Shakespeare and the archpriest controversy: A study of some new sources 9783111725192, 9783111029641

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STUDIES IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE

Volume LXXXV

SHAKESPEARE AND THE ARCHPRIEST CONTROVERSY A Study of Some New Sources

by

DAVID KAULA University of Western

Ontario

1975

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARK

© Copyright 1975 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 74-78510

Printed in Belgium by N.I.C.I., Ghent.

PREFACE

This study is an attempt to demonstrate a set of new sources for six of the plays Shakespeare wrote between 1601-1606, the sequence of tragedies and 'problem plays' running from Hamlet to Macbeth. By now so much scholarly attention has been devoted to Shakespeare's sources and the corpus of Elizabethan literature has been combed over so thoroughly, it would seem highly unlikely that any new sources remain to be discovered. In this case, however, the obscurity of the material helps to explain why it has not been investigated before in relation to Shakespeare. Understandably, it has never occurred to anyone that Shakespeare might have taken an interest in the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy, even though they were readily available to him and appeared just as he was commencing the central phase of his playwriting career. My purpose is in no sense to supply a 'key' that will unlock the hidden meanings of some of Shakespeare's most interesting and complex plays. I do feel that the pamphlets will shed light on some hitherto unrecognized aspects of the plays, especially as they might reflect Shakespeare's response to current developments in English Catholicism, but since the task of demonstrating that he used this material must obviously come first, I have limited my speculations to some remarks on Hamlet in the last chapter. In quoting from the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy and other early seventeenth-century works I have expanded abbreviations and corrected obvious misprints, but otherwise left the spelling unchanged. For quotations from Shakespeare I have used The Complete Works under the general editorship

VI

PREFACE

of Alfred Harbage (Baltimore, 1969). Line references and act-scene divisions are in keeping with that edition. Portions of the chapters on Hamlet and Measure for Measure originally appeared in Shakespeare Survey, XXIV (1971), and Shakespeare Studies, VI (1970). I am grateful to the editors of those journals for permitting me to include this material.

CONTENTS

Preface

v

1. Introduction

1

2. King Lear and the True Relation

18

3. Hamlet and the Sparing Disco verie

30

4. Troilus and Cressida and Persons' Briefe Apologie

. .

42

5. Measure for Measure and the Dialogue

60

6. Othello and Ely's Briefe Notes

74

7. Macbeth, Arnauld's Discours, and the Important Considerations

84

8. Some Observations on Hamlet

102

Bibliography

125

Index

130

1. INTRODUCTION

Among the important political events in England during the final years of Queen Elizabeth's reign was the series of bitter disputes within the English Catholic priesthood known as the Archpriest Controversy. Although not too well-known today, the controversy was much talked about in London at the time, and Shakespeare almost certainly would have been aware of it. It had serious political implications because it was largely concerned with how the underground Catholic movement in England should be organized and what its objective should be, one party advocating the eventual restoration of England to the Church, the other seeking to work out a compromise with the Protestant regime. The disputes were a matter of special interest to Queen Elizabeth and her councilors, and they did what they could to foster them by secretly supporting one side against the other. They were also fully exposed to the public through a series of almost two dozen pamphlets written by the priests, most of which were published in London in 1601-1602. As William Camden remarked in his Annals, the two parties "fell foule one of another with bitter pennes, virulent tongues, and contumelious bookes", 1 and indeed the polemics they fired at each other were sometimes as vicious as any which came out of the other religious disputes of the time. The controversy had such a damaging effect on the Catholic missionary program in England that it completely and permanently lost the considerable momentum it had gained earlier in the Elizabethan period. 1

The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth, tr. Richard Norton (London, 1630), 214.

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INTRODUCTION

Although no one has so far tried to demonstrate any connection between them, the Archpriest Controversy may have a special significance for the plays Shakespeare wrote between 1601-1606. This is because several of the pamphlets written by the priests show a large number of similarities to six of these plays: Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Many of these similarities are of the detailed verbal variety, involving particular words, phrases, images, and combinations of these. Sometimes they involve more general features of thought, situation, and character. While it is true that accidental resemblances can be seen fairly often between Shakespeare's plays and various contemporary works, and while for this reason the temptation to spot new Shakespearean sources is one it is generally well to resist, in this case the similarities are so plentiful that they raise the question whether Shakespeare might have actually used the pamphlets. No doubt it will seem highly unlikely that he could have done so, first because such a large body of source material surely would not have remained undetected for so long. The explanation for this oversight would be that since the seventeenth century the pamphlets have rarely been examined except by ecclesiastical historians who had little reason to be on the alert for Shakespearean parallels. Until very recently, of the nearly two dozen published works which emanated from the Archpriest Controversy, only two have been reprinted since the seventeenth century, one in 1831 and the other in 1889.2 But it can also be objected that Shakespeare seems never to have made use of this kind of material. Among his recognized sources the only one that even remotely resembles the pamphlets, indeed the only example of a religious polemic, is Samuel Harsnet's violently anti-Catholic A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, which supplied a number of details for King Lear. By now it is generally recognized, however, that Shakespeare was extraordinarily versatile both in his selection of sources and his manner of exploiting them. In writing many of his plays, including some of those to be considered here, he utilized not only several 2

Facsimile editions of all the pamphlets are now being published by the Scolar Press in its English Recusant Literature Series.

INTRODUCTION

3

previous versions of the story but also a variety of other works, from which he drew a broad assortment of words, phrases, images, and ideas.3 However improbable it may seem that Shakespeare would have found anything worth borrowing from the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy, his use of such material would not be out of keeping with his normal highly flexible practice as we know it. One of the more significant features of the similarities between each pamphlet and play is their frequency. In the case of some contemporary works which have been proposed as Shakespearean sources, such as Bright's Treatise of Melancholie as one for Hamlet or King James' Basilicon Doron as one for Measure for Measure, the parallels are too few and imprecise to establish with any certainty that Shakespeare used them. The most one can say is that since such works were well-known he probably would have been familiar with them. But in the present case the similarities are both more plentiful and more detailed: in the plays they occur not in just a few isolated places but at many different points. It is true that the plays contain no longer passages of a half-dozen lines or more which closely duplicate single passages in the pamphlets. They reveal no parallels, that is, as obvious as Shakespeare's almost word-for-word adaptations of North's Plutarch in Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus _ the only plays, incidentally, in which he seems to have depended on this wholesale method of borrowing. Most of the similarities are rather of the smaller, scattered variety, such as those which can be seen, say, between King Lear and Harsnet's Declaration,4 For this reason the possible connection between each pamphlet and play can only be shown through the lengthy and methodical listing of parallels. If individually the parallels do not always seem remarkable, as they accumulate they tend to appear less and less 3

See Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare's Sources (London, 1961), 7-17 and passim; his article on "Sources" in A Shakespeare Encyclopedia, ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn (London, 1966), 810-814; and G. K. Hunter, "Shakespeare's Reading", in A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Kenneth Muir and S. Schoenbaum (Cambridge, 1971), 55-66. 4 See Kenneth Muir, "Samuel Harsnett and King Lear", Review of English Studies, n.s., II (1951), 11-21, and Shakespeare's Sources, 147-161.

4

INTRODUCTION

accidental. Another factor which supports this impression is that, among all the works produced by the controversy, those which show Shakespearean parallels are clearly distinguishable from those which do not. In reading each of the former, moreover, one is repeatedly reminded of a particular play and one only. In no case is there a suggestion first of one play, then of another, then of a third, as one would expect if the similarities were merely fortuitous. A one-to-one relationship may be seen between five of the pamphlets and five of the plays, the one exception being Macbeth, where two pamphlets seem to be involved. In the following chapters each play and its corresponding pamphlet will be considered in turn. Before the examination can begin, however, some account should be given of the Archpriest Controversy, at least as much of it as should be known if later references to its complexities are to be understood. Lasting for nearly five years (1598-1602), it was a complicated set of disputes certain features of which still remain obscure, and it has received very different interpretations in the hands of modern historians.5 The two parties involved have generally been referred to as the "seculars" and "Jesuits", but these terms must be understood in a carefully qualified sense. The 'seculars' by no means comprised the majority of the roughly 300 secular priests who were in England at the time either working on the underground mission or biding their time in prison, but rather the dozen or so individuals who were directly involved in the disputes either as writers or negotiators. The term 'Jesuits' is also 5

The fullest treatments of the Archpriest Controversy and the preceding Wisbech Stirs appear in Thomas Graves Law, A Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1889); John Hungerford Pollen, The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell (London, 1916); and Arnold Oskar Meyer, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth, tr. J. R. McKee (London, 1916; reissued with an introduction by John Bossy, London, 1967), 400-457. Two seventeenth-century views of the controversy are provided by Camden, Historie of Elizabeth, 214-215, and Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain (1655), ed. J. S. Brewer (Oxford, 1845), V, 204-211, 229-231, 247-248. For a valuable analysis of the social and ideological conflicts manifested in the Archpriest Controversy see John Bossy, "The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism", in Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660, ed. Trevor Aston (London, 1965), 223-246.

INTRODUCTION

5

apt to be misleading in that only two Jesuits played an important part in the controversy: Robert Persons, then rector of the English College in Rome, and Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Provincial in England. The rest of the party consisted of the Archpriest George Blackwell, his assistants, and an indeterminate number of supporters in the secular clergy. Despite their inaccuracy, however, the two terms are still the most convenient ones available, both because they were the labels applied to the two parties at the time and because they suggest the opposing ideals they claimed to represent. The seculars considered themselves the champions of the traditional ecclesiastical order surviving from pre-Reformation times, an order in which the secular clergy enjoyed the honor and responsibility of supervising the laity and saving souls. The Society of Jesus they regarded as a dangerous innovation, a regular order which, rather than remaining quietly in the cloister, involved itself everywhere in temporal affairs, concentrating its attentions on the wealthy and powerful, conspiring to influence or undermine governments, even advocating such military enterprises as the Spanish Armada. The seculars claimed that because of such activities the Jesuits were responsible for the persecution of English Catholics, that it was their constant plotting and propagandizing against the Elizabethan regime which provoked it into enacting the harsh recusancy laws of the past three decades. Tacitly accepting the English Reformation as an irreversible fact, they hoped to convince the government that the great majority of Catholics were loyal to the Queen and were ready to defend her against Spanish or other Catholic invaders, and that all they asked for was the limited freedom to practise their religion in safety. The Jesuits on their part were certainly not the ruthless Machiavellian politicians the seculars made them out to be, and indeed several of them, including Campion, Southwell, Persons, Garnet, and Gerard, must be regarded as unusually talented and courageous men. But to more conservative Catholics they represented a threat because they were fully committed to the militant ideals of the Counter-Reformation. They insisted on the supreme authority of the Pope, including his right to excommunicate and depose

6

INTRODUCTION

rulers, and dedicated themselves to the mission of regaining the territory lost to the heretic. In the famous challenge he addressed to the Lords of the Council after he entered the English mission in 1580, Campion announces that he has come "to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance wherewith many my dear Countrymen are abused".6 In similar vein, Persons in one of his volumes typically speaks of the Church as engaged in a "long, wearisome, and bloody conflict" or "combat with heresy", and of the missionary priests as its "souldiers" who must observe the discipline of an army camp and obey their superiors in all matters if the battle is to be won.7 Although the antagonism between the two parties had already begun to appear as early as 1580, especially at the English College in Rome, the event which brought it fully into the open in England was the death in 1594 of Cardinal William Allen. Earlier, as a result of Allen's leadership, the founding of seminaries for the training of English priests at Douai and Rome, and the tenacious efforts of the Jesuits and seminary priests, the mission had shown considerable vigor and solidarity and appeared to be gaining ground. With the death of Allen, however, it was left without a generally accepted leader or a formal organization which would hold the divergent elements of the priesthood together. The first serious outbreak of friction occurred at the prison for Catholic priests the government maintained at Wisbech Castle in Cambridgeshire. Early in 1595 William Weston, the only Jesuit among the thirty-three prisoners there at the time, withdrew to his chamber and refused to associate with some of the other priests, claiming that he could no longer tolerate their unruly behavior, specifically their "whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing".8 Most of the other prisoners sympathized with him, and in effort to impose a stricter order on the community they drew up a set of disciplinary rules and urged Weston to become their spiritual leader. They also wrote to Garnet, the Jesuit Provincial, to gain his support for this scheme. 6

A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1559-1582 (London, 1950), 154. A briefe apologie, or defence of the Catholike ecclesiastical hierarchie (Antwerp, 1601), f. 215v. 8 Christopher Bagshaw, A true relation of the faction begun at Wisbich (London, 1601), 8, 18. 7

INTRODUCTION

7

Denying the accusations of misconduct, the priests on the other side saw the proposed reformation as a stratagem secretly devised by Weston and Garnet to bring the prisoners under Jesuit control. Out of these differences arose a "schisme and diuision in the house" which continued with varying degrees of intensity for the next three years, the two factions even refusing at times to take their meals in common. Their quarrels, or the "Wisbech Stirs" as they are known, became notorious outside the prison, a source of scandal to the Catholic laity and of righteous satisfaction to the Protestants. As one of the seculars later wrote: "not only the whole realme was grieuously scandalized, but the Pulpets rung also euery where with the great contentions, which were betweene the Iesuits and the Priests at Wisbich".9 The Wisbech Stirs were the prelude to the more serious and widespread dissensions of the Archpriest Controversy itself. In 1598 an attempt was finally made to reorganize the mission when the Cardinal Protector of England in Rome appointed the secular priest George Blackwell as Archpriest with jurisdiction over the clergy in England and Scotland. Blackwell was given twelve assistants, half to be chosen by the Cardinal Protector and half by himself; he was to have full power to chastize or suspend any member of the secular clergy; but rather than being granted authority over the Jesuits, he was instructed to seek the advice of the Jesuit Provincial on important matters. Certain members of the clergy were quick to see this unorthodox arrangement as a direct sequel to the alleged Jesuit conspiracy at Wisbech. They claimed first that Blackwell's appointment was invalid on technical grounds because it was made not by the Pope but by the Cardinal Protector, who had no jurisdiction over ecclesiastical affairs in England. More 8

John Colleton, A ivst defence of the slandered priestes (London, 1602), 21. When Weston was transferred to the Tower of London in 1598 he discovered to his consternation that the commissioners who examined him knew a great deal about the quarrels at Wisbech. In his autobiography he writes: "They gave me ... a long account of the turmoils at Wisbech, specifying incidents and personalities which I would so much rather had been kept within the prison walls, not published to the heretics with so much scorn and infamy" (The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman [London, 1955], 205).

8

INTRODUCTION

crucially, they suspected that it had actually been engineered in Rome by Persons, and that since Blackwell was known to be friendly to the Jesuits and was explicitly instructed to seek Garnet's advice, he was to be no more than an "Arch-priest of cloutes", the pliable instrument of Persons and his colleagues.10 To combat what they saw as the menace of Jesuit domination the seculars over the next few years resorted to two tactics. The first was to appeal over Blackwell's head to the papacy either to have his appointment rescinded or, short of that, to have his instructions so altered that he would no longer be under Jesuit influence. Late in 1598 they dispatched two of their number, Robert Charnock and William Bishop, to Rome to present their case to Clement VIII. This they had little chance to do, however, for soon after arriving they ran afoul of Persons, who had them arrested and incarcerated at the English College. They were then interrogated by a special commission of two cardinals, and finally after four months banished from Rome with the command that they not return to England. The Pope meanwhile confirmed the Archpriest's appointment, and Blackwell proceeded to exercise his authority in what the seculars considered tyrannical fashion by condemning some of them as schismatics and depriving them of their priestly faculties. The second appeal took the form of a petition signed by thirty-three priests and sent to Rome in November, 1600. The long-awaited answer to this came the following August in a papal brief which again confirmed the Archpriest's appointment, admonished Blackwell for his severity, and reprimanded his opponents for their disobedience. The seculars launched their final, best-organized effort when, after gaining the secret approval of Queen Elizabeth and her council, they sent a delegation of four priests to Rome late in 1601. To avoid the fate of Charnock and 10

Blackwell is called an "Arch-priest of cloutes" in the True Relation, where Bagshaw describes the seculars' consternation when they learned the terms of his appointment: "wee perceiued by the Cardinals instructions, that maister Blackwell was made no better in deede then an Arch-priest of cloutes, being limited to do nothing, but as it should please maister Garnet. And it could not sinke into our heads, that his holynes being throughly acquainted with these plots, would euer haue bin drawne to haue yeelded, that his Clergie of England should be ouertopt, and controuled by the new vpstart Iesuites" (58).

INTRODUCTION

9

Bishop the envoys kept a safe distance from Persons and the English College and relied on the influence of the French ambassador, who had his own reasons for assisting them against the Spanish-supported Jesuits. After eight hectic months of complicated negotiations, examinations by the Inquisition, audiences with the Pope, and maneuvers by the French and Spanish ambassadors, Clement in October, 1602, issued his decision. The outcome was a victory for neither side. The Archpriest was to remain, but he was ordered henceforth not to consult the Jesuit Provincial, and the first three vacancies among his assistants were to be filled by the seculars. Much to the seculars' disappointment, on the other hand, the Jesuits were not excluded from the English mission. A month later the seculars were to be more severely disillusioned. In their clandestine dealings with the English government they had hoped that by declaring their loyalty to the Queen and placing the blame for past troubles on the Jesuits they would gain some concession in the form of an alleviation of the anti-Catholic laws. But far from showing any favor, the Council on November 5, 1602, issued a proclamation banishing all Catholic priests from the realm. The only distinction it made between the two parties was to command the Jesuits and their followers to leave immediately, the seculars either to submit to the authorities or to leave before the first of February. On January 31, the last day of grace, thirteen secular priests signed an oath of allegiance to the Queen which implicitly rejected the deposing power of the Pope. With the ranks of the priesthood still deeply divided, the only party to reap any benefit from the Archpriest Controversy was the English government. The other tactic adopted by the seculars, the one that especially concerns us here, was to wage a vigorous polemical campaign against the Archpriest and the Jesuits. Beginning with the first two in May, 1601, over the next year and a half they managed to produce eighteen pamphlets. 11 Except for two translations of 11 Discussions of these works together with bibliographical information appear in Law, Jesuits and Seculars, lxxxv-xcvi; Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest, 58-60, 101-106; and Gladys Jenkins, "The Archpriest Controversy

10

INTRODUCTION

anti-Jesuit works from the French, all of these pamphlets were original; except for two in Latin addressed to the Pope and the Roman Inquisition, all were in English; and except for one published in Paris, all were printed in London by such reputable stationers as Robert Barker, Felix Kingston, Richard Field, and James Roberts. At least twelve individuals were involved in writing these tracts, the most active being William Watson and Christopher Bagshaw. On the other side, the first two of the seculars' volumes induced Persons to write his first, A briefe apologie, or defence of the Catholike ecclesiastical hierarchie, and this he followed with two others, An appendix to the apologie and A manifestation of the great folly and bad spirit of certayne in England calling themselues secular priestes. All three were printed in Antwerp and smuggled with little difficulty into England. One of the unusual features of this pamphlet war is the fact that, even though it was illegal to print and distribute such works in England at the time, so many of them came from the presses of well-established London printers who could have had no personal motive for becoming involved in the controversy. Indeed, one of them, Robert Barker, was the official printer for the Queen. The reason he and the others could print the pamphlets with impunity is indicated by an entry Sir Roger Wilbraham made in his journal in 1602: it appears that the Bishop of London, o n the advice of the Council, and, as he told me, especially the Secretary's advice, has worked to bring about discord between the Jesuits and secular priests, whereby they have written divers railing quodlibets and pamphlets against one another... 1 2

Preoccupied at the time with the succession problem, the Secretary mentioned here, Robert Cecil, saw in the disputes a chance to and the Printers, 1601-1603", The Library, 5th series, II (1948), 180-186. The most recent and reliable source of bibliographical data on the pamphlets is A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, "A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1558-1640", Recusant History (formerly Biographical Studies), III, iii-iv (1956). The information given in the ShortTitle Catalogue is often inaccurate. 12 The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, Camden Miscellany, X (London, 1902), 52-53.

INTRODUCTION

11

bring discredit o n the Catholic cause in England and thus t o weaken the support for a Catholic successor t o Elizabeth. 1 3 Following Cecil's strategy, Bishop Bancroft of London had private meetings with some of the seculars, encouraged them t o write against the Jesuits, and made it possible for them t o have their pamphlets printed in London. 1 4 In a letter written from London in July, 1602, the Jesuit Anthony Rivers informed Persons that Bancroft so arranged matters that any manuscript the seculars submitted to the printers "should immediately pass the press without further censure or examination". 1 5 In the same letter Rivers reports: When the Bishop saw the new book of the Manifestation, &c., he exulted beyond measure, saying this would stir u p the contrary party to more invective writings, which was the main point that he most levelled at. H e termed both sides knaves, but the appellants good instruments to serve the state. 16 Clearly, Bancroft did not aid the seculars out of any sympathy for their cause. Even so, the assistance he gave them, especially in the publication of their pamphlets, was misinterpreted by those of Puritan inclination who felt that all Catholic priests were traitors and therefore not t o be favored in any way. 1 7 At the 13

See P. M. Handover, The Second Cecil (London, 1959), 288-292, and Joel Hurstfield, "The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England", in Elizabethan Government and Society, ed. S. T. Bindoff, et al. (London, 1961), 386-389. 14 At least two of the seculars, William Watson and Thomas Bluet, even enjoyed the Bishop's hospitality at his palace in Fulham. An anonymous correspondent wrote to Blackwell in September, 1601: "Watson keepeth most at Putney [Fulham Palace], under the bishop's elbow, by whose appointment he is placed there. He is now penning of certain articles against the jesuits, together with a large preface and discourse upon the same, which, as is intended, shall shortly be printed" (Charles Dodd, Church History of England, ed. M. A. Tierney [London, 1839-1843], III, Appendix, cxlviii). Bluet describes his meetings with Bancroft and his later interviews with the Council and the Queen herself in a report he compiled in Rome in 1602, printed in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1601-1603, ed. M. A. E. Green (London, 1870), 168-171. 16 Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London, 1877-1883), I, 43. 18 Foley, Records, I, 42. 17 The government's policy was attacked in two contemporary pamphlets:

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INTRODUCTION

Hampton Court Conference in January, 1604, when the Puritan spokesman John Reynolds complained about the availability in England of "vnlawfull and seditious bookes", King James, assuming that he was referring to the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy, came to Bancroft's defence: it pleased his excellent Maiestie, to tell D. Reyn. that he was a better Colledge man, then a Statesman; for if his meaning were, to taxe the Bishop of London, for suffering those books, betwixt the Secular Priestes, and Iesuites lately published, so freely to passe abroad; His Maiestie would haue him and his Associates to know, and willed them also to acquaint their adherents, & friends abroad therewith, that the saide Bishop was much iniured and slandered in that behalfe, who did nothing therein, but by warrant from the Lordes of the Councell, wherby, both a Schisme betwixt them was nourished, & also his Maiesties owne cause and title handled: the Lord Cecill affirming thereunto, that therefore they were tollerated, because, in them, was the Title of Spaine confuted.16

Apparently not only the seculars' pamphlets but also the ones Persons wrote and had printed in Antwerp were easy to obtain in London. Reynolds' complaint at the Hampton Court Conference prompted Bancroft to explain that Catholic books published abroad "came into the Realme by many secret conueyances, so that there could not bee a perfect notice had of their importation", and Cecil also complained about the "vnlimited libertie of the dispersing and diuulging these Popish and seditious Pamphletes, both in Powles Churchyeard, & the Vniuersities".19 In 1603 Thomas Bell, a former Catholic priest turned Anglican polemicist, published a volume made up largely of excerpts from the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy, seventeen of which he lists by title, including Persons' Briefe Apologie and Manifestation. In explaining why he took the trouble to compile the volume he writes : All these bookes I haue perused very seriously, and drawen the summarie and chiefe points of them all, vnto certaine heads, distincte bookes, William Bradshaw, Humble motives for association to maintaine religion established (London, 1601), and Let qvilibet beware of qvodlibet (London, 1602). 18 William Barlow, The svmme and svbstance of the conference ...at Hampton Court (London, 1604), 50-51. 19 Barlow, Svmme of the conference, 49.

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and chapters. So as the indifferent reader may in a few houres, vnderstand the effect of the whole proceeding, betweene the Iesuites and the secular priestes... To read all the said bookes, is a labour both tedious and painefull. To buy them, is too chargeable for manie... The reader may at his pleasure, and that with all facilitie, turne to the originall in euerie booke by me named, and by the help of my quotations, finde out roundly the verie wordes which I put downe.20 This shows that all the pamphlets Bell mentions, including the two by Persons, could be purchased in London by anyone who could afford them. Bell does not once suggest that he is summarizing their arguments because any of them is hard to come by. To the contrary, in writing to Persons from London in June, 1602, the Jesuit Richard Blount remarks that his "Manifestation and Appendix both are here very current, and are greedily read of Protestants as well as of Catholics, with good liking of all." 21 The public response to the pamphlet war is further indicated by Rivers' report a month later that Colleton's Just Defence is "greedily bought by the ministry, who fill u p their pulpets with priests' dissensions". 22 The royal proclamation of November 5, 1602, mentions as matters of common knowledge both the "much contention and controuersie" between the Jesuits and seculars and their "writings". 23 Although certainly not as sensational as such other events of the period as Essex's rebellion or the Gunpowder Plot, the Archpriest Controversy thus seems to have attracted a fair amount of attention in London at the time. The spectacle of the self-divided priesthood was apparently as intriguing to the Protestants as it was disturbing 20

The anatomie of popish tyrannie (London, 1603), sigs. B4-B4V. A similar compilation was made several years later by Thomas James in The Iesuits downefall (Oxford, 1612). James quotes from or paraphrases eleven of the pamphlets. 21 Foley, Records, I, 39. 22 Foley, Records, I, 44. Further evidence that the controversy provided matter for sermonizing appears in Rivers' letter of May 5,1602 (Foley, Records, I, 33), and William Watson, A decacordon of ten qvodlibeticall qvestions (London, 1601), 348, where Watson refers to the "open sermons which haue beene made against vs at Paules crosse and other places". 23 A proclamation for proceeding against Iesuites and secular priestes (London, 1602); reprinted in Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, HI (New Haven and London, 1969), 250-255.

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INTRODUCTION

to the Catholic laity. It seems safe to assume that as an observant resident of London Shakespeare would have been aware of the disputes, and that, whatever his personal religious feelings, he would not have needed a special motive to take an interest in them. Moreover, had he wished to read any of the pamphlets, including the ones published abroad, he could have easily obtained them without recourse to clandestine sources. There is at least one piece of evidence that Shakespeare during these years did pay some attention to English Catholic affairs. This is his use of Harsnet's Declaration

as a source for King

Lear.

Published shortly before the death of Elizabeth in March, 1603, the Declaration seems not only to have a connection with the Archpriest Controversy but to have been conceived by Bancroft himself. The "egregious popish impostures" it exposes are the sensational exorcisms performed in 1585-1586 by a group of Catholic priests in various houses in and around London, who used them as a means of demonstrating the miraculous power of the Catholic faith and winning converts to the Church. When Harsnet wrote the pamphlet he was serving as Bancroft's chaplain, and for his material he relied mainly on the testimonies of five men and women who had recently been examined by Bancroft, Lancelot Andrewes, and two other ecclesiastical commissioners. One of the five was Anthony Tyrell, a former Catholic priest who had taken part in the exorcisms and later became a Protestant, while the other four were the supposed victims of demonic possession on whom the priests had worked their miracles. According to the dates given in the section of the Declaration where their testimonies are printed, two of the five witnesses were examined by the commissioners in 1598, but one of these two was reexamined in May, 1602, and the other three were interrogated in April and June of that year.24 On the surface there seems to be no special reason why this information should have been gathered and the pamphlet written so many years after the exorcisms took place, for by then they were very stale news. The explanation seems to be that Bancroft conceived the exposure as yet another way of discrediting the 24 A declaration of egregious popish impostures (London, 1603), 173, 207, 237, 246, 257.

