as the greatest honour the gods could do her’ (18). In Southerne’s play, Oroonoko states quite simply that he ‘marry’d her’ (2.2.96), though Southerne too is quick to stress the unusualness of an African rejecting his ‘Country’s Custom’ of indulging in ‘the Privilege of many Wives’ and swearing to himself ‘never to know but her’ (2.2.96–8). Their love is thus demarcated as analogous to Christian marriage (that is, monogamous and formalised), but tragically cut short and prevented from flourishing in the domestic setting of their native Coramantien (Koromantyn). In both texts, the couple are deprived of marital happiness before they can consummate their union, since the jealous king, perceiving Imoinda to be only the mistress of Oroonoko (and thus a virgin fit ‘for the king’s private use’; 18), seizes her to satisfy his own lascivious desires. To escape his lustful advances, Imoinda falsely claims that Oroonoko has known her carnally; in the eyes of the king, Imoinda thus becomes ‘a polluted thing’, since ‘it is the greatest crime in nature amongst them to touch a woman after having been possessed by a son, a father or a brother’ (31). The king is so incensed that he orders Imoinda be ‘sold off’ as a slave ‘to another country, either Christian, or heathen, it was no matter where’, and the ‘cruel sentence’ is executed ‘with so much secrecy’ that none knew of Imoinda’s departure or her destination (31).10 It is only when Oroonoko reaches the New World that he is felicitously reunited with Imoinda and each learns of the other’s fate. It is true that Southerne’s Imoinda is born of a white father, the ‘first’ that Oroonoko ‘ever saw of [that] Complexion’ (2.2.73), whereas Behn’s Imoinda is pointedly a ‘black Venus to our young Mars’ and the ‘only daughter left of [her father’s] race’ (16), but whatever significance critics ascribe to Southerne’s creation of a miscegenous romance which ‘arguably capitalizes on the cultural prestige of Othello’s drama’ (Ferguson 185), the fact remains that in both versions of the story, the couple fall in love in the Old World and are only reunited in the New World. Unable to celebrate their erotic union in the domestic setting

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of their homeland, the couple are offered the chance to reconstitute their bond in the new, ‘exoticised’ domestic sphere of Surinam – much like Bess and Spencer pursue their romance abroad in Fair Maid of the West. As Julia A. Rich puts it: ‘Having lost everything – power, position, freedom itself – Oroonoko, in an inversion of the usual pattern, regains empire “enough” in the restoration of his love’ (193). The romance trope thus pushes the potential of the domesticated exotic still further, construing it not only as a normalised site of Old World domesticity, but as a privileged site where domestic shortcomings can be fantastically rectified and erotic bonds miraculously rejuvenated. If, by virtue of its generic interest in the quotidian and the lower classes, the comic plot of The Widow Ranter provided a realistic glimpse of the current state of affairs in Virginia, the New World is limned in palpably fantastic terms in the high romance of Oroonoko (both versions). To dismiss this latter depiction of the New World as literally ‘fabulous’ or ‘incredible’, though, would be a mistake: although highly contrived, drama can present otherness through artifice more easily than can either fictional prose or even eyewitness narratives. In early modern travel narratives (and, indeed, early modern poetry) purporting to capture the New World experience for European readers, even the most stringent attempts at faithful descriptions of radical alterity often fall short of the mark, for the simple reason (noted by Anthony Pagden) that ‘[t]he European observer in America … was not equipped with an adequate descriptive vocabulary for his task and was beset by an uncertainty about how to use his conceptual tools in an unfamiliar terrain’ (11). Prose narratives attempting realism without the requisite discursive framework necessarily fell back upon contrived classical motifs in lieu of accurate descriptions of alterity (see McInnis, ‘Golden Man’); paradoxically, drama (especially Restoration drama), on account of already being a highly contrived, stylised medium, was arguably better poised to tackle the representational challenges presented by the New World. As a platform for negotiating alterity and fostering mind-travelling, drama surpassed its prose counterparts in unexpected ways. In its depiction of the New World, the romance plot of Oroonoko is assisted rather than hindered by its conformity to literary tradition; playgoers in Restoration England had arguably been conditioned to receive productions of the exotic through the highly artificial generic conventions of tragic love and heroic drama. The successes of Howard’s Indian Queen and Dryden’s Indian Emperour and Conquest of Granada, Parts 1 and 2 reinforced the normality of engaging with foreign shores through hyperbolic, theatrical vehicles, and conditioned the audience to accept the artificiality of these channels of communication, to the point that

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the unnatural parameters of this staged exoticism were probably internalised, rendering them unobtrusive. Today’s filmgoers barely register the various devices silently deployed to construct a narrative: for example, the camera ‘eye’ can be equated with a character’s point of view without the need of explanation, or it can be an omniscient observer extraneous to the scene and invisible to the protagonists. These are generic conventions of the medium, or shared assumptions of the viewers, and as such, are accepted unquestioningly (along with many other techniques) since the very narrative itself is predicated upon such acceptance. The trappings and scaffolding of the film medium are hardly innate to the observer though, they are learned: the spectator is indoctrinated from an early age. In just the same way, I claim that early modern playgoers comprehended their entertainment through, and despite, the clunky infrastructure imposed by popular genres; that (in this case) the artifice of romance was the conduit through which a New World message could be conveyed. Rather than impeding the portrayal of foreign shores, the stylised conventions of Eurocentric romance created a familiar and tested ground upon which to lay the foundations of a sample of alterity. J.H. Elliott has observed of the European experience of describing the New World, that ‘[i]f the unfamiliar were to be approached as anything other than the extraordinary and the monstrous, then the approach must be conducted by reference to the most firmly established elements in Europe’s cultural inheritance’ (24). In prose, this meant that ‘the Christian and the classical traditions were likely to prove the obvious points of departure for any evaluation of the New World and its inhabitants’, as these fields of reference provided the necessary discursive tools with which to frame the radically exotic (Elliott 24). In the dramatic medium, genre (which operates on a larger scale) was an even more powerful determinant of intelligibility than discourse, which operates on the level of language and individual words only. In the context of genre, Aravamudan has noted that: [i]t is as if Behn’s novella, as one of the multiple origins of English novelistic discourse, deconstructs in one uninterrupted movement the very history of the English novel in miniature, moving from romance convention through high realism back to postmodern self-consciousness. (67) Whatever the accuracy of Aravamudan’s observation that Oroonoko proleptically anticipates the development of the Western novel (and I think his analysis is quite astute), his point that Behn begins with

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‘romance convention’ but moves beyond those strictures is extremely pertinent to the current argument about genre, for this is precisely what we witness occurring in Southerne’s adaptation too. The contrived structure of romance provides the familiar crutch on which the audience can lean while being introduced to otherwise intimidatingly alien subjects.

