The genres of Renaissance tragedy [1 ed.] 1784992798, 9781784992798

Citation preview

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

The genres of Renaissance tragedy Edited by DANIEL CADMAN, ANDREW DUXFIELD and LISA HOPKINS

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2019 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 7849 9279 8  hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Contents

Notes on contributors

page vii

Introduction 1 Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield and Lisa Hopkins 1 De casibus tragedy: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great 11 Andrew Duxfield 2 Biblical tragedy: George Peele’s David and Bethsabe 29 Annaliese Connolly 3 Closet tragedy: Fulke Greville’s Mustapha 51 Daniel Cadman 4 Tragedy of state: Macbeth 68 Alisa Manninen 5 Domestic tragedy: Yarington(?)’s Two Lamentable Tragedies 84 Lisa Hopkins and Gemma Leggott 6 Roman tragedy: the case of Jonson’s Sejanus 100 John E. Curran, Jr 7 Satiric tragedy: The Revenger’s Tragedy 115 Gabriel A. Rieger 8 Revenge tragedy: Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman 132 Derek Dunne 9 ‘Ha, O my horror!’ Grotesque tragedy in John Webster’s The White Devil 148 Paul Frazer 10 She-tragedy: lust, luxury and empire in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One 166 Domenico Lovascio

vi Contents 11 Ford’s Perkin Warbeck as historical tragedy Sarah Dewar-Watson

184

12 Caroline tragedy: James Shirley’s The Traitor 196 Jessica Dyson Selected bibliography

213

Index 216

Notes on contributors

Daniel Cadman is a Lecturer in English Literature at Sheffield Hallam University and editor of Early Modern Literary Studies. His previous publications include Sovereigns and Subjects in Early Modern Neo-Senecan Drama (Routledge, 2015). Annaliese Connolly is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Sheffield Hallam University. Recent publications include Richard III: A Critical Reader (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Essex: The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier (Manchester University Press, 2013) edited with Lisa Hopkins. Her current project is a monograph on George Peele. John E. Curran, Jr is Professor of English at Marquette University and editor of the journal Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature. His most recent book is Character and Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama (University of Delaware Press, 2014). Sarah Dewar-Watson is a Lecturer in English at Mount St Mary’s College in Derbyshire and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Her publications include Tragedy: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave, 2014). Derek Dunne is a Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University. His publications include Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy, and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice (Palgrave, 2016) and articles on the mathematics of revenge, the forensics of the blush and the early modern jury. Andrew Duxfield is a Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. His publications include Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify (Ashgate, 2015). In 2009 he won the Calvin G. and Rose Hoffman Prize for Distinguished Publication on Christopher Marlowe.

viii

Notes on contributors

Jessica Dyson is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth. Her publications include Staging Authority in Caroline England: Prerogative, Law and Order in Drama 1625–1642 (Ashgate, 2013), and ‘The Politics of Love: The Broken Heart in the Caroline Context’ in a Special Issue of Early Modern Literary Studies on Readings of Love and Death (2015), which she co-edited. Paul Frazer is a Senior Lecturer of Early Modern Literature at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. He has published elsewhere on plays by Thomas Dekker, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. He also co-edited and contributed to the Arden Early Modern Drama Guide to The White Devil (Bloomsbury, 2016) and is co-editing a critical edition of Gorboduc and Other Political Texts for Manchester Revels. Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University and coeditor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association. Her most recent publications are From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage (Medieval Institute Publications, 2017) and Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare (Palgrave, 2016). Gemma Leggott was awarded a PhD from Sheffield Hallam University in 2017 for a thesis entitled ‘A Critical Edition of The Miseries of Enforced Marriage’. This is her first publication. Domenico Lovascio is Ricercatore of English Literature at Università degli Studi di Genova. His publications include the first English–Italian edition of Jonson’s Catiline (ECIG, 2011) and Un nome, mille volti: Giulio Cesare nel teatro inglese della prima età moderna (Carocci, 2015), winner of the National Literary Award ‘Scriviamo Insieme’ and the Special Jury Prize at the National Literary Award ‘Franz Kafka Italia’. Alisa Manninen received her PhD from the University of Tampere, Finland, where she taught English literature as a lecturer. Her publications include Royal Power and Authority in Shakespeare’s Late Tragedies (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). Gabriel A. Rieger is an Associate Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at Concord University in Athens, West Virginia. His publications include Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern Literature: Penetrating Wit (Ashgate, 2009) and articles in various journals.

Introduction Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield and Lisa Hopkins

In 1797 William Richardson, writing about Hamlet, declared, ‘We find nothing in music or painting so inconsistent as the dissonant mixture of sentiments and emotions so frequent in English tragedy’.1 This was never truer than of the tragedies of the early modern English stage. On one level, these might seem to follow a fairly standard formula: there is a hero (most famously Hamlet, Othello, Lear), who will be caught between noble aspirations and a fundamental weakness; there is a heroine (Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia) who is innocent but is nevertheless doomed to suffer and die; there is a villain (Claudius, Iago, Edmund – though there are other candidates too in King Lear) who precipitates the catastrophe but will ultimately be detected and expelled from the community; and there are repercussions not only for individuals but for society as a whole (‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’). And yet even this crude and schematic account of three of Shakespeare’s ‘great tragedies’ fails to account for the fourth, Macbeth, and has nothing at all to say to many other great tragic plays of the period such as Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (where the heroine is far more important than the purely nominal hero), the anonymous Arden of Faversham (which concerns an individual household rather than the state), or Ford’s The Broken Heart, which does not have a villain. Rather than trying to identify any single or simple formula for early modern English tragedy, this collection of essays recognises its astonishing diversity. Tragedy is the most versatile of Renaissance literary genres. The pinnacle of tragic drama in the period, Hamlet, has become the most famous play and indeed arguably the most famous work of literature of any genre ever to have been written; tragedies of the period which deal with historical figures such as Julius Caesar or Richard III have made definitive contributions to the general perception of those personages. The emotional range of the genre is also astonishing: King Lear so moved Dr Johnson that he could not bear to reread it until he had to edit it, whereas some revenge tragedies

2

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

contain moments of wild and weird wit or humour which make them funnier than many comedies of the period, as when the villain of Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy accidentally knocks out his own brains while trying to behead his nephew, or the wicked Duke Lussurioso in Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy keeps seeming to die and then popping back up again.2 Renaissance tragedy as a whole enables exploration of issues ranging from gender to race to the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, taking in plenty of others on the way. It provides us with the first English play published by a woman, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, and the first dramatic representations of the lives of actual ordinary Englishmen and women, in the shape of domestic tragedies such as Arden of Faversham and A Yorkshire Tragedy. This collection of newly commissioned essays, which mixes perspectives from emerging scholars with those of established ones, explores the full range and versatility of Renaissance tragedy as a literary genre. Its modus operandi is by case study, so that each chapter will offer not only a definition of a particular kind of Renaissance tragedy but also new research into a particularly noteworthy or influential example of that genre. One of our key aims has been to offer a critical account of the extraordinary variety of material that falls into the broad category of Renaissance tragedy. With this aim in mind, the collection examines the work of as wide a range of dramatists as possible. We start with Christopher Marlowe, whose innovations in blank verse writing were so instrumental in shaping what we recognise as Renaissance tragedy. We then move on to George Peele, whose career as a poet, dramatist and pageant-maker cuts across the main literary genres of the period as well as the civic and commercial playing spaces of Elizabethan London and beyond, and whose body of work provides fascinating insights into the social, theatrical and political networks of the period, including those of patrons, playing companies and printers. Next come Fulke Greville, who helped develop the unique and specialised genre of closet drama; Henry Chettle, the man who arguably first introduced the note of the grotesque, and Thomas Middleton, who developed that and injected irony and comedy; the anonymous author (possibly Robert Yarington) of Two Lamentable Tragedies, who contributed to the subgenre of domestic tragedy; Ben Jonson, whose Roman tragedies combined neo-classical conventions with intricate historical detail to bring incisive and provocative political analysis onto the popular stage; John Webster and John Fletcher, who pioneered the concept of the female tragic hero; John Ford, who offered a consciously nostalgic and yet at the same time revisionist view of historical tragedy; and James Shirley, who offers one of the latest examples of the genre. What may seem most surprising is who is not here, or at any rate here as only one author among many: Shakespeare. We hope to offer a deliberate corrective to the tendency to view Renaissance tragedy predominantly through a Shakespearean lens by considering him as one of a number of

Introduction 3 practitioners who contributed to the period’s engagement with this fascinating and fluid genre. Shakespeare has dominated discussions of Renaissance drama, but we need to question just how representative he is of the rich and diverse range of tragedies that appeared on the Renaissance stage. There are a number of sub-genres of tragedy – biblical tragedy and closet drama, for example – in which Shakespeare did not engage and there were also many sub-genres in which the nature of his influence was interrogated. The chapters in this collection also respond to the growth in interest in nonShakespearean plays driven by the development of such critical and theoretical currents as new historicism, cultural materialism and feminism, as well as the recent re-emergence of repertory studies. A consequence of this has been that the range of Renaissance plays which have been the objects of critical attention has considerably expanded and raised important questions about canonicity. These developments are reflected in the diverse range of plays and authors our contributors find of interest, producing original critical readings of individual plays which show how interventions in these sub-genres can be mapped onto debates surrounding numerous important issues, including national identity, the nature of divine authority, early modern youth culture, gender and ethics, as well as questions relating to sovereignty and political intervention. The chapters also highlight the rich range of styles adopted by the early modern tragic dramatists and show how opportunely the genre as a whole is positioned for speaking truth to power. Collectively, these essays reassess the various sub-genres of Renaissance tragedy in ways which respond to the radical changes that have affected the critical landscape over the last few decades. In stressing the diversity and flexibility of early modern tragedies, we believe we are echoing an approach to the genre that many early modern playwrights and audience members would have shared. A familiar startingpoint in discussions of tragedy has been the Aristotelian unities of time, place and action; however, they appear to have had very little bearing on the composition of tragedies during the early modern period. One notable voice of regret about the declining influence of classical models of tragedy comes from Sir Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry. While he offers qualified praise for Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc, one of the formative English tragedies, Sidney goes on to lament that, in spite of its ‘notable morality’ and ‘stately speeches and well-sounding phrases’, the play is ‘faulty both in place and time’.3 Sidney also goes on to complain further about the impact of the departure from the unities of time and place, as well as the lack of decorum in contemporary tragedy, caused by ‘mingling kings and clowns’ and resulting in a kind of ‘mongrel tragi-comedy’.4 Such views, however, hardly seem to be representative of wider contemporary attitudes towards tragedy. As Janette Dillon helpfully reminds us, an important caveat to bear in mind regarding Aristotle is that his comments on tragedy in the Poetics were ‘describing the Greek tragedy of the fifth century BCE, not

4

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

prescribing what tragedy should be’.5 As the chapters in this volume show, early modern dramatists saw tragedy not as a fixed template to be followed, or as a set of constraints upon their creativity, but as a framework in which to undertake bold and dynamic experiments with genre. Another frequently cited element of Aristotle’s theories of tragedy relates to the characterisation of the tragic protagonist, particularly the extent to which they embody the features of hamartia and catharsis. Again, though, early modern tragedies tend to complicate, or offer a range of views upon, the degree to which individuals are responsible for their own tragic downfalls. The question of how far the tragic events can be attributed to some kind of external agency – the gods, providence, fortune or the fates – is one that is frequently interrogated in early modern tragedy. One of the foundational tragedies of the early modern English stage, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, has a framing device whereby the on-stage action is witnessed by the character of Don Andrea and the allegorical figure of Revenge, who engineers the earthly action of the main plot. Hamlet registers his confidence in the ‘special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (V.ii.191–2), or a guiding agency determining human events. A similar assertion about the power of fate and the limited agency is famously voiced in John Webster’s tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, in which Bosola states that ‘We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, struck and banded / Which way please them’ (V.iv.56–7). Even in the pioneering domestic tragedy, Arden of Faversham, a play largely driven by questions of land, local politics and marital strife, there are still hints of a providential agency influencing events. The majority of the action in Arden consists of a series of instances in which the protagonist unwittingly escapes repeated attempts on his life instigated by his wife and her lover, including narrowly avoiding eating a poisoned broth and evading plans put in place by two hired assassins, named Black Will and Shakebag, whose efforts are thwarted when, in one attempt, Black Will is rendered unconscious before being able to strike the fatal blow and, in another, the two assassins lose their quarry in the fog. After Arden is eventually killed at the end of the play, further evidence of providential intervention is offered by the fact that Arden’s spilled blood resists all attempts to be cleaned from the floor and that the corpse continues to bleed whenever his wife, Alice Arden, comes into proximity of it, thereby highlighting her role in his death. Shakespeare’s King Lear also interrogates the role of providence or fate in its highlighting of the distinct set of values held by Gloucester and his illegitimate son, Edmund. After reading the forged letter implying that his elder legitimate son, Edgar, is plotting against him, Gloucester reflects that the ‘late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us’ and that, under such signs, ‘Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt son and father’ (I.ii.94–100). While Gloucester attributes the events of the play to a kind of cosmic determinism, Edmund goes on, in private, to dismiss such