INTRODUCTION

15

missionary priests at the time he was fostering their internal disputes. Such a motive is suggested by a passage in Blount's letter to Persons of June 28,1602, part of which has already been quoted. After describing the public reception of two of Persons' works, Blount goes on to report Bancroft's reaction, then another of the Bishop's current activities: The Manifestation and Appendix both are here very current, and are greedily read of Protestants as well as of Catholics, with good liking of all, and Mr. Bancroft had one delivered unto him, which he took in so good part that he told the gentleman (which was a Protestant) that if he had brought £100 he could not have done him a greater pleasure, and, scratching his elbow, said this was that he looked for all this while, viz., that one should write against another. His lordship is in hand with a piece of work touching the incontinency of priests, for which purpose hath called unto him Tyrell, and some other such lost companions and two or three women that were exorcised heretofore, for being possessed, by some priests, and being now heretics, according to their confessions, compileth a book, which haply shortly you may see. 25

The references to Tyrell and the exorcised women show unmistakably that the book Blount says Bancroft is compiling is the Declaration. The "incontinency of priests" is likewise one of the topics dealt with in the pamphlet, for there Harsnet insinuates repeatedly that in their handling of their female victims the exorcists were far from spiritual in their motives. 26 Although Shakespeare probably would not have been aware of the circumstances behind the writing of the Declaration, he would have found certain things in it more directly reminiscent of the Archpriest Controversy. The leader of the exorcising priests and the main target of Harsnet's attack was the Jesuit William Weston. 27 Shortly after conducting the exorcisms Weston was 25

Foley, Records, I, 39. See especially p. 149 of the Declaration, where Harsnet compares the priests to "vagabond players" who "carry in theyr consort, broken queanes, and Ganimedes, as well for their night pleasance, as their dayes pastime". 27 Weston gives his own account of the exorcisms, needless to say very different from Harsnet's, in his Autobiography, 24-27. There he reports William Cecil's reaction to them at the time, which anticipated Harsnet's attack: "He brushed it all aside as probable fraud and as a series of impostures devised by priests in order to deceive people" (25). 26

16

INTRODUCTION

arrested in London, held in jail there for over a year, then transferred to Wisbech Castle in 1588. It was there several years later that he played a central role in those quarrels among the prisoners which directly preceded the Archpriest Controversy. Nor is Weston the only Jesuit Harsnet lampoons. He also has several things to say about Persons' alleged subversive activities - that when he entered the English mission in 1580 he did so to plot the "deposing of her Maiestie, and the setting vp of another Prince", that later he combined with the Pope and the King of Spain in "plotting beyond the seas, for the deliuery out of prison of the Q. of Scots, by forcible attempt", and that the exorcisms of 1585-1586 were a stratagem "inspired by the Pope into Parsons, by Parsons into ... Weston".28 Concerning the Jesuits in general, Harsnet states at one point that the exorcists asked a devil inhabiting one of their victims: May the Iesuits ... in ordine ad Deum cog, lye, aequiuocate, adulterate, murther, stab, poyson Christian Princes, for aduancing the Popes Monarchic, & the King of Spaine, or no ? to which the devil replied: " Oh they may doe what they list in ordine ad Deum." 2 9 All this sounds very much like the things repeatedly said about the Jesuits in general and Persons in particular in the seculars' pamphlets, for there too they are described as plotters against the Queen, agents of King of Spain, liars, equivocators, murderers, poisoners, and so on. Indeed, the Declaration contains some passages that come so close to the actual wording of two of the pamphlets that Harsnet might be suspected of having gathered some of his polemical material from them. 30 At one point he does refer explicitly to Persons' Briefe Apologie in a marginal note. 31 28

Declaration, 5-6. Declaration, 165. 30 One such passage is the last-quoted dialogue between the exorcists and the devil. In A sparing discoverie of ovr English lesvits (London, 1601), Bagshaw condemns the Jesuits for their "equiuocating, which you may tearme in plaine english, lying and cogging" (11), and repeatedly accuses them of doing "what they list" by the rule "ordine ad Deum" (13, 38, 41). The other pamphlet to which the Declaration shows affinities is the Important considerations (London, 1601). 31 Declaration, 7. 29

INTRODUCTION

17

In reading the Declaration, Shakespeare would thus have encountered a work comparable in ways to some of the polemics of the Archpriest Controversy. Because it is a recognized Shakespearean source and because of its connection with the controversy the Declaration provides a link between something already known about Shakespeare and what has yet to be investigated. In one of the seculars' pamphlets William Weston is attacked for his part in the Wisbech Stirs, and indeed is characterized much more fully there than he is in the Declaration. In its language and ideas this work shows repeated resemblances to King Lear. Although chronologically the latter comes next-to-last in the sequence of plays to be considered in the following chapters, because of the link established by the Declaration it seems the most appropriate one to begin with. The other plays will then be taken up in the order in which Shakespeare probably wrote them.

2. KING LEAR A N D THE TRUE

RELATION

According to the seculars, the Jesuit conspiracy to gain control of the clergy in England began at Wisbech Castle in 1595 when William Weston, with the encouragement of Henry Garnet, tried to assume the leadership over his fellow prisoners. In a pamphlet published in the latter part of 1601, one of the seculars provides a detailed account of Weston's conduct and the ensuing quarrels at Wisbech, then goes on to describe the development of the "more bitter tragedie" of the Archpriest Controversy itself. The title-page outlines the general features of the conspiracy: A True relation of the faction begun at Wisbich, by Fa. Edmonds, alias

Weston,1 a Iesuite, 1595. and continued sinoe by Fa. Walley, alias

Garnet, the Prouinciall of the Iesuits in England, and by Fa. Parsons in Rome, with their adherents: Against vs the Secular Priests their brethren and fellow Prisoners, that disliked of nouelties, and thought it dishonourable to the auncient Ecclesiasticall Discipline of the Catholike Church, that Secular Priests should be gouerned by Iesuits. Newly Imprinted. 1601.

A quarto volume of ninety-six pages, the True Relation bears evidence that it was printed in London by Felix Kingston. 2 By reprinting it in his Jesuits and Seculars (1889), Law made it the most readily available in recent times of all the pamphlets of the 1

Weston was generally known as "Father Edmunds", a name he adopted in memory of Edmund Campion, who was executed in 1581, two and a half years before Weston crossed over from the Continent and began his missionary work in England. 2 Jenkins, "The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers", 185.

'KING LEAR' a n d t h e ' t r u e r e l a t i o n '

19

Archpriest Controversy, and for this reason it seems to have had some influence on those modern interpretations of the controversy which, like Law's, generally show an anti-Jesuit bias.3 Although the author of the True Relation is anonymous, there is some fairly definite evidence of his identity. He must have been someone who was on the scene at Wisbech, for he describes particular episodes and verbal exchanges with a familiarity which could only be first-hand. A figure repeatedly mentioned in the pamphlet (always favorably) is Christopher Bagshaw, who together with Thomas Bluet led the opposition to Weston and his supporters. Anthony Wood mentions that Bagshaw "had a hand" in the True Relation ; 4 the eighteenth-century ecclesiastical historian Charles Dodd also regards him as the author, 5 and this attribution has been accepted since by Law and others. External support for it appears in two documents dating from 1600 which together constitute what appears to be a preliminary outline for the pamphlet. One is a list of forty-five questions prepared by Bancroft concerning the disputes at Wisbech and the political activities of the Jesuits, the other, in Bagshaw's handwriting, provides answers to the questions. Law notes that "Bagshaw's True Relation ... runs entirely on the lines sketched by the enquirer and supplies in the amplest manner the particulars wanted". 6 From this it would appear that Bancroft had considerable influence on the writing of the pamphlet, as he did later on Harsnet's Declaration. A less flamboyant stylist than Harsnet, Bagshaw generally writes in a clear, straightforward manner, without relying on rhetorical ingenuities or an exotic vocabulary. For this reason the True Relation does not offer any such simple and convenient clues to Shakespeare's possible indebtedness as the Declaration does in the 3

More recently the veracity of the True Relation has been questioned by P. Renold, ed„ The Wisbech Stirs, Catholic Record Society, LI (London, 1958), xviii. On the basis of the contemporary documents collected in this volume Renold argues that not Weston but his opponents were responsible for the troubles at Wisbech. 4 Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1691-1692), I, 425. 5 The Church History of England (Brussels, 1734-1742), II, 67. 6 Thomas Graves Law, ed., The Archpriest Controversy, Camden Society, LVI (London, 1894), xxv. The two documents are printed on pp. 226-241 of this volume.

20

'king lear' and the 'true relation'

names it provided for Edgar's devils. What it does present are many parallels to King Lear of various kinds, ranging from broad similarities in character and incident to more specific ones in words, phrases, and ideas. One reason for supposing that the similarities may not be accidental is that in several instances they involve details in the play which cannot be traced to any of its known sources. According to Bagshaw, Weston began to assert his authority at Wisbech when he complained of the gross misconduct of some of the other prisoners. In the following series of excerpts Bagshaw describes some of the occasions when Weston and his followers severely condemned the behavior of their opponents: He [Weston] lifted vp his countenance, as if a new spirit had bin put into him, and tooke vpon him to controll, and finde fault with this and that ... affirming that he would no longer tolerate these and those so grosse abuses, but would haue them reformed. (7) No, sayth maister Southworth, we are determined ... to draw our selues into a more strict order of life ... the better to auoyd such sinnes, as whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing, the same being too ordinarie with some in this house. (8) so from henceforth Fa. Weston would indure it no longer... saying, that their intent of separation was ... to auoyd such sinnes as were in the house, as whoredome, dronkennes, and dicing... (18) Then sayth maister Weston very sharply, you do vs great wrong... so you would confesse, if you saw but our extract: which conteyneth three sheetes of paper of the enormious crymes, that we haue to charge them withall. (24-25) Weston's opponents were also denounced as "persons of great licentiousnes; such as could neither indure any good order nor holesome discipline" (30), as "vnrulie, disordered, and disobedient persons" (38), and as "persons of all disorder, licentiousnes, and confusion" (45). Several elements in these excerpts - the attitudes they describe, the 'sharp' tone of voice in which those attitudes are expressed, and a number of individual words and phrases - are paralleled in Goneril's repeated complaints about the riotous conduct of Lear and his retinue. Her initial statement on the subject suggests the

'king lear' and the 'true relation'

21

phrases, "you do vs great wrong", "enormious crymes", "no longer tolerate these and those so grosse abuses", and "indure it no longer": By day and night, he wrongs me! Every hour He flashes into one gross crime or other That sets us all at odds. I'll not endure it. (I.iii.3-5)

In one of Goneril's later speeches to Lear we find analogies to "persons of all disorder, licentiousnes, and confusion", "whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing", and Weston's insistence that such vices be "reformed": Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires, Men so disordered, so deboshed, and bold That this our court, infected with their manners, Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust Makes it more like a tavern or a brothel Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak For instant remedy. (I.iv.231-237)

Several details in the excerpts are also paralleled at other points in the scenes covering the quarrels between Lear and his daughters. As Weston claimed he could "indure it no longer", for instance, so Goneril complains of the "not-to-be-endured riots" of Lear's knights (I.iv.194). The twice-repeated "whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing" is matched not only by Goneril's more elegant "Epicurism and lust" but also in two other passages. All three vices are mentioned in the Fool's jingle: Set less than thou throwest, Leave thy drink and thy whore... (I.iv. 117-118)

and Edgar's line: Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramoured the Turk. (III.iv.86-87)

Describing Weston's tactics in the early stages of the quarrels, Bagshaw writes that he "withdrew himselfe to his chamber by the space of a fortnight, of purpose ... to deuise ... new orders and lawes" (7), and that during this time he "oft refused conference" with the other party (13). This behavior prompted Weston's own

22

'king lhar' and the 'true relation'

followers to reproach him for affecting a "palsey of the mind" and for being "an hypocriticall paralytick" (8, 11). It also provoked Thomas Bluet into demanding of him: Haue you kept your chamber ... all this while, for this?... Can you name any in the house, worse then your selues? Well, well: I pray you leaue this course: it is naught. Be content to eate and drinke with vs still... (9) Some time after Lear and his retinue have moved into her house, Goneril's first maneuver is likewise to withdraw, refuse conference with Lear, and pretend illness: When he returns from hunting, I will not speak with him. Say I am sick. (I.iii.7-8) Later, when Lear discovers Regan and Cornwall employing the same tactic - "Deny to speak with me? They are sick... ?" (II.iv.84) - he threatens to drive them from their "chamber" (Il.iv. 113). Bluet's reproach to Weston, "it is naught", resembles Lear's comment on Goneril: "Beloved Regan, / Thy sister's naught" (Il.iv. 128-129). Bagshaw twice remarks that Weston withdrew to his chamber for a "fortnight" in order to devise new laws (7, 8), and this same detail, for which no precedent may be found in any of the previous versions of the story, appears in Lear's reaction to Goneril's reforms: What, fifty followers at a clap ? Within a fortnight ? (I.iv.285-286) Another suggestive detail in this part of the True Relation is Bagshaw's repeated use of the word "house" to denote the unsettled prison community. In the play Gloucester's domicile, the scene of the culminating quarrels between Lear and his daughters, is called a "house" nine times, and one of the passages in which the term occurs: How in one house Should many people, under two commands, Hold amity? (II.iv.235-237) could be applied to the "schisme and diuision in the house" at Wisbech, where several unsuccessful attempts were made to bring

'KING LEAR' AND THE 'TRUE RELATION'

23

the two factions together in "amity and charity" (13). Also, Goneril's and Regan's insistence that only one party be in "command" resembles an attitude Bagshaw attributes to the Jesuits, who, he claims, try to make everyone believe that we secular priests are no body, nor able to do any thing of our selues, except the Iesuites may haue the commaundement ouer vs, to direct and command vs, as they thinke good. (22) Regan uses the same argument in claiming authority over Lear: You should be ruled By some discretion that discerns your state Better than you yourself. (Il.iv. 143-145) Another detail in these scenes for which no parallel may be found in any of the earlier versions of the story is suggested by the Weston party's refusal to "eate and drinke" with their opponents, or, as Bagshaw says nearby, to have their "dinners and suppers" with them (9). Shakespeare introduces the subject of dinner in Goneril's command to Oswald, "Prepare for dinner" (I.iii.26), and again in Lear's repeated demand: "Let me not stay a jot for dinner"; "Dinner, ho, dinner!" (I .i.v.8, 40). Although the point is not too obvious, it appears that Goneril, like Weston, wishes to effect a "diuision of Commons" between her part of the household and Lear's, and Lear, of course, never does receive his dinner from either of his daughters. According to Bagshaw, one of Weston's followers threatened those that stood against maister Weston, that if they would not submit themselues vnder the Iesuites obedience, and liue vnder their statutes and lawes, they should starue, and not haue a morsell of bread to put in their mouthes. (23) Similarly, just before Goneril rebukes Lear for his disorders the Fool hints that bread may not be forthcoming: He that keeps nor crust nor crum, Weary of all, shall want some, (I.iv.188-189) and soon afterwards he observes that Lear's daughters would make him an "obedient father" (I.iv.225). The similarities observed so far have generally involved Weston

24

'king LEAR' a n d t h e ' t r u e r e l a t i o n '

and his followers on the one hand and Goneril and Regan on the other, both parties displaying some of the same attitudes and sometimes expressing them in much the same language. Another set of resemblances is suggested by Bagshaw's repeated references to Weston as "maister Edmonds" or "one Edmunds by name" (3, 72, passim), a pseudonym which also occurs in Harsnet's Declaration.1 The appearance of this name in the play would seem of little significance were it not that Weston, as Bagshaw describes him, shares several prominent features with Shakespeare's Edmund. Bagshaw claims that at Wisbech Weston engaged in "Machiuilian practises" and resorted to cunning "busines" in an effort to "aduance himselfe aboue his brethren" (sigs. A3, A4V, p. 3). He was also a pious hypocrite: although "of as haughty a spirit as any man can be: it was wonderfull to consider, what humbleness and simplicitie he would pretend" (5). Even though Weston was in his mid-forties at the time, Bagshaw calls him a "yonker" and "this Iesuiticall youth" (22), and sees him as typical of the "new vpstart Iesuites" who are determined not only to "ouertop" the secular clergy (58) but even to gain the "Monarchic of all England" (74). So Shakespeare's Edmund announces in his first soliloquy that he is out to "top" his brother Edgar (I.ii.21), speaks of his "practices" and "business" (I.ii.175), pretends humbleness and simplicity with virtually every character he encounters, and eventually sees his chance to gain "no less than all" (III.iii.22) _ including the monarchy of England. He emphasizes his role as a young upstart or "yonker" in the line: The younger rises when the old doth fall, (III.iii.23) and it is also implied in Kent's challenge: "come on, young master" (II.ii.42).8 In the King of Paphlagonia episode in Sidney's Arcadia, 7

Kenneth Muir conjectures that the Declaration suggested the name Edmund to Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sources, 150). In the source episode in Sidney's Arcadia Edmund's counterpart is named Plexirtus. 8 The epithet "yonker", which Bagshaw applies both to Weston in particular and the Jesuits in general (22, 38), derives from the Middle Dutch "jonchere" meaning "young master" and is related to the English "youngster" (OED). While Shakespeare may not have been thinking of this etymology when he called Edmund "young master", he probably intended his "younger" to suggest "yonker". Edmund's "upstart" nature is implied at some other points

'KING LEAR' AND THE 'TRUE RELATION'

25

while the bastard son Plexirtus is said to be guilty of "poisonous hypocrisy, desperate fraud, smooth malice", and the like,9 he is not given the qualities of a "yonker" or young upstart, nor in plotting to gain his father's kingdom does he show any interest in "topping" his innocent brother. In Harsnet's Declaration Weston is so vaguely characterized that he seems to have little in common with Shakespeare's Edmund beyond the name. The similarities apparent in Bagshaw's portrayal of Weston are much more specific. As for the way the seculars are characterized in the True Relation, Bagshaw, as one would expect, sharply differentiates them from the Jesuits by consistently describing them as humble, honest, benevolent types. They are the "deere and louing fathers" of English Catholics, "honest and plaine dealing men", "old and constant professors" who faithfully plod "in the old steps of antiquitie" (30, 33, 59). However much they are slandered and persecuted by the other party, they staunchly maintain their loyalty to the old religion "without any change at all", and are "readie to offer [their] liues" in its defence (30, 66). Such qualities of unsophisticated "plainness", fidelity to the old regime, and readiness for selfsacrifice are generally exemplified in the play by Lear's supporters. Honesty and plainness are repeatedly attributed to Cordelia, Edgar, and Kent. The loyal Edgar states that he is "In nothing ... changed" but in his garments (IV.vi.9), Kent that he has followed Lear's "sad steps" from the beginning of his troubles (V.iii.290). The play contains many variations of the phrase "deere and louing fathers", especially in connection with Lear and Gloucester. The latter says of Edgar, for instance: I loved him, friend, No father his son dearer, (III.iv.159-160) and a scene later Cornwall parodies this when he says to the newlyadopted Edmund: "thou shalt find a dearer father in my love" (III.v. 23-24). In general, the two sharply-contrasted parties in the in the play, for instance in his own line: "Now, gods, stand up for bastards" (I.ii.22), and Regan's: "The which immediacy may well stand up" (V.iii.65). 9 Shakespeare and his Sources, ed. Joseph Satin (Boston, 1966), 529.

26

'KING LEAR' AND THE 'TRUE RELATION'

play, the followers and opponents of Lear, seem to correspond in several ways the two factions in the priesthood as they are delineated in the True Relation. Some other short phrases the two works have in common are "great breach" (p. 14, IV.vii.15), "poore old man" (p. 18, Il.iv. 267), "great decay" (p. 77, V.iii.298), and "plague-sore" (p. 65, Il.iv.219), a term Shakespeare does not use elsewhere in his plays. Bagshaw speaks of an "assemblie of honorable Cardinals" (79), Lear of an "honorable assembly" (III.vi.47). From a letter addressed to the quarreling priests at Wisbech Bagshaw quotes the phrase: "too late you shall lament your incurable woe" (35). This is approximated fairly closely by Lear's line: "Woe that too late repents" (I.iv.248). Among various longer passages in the True Relation which show resemblances to King Lear, one of the more interesting appears in one of the several documents Bagshaw appended to his discourse, a "memoriall" compiled in 1597 which catalogues the many crimes and malpractices of the Jesuits. One of their malpractices it describes is to control the distribution of alms received from the Catholic laity so that they can withhold them from their opponents in the clergy. What the Jesuits did with the funds they monopolized is indicated in this passage: And yet so great a masse of monies cannot be consumed, with so small charge, and expences, but that the Fathers bestow much vpon themselues. For they go indeed in great gallantrie; no Iesuite goeth but to visit any one, or trauelleth from one place to another, but he is richly apparrelled, he is attended on with a great trayne of seruants, as if he were a Baron, or an Earle; which is not necessary, but playnely ridiculous and absurd. The secular Priests themselues do go also Gentlemen-like because of danger; but not arrayed in that sumptuous manner, nor guarded with so many attendants, as the Iesuites. They wrangle, and reproue the Priests garments, and spendings; whereas the expences of one Iesuite were able to mayntayne twentie Priests plentifully, and richly. (70) In King Lear there is also considerable talk of needless trains and clothing. Lear's problematic "train" is referred t o as such seven times, and the term does not occur in the previous versions of the story in which Lear's retinue is mentioned. The argument

'KING LEAR' AND THE 'TRUE RELATION'

27

that a "great trayne of seruants ... is not necessary, but playnely ridiculous and absurd" recalls Goneril's and Regan's objections to the size of Lear's train: "What should you need of more?"; "What need one?" (II.iv.233, 258). As the argument applies to rich apparel it also suggests Lear's rejoinder: Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st... (II.iv.264) Comments on superfluous or inappropriate clothing are frequent in the play, of course, and at one point we notice that Lear behaves like the Jesuits who "wrangle, and reproue the Priests garments" when, still obsessed with his train, he says to Edgar: You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments. (Ill.vi.76-78) The possible connection between the True Relation and King Lear is strengthened by the fact that, in addition to certain details already noted, they share at least one important feature which does not appear in any of the known sources for the play. For Goneril's complaints about the riotous conduct of Lear and his retinue there are, as we have seen, a number of parallels in Bagshaw's account of the quarrels at Wisbech, but no such analogies may be found in the versions of the story occurring in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Mirror for Magistrates, Holinshed's Chronicles, the Faerie Queene, and the chronicle play King Leir. The closest approximation appears in the last work, where Gonerill rationalizes her repudiation of her father by complaining of his captiousness: Could any woman of our dignity Endure such quips and peremptory taunts, As I do daily from my doting father? Elsewhere she also claims that Leir "has most intolerably abused me, set my Lord and me at variance".10 Shakespeare's Goneril similarly complains that her father "sets us all at odds" and "upbraids us / Op. every trifle" (I.iii.5-7). But in these same lines she also states that "His knights grow riotous", an accusation 10

Satin, Sources, 478, 485.

28

'king lear' and the 'true relation'

against Lear's retinue which the other Gonerill does not and indeed cannot make because in that play he is not provided with one. In the only versions of the story where the retinue is mentioned, those in Geoffrey's Historia and the Mirror for Magistrates, no one accuses it of even mildly irregular conduct, let alone anything equivalent to "Epicurism and lust" or, in Bagshaw's terms, "whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing".11 When Shakespeare wrote King Lear in late 1605 or early 1606 the Wisbech Stirs were ten years old and the Archpriest Controversy, formally concluded by the papal brief of October, 1602, was also apparently a thing of the past. It may seem unlikely that Shakespeare would have found much of interest in a pamphlet which no longer had immediate topical relevance. Yet the fact that Harsnet's Declaration deals with events which took place twenty years before, the exorcisms Weston conducted in 1585-1586, proved no obstacle to his making use of that work. Furthermore, the conflicts Bagshaw describes were by no means resolved at the time Shakespeare wrote the play. After a brief period of relative quiescence following the accession of King James, when Catholics had some hope that the Elizabethan recusancy laws would be relaxed, the tensions in the Catholic community were reactivated 11

Bagshaw's account of the Wisbech Stirs was answered in a Latin document compiled in Rome in 1602 by the secular priest Giles Archer, who was one of Weston's supporters at Wisbech. In describing the misbehavior of Weston's opponents, Archer claims that Bluet's chamber "was like a public tavern, where these men and their companions used to hold banquets with splendid provision, and feasted sumptuously each day", and further, that a "certain woman of ill-repute ... very often made her way to him [Bagshaw] and visited his chamber" (Renold, Wisbech Stirs, 333n, 329; editor's translation). This further substantiates the charge of "whoredome, drunkennes, and dicing", and again recalls Goneril's complaints about the "Epicurism and lust" of Lear's knights, their turning her court into a "tavern or a brothel". Since Archer's account remained unpublished and no record exists that copies of it were sent to England it is very doubtful that Shakespeare could have seen it, yet it is conceivable that he might have heard about these scandalous matters from other sources. A portion of the document which describes Weston's "unimpeachable conduct" at Wisbech and rejects the True Relation as a "shameless and lying account" is translated by Caraman in Weston, Autobiography, 245-248. Another version of the Wisbech Stirs very different from Bagshaw's, Robert Persons' in the Briefe Apologie, will be considered later in the chapter on Troilus and Cressida.

'KING LEAR' AND THE 'TRUE RELATION'

29

by the government's renewal of those laws in 1604, then by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, generally regarded at the time as yet another glaring example of Jesuit treachery.12 In Bagshaw's view, the "great breach" or "schisme and diuision" in the priesthood which began at Wisbech had such serious repercussions in the Catholic community that it produced a more general "diuision in the Church" (35), a division which in turn threatened to bring about the destruction of the old religion in England, the "great decay of the common cause" (77). King Lear is also much concerned with radical divisions in the community, and, as noted earlier, the two sets of characters seem to correspond in various ways to the two competing factions in the priesthood as Bagshaw describes them. Lear himself, the literal and symbolic father of the two parties, is said to suffer a "great breach" in his nature (IV.vii. 15), and is ultimately reduced to "this great decay" (V.iii.298). The play ends with a sense that the old regime has passed beyond recovery: after all the turmoil Lear is "gone indeed" (V.iii.316). It would be premature to speculate whether Shakespeare in King Lear might be commenting indirectly on the unhappy situation of Catholicism in England as it appeared around 1605-1606. Many other factors both in the play and the historical background would have to be investigated first. But at least at this point it can be observed that, as in many of their details, so also in some of their broader features King Lear and the True Relation seem to have more than a little in common. 12

In his Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, written in late 1606, the Jesuit John Gerard vividly describes how Catholic hopes were first aroused by James' accession and then bitterly disappointed by the legislation of 1604, which he blames on the Puritans (The Condition of Catholics under James I: Father Gerard's Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, ed. John Morris [London, 1871], 20-32). He claims that this frustration rather than Jesuit treachery was the real cause of the Gunpowder Plot, but at the time it was generally assumed that the Jesuits were the instigators. The indictment of the conspirators states that "Henry Garnet, Oswald Tesmond, Iohn Gerrard and other Iesuites did maliciously, falsly, and traiterously mooue and perswade" them to attempt the plot (A trve and perfect relation of the whole proceedings against ... Garnet [London, 1606], sig. A4V). The prosecutor Edward Coke's violent attack on the Jesuits at the trial is strongly reminiscent of the seculars' attacks a few years earlier (sigs. E4V-F1).

3. HAMLET AND THE SPARING

DISCOVERIE

About a month after the True Relation another pamphlet appeared in London of which Christopher Bagshaw was probably the author. This one bears the title: A SPARING DISCOVERIE OF OVR ENGLISH IESVITS, and of Fa. Parsons proceedings vnder pretence of promoting the Catholike faith in England. For a caueat to all true Catholiks our very louing brethren and friends, how they embrace such very vncatholike, though Iesuiticall deseignments. Eccles. 4. Vidi calumnias quae sub sole geruntur, & lachrymas innocentium, & neminem consolatorem. Newly Imprinted. 1601. This is a volume of about the same length and format as the True Relation, consisting of eighty-two pages in quarto. Gladys Jenkins deduces that it too came from Felix Kingston's press,1 but more recently Allison and Rogers have assigned the printing of it to James Roberts,2 the same printer who entered Hamlet in the Stationers' Register in July the following year and produced the Second Quarto edition of 1604. Like two of the seculars' other pamphlets published in the latter part of 1601, the Sparing Disco verie includes a preface signed " W. W", the initials of William Watson, the most aggressive and prolific of the anti-Jesuit writers. With Bancroft's encouragement Watson made himself the enfant terrible of the Archpriest 1 2

"The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers", 184-185. "Catalogue", no. 64,

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

31

Controversy, adopting a polemical style as flamboyantly pugnacious as Thomas Nashe's, though one that falls considerably short of the Nashean ingenuity. 3 So uninhibited were Watson's attacks on the Jesuits in his three prefaces and his main effort, the voluminous Quodlibeticall Questions, that his writings proved an embarrassment to the delegation of seculars conducting the appeal in Rome in 1602, and they were obliged to repudiate them. 4 Near the end of his preface Watson intimates that the body of the Sparing Discoverie is the work of another author, and since it is written in a style decidedly more lucid and coherent than his own there is no reason to doubt him. One indication of this writer's identity appears in a letter Anthony Rivers wrote to Persons on July 7, 1602, which also mentions two other anonymous pamphlets to be considered later: The Bishop of London averreth to many of his friends (since he hath heard that the appellants at Rome deny the books published here in their names) that most of those books were written before they went, and that he hath their hands to every page of the same... Mushe is thought to be author of the Dialogue, Bluett of the Important Consideration, Bagshawe of the Sparing Discoverie, and divers others. Watson was but the prolocutor in adding the prefaces, as he confesseth. 5 If Bagshaw was the author of the True Relation it is very likely that he also wrote the Sparing Discoverie, for the t w o pamphlets are very similar in style and indeed at several points employ the same wording. They also complement each other in content. The 3

Another analogy between Watson and Nashe appears in the fact that Bancroft earlier employed the latter in the campaign against the Marprelate writers (see the entry on Bancroft in the DNB). As Bishop of London, Bancroft was forced to fight a running battle with the Puritans, and this may partly account for Watson's habit of repeatedly comparing the Jesuits with the Puritans to their mutual discredit, as he does in the Quodlibeticall Questions, 25-27, 144, 169, 224. After his contributions to the Archpriest Controversy Watson by no means remained a cooperative tool of the government. In 1603 he was executed for his complicity in the Bye Plot, the conspiracy to kidnap King James and force him to establish a new government favorable to the Catholics, in which Watson himself presumably would have been the chancellor. 4 See CSP, Dom., 1601-1603, 185, 196. According to a report sent to Cecil, one of the appellants "said that Watson deserved to be whipped about the streets of Rome for the books he had set forth" (185), 6 Foley, Records, I, 42.