A domestic tragedy in the New World Leaving Oroonoko behind, but continuing with my investigation of New World romance, I wish to turn now to the tragic plot of The Widow Ranter and examine Behn’s use of genre in relation to Bacon and the Indian Queen (Semernia). Discussing the 1667 pamphlet by William Harris, Strange News from Virginia, on which Behn loosely based her text, Margaret Ferguson points out that ‘Behn’s Bacon, unlike his pamphlet counterpart, has romantic as well as military adventures’ – but the historical Mrs Bacon is absent in Behn’s play, where Bacon’s romantic interests are transferred to the Indian Queen (154). Margo Hendricks argues that ‘literary convention can help us understand why Behn consciously elects not to represent Bacon’s actual wife in the play: romantic love in Restoration comedy rarely takes place in marriage since the phenomenon is about courtship’ (234). Literary convention may indeed explain why Bacon is pursuing a lover rather than already being married, but as Hendricks herself observes, it cannot explain ‘why Behn chooses to construct a miscegenous relationship’ (234), nor can it explain why Behn’s hero courts a married woman (a point that neither Hendricks, Hutner, nor any other critic that I know of has considered). Beyond the fashionable controversy that depicting a miscegenous relationship on stage might generate, the true import of Bacon’s pursuit of Semernia, I will argue, lies in her dual significance as a married woman and the Indians’ Queen. This has important consequences for genre, and thus for the staging of the New World setting. In Bacon’s pursuit of a female ruler, Behn implicitly preserves the early misogynist trope, famously utilised by Raleigh, of the New World as feminised, virgin terrain awaiting European conquest. On the one hand, we have Bacon proclaiming, ‘Why cannot I Conquer the Universe as well as Alexander? or like another Romulus form a new Rome, and make my self Ador’d?’ (1.1.129–31), but Bacon is simultaneously pursuing the hand of the Indian Queen, as Friendly reports: ‘This Thirst of Glory cherisht by Sullen Melancholly, I believe was the first Motive that made him in Love with the young Indian Queen, fancying no Hero ought to

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be without his Princess’ (1.1.134–7). As both a monarch and as a woman who is presented in the text as being sexually responsive to Bacon’s desires, Semernia functions synecdochally for the Indians’ land and country. Bacon’s ‘conquest’ of Semernia is tantamount to the successful colonisation of Virginia, the virgin land; a point that Hendricks anticipates when she observes that ‘Bacon’s pursuit of Semernia takes on the rhetoric of property. Symbolically, Bacon’s pursuit is about the English efforts to acquire American Indian lands’: The acquisition of Semernia not only would signify Bacon’s mastery of the American Indians (including their enslavement) and what they control but also the English man’s right to lay claim to the American Indian female body. In Bacon’s colonialist endeavors, Cavernio stands between the Englishman’s accumulation of property – whether lands or the object of his erotic desire, Semernia. Given that Semernia is the wife of Cavernio and, in the context of early modern English ideologies regarding marriage, ‘belongs’ to him, Bacon’s actions represent an encroachment upon the property of the American Indian. … [F]rom the English perspective, Bacon’s position is typical of a general colonialist attitude. (Hendricks 236) Hutner suggests that the depiction of the Bacon/Semernia relationship is governed by ‘Behn’s obsessive preoccupation with the fall of the Stuart crown’ and that Bacon’s role is one of ‘an antihero, a Cromwellian or parliamentarian rebel in dangerous pursuit of the throne’, with Sermernia and Cavernio’s deaths reflecting ‘the evils of usurpation’ (102). However, the fact of Semernia being married means that Bacon is doubly an intruder: by seducing the Indian Queen, he invades the Indians’ land and he violates the sacred bond between husband and wife. In both contexts, Bacon disrupts the Indians’ domestic sphere, crossing the threshold of their figurative home and taking their Queen: Downright relates that it is ‘no secret that [Bacon] passionately Admires the Indian Queen, and under the pretext of a War, intends to kill the King her Husband’ (1.2.23–5). Accordingly, it might be argued that The Widow Ranter shares features with Renaissance domestic tragedies like Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), wherein an intruder to the household seduces the wife and destroys the familial bonds, which society needs to regenerate at the play’s denouement if a nihilistic conclusion is to be avoided.

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Lori Schroeder Haslem identifies ‘three interconnected areas of potential female transgression’ in domestic tragedies (‘the threshold of the house, the mouth, and chastity’) and observes that [w]e realize in looking back at Woman Killed with Kindness that all three points of entry were precariously guarded in Anne’s case – indeed, that transgression in the first two areas evidently led to the ultimate transgression of chastity – adultery: Wendoll was first admitted across the threshold, then invited both to sup and to converse regularly with Anne, and finally accepted into her bed. (146) Bacon’s attack on the Indians echoes the violation of domestic boundaries in plays like Heywood’s, where the intruder crosses the threshold, shares food and conversation with the hosts, and finally carries out the ‘ultimate transgression’ by committing adultery with the hostess. In the diplomatic exchange that occurs during a ‘Cessation’ in the battle, the King and Bacon recall their former familiarity; the King regretfully greeting Bacon with the apology, ‘I am sorry Sir, we meet upon these terms, we who so often have embrac’d as friends’ (2.1.1–2), and Bacon begging that they ‘may exchange those Friendships, Sir, we have so often paid in happier Peace’ (2.1.9–10). We learn throughout the conversation that the colonised indigenous peoples had, like a naive husband on the verge of cuckoldry, welcomed the English intruders with generous hospitality and misplaced trust: King: tho’ I’m young I’m sensible of Injuries; And oft have heard my Grandsire say – That we were Monarchs once of all this spacious world; Till you an unknown People landing here, Distress’d and ruin’d by destructive storms, Abusing all our Charitable Hospitality, Usurp’d our Right, and made your friends your slaves. (2.1.12–18) Just as the English abused the Indians’ good faith in appropriating their land, Bacon is seen opportunistically to seize the occasion of the ceasefire to seduce Semernia, whose ‘Charming mouth’ and ‘soft words’ herald the degeneration of her bond to her husband (2.1.32–3). Bacon’s declaration that he will ‘pursue her to the Banquet’ suggests that the sharing of meals has probably occurred in the past too (2.1.168). Two of the three ‘points of entry’ identified by Haslem as sites of potential