Introduction 5 an outlook as the ‘excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and stars’ (I.ii.108–11). According to Edmund, such faith in cosmic determinism leads to a ludicrous degree of self-deception and the failure of the individual to take responsibility for their own actions and shortcoming: ‘An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!’ (I.ii.115–17). This is an idea taken up by a number of later dramatists, sometimes in ways complicated by explicit or implicit reference to the theology of predestination. Early modern tragedy, then, offers an ultimately ambivalent view on the potential of human agency and the extent of the influence exerted by fate, fortune or providence. Such questions regarding the role of providence in early modern tragedy have been the subject of much critical discussion and were at the centre of one of the most influential and provocative studies of early modern tragedy from the last few decades, one to which we owe a debt but which we seek to build upon rather than simply to echo. First appearing in 1984, Jonathan Dollimore’s book, Radical Tragedy, marked a significant departure from readings of early modern drama that stressed the plays’ emphases upon such ideas as providence and natural law by setting out to challenge critical assumptions that a fundamental advocacy of such premises as ‘order’, ‘tradition’, the ‘human condition’ and ‘character’ provided the bases for these plays.6 Rather, Dollimore sees the tragedies of the period as offering an interrogation of the ways in which these kinds of ideas were harnessed as the ideological underpinnings for state power. Ideas of providence, according to Dollimore, ‘aimed to provide a metaphysical ratification of the existing social order’.7 For Dollimore, tragedy was a fundamental part of a theatrical culture in which ‘[institutions of state] and their ideological legitimation were subjected to sceptical, interrogative and subversive representations’.8 Dollimore’s book is part of a group of late twentieth-century studies that highlight early modern tragic drama’s potential to challenge political orthodoxies and ideas of social order; other studies developed in this vein include Dympna Callaghan’s work emphasising the roles of female characters in exposing the fragility of patriarchal power.9 A number of studies have also highlighted the ways in which tragedy poses fundamental questions about identity and subjectivity, the most influential of which is arguably Catherine Belsey’s book, The Subject of Tragedy (1985). Like Dollimore, Belsey takes to task assumptions inherent in liberal humanist criticism, particularly the notion that the values which inform it are ‘both natural and universal’.10 Instead her focus is upon the ways in which tragedy is one of a number of spaces ‘from which to begin an analysis of what it means to be a person, a man or a woman, at a specific historical moment’ and the ways in which ideas of subjectivity and individuality are ‘discursively produced’ and ‘constrained by the range of subject-positions’ permitted by the prevailing discourses of that given historical moment.11 Subjectivity and

6

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

identity are also at the centre of Michael Neill’s Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy, which probes tragedy’s role in the shaping and ‘reinvention’ of cultural understandings of death and mortality. Neill highlights that tragedy consistently offered a resistance to ‘the notion of death as an arbitrary cancellation of meaning’ and a ‘force of undifferentiation’ and that its frequent ‘displays of agony, despair, and ferocious self-assertion … provided audiences with a way of vicariously confronting the implications of their own mortality, by compelling them to rehearse and re-rehearse the encounter with death’.12 Two recent studies have placed different emphases at the centre of their analyses. The first, by Paul Hammond, sees tragedy enacting a process of estrangement whereby the protagonist becomes alienated or displaced from the space they had considered their home; according to Hammond, such dislocations ‘translate the central figure of the drama into new modes of being, and into new, only half-comprehensible languages’, resulting in ‘a decomposition of the self, a deformation which may sometimes render that figure sublimely heroic, but is also liable to make him estranged and fractured’.13 Focusing on Shakespeare, Paul A. Kottman applies the term ‘tragic conditions’, rather than ‘tragedy’, to a variety of Shakespearean plays, suggesting that such conditions are not exclusively confined to what we would most readily define as the tragic genre. For Kottman, the principal driver in these ‘tragic conditions’ is disinheritance or the rupturing of the relationships that provide the bedrock for society. The ‘tragic conditions’ arise from a play’s dramatisation of ‘the fate of protagonists whose lives are conditioned by authoritative social bonds – kinship ties, civic relations, economic dependencies, political allegiances – that end up unravelling irreparably’, leaving them in a situation in which they can ‘neither inherit nor bequeath a livable or desirable form of sociality’.14 Such an idea complicates traditional notions of genre (especially as two of the chapters in the study focus upon, respectively, a comedy in the form of As You Like It, and The Tempest, a play usually grouped with Shakespeare’s late romances), as these tragic conditions do not necessarily feature exclusively in plays that would normally be classified, on the whole, as tragic. Individual sub-genres of early modern tragedy also continue to be the subject of study in a range of analyses; to take revenge tragedy as just one example, the sub-genre has been analysed in a series of recent monographs through a diverse range of lenses, including the relationship between revenge and law, the genre’s engagement with contemporary economic debates, and considerations of this mode of tragedy in the light of changing cultural views of commemoration during the Reformation.15 This case in point highlights the diverse and innovative ways in which scholars continue to approach early modern tragedy, as in Goran Stanivukovic and John H. Cameron’s Tragedies of the English Renaissance: An Introduction, which reads early modern tragedy specifically in relation to London.16 In its reach beyond the limits of

Introduction 7 the traditional tragic canon, in its alertness to the capacity of tragedy to both contest and reinscribe dominant discourses, in its interest in tragedy’s constructions of varying kinds of identity, in its recognition of the fluidity of generic boundaries, and in its focus on genre as a concept with political and historical as well as aesthetic implications, this collection builds upon these recent and influential critical interventions, producing new readings which continue to highlight the dynamic and multivalent nature of early modern tragedy. The first two chapters focus on the ways in which Renaissance tragedy interrogates some of the pieties of the age. In the first, Andrew Duxfield reads Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great as a provocative example of the de casibus tradition, in which we see the fall of prominent figures who have previously enjoyed the benefit of great fortune, in the process demonstrating to the reader the arbitrariness of earthly success and failure, and teaching that the material world should be held in contempt. In the second, Annaliese Connolly takes Peele’s David and Bethsabe as an exemplar of biblical tragedy and argues that it complicates the traditional picture of David’s reign in order to scrutinise providential monarchy as a model of kingship, in the process tackling other topical issues such as the responsibilities of the monarch to govern and receive advice. We then move to chapters on two plays which offer contrasting perspectives on the interface between public and private. Daniel Cadman argues that Fulke Greville’s closet tragedy Mustapha shares common ground with the so-called Turk plays which were enjoying considerable popularity in the commercial theatres and explores the potential for multivocality through the choruses in which a variety of social groups and institutions of the Ottoman Empire are represented. Mustapha raises questions about the nature of tragic heroism and engages in a number of debates provoked by the political crises it dramatises, while at the same time exhibiting Greville’s awareness of the limitations of political engagement imposed upon him by his Calvinist outlook and exploring the potential opportunities and limitations for the tragic genre as a locus for political comment and generic experiments. Alisa Manninen (the only contributor to write on Shakespeare) reads Macbeth as a representative of tragedy of state and argues that the state itself is one of the victims, perhaps the victim of the tragedy, with its corruption expressed and furthered by the destructive actions of the characters. Although Macbeth reflects on the general concerns of tragedies of state, its interest in depicting both the presence of the supernatural and human psychology, two potentially contradictory aims, leads to a particularly intensive questioning of what is natural or unnatural in the state. Mustapha and Macbeth may appear poles apart, but both raise the question of how societies should be governed and whether it is ever legitimate to resist a tyrannical ruler. Domestic tragedy is often taken to be the antithesis of tragedy of state. However, in the fifth chapter, on Two Lamentable Tragedies, Lisa Hopkins

8

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

and Gemma Leggott argue that domestic tragedy, on the face of it the simplest and most unpretentious of tragic forms, is in fact potentially one of the most ambiguous, for almost every aspect of domestic tragedies is typically susceptible of being read on more than one level. At the same time as the genre foregrounds the private house, it also calls into question how private it truly is; moreover, though one plot of Two Lamentable Tragedies is set in Italy and the other in England, they mirror each other in so many ways that we are in effect asked not only what difference there is between the two countries, but to what extent Italy may serve in Renaissance drama as a transparent proxy for England. The next chapter stays in Italy but moves back in time as John Curran takes Jonson’s Sejanus as an example of Roman plays. Jonson intended his rendering of Sejanus’s rise and fall as a complete realisation of tragedy’s requirements, but Curran argues that the play, as a study in tragic theory and practice, illustrates the double-sidedness endemic to Roman tragedies: the evils of ambition and tyranny are exposed, yet at the same time the latter emerges as a cure for the former. The following chapters collectively reveal the slipperiness of generic distinctions. Gabriel Rieger focuses on Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and reads it in relation to satiric tragedy, which is defined by a philosophy whereby folly, vice and corruption are exposed and subjected to rhetorical attack. This philosophy provides the genre with its distinctive energy, an energy which has the potential to register as subversive: the satirist must possess an intimate knowledge of vice in order to condemn it, and yet he must retain at least the appearance of integrity. This tension is particularly pronounced in The Revenger’s Tragedy, in which Vindice, the satirist-figure of the tragedy, disguises himself as a bawd and works towards the ruin of his own family in the pursuit of his vengeance. The Revenger's Tragedy is of course also an example of revenge tragedy, but Derek Dunne chooses Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman as his specimen of that genre and argues that revenge tragedies offer subtle and sophisticated commentaries on their society at a time of unprecedented upheaval. The traditional image of the solitary revenger embodied by Hamlet is misleading: far from being an isolated figure, the revenger is often shown as a radical agent of communal political action. Hoffman also raises questions of considerable complexity from a legal standpoint, reminding us of the importance of young men from the Inns of Court among the audiences for early modern plays. Finally Webster’s The White Devil has several characteristics of revenge tragedy, but Paul Frazer reads it as grotesque tragedy, a genre which to modern sensibilities may sit uncomfortably against the sober tenets of tragedy. The White Devil plays relentlessly with polarities of life and death, virtue and sin, settledness and motion in a sophisticated dramatisation that persistently probes the border between laughter and horror. Frazer argues that through these dichotomies, Webster’s ambiguous play undertakes a chaotic enquiry into the disorientating soteriological directions potentially open to the early modern subject in Jacobean England.

Introduction 9 The last three chapters move forward in time, but the plays they discuss all register strong awareness of the past as well as responding to the present. Domenico Lovascio examines Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One as an example of what later came to be called ‘she-tragedy’. The False One focuses on Cleopatra, a figure of compelling interest to a number of writers of the period, but takes what at the time was a unique perspective by dramatising her relationship with Caesar rather than with Antony. Lovascio maps the play’s luxury-loving Cleopatra onto contemporary anxieties regarding both the passivity of James I’s foreign policy and the potential influence of luxury goods being imported from the new world, yet also suggests that The False One is striking in that it is Cleopatra who in the end ensures that Caesar rediscovers his martial nobility; the play ultimately implies that love and masculine virtue might not be so incompatible after all. In the penultimate chapter, Sarah Dewar-Watson takes John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck as an example of historical tragedy. Perkin Warbeck self-consciously addresses a lacuna in Shakespeare’s account of Tudor history, but Ford’s play is notably called not after a king (as Shakespeare’s histories are) but after a man who would be king. It thus sets up a tension between historical priorities (in the narrative of the Tudor succession, Warbeck’s story is firmly subordinated and marginalised) and dramatic priorities, in which Warbeck is a compelling protagonist, and prises apart the elements of historical tragedy which Shakespeare so successfully synthesises. Ford revises Shakespeare’s writing of English history to formulate a retrospective on Shakespeare’s histories, and to show how the plays are themselves subject to the processes of historical revisionism which they dramatise. Finally Jessica Dyson examines James Shirley’s The Traitor as an example of Caroline tragedy, which sidelines the desires of the monarch in favour of exploring the madness of tyrannical passions more broadly, still suggesting a need for political reform but casting its net wider than the King alone. Dyson reads The Traitor as appearing, at first, to follow the conventions of earlier tragedy where the Duke’s uncontrolled desire leads to deaths and revenge; however, the Duke’s desires are never fulfilled and prove ultimately irrelevant to the plot. For Dyson, such revision of the revenge tragedy plot highlights a transition evident within Caroline tragedy which erodes the idea of a central, divine or semi-divine controlling authority to a fragmented and failing power. Tragedy, which began by asking delicate questions about power, thus ends with a full-on challenge to it. Notes 1 William Richardson, cited in John Lee, ‘The Critical Backstory’, in Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (eds), Hamlet: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 15–52 (p. 24). 2 A good account of this is to be found in Nicholas Brooke, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979).

10

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

3 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973; reprinted 1984), p. 134. 4 Ibid., p. 135. 5 Janette Dillon, The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 2. Our emphases. 6 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, 3rd edn (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) (first published 1984), p. 3. 7 Ibid., p. 87. 8 Ibid., p. 4. 9 See Dympna Callaghan, Shakespeare Without Women (London: Routledge, 2000). 10 Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London: Methuen 1985), p. 7. 11 Ibid., p. 5. 12 Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 31. 13 Paul Hammond, The Strangeness of Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4. 14 Paul A. Kottman, Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting the Globe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), pp. 3–4. 15 See, respectively, Derek Dunne, Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Linda Woodbridge, English Revenge Drama: Money, Resistance, Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Thomas Rist, Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For an analysis of the broader historical development of this genre, see John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 16 Goran Stanivukovic and John H. Cameron, Tragedies of the English Renaissance: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

1

De casibus tragedy: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Andrew Duxfield

Introduction Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, As olde books maken us memorie, Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee, And is yfallen out of heigh degree Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.1

So says Chaucer’s monk in the prologue to his contribution to The Canterbury Tales (c. 1388–1400). His tale represents the first notable English contribution to a tradition that began with an earlier fourteenth-century Latin work by Giovanni Boccaccio, the title of which is reproduced in the tale’s headnote: ‘Here bigynneth the Monkes Tale / De Casibus Virorum Illustrium [on the fates of famous men]’.2 Boccaccio’s De Casibus (c. 1355–60) is a voluminous collection of exemplary prose narratives detailing the demise of great historical, biblical and mythological figures. The stories are varied and complex, but their overriding theme is the mutability of Fortune; they teach the powerful that what they might presume to be a permanent state of prosperity is in fact liable to be overturned at any moment and that in such circumstances it is unwise to invest heavily or take excessive pride in earthly matters. In The Canterbury Tales, the monk follows the Boccaccian model in offering his own much shorter set of tales, detailing the falls of figures from Lucifer to Croesus, but departs from Boccaccio in referring to them as tragedies. The monk’s definition of the term differs in some important ways from the conventional, Aristotelian model of tragedy to which students of Renaissance literature are so often referred. Firstly, these tragedies are to be found in old books rather than on the stage. Secondly, the monk tells us that tragedy deals in the fall of great men from prosperity to ruin, but gives no indication of why these men suffer this fate; in this kind of tragedy, the great man falls not as a logical and predictable result of a particular flaw or