32

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

plan of the True Relation is essentially chronological, covering first the disputes at Wisbech and then the earlier stages of the Archpriest Controversy. That of the Sparing Discoverie is explained near the beginning: In this our rough draft to s h a d o w out in s o m e sort v n t o y o u the c o n t a g i o n a n d practises o f our English Iesuitisme and Iesuites, we d o first intreate o f them and such like as they are more generally, and then w e will be b o l d a little t o claw Father Parsons where he itcheth not, as the man that hath bin and still continueth the chiefe firebrand that hath a n d d o t h inflame s o many b o t h mens a n d w o m e n s hearts with pride, disdayne, and malice against vs, their auncient, most louing, and faithfull ghostly Fathers... (4)

Thus the first half of the pamphlet presents a general attack on the Jesuits, the second half a highly uncomplimentary review of Persons' career. In addition to the general animosity the seculars felt towards Persons as their main opponent, Bagshaw had a more personal reason for clawing him. Nearly thirty years earlier, before either had become a Catholic, there had been serious differences between them when they were both at Balliol.6 The Sparing Discoverie shows repeated resemblances to Hamlet, fully as many as the True Relation does to King Lear. At first it may seem unlikely that Shakespeare could have used the pamphlet in writing this play because of its date. According to Pollen, the Sparing Discoverie was published in October, 1601.7 It has been argued that Shakespeare must have written Hamlet before February of that year, the evidence for this being the marginal note in Gabriel Harvey's copy of Chaucer, which refers to Essex in the present tense before mentioning "Shakespeares ... tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke". 8 It has been questioned, however, 6 When Persons was dean and bursar at Balliol in 1574 he was expelled from the college under obscure circumstances, a humiliation for which Bagshaw seems to have been partly responsible. The latter is called Persons' "stifle aduersarie in the matters objected against him" in the Sparing Discoverie, 42. Persons presents his own account of the episode in the Briefe Apologie, ff. 192 v 197, Bagshaw his rebuttal of this in his appendix to Humphrey Ely's Certaine briefe notes vpon a briefe apologie (Paris, 1602), 32-34. 7 Institution of the Archpriest, 102. 8 See E. A. J. Honigmann, "The Date of Hamlet", Shakespeare Survey, IX (1956), 24-26.

'HAMLET' A N D THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

33

whether the note was necessarily written before Essex's execution in February, 9 and in any case a casually jotted note cannot be considered too formidable a piece of evidence, especially in the absence of any other evidence for the earlier date. A more definite terminal date for Hamlet is established by Roberts' entry in the Stationers' Register of July 26, 1602. Between the preceding October and that date Shakespeare would have had time enough to read and make use of the Sparing Discoverie. Since the main source for Hamlet, probably the earlier Hamlet play of about 1589, has not survived, it will not be possible to indicate those features which the pamphlet and play alone have in common. Among the elements they share, however, are nearly two dozen words which Shakespeare never used before in his plays, and these will be listed later. An example of parallel phrasing may be seen in the following sentence from the preface of the pamphlet, in which Watson makes the typically unsupported claim that the Jesuits were responsible for the papal bull of excommunication issued against Queen Elizabeth in 1570: For this cause it is that they (the Spanish faction I meane) haue labored these 30. yeers space and vpward (for so long it is since the Bull of Pius Quintus came out by the Iesuiticall humorists procurement) for depriuing her Maiestie of her life, Kingdome, Crowne, and all at once... (sig. a2v) In Hamlet the final portion of the sentence is paralleled in two places, in the Ghost's line: by a brother's hand Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched... (I.v.74-75) and, more fully, in Claudius' proposal to Laertes: we will our kingdom give, Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours... (IV.v.205-206) A detail worth noting here is the way the phrase "and all at once" at the end of the quotation is divided between the two lines in the play. In condemning the Jesuits for trying to instigate rebellions against the Queen, Bagshaw writes: 9

Leo Kirschbaum, "The Date of Shakespeare's Hamlet", Studies in Philology, XXXIV (1937), 168-175.

34

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

Hereunto may be added ... how many they haue intituled to the Crowne of this Kingdome ... exciting some of them by force of armes to assayle her Maiestie, and buzzing into their eares how easily the Scepter might be wrung out of her hands, and they obtayne it. (8)

The phrase "buzzing into their eares" resembles a line on Laertes' rebellion: And wants not buzzers to infect his ear... (IV.v.90)

and "by force of armes to assayle her Maiestie" a line on Fortinbras: To give th' assay of arms against your majesty. (II.ii.71)

Here the resemblance is strengthened by the fact that "assay" in one of its now-obsolete meanings was synonymous with, and indeed apparently influenced by, "assail".10 Again on the subject of rebellion, Bagshaw accuses the Jesuits of advocating "that the people may depose their Princes, and choose others at their pleasures..." He then asks: what Prince will indure such persons in his Kingdome, as vnder pretence of Religion, shall infect his subiects with such hatefull conceits, so dangerous to his estate?

Further on he presents a sequence of three images: This only we will say, that our pretended Fathers build Castles in the ayre, a n d feede themselues with their owne follyes: as though where the people do once get a head, it be not as hard a matter to suppresse them, as to stop the breach of the sea, when in fury it hath once mastered the banks. (14-15)

Several details here are paralleled in Claudius' and the Messenger's accounts of Laertes' rebellion just before he enters with his rabble. First, the notion that the people may depose one prince and "choose" another: They cry, "Choose we! Laertes shall be king!" (IV.v.106)

10

OED, "assay", v., II, 14.

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

35

Shortly before this Bagshaw's comparison of a popular uprising which has gained a "head" to a sea which has mastered its banks is matched in the Messenger's lines: The ocean, overpeering of his list, Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, O'erbears your officers. (IV.v.99-102) Before this occurs a line which suggests Bagshaw's other two images, "build Castles in the ayre, and feede themselues with their owne follyes" - if, that is, "clouds" is taken as equivalent to "Castles in the ayre": Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds... (IV.v.89)11 Yet another resemblance may be seen between the phrases, "what Prince will indure such persons in his Kingdome ... so dangerous to his estate", and Claudius' earlier remark on the danger presented by Hamlet: The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near's... (III.iii.5-6) A numerical correspondence appears in this sentence in the Sparing Discoverie: Whereupon Doctor Barret in the behalfe of the Colledge fel in debt 3000. crownes: the Iesuits all the while keeping him from the annuall pension. (64) Both "3000. crownes" and the notion of an "annuall pension" occur in the line on Fortinbras: Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee... (II.ii.73)12 11 The conventional connection between clouds and castles in the air is indicated by a passage in Fairfax's translation of Tasso, Godfrey of Bulloigne (London, 1600), 294: "oft the clouds frame shapes of castles great/Amid the aire, that little time do last..." 12 This is the line as it appears in both the First Quarto and Folio. In the Second Quarto it reads: "Giues him threescore thousand crownes in annuall fee." Since the addition of "-score" here makes the line hypermetrical it could be plausibly assumed that Shakespeare originally wrote "three" rather than "threescore".

36

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

Although Fortinbras' situation is hardly comparable to that of Dr. Barret, the rector of the seminary at Douai, the correspondence seems more significant when we notice that this is the only place in Hamlet where crowns are mentioned, the standard currency elsewhere being the ducat. 13 In another reference to the Jesuits' mishandling of money Bagshaw writes: You haue heard how the Iesuites became our Collectors, or rather not ours, but their owne: to whome for their accompts the false Steward in the Gospell we suppose may giue place. (19) In the next sentence Bagshaw alleges that a Jesuit "stole 27. pound of the common money" belonging to the prisoners at Wisbech. "False Steward" and "stole" are combined in Ophelia's line: It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter. (IV.v.171-172) Some other short phrases in the Sparing Discoverie which also appear in Hamlet are "continuall practise" (p. 1, V.ii.200), "most holy and religious" (p. 1, III.iii.8), "particular thoughts" (p. 24, I.i.67), "take Armes against" (p. 65, III.i.59), "out of ioynt" (p. 67, I.v.188), and "filius terrae", which corresponds to Rosencrantz's "children of the earth" (p. 56, II.ii.224). "Filius terrae" is one of Baghaw's several uncomplimentary epithets for Persons, an allusion to his plebeian origin. Although he pretends he is reluctant to do so, Bagshaw repeats another, more serious slander the seculars often directed at Persons, that he is by his birth a bastard, begotten vpon the bodie of a very base woman by the Parson of the parish where hee. was borne... Which defect, because it did not proceede from any fault in him, we could haue wished had bin omitted by our very reuerend brethren in their late declaration to his holiness... (41-42)14 In his curious meditation on the "vicious mole of nature" Hamlet expresses the same idea, that a person will be censured for his 13

A s in "a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little" (II.ii.357), "five ducats, five" (IV.iv.20), "twenty thousand ducats" (IV.iv.25). 14 The "declaration" Bagshaw refers to is John Mush's Declaratio motvvm ac tvrbationvm (London, 1601), which began the seculars' onslaught against Persons' character and career. Persons answers the completely groundless charge that he was illegitimate in the Brief Apologie, if. 197-197 v .

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

37

"birth" even though "it did not proceede from any fault in him": So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty... (I.iv.23-25) As Bagshaw speaks of a "defect" and "fault", so Hamlet in his following lines also uses these terms in the phrases "stamp of one defect" and "particular fault" (I.iv.31, 36). In addition to these similarities in verbal detail, the Sparing Discoverie shows a number of broader resemblances to Hamlet, some of which involve traits of character. One of the more prominent features of the pamphlet is its portrayal of the Jesuits as busy politicians obsessed with plots and stratagems and forever meddling in affairs irrelevant to their calling. Bagshaw declares: Let these men brag as much as they list of their pollicies, their foresights, and their pragmaticall wisedome, they shall neuer whilest we liue, haue in these courses our approbation. (10) Bragging of policies and foresights is a habit also displayed by a certain character in the play, one who likes t o think of himself as among those "of wisdom and of reach" (II.i.64). In describing the Jesuits' schemes and stratagems Watson and Bagshaw often make use of such terms as "drifts, practises, and deuices", "plotting and compassing", "cunning fishing", "hunting", "ginnes", and "traps" (sig. A3 V , pp. 8, 23, 27, 32). Polonius shows his predilection for this sort of language in "encompassment and drift of question" (II. i.10), "here's my drift" (II.i.37), "Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth" (II.i.63), and "Hunts ... this trail of policy" (II.ii.47). Watson claims that he could deduct a triple alphabet intire of Machiuilian practises vsed by the Iesuits ... how, when, amongst whom, and by whom, this & that stratageme is to be practised: what maximes, axiomaes, or rules are generall or common to all: and which are speciall... How this politician or statefather is to be imployed in Princes courts as a lieger for aduice ... how to insinuate himself ... into his Soueraignes fauour, or some neerest about the seate of Maiesty, to know all the secrets of the land... (sig. a2) Polonius likewise has his collections of stratagems and maxims, takes pride in being an "assistant for a state" high in his sovereign's

38

' h a m l e t ' a n d t h e 'sparing discoverie'

favor, and devotes his energies to ferreting out secrets. In addition, there is a more precise resemblance between one of Watson's phrases - "how, when, amongst whom, and by whom, this & that stratageme is to be practised" _ and a verbal idiosyncrasy Polonius displays as he is contriving stratagems for Reynaldo: Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris, And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, What company, at what expense... (II.i.7-9) The Sparing Discoverie presents an analogy to one of Polonius' specific activities in Bagshaw's detailed account of a device he claims the Jesuits invented "to enrich and increase their order": It is tearmed by them an holy exercise, and is put in practise when they finde any, that are meet to serue their turnes, either for their extraordinary pregnancy of wit and learning, or for their parentage and friends, or for their wealth and possessions... (21) After explaining how the Jesuit conducting the exercise first subtly works on the candidate's emotions so as to place him in a receptive frame of mind, all the while treating him "with all kinde of sweete behauiour and curtesy", Bagshaw describes how the exercise itself proceeds: The partie at the time appointed, comming to the holy Father who must deale with him, is recluded from the speech of any body but the sayd Father for a certaine time. Vpon his first reclusion the Father commeth vnto him, and giueth him a meditation to study vpon for some foure or fiue houres: willing him in the meane while carefullie to remember all the cogitations that do come into his minde. The sayd foure or fiue houres expired, in commeth this good Father: and then the partie must be confessed, and is to reueale all his particular thoughts of what matter soeuer good or bad that came into his head, all the time of his aforesayd meditations. (24) The most suggestive phrase here is, "the Father ... giueth him a meditation to study vpon for some foure or fiue houres". Although Polonius does not do precisely this with Hamlet, as he is contriving his meeting with Ophelia he mentions the same timeperiod: You know sometimes he walks four hours together Here in the lobby... (II.ii.160-161)

'HAMLET' AND THE 'SPARING DISCOVERIE'

39

and a few moments later Hamlet comes in "reading on a book" (II.ii.167, s.d.). At this point, by asking Claudius and Gertrude to leave, Polonius in effect "recludes" Hamlet "from the speech of any body" but himself. Then in the course of their following dialogue he enacts what could be taken as a parody of the inquisition described in the excerpt, as he questions Hamlet about the "matter" of his cogitations: Polonius. What do you read, my lord? Hamlet. Words, words, words. Polonius. What is the matter, my lord? (II.ii.191-193)

Shortly after this episode Hamlet makes a remark to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern which resembles the phrase, "thoughts of what matter soeuer good or bad": for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (II.ii.246-247)

The word "exercise" in the specifically religious sense, which Shakespeare used only once before in his plays (in Richard III), occurs in Polonius' lines to Ophelia as he is about to expose her to Hamlet. Like Bagshaw's Jesuit, he both gives her a "meditation to study vpon" and prepares her for "reclusion": Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may color Your loneliness. (III.i.44-46)

In forcing Ophelia to perform this kind of "show" or "pious action", Polonius illustrates yet another one of the many vices Watson and Bagshaw attribute to the Jesuits, a "catholick shew of so true religion" or "externall shew of pietie" (sigs. A3V, al). The Sparing Discoverie reveals several other resemblances to Hamlet of the more general variety, but these would largely repeat the kind of evidence which has been presented. It remains to list those words which appear in both works but in none of the twentytwo plays Shakespeare wrote before Hamlet. Most of these words are not unusual, but since the list is fairly extensive it does provide one means of assessing a possible influence, in that Shakespeare could have been prompted to use them by his reading of the

' h a m l e t ' a n d t h e ' s p a r i n g discoverie'

40 15

pamphlet. Those words which occur in no other Shakespeare play before or after Hamlet are indicated with an asterisk: anticipation (p. 20, II.ii.290) appurtenance (p. 57, II.ii.362*) associates (as a noun - sig. al, p. 59, IV.iii.44*) calumny (sig. a2, III.i.137) comply (sig. A4V, II.ii.363) disioynt (sig. A4V, I.ii.20) document (p. 1, IV.v.177*)16 equiuocation (pp. 6, 11, V.i.129) gules (sig. A3, II.ii.445) incest (sig. a2,1.v.83) inuentor (p. 7, V.ii.374) marshal (as a verb - p. 55, III.iv.206) occurents (sig. a2, p. 7, V.ii.346*) ouercrow (sig. al, V.ii.342*) ouertop (sig. al, V.i.240) pourport (sig. A3, II.i.82*) Prouinciall (sig. a3v, p. 18, III.ii.266) schoolfellowe (p. 43, III.iv.203*) sheepes skin (p. 40, V.i.106*) statist (p. 43, V.ii.33) towring (sig. al v , V.ii.80) traduced (pp. 9, 34,1.iv.18) A word of special significance here is "equiuocation". Bagshaw devotes more than a page to condemning the Jesuits for "their equiuocating, which you may tearme in plaine english, lying and cogging". In the play the word occurs in Hamlet's comment to Horatio on the quibbling of the Gravedigger: How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe. (V.i. 128-132) 15 An example of this kind of influence appears in the many words in King Lear which Shakespeare seems to have picked up from his reading of FJorio's Montaigne. For a list of these see King Lear, New Arden edition by Kenneth Muir (London, 1959), 250. 16 In both works this word is used in the now-obsolete sense of "lesson". In the play it occurs in Laertes' comment on Ophelia's flower speech: "A document in madness."

'hamlet' and the 'sparing discoverie'

41

Just what the three-year period and the image of the peasant and courtier are supposed to signify has never been satisfactorily explained, but it would appear that they have something to do with the preceding reference to equivocation, a practice which in turn was closely identified at the time with the Jesuits. The Sparing Discoverie contains some passages, including the one on equivocation, which may shed light on these matters, and together with other possible connections between the two works they will be considered in the last chapter. After Hamlet Shakespeare explicitly mentions equivocation again in some of the other plays of his middle period: Othello, All's Well, and Macbeth. He seems to have maintained a consistent interest in the subject during the years the Jesuits were under heavy attack.

4. TROILUS

AND CRESSIDA A N D PERSONS' BRIEFE APOLOGIE

When the seculars began publishing their pamphlets in May, 1601, they gave the Archpriest Controversy a new character, converting it from a relatively inconspicuous into a fully public affair. This was understandably not to the liking of the other party, for in exposing the disputes within the priesthood the pamphlets showed the world that the Church in England was far from presenting a united front against heresy, that the Catholic cause was not truly catholic even among its avowed supporters. Once the seculars had publicized their grievances, however, it was obviously necessary that they be answered in an equally public manner, especially for the edification of the confused Catholic laity. This task was undertaken by the man who was clearly the best equipped to handle it, Robert Persons, a skillful and experienced polemicist who over the past two decades had produced a steady flow of anti-Protestant tracts as well as the highly popular devotional work, The Booke of Christian Exercise.1 In addition to justifying the appointment of the Archpriest and exposing the seculars as a 1

Persons has yet to receive the book-length biography he deserves. Shorter biographies appear in L. Hicks, ed., Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, S. J. (to 1588), Catholic Record Society, XXXIX (London, 1942), ix-lxxvi; Denis Meadows, Elizabethan Quintet (London, 1956), 91-175; John E. Parish, "Robert Parsons and the English Counter-Reformation", Rice University Studies, LII (1966), 1-80; and Bernard Basset, The English Jesuits from Campion to Martindale (London, 1967), 20-96. As two of these titles indicate, even among modern historians not only Persons' character but the spelling of his name is a controversial matter. In his own time his opponents both Catholic and Protestant always spelled it "Parsons", he himself and his supporters "Persons". It seems only fair to use the spelling Persons himself preferred.

PERSONS' 'BRIEFE APOLOGIE'

43

faction of undisciplined troublemakers, Persons had another motive for resorting to print. This was to defend himself against the personal attack made on him in one of the seculars' first two pamphlets, the Declaratio Motuum. To accomplish these aims Persons composed a "brief" discourse of close to 500 pages in octavo, the title-page of which runs as follows: A BRIEFE APOLOGIE, OR DEFENCE OF THE CA-tholike Ecclesiastical Hierarchie, & subordination in England, erected these later yeares by our holy Father Pope Clement the eyght; and impugned by certayne libels printed & published of late both in Latyn & English; by some vnquiet persons vnder the name of Priests of the Seminaries. Written and set forth for the true information and stay of all good Catholikes, by Priests vnited in due subordination to the Right Reuerend Archpriest, and other their Superiors. Hebr. 13. vers. 17. Obedite praepositis vestris, & subiacete eis, &c. Obey your Superiors, and submit your selues vnto them. 1. Thess. 5. Rogamus vos fratres, corripite inquietos. We beseech yow brethren represse those that are vnquiet amongst yow. Permissu Superiorum. Despite the claim that the work was written by a number of "vnited" priests and the use throughout of the authorial "we", no one at the time or since then has doubted Persons was the author. The pamphlet itself provides ample evidence of this: it continually refers to him in the third person, quotes extensively from letters written by and to him, shows an intimate knowledge of disputes in which he was personally involved, and devotes a whole chapter to answering the charges directed against him in the Declaratio Motuum.2 Persons completed the Briefe Apologie around July 20, 1601, 2

Persons' attempt to conceal his authorship did not escape the derision of the seculars. In his Briefe Notes Ely repeatedly cajoles the supposed authors for letting themselves be exploited by a Jesuit, and in A reply to a notorious libell intituled a briefe apologie (London, 1602), Robert Charnock heads his first chapter: "How the Author of the Apologie playeth All hid, with the Reader, and while hee is couered vnder the name of vnited Priestes, he discouereth himselfe to be a Iesuite" (5). In this chapter Charnock summarizes the internal evidence for Persons' authorship (7).

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the date which appears at the end of his prefatory epistle to the Pope, then had it printed in Antwerp under the supervision of the English Catholic writer and editor Richard Verstegan.3 Before it could be distributed, however, the Pope on August 17 issued his long-awaited brief in answer to the seculars' appeal of the previous November, in which he not only reconfirmed the Archpriest's appointment and admonished the two parties to live in peace but strictly forbade the publication of any further writings on the controversy. With the Briefe Apologie so soon to appear, this prohibition was obviously an awkward one for the Archpriest's party, and to circumvent it Blackwell resorted to a stratagem which inevitably provoked the indignation of the seculars and gave them a convenient excuse to continue with their own pamphlet campaign. Although the brief must have been in Blackwell's hands by the end of September, he deliberately withheld it until after the Briefe Apologie had appeared in London soon after the turn of the year, finally releasing it on January 26.4 About a month later the pamphlet was reprinted in London under rather unusual circumstances, for the person responsible for this was not Blackwell or a member of his party but Bishop Bancroft, as Rivers indicates in a letter he wrote to Persons on March 3, 1602: The B i s h o p of London hath caused fifty of the Apologies t o be newly imprinted here by the Queen's printer [Robert Barker], s o m e say verbatim, s o m e say with marginal notes. H e causeth them to be b o u n d with clean paper between every leaf, a n d s o meaneth to present the Council and his friends therewithal. 5

Bancroft's motive apparently was not to give the pamphlet wider 3

See A. G. Petti, "A Bibliography of the Writings of Richard Verstegan (c. 1550-1641)", Recusant History, VII (1963), 102. Under the heading "Verstegan as editor or supervisor" Petti lists Persons' Briefe Apologie, Appendix, and Manifestation, all three of which were printed in Antwerp by Arnout Coninx. 4 See Law, Jesuits and Seculars, lxxxvii-lxxxviii. Blackwell is attacked for this maneuver in Ely's Briefe Notes (General Preface, f. 4) and Colleton's Just Defence (sigs. *3-*3v). In a letter he wrote to Persons on January 13,1602, Garnet reports that the "Apology is come and beginneth to go forth" (Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet, 1555-1606, and the Gunpowder Plot [London, 1964], 292). 5 Foley, Records, I, 21.

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45

circulation but to supply his own circle with a fresh example of the Jesuit viewpoint, also perhaps to present further evidence of his success in stimulating the controversy. The marginal notes in the two editions are actually identical, the one significant difference between them being the omission of the epistle to the Pope in the London. In his thirteen chapters Persons surveys a wide area, systematically covering not only the quarrels surrounding the Archpriest but the entire history of the disturbances caused by the "disobedient" or "unquiet" elements in the priesthood. Among other matters, he has chapters on the dissensions at the English College in Rome in the 1580's and '90's, the stirs at Wisbech, Charnock and Bishop's mission to Rome, the first two of the seculars' pamphlets, the slanders aimed at the Jesuits in general, and, as mentioned earlier, the "particular calumniations and slaunders" directed against himself. All these disturbances, he claims, have arisen from a deliberate conspiracy, a "great and universal plot" against the Catholic hierarchy originating in a small group of self-seeking priests and laymen working in secret collaboration with the English government. With the help of frequent citations from Scripture and the Church fathers and doctors, Persons argues that in opposing the Archpriest the seculars are in effect challenging the entire hierarchy from the Pope down, and that in attacking the Jesuits and their supporters they are disrupting the united front against heresy and thus endangering the program to restore England to the Church. As Persons sees it, then, the Church is both engaged in a "long, wearisome, and bloody conflict" with an enemy without and severely threatened by subversive elements within. This is also the predicament of the Greek army in Troilus and Cressida, and indeed there are passages in the Briefe Apologie which would describe that aspect of the play with considerable accuracy. The earliest record of Troilus, an entry in the Stationers' Register dated February 7, 1603, makes it plausible to assume that the play was written in 1602, when the Briefe Apologie would have been available to Shakespeare. In Troilus the most conspicuous similarities in language and

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idea occur in the third scene, that of the Greek war council, where Ulysses presents his own celebrated defence of hierarchy or "degree" and attributes the problems confronting the army to a small faction of troublemakers. The scene begins with an oration delivered by Agamemnon in which he exhorts the Greeks not to be discouraged by their afflictions but to accept them with stoic fortitude. The first few pages of the Briefe Apologie contain several elements that are paralleled in this speech. Persons begins his preface addressed to the Catholics of England by telling them how they should regard such a potentially disheartening spectacle as the controversy among the priests: we thought it expedient to forewarne, and forearme you ... least the matter being otherwise taken then it ought should yeeld to scandal, and thereby ouerthrow you and worke your mine, which is intended and permitted by almightie God Father of all mercyes toyour trial andgreater merit, to which end you are deligenly [jic] to consider ... his prouidence... whereby he permitteth; not only his whole church, familie, kingdome, and dearly bought portion to be afflicted continually with tempests, and contradictions in this life, but euery particular man also and member of most merit in the same... Both partes may be shewed by infinite examples of a perpetual succession of times, and matters happened from the beginning of Christian Religion, vnto our dayes. (sigs. A1-A1 V )

As Persons argues that "almightie God" permits his people to be "afflicted continually with tempests, and contradictions in this life" to their "trial and greater merit", so Agamemnon claims that the "Checks and disasters" suffered by the Greeks are nought else But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men. (I.iii. 19-21)

A few lines later Agamemnon employs the tempest image when he speaks of the "wind and tempest" whereby Distinction separates the wheat from the chaff (I.iii.26). Earlier in the speech he also presents a version of Persons' concluding point, that the present trials are nothing new but a repetition of "infinite examples of a perpetual succession of times": Nor, princes, is it matter new to us

That we come short of our suppose so far

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47

That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand; Sith every action that hath gone before, Whereof we have record, trial did draw Bias and thwart... (I.iii.10-15) A page later Persons repeats some of the same ideas in the form of a series of biblical quotations: God ... hath put the law ineuitable, Pressuram habebitis, you shall haue afflictions ... but what, adprobationem fideim bonorum, to proue good mens fayth and constancie, and what shalbe the ende qui perseuerauerit vsque in finem saluus erit, hee is safe that shal stand out constant to the end, and is not mooued with these blasts, (sig. A2)6 Agamemnon likewise claims that the trials imposed by Jove are intended to find "persistive constancy in men". Persons' allusion to the man who "is not mooued with these blasts" is paralleled by Agamemnon's final image of the thing which has "mass or matter" enough not to be blown away by the tempest (I.iii.29-30). In addition, the biblical phrase, "to proue good mens fayth and constancie", and a similar one Persons uses later, "vt qui probati sunt manifestifiant, that those who are men of proofe may be made manifest" (f. 127v),7 resemble the statement with which Nestor begins his amplification of Agamemnon's speech: In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men. (I.iii.33-34) After this Nestor proceeds to develop the tempest-trial analogy through the rest of his speech. The ideas and images in Agamemnon and Nestor's speeches are conventional, of course, and Shakespeare could have found them in any number of sources. When the two works intersect in this fashion at many different points, however, it is at least worth considering whether the similarities might be more than accidental. Ulysses' discourse on degree, generally considered an amalgam of traditional ideas gathered from such possible sources as Elyot's Governour, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and the Elizabethan 6 7

The quotations are from John 16:33, Jas. 1:3, and Mat. 24:13. 1 Cor. 11:19.

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homily Of Obedience,8 also shows a number of resemblances to passages in the Briefe Apologie. The most significant ones appear in the concluding portion, where Ulysses focuses on the "envious fever / Of pale and bloodless emulation" as the source of the troubles in the Greek camp. In analyzing the troubles in the Church Persons similarly locates their source in the "disease of emulation", and stresses the disastrous effects emulation can have on the common cause: this passion of emulation hath wonderfully hurt and hindred the English Catholike cause for many yeares, and some ages: and so much the more ought it to be auoided by all good men now, seing that we are not ignorant, what hurts haue and doe and wil proceede therof, which is confusion and ruine to the whole... the principal or only ground of this our present contention and scandalous controuersy, is the very same disease of emulation... (ff. 2-2v) Using the disease metaphor again, Persons elsewhere accuses the seculars of showing contempt for their superiors when he quotes that dreadful saying of the Apostle: Mali autem homines proficiant in peius, il men shal go from worse to worse.9 And so it semeth to haue comen to passe; for that diuers of these cheefe heades of this sedition ... haue runne sythence to farre greater contempt & perturbation of mynd... not only in contemning this Superior heere in England, and abusing him with contemptuous and contumelious wordes and deedes, but calling also in controuersy the Protector & his Hoi. [Holiness'] actions and power about this affaire... (ff. 13v-14) In his corresponding lines Ulysses speaks of the contempt the Greeks show for their superiors, the spreading of an infection among "il men", and the disease of emulation: The General's disdained By him one step below, he by the next, The next by him beneath; so every step, Exampled by the first pace that is sick Of his superior, grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation... (I.iii.129-134) 8

See Troilus and Cressida, New Variorum edition by Harold N. Hillebrand and T. W. Baldwin (Philadelphia, 1953), 389-410, and Muir, Shakespeare's Sources, 88-96. 9 2 Tim. 3:13.