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transgression have clearly not been guarded: the threshold and the mouth. Bacon has been permitted to converse regularly with the Queen, and even when she admits to her husband that Bacon is captive to ‘my Beauty’ and ‘says he languishes for Love of me’, the King pays little heed to Bacon being his ‘Rival’ (4.1.30–2). As the confrontation between Bacon and the King looms, Semernia is revealed to be inconstantly devoted to her husband, her ‘faithless mind’ wavering ‘’twixt … two opinions’ (4.1.54) – praying for her husband’s safety, and pitying the man with whom she is now infatuated. The parallel between Bacon breaching the domestic bond (the threshold of the home) and the English invading the Indians’ land clearly registers in the repeated use of the term ‘Conqueror’ to designate Bacon’s roles in capturing territory (Anaria: ‘all the Wood’s surrounded by the Conqueror’; 5.3.7–8) and capturing Semernia’s heart (Queen: ‘my pain [love] return’d when ever I beheld my Conqueror’; 5.3.31–2). In the end, the illicit love is never realised, since Bacon mistakenly gives the disguised Queen her death wound in battle, and Semernia dies in Bacon’s arms. At the climax of the adulterous plot, then, the Queen’s body is unexpectedly penetrated by Bacon’s sword. The seemingly inevitable adulterous liaison is averted; a fatal encounter is substituted for an erotic encounter, as Semernia herself recognises when she proclaims that Bacon has ‘sav’d my Honour and … given me Death’, thus enabling her to ‘Love you without Infamy, and please my Dying Heart by gazing on you’ (5.3.57–61). The Queen’s body thus remains technically untainted, but surely the innocuous conclusion to their destabilising relationship does not exonerate Bacon of improper conduct in his disregard for Christian values throughout his amorous pursuits. Margo Hendricks argues that historically, ‘it was the loss of “Englishness” within an erotic, miscegenous space of “civilized conquest” that most alarmed the colonizers’: As Bacon pursues Semernia, is he civilized man or ‘savage’ native? Do we excuse Bacon’s blatant disregard of the Christian prohibitions against adultery, lust, and murder because the individuals who provoked this behavior were considered ‘savages’? Or, do we condemn him for his failure to remain a ‘true’ Englishman? (237) Bacon’s brashness and unorthodox methods in love and in war mark him as a rebellious and ultimately unassimilable member of the Virginian English society; in the contrived romance plot which Behn grafts onto her historical source, Bacon’s attempted defiance of the

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biblical injunction against adultery (Exodus 20:14) is a literary signifier of his incompatibility with the colonial society. With his suicide by poison in the wake of his beloved’s passing (the attenuated outcome of their attempted tryst), the renegade General is expelled from the English community by his own hand, in a manner redolent of Anne Frankford’s remorseful suicide in A Woman Killed with Kindness. Bacon’s suicide ambiguously stems from either his misperception of defeat or his unwillingness to survive Semernia’s death, but whatever the cause (it is probably both of these), his final speech definitively acknowledges his neglected responsibilities to the colony, and denounces the folly of his self-interested pursuits: Now while you are Victors make a Peace – with the English Councel – and never let Ambition – Love – or Interest, make you forget as I have done – your Duty – and Allegiance – farewel – a long farewel – (5.4.31–4) English society in Virginia is reconstituted anew, now without the rebellious faction (Bacon) which threatened its unity even whilst preserving the colony against the incursions of the Indians. (The text leaves open the question of whether a Virginia of cutpurses and thieves will be better off without the man who, despite his personal shortcomings, can still be regarded as valorous and capable of significant contributions to the betterment of the colony.) For their part, the Indians are relieved of the woman who willingly offered to forfeit ‘all our Kingdoms – make our People Slaves, and let me fall beneath your Conquering Sword’ (2.2.163–5) and the King who had never managed to hold her affections. The Widow Ranter is unmistakably a New World play, but it does not call attention to this fact so much as take it as its premise. If we take the treatment of domestic anxieties in the exotic location to be Behn’s central concern, we have an appropriate explanation for the seeming disjunction between the comic plot’s chronicle of Virginian society and the tragic plot’s stylised romance. The play’s New World interest constitutes an extension of domestic concerns, a fact that is reflected both in Behn’s transposition of the form and generic features of domestic tragedy onto the romance story of her New World tragicomedy, and in her presentation of a ‘domesticated exotic’ in the pointedly Virginian society of the comic plot. Behn’s audience is presented with a genuinely New World story which is to be valued as such, and not simply for the novelty of its setting, which by the late seventeenth century

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was not anyway so novel. The playwright’s innovative appropriation of old genres is instrumental in managing the audience’s expectations in such a way that the foreign setting assists the production rather than dominating it.

Notes 1. In his relatively neglected paper on The Widow Ranter, Peter C. Herman adopts a similar position to mine in insisting that ‘Behn constructs for her English audience a culturally independent Virginia long before the colonists themselves articulated their political and social differences from the mother country’ (274), but Herman is interested in Behn’s contribution to the invention of American identity, whereas this chapter seeks to locate Behn’s play within the native dramatic tradition of England (and more particularly within the vogue for voyage drama throughout the seventeenth century). I am thus more interested in genre and the stage than in cultural studies or anthropology, and though our analyses overlap or intersect at certain unavoidable points, the divergence in interests ensures minimal identity of conclusions. 2. Margaret Ferguson notes that although ‘[s]cholars differ substantially on the dating (and duration) of Behn’s Surinam visit’, most ‘now agree that it occurred between early fall, 1663, and February or March, 1664.’ She also characterises The Widow Ranter and Oroonoko as ‘texts that seek to dramatize, and profit from, exotic “news” from the new world. The news derives, explicitly in one text, implicitly in the other, from an experience Behn herself claimed to have had in the British colony of Surinam when she was a young woman’ (155n, 152). 3. The same phenomenon can be observed in Southerne’s stage adaptation of Oroonoko, when the Captain who conveys Oroonoko to Surinam ascertains the present state of the colony: ‘You are in hostility with the Indians, they say; they threaten you daily’ (1.2.125–6). 4. ‘Like the characters she describes, she had been a colonist in the New World. She lived in the then British colony of Surinam as a young girl, staying with the Johnson family, the father of whom had been appointed lieutenant general of the colony. There she gathered material for the work for which she is best known, Oroonoko. There, too, she and her brother were introduced to a group of Indians who served them a meal of “dressed Venison and Buffalo,” clearly the original for the feast described in The Widow Ranter’ (Pulsipher 42). 5. Dullman calls for ‘some Pipes and smoak’ upon entering the bar (1.1.170), and the Widow Ranter calls for ‘some Pipes and a Bowle of Punch’ and declares that she ‘must Smoke and Drink in a Morning, or I am Mawkish all day’ (1.3.33–5). Similarly, when the Widow throws a banquet in her Hall, Surelove tells us that the dessert is ‘Punch and Tobacco’ (2.2.3). 6. Jenny Hale Pulsipher makes this point too, though less decisively, as she also admits of the possibility that Behn merely sought to provide a new, less conservative viewpoint in her later works: ‘Stereotypes of Virginia’s classclimbing society were well known in England. When Behn’s Widow Ranter

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7.