12

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

wrongdoing, but, conversely, as a demonstration of the arbitrary and illogical nature of earthly events. Chaucer’s tragic model is consistent with a widespread medieval understanding of tragedy as a genre of historical writing that encouraged a contempt for worldly matters by demonstrating the inconstancy of Fortune. According to this understanding, tragic downfalls are not punishments but expressions of the idea that Fortune ultimately catches up with all of us, whoever we might happen to be (although, as we will see, this model would often awkwardly co-exist within the same texts with a more providential logic). By the time the professional theatres were flourishing in late Elizabethan London, this notion of tragedy had lost its monopoly, as dramatists turned to classical precursors such as Seneca for inspiration. Nonetheless, the de casibus tradition continued to flourish in the second half of the sixteenth century, and continued to exert influence over the creative work of early modern dramatists. In this chapter, as well as briefly tracing the genealogy of the de casibus tradition from Boccaccio to Elizabethan London, I will examine the influence of and engagement with the de casibus tradition in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587). In this reading, I aim to show that Marlowe’s drama exploits a tension that lies at the heart of all de casibus tragedy: namely a tension between understandings of worldly events as governed by divine providence, on the one hand, or by the whims of Fortune, on the other. Marlowe’s indebtedness to the drama of the medieval period has been long established; here I hope to demonstrate the imaginative use he makes of the period’s narrative and poetic tradition. The English de casibus tradition While ‘The Monk’s Tale’ is the earliest English engagement with De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, the most significant contribution to the establishment of an English de casibus tradition was made by John Lydgate, who in 1431 began work on The Fall of Princes, an ambitious poetic translation of Boccaccio’s work. The Fall of Princes is both a loose and an indirect translation; Lydgate based his text on Les Cas des nobles hommes et femmes, a French translation – itself somewhat liberal – of Boccaccio’s De Casibus by Laurent de Premierfait. Lydgate makes considerable alterations to both the Latin and French versions, including the introduction of a framing narrative device in which the poem’s tragic figures, from Adam and Eve to John II of France, present themselves one after another and relate their stories to ‘John Bochas’, who is working on De Casibus in his study. Another crucial departure from Lydgate’s sources seems to have originated in a demand from his patron, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who stipulated that an ‘envoy’ – a short verse postscript – should be added to each narrative, detailing for the reader the political and ethical lessons to be gleaned from its events.3 Lydgate’s patronage by such a senior establishment figure, and the apparent attempt by that patron to enforce a degree of moral certitude on the



De casibus tragedy

13

poet’s work, have contributed to a sense, predominant for much of its critical history, that The Fall of Princes is essentially an exercise in bland conservatism, conceived in the service of established power and eked out on an unnecessarily grand scale.4 Of particular note is an exquisitely brutal literarycritical hatchet job by Joseph Ritson, who in his Bibliographica Poetica (1802) lamented the ‘stupid and fatigueing productions’ of ‘this voluminous, prosaic, and drivelling monk’.5 Nevertheless, the reputation of Lydgate, and of English poetry between Chaucer and Wyatt more broadly, has undergone some rehabilitation since the latter part of the twentieth century, with critics beginning to observe a degree of subversive vitality and political engagement in the work.6 Whatever the vicissitudes of its modern critical afterlife, The Fall of Princes was an undoubted success at the time of its production, and for at least a century after that. Despite its ‘colossal length … and the consequent expense of production’, A. S. G. Edwards notes that the poem ‘survives complete in nearly forty fifteenth-century manuscripts, many high quality productions’, and that these manuscripts ‘continued to be read into the sixteenth century’.7 Richard Pynson produced the first printed edition of the poem in 1494, and it was reprinted once in 1527 and three times in or around 1554. These would prove to be the last editions before the twentieth century.8 In 1555 an ultimately abortive project was underway to produce an edition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes with a continuation that both brought it up to date and turned its attention to English concerns. While this edition did not transpire – possibly as a result of official suppression – the preparations put in place for it would, four years later, give rise to the first edition of The Mirror for Magistrates (1559).9 The Mirror was a project executed by a committee of writers headed by William Baldwin.10 While the Mirror was not, as had been initially planned, published as an extension of The Fall of Princes, Baldwin’s preface to the reader makes clear the influence of Lydgate’s poem both in the origin of the project and in the process of its completion; as well as noting the project’s original intention to go ‘from where as Bochas lefte, unto the presente time’, Baldwin notes that once his syndicate of seven co-authors was assembled, he ‘resorted vnto them, bering with me the booke of Bochas, translated by Dan Lidgate, for better obseruacion of his order’.11 Despite this clear statement of its genealogy, however, the approach of the Mirror differs from that of the Fall in a number of interesting ways. The text dispenses with Lydgate’s envoys, instead interlinking the tragedies with prose sections in which Baldwin and his committee of writers discuss the aesthetic merits and ethical and political implications of what has preceded; while these discussions usually result in a consensus, this device allows a plurality of responses to each of the stories to be voiced in a way that is not facilitated by Lydgate’s model. The tragedies themselves take on a more immediate form: the intermediary narrative device – ‘Bochas’ – is here dispensed with, and the subject of each tragedy instead narrates his or her own demise, in most cases

14

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

finishing with a short lament that, along with the prose links, takes over some of the didactic functions of Lydgate’s envoys. Fulfilling the promise to produce a Fall of Princes specifically focused on English concerns, the 1559 edition of the Mirror follows the events of the Wars of the Roses, from the reigns of Richard II to Edward IV, using Edward Hall’s Chronicles as its principal source.12 The 1559 edition of Mirror was only the first instalment of a continually evolving project. There followed an edition of 1563, which added a new series of tragedies taking the narratives to the end of the reign of Richard III, and further adjustments occurred in an edition of 1578. Alongside this, what has tended to be considered an alternative Mirror tradition emerged in 1574, with the publication of John Higgins’s The First Part of the Mirror for Magistrates, which applied the de casibus treatment to Britain’s mythical past, from the country’s founder Brutus to its defender against the invasions of Julius Caesar, Nennius. This work was published by Thomas Marshe, who subsequently reprinted the ‘original’ Mirror under the title The Last Part of the Mirror for Magistrates. Higgins’s prequel was followed in 1578 by Thomas Blenerhasset’s The Second Part of The Mirror for Magistrates, which continued the narrative to the reign of King Harold. The convoluted publication history of the Mirror took a final turn in 1587, around the time Marlowe was enjoying his first public theatrical success with Tamburlaine the Great, when an edition was published which combined the ‘original’ Mirror with Higgins’s First Part, incorporated further additions but omitted Blenerhasset’s second part.13 The work also engendered a steady flow of imitations and responses: Willard Farnham identifies a significant number of such works that appeared in the latter quarter of the sixteenth century, including ten in the last two years of Marlowe’s life.14 To talk about The Mirror for Magistrates, then, is to talk not about a single work with a unilateral ethical and aesthetic identity but about an evolving, polyvocal and textually unstable tradition. It was a collaborative project which quickly outgrew its original conceptual boundaries and underwent a thirty-year process of emendation, re-iteration and appropriation. This process helped to ensure that tragic verse narratives concerning the instability of worldly fortune enjoyed a period of vitality in England that was relatively unbroken from the late fourteenth century to the emergence of tragedy on the public stages in the late sixteenth century. Providence and Fortune Lydgate’s Fall is explicit from its outset regarding the determining role Fortune will play in the work. The work’s prologue states the author’s hope that ‘sundry princes’, upon reading the work, would understand: That thinges all where fortune may attayne Be transitorye of condicion



De casibus tragedy

15

for she of kynde is hasty and sodeyn Contrariouse her course for to restreyne Of wilfulnesse she is so variable Whan men moost trust than is she moost chaungable.15

Likewise, in the prologue to the Mirror, Baldwin relates how the work’s printer had asked him: to procure to haue the storye contynewed from where as Bochas lefte, vnto this presente time, chiefly of suche as Fortune had dalyed with here in this ylande: which might be as a myrrour for al men as well noble as others, to show the slyppery deceytes of the waueryng lady, and the due reward of all kinde of vices.16

The fickleness of Fortune is ostensibly the root from which the moral universe of the de casibus tradition springs; the reader should learn that the pursuit, and even the attainment, of earthly power is at best precarious and at worst futile, since Fortune’s defining characteristic is that she is always liable to execute a ‘sodeyn’ and ‘slyppery’ redistribution of her favour. The enduring visual encapsulation of this idea is, of course, her wheel, on which those who are carried to the top are soon guaranteed a sharp descent. From these stories, the respective prologues suggest, a reader will come to understand that the concerns of this world ought to be held in contempt, since terrestrial success or failure depend not on merit or culpability, but on the arbitrary whims of Fortune. Better to live a simple life devoted to the consideration of spiritual truths and devotion to God, whose realm is not subject to the mutability that reigns in the sublunary world. This contemptus mundi morality, and its manifestation in the de casibus tradition from Boccaccio onwards, owes a great deal to Boethius’s sixthcentury work The Consolation of Philosophy, in which Fortune’s wheel makes its earliest known appearance. In The Consolation, the imprisoned and condemned Boethius is transfigured from a state of lamentation to one of enlightenment by a debate with Lady Philosophy, who teaches him that the losses he so keenly feels are not really losses at all: I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with grief at the suddenness of her desertion. If you can recall to mind her character, her methods, and the kind of favour she proffers, you will see that in her you did not have and did not lose anything of value.17

Through his dialogue with Philosophy, Boethius comes to realise that material fortune is essentially meaningless, and that the true good resides in philosophical and spiritual wisdom: ‘Why’, asks Philosophy, ‘do you mortal men seek after happiness outside yourselves, when it lies within you?’.18 It is in Boethius that contemptus mundi philosophy, argued on the basis of the earthly sovereignty of Fortune, is given its most sophisticated and

16

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

enduring expression, and it is an expression of this philosophy with which the late-medieval de casibus authors were familiar; Chaucer translated the text into middle English, a fact to which Lydgate refers in the prologue to The Fall.19 In inheriting this Boethian world view, however, the de casibus authors also inherited a problem with which Boethius himself wrestles in the Consolation. The idea of Fortune’s predominance over earthly concerns provides a clear logical basis for holding the world in contempt, but it also sits rather uncomfortably alongside any notion of divine providence. If God is truly omnipotent, how can the responsibility for earthly successes and failures be attributed to an entirely arbitrary force? If God knows all, he must know all future events, which in turn means that their occurrence must already have been pre-established; but how can events be simultaneously random and preordained? While Boethius attributes earthly successes and failures to the ‘domineering hand’ of Fortune, he is unwilling to accept the apparently logical conclusion that arises from this: that earthly affairs, since governed by chance, lie outside the remit of God’s plan.20 Boethius tackles this problem with a discussion of temporal metaphysics. Since God is eternal, he experiences time in a different manner to those who are not eternal; those belonging to the latter group live through time in a linear fashion, moving from a past that has happened into a future that is yet to exist. In contrast, Boethius has Philosophy define the eternal as ‘the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life’;21 to be eternal is not simply to live forever, but to live an existence that encompasses all eternity at once, in an eternal present. Therefore, the argument goes, God’s knowledge of what for a mortal being is a future event does not render it predetermined, as His knowledge of it is not, strictly speaking, foreknowledge. As such, God can possess eternal knowledge of events without predetermining their occurrence, and, accordingly, his omnipotence need not obviate the earthly tyranny of Fortune.22 The late medieval and early modern de casibus authors who drew inspiration from Boethius were less able, however, to neatly reconcile the idea of a world governed by Fortune with that of a world in which earthly misdeeds are visited with divine punishment. The standard position in the limited early twentieth-century criticism on the de casibus tradition was to suggest that in its late medieval manifestation – in Chaucer and Lydgate – it maintained a contemptus mundi morality based on Fortune, while in its early modern manifestations – the various iterations of the Mirror – it gravitated towards a morality based on a direct providential relationship between the wickedness of one’s actions and the grisliness of one’s fate. Henry H. Adams states, for example, that ‘during the sixteenth century the idea of fortune gradually retreated in the minds of writers, to be replaced by that of God’s retributive justice’.23 According to this view, the tradition begins with Boccaccio adhering strictly to Fortune as the motivating logic informing his narratives, is



De casibus tragedy

17

developed via Lydgate, who retains a predominantly Fortune-based morality but who introduces a providential reasoning to a number of his tragedies, and culminates in the Mirror, which pays lip service to the whims of Fortune but which ultimately settles on a monitory rationale based on divine retribution (note that in the passage quoted above Baldwin promises to show both the ‘slyppery deceytes of the wauerying lady’ and ‘the due reward of all kinde of vices’).24 This shift was, according to an influential study by Willard Farnham, accompanied by a related move away from a medieval-minded contempt for the world, which Fortune was so useful in fostering, and towards a more Renaissance-minded worldliness informed by humanism and emergent notions of individualism.25 As interest in the de casibus tradition has revived since the late twentieth century, though, the linearity of this progression from Fortune to providence, and from contempt for the world to worldliness, has been increasingly called into question. As early as 1949, William Peery made a case for the Mirror being much less unilaterally providentialist in its outlook than the critical consensus had previously asserted, while three decades later Frederick Kiefer argued that Fortune and providence play oppositional yet complementary roles in the text, the former serving to provide an ethical rationale in those narratives where the historical source material appears resistant to a providential explication.26 The earlier end of the linear progression from Fortune to providence has also been subjected to complication by recent criticism: Nigel Mortimer identifies the co-existence in The Fall of Princes of envoys attributing the events of its narratives on the one hand to Fortune and on the other to providence, while Paul Strohm argues that Lydgate’s poem infuses the contemptus mundi narratives, which he inherited from Boccaccio and Premierfait, with a proto-Machiavellian interest in worldly pragmatism.27 From the early days of its introduction into English literary culture, then, the de casibus tragedy is a polyvalent phenomenon, characterised by competing ethical and theological ways of understanding the events of history. Inherent to the genre, in particular, are tensions along two axes: one between earthly Fortune and divine providence, and another between contempt for the world and a concerted interest in terrestrial matters. Taking Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great as a case in point, I aim to show some of the ways in which Elizabethan stage tragedy made extensive creative use of these tensions. Tamburlaine the Great and the de casibus tradition To read the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great as de casibus tragedy – or at least as representing an engagement with the de casibus tradition – is to take an unusual but not a unique approach. Two critics who have conducted such readings are Willard Farnham, as part of his large-scale study of the ‘medieval heritage’ of early modern drama, and, more recently, Troni Y.