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Later in the Briefe Apologie there is another passage in which the disease metaphor appears together with certain other elements paralleled at the end of Ulysses' speech. This is a quotation from a letter an English priest wrote to the Cardinal Protector concerning the opposition to the Archpriest: Your grace I know doth wel se how great mischief this matter is like to bring vnto our English Church ... except as we hope remedy be put by diligence at the beginning. For this disease is so much the more daungerous by how much the more secretly it infecteth. This truly I can affirm vnto your grace that the true and zealous defenders and propagators of Catholike religion in England do receaue more hurt and hinderance in the cause from these false and factious brethren, then from the open enemyes themselues... (f. 126v)

The final point resembles the one Ulysses makes at the end of his speech, after which the disease metaphor is repeated and the question of a "remedy" is raised: And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength. Nestor. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered The fever whereof all our power is sick. Agamemnon. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, What is the remedy? (I.iii.135-141)

As the letter Persons quotes places the blame for the hindering of the cause on "these false and factious brethren", so Ulysses earlier in his speech describes the Grecian tents as "so many hollow factions" (I.iii.80). Throughout the Briefe Apologie the words "emulation" and "faction" occur countless times, serving as Persons' stock labels for the seculars - "these factions and their emulations", as he calls them at one point (f. 164). In Troilus "emulation" and "emulous" occur eight times, "faction" and "factious" seven times, in both cases more often than in any other Shakespeare play. As Thersites remarks, the war over Helen is a "good quarrel to draw emulous factions" (II.iii.69). Among various other similarities the Briefe Apologie shows to Ulysses' speech on degree, one appears in Persons' comment on a passage in the Declaratio

Motuum:

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Marke the modestie of these men, they cal the authoritie of their Superiour instituted by Christes vicar, Laruam, that is a masking visard... (sig. t t 5V) Ulysses describes the subversion of authority in terms of mask and vizard in the lines: Degree being vizarded, Th' unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. (I.iii.83-84) Persons uses the word "degree" itself when he says of the seculars: They do also neglect and contemne whatsoeuer the present Protector Cardinal Farnesius hath done or written, or deferred to the Archpriest, namely in procuring him to be Prothonotarius Apostolicus neyther do they geue him the tytle of Reuerendissimus, due to that degree... ([f. 10]) The two terms which frame this passage, "neglect" and "degree", are combined in Ulysses' line: And this neglection of degree it is... (I.iii.127) In a later scene Achilles displays contempt for the high-sounding titles of his superior when he speaks of the magnanimous and most illustrious, six-or-seven-times-honored captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon... (Ill.iii.273-275) The title "most illustrious" which Achilles applies to Agamemnon appears in the Briefe Apologie both in English, "a most Illustrious Cardinal" (f. 115v), and Latin, "Illustrissimae Dominationis" (f. 125v). Again on the subject of titles, Persons twice refers to the papacy as the "seat of Peter" (ff. 22 v , 172), and repeatedly mentions the Apostolic "Sea", a term which likewise signifies the papal "seat". In addition, he claims that the Pope occupies the "place" of "God" (f. 205 v ) and is the "highest authoritie that is vpon earth" (f. 104v). In Troilus Nestor addresses Agamemnon in similar terms: With due observance to thy godlike seat... (I.iii.31) Aeneas also mentions Agamemnon's "seat" (I.iii.252) and speaks of him as a deity: Which is that god in office, guiding men ? Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon? (I.iii.231-232)

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Translated into Christian terms, another phrase applied to Agamemnon's position in this scene, "topless deputation" (I.iii.152), would be equivalent to "Christes vicar". After the degree speech, Ulysses and Nestor go on to describe the highly irregular conduct of Achilles, Patroclus, and the other malcontents. A chapter in the Briefe Apologie of special interest in this connection is the one on the Wisbech Stirs. It is no surprise that Persons' version of the quarrels differs radically from Bagshaw's in the True Relation. He claims that Weston was an exceptionally pious and unassuming man who, far from trying to elevate himself above his fellow prisoners, wished only "to se certayne rules for good order kept, without title, place or Superiority" (f. 64). The quiet, orderly life he and his followers tried to maintain was violently disrupted, however, by Bagshaw himself, a man of "restles, turbulent nature" (f. 70), and his two confederates, Thomas Bluet and John Norden: And albeit these three did hardly long agree among themselues, but had their priuate combats ... yet neyther of them being a frend of discipline and order, they quickly had some followers, to bring in and maintayne liberty and dissolution, so as in litle time after ... the whole good order of the house was altered, and braules, dissension, falling out, fighting, idlenes, banketting, playes, and other dissolution was brought in... (f. 65v) Persons provides another, more detailed list of these disorders in quoting phrases from a letter in Latin which the "better sort of priests" at Wisbech wrote to Garnet: The first wherof was ... Otium & languor, atque a bonis studiis, virtutum exercitiis magna cessatio: Idlenes and lasynes, & a great ceasing from good study and exercise of vertue. The second was: Quotidianae rixae, iurgia, &.c. daylie brauling, chiding, contumelious slanders, &c. The third: Pugnae & vsque ad sanguinis effusionem, dimicationes, fighting among themselues, and buffeting euen to the effusion of bloud, &c. Then followed Clericorum percussiones pro leui aestimatae. Beating of priests litle esteemed or rather defended. And then againe: Conuiuia, commessationes, compotationes, &c. Banqueting, eating, compotation, &c... (f. 71T) This could serve as a catalogue of the usual activities of the malcontent faction in the Greek camp, both as they are described by

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Ulysses and Nestor after the degree speech and as they are directly exhibited in later scenes. Ulysses mentions "lasynes" and "slanders" in his lines on Achilles and Patroclus: With him Patroclus Upon a lazy bed the livelong day Breaks scurril jests, And with ridiculous and silly action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls) He pageants us. (I.iii.146-151) Aeneas also speaks of the Greeks' "lazy tents" (I.iii.257), while Thersites in his later remarks to Patroclus implies a "great ceasing from g o o d study" and an aversion to "discipline and order": The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue. Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee. (Il.iii.25-28) "Brauling" and "fighting among themselues" are amply represented in the savage quarrel between Ajax and Thersites at the beginning of Il.i, "Banqueting" and "compotation" in Ajax's "factious feasts" (I.iii. 191) and Achilles' preparations for the entertainment of Hector: I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night... This night in banqueting must all be spent. (V.i.l, 45) The Latin "Conuiuia" near the end of the excerpt resembles a word A g a m e m n o n uses on the same occasion: all you peers of Greece, go to my tent; There in full convive we. (IV.v.270-271) 10 10

The Briefe Apologie shows another correspondence of this type in a Latin quotation which includes the word "constringi" (f. 178). Shakespeare uses "constringe" for the only time in Troilus' "hurricano ... / Constringed in mass" (V.ii.169). As several of the quotations from the Briefe Apologie have indicated, Persons makes extensive use of Latin quotations, and in fact prepared a Latin version of the pamphlet for publication in Rome (see Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest, 103). One of the peculiar features of Troilus is its heavy emphasis on Latinate diction, especially in the oratory of the Greek and Trojan council scenes, which suggests that Shakespeare may have been trying to impart a "Roman" flavor to the play.

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53

Although the parallel is a slight one, it might be noted that another one of the disorderly activities Persons mentions, "playes", has analogies in Patroclus' "pageanting" or "playing" of his superiors (I.iii.lSl, 165) and Thersites' impromptu performance of the "pageant of Ajax" (III.iii.269). Certain other similarities to these elements in Troilus may be seen in Persons' chapter on the quarrels at Wisbech. The anti-Weston party, he claims, was dominated by a small band of ringleaders, "some two or three heads, that incensed the rest" (f. 67v). This is also the case with the malcontent crew in Troilus, as Nestor points out: And in the imitation of these twain ... many are infect. (I.iii. 185-187) According to Persons, the most violent of the priests at Wisbech was Bluet. A man of "hasty rude and fiery nature", he would "not only reuile and threaten men, but strike & beat them also" (f. 70v), and on one occasion a priest "was beaten twise by the said M. Bluets fist" (f. 72). This again recalls Ajax's insulting, threatening, and beating of Thersites in Il.i. In its incongruous references to "holiness" and "prayer", Thersites' response to this treatment suggests that Ajax's behavior, like the irascible Bluet's, is anything but priestly: Ajax. ... I will beat thee into handsomeness. Thersites. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think my horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? (II.i.13-17) Bluet's violent "fist" is something else he has in common with Ajax: If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face. (II.iii.196-197) These similarities seem more significant when we notice that in those portions of his translation of the Iliad which Chapman had published before Shakespeare wrote Troilus, except for Thersites' railing at Agamemnon and Ulysses' beating him with his mace in Book II, there is little that corresponds to the scurrilous and violent behavior of the unruly characters in the Greek camp. In these

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matters the play seems to show closer analogies to the Briefe Apologie than it does to one of its more important sources. The Briefe Apologie also shows some resemblances to the love plot of Troilus, though not as many as it does to the scenes in the Greek camp. One of them appears in a passage Persons quotes from an anti-Jesuit diatribe composed by William Watson. In describing some of the cunning practices of the Jesuits Watson writes : It is a special principle in this Macheuillian schoole to obserue all mens maners, words, and actions ...to vrge others to speake, themselues keeping sylence, wherby eyther to haue them condemned of lightnes, and themselues commended for wisedome, or to take others tripping... (f. 136v) This method of prompting others to speak through crafty "sylence" is one Cressida accuses Troilus of employing in the scene of their first meeting : in this rapture I shall surely speak The thing I shall repent. See, see! your silence, Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws My very soul of counsel. (III.ii.123-126) Another practice for which the Jesuits were often condemned may also be reflected in the love plot. This is equivocation, and since it is a topic which will later be considered in relation to Hamlet it would be well to quote Persons' careful defence of it at some length. In answering those who, like Bagshaw in the Sparing Discoverie, claim that equivocation is merely a form of lying and therefore not to be permitted under any circumstances, Persons draws on scholastic authority to define the four situations in which it may be legitimately employed: And generally all schoole Doctors do handle the lawfulnes of this amphibologie or hiding the truth by prudent dissimulation in foure general matters: First ... in couering the secresy of confession... Secondly in diuers cases of examinations both of witnesses & others accused before judges. Thirdly ... when it may concerne the hurt of Gods seruice or daunger of our neighbours. Fourthly about the external confession of our fayth and obligation therin. All which 4. general matters may require somtymes prudent diuersion or dissimulation of the truth without lying, which schoolemen, casuists,

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55

and canonists do cal amphibologie or equiuocation of words, which S. Thom. describeth in these words, when he sayth... It is lawful to hide the truth prudently sometymes vnder some dissimulation of woords as S. Augustine saith, in his booke against lying, ([if. 202-202v]) In Troilus there are n o explicit references to equivocation such as Hamlet's in his comment on the Gravedigger's quibbling. In considering whether it might be implied, we should notice first that for Shakespeare equivocation generally seems to have assumed its literal meaning of "equal-naming", that is, a statement in which antithetical ideas are combined and paradoxically treated as equally valid. This definition is implied in Macbeth in the Porter's description of an equivocator as one "that could swear in both scales against either scale" (II.iii.8-9) and in his following remarks on the equivocal effect of liquor on lechery ("it provokes, and unprovokes", etc.). It is also indicated in Othello when Brabantio replies to the Duke's attempted consolations: These sentences, to sugar, or to gall, Being strong on both sides, are equivocal... (I.iii.216-217) and again in All's Well, in the exchange between Parolles and the King concerning Bertram's relationship to Diana: Parolles. He loved her, sir, and loved her not. King. As thou art a knave, and no knave. What an equivocal companion is this! (V.iii.248-250) The rhetorical figure this "is and is not" form of equivocation seems to resemble most closely is synoeciosis, the combination of contraries, which differs from antithesis in that the latter is the opposition of contraries. 11 Troilus offers at least two examples of this figure, the first in Pandarus and Cressida's argument about Troilus' complexion: Pandarus. ... for so 'tis, I must confess, not brown neither — Cressida. N o , but b r o w n .

Pandarus. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown. Cressida. To say the truth, true and not true. (I.ii.89-93) 11

The OED cites Puttenham's definition of synoeciosis as the "Crosse coupling". For other Shakespearean examples see Sister Miriam Joseph, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York, 1966), 135-136.

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As trivial as they seem at the time, these paradoxes anticipate Troilus' anguished reaction to Cressida's betrayal: "This is, and is not, Cressid" (V.ii.142). Just before this Troilus defines his dilemma as that of "Bifold authority" or double truth. Faced with the two irreconcilable Cressidas, the one who swore her vows and the one whose infidelity he has just witnessed, he expresses the dilemma in what appears to be the Shakespearean form of equivocation. Cressida's quarrel with Pandarus about Troilus' complexion may be a pointer that in that early scene she is practising equivocation in the more general sense Persons gives it: "hiding the truth by prudent dissimulation". For there she prudently conceals her true feelings from Pandarus, explaining that she relies on her "secrecy" to defend herself (I.ii.248) and justifying her deception in her soliloquy at the end of the scene. Later, in the scene of their first meeting she tries unsuccessfully to do the same with Troilus, first concealing her love, then admitting it, then denying it. Here one of the occasions for employing equivocation Persons mentions, the "external confession of our fayth", may be implied. As Cressida alternately claims that her love for Troilus "is" and "is not", she also speaks of making a confession: I was won, my lord, With the first glance that ever - pardon me: If I confess much you will play the tyrant. I love you now, but not, till now, so much But I might master it. In faith, I lie... (III.ii.110-114) Cressida again refers to the "confession" she is making in her following lines (III.ii.146), and we notice that the words "confess" and "faith" which she uses here also occur in her earlier quarrel with Pandarus. When she admits, "In faith, I lie", she suggests that pejorative definition of equivocation as mere 'lying' which Persons is trying to refute. In contrast to Cressida, Troilus scrupulously avoids "equiuocation of words" in confessing his faith: "Few words to fair faith", he declares, and goes on to make his name virtually synonymous with truth (III.ii.89). It is "dissimulation of woords" he accuses Cressida of practising after reading her final message: Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart... (V.iii.107)

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57

There is another episode in Troilus where equivocation as Persons explains it may be represented. On the morning when Cressida is to be sent to the Greeks, Aeneas arrives at Pandarus' house and asks him whether Troilus is there. When Pandarus pretends he does not know he is "hiding the truth by prudent dissimulation" for one of the reasons Persons mentions: "when it may concerne the ... daunger of our neighbors". Persons is alluding to a problem repeatedly considered in contemporary discussions of equivocation, the problem whether it is legitimate to resort to evasive or equivocal answers to conceal the whereabouts of someone, such as a priest, who is being sought by the authorities.12 In answering Aeneas, Pandarus does not resort to an outright lie but repeated evasions: H e r e ? What should h e do here? Is he here, say y o u ? 'Tis more than I know, I'll be sworn. For m y o w n part, I came in late. What should he do here? (IV.ii.48-53)

In reproaching Pandarus for this dissimulation Aeneas says: Come, come, you'll do him wrong ere y o u are ware. Y o u ' l l be s o true to him, to be false to him.

This paradoxical combination of "true" and "false" seems to be another example of the "is and is not" locution. Aeneas is suggesting that in trying to protect Troilus, Pandarus is acting on a principle which conflicts with another, higher obligation, the first being his fidelity to Troilus' private interests, the second his duty to tell the truth so that Troilus can fulfill his public responsibilities. If in this and the other passages Shakespeare is indeed referring 12

This question entered the debate on equivocation between Robert Southwell and Edward Coke at the former's trial in 1595. See Christopher Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr (London, 1956), 311-314. The anonymous Treatise of Equivocation written between 1595-1598, a manuscript copy of which bearing Garnet's corrections was discovered after the Gunpowder Plot, states the question on its title-page as the one which is "largely discussed" in the work (A Treatise of Equivocation, ed. David Jardine [London, 1851]). Since Jardine's edition it has been established that Garnet was in fact the author of the Treatise. See A. F. Allison, "The Writings of Fr. Henry Garnet, S. J. (1555-1606)", Recusant History (formerly Biographical Studies), 1(1951), 14-15.

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to equivocation, he would not be agreeing with Persons that it is in any sense a 'lawful' form of deception. 13 One of the general features of Troilus which reinforces its possible connection with the Briefe Apologie is its consistent emphasis on religious or, more precisely, pseudo-religious attitudes. The central situation of the play, the war over Helen, is defined by Hector as an act of false worship or "mad idolatry", a making of the "service greater than the god" (Il.ii.56-57). Troilus bears this out when he glorifies Helen to the point of comparing her to the pearl of great price (Il.ii.81-83), and when he claims that by fighting for her the Trojans will gain a kind of sainthood or "canonization", a "promised glory" worth more than the "wide world's revenue" (II.ii.202-206). While the Greeks for understandable reasons show little inclination to idolize Helen, they have certain idolatrous practices of their own. They display a rather strained reverence for Agamemnon's "godlike seat" (I.iii.31), they manipulate Achilles and Ajax as if they were rival deities competing for their "worship" (Il.iii.177-183), and Ulysses deifies the state when he equates it with "providence" and describes the "mystery" in its soul Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can expressure to. (Ill.iii.203-204) These attitudes are augmented by a great many references in the play to religious objects and ceremonies to gods, altars, sacrifices, oaths, prayers, prophecies, adorations, maledictions, and the like. Although the only literal priests among the characters are the relatively unimportant Helenus and Calchas, several of the others engage in priestly activities _ for instance Thersites when he recites his maledictory "prayers" against the Greek camp (II.iii.9-20), Pandarus when he joins the two lovers in a mock betrothal ceremony (IH.ii. 190-198), and Troilus when, as he about to give up 13

A few years later Shakespeare made his disapproval of equivocation explicit in the remarks he gave the Porter in Macbeth: "Faith, here's an equivocator ... who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven" (Il.iii.7-10). This suggests a conflict of principles or paradoxical mixture of truth and falsity similar to the one Aeneas points out in his comment on Pandarus' evasions.

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Cressida, he compares himself to a priest sacrificing his heart on an altar (IV.iii.7-9). While such religious terminology is hardly peculiar to Troilus among Shakespeare's plays, it does appear there in unusual concentration. What it generally suggests is that the Greeks and Trojans are meant to be seen, from one standpoint, as metaphorical priesthoods - quasi-ecclesiastical bodies both at war with each other and each within itself. The Briefe Apologie has a bearing on this aspect of the play because it too portrays a priesthood which is both divided within and embattled without. Persons in fact delineates this situation in military terms when he refers to the missionary priests as "souldiers" engaged in "spiritual warre". After explaining the need for strict discipline in an army when "two campes are actually in sight one against the other", he writes of the disturbances caused by the seculars: The case then being as it is, and our Catholike cause after a long, wearisome, and bloody conflict, hauing gathered some good strength vnto it, and being in actual combat with heresy, and in no smal hope in tyme to preuayle, by the patience, vnion, fortitude and longanimity of her souldiers, for these few men now to rayse a particular sedition within their owne camp vpon pretence of iniuryes or dishonors done them ... this point of what quality it is we leaue to all men to iudge and discerne. (ff. 215^-216) Such military language is frequent in the Briefe Apologie, and this passage again recalls the troubled situation in the Greek camp "after seven years' siege". If Shakespeare read the Briefe Apologie, he might have been prompted to think of the war he was portraying as a commentary on the one depicted by Persons.

5. MEASURE

FOR MEASURE

A N D THE

DIALOGUE

In addition to the True Relation and the Sparing Discoverie, the seculars in the latter part of 1601 produced another pamphlet which bears the title: A D I A L O G VE BETWIXT A SECVLAR PRIEST, A N D A LAY GENTLEMAN. Being an Abstract of the most important matters that are in controuersie betwixt the Priests and the Spanish or Iesuiticall faction. Printed at Rhemes. MDCI.

For some reason the pamphlet was reissued with a new title-page in which the main title remained the same but the subtitle was changed to the following: Concerning some points objected by the Iesuiticall faction against such Secular Priests, as haue shewed their dislike of M. Blackwell and the Iesuits proceedings.

It has been established that the pamphlet was printed in London rather than "Rhemes", this being one of the customary decoys used at the time in Catholic works published in England. 1 The Dialogue is a quarto volume of 154 pages, twenty of which are taken up by a preface signed with the familiar initials "fV. W." 1

The printer is identified as Adam Islip in Jenkins, "The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers", 185. One of the differences between the two subtitles is that "most important matters" in the first is changed to the more restrained "some points" in the second. Since the Dialogue, in contrast to some of the other pamphlets, does not make a point of the seculars' loyalty to the Queen and their opposition to Spanish or papal designs against England, someone, possibly Bancroft, may have felt that a more modest description of its contents was called for.

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Watson is in typically belligerent form as he fulminates against "these new pestiferous Puritanean Iesuiticall Sectaries", and the contrast between his hyper-embellished style and that of the dialogue itself is so marked that someone else was clearly responsible for the latter. One indication of this writer's identity appears in Rivers' letter to Persons of July 7, 1602, already quoted in connection with the Sparing Discoverie: "Mushe is thought to be author of the Dialogue."2 Another occurs in Persons' Manifestation, published in mid-1602. As he is preparing to attack the Dialogue Persons writes: The title is, as yow haue heard A Dialogue, &c. and the author therof is esteemed by many to be M, Mush, one of the cheef Appellants gone to Rome; and for the litle substance therof, it may be wel inough... 3

Having worked as a highly-respected missionary in his native Yorkshire for over twenty years, John Mush played the part of mediator during the Wisbech Stirs, visiting both the prison itself and Garnet in London and managing to bring about a temporary truce in the quarrels. With the appointment of the Archpriest, however, he became staunchly opposed to Blackwell and the Jesuits. He wrote the first published defence of the seculars' position, the Declaratio Motuum, and, as Persons indicates, he was one of the delegation of appellants who spent most of 1602 in Rome. Contrary to Persons' opinion of its "litle substance", the Dialogue is one of the more intelligent and skillfully-written of the polemics produced by the controversy. Its appeal depends not so much on the arguments it directs against the other party, which are repeated in other pamphlets, as on the dialogue form Mush chose to employ. Avoiding the more strident kind of invective favored by Watson and Bagshaw, he manages to create a sense of detached and civilized discourse as he has his two interlocutors debate various ethical questions as well as the specific points at issue between the two parties. His Secular Priest does his best to speak 2

Foley, Records, I, 42. Manifestation, f. 94v. Among the several other pamphlets Persons attacks here are the True Relation, the Sparing Discoverie, and the Important Considerations, but he does not identify their authors. 3

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charitably at times of Blackwell and the Jesuits, but is unhappily obliged to complain of their "violent and vniust courses" and "oppression of many innocent priests". The Gentleman is a wellmeaning but uninformed layman who is evidently supposed to represent the body of influential recusants upon whose support the missionary program depended. This seems to be the audience to whom the pamphlet is primarily addressed. 4 While Watson's preface has little in common with anything Shakespearean, the main portion of the Dialogue shows many similarities to Measure for Measure, a play Shakespeare probably wrote in 1604.5 The most conspicuous ones involve Mush's portrayal of Blackwell and the Jesuits and Shakespeare's of Angelo. In both cases we are shown presumably saintly individuals, much esteemed for their superior virtue, intelligence, and self-discipline, who nevertheless abuse their positions of authority and ruthlessly try to force their will on others. Mush repeatedly questions, for instance, the reputed saintliness of the Jesuits: Fa. Parsons (forsooth) and his Iesuits, they are Saint-like men ... running to perfection... (58) what is to be expected, where ouer-weening of themselues, blindeth these Saints?... the Iesuits bee no such Saints... (78) it is vsuall in all estates, That the best men are not the best rulers. If a man lacke the gifts of prudence, of justice, and discretion, of sinceritie, and of compassion in his actions, be he otherwise neuer so great a Saint, hee shall neuer gouerne well. (81) Isabella eventually discovers that Angelo is merely an "outwardsainted deputy" (III.i.89), and Angelo himself is forced to recognize that his saintliness is less than perfect: 4

The comparative restraint Mush shows in the Dialogue prompted William Clarke to remark, in answering Persons' attack on the pamphlet in the Manifestation, that many of Persons' "owne faction commend the booke, both for moderation, charity, patience, and well composing thereof" (A replie vnto a certaine libell... intituled, a manifestion [London, 1602], f. 95v). 5 The earliest record of the play is of a performance at court on December 26, 1604. Since Othello was presented there on November 1 of that year it could be argued that Shakespeare wrote that play before Measure for Measure. The latter is taken up first, however, because the resemblances it shows to the Dialogue are somewhat stronger than those Othello shows to the pamphlet which will be considered in the next chapter.

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0 cunning enemy that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook... (Il.ii. 180-181)

Again, Mush accuses the Jesuits of having an exalted opinion of their virtue, a "vaine-glorious conceit ... of their religious estate and perfection" (6). They "would be thoght mortified of their inordinat affections aboue al other" (25), and wish to be seen as "graue, vertuous, and learned" (98). Angelo, whose reputation for virtue and self-mortification is repeatedly emphasized beginning with the Duke's opening words to him, reveals in one of his soliloquies that he too has a vainglorious opinion of himself: yea, my gravity, Wherein, let no man hear me, I take pride... (II.iv.9-10)

In both cases, moreover, there is a sharp discrepancy between public reputation and actual conduct. Of the Jesuits in general and Thomas Lister6 in particular Mush writes : and for the Iesuites, considering that their cheefest vaunt and glory of their religion dooth consist in a singular perfection of obedience ... it cannot be imagined, that any of them, but especially not Fa. Lister, a Doctor of Diuinitie, famous among them for learning, a man for tendernesse of conscience, much enclined to scrupulositie, and for humilitie and other religious vertues ... it cannot be imagined (I say) that this Iesuit of all other should so forget himselfe, and staine the splendor of his obedience by such wilfull rashnesse and indiscretion.. .(11)

After this Mush again claims that Lister had in a "grosse manner forgotten euery point of his religious obedience", and had not acted "according to Fa. Garnets owne will and pleasure" (11-12). Angelo's perfect obedience, specifically his obedience to his superior's "will and pleasure", is the trait Shakespeare chooses to accentuate in the first lines he gives him in the play: Always obedient to your grace's will, 1 come to know your pleasure. (I.i.25-26) 6

Lister made a brief contribution to the Archpriest Controversy in 1598 when he wrote an unpublished tract entitled Adversus I'actiosos in Ecclesia, in which he condemned the priests who refused to accept the Archpriest's appointment as schismatics, a condemnation Blackwell subsequently made official. Mush accuses Lister of having done this without his superior's approval in the following excerpt. See Law, Jesuits and Seculars, cxxviii.