8.

9.

10.

rose to wealth and social prominence in Virginia, she was simply doing what was popularly believed (and historically demonstrated) to be common in that colony. While such inversions could occur, London audiences expected theatrical demonstrations of class-climbing to be firmly quashed by the end of a play, restoring political and social order (Canfield 2). Perhaps Behn allowed this one exception as a nod to reality. In distant Virginia, where such things could and did occur, such an inversion of order could be allowed. In London, they could not. On the other hand, The Widow Ranter was Behn’s last play. Perhaps, at this point in her life, she chose to give a more open expression of her own split sympathies. While Behn’s political views were consistently royalist, supportive of traditional monarchical rule and class hierarchies, she was also openly critical of what she saw as unjust moral and social strictures on women’ (54). For a contradictory position, see Pulsipher, who after entertaining the possibility of sanctioned inversions (see note above), ultimately concludes as follows: ‘These characters’ rise to positions of power and influence is crucial to the comedy of the play and has led some to think Behn intended it as an affirmation of creole society in the New World, where those on the bottom of the social hierarchy could quickly rise to the top. Such a view would be misplaced. Behn may have found aspects of colonial Virginian society appealing, but in her dramatic account of Bacon’s Rebellion, as in the historical accounts, traditional order and hierarchy are affirmed and upheld, a clear demonstration of the continuity of English royalist culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Several recurrent themes in both The Widow Ranter and the historical records of Bacon’s Rebellion illustrate common cultural values. These include loyalty to the king, commitment to a hierarchical social order, and the emergence of a royalist type – a Tory immigrant, often a second son, whose most striking characteristic is self-conscious honor’ (41). Compare Orr, who argues that the Widow Ranter ‘is eventually reintegrated into traditional structures through her marriage to the genteel Daring’ (237). That the women will fare better than the slaves might be expected from Southerne’s choice of genres. As Iwanisziw explains, ‘If Southerne wished to make us examine women’s lot within an oppressive patriarchal system, however, he chose an especially difficult genre within which to make his point. This half of the split-plot drama is a comedy, and there can be no tragic ending, even though Lackitt may be “ruined” …. By making Lackitt a comic, rather than tragic, figure, Southerne carefully separates the fate of the British women from that of the slaves; in doing so, he invests the subplot with comedy and the main plot, that of Imoinda and Oroonoko, with tragedy’ (64). In Southerne’s account, the King is similarly driven to vengeful punishment, but Oroonoko remains ignorant of whether the King ‘Poyson’d her, or sent her far, far off’ (2.2.109–10).

Conclusion

Playgoing in early modern England constituted a departure or diversion from work and everyday life, and as such was liable to incur strict censure from antitheatrical polemicists. Travel was similarly subjected to moral opposition from writers who feared that unregulated, idle voyaging would result in cultural degeneration and the adoption of Continental vices. Such fears concerning the threat of foreign influence were particularly prevalent in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the English nation state was in its formative stages and the question of national identity was at stake. As the century wore on, and touring the Continent became increasingly affordable and acceptable, the affinity grew stronger between these two pastimes, playgoing and travelling, as forms of otium for the masses. The nexus of these diversions from negotium was voyage drama. Building on the work of Jowitt in particular, this study has attempted to bring the neglected sub-genre of voyage drama into sight, arguing that it deserves consideration as a phenomenon in its own right. Voyage drama is important for our understanding of theatre history, but also for our understanding of the cultural history of travel. I have argued that in staging travel plays, the theatre appears to have conditioned the English desire for sightseeing by fostering the demand for a vicarious form of tourism before physical voyaging had become accessible to the populace at large. Especially in the late Tudor period, the exponential increase in printed texts containing descriptions of exotic countries stimulated an interest in travel which only a significant minority of Englishmen could pursue. Mind-travelling was a viable alternative for pleasure-seeking early moderns who were physically or financially unable to delight in ‘the corporal view, and passage’ of ‘the most remarkable countries of the world’ (Argyll 70–1). The archival 210

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research presented in the early chapters of this book elucidates the extent to which early moderns were gratified by the descriptions and first-hand experience of travel. The theatre exceeded the printed chronicle in bringing foreign shores to life for the playgoer, but to understand how it did so, I have argued that we must stress the concept of playing as a system across which the imaginative and cognitive burden is spread. Maps and books stimulated the imaginations of Marlowe, Burton, and the mind-travelling readers envisaged by William Wood, guiding the beholder through lands so alien that the imagination is forced to supply what knowledge alone cannot. The playwright’s imaginative wanderings become encoded in the drama such that the playgoer, hearing the exotic travels of the protagonist described, will most likely respond to the oral marker just as the playwright responded to the textual stimulus. Like Wolfgang Iser’s active reader, the playgoer must actively participate in the creation of theatrical spectacle, as choric figures constantly remind them to do through injunctions to ‘work’ their thoughts, to activate their imaginations. The insights of a Distributed Cognition model of playing suggest that even expository speeches are unlikely to operate merely on a unidirectional plane; playgoers must accept their role in the system if something approaching Kames’s ideal presence is to be achieved. In this collaborative ‘production’ of spectacle, the theatre anticipates much modern day sightseeing, which as Dean MacCannell observes, relies in equal parts on the sight and on the ‘marker’ which designates it as a sight and imbues it with significance as an exceptional, noteworthy attraction. All tourists experience a sight in their own way, based on the cues they are given and the degree to which their expectations are met by the experience itself: as MacCannell wryly notes, a moon rock that is indistinguishable from something found in Central Park attracted throngs of tourists in New York City, but moon dust on display in Pittsburgh attracted about as much attention as ‘a sack of coal dust’ (116). Satisfaction is a fickle thing, and depends at least as much on the beholder as on the sight. Playgoers are similarly provided with a variety of markers which condition (but do not determine) their experience of the theatrical ‘sight’. The choric figures are a crude form of such markers, as are the ‘location boards’ sometimes displayed above the stage to indicate the setting of a scene. The ‘plots’ or Arguments sometimes circulated at important or elaborate performances (Stern, Documents 65) were another source of complementary information, as were print versions of the play’s subject matter, which playgoers might have read prior