18

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Grande.28 Both critics read the plays as recalling but in one way or another wilfully undermining the moral logic of de casibus tragedy. Farnham goes as far as to describe Tamburlaine as ‘a medieval tragedy reversed, a rebellious violation of all that De Casibus tragedy had set out to convey’.29 Where the de casibus tradition promoted a contempt for, or at the very least a suspicion of, earthly achievements, Marlowe ‘gave himself completely to a drama of untrammeled worldly success’.30 In a similar reading, Grande contends that the plays generate a radical ambiguity by interweaving conventions belonging to two distinct and contradictory genres: on the one hand, de casibus tragedy, which for Grande demands that the protagonist’s earthly pride should occasion a fitting and monitory punishment, and, on the other, an instance of an emergent ‘heroic tragedy’, which unashamedly valorises its protagonist’s worldly achievements. Both of these readings are illuminating and inform much of what follows, but my own reading will depart from them in a couple of important ways. Firstly, Farnham’s interpretation in particular relies upon an understanding of Tamburlaine as an unequivocal celebration of its protagonist’s achievements. Criticism of the plays over the last thirty years has done much to complicate that notion, and a reading of the play in relation to the de casibus tradition needs to account for the work’s now widely recognised moral ambiguity.31 Secondly, where Grande conceives of the Tamburlaine plays as exhibiting a generic tension between a straightforwardly providential version of de casibus tragedy and a heroic form of tragedy that runs directly counter to it, I read the plays as exploiting and manipulating tensions between competing conceptions of tragedy that are already present within the de casibus tradition. Regardless of what conclusions one draws from them, the parallels with and allusions to the de casibus tradition are numerous in the Tamburlaine plays. In its closing lines, the prologue encourages the audience to ‘View but his picture in this tragic glass / And then applaud his fortunes as you please’ (I.Prologue.7–8),32 simultaneously evoking the notion of tragedy-asmirror – a notion doubtless reinvigorated by the recent publication of a new edition of Mirror for Magistrates – and alluding to the concept of fortune. Fortune is a subject to which the plays return with metronomic regularity, as characters variously celebrate, bemoan, defy or appeal to her primacy. Some of these references are made in passing and suggest a presumption of Fortune’s supremacy: early in the first part, for example, Menaphon counsels Cosroe not to lament the incompetent kingship of his brother, Mycetes, ‘Since Fortune gives you opportunity / To gain the title of a conqueror / By curing of this maimèd empery’ (1.I.i.124–6), while in the opening scene of the second part the Natolian king Orcanes reveals the true nature of his fears: ‘Slavonians, Almains, Rutters, Muffs and Danes / Fear not Orcanes, but great Tamburlaine – / Nor he, but Fortune that hath made him great’ (2.I.i.58–60). A more sustained appeal to a traditional de casibus understanding of Fortune is made by Callapine, who in anticipation of his final confrontation



De casibus tragedy

19

with the Scythian conqueror takes comfort from the deity’s renowned mutability: We shall not need to nourish any doubt But that proud Fortune, who hath followed long The martial sword of mighty Tamburlaine, Will now retain her old inconstancy And raise our honours to as high a pitch In this our strong and fortunate encounter. (2.III.i.27–32)

For Callapine, Tamburlaine’s downfall is inevitable, not because of any providential sense of deserved punishment, but simply because this is how Fortune works: wherever her favour lies today, it will lie somewhere else tomorrow. Of course, Callapine’s faith in Fortune turns out to be misplaced, as Tamburlaine soon adds him to his list of vanquished enemies. In one sense this accords entirely with the de casibus notion of Fortune’s slipperiness; the moment Callapine puts his faith in Fortune’s capriciousness working in his favour is the moment that she begins to appear unwaveringly constant in her favouring of Tamburlaine. To place one’s trust in Fortune, even if that is to trust her to be untrustworthy, is to seal one’s own fate. But at the same time as Callapine is given this lesson in de casibus morality – indeed, as a necessary condition of Callapine receiving this lesson – Tamburlaine seems to be exempt from its rules, as Fortune’s favouring of him appears to continue unabated. Tamburlaine’s audacious declaration early in the first part that ‘I hold the fates bound fast in iron chains / And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about’ (1.I.ii.173–4) sends a clear signal to readers or audiences familiar with the de casibus tradition that an impending fall is likely, and elsewhere in the Marlowe canon this kind of expectation turns out to be justified: a similar boast made by Mortimer Jr in Edward II is almost immediately succeeded by his downfall, for example.33 But, as Grande’s reading of the play notes, Tamburlaine’s ‘punishment’ for his imperious dismissal of Fortune is either unusually dilatory or even arguably never transpires at all. Indeed, such is the absence of any repercussion for his claims that the plays’ other characters begin to believe and even echo them, most notably when Anippe reassures a concerned Zenocrate with the following appeal: Madam, content yourself and be resolved Your love hath Fortune so at his command That she shall stay, and turn her wheel no more As long as life maintains his mighty arm That fights for honour to adorn your head. (1.V.i.373–7)

According to this view, Fortune has effectively ceased to be Fortune, and her characteristic instability has been transformed into stasis. As well as dismissing Fortune herself, Tamburlaine directly contradicts the contemptus mundi morality that de casibus tragedy traditionally uses her to elucidate: in the

20

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

play’s most famous speech, he declares that ‘Nature, that framed us of four elements / Warring within our breasts for regiment, / Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds’, and that, as a result of this, no prize can be greater valued than ‘the ripest fruit of all, / That perfect bliss and sole felicity, / The sweet fruition of an earthly crown’ (1.II.vii.18–20; 27–9). It is difficult to imagine a more eloquent expression of precisely the kind of thinking at which Fortune-based de casibus tragedy took aim, yet for another eight acts Tamburlaine’s successes continue to pile one upon the other. It is also striking that Tamburlaine’s achievements are of a kind specifically singled out for condemnation in Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. Much is made in the first act of Tamburlaine’s modest origins, as he volubly espouses a meritocratic world view, asserting to Zenocrate that ‘I am a lord, and so my deeds shall prove, / And yet a shepherd by my parentage’, before memorably rendering this idea visible by exchanging his shepherd’s weeds for ‘complete armour’ and ‘curtle axe’ (1.I.ii.34–5; 42). But Tamburlaine’s stage-managed metamorphosis, however impressive, cannot entirely divest him of the spectre of his low birth; as Orcanes reminds him in the third act of part two, for all of his power, he remains, in the eyes of those with whom he presumes to seek war, a ‘shepherd’s issue, base-born Tamburlaine’ (2.III.v.77). That Tamburlaine’s origin is raised both by himself and his opponents is significant in a de casibus context, since this places him in a category of individual singled out by Lydgate as being most likely to suffer a precipitous fall. In his narrative detailing the rise to power of Flavius Rufinus, ‘chamberlain’ to the eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I, Lydgate notes that ‘Hye clymbinge up hath oft an unware fall / And specyally whan it is sodeyn / fro lowe degre to estate imperiall’; such is the fate of those who ‘have forget the grounde of their gynnynge’.34 Another of Lydgate’s instances of sudden social climbing results in a particularly resonant outcome in terms of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays. In the narrative of the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, a knight who propelled himself into power by marrying the widow of Constantine, a reversal of this great fortune is occasioned by the arrival of Alp Arslan (rendered here as ‘Belset Tarquynyan’), the sultan of the Seljuk empire. After being defeated in battle, Diogenes suffers the following indignity at the hands of his conqueror: Take he was and brought by great disdeyne In whom as tho there was no resistence To kynge belset called tar[q]uynyan And whan he cam to his prsence Ageyns him was yove this sentence To lye down plat and that kinge belset Shulde take his fote and on his throte set This was done for an hye despite Dyogenes brought forth on a Cheyne without reverence favoure or respite



De casibus tragedy

21

At great festys assigned was his payne And aldrelaste put out his iyen twene The whele of fortune tourneth as a ball Sodeyn clymbynge axeth a sodeyn fall.35

This passage anticipates Tamburlaine’s notorious treatment of Bajazeth in part one of Marlowe’s play: he, too, is used as a footstool by his conqueror, and is presented captive, ‘without reverence favoure or respite’ at a lavish feast. I do not wish to suggest that this episode in Lydgate represents an undiscovered source for Marlowe’s play; the humiliation of Bajazeth is detailed in a number of sixteenth-century chronicles that have been identified as likely sources of inspiration for the scene.36 But the parallels between Lydgate’s narrative and the Bajazeth episodes in the play are noteworthy, not least in terms of the moral interpretation that Lydgate appends to the story: Diogenes’s humiliation is another exemplar of the de casibus notion that a rapid elevation in status often precedes an equally swift demise. What is particularly interesting is that both of Marlowe’s most universally accepted sources interpret the humiliation of Bajazeth in a similar manner. Thomas Fortescue’s The Forest, which translates material from Pedro Mexia’s 1542 chronicle Silva de Varia Leción, recounts how Bajazeth was presented to the great Tamburlaine, who incontinently closed him up in a cage of iron, carrying him still with him whithersoever he after went, pasturing him with the crumbs that fell from his table, and with other bad morsels, as he had been a dog. Whence assuredly we may learn not so much to affy in riches, or in the pomp of this world, for as much as he that yesterday was prince and lord of all the world almost, is this day fallen into such extreme misery that he liveth worse than a dog.37

Marlowe’s other main source, Petrus Perondinus’s chronicle Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum Imperatoris Vita (1553), extracts from the episode a similar lesson: He would humiliate him by using him as a mounting-block, stepping on to his back as he crouched; when he ate, he kept him tied up like a dog under a threelegged table, to be the butt of all as he ate the crumbs and scraps. For the rest of the time he was kept in an iron cage like a wild animal, a pitiable spectacle, a prime example of human affairs and of the fickleness of Fortune.38

Crucially, this renders Tamburlaine a bifurcated figure in de casibus terms. As a shepherd who has risen to imperial heights he is an example par excellence of the kind of rapid social climbing and pride in earthly matters that ‘ought’ to precede a swift turn of Fortune’s wheel, yet as a humiliator of proud emperors he is also an instrument through which Fortune makes such turns of the wheel at the expense of others. Owing in a most obvious sense to their status as drama, the plays lack the narrative voice that serves in Marlowe’s sources to expound the moral significance of Tamburlaine’s deeds.

22

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

But for a brief moment Tamburlaine’s position on the knife-edge between finding himself Fortune’s agent and Fortune’s fool is clearly articulated, when Zenocrate retreats from the scene of her husband’s slaughter of the virgins at Damascus to find the brained corpses of Bajazeth and Zabina: Those that are proud of fickle empery And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp – Behold the Turk and his great emperess! Ah Tamburlaine my love, sweet Tamburlaine, That fightest for sceptres and for slippery crowns, Behold the Turk and his great emperess! (1.V.i.353–8)

Zenocrate’s plea is a clear articulation of the logic of Fortune-based de casibus tragedy, confirming the significance of episodes in the play that audience members would have already recognised as tropes from the narrative tragic tradition. Yet for all that Zenocrate might seem like the best candidate for a moral raisonneur in the plays, the continued successes of the succeeding five acts do not seem to bear out her warning. Instead, the plays repeatedly evoke the fortunal logic of de casibus tragedy in order to apparently undermine it. One reason that the plays do not explicitly follow through on the contemptus mundi morality that they seem at times to be espousing is that, as in collections of de casibus narratives like The Fall of Princes and The Mirror for Magistrates, the sublunary supremacy of Fortune faces competition in this play-world from an understanding of the world based on more directly providential divine intervention. Sigismund, after his defeat at the hands of Gazellus and Orcanes, against whom he has conspired dishonourably, interprets his fall in this way, acknowledging that ‘God hath thundered vengeance from on high / For my accursed and hateful perjury’ (2.II.iii.2–3). The clarity of Sigismund’s providential thinking is not characteristic of the play as a whole, however; just a few lines later, for example, Sigismund’s enemies consider a range of authorities to whom the same event might be attributed. The Muslim Orcanes, noting that ‘Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend’ (2.II.iii.11), considers the possibility that his victory over his Christian opponent could be attributed either to the support of the prophet associated with his own faith, or to Christ’s punishment of the falsehood of one his own followers. Gazellus’s response to this suggests a third, demystifying explanation: ‘’Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord, / Whose power is often proved [i.e. understood as] a miracle’ (2.II.iii.31–2). Gazellus suggests that to attribute the outcome of the battle to any deity or prophet is to rationalise after the fact what are merely random events (as the lower case ‘f’ implies, Gazellus employs the term ‘fortune’ to refer simply to luck). In the space of a few lines, then, one materialistic and two alternative providential interpretations of the same event are offered.



De casibus tragedy

23

The question of direct divine intervention is equally ambiguous when considered in relation to the plays’ protagonist. Just as the plays relate the idea of Tamburlaine doing the work of Fortune, they also allow him to present himself as an instrument of God’s punishment. As Roy Battenhouse notes, Tamburlaine evokes a providential theological tradition by styling himself as a ‘scourge of God’, from whom the wicked receive their divine retribution.39 In one of several examples of this kind of self-projection, Tamburlaine, faced with a horrified response to the killing of his son, Calyphas, explains to the king of Jerusalem that ‘I execute, enjoined me from above, / To scourge the pride of such as Heaven abhors’, before describing himself a few lines later as ‘The scourge of God and terror of the world’ (2.IV.i.148–9; 154). Mark Hutchings observes in the phrase a ‘beautiful ambiguity’, positioning Tamburlaine as both one who scourges on behalf of God and one who scourges God;40 Tamburlaine demonstrates at various points attitudes that seem to accord with both interpretations of the phrase, asserting near the beginning of part one that any who attempted to strike him with a sword would find that ‘Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven / To ward the blow and shield me safe from harm’ (1.I.ii.179–80), and near the end of part one that ‘Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan, / Fearing my power should pull him from his throne’ (1.V.i.453–4).41 As with his braving of Fortune, no direct consequence seems to emerge from this direct affront to divine authority. The question of providence, and the source from which it may or may not derive, is thus left unresolved by these plays; specific events are attributed variously to the intervention of different deities and to the vagaries of chance, and outrageous acts of hubris that might be expected to elicit a providential response pass by without incident. Crucially, however, while the plays undermine and complicate both the fortunal and providential frameworks of de casibus tragedy, they do not dismiss them altogether. Indeed, in the climactic (or perhaps anti-climactic) scenes of the second part, the sequence of events surrounding Tamburlaine’s death and the manner of their staging make available both a providential and a contemptus mundi reading, albeit in an oblique fashion. This sequence of events ostensibly, although not unquestionably, begins shortly after Tamburlaine’s defeat of Babylon when, apparently struck by the lack of either divine or mortal resistance to his military advances against his Muslim enemies, the conqueror stages a burning of the Qu’uran and challenges Mohammad to take vengeance on him. In doing so, Tamburlaine both dismisses the providential capacity of one religious authority and claims to act on behalf of another: In vain, I see, men worship Mahomet: My sword hath sent millions of Turks to hell, Slew all his priests, his kinsmen, and his friends, And yet I live untouched by Mahomet.