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After Angelo's exposure in the final scene, however, Escalus is astonished that a man of his reputation should behave, as Mush says o f Lister, in such a "grosse manner" and with "such wilfull rashnesse and indiscretion" : I am sorry, one so learned and so wise As you, Lord Angelo, have still appeared, Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood And lack of tempered judgment afterward. (V.i.466-469) Mush repeatedly condemns Blackwell and the Jesuits for their harsh treatment of their opponents and for abusing their ecclesiastical authority, and some of his accusations against them are reminiscent of Angelo's conduct as deputy. His Priest declares: In this onely our aduersaries haue the aduantage of vs, that they can easily couer the wrongs they doe vs with a plausible cloake, and name of their religion and authoritie... the very bare name or coat of religion, and the very remembrance of authoritie, swaieth much in mens opinions, to the discrédité of any that contend with religious persons and superiours, although their cause bee neuer so iust, and the actions of the religious or superiours bee most iniurious. But yet who is he, that... can be ignorant ... that men placed in authoritie, may also transgresse the lawes of equitie in the execution of their office, and then they are accustomed in the worst sort to oppresse their subiects, when they most pretend justice, and in strongest manner sound forth the cries of their authoritie, for colouring therby their vniust violence. (5-6) After Angelo succumbs to his human frailty he exploits his authority in similarly ruthless fashion. He himself is aware o f how the "very bare name or coat o f religion, and the very remembrance o f authoritie, swaieth much in mens opinions", a notion he likewise expresses through the clothing image: O place, O form, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming. (II.iv.12-15) He tells Isabella that his "unsoiled name" and "place i ' th' state" will protect him against her accusations (II.iv.155-157), and in a later soliloquy again acknowledges the power of his authority to conceal his injustice:

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For my authority bears off a credent bulk, That no particular scandal once can touch But it confounds the breather. (IV.iv.24-26)

The metaphorical linking of clothing and authority appears again in Isabella's outburst against man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority... (II.ii.117-118)

In the final scene Angelo, like Mush's adversaries, brazenly "pretends iustice" when he demands the "scope of justice" so that he can preside over the trial of the women he has wronged (V.i.232). In another place where he complains about Blackwell's mistreatment of the seculars, Mush claims that soon after his appointment he "solemnely in writing with complements of a new seale, and all his titles, suspended" three of them, one being Mush himself (18). Together with the metaphor of the "cloake" or "coat" of authority Mush uses in the preceding passage, the Archpriest's "seale" and "all his titles" are paralleled in Isabella's lines: even so may Angelo, In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms, Be an arch-villain... (V.i.55-57)

Since a "charact" is an "engraved or impressed mark; a stamp, impress" (OED), Angelo's "characts" would be equivalent to the Archpriest's "seale". One of the distinctive features of Measure for Measure is the large number of biblical allusions it contains, one of which appears in the title itself. Mush supports his attack on Blackwell and the Jesuits by making occasional use of biblical quotations, and in one passage he cites the text which is paraphrased more often than any other in the play and is closely related to its central theme of justice and mercy. This is where he distinguishes between two ways of passing judgment on others, first writing about those who are very easily caried away ... into rash judgements and disgracefull reports, to misconstrue the words and deeds of them they fancy not; to interprete all sinisterly; and to take and censure all they see or heare in the worst part they can deuise: affirming against both the manifest rule of charitie, and the expresse commaundement of God, forbidding

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all rash and temerarious judgements in these words: Nolite iudicare & non indicabimini, nolite condemnare & non condemnabimini,7 affirming vncertaine things, I say, for certaine; or ... judging secret things for manifest euils; or finally (if they bee manifest) persecuting them, as to be done badly, without knowledge of mind, intention, and disposition of him that did them. Mush then explains the contrary way of judging: A good conceit or opinion, by the law of Nature is due to euery man; and this ought all Christians to carry in the secrecie of their owne hearts, each one towards other, vntill by some manifest and certaine fault one haue deserued the contrarie. By the same law also, a mans credit, honor, and good name should rest entire and safe without losse or detriment, vntill by some inexcusable bad fact or fault, or by some assuredly knowne crime, they be impeached....(47) The same distinction seems to be repeatedly suggested in the play. The biblical quotation in the excerpt, "Judge not, that ye be not judged", which immediately precedes the "measure for measure" verse in Matthew, is paraphrased at least five times in Shakespeare's lines.8 The injunction is most often applied, of course, to Angelo, and at one point even the Provost ventures t o warn him against passing "rash judgment" on Claudio (II.ii.9-12). Angelo also behaves like those who "interprete all sinisterly", or "take and censure all they see or heare in the worst part they can deuise", when he loses patience during Escalus' examination of Elbow, Pompey, and Froth: I'll take my leave, And leave you to the hearing of the cause, Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. (Il.i. 128-130) Another character who exhibits this tendency in his own fashion is Lucio, especially in his gratuitous slandering of the Duke. In Mush's words, he breaks the "manifest rule of charitie", "judging secret things for manifest euils ... without knowledge of mind, intention, and disposition of him that did them". As the Duke tells him in similar language: 7

Mat. 7:1-2. By Escalus (II.i-8-16), Isabella (II.".75-77, 126, 136-141), and the Duke (V.i.110-111). 8

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you speak unskillfully; or, if your knowledge be more, it is much darkened in your malice. Lucio. Sir, I know him, and I love him. Duke. Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love. (Ill.ii.137-142)

Shortly before this Lucio judges a secret thing for a manifest evil when he pretends to know a compromising "secret" about the Duke (III.ii.127). Later in this scene, when the Duke asks Escalus, "of what disposition was the Duke?" (III.ii.217), Escalus expresses that "good conceit or opinion" of his superior which is directly contrary to Lucio's uncharitable slanders. As for the Duke's mode of judging, it is significant that in his treatment of Angelo he strictly abides by the "law of Nature" Mush explains in his last two sentences; for even though he is aware of Angelo's guilt he consistently speaks favorably of him and defends his good name so long as his guilt remains publicly unknown (IV.ii.74-79, V.i.9-16, 107-112), but once Angelo is exposed he judges him according to his "manifest and certaine fault": Then, Angelo, thy fault's thus manifested... (V.i.408)

Another place where a "bad fact or fault" is said to be "manifest" is in the Provost's lines on Barnardine: Provost. ... his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angelo, came not to an undoubtful proof. Duke. It is now apparent? Provost. Most manifest, and not denied by himself. (IV.ii.132-135)

Another contrast presented in the Dialogue, one the seculars often insisted on in their complaints against the Jesuits, may also have analogies in the play. This is the distinction between the two types of clerical vocation, secular and religious, as explained by Mush's Gentleman: it is fittest in my opinion, that greatest respect and reputation be made of the secular priests and pastors, which haue charge ouer soules, & which by their state and vocation are bound not onely to instruct well their people by Catholicke and wholesome doctrine, but moreouer by their vertuous life and conuersation to giue their people exteriour examples of well doing. A Iesuit, or any religious man ... is not by his

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profession bound to remaine still among the people, and himselfe to practise in open shew what hee had taught, and to be readie at all occasions to helpe and counsell his auditors: but hee may and is by his state tied to retire himselfe into his cloister or colledge, where he may be thus, or so; good, or bad, as hee is disposed: if good, to little edification in the world; if bad, to small scandale, because hee is hid and shut vp from the eyes of the people... Buta pastor, besides his diligent endeuors in teaching and dispensing the mysteries of God, must also at all times and in all occasions, by his vertuous carriage giue a light vnto his flocke, what they are to do and imitate, or else he faileth in the performance of his dutie. (60-61) A similar contrast seems to be implied in the play partly through the Duke's two different ways of dealing with his subjects. Initially, as one who has "ever loved the life removed" (I.iii.8) and is known for his "withdrawing" (Ill.ii. 124), he shows an inclination to retire from the world, to remain "hid and shut vp from the eyes of the people": I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes. (I.i.67-68) Once he has adopted his friar's disguise, however, the Duke reverses this tendency and works in close contact with his misguided subjects in the lowly setting of the prison, ministering to their spiritual needs, repeatedly counseling and consoling such characters as Juliet, Claudio, Isabella, Mariana, and Barnardine. The words with which he announces this change of approach: Bound by my charity and my blest order, I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in prison... (II.iii.3-5) recall Mush's remarks about those who are "bound" by their vocation to remain among their people and instruct them. Mush's allusion in the last sentence to the "pastor" who gives a "light vnto his flocke", a metaphor he repeats soon afterwards when he refers to the "sheepe and their ordinarie sheepeheards", suggests an image the Duke employs which at first seems out of place in the urban setting of the play. Near the end of his active night in the prison he says to the Provost: Look, th' unfolding star calls up the shepherd. (IV.ii.194)

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One purpose of the image seems to be to draw attention to the pastoral calling the Duke has been following in the prison. Significantly, just before he speaks the line he misreports himself as "perchance entering into some monastery". The words "monastery" and "shepherd" imply the same contrast as the one Mush draws between the two vocations. In the play the monastic ideal of retirement from the world is most fully exemplified, of course, by Angelo the would-be saint and Isabella, who at the outset is literally on the verge of entering a "cloister" (I.ii.172). I f the Duke in his friar's disguise illustrates the principle of active charity which Mush associates with the secular clergy, 9 they show the ascetic tendencies he attributes t o such regular orders as the "Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carthusians, and the rest": For all these haue the essentiall vows of pouertie, chastitie, and obedience, as well as Iesuits; and it is to bee supposed, that they obserue them as perfectly. Besides, they haue their continuall abstinence, their diuerse Lents, and many extraordinaire fasts, their nightly risings and watchings to sing Laudes to God, to meditate and to pray, their great castigations, and vsuall afflictions of their bodies; by disciplines, hard diet, sharpe attire, and other meanes of mortification. (75) Angelo is also one who practices "continuall abstinence". He is said to be a "man of stricture and firm abstinence" (I.iii. 12) and a man of "holy abstinence" (IV.ii.76), with a predilection for fasting and hard diet (I.iii.52-53, I.iv.61). Isabella on her part would prefer a "more strict restraint" upon the votarists of St. Clare (I.iv.4), and she makes her dedication to chastity unmistakable in her response to Angelo's proposition. That she aspires to a life which involves both fasting and "nightly risings and watchings ... to pray" she shows when she offers to bribe Angelo with true prayers That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sunrise: prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids... (II.ii.151-154) 9 Strictly speaking, as a supposed friar the Duke is a member of a regular order rather than the secular clergy, but his behavior more closely resembles that of the latter as Mush describes it.

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Isabella also shows her readiness to undergo affliction of the body, or even literal "mortification", when she tells Angelo that she would sooner be whipped to death than "yield/My Body up to shame" (II.iv.104). Mush elsewhere maintains that spiritual perfection is to be achieved not merely in adhering to the "three essentiall vowes of pouertie, chastitie, and obedience, to a Superiour", but in actively pursuing a "perfect charity towards God and man" (51). In Measure for Measure the limitations of the ascetic ideal are also indicated in various ways - in the rebellion of Angelo's mortified appetites and his failure to deal compassionately with his subjects, in the Duke's conversion from recluse to ministering friar, and in his withholding Isabella from the convent so as to involve her in his plan to rescue Claudio, Mariana, and Angelo. Shakespeare seems to agree with Mush in preferring a "secular" to a cloistered virtue. A few more of the smaller similarities between the two works might be noted. In three places Mush complains of the Jesuits' "busie stirring ... in temporall states" (84), claims that "they entermeddle ... in the affaires of temporall estates" (86), and blames Persons for his "polliticke and cunning entermeddling in all matters" (104). In the last scene of the play Friar Peter denies Lucio's charge that the disguised Duke is a "meddling friar" or "temporary [i.e. temporal] meddler" (V.i.127, 145). Another of the Jesuits' practices Mush condemns is their diligent "fishing" for the best seminary students as prospective members of their society: but this diligence to be vsed in the Seminaries among our English students, whom we haue vndertaken to frame and make fit for our English harvest... to vse this importune fishing among them, was a thing that neuer liked me. ([117]) The phrase "frame and make fit" is duplicated in the Duke's line on Mariana: The maid will I frame and make fit for his [Angelo's] attempt. (III.i.248) Mush uses the image of the harvest not only in the above sentence but in other places where he writes about the English mission:

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And for seminarie priests in England, it is manifest, that they haue labored in Christs vineyard with no lesse fruit ... than any Iesuit hath done hetherto... (43) it is the greater benefit and good of our Countrey, the moe students wee haue brought vp in the Seminaries, which become priests, and yeelde themselues to labor in our English haruest. (110) This biblical imagery of laboring and harvesting also appears in the play in conjunction with the Duke's plan to bring Mariana and Angelo together. The place where he "frames" her for the encounter is a "grange" (III.i.257), which in one of its early meanings signifies a place for the storage of seed or grain. 10 After contriving his plan the Duke anticipates the labor and the harvest: Our corn's to reap, for yet our tithe's to sow. (IV.i.75) The scene of consummation is a walled garden adjacent to a "vineyard" (IV.i.28). 11 In comparing Measure for Measure with its various possible sources, the several sixteenth-century versions of the two stories of the "monstrous ransom" and "disguised ruler", 12 one of the main differences we notice is the much greater emphasis it places on religious matters. The ruler in Riche's Brusanus, the closest counterpart to Shakespeare's Duke, disguises himself not as a friar but a merchant. In the novellas and plays of Cinthio, Whetstone, and Lupton, Angelo's prototype is initially a young man of superior 10

OED, "grange", 1. This definition would make "grange" synonymous with the literal meaning of "seminarie". 11 While this is not the place to explore the possible symbolic meaning of these images, it might be noted briefly that in medieval and Renaissance art the Garden of Eden was often depicted as a garden which, like Angelo's, is "circummured with brick" (IV.i.27), and that the scene of the Annunciation, identified with both the Garden of Eden and the enclosed garden of Canticles, was represented in the same fashion. Other pertinent details are the closeness of the names Angelo and Mariana to "Angel" and "Mary", and the location of Mariana's grange at "St. Luke's" (III.i.256): it is in St. Luke's Gospel, and there only, that the Annunciation is described (1:28-38). What Shakespeare may be suggesting through these details is that the Duke, in uniting Angelo and Mariana, is converting what Angelo in his blindness thinks is an illicit assignation into a facsimile of the Annunciation, of the spiritual sowing which precedes the harvest of redemption. 12 Collected in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, II (London, 1958), 418-530.

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intelligence and virtue, but he is not an ascetic, a self-styled saint who subsequently exploits his reputation for austerity to counteract the complaints of the woman he has wronged. Nor is any of Isabella's predecessors a would-be nun with a penchant for selfmortification and noctural prayer. In these works the conflict between justice and mercy is handled largely as a problem in secular morality, with little reference to biblical ideas or the Christian scheme of redemption. These differences tend to reinforce the similarities between Measure for Measure and the Dialogue, for they do have in common those specifically religious elements which are lacking in the other works. Some of these elements, moreover, are of a particular sectarian kind. In its presentation of nuns and friars and its several references to the papacy, confession, fasting, penance, and such matters, Measure for Measure has a distinctly "Catholic" flavor which seems all the more pronounced because it was written for the entertainment of a self-consciously Protestant audience. Another work which has been proposed as a source for the play, King James' Basilicon Doron,13 includes some passages which suggest the false saintliness of Angelo. James writes that "an vsurping Tyrant", counterfeiting the Sainte while he once creepe in credit, will then (by inuerting all good lawes to serue onely for his vnrulie priuate affections) frame the Common-weale to aduance his particular...

and again: I shew how a Tyrant would enter like a Saint while hee found himselfe fast vnder-foote, and then would suffer his vnrulie affections to burst foorth. 14

Angelo similarly inverts the laws of Vienna to gratify his unruly private affections, but the difference is that he does not merely counterfeit saintliness to achieve his Machiavellian ends. He genuinely believes in his saintly superiority until he discovers 13 See David L. Stevenson, "The Role of James I in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure", ELH, XXVI (1959), 201-207, and Josephine Waters Bennett,

"Measure for Measure" as Royal Entertainment (New York, 1966), 82-104.

14

Basilicon Doron (London, 1603), 25, 29.

'measure for measure' and the 'dialogue'

73

elements in his nature he had never suspected. So Mush does not accuse the Jesuits of crude hypocrisy: to him they are really, if mistakenly, convinced that they come closer to spiritual perfection than any of the other orders. In some of its ideas, especially those concerning the ruler's duty to present himself as a model to his people and to act as a firm but merciful judge, the Basilicon Doron reveals some interesting analogies to Measure for Measure, but it shows many fewer verbal similarities to the play than does the Dialogue. If it can be argued that Shakespeare used the one work, a considerably stronger case can be presented for the other.

6. OTHELLO AND ELY'S BRIEFE

NOTES

As the first published defence of the new hierarchy established through the appointment of the Archpriest, Persons' Briefe Apologie prompted two lengthy replies from the seculars, one by Robert Charnock, the other by a priest who until then had taken no part in the controversy. This was Humphrey Ely, at one time a close associate of William Allen's at Douai and Rheims and since 1586 a professor of law at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine. 1 Ely was a welcome addition to the ranks of the seculars, for he seems to have been highly respected by his fellow Catholics for his learning and integrity. The anonymous author of the preface to his volume speaks of him as a "very auncient, wise & ledned [learned] Prieste, lyuinge in honour and at his ease, far from his natiue soile, and farther from ... debate and contention", also as a "right wourshipfull Doctor" endowed with "sound naturall iudgment, refined and accomplished with a profound knoweledg of both ciuill and canon lawe" (General Preface, if. 2V, 3). In his own preface Ely claims that he originally favored neither side in the controversy, but that "loving and honoring both sides and parties as my deare contreymen", he wished only that "some good peace and appointment might be made amongst them". What has prompted him to enter the controversy now, he says, is the "fond and foolish matter" he has found in the Briefe Apologie, which has convinced him of the "iustice of the cause of those called discontended Priests" (Epistle, sigs. aiii, aiv). 1

In his sketch of Ely, Wood refers to Allen as his "great friend" (Athenae Oxonienses, I, 277). Fuller also gives a short account of Ely in the Worthies of England (London, 1662), Herefordshire, 41.

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Unlike the seculars' other pamphlets, Ely's volume was printed not in London but Paris, a fact which may account for the unusually large number of misprints it contains and for the occasional appearance of the grave accent over the article "a". The title-page runs as follows : CERTAINE BRIEFE NOTES VPON A BRIEFE APOLOGIE SET out vnder the name of the Priestes vnited to the Archpriest. Drawne by an vnpassionate secular Prieste friend to bothe partyes, but more frend to the truth. Wherunto is added à seuerall answeare vnto the particularités obiected against certaine Persons. Forte est vinum, fortior est Rex, sed svper omnia vincit Veritas et manet in aeternvm. 5. Esd. 3. Imprinted at Paris, by Peter Sevestre. With Priuiledge. Consisting of 467 pages in octavo, the Briefe Notes is largely taken u p by Ely's methodical rebuttal of the Briefe Apologie, but it also contains three separately-paginated sections by other authors which answer Persons' charges against William Bishop, Charles Paget, and Christopher Bagshaw, the last two writing their own defences in the first person. The patchwork nature of the volume suggests that the editorial work was done by someone other than Ely, probably Bagshaw, who remained in Paris in 1602 while his fellow appellants were presenting their case in Rome. That Bagshaw had a hand in preparing the Briefe Notes might be inferred from a comment in a letter Rivers wrote to Persons on August 25, 1602: now he [Bancroft] hath received from Bagshawe, his agent in Paris, a kind of answer to the late Apology, composed by Dr. Ely, seen, allowed, and augmented by Drs. Bagshawe, Bishop, and Charles Paget, approved by two Sorbonne Doctors, and printed at Paris. All the copies are in the Bishop and Mr. Watson his disposition, yet by chance hath my cousin [Garnet] got one... 2 The Briefe Notes bears no date, but this reference together with Rivers' remark in an earlier letter of July 26, that the "answer to 2

Foley, Records, I, 45-46.

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the Apology is in printing in Paris", 3 would place the date of publication in August, 1602. As a professor of law who has "left for a time my lawe bookes" in order to answer the Briefe Apologie, Ely understandably adopts a legalistic approach to the question of the Archpriest's authority. He finds that the "chief hedd" of the controversy depends upon a "pointe of lawe" (Epistle, sig. alv), and is consistently preoccupied with the apparatus of accusation and defence, methods of proof, interpretations of canon law, and the like. Since in his view the institution of the Archpriest was "lawles" to begin with, he repeatedly finds Persons' arguments in its favor and condemnation of the intransigent seculars legally and logically fallacious. It is this pervasive legalistic flavoring of the Briefe Notes which makes it generally reminiscent of Othello, a play in which legal terminology and judicial activity are often in evidence - in Brabantio's accusations against Othello and the latter's trial before the Venetian senate, the trial of Cassio and Montano after the tavern brawl, Iago's elaborate efforts to "prove" Desdemona and Cassio's guilt, and Othello's self-appointed role as Desdemona's accuser, judge, and executioner. Since such terms as "trial", "proof", "cause", "witness", and "arraignment" are thoroughly commonplace, however, the possible connection between the two works must be shown through more complex combinations of words, phrases, and ideas. At the beginning of the Briefe Notes the author of the General Preface (possibly Bagshaw) expresses his indignant reaction to the Briefe

Apologie:

Were it not a principle well knowen to all men by the very instinct of nature, that euery one hath greater reason to defend his good name, then any other parte off his riches ... I should be sorie ... to heare of any more writinge of this lamentable subiect, of our ciuill dissention, who ought (like bretherne) to lyue together in perfit peace and vnity. But hauinge read a most indiscrete and odious Apologye ... I could n o t . . . but esteeme him to haue no feelinge of a true English nature in him, that would not be much moued at that not Onely Vnchristianlyke, but vnciuill and

3

Foley, Records, I, 44.

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Barbarous behauiour: and should not also thinke it very requisyte and necessarye, that k reasonable answeare were retourned, to preserue and defend our deare countryes, and countrymens reputation. (General Preface, ff. 2-2v) The principle enunciated at the beginning, "that euery one hath greater reason to defend his good name, then any other parte off his riches", recalls Iago's familiar observations on the value of a good name: Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls... he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed. (Ill.iii. 155-161) The original source of the idea is undoubtedly Proverbs 22:1: "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." Elsewhere in the play, however, "name" and "riches" are associated again in lines which also include a parallel to the notion expressed at the end of the excerpt - the returning of an "answeare" in order to "defend" a "reputation". Othello says to Montano after the tavern brawl: your name is great In mouths of wisest censure. What's the matter That you unlace your reputation thus And spend your rich opinion for the name Of a night-brawler? Give me answer to't. (Il.iii. 182-186) In response to this Montano offers excuses for "defending" himself against Cassio. The similarity is reinforced by a parallel between another phrase in the excerpt - "not Onely Vnchristianlyke, but vnciuill and Barbarous behauiour" - and Othello's reaction to Montano and Cassio's behavior: For Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl! (Il.iii.162) After stopping the brawl Othello repeatedly asks who "began" it. In the Briefe Notes such statements as these recur: Who haue bene the beginners of these sturres and broyles, amonge English Catholickes at home and abroade... ? (Paget, 21)

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who began this contention and strife... ? (41) Of this occasion then begane all that fowle sturre... (84)

Using a phrase resembling "fowle sturre", Othello asks: "Who began this?"; "Give me to know / How this foul rout began"; "Iago, who began't?" (II.iii.168, 199-200, 207). As the Briefe Notes repeatedly mentions "sturres", so Othello twice uses this term as a verb in this scene: "He that stirs next"; "If I once stir" (II.iii.163, 197). In the section of the Briefe Notes which answers Persons' charges against William Bishop occurs this passage: it was related, that the Card: instituted that subordination, SEQVENS VOLVNTATEM SANCTISSIMI: Whereas the Apol. averreth it to haue bin done EX SPECIALI MANDATO, by his hoi: speciall commandement. (Bishop, f. 3V)

Ely also repeats the phrases "sine speciali mandato ... without our speciall commandment", and "Ex speciali mandato Sanctissimi" (139,230). The term "speciali mandato" has an analogy in the scene in the Venetian senate, where Brabantio speaks of the "special mandate" which has brought Othello there (I.iii.72). Later, upon receiving new instructions from Venice, Othello says to Lodovico: I am commanded home... Sir, I obey the mandate... (IV.i.251-252)

In the next scene Iago refers to this mandate as an "especial commission" (IV.ii.217). In his section of the Briefe Notes Charles Paget demands of Persons: "vpon what prerogative do you chalenge of me that slauerye that I must deliuer to you my conceits and whole course of life..." And further on he asserts: I am not to be brought to that bent, therfore neuer looke for it, for you shall neuer haue it. I will acknowledge that dewtye to my soueraigne Prince, & countrye, that I am bounde vnto... (Paget, 21-22)

In the temptation scene (IH.iii) Iago similarly rejects the "slavery" of telling Othello his thoughts on demand. In addition, scattered through this part of the scene are various terms Paget uses. First, "my ... whole course of":

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And when I told thee he was of my counsel In my whole course of wooing... then "conceits": As if thou hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit... then "dewtye ... I am bounde vnto" and "slauerye": Though I am bound to every act of duty, I am not bound to that all slaves are free to. Utter my thoughts? (III.iii.111-112, 114-115, 134-136) The following series of quotations occurs in the section of the pamphlet devoted to William Bishop, the envoy of the seculars who, after traveling to Rome with Charnock in 1598, was arrested and incarcerated for several months at the English College: lett vs nowe come to the affaires of Rome wich belonge to him [Bishop], wher first presenteth it selfe, his apprehension, shortly after his arriuall which beinge contrary to the course of lawe, contrary to equity and all good custome, Hath been euer sence greately misliked... Howe then could he [Persons] Pike out ... any raisonable cause to cast Priestes in to prison vnheard? The right R: Bishope of modina ... said that it might welbe done with out his hoi priuity, By Card: Caetane his order, who beinge lord high treasurer had sergentes at his commandement, and so might commit of his owne authority... (Bishop, IF. 10-11) Certain similarities may be seen here to those early scenes where Brabantio arrests Othello in the street, threatens to imprison him, then takes him before the Venetian senate to answer his charges an episode for which there is no suggestion in the primary source for the play, the tale of the Moor in Cinthio's Hecatommithi. One similarity appears in the third quotation, in the description of Cardinal Caetani as one "who beinge lord high treasurer had sergentes at his commandement, and so might commit of his owne authority". As one of the potentates of Venice, Brabantio likewise has officers at his commandment: At every house I'll call; I may command at most. Get weapons, ho! And raise some special officers of night. (I.i.179-181)

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Shortly after this, Iago warns Othello that Brabantio can imprison him on his own authority: He will divorce you Or put upon you what restraint and grievance The law, with all his might to enforce it on, Will give him cable. (I.ii. 14-17) As Charnock and Bishop were "cast ... in to prison vnheard", so Brabantio threatens to do the same to Othello, and his lines also include a variation of the phrase "course of lawe" in the first quotation: Othello. ... Where will you that I go To answer this your charge ? Brabantio. To prison, till fit time Of law and course of direct session Call thee to answer. (I.ii.84-87) In the same pages of the Briefe Notes the writer quotes one of Persons' comments on Charnock and Bishop's mission to Rome: Yf these Captaines of newe broiles doe find fauour, they will stirr vp great stormes in England, but yf they be kept downe with sharpnes, all wilbe quiet. In answer to this the writer claims that if Charnock and Bishop, rather than being "hardly handled", "had been Courteously dealt withall, all might haue been quietly composed" (Bishop, f. 10v). The contrast between "kept downe with sharpnes" and "Courteously dealt withall" is similar to the one between Brabantio's cry as he comes to arrest Othello: "Down with him, thief!", and Othello's polite response: Good signior, you shall more command with years Than with your weapons. (I.ii.57, 60-61) Again, the writer maintains that the Pope himself would not have treated the two priests so harshly as to imprison them without a hearing: And for his hoi: who is renowmed through the world, for his mild considerate manner of proceedinge, with out any such hast and precipitation, it is impossible, that he could vpon the onely clamours of aduersaries, resolue to Comitt Priestes before they were heard. (Bishop, f. 11)

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The Duke responds in similar fashion to Brabantio's complaints, for before passing judgment on Othello he gives him a chance to speak in his own defence (I.iii.74). After this, even Brabantio is willing to give Desdemona a hearing: "I pray you hear her speak" (I.iii.175). Following their arrest, Charnock and Bishop were "kept close prisoners" at the English College (Bishop, f. 18), and Ely also states that they were kept "close prisoners" (108). This phrase, which Shakespeare does not use elsewhere in his plays, occurs in Lodovico's line to Othello near the end: "You shall close prisoner rest" (V.ii.336). Among various other verbal similarities between the two works, Ely in his prefatory epistle refers to his fellow priests in England as "my deare contreymen", "old and deare frends", and "my acquaintance" (Epistle, sigs. aiii-aiiiv). Othello speaks of his friends in Cyprus as "my old acquaintance of this isle" (II.i.201), and Iago of Roderigo as "my friend and my dear countryman" (V.i.89). A proverb quoted in the Briefe Notes, "are not the hartes of princes in the handes of God ?" (Parkinson, sig. Civ),4 is approximated in Iago's reply to Othello: You cannot, if my heart were in your hand... (III.iii.163) One of the more curious parallels arises from Ely's habit of repeating a certain stock phrase as he cajoles the supposed authors of the Briefe Apologie for their fallacious arguments or various words they have misused: But I tell you (my vnited brethren,) you might haue putt vp the worde Religious, in your purse. (66) You may well put hitherto and continuation in your purse... (169) you might haue putt his Hoi. in your purse... (182) And so might you haue put vp this rule in your purse... (240) In one part of his discourse Ely also twice repeats the phrase "money in their purse" (209, 212). The parallel is, of course, to 4

"Parkinson" refers to a short, five-page section of the Briefe Notes entitled "The Opinion of M. Kob [Rob.] Parkinson priest and licentiate in diuinitie touchinge this controuersie with M. Archpriest".

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Iago's reiterated command to Roderigo: "Put money in thy purse... I say, put money in thy purse", etc. (I.iii.337 ff.). In a recent study of Iago, Daniel Stempel argues that he shows the qualities not only of a Machiavellian villain but also those of a "Jesuitical Machiavel", that certain of his ideas and activities resemble ones attributed to the Jesuits in contemporary polemics.5 The specific points of similarity are two: the "Pelagian" conception of free will expounded by Loyola in the Spiritual Exercises and Molina in the Concordia Liberi Arbitrii, and the techniques of casuistry developed by the Jesuits for handling cases of conscience. Iago shows affinities to the former in his discourse to Roderigo on the self-sufficiency of reason or the "power and corrigible authority" of the will (I.iii.319 ff.), and to the latter in the methods of persuasion by which he manipulates the consciences of Roderigo, Cassio, and Othello. Although Mr. Stempel does not try to show a direct connection between the play and any particular work in which these matters are treated, he does assume that "Shakespeare had some knowledge of contemporary Jesuit doctrine and practices". The doctrine of free will and the techniques of casuistry are not considered in any of the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy, which are generally little concerned with questions of moral theology. Nevertheless, the "Jesuitical" elements Mr. Stempel finds in Iago would support the likelihood of Shakespeare's taking an interest in such a work as the Briefe Notes, for even though it does not attack the Jesuits as a body in the fashion of the True Relation and the Sparing Discoverie, it does present a systematic critique of the methods of argument employed by the leading English Jesuit of the period. If Shakespeare were already acquainted with Persons' Briefe Apologie, he would have a further incentive for reading the Briefe Notes. In his rebuttal of the Briefe Apologie, Ely repeatedly condemns the supposed authors for what he calls their "Iuggling, fraude, and guile", their slippery methods of argument and failure to present adequate proofs for their accusations against the seculars. As he tells them at one point: 5

'The Silence of Iago", PMLA, LXXXIV (1969), 252-263.

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83

Can there be greater accusations then to committ a false and malicious lie ? then to be Odious and malicious wresters of mens dooingsl

these

be your Accusations, you are taken for honest men, therefore you ought to haue beene precise and punctuall in your prooffes. but what tell I you of prooffes? for you haue sworne as it seemeth in this your Apol. to say what you list, but not to proue any thing at all. (32-33) The same might be said to "honest" Iago concerning the fabricated "proofs" of Desdemona's infidelity he presents to Othello, or as Emilia eventually tells him in words similar to the ones Ely quotes f r o m t h e Briefe

Apologie:

You told a lie, an odious damned lie! (V.ii.181) In his portrayal of Iago Shakespeare may be suggesting another familiar Jesuit practice. At the end of his speech of self-explanation to Roderigo near the beginning of the play, Iago defines himself in the words: "I am not what I am" (I.i.65). It would be more logical for him to say: "I am not what I seem." In phrasing the line as he does, Shakespeare produces another example of synoeciosis, or that "is and is not" locution which, as the examples considered earlier seem to indicate, is one of his principal ways of alluding to equivocation. In his many ambiguous insinuations, subtle half-truths, and evasions, Iago is the most skillful and deliberate equivocator among Shakespeare's characters. 6

6

In her discussion of Othello in Paradoxica Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton, 1966), Rosalie L. Colie remarks that Iago "is the perfect equivocator, the figure of evil so feared by the straight-seeming English" (244), but she does not go on to consider the specific methods of equivocation Iago employs. Some other possible allusions to equivocation in the play will be noted in the last chapter.