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to their experience of the drama itself. In the Interregnum, Davenant provided his playgoers with the full text of his entertainments, including additional exegetical commentary which shaped the audience’s perception of the performance. These oral and textual markers typically affected playgoers’ expectations of a play and prepared them for the experience, just as an actor working from his ‘parts’ would commence a performance armed with certain knowledge but would also encounter dynamic playing conditions. During the experience of a performance itself, the cognitively rich physical environment of the playhouse contributed to the illusion of travel, as Heywood was swift to recognise and exploit, in conjunction with a variety of visual and aural markers of place. Davenant’s introduction of an elaborate visual facet (painted scenery in the public theatres) did not cause playgoers to become passive like the television viewers described by Paul Fussell; rather, it caused them to spread their imaginative activity over a greater set of stimuli. Despite the detail of the perspectival backdrops, the scenes were not a substitute for the imagination, only another form of marker. As Dryden so elegantly explained it, the theatre, like a prospective glass, represents scenes beyond its limited physical capacity to comprehend them. The representational gesture, no matter how detailed, is ultimately dependent on the playgoer’s imaginative activity. For this reason, Davenant was at pains to ‘teach’ the playgoer how to use this new stage technology, his actors providing cues to the audience just as they would indoctrinate a novice player. The overriding impression yielded by this survey of the staging of voyage drama, and the associated aids to mind-travelling, is one of dramatic evolution. Despite the natural inclination to assume, as a consequence of the periodisation of literature courses, that Restoration aesthetics and technologies of the stage differed radically from their Renaissance counterparts, the evidence mobilised here suggests a subtle degree of continuous innovation rather than a complete severance during the Interregnum. Demand for the vicarious travel experience in the theatre remained constant over the course of the seventeenth century; a fact which sits uncomfortably with the assumption of some critics that staging travel is the surest way to expose the limitations of the theatre. Characters such as Faustus, Fortunatus, Wincott, and Peregrine Joyless read about distant lands and longed to see them; voyage drama, however crude – and I suggest that it was not so crude as we might intuitively believe – was the chief means of (temporarily) sating such desires for the average Londoner, few of whom could afford the time or expense required to travel physically.

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In attending to voyage drama, often thought to be the harshest test of the stage’s abilities, I have attempted to provide an ‘extreme’ test case through which to better understand the production and consumption of early modern theatre. How might this understanding of the stage apply to drama that does not incorporate travel? Can the principles of staging covered here be transposed to other plays? Presumably so, to some extent at least. Dryden’s meditations on stage fights may prove instructive in seeing why: For why may not our imagination as well suffer it self to be deluded with the probability of it, as with any other thing in the Play? For my part, I can with as great ease perswade my self that the blowes are given in good earnest, as I can, that they who strike them are Kings or Princes, or those persons which they represent. (‘Essay’ 50) An imagination capable of accepting an actor’s representation of royalty can easily accept a stage fight as a representation of real combat; so too an imagination capable of accepting a representation of voyaging and exotic lands can just as easily accept other forms of fictional events and settings. The principles of the imagination are at least to some extent transferrable from the staging of travel to other kinds of spectacle. At the heart of this study is a concern with the representation of peoples and places beyond the ordinary reach of a London playgoer. As I briefly, provocatively mentioned in the context of Marlowe, however, geographical travel may have some analogy with time-travel. The conjuration of Helen of Troy, or any historical personage for that matter, is a representational challenge on par with the depiction of exotic lands. Whilst there would undoubtedly be additional or alternative factors requiring consideration in the context of history plays, I am somewhat reassured by Dryden’s ability to persuade himself in equal measures of the credibility of the sword fight and of the regal quality of the supposed combatants. Whilst it is possible to discriminate between time and place, fiction and history, all dramatic representations ultimately depend upon the wings of active thought.

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Index active playgoer 2, 3, 42–4, 50, 60, 158–9, 211 see also imagination, active active reader 3, 32, 34, 49, 211 Adler, Judith 15, 25, 26, 29 Admiral’s Men 8, 10, 11, 64, 71, 72, 74, 155, 173 adultery, representations of 98, 105, 205–7 affectations of travellers 78, 83, 85–7, 92–3, 97 Alleyn, Edward 59, 71 Anderson, Benedict 114, 130 antitheatricalism 1, 92, 93, 210 Aravamudan, Srinivas 196, 199, 202 Aristotle 93, 174 ars apodemica 19, 20–5, 26, 78, 85–6, 87, 88, 91, 92, 94, 103, 106, 107, 166, 168–9 Baker, Gulielmus 81, 135 Barbour, Richmond 32, 33 Barnes, Barnabe The Devil’s Charter 177 Bartels, Emily C. 67 Beaumont, Francis Knight of the Burning Pestle 43 Behn, Aphra 182–208 Oroonoko 172, 185, 193, 195, 200–1, 202 The Widow Ranter, or The History of Bacon in Virginia 9, 182–3, 184–93, 194, 195, 201, 203–8 Berek, Peter 52 Birringer, Johannes H. 53 Blackfriars Theatre 156 Blount, Thomas 176 Blundeville, Thomas 27 Brome, Richard The Antipodes 6, 8, 53, 67, 121, 123–44, 199 A Jovial Crew 29–30