24

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

There is a God full of revenging wrath, From whom the thunder and the lightning breaks, Whose scourge I am, and him will I obey. So, Casane, fling them in the fire. (2.V.i.178–85)

Thirty-two lines later, Tamburlaine begins to come down with a vaguely defined complaint, the cause of which is treated by the warlord and his lieutenant as a puzzling mystery: tamburlaine:  But stay, I feel myself distempered suddenly. techelles:  What is it dares distemper Tamburlaine? tamburlaine:  Something, Techelles, but I know not what. (2.V.i.217–19)

Placed directly alongside his provocation of Mohammad, the bafflement of Tamburlaine and Techelles takes on an absurdly comic quality, but in the context of the play the time elapsed between the provocation and the onset of the fatal distemper, coupled with the refusal of the play or any of its characters to explicitly link the former with the latter, has been sufficient to produce disagreement among critics as to the nature of the malady. J. B. Steane, for example, reads the episode providentially, stating that ‘if any placing can be assumed to be pointed and deliberate, this can’, while Daniel Vitkus, who refers to the plays’ ‘anti-providentialism’, suggests that ‘Tamburlaine’s death is caused by a radically material disease of the body, an elemental imbalance that is not produced by anything above or beyond his own physical anatomy’.42 What is significant in relation to the present discussion is that, just as in the case of the fall of Sigismund, the cause of Tamburlaine’s demise is the subject of a profound uncertainty; the plays refuse to assert a correct moral or theological interpretation of their protagonist’s death, making equally plausible the suggestions that it is the result solely of an arbitrarily occurring physiological disorder or of a direct divine response to an act of hubris. Crucially, these competing interpretations of the plays’ climax correlate with the competing moral logics at work in the de casibus tradition. Reading Tamburlaine’s death as a direct outcome of his vaunts against Mohammad, of course, places the plays into a providential framework, however belated the punishment may be. (And how typically provocative of Marlowe to construct events in such a way that if one reads Tamburlaine’s fall in these terms, it is an affront not to God or Christ but to Mohammad that has finally occasioned heavenly intervention.) If, however, Tamburlaine’s distemper is not the product of divine intervention, then its sudden onset – at the point where Tamburlaine’s power and pride seem to be at their peak – is an example of exactly the kind of arbitrariness of events for which Fortune stands as a metaphor. Whether or not Tamburlaine recognises a contemptus mundi moral to his own death – his declaration that ‘In vain I strive and rail against those powers / That mean t’invest me in a higher throne, / As much too high for this disdainful earth’ suggests that he understands it rather



De casibus tragedy

25

differently (2.V.iii.120–2) – the spectacle of this hitherto indestructible man on his deathbed, brought low by illness and counting on a map the conquests he has failed to achieve, is bound to provoke some audiences to consider the absurdity of earthly ambition and pride in terrestrial achievements. Rather than evoking a monolithic sense of the de casibus tradition in order to undermine it, then, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine exploits an unresolved generic and theological tension that is inherent in the de casibus tradition itself. De casibus tragedy, with its conflicting models based on Fortune and providence – each promoting mutually incompatible notions of earthly causality – exhibits a spiritual confusion that is put to creative use by Marlowe in the construction of the profoundly agnostic world of these plays, which repeatedly ask but pointedly refuse to answer questions about the extent of divine involvement in mundane lives. Notes 1 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Prologue of The Monk’s Tale’, The Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 240–1, ll. 1971–81. 2 Ibid., p. 241. 3 See Giovanni Boccaccio, The Fall of Princys Princessys and Other Nobles, trans. John Lydgate (London: Richard Pynson, 1494; repr. Norwood, NJ: 1976), sig. F3v. In listing Boccaccio as author I follow the facsimile edition, but as should be clear, this is a problematic attribution. Duke Humphrey would himself go on to feature as a character both in de casibus tragedy and on the Shakespearean stage: see Lily B. Campbell (ed.), The Mirror for Magistrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938; repr. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1960), pp. 445–60; and William Shakespeare, 1 & 2 Henry VI, in Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2008), pp. 1098–235. 4 On Lydgate’s critical reception see Nigel Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–24; and David Lawton, ‘Dullness and the Fifteenth Century’, English Literary History, 54.4 (1987), pp. 761–99. On the length of the poem, see Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, p. 1. 5 Joseph Ritson, Bibliographica Poetica: A Catalogue of the Engleish Poets of the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centurys, With a Short Account of Their Works (London: C. Roworth, 1802), pp. 87–8. 6 See Lawton, ‘Dullness’; Paul Strohm, Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); and Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. 7 A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: Translation, Re-translation and History’, in Sara K. Barker and Brenda M. Hosington (eds), Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473–1640 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 21–34 (p. 24). 8 Ibid., p. 23.

26

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

9 On the possible suppression of the 1555 edition see Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, pp. 3–16; John Thompson, ‘Reading Lydgate in Post-Reformation England’, in A. J. Minnis (ed.), Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 181–209; and Alexandra Gillespie, Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate and their Books, 1473–1557 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 214–28, and Strohm, Politique, pp. 109–10. 10 On the authorship of the Mirror, see Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, pp. 21–48. 11 Ibid., pp. 68–9. ‘Dan’ was a title used to address both members of religious orders and men of poetic or intellectual distinction. The term might have been meant in either or both senses here (OED, ‘Dan’, n. 1). 12 Baldwin and his co-authors also consulted histories by Fabian and Sir Thomas More, but ‘wherever the chronicles disagreed, the authors accepted the authority of Halle’. See Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, p. 10. See also Scott Lucas, ‘Hall’s Chronicle and the Mirror for Magistrates: History and the Tragic Pattern’, in Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 356–71. 13 On the publication history of the Mirror, see Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, pp. 3–20, and Parts Added to the Mirror for Magistrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946), pp. 3–28, 363–77. Campbell notes the existence of a further Mirror edition in 1610, arranged by Richard Niccols, but argues that it ‘cannot be integrated into the tradition’. ‘Niccols’, Campbell states, ‘played Colley Cibber to the Mirror’, p. 20. 14 Willard Farnham, ‘The Progeny of A Mirror for Magistrates’, Modern Philology, 29.4 (1932), pp. 395–410. 15 Boccaccio, Fall of Princys, sig. a2v. 16 Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, p. 68, ll. 4–8. 17 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. V. E. Watts (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 54. 18 Boethius, Consolation, p. 63. 19 See Boccaccio, Fall of Princys, sig. A3v. Mortimer states that Chaucer’s indebtedness to Boethius ‘is clearly attested not only by his translation of the Consolation, but also by his other works’. See Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, p. 165. The continuation of the Consolation’s influence and popularity into and throughout the sixteenth century is suggested by the fact that Elizabeth I translated it as a private intellectual exercise in 1593: see Lysbeth Benkert, ‘Translation as Image-Making: Elizabeth I’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy’, EMLS, 6.3 (2001), 2.1–20, https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/06-3/ benkboet.htm (accessed 7 August 2017). 20 Boethius, Consolation, p. 56. 21 Ibid. (my emphasis), p. 163. 22 Ibid., p. 168. 23 Henry H. Adams, English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy, 1575 to 1642 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), p. 21. Campbell similarly argues in her edition of the Mirror that the work ‘substitutes an analysis of divine justice for the older philosophizing on the uncertainty of fortune’. See Campbell (ed.),



De casibus tragedy

27

Mirror for Magistrates, p. 56. See also Campbell, Tudor Conceptions of History and Tragedy in ‘The Mirror for Magistrates’ (Berkley: University of California Press, 1936), pp. 17–18. 24 Campbell (ed.), Mirror for Magistrates, p. 68, ll. 7–8. 25 See William Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (Berkley: University of California Press, 1936; repr. Oxford: Blackwell, 1970). 26 See William Peery, ‘Tragic Retribution in the 1559 Mirror for Magistrates’, Studies in Philology, 46.2 (1949), pp. 113–30, and Frederick Kiefer, ‘Fortune and Providence in the Mirror for Magistrates’, Studies in Philology, 74.2 (1977), pp. 146–64. 27 See Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, pp. 59–61; and Strohm, Politique, pp. 87–132. 28 See Farnham, Medieval Heritage, pp. 368–76; and Troni Y. Grande, Marlovian Tragedy: The Play of Dilation (London: Associated University Presses, 1999), pp. 44–72. 29 Farnham, Medieval Heritage, p. 369. 30 Ibid., p. 373. 31 For recent readings that stress the moral ambiguity of the militaristic achievements dramatised in the Tamburlaine plays, see Nina Taunton, 1590s Drama and Militarism: Portrayals in Marlowe, Chapman and Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 58–62 and passim; Alan Shepard, Marlowe’s Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 21–52; Robert A. Logan, ‘Violence, Terrorism, and War in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Plays’, in Sara Munson Deats, Lagretta Tallent Lenker and Merry G. Perry (eds), War and Words: Horror and Heroism in the Literature of Warfare (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2004), pp. 65–82. On Tamburlaine as a more generally paradoxical figure, see Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 45–75; and Sara Munson Deats, ‘Mars or Gorgon? Tamburlaine and Henry V’, Marlowe Studies, 1 (2011), pp. 99–124. 32 Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, ed. J. S. Cunningham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981; repr. 1999). All further quotations will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 33 See Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, ed. Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (London: A&C Black, 1997), 25.59–63. 34 Boccaccio, Fall of Princys, sig. D6. 35 Ibid., sig. F4v. 36 See Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman, Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and Their Sources (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 69–81, for an account of the various possible sources for the plays. 37 Ibid., pp. 86–7. 38 Ibid., p. 109. The Latin source is rendered here in the translation provided by Thomas and Tydeman. 39 Roy W. Battenhouse, ‘Tamburlaine, the “Scourge of God”’, PMLA, 56.2 (1941), pp. 337–48. See also Andrew Hadfield, ‘Tamburlaine as the “Scourge of God” and The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth’, Notes and Queries, 50.4 (2003), pp. 399–400.

28

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

40 Mark Hutchings, ‘Marlowe’s “Scourge of God”’, Notes and Queries, 51.3 (2004), pp. 244–7 (p. 246). 41 See Andrew Duxfield, Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 50–4. 42 See J. B. Steane, Christopher Marlowe: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 115, n. 1; and Vitkus, Turning Turk, pp. 59, 63.

2

Biblical tragedy: George Peele’s David and Bethsabe Annaliese Connolly

In the fifth act of John Bale’s play God’s Promises (1538), King David, the Old Testament patriarch, is confronted by God the Father (Pater Coelestis) and rebuked for the idolatry of his people, his own lust for Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, Uriah: pater coelestis: david rex pius: pater coelestis: david rex pius:

David, my servant, sumwhat must I saye to the, For that tu latelye has wrought soch vanyte. Spare not blessed lorde, but saye thy pleasure to me. Of late dayes thu hast mysused Bersabe The wife of Urye, and slayne hym in the fyelde. Mercye, lorde, mercye, for doubtlesse I am defyelde.1

In God’s Promises David is one of a sequence of Old Testament patriarchs in conversation with God the Father, who represent humanity and reaffirm God’s covenant with His people. Each of the play’s seven acts is a patterned sermon in which humankind is admonished for its sinfulness, God is moved to mercy and a promise is made, confirmed by a sign and celebrated with a musical antiphon. In the case of King David, the restoration of God’s favour is marked by the promise that the Messiah will come from David’s line, and is symbolised by the building of the Temple in Jerusalem by David’s son, Solomon. Bale’s play draws upon the popularity of David’s story in homiletic literature as an exemplar of sinfulness and penitence. The details of his life and reign in the Second Book of Samuel indicate his susceptibility to the sins of lust and murder, but also outline his contrition and forgiveness, culminating in his role as the Psalmist. Rethinking biblical drama This opening snapshot from Bale’s play serves as a contextual and critical frame for this chapter’s discussion of biblical drama during the sixteenth

30

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

century, and in particular for Peele’s dramatisation of David’s story nearly sixty years later, in David and Bethsabe (1590). Comparing the two plays highlights the very different circumstances surrounding the writing and performing of biblical drama in 1538 and 1590. My diachronic approach offers an important corrective to some of the assumptions that have persisted about the relationship between drama and religious matters during the sixteenth century and about drama before Shakespeare. In the first case it has often been suggested that the Reformation instituted the decline of biblical drama and that the relationship between Protestant reformers and playing was one characterised by suspicion and opposition. The second concurrent narrative is that plays written before the mid-1580s were the crude precursors of a more sophisticated, golden age of drama. This synchronic teleology, which posits a shift from simplicity to sophistication, and from the sacred to the secular, has undergone a radical rethink in the last thirty years, particularly as critics address some of the issues raised by periodisation and the evaluative distinctions made between medieval and Renaissance drama.2 Several branches of scholarship have also contributed to a richer understanding of the religious drama written and performed during the sixteenth century. Archival research into the performance history of drama, especially in the provinces, by the pioneering project REED (Records of Early English Drama),3 has revealed a diverse, thriving theatrical landscape. The records for towns such as Norwich and Coventry, for instance, show that traditional religious drama continued to thrive during the sixteenth century and that it did so by adapting to weather the doctrinal changes produced by the Reformation. The Norwich Grocers’ Play, concerned with the Temptation of Adam and Eve, provides a fascinating example of this process in action as it exists in two versions: a ‘Catholic’ A text from 1533 and a ‘post-Reformation’ B text from 1565 and demonstrates the revision of the play to suit reformist doctrine. These important archives also show that while at politically sensitive points in the 1560s and 1570s the state acted to censor and curtail performances of some cycle plays, there was no centralised, wholesale policy of suppression of religious drama.4 The work of the REED project has been complemented by recent scholarship in the field of historicised theatre studies, specifically on the records of ‘lost plays’, providing additional evidence not only that biblical drama continued to be commissioned, written and performed during the period, but that it made the transition into the commercial theatre where models of earlier drama were appropriated by dramatists such as George Peele, Robert Greene and their contemporaries. Steggle and McInnis argue that the study of lost plays is vital since it challenges long standing critical assumptions about the prevalence of certain kinds of drama: having a more accurate sense of the true scope of dramatic output in early modern London helps guard against making unjustified inferences regarding