7. MACBETH, ARNAULD'S DISCOURS, AND THE IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

Among the six plays considered here, Macbeth offers the clearest indication that Shakespeare at the time had opinions about the Jesuits. This appears in the Porter's comments on the equivocator he is welcoming to hell soon after the murder of Duncan: Knock, knock. Who's there, in th' other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O come in equivocator. (II.iii.6-11) These remarks have generally been taken as referring to Henry Garnet, who was tried for his part in the Gunpowder Plot and then executed for treason in early May, 1606.1 As he had a decade earlier at Southwell's trial, Edward Coke on this occasion attacked the "perfidious and perjurious Equiuocating" of the Jesuits, and Garnet, having been cleverly trapped into telling lies to his examiners, made an attempt to defend the practice. Admonished to speak the truth in his final moments, Garnet said on the scaffold: "It is no time now to Equiuocate... I do not now Equiuocate, and more than I haue confessed, I doe not know." 2 Several other allusions to equivocation in Macbeth indicate that it is meant to have a more than limited topical significance in the play.3 The general atmosphere of ambiguity established in the opening scenes through the repetition of such phrases as "lost and won" and 1

See Henry N. Paul, The Royal Play of Macbeth (New York, 1950), 237-245, and Macbeth, New Arden edition by Kenneth Muir (London, 1964), xvi-xix. 2 Trve and perfect relation, sigs. H 4 \ T2-T3, V4-V4V, Fff3. 3 See Frank L. Huntley, "Macbeth and the Background of Jesuitical Equivocation", PMLA, LXXIX (1964), 390-400.

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"fair is foul" later envelops the treacherous activities of the two Macbeths, and is sharply contrasted by the "clearness" of Duncan's regime and the new order which finally emerges under Malcolm. Macbeth himself is both an equivocator, or one who engages in what Persons calls "dissimulation of woords", and the gullible victim of equivocation, the deceptive enticements and reassurances of the witches. Shakespeare seems to have detected an analogy between the motives and practices currently attributed to the Jesuits and the perverse ambitions and deceitful tactics of his hero. In his handling of the 'Jesuitical'elements in Macbeth Shakespeare may have been influenced by two anti-Jesuit pamphlets produced by the seculars, both of which show a variety of similarities to the play. One is the English translation of Antoine Arnauld's Le Franc Discours, the other the Important Considerations, formerly attributed to William Watson. The original version of the Discours appeared in Paris in 1602 under the title, Le franc et véritable discours au Roy, sur le restablissement qui luy est demandé pour les Iésuites. Arnauld, a distinguished advocate who for several years had been an outspoken opponent of the Jesuits,4 wrote the pamphlet to persuade Henri IV not to revoke the parliamentary decree of 1594 which banished the Jesuits from France as corrupters of youth and enemies of the king and state. The decree was prompted by the attempted assassination of Henri by the youthful Jean Châtel, a former pupil of the Jesuits who admitted that he had been influenced by their purported doctrine that excommunicated rulers could rightfully be deposed and even, when necessary, forcibly eliminated. 5 The Discours was a plausible work for the 4

The translation of an earlier pamphlet by Arnauld appeared in London under the title, The arrainement of the whole societie of Iesuites in Fraunce (1594). Arnauld's twenty children included the more famous Antoine Arnauld and several other leaders of the Jansenist party. 5 Although Henri at the time had already converted to Catholicism, Châtel thought the assassination justified because his excommunication had not yet been rescinded by the Pope. As it turned out, Henri did permit the Jesuits to return, and Arnauld's warning that another Châtel might try the same again eventually proved prophetic. For the interest shown by Henri and his ministers in the Archpriest Controversy and their efforts to influence its outcome see John Bossy, "Henri IV, the Appellants and the Jesuits", Recusant History, VIII (1965), 80-122.

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seculars to translate, for, like several of their own pamphlets, it accuses the Jesuits of advocating deposition, rebellion, and regicide, and presents the standard caricature of them as treacherous Machiavels, agents of the King of Spain, seducers of the young, and the like. In his preface the translator explains the moral he thinks English Catholics should derive from Arnauld's account: "A Iesuit is a Iesuit, wheresoeuer he become. Neyther may England expect lesse, then France hath felt: if they continue amongst vs, and be not better hamperd, then yet they are" (sig. «14). An octavo volume of 142 pages, the translation bears the title: Le franc Discours. A Discourse, presented of late to the French King, in aunswer to sundry requests made vnto him, for the restoring of the Iesuits into Fraunce, as well by theyr friends abroad, & at home, as by themselues in diuers Petitionarie Bookes. Written in French this present yeere, 1602. and faithfully Englished. Printed Anno. Domini. 1602.

According to Allison and Rogers, the pamphlet was printed in London by James Roberts, and the translator was Watson.6 Some references in the preface to the papal brief of October, 1602, which officially concluded the Archpriest Controversy indicate that it must have been published after that date.7 Among the various similarities between the Discours and Macbeth there are several in smaller details of language. The Discours refers to the students at the University of Paris as "young frie" (5), and "Young fry of treachery" is what one of the murderers of Macduff's family calls the son (IV.ii.83) - a term Shakespeare does not use elsewhere in his plays. The phrase "friends abroad", which appears on both the title-page of the Discours and in the 6

"Catalogue", no. 42. Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest, 102, sets the date of publication in November, 1602. Later in the seventeenth century another translation of the Discours appeared under the title, The king-killing doctrine of the Jesuites, tr. Peter Bellon (London, 1679). Another pamphlet the seculars translated from the French is Etienne Pasquier's The Iesuites catechisme or examination of their doctrine (London, 1602), a much bulkier volume than the Discours which ranges over much of the history of the Jesuit order from its foundation. 7

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87

text (123), occurs in Malcolm's line near the end: "As calling home our exiled friends abroad" (V.viii.66). Arnauld asks the King if he wishes "to taint your name and memorie with the blot of feare" (126); "taint with" and "fear" are combined in Macbeth's boast: "I cannot taint with fear" (V.iii.3). Arnauld attacks a Jesuit argument as a "strange abuse" (33); Macbeth speaks of "My strange and self-abuse" (Ill.iv. 142). The metaphor "spring, and fountaine" in the Discours (111) appears in the line: "The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood" (II.iii.94). In describing a siege Arnauld writes that an army "aduaunced their colours vpon the walls" (118); this is paralleled in the last line of V.iv, spoken by Siward: Towards which advance the war... (V.iv.21) and in the first line of the next scene, spoken by Macbeth: Hang out our banners on the outward walls. (V.v.l) One of the more interesting verbal similarities appears in this passage about the Jesuits in the Discours: Perhaps they wil pretend, that this fruitful! encrease of their number, is an argument of Gods blessing vpon their Societie: but this were both a dangerous, and an absurd consequence. For it wil be a long time, ere they come to equall the number of the Arsacides, or Assasins, men of their owne stampe... (88) For the word "Arsacides" a marginal note is supplied: "Sent into Fraunce by their king a Pagan, to murther S. Lewes: whence all murtherers haue beene since called Assasins." The parallel to "Assasins" appears in Macbeth's line: If th' assassination Could trammel up the consequence... (I.vii.2-3) This is Shakespeare's only use of "assassination" in his plays, and also the first instance of the word recorded in the OED. The earliest example of "assassin" the OED cites is from Knolles' Historie of the Turks, written in 1603, or a year after the publication of the Discours. Just before the passage on the assassins Arnauld says of the Jesuits:

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But to winne new credite to their cause, they alledge ... that they are a great number... I vnderstand not to what purpose this muster of their numbers may serue, vnlesse it be to scare, and affright vs. And I protest, I am afraide of them within the Realme: but out of the Realme, I doe not feare... (87) In these great "numbers" which "scare" and "affright" there is an analogy to the "terrible numbers" which accompany Norway in his invasion of Scotland (I.ii.51) _ numbers of which Macbeth shows himself to be "Nothing afeard" (I.iii.96). Another type of similarity between the Discours and Macbeth involves certain images and metaphors which occur in both, of which there are several examples. Arnauld twice uses the image of the spur, first when he writes that the governors of Paris under the League "did in truth neede a bridle, & not a spurre" (42), and then when he claims that the Jesuits "did violentlie beare & spurre him [Chatel] forward to strike this stroake" (128). Like Arnauld in the second quotation, Macbeth relates this image to the killing of a king when he says: I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent... (I.vii.25-26) In one of the many passage where he condemns the Jesuits for justifying the excommunication and deposition of rulers, Arnauld tells the King: If our fore-fathers had swallowed this poysonous doctrine of excommunicating kings, and of the power to translate kingdoms, this great succession had neuer descended to your Maiestie, it had long since beene wrested out of the hands of your predecessors. (131) The image of a royal "succession" being "wrested out of the hands" of a king is paralleled in Macbeth's complaint that the witches put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. (Ill.i.62-64) Another of Macbeth's anxieties is suggested in Arnauld's comments on the Jesuits' condemnation of Henri III: They haue in so furious manner thundred out such intolerable blasphemies against the deceased King, as the horror therof dooth to this day

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retaine an impression in mens minds. Frenchmen haue a certaine inclination by nature, to loue theyr Prince: and that causeth their harts suddenly to rise, and start within their breasts, when they heare such outragious speeches vttered against their kings. (54) Macbeth likewise feels a violent agitation of the heart when he contemplates the "horror" of injuring a king, and his lines also include a phrase corresponding to "a certaine inclination by nature" : why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature? (I.iii. 134-137) Although the abnormal behavior of Macbeth's hair in these lines is a commonplace image, it is worth noting that it too occurs in the Discours, where Arnauld describes the tormented conscience of Philip II before he died: when he sawe that hee was going to appears before his great Maister, before the great Iudge, the horror of it made his haire stand vpright on his head: then could neyther the flatteries of his Inquisition, nor the soothings of the Iesuits, secure him against his owne knowledge, & conscience... (133) Macbeth, similarly tormented by self-knowledge, speaks of his standing hair and "horrors" again at V.v. 11-13. In the following passage Arnauld quotes part of the interrogation of Jean Chatel after his attempted assassination of Henri: Being demaunded, if hee had not beene in the Chamber of Meditations, into which the Iesuits vsed to bring the most notorious sinners, there to beholde the pictures of many deuils in diuers terrible shapes, vnder pretence to reduce them to a better life, in truth to affright theyr minds, and incite them by such terrours to doe some notable seruice. He answered, that hee had been oftentimes in the said chamber. Being demaunded, by whom he had been perswaded to kill the King. He answered, that hee had heard in diuers places, that it was to be held for a most true principle, that it was lawfull to kill the King... (35) Of special interest here is the association of two ideas, the "pictures of many deuils" which "affright" the beholder, and the killing of a

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king. When Macbeth says that he dare not look upon the murdered Duncan, his wife speaks of the frightening picture of a devil: The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. (II.ii.52-54)

The image of the terrifying "pictures of many deuils" is paralleled again, though less precisely, after the appearance of Banquo's ghost, when Macbeth claims that he "dare look on that / Which might appal the devil", and Lady Macbeth replies: O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear. (III.iv.58-61)

There are several other longer passages in the Discours containing various elements which also appear at different points in Macbeth. In isolation from the rest of the evidence such passages cannot be considered too significant, but if the foregoing similarities seem to indicate that Shakespeare used the Discours, then it is conceivable that he read these passages and picked up some suggestions from them. In the following quotation, for instance, Arnauld draws a contrast between the way normal citizens and the Jesuits go about their business: They that keepe the beaten roade, and continue in their natural obedience, take their rest in the night, and follow their busines in the day: wheras contrariwise, such as labour to exchange their old maister for a new, such as study to ouerturne the State, they haue their assemblies at night, holde their secrete parlies, encrease their strength daily: they haue no businesse else to entend ... so that in the end, they suddenly surprize the contrarie side. He that first laieth hand on his weapon, hath the aduantage. (51-52)

Contrasts between day and night and the different kinds of "business" appropriate to each are repeatedly evoked in Macbeth. Plotting Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth speaks of "This night's great business" (I.v.66), and the word "business" reechoes in these scenes and in the later ones surrounding the nocturnal murder of Banquo. The victims of Macbeth's tyranny, on the other hand, yearn for "sleep to our nights" and the chance to "Do faithfull homage" (III.iv.34-36) _ phrases which correspond to Arnauld's

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91

"continue in their natural obedience, take their rest in the night". The notion of quick, violent action epigrammatically expressed at the end of the quotation recalls one of Macbeth's soliloquies, where we find analogies to the phrase "first laieth hand on his weapon" and the word "surprize": From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand ... The castle of Macduff I will surprise... (IV.i.146-150)

The second pamphlet which shows resemblances to Macbeth, the Important Considerations, treats the English Jesuits in much the same fashion as the Discours does their French counterparts. Of all the seculars' pamphlets it most explicitly blames the Jesuits for the hardships suffered by English Catholics, and calls upon the latter to repudiate the Jesuits' practices and declare their loyalty to the Queen. It even argues that, despite continual provocations, the Queen and her government have been remarkably lenient in their treatment of her Catholic subjects. As the title-page explains: IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS, WHICH OVGHT TO MOVE ALL TRVE A N D SOVND CATHOLIKES, WHO are not wholly Iesuited, to acknowledge without all equiuocations, ambiguities, or shiftings, that the proceedings of her Maiesty, and of the State with them, since the beginning of her Highnesse raigne, haue bene both mild and mercifull. Published by sundry of vs the secular Priests, in dislike of many treatises, letters, and reports, which haue bene written and made in diuerse places to the contrarie: together with our opinions of a better course hereafter, for the promoting of the Catholike faith in England. Newly Imprinted. 1601.

A quarto volume of sixty-eight pages, the Important Considerations was evidently printed in London by Shakespeare's fellow-Stratfordian, Richard Field. 8 Like the Sparing Discoverie and the Dialogue, it includes a lengthy preface signed "W.W.", and again there is an obvious difference between the style of the preface and 8 Jenkins, "The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers", 184, and Allison and Rogers, "Catalogue", no. 122.

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that of the text. The claim of multiple authorship on the title-page is matched by the signature at the end, " Your true friends the secular Priests", but this is clearly a blind. The only external evidence of authorship appears in Rivers' letter to Persons of July 7, 1602: "Mushe is thought to be author of the Dialogue, Bluett of the Important Consideration,"9 Having opposed William Weston at Wisbech and later negotiated with Bancroft, the Council, and the Queen, Bluet was one of the most influential figures among the seculars and would have had ample motive for writing such a work as the Important Considerations. Certain questions can be raised about his authorship,10 but since these could only be resolved through a lengthy digression, and since in any case they have no bearing on the problem of Shakespeare's possible indebtedness to the pamphlet, for present purposes he will be considered the author. 11 Although the Important Considerations does not include an extended attack on equivocation such as the one in the Sparing Discoverie, on its title-page it does refer to "equiuocations, ambiguities, or shiftings", and it repeatedly accuses the Jesuits of trying to corrupt the natural loyalties of English Catholics through "false suggestions", "Iesuiticall perswasions", and "traiterous instigations and iuglings" (8,25, 39). It also accuses them of plotting 9

Foley, Records, I, 42. N o t only is the Important Considerations very similar to the Sparing Discoverie in general style but the two pamphlets show many correspondences in phrasing, metaphor, and idea, so that there are good reasons for supposing they were written by the same person. 11 Of all the pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy the Important Considerations later proved to be the most useful as a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda, being reprinted wholly or in part five times during the next three centuries, Watson's preface by itself in 1689 and 1738, the text without the preface in 1677 and 1688, and the pamphlet as a whole in 1831. Each of the f o u r earlier reprints is included in a collection of anti-Catholic tracts (in two of them it immediately follows Burghley's Execution of Justice), while the editor of the 1831 volume, the Rev. Joseph Mendham, shows in his long introduction that he is much disturbed by what he considers the danger of a Catholic revival in England, recently intensified by the Catholic Emancipation Act. The editor of the 1677 collection explains that one reason for reprinting the pamphlet is that it "hath been so much concealed, or bought up by those of the [Catholic] Religion, that it hath been heard of by few, and seen by fewer Protestants". The Catholics apparently found it embarrassing. 10

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against the life of the "mild and mercifull" Queen, of trying to interfere with the legal succession to the crown, and of scheming to deliver control of the nation into the hands of the Spanish, "who are knowne to be the cruellest tyrants that liue vpon the earth" (40-41). It also luridly describes the miseries Englishmen would suffer if any of the Jesuits' plots for invasion, rebellion, or regicide were to succeed. All these general points have analogies in Macbeth, but first it would be well to notice some of the smaller verbal similarities between the two works. In two places Bluet claims that would-be assassins tried to lay "violent hands" on the Queen (23, 33), and this expression occurs near the end of the play when Malcolm reports that Lady Macbeth has taken her life "by self and violent hands" (V.viii.70). Bluet refers to the proclamation of 1581 made "for the calling home of her Maiesties subiects beyond the seas" (18); this resembles the line in Malcolm's final speech quoted earlier in connection with the phrase "friends abroad" in the Discours: "As calling home our exiled friends abroad" (V.viii.66). Writing in his usual hyperbolical vein, Watson in his preface asserts that if the Jesuits had their way they would "bring our natiue countrie all into combustion, desert, and desolation" (sig. A2), and Bluet likewise speaks of Ireland as being "in great combustion" (14). The violent upheavals on the night of Duncan's murder are described as "dire combustion and confused events" (II.iii.54), this being Shakespeare's first use of "combustion" in his plays. 12 According to Watson, the Jesuits have grown into a dangerous faction, daungerous to our Soueraigne and the present state, as we are subiects: dangerous to vs all, as we are Recusants, prepared as fuel to the fury of forreigne & homeborne foes, by famine, fire, sword, & wracke of body, soule, and all together in the turne of fortunes wheele, casting vs all off from the highest Pyramides of Englands wonted flourish, into the Stigian depths, of the sorest downfall... (sig. *2V) The Jesuits, in short, seek nothing less than the "vtter ruine, desolation, and destruction of this whole lie, and the ancient 12

He used the word only once again, in Coriolanus.

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inhabitants therof" (sig. * *2V). In one of his several evocations of chaos Macbeth also speaks of the downfall of "Pyramides" and universal "destruction": Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations, though the treasure Of nature's germens tumble all together Even till destruction sicken... (IV.i.57-60)

The only other place Shakespeare mentions pyramids in his plays is, more appropriately, in Antony and Cleopatra. Watson's remark on the "fury of forreigne & homeborne foes" resembles Bluet's claim that the Iesuitical designments beyond the seas, together with certaine rebellious and trayterous attempts of some Catholikes at home, haue bene the causes of such calamities and troubles, as haue hapned vnto vs... (36)

These dangers both "forreigne" and "at home" correspond to the phrase "Malice domestic, foreign levy" in Macbeth's lines on the murdered Duncan: Treason hath done his worst: nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. (III.ii.24-26)

These lines could, in fact, serve as a compendium of the many threats against the Queen which Watson and Bluet enumerate, the repeated attempts at invasion, rebellion, and assassination by poisoning or stabbing which they claim originated in the "treason and crueltie" or "malice and spite of the Iesuits" (6, 25). Watson reassures his readers that he and his fellow seculars are determined to oppose the treacherous practices of the Jesuits, so that you shall not haue cause to curse vs, nor your innocent bloud to cry against v s . . . nor your posteritie bewaile our silence, whiles any English blood remaines aliue...

Never "by our vnnaturall attempts, plots and deuices", writes Watson, "shall any tender mother curse, or sweete babe weepe, or any hand wring, or heart hurle out voleys of sighes in teares..."

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Hence the purpose of the present discourse is nothing else but to lay open vnto you the traiterous practises of the Iesuits against her Maiesty, her kingdom, and our countrey, vndertaken by them of purpose to haue brought them all vnder the tyrannical yoke of the bloudy Spaniards... (sigs. A2-A3 V )

The dismal fate Watson envisages for England under the traitorous Jesuits and bloody Spaniards resembles the condition of Scotland under Macbeth's tyranny, especially as it is described in the redundant lamentations of Malcolm, Macduff, and Ross: Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven in the face... I think our country sinks beneath the yoke, It weeps, it bleeds... Where sighs and groans, and shrieks that rent the air, Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy. (IV.iii.4-6, 39-40, 168-170)

All this violent sorrow is accompanied, moreover, by "Curses not loud but deep" (V.iii.27). The scene of Malcolm and Macduff's meeting in England is obviously based on the corresponding episode in Holinshed's Historie of Scotland, where the two exiles are said to bewail the "great misery the state of Scotland was brought [into] by the detestable cruelties exercised by tyrant Macbeth". 13 Holinshed treats the subject, however, only in general terms. Both Watson and Shakespeare, on the other hand, present a particularized as well as repetitious account of the national misery in terms of the weeping, crying, sighing, bleeding, and cursing of women, children, and the general population. Among the passages in the Important Considerations which show more general analogies to Macbeth, one appears in Bluet's response to the fierce denunciation of Queen Elizabeth which Cardinal Allen published shortly before the Spanish Armada, An Admonition

to the Nobility

and People

of England

Bluet claims that it was actually written by Persons: 13

Satin, Sources, 554.

(1588).

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the said Fa: Parsons (for so we euer charge him, though another man by his crafty perswasion took vpon him to be the Author of that booke) did labour with all the Rhetorick he had to haue perswaded vs, upon the supposed airmail of the Spaniard, to haue ioyned with him to our own destructions: telling vs many faire tales, and alluring vs with sundrie great promises, all of them meere illusions, falshoods and most traiterous instigations and iuglings. He ascribeth it to error of conscience, and want of courage, terming the same an effeminate dastardie: that we had then suffred her Maiestie almost thirtie yeares to raigne ouer vi. (25-26) Certain similarities may be seen here to the way Macbeth is lured into the murder of Duncan, for he too is given "faire tales" and "great promises" which are actually "meere illusions" and "iuglings". The witches "promise" a "greatness" t o him (I.iii.l 17-120) which he then reports to Lady Macbeth: "what greatness is promised thee" (I.v.ll). But eventually he discovers that these promises are no more t h a n equivocal "iuglings": And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense, That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope. (V.viii. 19-22) A further resemblance appears in the particular rhetorical inducements Bluet claims Persons employed in the Admonition, specifically his attributing a "want of courage" and " e f f e m i n a t e dastardie" t o English Catholics for suffering Elizabeth to reign. So Lady Macbeth goads her reluctant husband into proceeding with the murder of Duncan by questioning his courage and manliness (I.vii.41-51). Holinshed attributes n o such rhetorical tactics t o Lady Macbeth, saying only that "specially his wife lay sore upon him t o attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire t o bear the name of queen". 1 4 Another parallel t o these ideas in the quotation appears in Macbeth's manner of persuading the two hired assassins t o murder 14

Satin, Sources, 549. There are also similarities between Lady Macbeth and Donwald's wife in Holinshed's account of the murder of King Duff, but again Holinshed does not describe the particular methods of persuasion the wife used on her husband: she merely "counselled him ... to make him away, and showed him the means whereby he might soonest accomplish it" (540),

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Banquo, for he similarly asks them how they can suffer Banquo to live and questions their manliness: Are you so gospelled To pray for this good man and for his issue Whose heavy hand hath bowed you to the grave And beggared yours for ever? 1. Murderer. We are men, my liege. Macbeth. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men... (Ill.i.88-92) The parallel is strengthened by the fact that Banquo, as the presumed ancestor of the Stuarts, is a royal figure (Macbeth refers to his "royalty of nature" at III.i.50), so that the killing of him would be tantamount to regicide. As Macbeth asks the assassins how they can pray for Banquo and his "issue" (i.e. King James), so Bluet claims that English Catholics have an obligation to do this for Elizabeth, to "pray for her prosperous raigne and long life" (16); and as Macbeth tells the assassins of the persecutions they have supposedly suffered under Banquo, so the Jesuits, according to Bluet, try to convince English Catholics that Elizabeth's treatment of them has been anything but "mild and mercifull". For these arguments there is again no precedent in Holinshed's version of the episode. The highly derogatory portrait of the Jesuits and Spaniards in the Important Considerations is counterbalanced by that of the Queen: And therefore we may reioyce vnfainedly [writes Bluet], that God hath blessed this kingdome with so gracious and mercifull a Soueraigne... both we and all other Catholikes her naturall subiects, deserue no longer to liue, then we hereafter shall honor her from our hearts, obey her in all things ... and to our powers defend and protect both her and our countrie against any whatsoeuer, that shall by force of armes attempt to damnifie either of them. (16) Bluet further insists that Catholics should make no secret of their loyalty to the Queen: The duty we owe to our Soueraignes, doth not consist in taciturnity or keeping close within our selues such allegiance as we thinke sufficient to afford them: but we are ... to make open profession of it, that we may appear vnto them to be such subiects as we ought to be, and as they may

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relye vpon, if either their kingdomes or safeties be in hazard or danger. (21) Although Bluet describes Elizabeth only in such general terms as "mild", "gracious", and "mercifull", it may be significant that Duncan is given a similar character. He too is called "gracious" (III.i.66, III.vi.3,10), and Macbeth himself acknowledges the mildness of his rule: Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office... (I.vii.16-18) Furthermore, after Macbeth plays a major role "in his kingdom's great defense" against rebellion and invasion in the opening scenes (I.iii.99), he makes such an open profession of loyalty to his king as Bluet demands. As Bluet maintains that subjects "owe" their duty, honor, and allegiance to their sovereigns, especially when their "safeties" are threatened, so Macbeth declares: The service and loyalty I owe, In doing pays itself. Your Highness' part Is to receive our duties ... Safe toward your love and honor. (I.iv.22-27) However broadly Shakespeare's portrayal of Duncan corresponds to Bluet's of Elizabeth, it actually resembles it more closely than it does the treatment of Duncan in Holinshed. For there while he is said to be "soft and gentle of nature" on the one hand, on the other he is called a "dull coward and slothful person" whose "feeble and slothful administration" permits so many "enormities and abuses" to arise in Scotland that Macbeth has an excellent reason for replacing him and actually serves as an effective ruler for several years.15 In Shakespeare's rendition there is no suggestion of laxity or maladministration on Duncan's part - he is "So clear in his great office" - and Macbeth, of course, has no motive for supplanting him beyond his own and his wife's ambition. 15

Satin, Sources, 542, 545, 549. The same unflattering portrait of Duncan appears in Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia, which Shakespeare may have consulted.

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In another expression of patriotic sentiment Bluet declares, "without all Iesuiticall equiuocation", that even if the Pope himself tried to invade England by force, and with the sword, we will be most ready ... to withstand and oppose our selues against him, & to spend the best bloud in our bodies in defence of the Queene and our countrey. For we are throughly perswaded, that Priests of what order soeuer, ought not by force of armes.to plant or water the the [j/c] Catholike faith, but in spiritu lenitatis & mansuetudinis to propagate and defend it. So it was planted in the primitive Church, ouer all the world... (38)

A similar patriotic determination is shown by Macbeth's opponents as they march on Dunsinane. Specifically, two elements in the passage, the phrase "spend the best bloud in our bodies in defense of ... our countrey" and the following horticultural image of planting and watering, are paralleled in the lines: Caithness. ... pour we in our country's purge Each drop of us. Lennox. Or so much as it needs To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds. (V.ii.28-30)

It is also worth noting that like Mush in the Dialogue, Bluet employs the biblical imagery of spiritual planting and harvesting, elsewhere referring to the "planting" of the faith and the "haruest" of the English mission (2, 14).16 Such imagery is also prominent in Macbeth with its repeated allusions to fruitifulness and sterility, growth and decay, and in one passage in particular we find a series of references to planting, growing, and harvesting. After Macbeth expresses his loyalty to his king - with "Iesuiticall equiuocation", as Bluet would say - Duncan tells him: I have begun to plant thee and will labor To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo, That hast no less deserved nor must be known N o less to have done so, let me enfold thee And hold thee to my heart. Banquo. There if I grow The harvest is your own. 16

The probable source of Bluet's reference to the planting and watering of the faith in the primitive church is 1 Cor. 3:6 ff.: "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase..."

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King. My plenteous joys, Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow. (I.iv.28-35) When Malcolm and his loyal thanes reenact this scene at the end of the play the planting motif is repeated in Malcolm's line: What's more to do Which would be planted newly with the time... (V.viii.64-65) One of the other places in Macbeth where a harvest is mentioned is the Porter's hellgate speech: Who's there, i' th' name of Belzebub? Here's a farmer that hanged himself on th' expectation of plenty. (II.iii.3-5) Since this is immediately followed by the Porter's remarks on the equivocator, and since Garnet used the alias "Farmer" and was hanged for treason, the frustrated farmer has been interpreted as another allusion to the notorious Jesuit. 17 His failure to participate in the "plenty" of others stands in contrast to the "harvest" Banquo promises, Duncan's "plenteous joys", and Malcolm's new planting at the end, and parallels Macbeth's sterility, his "fruitless crown" and "barren sceptre" (IILi.61-62). The Important Considerations presents a similar contrast between those who genuinely "plant" and "propagate" the faith, and those who through "Iesuiticall equiuocation" and other treacherous practices try to bring about "vtter ruine, desolation, and destruction". It has been suggested that the Porter's comments on the equivocator may not be the only allusion to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth, that there may be others, for instance, in the "blow" which Macbeth hopes will be the be-all and end-all (I.vii.4), and in the cosmic commotion or "combustion" on the night of Duncan's murder. 18 At the time it was generally believed that a terrible blow or combustion would have been the fate of king and country 17

See Macbeth, ed. Muir, xxviii. See Paul, Royal Play, 226-236. The famous letter to Monteagle darkly refers to "a terrible blowe", and "blow" was the term often used for the plot thereafter. The possible connections between Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot are also considered in Leslie Hotson, I, William Shakespeare (London, 1939), 172-202. 18

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101

had Guy Fawkes managed to ignite the fuse. As Coke exclaimed at the trial: "Lord, what a Wind, what a Fire, what a motion & Commotion of Earth and Ayre would there haue been!"19 While the images of cosmic catastrophe in Macbeth need not have been prompted specifically by the Gunpowder Plot, Shakespeare was no doubt fully aware of the public impact of that event and the significance it had for the royal patron of his company, Banquo's putative descendant. Although published a few years earlier, the Important Considerations also has a bearing on the Gunpowder Plot. In its exaggerated warnings against Jesuitical plots and the cataclysmic effects they could produce - the reduction of England to "combustion, desert, and desolation", the "vtter ruine and ouerthrow both of our Prince and countrey" - it offers a vivid preview of what presumably almost happened in November, 1605. Likewise Arnauld's Discours, in its preoccupation with the assassination of monarchs by their Jesuitical enemies, could have been seen as furnishing a timely warning. If Shakespeare read the two pamphlets around the time he was writing Macbeth he might have been impressed by the analogies they presented both to recent events and the story of regicide and national catastrophe he was dramatizing.