Burton, Robert 35, 37–8, 46, 49, 58–60, 62, 63, 65, 70, 127, 137, 211 ‘Alba’ 156 Busino, Horatio 87 Campbell, Mary B. 139, 140 Canfield, J. Douglas 190, 209 Carey, Daniel 20, 21, 25, 78 Cartelli, Thomas 54, 55 Casas, Bartolomé Las 151 censorship 119, 149, 181 Chapman, George Eastward Ho 9, 89, 162, 194 Charles I 147 Charles II 23, 150, 170, 173, 184 chorus, role of 3, 9, 39–44, 47–9, 66, 94, 114, 116, 118, 159, 211 Chua, Brandon 183 Clare, Janet 148, 149, 150, 151–2, 153, 155 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 45, 179 colonialism 2, 12, 53–4, 113, 147–8, 150–2, 182–209 conqueror plays 8, 52–7, 71–4 Cope, Kevin L. 149, 160, 161 Cortez, Hernando 11, 173, 174 Coryate, Thomas 5, 6, 20, 31, 32, 33, 34, 70, 79, 81, 135, 165, 167 Corye, John The generous enemies, or The ridiculous lovers a comedy 157 cosmography 31, 54, 65–8, 129–30 court entertainments 3, 68–9, 145, 149, 153–4, 155, 157 Cowley, Abraham 148 Craik, Katharine A. 138 Creaser, John W. 86 Cromwell, Oliver 147, 148, 150, 151–2 Cromwell, Richard 152 cultural difference 8, 23, 94, 128, 132, 140 230

Index Cunningham, Peter 69 Cunningham, William 31, 54, 176 Curtain Theatre 11, 116 Dallington, Robert 21, 24, 70 Danson, Lawrence 40 Davenant, William 9, 11, 146, 147–63, 164, 170, 172–3, 212 The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru 9, 146, 147–9, 151–2, 153, 155, 159, 163, 172 The First Days Entertainment at Rutland-House 159 The History of Sir Francis Drake 9, 146, 147–8, 152–3, 155, 161, 162, 163, 172 The Playhouse to be Let 172 Siege of Rhodes 159, 160, 161 Day, John ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ 11, 173, 190 The Travels of the Three English Brothers 8, 10, 113, 154, 176 Dekker, Thomas 50, 74 Old Fortunatus 7, 8, 10, 42–3, 47, 63–4, 74–82, 79–82; 123, 159, 212 ‘Page of Plymouth’ 99 Westward Ho 89 Des Maizeaux, Pierre 164 Dessen, Alan C. 39, 40–1, 114, 117, 118, 161 Devereux, Robert, see Essex, 2nd Earl of Distributed Cognition 2, 20, 44–50, 116–18, 121, 163, 211 domestic tragedy 98–100, 183, 203–8 domesticity, representations of 83, 84, 98–9, 105, 107, 182–208 Donaldson, Ian 85, 90, 95 Drake, Sir Francis 150, 152 Dryden John 170–80, 212, 213 Conquest of Granada, Parts 1 & 2 201 ‘Essay of Dramatick Poesie’ 16, 158, 159 The Indian Emperour 9, 146, 172, 173, 174, 175, 179, 201 The Indian Queen (with Robert Howard) 9, 170–1, 172, 174, 201

231

East India Company 119–20 Eden, Richard 31, 129–30, 139, 140 Elizabeth I 111, 112 Elliott, J.H. 202 Elyot, Sir Thomas 12, 30 English Faust Book 68, 69 Englishness 93, 109, 113, 206 see also national identity Essex, 2nd Earl of (Robert Devereux) 21, 24, 111–12, 169 experiential knowledge 87, 137 through travel 133, 134, 135, 141 Felltham, Owen 15, 29, 35, 59, 86, 169 Ferguson, Margaret 183, 200, 203 Feuillerat, Albert 74 Flatter, Richard 177 Floyd-Wilson, Mary 23 Forde, Thomas Virtus rediviva: a panegyrick on our late King Charles I 178 Franklin, Wayne 132, 188, 192 Frohock, Richard 147–8, 149, 150, 151 Frow, John 26 Fuchs, Barbara 108, 109, 112 Fussell, Paul 14, 41, 43, 146, 163, 212 genre 183 conqueror plays 8, 52–7, 71–4 domestic tragedy 98–100, 183, 203–8 humoral comedies 99, 123–4, 125, 143 moral entertainments 146, 148, 149 tragicomedies 183, 184, 190, 196 voyage drama 1–10 Gerbier, Sir Balthazar 21 Gossett, Suzanne 89 Gosson, Stephen 10, 92, 93 Grand Tour 15, 21, 86, 146, 164, 169, 170 Greenblatt, Stephen 54, 57 Greene, Robert Alphonsus, King of Arragon 71 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay 176 Selimus (attributed) 71

232

Index

Guicciardini, Francesco 28 Gurr, Andrew 38–9, 48, 157 Hakluyt, Richard 13, 20, 21, 53, 112, 138, 139 Hall, Bishop Joseph 31, 124, 131, 133, 134, 139, 141 Harbage, Alfred 8, 73, 111 Harington, Sir John 91 Haslem, Laurie Schroeder 205 Haughton, William ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ 11, 173, 190 Haynes, Jonathan 97–8 Healy, Thomas 53, 70 Henderson, Diana E. 98–9 Hendricks, Margo 183, 185, 203, 204, 206 Henslowe, Philip diary 10, 64, 72, 74 papers 67, 68–9, 71, 116, 155, 157, 173 Herbert, Sir Henry 119, 149 Herrick, Robert 27 Heywood, Thomas 3, 9, 71, 83–4, 85, 96–121, 123, 205, 212 ‘Albere Galles’ 11 Apology for Actors 83, 96, 98, 146, 148 The English Traveller 3–4, 9, 83, 99–100, 101, 103, 107, 121 Fair Maid of the West, Parts 1 & 2 9, 83, 97, 99, 100, 107–8, 110–16, 201 Fortune by Land and Sea 9, 40, 83, 99, 107–10, 115, 116, 117, 177, 194 If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody 83 A Woman Killed With Kindness 98–9, 101–2, 107, 204, 205, 207 Holaday, Allan 96 Holland, Norman N. 47 Holland, Peter 41, 63, 67, 101, 104–6, 115–16, 118, 124 Holyday, Barten Technogamia, or The Marriages of the Arts 127–8 Hopkins, Lisa 53, 60, 96