Biblical tragedy

31

the significance or prominence of certain genres and subject matters treated by playwrights. What strikes us as dominant or frequent may in fact be an over-represented aberration … Conversely, a low number of extant plays on a theme may have had more numerous siblings during the period of their first production.5

Biblical drama and Peele’s David and Bethsabe are a case in point. In his introduction to Peele’s David and Bethsabe Elmer M. Blistein remarks that ‘biblical drama as a whole seemed to interest neither the Elizabethan dramatist nor his audience’.6 Blistein bases his assertion on a small handful of five surviving plays from the period which deal explicitly with biblical material, were entered in the Stationers’ Register and were printed. This apparent paucity of extant biblical drama has meant that those which have survived have often been described as relics from an earlier period of drama; indeed Martha Bellinger describes David and Bethsabe as a ‘morality surviving out of season’ and seems to regard the play in the tradition of the didactic morality plays which were associated with ‘medieval’ drama written in the earlier part of the century.7 Recent work in the field has shown in fact that the Bible continued to provide a rich seam of material for the stage, indicated by the titles of lost plays detailed in the Stationers’ Register, Henslowe’s Diary and other theatrical inventories.8 These include several lost plays about David: the first, ‘The Two Sins of King David’, was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1562,9 while the second ‘Saul and David’ (c. 1580–91) focuses on David’s relationship with Saul and his accession to the throne.10 Plays about Old Testament kings, warriors and prophets were popular between 1589 and 1602, with records of at least ten lost biblical plays listed, including ‘The History of Job’ (c. 1588?),11 ‘Abraham and Lot’ (1588),12 ‘Hester and Ahasuerus’ (1594),13 ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ (1596),14 ‘Samson’ (1601–2),15 ‘Judas’ (1602),16 ‘Jephthah’ (1602),17 ‘Tobias’ (1602),18 ‘Joshua’ (1602)19 and ‘The Tragedy of Absalon’ (1602).20 By this time, however, the purpose of these figures and the plays they populated had changed: the emphasis now was upon entertainment and excess. My discussion of Peele’s David and Bethsabe will detail the ways in which the play is attuned to the religious and theatrical concerns of the 1590s and therefore complicates earlier critical narratives which have regarded later biblical plays as a medieval hangover, or simply an Elizabethan rendering of earlier religious drama. Religious and theatrical contexts The two fundamental changes which occurred between 1538 and 1590 and which had the biggest impact on biblical drama were the religious upheaval marked by the movement between Catholicism and Protestantism under the Tudors, and the proliferation of playing spaces in London, between the 1560s and the 1580s. A brief discussion of the religious and theatrical contexts for each of these plays will provide a more complex picture of the religious

32

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

drama written, printed and performed during the intervening years between Bale and Peele. Bale’s play, written in 1538, is a direct response to the confessional shift in England from Catholicism to Protestantism, when Henry VIII established a national Protestant church in 1533. This change in the religious identity of the nation was prompted by the king’s own personal desire for a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to permit his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Elsewhere in Europe religious change had already been prompted by reformers such as Martin Luther, who had sought to challenge the corruption within the Catholic church and address specific practices and aspects of doctrine which encouraged superstition and exploited the laity. The reforms instituted by Luther in 1517 included the elimination of Catholic practices such as the worship of saints, recognition of the authority of the Pope and belief in purgatory. The sacraments were reduced from seven to two to include just baptism and the Eucharist. The elimination of the sacrament of confession for example, whereby individuals could receive penance and absolution for their sins from a priest, redefined the nature of the relationship between the sinner and God: it was no longer mediated by members of the clergy but was instead more direct and encouraged private contrition and introspection rather than the previously public confession. Other reforms also worked to emphasise the individual’s engagement with the written and spoken word of God: the translation of the Bible into English and the prominence given to preaching meant that those of the Reformed church were actively encouraged to read and listen to God’s word directly rather than through the liturgy of the Latin Mass. The most significant doctrinal changes prompted by the Reformation related to the afterlife and the means by which individuals might secure their salvation. Protestants rejected the medieval (Catholic) theology which offered a system whereby salvation might be obtained by a combination of good works, prayers for souls in purgatory, and the purchase of indulgences (absolution for certain sins). Luther and other reformers argued that entrance into heaven could only be secured by God’s grace and an individual’s faith in that grace.21 John Bale (1495–1563), with whom this chapter opened, renounced his position as a Carmelite friar in 1536 and became a Protestant preacher and playwright. He secured the patronage of Thomas Cromwell, who was charged with implementing the Crown’s Protestant agenda. Cromwell and other reformers appreciated the power of drama to promote the new religion to a largely illiterate audience.22 Bale and his troupe of actors, known as Bale and his Fellows, toured extensively in England, promoting the new Protestant theology in their plays.23 One of the three main traditions of theatrical performance during the early part of the sixteenth century was performances by a professional troupe, such as Bale’s Fellows, either in the provinces or at court. The second included amateur performances of mystery or cycle plays and civic pageants by local communities in towns and cities. The third



Biblical tragedy

33

were plays performed by students at educational institutions, including universities, grammar and choir schools, and could be called upon for royal visits or for performance at court.24 Although narratives of the relationship between reformers and the drama of the sixteenth century have characterised it as one of conflict and unease, Bale’s work demonstrates that the relationship was in fact one of accommodation as existing Catholic drama was appropriated by Protestant reformers to suit their own religious and political agendas. The full title of Bale’s play is A tragedye or enterlude manyfestyng the Chiefe Promyses of God unto man by all ages in the olde lawe, from the fall of Adam to the incarnacyon of the lorde Jesus Christ, indicating that the play, like the medieval cycle plays, dramatises a history of the world from Adam to the coming of Christ, outlining God’s covenant with his people and the promise of salvation. God’s Promises is one of a trio of plays, also including John the Baptist’s Preaching and The Temptation of Our Lord, which form a mini cycle based on the earlier mystery or cycle plays.25 While the structure and title of the play signal its medieval precedents, the play’s handling of the theology of sin, repentance and salvation underline its reformist agenda. The prologue promotes the Protestant view of grace – that salvation will come from God alone – and exhorts the audience to ‘rejoice in God for your justification, / And alone in Christ to hope for your salvation’ (20–1). As Murray Roston observes, ‘behind much of the dialogue in Bale’s play may be perceived a theological dispute concerning the place of grace in Christianity’.26 In act five when David repents of his sins, God notes ‘Though thy sins be great thy inward heart’s contrition / Doth move my stomach in wonderful condition’ (639–40). Here the play registers the shift away from the Catholic rites of penance and absolution via a priest, exemplified in the sacrament of confession, to a private but more direct act of ‘contrition’ between the sinner and God Himself. In the play’s final speech Bale, as Prolocutor, restates the Protestant theology of justification: Where is now free will whom hypocrites comment? Whereby they report they may at their own pleasure Do good of themselves though grace and faith be absent, And have good intents their madness with to measure. The will of the flesh is proved here small treasure, And so is man’s will, for the grace of God doth all. (976–81)

The play concludes with a rejection of the Catholic belief in free will and good deeds and instead emphasises faith in God’s grace as the means to salvation. King David and Protestant theology David’s role as the Psalmist speaks directly to this doctrinal shift in several ways. Firstly, David had traditionally been regarded as the author of the

34

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

seven penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) which detail his sin of lust for Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah. The recitation of these Psalms was part of the Catholic church’s public ritual of contrition, confession and satisfaction. The rejection of this penitential system during the Reformation and the development of the doctrine of ‘by faith alone’ (sola fide) meant that the Psalms and Psalm translation became a site of doctrinal contestation. Psalm 51 ‘Have mercy upon me, O God’, which deals with David’s sin and God’s grace, became the focus of Reformation debate. This particular Psalm, according to Hannibal Hamlin: proved irresistible for Christian writers, who, during these decades of religious turmoil, struggled with the problematic nature of sin and repentance. Psalm 51 was also a text in which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformers, Protestant and Catholic alike, found the seeds of ideas that ultimately affected what they believed and how they worshipped.27

Sir Thomas Wyatt’s verse paraphrase of the Psalms, printed posthumously in 1549, provides an example of the ways in which the models of penance and reconciliation are given a Protestant makeover. During the course of Wyatt’s Psalms David is made aware of the nature of God’s grace which cannot be secured by the will or deeds of the king. Gradually he comes to make the Lutheran distinction between public and private acts of penance with the emphasis upon it as a spiritual rather than material undertaking. David realises that: The sacrifice, that the lorde lyketh moste Is spirite contryte, lowe harte in humble wyse Thou doeste accepte, O God, for pleasaunt hoste [sacrifice] Make Syon, Lord, accordynge to thy wyll Inward Syon, the Syon of the hoste Of hartes, Jerusalem strengthe thy walles stylle.28

Here the penance God desires is demonstrated by a ‘spirite contryte’ and ‘lowe harte’ with a focus on an inner, spiritual space, ‘Inward Syon, the Syon of the hoste / Of hartes’. For Stephen Greenblatt, Wyatt in Psalm 51 ‘captures the authentic voice of early English Protestantism, its mingled humility and militancy, its desire to submit without intermediary to God’s will’.29 Peele’s David and Bethsabe can therefore be situated within a wider Protestant tradition which used the Psalms and their author to negotiate doctrinal change concerning repentance and salvation. David, who had previously served as a pattern of certainty, in this regard now gives voice to contemporary religious doubts and despair. The play’s consideration of eschatological matters in David’s final speech (discussed below) as well as its blurring of cosmologies provide specific examples of this wider preoccupation with the consequences of Reformation theology. As the century progressed, the branch of Protestantism which became most influential in England, particularly by



Biblical tragedy

35

Elizabeth’s reign, was Calvinism, the doctrine developed by the Genevan reformer Jean Calvin and best known for the concept of predestination. Calvin developed this idea which stated that salvation is already determined by God and that from the beginning God will have decided who will receive his grace (the elect) and proceed to heaven and those who are damned (the reprobate) and will be condemned to hell. This theological development had a seismic impact on the spiritual practices of individuals and communities: it prompted intense debate about the consequences of election and reprobation, including the motivation to lead a moral life for those who have been designated as either reprobate or elect. It also encouraged an inward searching for signs of election. Although explicit discussion of religious matters was forbidden in the theatre at this time, it is clear that plays continued to address religious topics; as Paul Whitfield White suggests, ‘drama was a popular means of selecting, shaping, and channelling religious issues, issues that their audiences found intrinsically engaging’.30 Tragedies in particular, with their focus upon the death of the protagonist, afford an opportunity to rehearse contemporary debates and anxieties about the afterlife and the consequences of Calvin’s concept of predestination. The impact of the Reformation on the uses of the Psalms and specifically on David’s role as an adulterer has a particular relevance for my discussion of Peele’s David and Bethsabe. I will argue that the dramatisation of the familiar tableau of Bethsabe bathing at the start of Peele’s play is the logical consequence of the Psalms’ printed, iconographical tradition during the sixteenth century. Traditionally in psalters, primers and bibles these penitential Psalms had been prefaced by images of the Last Judgment, or by the figure of David as the prayerful penitent or with his harp (the symbol indicating his role as Psalmist). During the sixteenth century there is a shift in the type of image used with the Last Judgement and David as moral guide being replaced by a focus upon David the adulterer and his specifically sexual sin, with woodcuts of David watching the bathing Bathsheba now introducing the Psalms.31 There are a number of possible reasons for this change, including the availability of cheap prayer books, a wider readership and a gradual move from congregational use of the Psalms within church services to individuals reading and reciting the Psalms themselves. The Psalms were also used not only as part of the penitential system for the living but also for the dead and this is partly reflected in the use of the image of the Last Judgement. After the Reformation there is no longer a collective, single sense of how forgiveness and salvation might necessarily be achieved and the focus is now upon the individual and his or her relationship with God. In this way David comes to stand in as an Everyman figure in postReformation England, offering a bridge between Old Testament figures and later seventeenth-century imaginings of the Protestant pilgrim exemplified by John Bunyan’s Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).32 The Elizabethan plays of the 1580s and 1590s are characterised by excess in their plots and

36

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

staging, in particular extreme displays of violence and erotic encounters, and here playwrights such as Peele may have also taken their cues from printed prayerbooks.33 Biblical drama and dramatic form At this juncture it is worth noting several important dramaturgical developments and continuities. The first of these relates to dramatic form: the chapter has hitherto used the term ‘biblical drama’ as a catch-all term for different types of traditional religious plays such as cycle plays, morality plays and interludes written in the early part of the sixteenth century. The abiding feature of all these plays is their hybridity, a mix of comic and tragic elements with the purpose of educating and entertaining. Morality plays and interludes, focusing on religious and political conduct, frequently included the figure of the Vice and comic interactions with low-born characters as a means of communicating ideas. While there is an increasing engagement with the theories of comedy and tragedy during the century, this tradition of heterogeneity continues to be a feature of Renaissance drama. The title pages of Bale’s God’s Promises and Peele’s David and Bethsabe both advertise the plays as tragedies but can be situated within this tradition of hybridity: Bale’s play is ‘A tragedye or enterlude’, while Peele’s play deliberately appeals to the generic expectation associated with both comedy and tragedy: ‘The Love of King David and fair Bathsheba. With the Tragedie of Absalon’.34 For Bale, the term tragedy signals tone and sacred subject matter, whereas for Peele his play is a tragedy because it features suffering and death. The comic teleology and mixed form of biblical drama was also due to the ‘medieval’ Catholic theology which informed it. Morality plays such as Everyman, for example, set out the clear process by which individuals might secure their salvation, and therefore death and the preparations for death are presented as a gateway to heaven. Stories from scripture, like those from Roman or medieval history, might map onto classical or de casibus models of tragedy, but the fundamental point of tension in biblical tragedy is the idea of a reversal of fortune for the protagonist. For a figure like King David, whose world is governed by God’s providence, there may be suffering and he may commit sin, but there is always an opportunity for redemption. In this way biblical tragedy, unlike its classical counterpart, offers a model where the outcomes are fashioned in part by the individual rather than predetermined by destiny. This produces in broad terms a ‘happy’ and therefore comic ending. Here Thomas Heywood’s translation of the outline of comic and tragic form offered by the Roman playwright Terence is instructive: ‘Comedies begin in trouble and end in peace; Tragedies begin in calmes and end in tempest’.35 This model of ending is more complex in a post-Reformation landscape, particularly in the light of Calvin’s predestination which reimagines the