19

Trve and perfect relation, sig. H4.

8. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON

HAMLET

In reading the more ephemeral pamphlet literature of the Elizabethan period one occasionally comes across a passage which bears a curious resemblance to something in Shakespeare. One might even experience the momentary exhilaration of 'discovering' what appears to be a new Shakespearean source - until, that is, nothing else turns up in the work which bears this out. Such is apt t o happen in reading certain of the other pamphlets of the Archpriest Controversy. In his Quodlibeticall Questions, for instance, Watson, in castigating the Jesuits for their lack of humility, compares them to "Lawyers" and other privileged types who because of their superior endowments are presumably destined to go to heaven. He then exclaims: alas for woe: how shall euer those come in heauen, that haue neither qualitie of body to get it, nor gift of mind to gaine it, nor quillet of land to buy it, nor quidditie of wit to keepe it? (140) The combination of "Lawyers", "quillet of land to buy it", and "quidditie of wit" recalls Hamlet's remarks in the graveyard: Why may not this be a skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillities... This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land... (V.i.91-97) Aside from this, however, the Quodlibeticall Questions oifers very little evidence that it might have a connection with Hamlet. The same can be said of various other works which on the strength of a few isolated parallels have been proposed as Shakespearean sources.

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But in the case of the seven pamphlets considered in the preceding chapters the evidence seems far stronger, for there the resemblances are not few but many, not limited to one or two isolated passages but recurrent. Because of this they have a mutually reinforcing effect. Those which do not seem especially noteworthy in themselves become more significant in combination with the others, and the smaller similarities in verbal detail are augmented by the more general ones in thought, situation, and character. The possible connection between the pamphlets and plays is further strengthened by the fact that the six plays are all closely related in chronological sequence and in style and theme, forming a distinct group in the Shakespeare canon, the so-called "Problem Plays" and "Great Tragedies". With the first play, Hamlet, there is a definite turning in a new direction in Shakespeare's work, a greater concentration on complex moral and spiritual problems and on individual crises of faith, and this preoccupation continues to reappear in the succeeding plays.1 The seven pamphlets are also closely related, all stemming as they do from the same controversy and vividly reflecting the current disturbances in English Catholicism. Hence it is possible to see a recurrent relationship between the plays and pamphlets similar to the one between other groups of Shakespeare's plays and the sources he habitually turned to - the history plays and Holinshed's Chronicles, the Roman plays and North's Plutarch. It can still be asked, though, why Shakespeare would wish to utilize this kind of material. Granted that he normally drew on a wide variety of sources, the pamphlets are still markedly different from any of the works he is known to have consulted, not only because of their Catholic origin, but because they are concerned with an immediately contemporary situation, a controversy still in progress when he wrote the two earliest plays, Hamlet and Troilus. 1 In the absence of any evidence of its date and o n grounds of style and theme All's Well has usually been assigned t o 1603-1604, and therefore would also belong to this group of plays. Although n o pamphlet has been found which seems to have a special relevance to this play, it does reflect some of the same concerns as the others, for instance in the reference to Parolles' equivocating noted earlier. As Parolles' name suggests, he is one w h o habitually practises "dissimulation of woords".

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If Shakespeare used the pamphlets one would suppose that he must have had a special reason for doing so, a more than casual interest in the Archpriest Controversy and its disruptive effects on the Catholic cause. A question that naturally arises here is the muchdebated one of Shakespeare's personal religious attitudes. Although no evidence has been found that he was a recusant at any time, there are some indications that he had close affiliations with Catholicism _ for instance in his relationship through his mother with the Arden family, in the likelihood that his father was a recusant, and in his possible association with Southampton, a prominent recusant in the 1590's.2 After surveying these and other factors one scholar concludes: "it would appear that Shakespeare was indeed a Papist in sympathy and doctrine, but whether he was a recusant or not we shall probably never know for certain". 3 One difficulty with this observation is that it assumes that Shakespeare's religious sympathies remained constant from start to finish, whereas, as the examples of Donne and Jonson remind us, the period was one in which shifts of religious allegiance were not at all uncommon. Not too much weight can be given to Catholic affiliations at a time when a generation or two earlier nearly all Englishmen had been Catholic and when the dividing lines between the two faiths were often highly unstable and indistinct - when one could at various times be a declared Catholic, a crypto-Catholic, a Protestant with Catholic leanings, and so on. If nothing definite can be ascertained about Shakespeare's 2 The evidence for Shakespeare's Catholic connections is most reliably presented in John Henry de Groot, The Shakespeares and the "Old Faith" (New York, 1946). Of considerable interest in this regard is the Catholic confession of faith signed "John Shakspear" which was discovered beneath the roof of the Henley Street house in Stratford in the eighteenth century, printed in James G. McManaway, "John Shakespeare's 'Spiritual Testament' ", Shakespeare Quarterly, XVIII (1967), 197-205. Christopher Devlin writes that the most likely date of this document "is 1580, when Fr Persons who was distributing these leaflets passed through Warwickshire, as he tells us, and was entertained by the Ardens of Parkhall, and also probably by their cousins the Throckmortons of Coughton, only a few miles from Stratford. At that date William Shakespeare would have been sixteen years old. It is an intriguing thought - a meeting between William Shakespeare and Robert Persons" (Hamlet's Divinity and Other Essays [London, 1963], 14). 3 M. D. H. Parker, The Slave of Life (London, 1955), 253.

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religious attitudes from external sources, the plays themselves might offer evidence that he had a special interest in the disputes between the Jesuits and seculars and related matters.4 Certain elements in the plays noticed in the preceding chapters, such as the repeated references to equivocation and his use of Harsnet's Declaration, seem to point to such an interest. Although a separate study would be needed to investigate the subject thoroughly in all six plays, here at least one of them and its corresponding pamphlet can be examined more fully to see whether the comparison might throw light on anything in the play which has not been recognized before. Both because it is the earliest and in some ways the most challenging of the plays, Hamlet seems the most suitable one for the purpose. The additional passages which will be quoted from the Sparing Discoverie are not intended to provide further evidence that Shakespeare used it. They can be considered relevant only if, on the strength of the similarities noticed earlier, it is already assumed that he did so. It can then be supposed that he read these passages and perhaps drew some suggestions from them. At the end of the chapter on Hamlet it was pointed out that Shakespeare explicitly mentions equivocation for the first time in his plays in Hamlet's comments on the Gravedigger's quibbling: H o w absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will u n d o us. B y the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken n o t e of it, the age is grown s o picked that the toe of the peasant comes s o near the heel o f the courtier he galls his kibe. (V.i. 128-132)

Even though the phrase "this three years" seems to refer to a particular historical situation, very few attempts have been made to elucidate the passage. J. Dover Wilson for one does venture an explanation in his edition of the play. In separate notes he first 4

M. D. H. Parker is the only person known to this writer who has suggested that Shakespeare may have had such an interest. In 1955 she wrote: "The quarrel between the Jesuits and the seculars ... split English Roman Catholics into two distinct, pamphlet-warring camps, the overwhelming majority supporting the seculars. There is, in the plays themselves, interesting evidence of Shakespeare's cognizance of this quariel, of his political and personal sympathies generally and perhaps of his personal affairs, but to deal with this and with the difficult historical context would need another book" (The Slave of Life, 248-249).

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observes that the word "equivocation" is a "reference t o the Jesuit doctrine of 'equivocation,' much discussed 1600-1601, owing to the famous 'Archpriest Controversy'", and then comments on "this three years": Dowden suggests an allusion here "to the great Poor Law ... of 1601," which established "the principle of taxation for the relief of the poor... The purses, if not the kibes, of needly courtiers were galled by the assessments of the overseers." This seems likely. The act was actually passed in 1597 ... and only re-enacted in 1601 with slight changes, which makes the "Three years" precise if the passage was written in 1600 or 1601.6

There are two weaknesses in this explanation. First, it establishes no connection between equivocation and the Poor Law of 1597, even though Hamlet's reference to the former seems to give rise to his ensuing remarks on what has been happening for the past three years. Secondly, the Poor Law was designed for the relief of the "lame, ympotente, olde, blynde ... poore and not able t o worke", 6 a class to which Hamlet's "picked" and aggressive peasant clearly does not belong. The passage contains three elements which might be clarified both in the light of the Sparing Discoverie and through associations with details elsewhere in the play: "equivocation", the "age" which has lasted "this three years", and the image of the peasant and courtier. On the Jesuits' use of equivocation Bagshaw has the following t o say: An other thing also is generally misliked of these our Fathers, and breedeth vs indeede very great hatred, besides the danger; and it is their equiuocating, which you may tearme in plaine english, lying and cogging. For this amongst others is one of their rules: that a man framing himselfe a true proposition, when he is asked a question, he may conceale thereof as much as he thinketh good.

Bagshaw then illustrates how this technique of concealment or mental reservation can be employed to give a misleading answer t o the notorious "bloody question" often presented to Elizabethan 5

Hamlet, New Cambridge edition (Cambridge, 1954), 236.

6

E. P. Cheyney, A History

of England from the Defeat of the Armada

Death of Elizabeth (New York, 1948), II, 270.

to the

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Catholics: "whether if the Pope should come in warlike manner to inuade this land by force of Armes, you would take his part, or the Queenes". He then explains how the practice has placed even Catholics who are loyal to the Queen in a dangerous position: Which lying sleights being knowne by our aduersaries, do worke vs much woe and discredit already, and we feare, will be more and more preiudiciall vnto vs. For by this meanes, they begin to giue it forth, that the Catholicks are not to be trusted in any thing they say. And besides, they may charge vs by this ground with any treason whatsoeuer, and we haue no way left vnto vs to acquit our selues from it. For be our answeres neuer so direct and true ... our aduersaries may say vnto vs, that we keepe this or that to our selues, which (as they can frame it) is sufficient to hang vs. (10-12)

The first point to notice is that, as Bagshaw defines equivocation as "lying and cogging" or "lying sleights", so Hamlet, shortly before he mentions equivocation, bluntly calls the Gravedigger a liar for claiming that the grave he is "lying" in is his own (V.i.l 17). In contemporary discussions of the subject two main types of equivocation are sometimes distinguished: the one explained by Bagshaw or mental reservation, and verbal ambiguity.7 In the exchange between Hamlet and the Gravedigger the word "lie", vacillating between its two meanings through six repetitions, illustrates the second type, and indeed we find the same word used as an example of ambiguity both by Garnet in the Treatise of Equivocation and Persons. The former explains how "we may vse some equivocall word" : The like vnto this were if one should be asked whether such a straunger lodgeth in my house, and I should aunswere, "he lyeth not in my house," meaning that he doth not tell a lye there, although he lodge there.8

In Othello an even closer parallel to this play on "lie" and "lodge" 7

This distinction appears in Garnet's Treatise of Equivocation, 29; Thomas Morton, A fvll satisfaction concerning a dovble Romish iniqvitie (London, 1606), Part III, 48; and Robert Persons, A treatise tending to mitigation towards Catholicke-subiectes in England (St. Omer, 1607), 308. The last work, Persons' answer to Morton's pamphlet, greatly elaborates his defence of equivocation in the Briefe Apologie (273-556). 8 Treatise of Equivocation, 49. Persons uses this example in the Treatise tending to mitigation, 308.

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appears in the dialogue between Desdemona and the Gravedigger's counterpart, the quibbling Clown: Desdemona. Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies? Clown. I dare not say he lies anywhere. Desdemona. Why, man? Clown. He's a soldier, and for me to say a soldier lies is stabbing. Desdemona. Go to. Where lodges he? Clown. To tell you where he lodges is to tell you where I lie. (III.iv.1-9) Since this apparently trivial exchange immediately follows the temptation scene, it may be intended as a commentary on the elaborate exercise in equivocation or subtle lying to which Iago had just exposed Othello. 9 In a later play Shakespeare, like Bagshaw, explicitly identifies equivocation with lying when he has Macbeth declare: I pull in resolution, and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth. (V.v.42-44) In his discussion of equivocation Bagshaw describes an exchange of question and answer between the Protestant authorities and the Catholics they are examining. Earlier in the graveyard scene the Gravedigger subjects his helper to a similar inquisition when he asks him the riddle about the mason, the shipwright, and the carpenter. As Bagshaw employs such phrases as "when he is asked a question", "For be our answeres neuer so direct and true", and "sufficient to hang vs", so the Gravedigger speaks of questioning, answering, and hanging: I'll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself - . 9

Iago's definition of himself, "I am not what I am", has already been noticed, and in the temptation scene Othello echoes this when, trapped between two contrary "truths", he exclaims: "I think my wife be honest, and think she is not; / I think that thou art just, and think thou art not" (III.iii.384-385). Othello's quandary is reminiscent of Troilus' after Cressida's betrayal: "This is, and is not, Cressid." In his repeated insinuations that he is hiding "some monster in his thought" Iago may be employing equivocation in the form of mental reservation. Later he plays ambiguously on the word "lie" itself when he torments Othello with the remark: "Lie... / With her, on her; what you will" (IV.i.34).

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When the helper gives the wrong answer to the riddle the Gravedigger says: Argal, the gallows may do well to thee. Then after further questioning he gives the right answer: And when you are asked this question next, say "a grave-maker". (V.i.35-55) Even though the helper's initial answer is perfectly "direct and true", the Gravedigger, like the examiners Bagshaw describes, cunningly twists it into an answer which is "sufficient to hang" him. In this there may be further preparation for Hamlet's remark: "We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us." Just what Hamlet means by "undo us" is not too clear, but his image of speaking by the compass card suggests Bagshaw's phrase, "direct and true". In Bagshaw's terms he may be facetiously implying: our answers must be "direct and true", or "lying sleights" will "worke vs much woe and discredit", or even be "sufficient to hang vs". Hamlet's remarks may have a bearing on other matters in the play besides the Gravedigger's verbal tricks and evasions. In his opening speech from the throne in the second scene Claudius justifies the new regime in Denmark in this fashion: Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy, With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife. (I.ii.8-14) In smoothly trying to reconcile two glaringly incompatible facts Claudius produces a sequence of combined contraries or examples of synoeciosis. That he is deliberately engaging in equivocation is most clearly indicated by the line, "In equal scale weighing delight and dole", for the same image of the equal weighing of contraries appears in Macbeth in the Porter's comment on the equivocator, "that could swear in both scales against either scale"

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(II.iii.8), and it is also paralleled in Brabantio's reply to the Duke: These sentences, to sugar, or to gall, Being strong on both sides, are equivocal. (I.iii.216-217)

What Claudius' lines suggest beneath the surface is that the new order in Denmark rests on a facile disguising of falsity in apparent truth, an ambiguous mixture of "is" and "is not". Nor is Claudius the only equivocal figure to appear early in the play: Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee... O, answer me! (I.iv.40-45)

Strictly speaking, since these contraries are linked by "or" rather than "and" they should be considered examples of antithesis rather than equivocation; yet as Hamlet proceeds to discover, the answers he gets from this questionable ghost are not as "direct and true" as they seem at first, and things in the supernatural realm appear just as ambiguous as they do in the natural state of Denmark. In his preface to the Sparing Discoverie Watson, producing one of his many derogatory metaphors for the Jesuits, claims that he could deliver a lecture on "Iesuiticall ghosts", showing the diuersitie of such wicked spirits, as transforming themselues into angels of light, leade more soules to hell with them, then the feends of most vglie shape appearing in their owne proper colours, (sigs. al T -a2)

Hamlet for a while fears that the spirit he has seen may be, so to speak, an equivocating "Iesuiticall" ghost which has assumed a "pleasing shape" in order to lead him to damnation (Il.ii.584-589). Equivocation of the type explained by Bagshaw, mental reservation or the deliberate concealment of a portion of the truth, may also be represented in the play, most clearly in the episode where Hamlet cross-examines Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the reason for their visit to Elsinore. Here another inquisitorial situa-

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tion is presented, a sequence of pressing questions and evasive answers. Hamlet begins by asking: "Let me question more in particular"; then later: But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore? Rosencrantz. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

While not an outright lie, this answer obviously witholds an important part of the truth, and Hamlet is compelled to question further: Come, come, deal justly with me. Come, come. Nay, speak. Guildenstern. What should we say, my lord? Hamlet. Why, anything - but to th' purpose... be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no. (II.ii.237-285)

Hamlet wants an answer that is "direct and true", and another of his phrases anticipates the Gravedigger's words to his helper: "If thou answerest me not to the purpose..." Shortly after the passage on equivocation quoted above, Bagshaw describes a hypothetical dialogue between the Protestant authorities and the Catholics they are questioning: Tush (say they) you equiuocate with vs: you keepe this in your mindes... We answere, that we do keepe no such thing in our mindes. Oh (say they) you keepe no such thing in your mindes to tell vs: we know your shifts. (12)

Like the skeptical examiners, Hamlet remarks as he observes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's evasions: "Nay then. I have an eye on you"; and like the Catholics who claim "we do keepe no such thing in our mindes", Rosencrantz later replies to Hamlet's suspicions: "My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts" (II.ii.287, 307). Among other possible examples of equivocation in Hamlet we find this: Hamlet. ... I did love you once. Ophelia. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Hamlet. ... I loved you not. (III.i.115-119)

This seems to be another instance of the "is and is not" locution which occurs several times in Shakespeare's middle plays, and indeed Hamlet's words closely parallel Parolles' statement about

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Bertram in All's Well which the King explicitly describes as equivocal: "He loved her, sir, and loved her not" (V.iii.248). Moreover, just before this the King, in trying to dig the truth out of Parolles, repeats the very phrases Hamlet uses in questioning Rosencrantz and Guildenstem: Come, come, to th' purpose. Did he love this woman? (V.iii.241)10 The point of Hamlet's self-contradiction seems to be that, since Ophelia has made her own love equivocal in first welcoming and then rejecting his advances, she has exposed herself to the same inconsistent treatment in return. It may also be an indirect comment on the prime example of equivocation in love within Hamlet's observation, his mother's. If these passages are indeed deliberate examples of equivocation in its various guises _ verbal ambiguity, synoeciosis, and mental reservation - then Hamlet's remarks to Horatio in the graveyard would have reverberations which extend well beyond the immediate episode. In Macbeth Shakespeare makes the Porter talk about equivocation clearly in order to accentuate, through satirical exaggeration, an idea which recurs throughout the play and is closely related to the moral predicament of its hero. In similar though not so obvious fashion, Hamlet, as he does in several of his other sardonic observations in the graveyard, seems to be drawing attention to one of the symptoms of the general spiritual malaise of Denmark. Such broader implications may also be conveyed by Hamlet's following comments on the "age" and the upstart behavior of the peasant. As noted earlier, this peasant seems too self-sufficient to belong to the unfortunate class of people for whom the Poor Law of 1597 was designed. If the preceding reference to equivocation can be taken as a clue, he may have a connection with the Jesuits. The Sparing Discoverie does in fact offer a parallel in Bagshaw's manner of describing the principal English Jesuit of the age, Robert Persons. Emphasizing both his "meane parentage" and alleged illigitimacy, Bagshaw at one point calls him the "Smiths 10

In Troilus Aeneas also speaks like Hamlet when he is trying to find out from the evasive Pandarus whether Troilus is staying in his house: "nay, then. Come, come, you'll do him wrong ere you are ware" (IV.ii.54-56).

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sonne of Stockgersee, or rather the Parsons sonne of that parish" (29), and at another "that Bastard & most ignominious filius terrae Parsons" (56). He claims that despite such humble beginnings, however, Persons, after being expelled from Balliol and departing for the Continent, wasted little time in mounting to higher levels: within short time, he became a Iesuit... In this calling he did profit exceedingly, and was almost vpon the suddaine a very great Statist, little behinde many of his auncients, for plotting and practising of sundry vnpriestly enterprises. (43) Indeed, Persons was able to maneuver his way into the highest courtly circles in France and Spain: "through Mendoza his credit, he became not only vpon the sodain a Courtier, but grew very soone into great fauour with the King" (53); and while his fellow priests in England were languishing in prison, he "accompanied himselfe with Princes, and liued at his pleasure in kings courts" (40). But despite this spectacular rise in social status, Persons all this while remained essentially unchanged, being as craftie a crouder, and as lying a companion now amongst the Iesuits, after almost thirtie yeeres profession, as hee was in Balioll Colledge amongst his fellowes there. (47) The epithet "crouder", meaning 'one who crowds', complements Bagshaw's other description of Persons as so self-assertive that he is "little behinde many of his auncients". Combined with his rapid rise from "filius terrae" to "Courtier", Persons' "crowding" behavior provides an analogy to Hamlet's vignette of the peasant who presses the courtier so closely from behind that he treads on his heel. Also worth noting is Bagshaw's remark that Persons has been a "craftie crouder" or "lying companion" for "almost thirtie yeeres". Immediately after his comment on the peasant Hamlet asks the Gravedigger: "How long hast thou been grave-maker?" The Gravedigger eventually replies: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years. (V.i.151)11 II

Hamlet's image of the upstart peasant resembles Lafew's portrait of Parolles in All's Well: "You are a vagabond, and no true traveller. You are more saucy with lords and honorable personages than the commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry" (II.iii.254-257). Parolles earlier brags that

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Hamlet speaks of the peasant, though, not merely as an individual but as a type whose behavior is characteristic of a new "age", one which by implication differs markedly from the age before. Denmark as a whole happens to be enjoying a new age under a king who, despite the sudden, unorthodox manner of his accession, is fully accepted by queen, court, and people, one so popular with the last, in fact, that they are now eager to buy his picture in little. Those who seem to prosper most under the new regime are such adaptable courtiers as Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Osric, as well as the children's acting companies which, "now the fashion", have crowded out the older common players. In commenting on the new situation in Denmark Hamlet repeatedly mentions the "age" or the "time" and its peculiar corruptions. Acutely aware that "The time is out of joint" (I.v. 188), he speaks to his mother of the "fatness of these pursy times" (III.iv.154), and says of Osric: Thus has he, and many m o r e o f the same bevy that I k n o w the drossy age dotes on, only got the tune of the time... (V.ii. 180-182)

He refers to the "time" again in telling Ophelia how the "power of beauty" will "transform honesty": This was sometime a paradox, but n o w the time gives it proof. (Ill.i. 114-115)

The purpose of playing, says Hamlet, is to show the "very age and body of the time his form and pressure" (III.ii.22-23); hence he engages the common players to hold a mirror up to the court wherein it may see a true image of the time. The qualities of the he will become a "perfect courtier" (I.i.200), and as Persons is described as a "lying companion" in the Sparing Discoverie, so Parolles is called a "notorious liar" and "equivocal companion" (I.i.96, V.iii.250). It is also interesting to note that when Persons crossed over from France to begin working on the English mission in 1580 he disguised himself in the finery of a captain returning from the wars. Campion in a letter to the Jesuit General described him as "dressed up like a soldier; such a peacock, such a swaggerer, that a man needs must have very sharp eyes to catch a glimpse of any holiness and modesty beneath such a garb, such a look, such a strut" (Basset, The English Jesuits, 43). Parolles likewise presents himself as a swaggering captain decked with plumes, scarves, and ribbons. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the first syllables of the names Parolles and Parsons are the same.

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present age are sharply contrasted, moreover, by what appear to be the simpler, less sophisticated ways of the order it has displaced, an order whose tone was set not by a smiling courtier-diplomat but by a frowning warrior-king who habitually appeared in armor and fought in single combat. Vestiges of the former age are still visible in those customs and ceremonies which are desecrated, unappreciated, or forgotten in the present: the funeral equivocally mixed with marriage, the archaic drama of the common players, Ophelia's bits of flower lore and snatches of old lauds, Yorick the old king's jester and his rough merriment, the code of honest soldiership observed in the present only by such outsiders as the watchers on the platform and Fortinbras.12 One of Hamlet's ways of opposing the facile courtliness of Claudius' regime is to adopt an "antic" or "antique" disposition, while Horatio is another who considers himself more an "antique Roman" than a modern Dane. 13 Hamlet's comment on the "age" which has grown so "picked" or fastidious therefore seems to fit into a pattern which comprehends much of the play, and the upstart peasant takes his place among several representative figures. Yet Hamlet indicates that this age 12

To this category also belong the Catholic sacraments of penance and extreme unction denied to Hamlet's father when he died "Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled" (I.v.77). On the strength of this line and the Ghost's allusion to purgatory (I.v.9-11) Christopher Devlin calls him the "Ghost of the old religion": "What really persuades people that the Ghost is a Catholic ghost is its appalled horror at having to die without the Last Sacraments" (Hamlet's Divinity, 26, 48). Of some interest in this connection is the fact that Shakespeare's father died in September, 1601, or shortly before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, that he was probably a recusant, and that the "John Shakspear" spiritual testament explicitly mentions and guards against the predicament of dying without the sacraments. At one point it states, for instance: "I John Shakspear doe protest that I wil also passe out of this life, armed with the last Sacrament of Extreme Unction: the which if through any let, or hinderance, I should not then be able to haue, I do now also for that time demaund, & craue the same" (McManaway, "Spiritual Testament", 201). If John Shakespeare was indeed an adherent of the Old Faith, Shakespeare's filial feelings, stimulated by his recent death, may have colored his portrayal of the Ghost and Hamlet's intense devotion to him. 13 In Shakespearean pronunciation "antique" and "antic" are homonyms since the former takes the accent on the first syllable, as is indicated metrically in Horatio's line (V.ii.330) and several other places in the plays and sonnets.

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has lasted "this three years", a period which obviously does not coincide with the duration of Claudius' regime. Once again the word "equivocation" and its implicit allusion to the Jesuits may be relevant. If the passage was written in late 1601 or early 1602 "this three years" would point to 1598, the year in which George Blackwell was appointed Archpriest and the latent frictions between the Jesuits and seculars flared into open controversy. From the standpoint of the seculars in late 1601, since Blackwell was merely a figurehead selected and controlled by Persons and his colleagues, the "new vpstart Iesuits" had effectively been in command of the English Church for the past three years. 14 In Watson's and Bagshaw's view this has brought about a drastic change in the "auncient Ecclesiasticall Discipline of the Catholike Church". The "olde customes of the Church" have been disrupted (48). The Jesuits have seduced the laity away from the secular clergy, "their auncient, most louing, and faithfull ghostly Fathers" (4): "through their cunning cariage with the people, they haue by little and little caried all before them" (18). By practising "all kinde of sweete behauior and curtesy" in conducting the spritual exercise they entice the more wealthy and promising young men into joining their society (21). Few Jesuits, claims Bagshaw, still "Hue according to their calling and first institution": For of late yeeres many of that order take such a course, as if religion were nothing else but a meere political deuise, concerned, framed, and vpheld only by humane wisedome, and sleights of wit: and they were the men that by Machiauels rules are raysed vp to mayntayne it by equiuocations, detractions, dissimulation, ambition... (6) 14

The phrase "these three yeares" is actually used for the period since Blackwell's appointment in Mush's Dialogue, published in late 1601 or about the same time as the Sparing Discoverie. Mush's Gentleman says: "sure I am, our Church was neuer so harmed by contentions and scandals, as it hath beene in these three yeares of his gouernment", to which the Priest replies: "No marueile, when hee is wholly led by the Iesuits, the principall authors and parties in these dissensions" (69). The phrase "this three yeares" appears in the Second Quarto of Hamlet, "these three yeares" in the Folio. The First Quarto, on the other hand, has "This seauen yeares" and omits the preceding reference to equivocation. This discrepancy tends to support the connection between "equivocation" and the three-year period in the two more authentic texts.