Horace 94, 132–4, 143, 144 Horodowich, Liz 12–13 Howard, Donald R. 139, 140 Howard, Jean E. 92, 110, 113, 114 Howard, Sir Robert 146, 172, 174, 196 The Indian Queen (with Dryden) 9, 170–1, 172, 174, 201 Howell, James 96–7, 104, 131, 132, 134, 135, 143–4 humoral comedies 88, 90, 99, 123–4, 125, 143 humours, the 90, 107, 123–6, 137–8, 142, 143 Hutchings, Mark 52–3, 62 Hutchins, Edwin 44, 48 Hutner, Heidi 147, 170, 172–3, 183, 184, 187, 203, 204 ideal presence 19–20, 34–8, 41, 47, 49, 61–2, 67, 178, 179, 182, 211 imagination, active 2–3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 28, 34–50, 52, 60, 61–3, 114, 117, 118, 121, 123, 145, 146, 153–4, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160–1, 162–3, 172, 175, 177, 178–80, 211 Interregnum period 6, 9, 145–51, 160, 212 Iser, Wolfgang 3, 34, 42, 50, 211 Iwanisziw, Susan B. 197, 198 James I 177 James II 184 Johnson, Samuel 46 Jones, Inigo 85, 155, 156 Jonson, Ben 40, 79, 83–99, 104, 107, 116, 121, 123, 124–6, 132, 139, 143, 144, 164–5 Bartholomew Fair 89 Cynthia’s Revels 86, 93 The Devil is an Ass 36–7, 69–70, 129 Eastward Ho 9, 89, 162, 194 The Entertainment at Britain’s Burse 139 Epigrams 85 Every Man In His Humour 88, 94 Every Man Out of His Humour 84, 88, 90, 94, 123–4, 125, 126 The New Inn 89, 139 ‘Page of Plymouth’ 99

Index Volpone 83, 86, 90, 94, 105, 123, 164, 166, 169 Jowitt, Claire 7, 8, 109, 124, 138, 140, 210 Kames, Lord (Henry Home) 19, 35, 36, 37, 38, 46, 49, 178, 182, 211 Keck, David 58 Knutson, Roslyn L. 11, 64, 72–3, 76, 155 Lee, John 89, 95–6 Leech, Clifford 89 Leigh, Edward 23, 24 Leslie, Marina 143 Levin, Richard 55 Levine, Laura 92, 93 Lipsius, Justus 20, 21, 24, 31–2, 33, 66, 92–3, 97, 106 Lobb, Emmanuel, see Simons, Joseph Lodge, Thomas 150 Wounds of the Civil War 71 Lopez, Jeremy 40 lost plays 10–11 ‘Ajax Flagellifer’ 156–7 ‘Alba’ 156 ‘Albere Galles’ 11 ‘Belin Dun’ or ‘Bellendon’ 155 ‘The Blacksmith’s Daughter’ 10 ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ 11, 173, 190 ‘Famous Tragicall history, of ye Tartarian Crippell Emperour of Constantinople’ 72 ‘Fortunatus, Part 1’ 10, 74, 76 ‘The Four Sons of Aymon’ 98 ‘Friar Francis’ 98–9 ‘History of Ferrar’ 68 ‘Mahomet’ 10, 64 ‘The New World’s Tragedy’ 11, 64, 190 ‘Page of Plymouth’ 99 ‘The Plantation of Virginia’ 11, 186, 190 ‘Scanderbeg’ 11 ‘Sir John Mandeville Play’ 10 ‘A stately tragedy containing the ambitious life and death of the great Cham’ 73, 75, 76

233

‘Stuhlweissenberg’ 11 ‘Tamar Cham, Parts 1 & 2’ 10, 64, 71–2, 73, 76 ‘The Turkish Mahomet and Helen the Fair Greek’ 10 Lost Plays Database 11, 72–3, 98, 156, 173, 190 MacCannell, Dean 5, 6, 16–17, 33, 49, 153, 171, 211 Mandeville, Sir John 10, 56, 57, 67, 81, 126, 127, 137, 138–44 maps 12, 27, 28, 57–63, 65, 70, 135, 211 Maquerlot, Jean Pierre 7, 8 Mark, Jeffrey 149, 155 markers sightseeing 5, 6, 16–17, 33–4, 49, 153, 211 theatrical 4, 6, 18, 49, 50, 153–4, 155, 163, 171, 172, 179, 211–12 Marlowe, Christopher 51–73, 76, 82, 84, 96, 123, 183, 211, 213 Doctor Faustus 8, 51, 63–71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79, 82, 116, 123, 155 The Jew of Malta 64, 74 Tamburlaine, Parts 1 & 2 7, 8, 9, 10, 31, 51–63, 64–5, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 82, 96, 163 Marston, John Eastward Ho 9, 89, 162, 194 Massinger, Philip The Renegado 8, 9 Master of the Revels, see Herbert, Sir Henry McConachie, Bruce 42, 45 Merchant Taylors’ Hall 116, 118, 121 Meyer, Albrecht 21–2, 26, 28 Miller, William E. 156 mind-travelling 25–34, 133–5, 210–13 characters 81, 99–100, 123, 129–35, 138–44 effects of scenery on 146–64 in the theatre 38–50, 71, 114, 171–2, 179–80, 201–3, 210–13 playwrights 57–63, 114 see also travel, vicarious Montrose, Louis 91, 96 moral entertainments 146, 148, 149

234

Index

morality and playgoing 85, 90, 91–2, 93–5, 98, 110, 121, 136, 146, 148, 149, 150, 210 and sightseeing 164–80 and travel 23, 24, 25, 19, 84–96, 104–5, 121, 164–80, 210 Moryson, Fynes 90 Mountfort, Walter 119 The Launching of the Mary, or The Seaman’s Honest Wife 118–19 Münster, Sebastian 31, 129 national identity 85–7, 109–111, 128–9, 131–2, 210 native peoples, representations of 11, 147, 148, 151, 155, 163, 171, 172, 174, 184–7, 203–7 Neale, Thomas 168 negotium 91, 170, 210 Nell, Victor 101 New World, the 11, 53, 54, 71, 89–90, 140, 150–4, 172, 173, 174, 182–209 Newman, Karen 12 Niayesh, Ladan 113 Nichols, Philip Sir Francis Drake Revived 152 Nixon, Anthony 154 Northbrooke, John 92 Orgel, Stephen 46, 93, 156 Orr, Bridget 186 Ortelius, Abraham 26, 27, 28, 29, 57, 58, 59, 63, 169 Ostovich, Helen 125 otium 90–1, 210 Pagden, Anthony 201 Palmer, Thomas 130–1 Pangallo, Matteo 41, 43 Parr, Anthony 7–8, 11, 23, 31, 127 Pearson, Jacqueline 197, 199 Pepys, Samuel 172 periaktoi 156–7 perspective glass, see prospective glass piracy, representations of 108–110, 115 Platter, Thomas 66, 130, 131, 135, 174