Biblical tragedy

37

relationship between God and humankind and offers a stark narrative of salvation and damnation. Playing opportunities The other significant development to shape the form and content of drama was the upsurge in theatrical activity in London, including the building of playhouses and the professionalisation of playing companies. Among the earliest of these buildings was the Red Lion in Whitechapel in 1567, followed by the Theatre in 1576 and the Curtain in 1577.36 James Burbage, who was responsible for building the Theatre and later the Globe, was also the leading actor of the earl of Leicester’s men. In 1574 this company was granted a royal patent which allowed them to perform throughout England but also specifically throughout the city and liberties of London.37 The Theatre provided the company with a lucrative base for performing for London audiences. These buildings and those which quickly followed and the companies who performed there instituted the start of a commercial theatre industry. Whereas earlier cycle and morality plays were performed by communities or troupes, either by invitation or to mark events in the liturgical calendar, the drama of the commercial theatres was performed before a paying audience and was open to anyone who could afford admission. The theatres operated a repertory system offering a different play every afternoon and this intensive schedule required a high turnover of new plays. Just as Bale had adopted and revised the structure and content of the earlier cycle plays in God’s Promises, so Peele adapted David’s story, not only to engage with contemporary religious matters, but also for performance in specific playing conditions. Theatre companies such as the Admiral’s Men built on the success of existing plays in their repertory – say, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus – by commissioning new plays that would recycle popular themes and motifs, such as charismatic protagonists, stage spectacle and exotic locations. These plays would also provide comparable roles for their leading actor Edward Alleyn, whose celebrity status had been confirmed by his performances in the roles of Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus.38 In 1590 David’s theatrical peers were Tamburlaine, Hieronimo and Doctor Faustus, as well as a series of Plantagenet kings; Peele therefore shapes David and his biblical material in response to the phenomenal appeal and success of these characters and plays.39 A consequence of this is to overlay the moralising function of David’s story with theatrical considerations of characterisation and staging, creating characters and plot with opportunities for extreme emotions and violence. More importantly for my discussion of Peele’s David and Bethsabe, all these plays can be grouped together by their shared scepticism about religious belief, as each protagonist exposes the faultlines within contemporary religious debate.

38

The genres of Renaissance tragedy Commercial theatre and religious doubt

David and Bethsabe engages with some of the most urgent theological issues of the Elizabethan period. The play’s thematic concern with eschatological matters, namely death, judgement and the final destination of the soul, rank it alongside the plays of Peele’s contemporaries, in particular Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.40 Peele’s play deals with the flipside of the cosmology of his contemporaries: instead of depictions of hell, the play concludes with an image of heaven as the hoped-for destination of David’s dead son, Absalon: Then happie art thou Dauids fairest sonne, That freed from the yoke of earthly toiles, And sequestred from sence of humane sinnes, Thy soule shall joy the sacred cabinet Of those devine Ideas, that present Thy changed spirit with a heaven of blisse. Then thou art gone, ah thou art gone my sonne To heaven I hope my Absalon is gone. Thy soule there plac’d in honour of the Saints Or angels clad with immortalitie, Shall reape a sevenfold grace, for all thy greefes.41

With this vision the play subscribes to the model of comic resolution discussed earlier in the chapter, since the final lines of this speech hold out the possibility of salvation, even for sinful traitors like Absalon. While these lines are given to David, rather than the play’s Chorus, it appears that the moral to draw from the plot is that of God’s mercy and forgiveness. David’s speech situates the king within an older, medieval theological system: he is the great Old Testament exemplar of a sinful man who is forgiven by God, and by extension, this forgiveness is also available to his son, Absalon. The neat moral framework offered by the imagined scene of heavenly bliss at the play’s conclusion suggests the play is operating within the co-ordinates of a preReformation landscape: David stands in for all Christians and the route to salvation is clear. Yet David’s final speech in Peele’s play cuts straight to some of the most theologically fraught questions of the Elizabethan period: where do we go when we die and what will determine how we get there? In the remainder of this chapter I will argue that the play registers these theological anxieties by re-framing David’s story within the contemporary debates about the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. After the Reformation biblical exemplars like David can no longer offer the same assurances about God’s grace and mercy for the sinful, since an individual’s status as one of the elect or reprobate is determined by God. David, like the Protestant elect, is shown seeking reassurance or signs of his election. The king’s status as God’s chosen one is repeatedly scrutinised as the play examines the king’s propensity for



Biblical tragedy

39

despair and revenge, thus infusing his story with the religious uncertainties of the period. I will trace the ways in which David and Bethsabe’s engagement with contemporary religious debate and the conditions of playing produces a more complex and fragmented vision of David, whose status as God’s chosen king speaks ironically to anxieties about Protestant election. Peele’s play dramatises David’s story from the Books of Samuel and it opens with the infamous tableau of his lust for Uriah’s wife, Bethsabe: ‘He [the Prologue] drawes a curtaine, and discovers Bethsabe with her maid bathing over a spring: she sings, and David sits above vewing her’ (23, SD). David repents of his lust for Bethsabe and his murder of her husband Uriah: I have against the Lord, I have Sinned, O sinned greevously, and loe From heavens throne doth David throw himselfe, And grone and grovell to the gates of hell. (656–9)

The prophet Nathan responds:     … Thus saith the Lord by me: David the King shall live, for he hath seene The true repentant sorrow of thy heart. (660–2)

One of the reasons for David’s apparent confidence about the fate of Absalon’s soul is his status as God’s chosen king of Israel, a point which the play repeatedly rehearses. Sadoc, the priest, for instance, confirms God’s covenant with David: be assurd, that Jacob’s righteous God, That promist never to forsake thy throne, Will still be just and pure in his vows. (1017–20)

One of the consequences of David’s position as God’s chosen one is that he has a much clearer sense of two important issues: firstly, God’s providence and secondly, the means by which he can achieve forgiveness and redemption. The opportunities to achieve salvation are available through a reciprocal relationship with God, via repentance and reconciliation. Unlike the capricious gods of Kyd’s underworld or the terrifying and remote God of Faustus’s imagination, the God of David’s story is quick to respond and make His judgement known, and is readily accessible via the prophets and holy men. One of the terms used in these discussions about David which would have had particular resonance for an Elizabethan audience is that of ‘elect’. At the start of the play David is described as ‘wise and just, / Elected to the heart of Israel’s God’ (102–3) and Bethsabe echoes this description with ‘My lord the king, elect to God’s own heart’ (106). The term confirms that David has been chosen by God, but it also points to the term from Calvinist doctrine of those who God has chosen or predestined for heaven, ‘the elect’. David’s position as God’s chosen king would speak powerfully to those audience

40

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

members wrestling with the dilemma of how to be assured of their status without an intermediary like the prophet Nathan to offer confirmation. On the face of it, David looks like the antithesis of his dramatic contemporary Doctor Faustus: David appears to be resolved of all ambiguities by a network of holy men and by a clear sense of the opportunities for repentance and redemption. On closer inspection, however, there is a clear strategy at work to desacralise David and undermine the certainties offered both by his exemplary role and his vision of salvation. David and Bethsabe shares with Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus and The Spanish Tragedy an interest in depicting competing cosmologies: although Peele’s play dramatises the story of an Old Testament king, it frequently refers to the Hebrew God as Jove. David Blistein explains in the notes for his edition of David and Bethsabe that the name Jove in the play denotes ‘Not the Roman deity but the Hebrew Jehovah’,42 while David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen suggest in their notes for Doctor Faustus: ‘This pagan name (sometimes confused with the Hebrew ‘Jehovah’) was often applied to the Christian God in Renaissance writings’.43 This potential slippage between the classical and Hebrew name serves the play’s overall effect: the name of Jove underlines the religious uncertainty about the afterlife during the period. The use of the name Jove clusters around the relationship between David and Absalon, specifically Absalon’s rebellion against his father. In the following speech Absalon seeks Jove’s approval for the murder and usurpation of his father. In this instance the classical association of the name Jove would take on a particular resonance, since Jove was a notorious rebel having dethroned his father, Saturn. Now for the crowne and throne of Israel, To be confirmd with vertue of my sword, And writ with Davids bloud vpon the blade. Now Jove let forth the golden firmament, And looke on him with all thy fierie eyes, Which thou hast made to give their glories light, To shew thou lovest the vertue of thy hand, Let fall a wreath of starres upon my head, Whose influence may governe Israel, With state exceeding all her other Kings. (1440–9)

The story of Jove’s overthrow of Saturn had been given added theatrical timbre as it was the precedent deployed by Marlowe’s Tamburlaine for his rebellion against the kings of Persia: The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown, That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops To thrust his doting father from his chair And place himself in th’ empyreal heaven, Moved me to manage arms against thy state. What better precedent than mighty Jove?44



Biblical tragedy

41

Chloe Preedy has argued that Peele recalls the myth and its association with Tamburlaine in The Battle of Alcazar, when Muly Mahamet considers both Jove and Tamburlaine as models for his own treachery.45 In David and Bethsabe, the potential analogy between Saturn/Jove and David/Absalon serves to remind the audience that David’s accession had also been secured by an act of usurpation against Saul. This parallel works as part of the play’s wider concern with destabilising David as a sacred exemplar and inviting consideration of the ways in which both biblical and classical precedents might be used to justify acts of political treachery and violence. This strategy can also be detected through Peele’s use of music, which also provides an opportunity to scrutinise David’s identity as the Psalmist. The play’s prologue, for example, works to establish David’s proximity to God and his status as God’s anointed: he is ‘Israels sweetest singer’ (1) and ‘Joves Musition’ (14). God is the source of inspiration for David’s poetry and the play’s imagery suggests direct transmission via David’s pen from heaven to earth: Whose Muse was dipt in that inspiring deaw, Arch-angels stilled from the breath of Jove. (3–4)

David’s reputation as ‘Israel’s sweetest singer’ is not endorsed by the play, however, as the audience is invited to weigh what they are told by the Prologue with what they are shown elsewhere in the play. Traditionally David’s music is associated either with its capacity to soothe King Saul or later as the basis for the Psalms to reflect on his relationship with God. In Peele’s play music and singing are used as a prelude to rape and murder: in the first instance Bethsabe’s singing attracts the notice of David, prompting her ravishment and the elimination of her husband, Uriah: ‘What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce / My soule, incensed with a sudden fire?’ (49–50).46 Part of David’s punishment for this crime is enacted through the sins of his children. The rape of Tamar by her brother Ammon is avenged by Absalon at a sheep shearing festival. The scene begins as one of pastoral celebration – ‘Here enter a company of sheepeheards, and daunce and sing’ – but concludes with fratricide (754, SD). The play deliberately recalibrates the figure of the shepherd with its pastoral associations and recollections of David’s youth and becomes instead a preface for murder. Peele, like Marlowe, inverts the biblical and literary associations of the figure of the shepherd, so that David, like Tamburlaine the Scythian shepherd, is uncoupled from the moral associations which underpin it. The remainder of the play is characterised by an increasing absence of music with David’s response to the rebellion of his son Absalon and his murder by Joab marked by a refutation of his gift: … let them tosse my broken Lute to heaven, Even to his hands that beats me with the strings, To shew how sadly his poore sheepeheard sings. (1824–6)

42

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

The play marks this as a moment of both spiritual and political crisis; indeed as Robert Kilgore remarks, ‘as the play proceeds, David’s music and his reign lose their potency’.47 Joab’s rebuke of his king after quelling Absalon’s rebellion is couched in terms of failed ceremony and celebration: Advance thee from thy melancholy denne, And decke thy bodie with thy blisfull robes, Or by the Lord that swaies the heauen, I sweare, Ile lead thine armies to another King, Shall cheere them for their princely chivalrie, And not sit daunted, frowning in the darke, When his faire lookes, with Oyle and Wine refresht, Should dart into their bosomes gladsome beames, And fill their stomackes with triumphant feasts, That when elsewhere sterne warre shall sound his trumpe, And call another battaile to the field, Fame still may bring thy valiant souldiers home, And for their service happily confesse She wanted worthy trumpes to sound their prowesse, Take thou this course and live, refuse, and die. (1879–92)

The play concludes with an uneasy truce between the soldier and the king as Joab suggests that it is in response to his threats that David’s voice and his ability to govern are restored: ‘Bravely resolvd and spoken like a King, / Now may old Israel, and his daughters sing’ (1919–20). David functions at the play’s conclusion as an historical and dramatic exemplar whose reign follows the de casibus model of tragedy, rather than as an instance of Old Testament piety. This suggests that Peele has an eye to the popular history plays of the 1580s and 1590s and is thinking of David in terms of political themes such as kingship, succession and dynastic power play, rather than as an exclusively biblical figure. The relationship between David and his soldier-counsellor Joab provides further opportunities to consider ways in which David’s story intersects, not only with contemporary religious debates, but also with commercial considerations of performance. The play’s episodic structure and sequencing of events from David’s life suggest a deliberate strategy to foreground those elements that would have made the play more marketable and appeal to contemporary audience tastes. As a commercial entity Peele’s play utilises some of the features of characterisation and stage spectacle found in some of the most popular plays of the period: allusions to Hieronimo, Faustus and Tamburlaine serve as a shorthand method of shaping the characters of David and Absalon as contemporary theatrical models of grief and ambition. The death of Absalon, stabbed while hanging from a tree, also points to the deaths of Horatio and the Governor of Babylon. In each case the overriding effect of these connections is to update an Old Testament figure and establish the specifically Elizabethan theatrical coordinates for David and his story.