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Such passages as these, which are frequent in the Sparing Discoverie, suggest a general correspondence between the situation in the Church in recent years as it is conceived in the pamphlet and the new age in Denmark. In both cases the "auncient" order and its traditions are replaced by a regime which depends for its success on courtly dexterity, equivocation, dissimulation, and Polonius-like sleights of wit. As the Jesuits treat religion as a "meere politicall deuice" or mask their stratagems in an "externall shew of pietie" (sig. al), so Claudius, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern all at various points embellish their politic activities with expressions of pious sentiment, and Gertrude by her change of loyalty has turned "sweet religion" into a "rhapsody of words" (III.iv.48-49). Returning to the graveyard, we find the quibbling Gravedigger also combining piety and sleights of wit, first when he rebukes his helper for not knowing Scripture, then when he poses as a champion of the Church: Now thou does ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church. (V.i.44-45) In attacking the Jesuits for their hypocritical piety, Bagshaw at the beginning of his discourse compares them to the Pharisees, the biblical whited sepulchres who disguise their inner corruption with "cunning paynting". He speaks of their corruption as a spreading "Gangrene" or "disease" and as the "bones and rottennes that are in these graues and sepulchres" (3), and later refers to Persons himself as a "corrupted and stinking carkas" (40). The image of "painting" concealing corruption and disease also appears several times in Hamlet, once being applied by Claudius to himself (III.i.53), and the graveyard scene presents the literal spectacle of rotten bones and pocky corses. In Hamlet's vision the graveyard is the ultimate destination to which the inner rottenness of Denmark is leading Claudius and his court. Hamlet's comments on the Gravedigger's quibbling thus suggest a fairly elaborate set of analogies, internally to the general condition of Denmark under Claudius, externally to the situation of the Church tinder the Jesuits. The play contains some other passages which might be clarified through reference to the Sparing Discoverie

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and which might further substantiate these analogies. A minor example occurs in the fourth act when, during Hamlet's absence from Elsinore, a messenger delivers his letters to Claudius. When Claudius asks, "Who brought them?", the Messenger replies: Sailors, my lord: I saw them not. They were given me by Claudio; he received them Of him that brought them. (IV.vii.39-41) Who this Claudio is and why the letters should have been delivered to him before they were given to the Messenger and then to Claudius is a puzzle no one has tried to resolve. Another curious detail is the closeness of the names Claudio and Claudius. The following passage on the Jesuits in the Sparing Discoverie may shed some light on the matter: There are few kings Courts in Europe where some of their maisterships do not reside, of purpose to receiue and giue intelligence vnto their Generall at Rome of all the occurrents in these parts of the world: which they dispatch to and fro by secret ciphers... (7) One similarity appears in the phrase "these parts of the world". In the preceding scene, when Horatio is told of sailors bringing letters to him, he remarks: I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet. (IV.vi.5-6) Another correspondence is suggested by the reference to the "Generall at Rome". This was Claudius (or Claudio) Aquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus between 1581-1615, a highly influential figure in Rome who is mentioned by title several times in the Sparing Discoverie and once by name (49). Although not exact at every point, there is a general parallel between the Claudius in Rome who receives dispatches from other "parts of the world" and the Claudio mentioned in the play, the recipient of letters from another "part of the world" who in turn delivers them to Claudius. The name Claudius recalls another curious detail in Hamlet, the fact that the King of Denmark, whose counterparts in Saxo and Belleforest are called by the Scandinavian names Feng and Fengon, should be given such a distinctly Roman name. Although

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the name is never actually spoken in the play, the only authority for it being the initial stage direction to I.ii in the Second Quarto and Folio ("Enter Claudius, King of Denmarke"), Shakespeare must have had a reason for selecting it. It may have a connection with the several references to Rome in the play, including three to the downfall of Julius Caesar. One of these relates to Polonius and his demise - his acting of Caesar in the university - but the other two appear to be foreshadowings of Claudius' downfall: Horatio's studied discourse in the first scene which implicitly compares the present condition of Denmark to the "most high and palmy state of Rome, / A little ere the mightiest Julius fell" (I.i.113-114), and Hamlet's jingle in the graveyard about "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay" (V.i.200), which is immediately followed by the entrance of the "High and mighty" Claudius and his court in a funeral procession. If Claudius through these allusions and his name is associated with Rome, Hamlet at his first appearance is pointedly identified with another locale: For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire... Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. (I.ii.112-114, 119-120)

Later in this scene Hamlet twice asks Horatio: "what make you from Wittenberg?" (I.ii. 164, 168). In contrast, Claudius' satellites, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are never mentioned in conjunction with Wittenberg, even though they are supposed to be Hamlet's one-time "schoolfellows". In contemporary terms, the implied opposition between Rome and Wittenberg is potently suggestive.15 15

There can be little question that to Shakespeare and his contemporaries Wittenberg would immediately suggest Luther and the Reformation. The contemporary reputation of the university is indicated by Samuel Lewkenor in A discourse ... for such as are desirous to know the situation and customes of forraine cities (London, 1600), where he writes that "Duke Fredericke, the son of Ernestus Elector, erected in this citie an Vniuersity, about the yeare 1502. which since in this latter age is growen famous, by reason of the controuersies and disputations of religion, there handled by Martin Luther: the Doctors thereof are at this day the greatest propugnators of the confession of Augsburge, and retain in vse the meere Lutherane religion" (if. 15v-16).

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Even though Hamlet initially wants to go "back to school" at Wittenberg and therefore seems to prefer its teachings to those of Claudius' court, he still lets himself be persuaded into remaining at the latter. In Bagshaw's lengthy account of the Jesuit spiritual exercise, a portion of which was quoted earlier, there is a passage which shows some analogies to the lines in which Claudius and Gertrude argue Hamlet into submission. Bagshaw first describes how the Jesuit "Fathers" treat the young man they are trying to convert "with all kinde of sweete behauior and curtesy", and "pretend to haue an especiall care of his well doing, but principally how he may attayne to be in high fauour with God". He then writes: When they haue held on after this sort so long as they thinke conuenient, intermingling now and then some comforts, least otherwise the parties vnder their fingers should grow weary of them, then they begin to be more plentifull in the setting forth of such comfortable promises as are made in the scriptures to the children and saincts of God. Heere they omit no part of their skill to describe ... the happy estate and ioyes of the Saincts in that euerlasting kingdome, which is prepared for those who in this life shall embrace the Christian faith, and become obedient children in their true calling unto their holy Mother the Church of Rome. (21-22)

In his strenuous efforts to change Hamlet's attitude and enforce his obedience, Claudius, like the Jesuit fathers, begins by treating him with "sweete behauior and curtesy": But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son - . 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet... (I.ii.64, 87)

He then shows "an especiall care of his well doing", with particular emphasis on his relationship to God: But to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief. It shows a will most incorrect to heaven... (I.ii.92-95)

The analogies become more pronounced in the lines below, where we find a would-be "father" offering "comfortable promises", including the promise of a "kingdome", to the young man he is

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trying to convert, and then at the end a child showing obedience to his mother: think of us As of a father, for let the world take note You are the most immediate to our throne, And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son Do I impart toward you. For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire, And we beseech you, bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. Hamlet. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. (I.ii.107-120) One suggestive detail here is the twice-mentioned "praying" of Hamlet's mother - a detail which reinforces what at first seems a rather unlikely association between Gertrude and the "holy Mother the Church of Rome". If this symbolism were intended, it would give a precise significance to the choice of Wittenberg as Hamlet's university, and to Claudius and Gertrude's entreaties that, rather than going "back to school" there, he "stay with us". 16 16

An analogy between Gertrude and the "holy Mother the Church of Rome" must seem so questionable that certain other ways it is suggested in the play should be briefly indicated, even though the source involved is not the Sparing Discoverie but the Bible. In the soliloquy which soon follows his submission Hamlet speaks of his father as "So excellent a king, that was to this / Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother..." (I.ii. 139-140). Later the Ghost similarly describes Claudius as "that adulterate beast", and claims that his love for Gertrude "was of that dignity / That it went hand in hand even with the vow / I made to her in marriage..." (I.v.42-50). In the closet scene Hamlet, in his discourse on the two "pictures", again compares his father to Hyperion, Jove, and other gods, Claudius to various animals, and compels his mother to see the "black and grained spots" in her soul (III.iv.91). Finally, he claims that Claudius "whored my mother" (V.ii.64). These two sets of heavily-emphasized details - the elder Hamlet's god-like superiority and perfect love for Gertrude on the one hand, Claudius' beastliness and Gertrude's "spotted" and "whored" condition on the other - seem to correspond to the antithetical images of the two couples, Christ and his Bride and the Whore of Babylon and the Beast, both as they are presented in Revelation and other parts of the Bible and as

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Reluctantly remaining at the court, Hamlet eventually undertakes the mission of purging it from within, of acting as its scourge and minister. Later, near the end, he seems to see his vocation in yet another light as he relinquishes deep plots and places himself at the disposal of Providence. Some of the lines in which he expresses his new attitude to Horatio show resemblances to the passage immediately following the last one quoted from the Sparing Discoverie, where Bagshaw describes the next stage in the Jesuits' conduct of the spiritual exercise: H e r e u n t o t h e y a d d e a discourse c o n c e r n i n g t h e diuersitie of s u c h callings as G o d h a t h o r d e y n e d f o r his s e r u a n t s a n d children t o w a l k e i n : shewing h o w necessary it is f o r e u e r y m a n t o v n d e r s t a n d a n d k n o w w h a t calling t h a t is, which particularly b e l o n g e t h t o himselfe, a n d w h a t d a n g e r e n s u e t h , w h e n m e n d o rashly v n d e r t a k e a n y occasion, either f o r p r o f i t o r pleasure, t o f o l l o w this o r t h a t c o u r s e of life... M a n y (say t h e y ) t h r o u g h their o w n e r a s h n e s a r e spirituall persons, w h o o u g h t b y G o d s o r d i n a n c e to h a u e b i n of t h e L a y t y : a n d m a n y o n t h e o t h e r side a r e (as w e t e a r m e t h e m ) L a y m e n , w h i c h o u g h t t o b e Ecclesiasticall: b o t h of t h e m perishing in their o w n e courses t h r o u g h their o w n e faults, i n that they h a d n o care t o l e a r n e a n d k n o w their o w n e p r o p e r callings o r d e y n e d f o r t h e m . . . (22) 1 7

they are elaborated in the Elizabethan biblical commentaries. In sixteenthcentury Protestant polemics and in the marginal notes to Revelation in the Geneva Bible the Whore of Babylon is identified, of course, with the Catholic Church, the Beast with the R o m a n Empire and its successor, the papacy. Such associations would strengthen the connections between Claudius and Rome, and Gertrude and the Church, and would further illuminate Hamlet's bitter disillusionment in his mother for transferring her devotion from her first husband to the second, a change he sees not merely as an immoral but as a sacrilegious act, a desecration of "sweet religion". The question of Shakespeare's use of apocalyptic symbolism in Hamlet is a complex one, and will be investigated more fully elsewhere. For his use of similar imagery in the next play he wrote, see my article, " ' M a d Idolatry' in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, XV (1973), 25-38. 17 The Jesuit exercise as Bagshaw describes it ultimately derives, of course, f r o m Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, and several correspondences may be seen between the two. This excerpt, for instance, parallels the section in the Spiritual Exercises entitled "Introduction to Making a Choice of a Way of Life" (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, tr. Anthony Mottola [New York, 1964], 82-87), while the insistence in the preceding quotation on obedience to the "holy Mother the Church of Rome" echoes Loyola's injunction: "Putting aside all private judgment, we should keep our minds prepared and ready

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One character who does not seem to know his proper calling, who "rashly" chooses the wrong one, exposes himself to "danger", and perishes as a result, is Polonius: Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell... Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. (III.iv.32-34)

For Hamlet, however, "rashness" eventually becomes a virtue, and his lines to Horatio suggest such other elements in the quotation as "Gods ordinance" and the final phrase, "learne and know their owne proper callings ordayned for them": Rashly, And praised be rashness for it - let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us There's a divinity that shapes our ends... (V.ii.6-10)

Hamlet acknowledges "Gods ordinance" again in his later remark: Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. (V.ii.48)

In praising "rashness" Hamlet is, in effect, rejecting the cautious, prudential approach to the choice of vocation Bagshaw attributes to the Jesuit fathers. Abandoning his earlier efforts to calculate ends and the final destination of souls, he is relying on his own spontaneous intuition of the role he should play _ much in contrast to Laertes at this stage, who, like the neophyte in the Jesuit exercise, is letting his soul be manipulated and his ends shaped by Claudius: And we shall jointly labor with your soul To give it due content. (IV.v.208-209)

At the end, Laertes admits that the calling he has been persuaded to adopt has led to his perishing through his own fault (V.ii.296). In the light of the Sparing Discoverie certain oppositions in Hamlet seem to become more distinct - between the old regime and the new, between Rome and Wittenberg. Obviously, further investigation would be needed to substantiate these speculations and to see whether other elements in the play might be clarified to obey promptly and in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church" (139).

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through reference to the pamphlet. Some of the other plays considered here seem to offer similar possibilities, especially Troilus and King Lear, with their extensive portrayals of factional conflict, communal disintegration, and personal crises of faith. To consider the plays in terms of Shakespeare's possible reaction to the current tensions in English Catholicism may seem a questionable approach because it would place undue emphasis on their merely topical significance at the expense of their broader meanings. But two points should be borne in mind. First, such is the flexibility and suggestiveness of Shakespeare's art that the topical allusions in his plays are not distinct from their more general meanings. Instead, they serve to amplify them. When Hamlet comments on such matters as equivocation and the new popularity of the children's acting companies he is illuminating further symptoms of the general malaise of Denmark under Claudius, a condition which in turn has an immediate relevance to his personal spiritual predicament. Secondly, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that throughout Shakespeare's lifetime the crucial public issues for Englishmen were simultaneously political and religious. The survival of England as an independent nation was thought to depend on its ability to maintain its Protestant identity, to withstand the challenge of international Catholicism from both within and without. To the Protestants the Archpriest Controversy was an encouraging spectacle because it severely weakened the Catholic cause and reduced the chances of a Catholic revival. To the Catholics it was a highly disturbing event both for these reasons and because it exposed an essential confusion in the aims of the Church, and to some of them it must have presented a severe test of faith. If Shakespeare, whatever his religious beliefs, was deeply interested in such matters and expressed that interest in his plays he would not have been following a merely personal preoccupation. In company with Spenser, Donne, and Milton, he would have been responding to some of the central problems of his age.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PAMPHLETS OF THE ARCHPRIEST CONTROVERSY Possible Shakespeare

Sources

The authors listed are certain in the case of Arnauld, Ely, and Persons, probable in the case of Bagshaw and Mush, doubtful in the case of Bluet. The STC numbers are followed by those in Allison and Rogers' catalogue. The location of copies is indicated in the latter. Arnauld, Antoine, Le franc discours (London, 1602). STC 780, A&R 42. Bagshaw, Christopher, A sparing discoverie of ovr English Iesvits (London, 1601). STC 25126, A&R 64. -, A true relation of the faction begun at Wisbich. (London, 1601).SrC1188, A&R 65. (Reprinted in Thomas Graves Law, A Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth [London, 1889], 3-133.) Bluet, Thomas, Important considerations (London, 1601). STC 25125, A&R 122. (Edited by Joseph Mendham [London, 1831].) Ely, Humphrey, Certaine briefe notes vpon a briefe apologie (Paris, 1602). STC 7628, A&R 291. Mush, John, A dialogue betwixt a secvlar priest, and a lay gentleman (London, 1601). STC 25124, A&R 553, 554. Persons, Robert, A briefe apologie, or defence of the Catholike ecclesiastical hierarchie (Antwerp, 1601). STC 19392, A&R 613. (Reprinted London, 1602. A&R 614.) Others Bagshaw, Christopher, Relatio compendiosa tvrbarvm (London, 1601). STC 3106, A&R 63. Bennet, John, The hope of peace (London, 1601). STC 1884, A&R 103. Charnock, Robert, An answere ... to a fraudulent letter of M. George Blackwels (London, 1602). STC 19830, A&R 235. , A reply to a notorious libell intituled a briefe apologie (London, 1602). $TC 19056, A&R 236,

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Clarke, William, A replie vnto a certaine libell ... intituled, a manifestion (London, 1602). STC 4321, A&R 241. Colleton, John, A ivst defence of the slandered priestes (London, 1602). STC 5557, A&R 247. The copies of certaine discourses (London, 1601). STC 5724, A&R 254. Copley, Anthony, An answere to a letter of a iesvited gentleman(Loadoa, 1601). STC 5735, A&R 257. , Another letter of Mr. A. C. to his dis-iesvited kinseman (London, 1602). STC 2736, A&R 258. Mush, John, Declaratio motvvm ac tvrbationvm (London, 1601). STC 3102, A&R 552. N., S., The copie of a letter written to a very worshipful Catholike (1601). A&R 565. Pasquier, Etienne, Thelesuites catechisme (London, 1602). STC 19449, A&R 596. Persons, Robert, An appendix to the apologie (Antwerp, 1602). A&R 612. , A manifestation of the great folly and bad spirit of certayne in England calling themselues secular priestes (Antwerp, 1602). STC 19411, A&R 633. Watson, William, A decacordon of ten qvodlibeticall qvestions (London, 1601). STC 25123, A&R 883. Worthington, Thomas, A relation of sixtene martyrs ... with a declaration ... that the seminarit priests agree with the Iesuites (Douai, 1601). A&R 917.

OTHER CONTEMPORARY SOURCES The Archpriest Controversy: Documents Relating to the Dissensions of the Roman Catholic Clergy, 1597-1602, ed. Thomas Graves Law. 2 vols. Camden Society, LVI (London, 1896), LVIII (London, 1898). Barlow, William, The svmme and svbstance of the conference ...at Hampton Court (London, 1604). STC 1456. Bell, Thomas, The anatomie of popish tyrannie (London, 1603). STC 1814. , The downefall ofpoperie (London, 1604). STC 1817. Bradshaw, William, Hvmble motives for association to maintains religion established (London, 1601). STC 3518. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1601-1603, ed. M. A. E. Green (London, 1870). Camden, William, The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth, tr. Richard Norton (London, 1630). STC 4500. Fenner, Dudley, An antiqvodlibet, or an advertisement to beware of secular priests (Middleburgh, 1602). STC 10765. Foley, Henry, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. 7 vols. (London, 1877-83). [Garnet, Henry], A Treatise of Equivocation, ed. David Jardine (London, 1851). Gerard, John, The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, tr. Philip Caraman (New York, 1955). , The Condition of Catholics under James I: Father Gerard's Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, ed. John Morris (London, 1871).

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Harsnet, Samuel, A declaration of egregious popish impostures (London, 1603). STC 12880. James I, King, Basilicon doroti (London, 1603). STC 14350. James, Thomas, The lesuits downefall (Oxford, 1612). STC 14459. Let qvilibet beware of qvodlibet (London, 1602). STC 20562. Lewkenor, Samuel, A discourse ...for such as are desirous to know the situation and customes of forraine cities (London, 1600). STC 15566. Morton, Thomas, A fvll satisfaction concerning a dovble Romish iniquitie (London, 1606). STC 18185. , An exact discoverie of Romish doctrine (London, 1605). STC 18184. Mr. George Blackwel ... his answeres vpon sundry his examinations (London, 1607). STC 3105. Persons, Robert, Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, S. J., ed. L. Hicks ( = Catholic Record Society, XXXIX) (London, 1942). , A treatise tending to mitigation towards Catholicke-subiects in England (St. Omer, 1607). STC 19417, A&R 641. A proclamation for proceeding against Iesuites and secular priestes (London, 1602). STC 8295. (Reprinted in Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, III [New Haven and London, 1969], 250-255.) Southwell, Robert, An Humble Supplication to Her Majesty (1600), ed. R. C. Bald (Cambridge, 1953). A trve and perfect relation of the whole proceedings against... Garnet (London, 1606). STC 11619. Weston, William, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, tr. Philip Caraman (London, 1955). Wilbraham, Roger, The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham (= Camden Miscellany, X) (London, 1902). Willet, Andrew, A catholicon ...a generali preservative or remedie against the pseudocatholike religion (Cambridge, 1602). STC 25673. The Wisbech Stirs, ed. P. Renold ( = Catholic Record Society, LI) (London, 1958). GENERAL Allison, A. F., "The Writings of Fr. Henry Garnet, S. J. (1555-1606)", Recusant History (formerly Biographical Studies), I (1951), 7-21. , and D. M. Rogers, "A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1558-1640", Recusant History, III (1956), iii-iv. Anstruther, Godfrey, The Seminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy in England and Wales, 1558-1850 (Durham and Ware, 1969). Basset, Bernard, The English Jesuits from Campion to Martindale (London, 1967). Bossy, John, "The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism", in Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660, ed. Trevor Aston (London, 1965), 223-246. , "Rome and the Elizabethan Catholics: A Question of Geography", Historical Journal, VH (1964), 135-142.

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, "Sources", in A Shakespeare Encyclopedia, ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn (London, 1966), 810-814. Mutschmann, H., and K. Wentersdorf, Shakespeare and Catholicism (New York, 1966). Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, 7 vols. (London, 1957-1973). Parish, John E., "Robert Parsons and the English Counter-Reformation", Rice University Studies, LII (1966), 1-80. Parker, M. D. H., The Slave of Life (London, 1955). Paul, Henry N., The Royal Play of Macbeth (New York, 1950). Petti, A. G., "A Bibliography of the Writings of Richard Verstegan (c. 15501641)", Recusant History, VII (1963), 82-103. Pollen, John Hungerford, The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell (London, 1916). Shakespeare and his Sources, ed. Joseph Satin (Boston, 1966). Southern, A.C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1559-1582 (London, 1950). Stempel, Daniel, "The Silence of Iago", PMLA, LXXXIV (1969), 252-263. Stevenson, Robert, Shakespeare's Religious Frontier (The Hague, 1958). Taunton, Ethelred L., The History of the Jesuits in England, 1580-1773 (London, 1901). Trimble, William Raleigh, The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England, 1558-1603 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). Watkin, E. I., Roman Catholicism in England from the Reformation to 1950 (London, 1957). Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses, 2 vols. (London, 1691-1692).

INDEX

Allen, Cardinal William, 6, 74, 95 Allison, A. F., lOn, 30, 57n, 91n AW s Well That Ends Well, 44, 55, 103n, 111-112, 113n Andrewes, Lancelot, 14 Antony and Cleopatra, 3, 94 Aquaviva, Claudius, 118 Archer, Giles, 28n Archpriest Controversy, 1, 4-14, 28, 42, 116, 124 Arnaud, Antoine, 85; Le Franc Discours, 85-91, 101 Bagshaw, Christopher, 10, 19, 28n, 51,75; True Relation, 6n, 8n, 18-29, 31-32, 51, 61n; Sparing Discoverie, 16n, 30-41, 54, 61n, 106-123 Bancroft, Richard, 11-12, 14-15, 19, 30, 3In, 44, 60n, 92 Barker, Robert, 10, 44 Barlow, William, 12n Basset, Bernard, 42n Bell, Thomas, 12-13 Belleforest, François de, 118 Bennett, Josephine Waters, 72n Bible, 47, 66, 71 n, 77, 99n, 117, 121 n Bishop, William, 8, 75, 79-81 Blackwell, George, 5, 7-8, 44, 62, 65, 116

Blount, Richard, 13, 15 Bluet, Thomas, l l n , 19, 28n, 51, 53, 92; Important Considerations, 16n, 31, 61n, 85, 91-101 Bossy, John, 4n, 85n Bright, Timothy, 3 Buchanan, George, 98n

Caetani, Cardinal Enrico, 7, 79 Camden, William, 1, 4n Campion, Edmund, 5, 6,18n, 114n Cecil, Robert, 10-11, 12 Cecil, William, 15n, 92n Charnock, Robert, 8, 43n, 74, 79-81 Chatel, Jean, 85, 89 Cinthio, Geraldi, 71, 79 Clarke, William, 62n Clement VIII, 7, 8-9, 80 Coke, Edward, 29n, 57n, 84, 101 Colie, Rosalie L., 83n Colleton, John, 7, 13, 44n Coriolanus, 3, 93n de Groot, John Henry, 104n Devlin, Christopher, 57n, 104n Dodd, Charles, l l n , 19n Donne, John, 104,124 Elizabeth I, 1, 8, 14, 33, 91, 97-98 Ely, Humphrey, 74; Briefe Notes, 32n, 43n, 44n, 74-83 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 47 Equivocation, 40-41, 54-58, 83, 84-85, 103n, 105-112 Field, Richard, 10, 91 Fuller, Thomas, 4n, 74n Garnet, Henry, 5, 6-7, 18, 29n, 44n, 84, 100; Treatise of Equivocation, 57n, 107 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 27-28 Gerard, John, 5, 29n Gunpowder Plot, 13, 29, 84, 100-101

INDEX

Handover, P. M., l l n Hamlet, 2, 3, 30-41, 105-123 Harsnet, Samuel, 2, 3, 14-17, 19, 24, 25, 28, 105 Harvey, Gabriel, 32 Henri IV, 85 Hicks, L., 42n Holinshed, Raphael, 27, 95, 96, 98, 103 Honigmann, E. A. J., 32n Hooker, Richard, 47 Hotson, Leslie, lOOn Hunter, G. K., 3n Huntley, Frank L., 84n Hurstfield, Joel, l l n Islip, Adam, 60n James I, 28, 97, 101; Basilicon Doron, 3, 72-73 James, Thomas, 13n Jenkins, Gladys, 9n, 18n, 30, 60n, 91n Jesuits, 4-6,16, 29, 37, 84, 116 Jonson, Ben, 104 Joseph, Sister Miriam, 55n King Lear, 2, 3, 14, 17, 20-29, 40n, 124 King Leir, 27-28 Kingston, Felix, 10, 18, 30 Kirschbaum, Leo, 33n Law, Thomas Graves, 4n, 9n, 18-19, 44n, 63n Lewkenor, Samuel, 119n Lister, Thomas, 63 Loyola, St. Ignatius, 82,122n Lupton, Thomas, 71 Luther, Martin, 119n Macbeth, 2, 4, 41, 55, 58n, 84-101, 108, 109, 112 Meadows, Denis, 42n Measure for Measure, 2, 3, 62-73 Mendham, Joseph, 92n Meyer, Arnold Oskar, 4n Milton, John, 124 Mirror for Magistrates, 27-28

131

Molina, Luis de, 82 Morton, Thomas, 107n Muir, Kenneth, 3n, 24n, 48n, 84n Mush, John, 61; Declaratio Motuum, 36n, 43, 49-50, 61; Dialogue, 31, 60-73, 116n Nashe, Thomas, 31 North, Sir Thomas, 3,103 Othello, 2,41, 55,62n, 76-83,107-108, 110 Paget, Charles, 75, 78 Parish, John E., 42n Parker, M. D. H„ 104, 105n Pasquier, Etienne, 86n Paul, Henry N., 84n, lOOn Persons, Robert, 5, 6, 8,11,16,18, 32, 36, 42-43, 80, 85, 104n, 112-113; Appendix to the Apologie, 10, 13, 44n; Briefe Apologie, 6n, 10, 12, 16n, 28n, 32n, 36n, 43-59, 74, 75, 76, 82, 107n; Manifestation, 10, 12, 13, 44n, 61; Treatise Tending to Mitigation, 107n Petti, A. G., 44n Pollen, John Hungerford, 4n, 9n, 52n, 86n Reynolds, John, 12 Richard III, 39 Riche, Barnabe, 71 Rivers, Anthony, 11, 13, 31, 44, 61, 75, 92 Roberts, James, 10, 30, 33, 86 Rogers, D. M., lOn, 30, 91n Saxo Grammaticus, 118 Shakespeare, John, 104, 115n Sidney, Sir Philip, 24-25 Southampton, Earl of, 104 Southwell, Robert, 5, 57n Spenser, Edmund, 27, 124 Stempel, Daniel, 82 Stevenson, David L., 72n Tasso, Torquato, 35n

132

INDEX

Troilus and Cressida, 2, 45-59, 108n, 112n, 122n, 124 Tyrell, Anthony, 14-15 Verstegan, Richard, 44 Watson, William, 10, lln, 30-31, 54, 61,85, 86; Quodlibeticall Questions, 13n, 31, 102

Weston, William, 6-7, 15-16, 17, 18, 20-25, 28n, 51 Whetstone, George, 71 Wilbraham, Sir Roger, 10 Wilson, J. Dover, 105-106 Wisbech Stirs, 6-7, 16, 18, 28n, 51 Wood, Anthony, 19n, 74n

de proprietatibus litterarum Series Minor 1 Eaton, T.: The Semantics of Literature 2 Koch, W.A.: Recurrence and a Three-Modal Approach to Poetry 3 Sullivan, N. : Perspective and the Poetic Process 4 LoCicero, D.: Novellentheorie 5 Uehling, T.E. Jr.: The Notion of Form in Kant's 'Critique of Aesthetic Judgment' 6 Waldrop, R.: Against Language? 7 Shibles, W.A.: An Analysis of Metaphor in the Light of W.M.Urban's Theories 8 Lengyel, C.: The Creative Self 9 Will, F.: The Knife in the Stone 11 Eaton, T.: Theoretical Semics 12 Champigny, R.: Ontology of the Narrative 13 Prince, G.: A Grammar of Stories Series Major 1 Hester M.B.: The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor 2 Delasanta, R.: The Epic Voice 3 Gray, B.: Style 5 Belgardt, R.: Romantische Poesie 6 Sexton, R.J.: The Complex of Yvor Winters' Criticism 7 Wood, T.E.: The Word "Sublime" and its Context 1650-1760 8 Thompson, E.M.: Russian Formalism and AngloAmerican New Criticism 9 Hale, D.G.: The Body Politic 10 Gallo, E.: The Poetria Nova and its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine 11 Miller, D.M.: The Net of Hephaestus 12 Ryding, W.W.: Structure in Medieval Narrative 13 Shmiefsky, M.: Sense at War with Soul 14 Raffel, B.: The Forked Tongue 15 Levitt, P.M.: A Structural Approach to the Analysis of Drama 16 Hagiwara, M.P.: French Epic Poetry in the Sixteenth Century 17 Braun, J.T.: The Apostrophic Gesture 18 Guggenheimer, E.H.: Rhyme Effects and Rhyming Figures 19 Ingram, F.L.: Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century 20 Barasch, F.K.: The Grotesque 22 Nichols, J.W.: Insinuation 23 Brockett, O.G. (ed.): Studies in Theatre and Drama 25 Schludermann, B. et al (eds.): Deutung und Bedeutung 26 Benoit, R.: Single Nature's Double Name

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de proprietatibus litterarum Series Practica 50 Metcalf, A.A.: Poetic Diction in-the old English Meters of Boethius 51 Knowlton, M.A.: The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics 52 Richmond, H.M.: Renaissance Landscapes 34 54 Celler, M.M.: Giraudoux et la métaphore 55 Fletcher, R.M.: The Stylistic Development of Edgar Allan Poe 57 Nelson, T.A.: Shakespeare's Comic Theory 59 Dugan, J.R.: Illusion and Reality 61 Couchman, G.W.: This our Caesar 63 Schulz, H.-J.: This Hell of stories 69 Godshalk, W.L.: Patterning in Shakespearean Drama 71 Xostis, N. : The Exorcism of Sex and Death in Julien Green's Novels 72 Woshinsky, B.R.: La Princesse de Clèves 49 75 Hewitt, W.: Through Those Living Pillars 49 78 Ferrante, J.M.: The Conflict of Love and Honor49 83 Jones, L.E.: Poetic Fantasy and Fiction

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