playgoers active imagination of 2–3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 28, 34–50, 52, 60, 61–3, 114, 117, 118, 121, 123, 145, 146, 153–4, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160–1, 162–3, 172, 175, 177, 178–80, 211 knowledge of other countries 127 playgoing as departure from everyday 1, 15, 16, 39, 85, 91, 170, 210 moral objections to 85, 90, 91–2, 93–5, 98, 110, 121, 136, 146, 148, 149, 150, 210 playhouses Blackfriars 156 Cockpit 9, 149, 152, 153 Curtain 11, 116 Globe 11 King’s 172 Lincoln’s Inn Fields 172 Merchant Taylors’ Hall 116, 118, 121 Red Bull 116 Rose 10, 116 Swan 120 Theatre Royal 172 private theatres 116, 120, 154 prospective glass 176–80, 212 Prynne, William 46, 136, 171 public theatres 116, 118, 120, 145, 146, 153, 154, 155, 157, 170 Rabkin, Norman 104, 105, 106 Raleigh, Sir Walter 111, 112, 203 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista 12–13 Rawlins, Thomas Tunbridge-Wells: or, A Dayes Courtship 158 real presence 13, 36, 67, 179, Revels Accounts 68–9 Rich, Julia A. 196, 198–9, 201 Robinson, H. 14, 15 Roe, William, 85, 86, 93, 95 Rosenthal, Laura J. 196 Rothstein, Eric 37, 61 Rowley, Samuel 173 Rowley, William, 108, 109 Fortune by Land and Sea 9, 40, 83, 99, 107, 108, 115, 117, 177, 194

Index The Travels of the Three English Brothers 8, 10, 113, 154, 176 Rubiés, Joan-Pau 22, 23 Ryan, Marie-Louise 46, 47 Saint-Évremond, Sieur de (Charles de Saint-Denis) Sir Politick Would-be 146, 164–80 Sales, Roger 51, 54, 69 Sanders, Julie 11–12, 46, 124 Sanford, Rhonda Lemke 12, 33, 143 scenery 40, 46, 68–9, 146–64, 170–2, 175, 179–80, 212 Schwenger, Peter 60 Scott, Alison V. 139 Seaton, Ethel 57–8 Settle, Elkanah 175–6, 180 Shakespeare, William The Comedy of Errors 128 Hamlet 98, 120, 147 Henry V 9, 39–41, 42, 43, 47 Macbeth 177 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 62 Othello 100, 200 Romeo and Juliet 69, 147 The Tempest 9, 40, 43–4, 114, 154, 192 Twelfth Night 192–3 Shapiro, James 51 Sidney, Sir Philip 21, 24, 38, 39, 40, 50, 94, 121 sight markers 5, 6, 16, 33, 153, 211 sightseeing 5, 31–4, 66–9, 145–6 and morality 164–80 scholarship of 13–18 Simons, Joseph Montezuma sive Mexici Imperii Occasus 173 slavery, representations of 196–9 Smith, Wentworth ‘Albere Galles’ 11 ‘The Conquest of the West Indies’ 11, 173, 190 Snuggs, H.L. 90 Southerne, Thomas Oroonoko 182, 195, 196–9, 200, 203 Spain and the Spanish, representations of 110–11, 115, 150, 151–2, 173, 174

235

Spenser, Edmund 56 stage realism 1, 4, 38, 39, 48, 118, 159, 160–1 stage technologies 145, 155–61, 179 see also scenery; periaktoi; markers, theatrical; chorus, role of staging travel 38–50, 107–21, 124 Stagl, Justin 22, 23 Stationers’ Register 10–11, 72, 173 Steggle, Matthew 11 Stern, Tiffany 153–4, 211 Strange’s Men 10, 71, 72 Sutton, John 3, 45, 117 Tanquam explorator 95 theatres, see playhouses Theilmann, John M. 14 Thornton Burnett, Mark 54 Thurloe, Sir John 148, 151 Todd, Janet 184, 192, 194 Tomkis, Thomas Lingva: Or, The Combat of the Tongue, and the fiue Senses For Superiority 139 tourism 13–18, 32, 49 in the early modern era 5, 66, 32, 33, 86, 145–6 as theatrical experience 16 tragicomedies 183, 184, 190, 196 travel benefits of 22–3, 79, 96 corruptive potential of 23, 24, 25, 78, 131–2 desire to 52–7, 74, 77, 121, 134 in the early modern era 1–2, 5, 13–16, 20–5, 25–34, 66, 71, 130 educative 15, 21, 22, 23, 26, 95, 103–4, 106, 170 as escape 83, 84, 96–107, 108, 110, 121, 166 instructions for, see ars apodemica knowledge through 21–2, 102–3, 106, 133, 134 morality and 19, 84–96, 104–5, 121, 164–80, 210 and national identity 85–7, 109–111, 131–2, 210 pleasurable 2–3, 19, 24, 28, 29, 31–3, 51, 66–9, 79

236

Index

travel – continued purposeful 20, 21–3, 32, 103, 104 secularisation of 23 staging 38–50, 107–21, 124 therapeutic 123–44 vicarious 11–13, 19, 20, 29, 31, 46, 53, 63, 67, 69, 76, 82, 112, 114, 125, 126, 133–4, 135, 170, 179–80, 210, 212 see also mind-travelling travellers, affectations of 19, 78, 85–7, 92–3, 97 travelling well 20–1, 78, 85–8, 92, 94–5, 109–10, 166 see also ars apodemica Tribble, Evelyn B. 44–5, 47, 48, 117, 118, 163 ‘Turk plays’ 10 Turler, Jerome 29, 67, 134, 141 Turner, Robert K. 100–1, 110, 111, 114

Visconsi, Elliott 184

Ure, Peter 177 Urry, John 1, 14, 15–16, 33, 39, 91

Wake, Sir Isaac 156–7 Walden, Aaron R. 188 wanderlust 53, 54, 65, 69, 81, 82, 84, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 136 Webb, John 159, 160 Webster, John Duchess of Malfi 98 Westward Ho 89 Whetstone, George 54 Wiggins, Martin 37, 52, 53, 69–70, 125 Wilkins, George The Travels of the Three English Brothers 8, 10, 113, 154, 176 Willems, Michèle 7, 8 Wilson, Richard 54 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott 23 Wood, William 27, 59, 80, 211 Wright, Father Thomas 85 Wright, Louis B. 4, 22, 63, 112, 114–15, 117, 118, 119

vagari 22, 23, 91 Velte, Mowbray 100, 101, 107 Vincent, Thomas 176–7

Zacher, Christian K. 23, 141 Zouch, Richard 30 Zwicker, S. 22–3