Biblical tragedy

43

David’s role as an avenging father in David and Bethsabe is further evidence that plot and characterisation are influenced by theatrical trends and serve to weaken the moralising or didactic function of a biblical figure. Revenge tragedy was the defining genre of the Elizabethan period and Peele’s play positions itself among some of the best known examples of the genre, specifically Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. The numerous examples of speeches from The Spanish Tragedy being imitated and reproduced in the drama of the period serve as testimony to its popularity.48 Hieronimo’s speeches of parental grief and extreme emotion were frequently copied, establishing him as the model of a particular character type. Peele updates the figure of David by underlining the connection between Hieronimo and David as the bereaved fathers of murdered sons. David’s grief in his final speech (discussed above) contains a brief echo of Hieronimo’s famous speech, ‘O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears’,49 when he thinks of Absalon: ‘Thy eyes now no more eyes but shining stars, / Shall decke the flaming heauens with nouell lampes’ (1908–9). The rhetorical patterning here is both an indication of the popularity of Kyd’s play, but also the wider shared thematic concerns suggested in part by the figure of the grieving father.50 The second example of this kind of characterisation comes with the figure of Absalon, whose role as the ambitious rebel and would-be regicide is fleshed out with Marlovian flourishes: ‘… muster all the men will serve the King, / That Absalon may glut his longing soule/ With sole fruition of his fathers crowne’ (1244–6). The second and third lines splice together images of Faustian ambition – ‘How am I glutted with conceit of this!’51 – with Tamburlaine’s desire for ‘the ripest fruit of all, / That perfect bliss and sole felicity, / The sweet fruition of an earthly crown’ (I.i.7). Utilising the style of speech associated with established stage characters such as Hieronimo, Faustus and Tamburlaine offers Peele a way of updating Old Testament figures for a 1590s theatre audience as well as signalling the play’s wider theological concerns. This strategy can also be detected in the way in which Peele’s play capitalises upon the demand for sensational stage business and underlines the connection between David and Bethsabe, Tamburlaine and The Spanish Tragedy, as each play depicts a hanging where the body is also subject to stabbing or being shot at. Andrew Gurr has argued that onstage hangings were a ‘standard shock device’ and could be achieved using a hook and harness attached under the actor’s arms.52 When the Governor of Babylon refuses to surrender Tamburlaine orders: ‘Hang him in chains upon the city walls / And let my soldiers shoot the slave to death’ (V.i.108–9). The murder of Horatio in the arbour takes place swiftly, within half a dozen lines, and is described via the stage directions: ‘They hang him in the arbour’, which is followed by Horatio’s startled concluding line, ‘What, will you murder me?’ (II.v.54), as he is stabbed by Lorenzo, Balthazar, Pedringano and Serberine: ‘Ay, thus, and thus, are the fruits of love’ (II.v.55). The murder is depicted in a woodcut to accompany four printed editions of the play published between

44

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

1615 and 1633. The woodcut shows Horatio hanging from an arbour, a trellis device covered with leaves. The image has generated some critical discussion about its relationship to the play in performance, the nature of the stage property used and whether it may have doubled as the gallows for Pedringano.53 Absalon’s death is a more protracted affair as he is first entangled by the hair in the branches of a tree and is forced to hang there for at least ninety-two lines of dialogue before finally being cut down: ‘The battell, and Absalon hangs by the hair’ (1469, SD). Joab, David’s captain, discovers the prince and stabs him for his treachery: But preach I to thee, while I should revenge Thy cursed sinne that staineth Israel, And makes her fields blush with her childrens bloud? Take that as part of thy deserved plague, Which worthily, no torment can inflict. (1524–8)

Absalon continues to hang in the tree and lament; he is then stabbed again, this time by more of Joab’s men, who finally kill him: Our captaine Joab hath begun to us, And heres an end to thee, and all thy sinnes. Come let us take the beauteous rebel downe, And in some ditch amids this darksome wood, Burie his bulke beneath a heape of stones. (1556–60)

David and Hieronimo are connected not only in their grief, but also by their vengeance as each father seeks to avenge their murdered son. David and Bethsabe explicitly rehearses the debate about revenge laid out in The Spanish Tragedy as David, like Hieronimo, moves between arguments against the exacting of revenge and actively pursuing his enemies. Both David and Hieronimo are called upon to act as judges in cases comparable to their own: David is called upon to arbitrate in a case of fratricide by the Widow of Thecoa, who asks him to determine whether the family should seek vengeance against the remaining son. David concludes, ‘Woman to God alone belongs revenge’ (906), echoing Hieronimo’s famous speech which begins with ‘Vindicta mihi!’ taken from Romans 12.19: ‘vengeance is mine I will repay saith the Lord’ (III.xiii.1). In each case this response defers judgement and punishment to a higher power, adhering to Christian teaching on responses to revenge. Later in both plays, however, David and Hieronimo take matters into their own hands as they act directly against those who murdered their sons: in Hieronimo’s case he is compelled to act as he is failed by the legal system in his attempts to secure justice. In the case of David, the king’s captain, Joab, kills Absalon against David’s wishes and the play concludes with an uneasy tension between David and Joab. The play then points forward to details of David’s story found in the first Book of Kings, which reminds the audience that he is not prepared to leave the punishment of his enemies to God and



Biblical tragedy

45

actively pursues vengeance against Joab, even from beyond the grave. While the play might end with the death of Absalon and confirmation that Solomon will succeed his father, the figure of Joab indicates unfinished business. In I Kings 2.5–6 before he dies David instructs Solomon that he must avenge himself upon Joab for the wrongs committed against the king. David warns his son that Joab is not to be trusted and concludes that the House of David must be avenged: ‘Do therefore according to thy wisdome, & let thou not his hoare head go downe to the grave in peace’.54 In Thomas Beard’s The Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597) Joab is cited in the chapter on murderers, as an example of one who is eventually punished appropriately for his crimes: For which cruell deed, albeit that in Davids time he received no punishment, yet it overtooke him at last, and the same kind of crueltie which hee had so traiterously and villanously committed towards others, fell upon his owne head, being himselfe also killed as he had killed others; which happened in king Salomons raigne, who executing the charge and commandement of his father, put to death this murderer in the tabernacle of God.55

Joab’s concluding lines in Peele’s play are proleptic as they gesture at David’s deferred vengeance. The play’s final couplet reinforces its dominant concerns: the focus upon the sin of revenge engages with religious debate about election and damnation – on the one hand David models the behaviour of one of the elect but his plan for revenge suggests he can act with impunity because he is elect, since the alternative according to Calvinist theology is that his behaviour marks him as reprobate. The play’s abrupt conclusion leaves these questions and doubts hanging. David is once again identified not as a sacred exemplar of sin and repentance but as a sixteenth-century Everyman whose actions cut straight to the paradoxes of Protestant theology. The play’s preoccupation with revenge and its potential to develop into a sequel also points to the ways in which Peele has adapted David’s story to serve the commercial demand for sensational plot lines and stage business. Conclusion In the prologue to God’s Promises Bale establishes the didactic intent of his play and its spiritual import: Yow, therefor, good fryndes, I lovyngely exhorte To wayw soche matters as wyll be uttered here, Of whom ye maye loke to have no tryfelinge sporte In fantasyes fayned, nor soche lyke gaudysh gere; But the thynges that shall your inwards stomake stere To rejoyce in God for your justyfycacyon, And alone in Christ to hope for your salvacyon. (15–21)

As Prolocutor Bale urges his audience to attend to the Protestant doctrine of ‘faith alone’ which inflects his play and offers a clear case for its theology.

46

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

The voice of the dramatist is also heard in Peele’s prologue to David and Bethsabe but here it serves a different function. In this case it is ‘divine Adonay’ who is addressed directly as a heavenly muse, so that the dramatist can translate his audience from earth to heaven via his verse: Then helpe devine Adonay to conduct, Upon the wings of my well tempered verse, The hearers minds above the towers of Heaven, And guide them so in this thrice haughty flight, Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire, That none can temper but thy holy hand: To thee for succour flies my feeble muse, And at thy feet her yron Pen doth use. (16–23)

The prologue appears to suggest that the purpose of the play is to elevate the minds of the audience to higher matters, affording them the opportunity for spiritual enlightenment and moral improvement. The audience are acknowledged but are not addressed directly as they are by Bale, indicating that the responsibility for responding to the play’s precepts lies with them. This potential ambiguity is furthered by the competing Christian and classical models of humankind’s relationship with its God/gods outlined in the prologue: Peele juxtaposes his use of the Hebrew name ‘Adonay’ for God and his allusion to the myth of Icarus when considering the nature of divine inspiration ‘guide them so … Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire, / That none can temper but thy holy hand’ (19–21). As I have argued in my discussion of Peele’s play above, this blending of classical and Christian cosmologies speaks to the play’s wider concern with religious doubt. It also positions the play in its theatrical milieu alongside the other famous Icarus figure, Dr Faustus. The different uses of the prologue in these plays point to some of the adjustments made by dramatists during the intervening period between God’s Promises and David and Bethsabe as plays gradually modify the use of the prologue and its moralising function. The plays of Bale and Peele also demonstrate the ways in which the story of King David was appropriated and retold to serve different religious and theatrical agendas during the sixteenth century. The facets of his life which make him an exemplar of sin and repentance ensure his currency within doctrinal debate during a period of religious upheaval, while the nature of those sins and his kingship serve the commercial imperative of supplying plays with compelling plots and violent spectacle. Notes 1 John Bale, God’s Promises, in The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. Peter Happé, 2 vols (Dover, NH: D.S. Brewer, 1986), Vol. II, ll. 603–8. All further quotations will be taken from this edition and line references will be given in the text.



Biblical tragedy

47

2 See for example, Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker, ‘Introduction: “When Lybertye Ruled”: Tudor Drama 1485–1603’, in Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 1–17; and Leah S. Marcus, ‘Dramatic Experiments: Tudor Drama, 1490–1567’, in Arthur Kinney (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1500–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 132–52. Adrian Streete’s introduction to Early Modern Drama and the Bible, Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), pp. 1–26, also offers an important overview of recent critical work in the field. 3 See Records of Early English Drama, http://reed.utoronto.ca/ (accessed 19 August 2018). 4 See Paul Whitfield White, ‘Civic Biblical Drama in the Age of Reformation’, in Drama and Religion in English Provincial Society, 1485–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 66–101. 5 David McInnis and Matthew Steggle, ‘Introduction: Nothing Will Come of Nothing? Or, What Can We Learn from Plays that Don’t Exist?’, in David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (eds), Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), pp. 1–14 (p. 3). 6 Elmer M. Blistein, ‘Introduction’ to George Peele, David and Bethsabe, in The Dramatic Works of George Peele, ed. Elmer M. Blistein, 3 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), III, pp. 139–188 (p. 174). 7 Martha F. Bellinger, A Short History of the Drama (New York: Henry Holt, 1927), p. 218. 8 See for example, John H. Astington, ‘Playing the Man: Acting at the Red Bull and the Fortune’, Early Theatre, 9.2 (2006), pp. 130–43; and John H. Astington, ‘Lumpers and Splitters’, in David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (eds), Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 84–104. 9 See Elmer Blistein, ‘Introduction’, p. 170; and Martin Wiggins, in association with Catherine Richardson, British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue. Volume 1: 1533–1566 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012–), pp. 381–2. 10 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol II: 1567–1589, pp. 438–9. See also ‘Saul and David’, Lost Plays Database, ed. Roslyn L. Knutson, David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009). 11 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. II, p. 414. Wiggins gives a ‘best guess’ date for the play as 1588 and limits of 1587–92. See also ‘Job, The History of’, Lost Plays Database. 12 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. II, p. 397–8. See also ‘Abraham and Lot’, Lost Plays Database. 13 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. II, p. 406–8. Wiggins notes that although the play is recorded for performances at Newington Butts in 1594 the play probably already existed and gives date limits of 1576–94. See also ‘Hester and Ahasuerus’, Lost Plays Database. 14 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. III: 1590–1597, pp. 353–4. See also ‘Nebuchadnezzar’, Lost Plays Database. 15 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. IV: 1598–1602, pp. 395–6. See also ‘Samson’, Lost Plays Database. 16 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. IV, pp. 363–4. See also ‘Judas’, Lost Plays Database.

48

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

17 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. IV, pp. 387–8. See also ‘Jephthah’, Lost Plays Database. 18 See Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. IV, pp. 388–9. 19 See ibid., pp. 421–2. 20 See ibid., pp. 422–5. The play is performed at the Rose by Worcester’s Men in October 1602. Henslowe’s makes a payment ‘for pulleys and workmanship for to hang Absalom’. Wiggins suggests that the play may possibly be a revival of Peele’s David and Bethsabe. 21 For useful discussion of the Reformation in England see Diarmaid MacCulloch, All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 2016). For the impact of the Reformation on early modern drama and its audiences see Kristen Poole, ‘Dr. Faustus and Reformation Theology’, in Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., Patrick Cheney and Andrew Hadfield (eds), Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 96–107. 22 Sarah Carpenter, ‘Performing the Scriptures: Biblical Drama after the Reformation’, in Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (eds), Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama 1350–1600 (Amsterdam: Brill, 2016), pp. 20–6. 23 Paul Whitfield White, ‘Bible as Play in Reformation England’, in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 87–115; John N. King, ‘Bale, John (1495–1563)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. www.oxforddnb.com.lcproxy.shu.ac.uk/view/ article/1175?docPos=1 (accesssed 17 October 2017). 24 See Paul Whitfield White, ‘Theater and Religious Culture’, in John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (eds), A New History of Early English Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 133–1. 25 See Peter Happé, ‘Introduction’ to John Bale, God’s Promises, in The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. Happé, Vol. I, pp. 12–13 and 20–2. Wiggins, British Drama, Vol. I, pp. 56–9. Ruth H. Blackburn, Biblical Drama Under the Tudors (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 47–63. Katherine A. Gillen, ‘From Sacrament to Signs: The Challenges of Protestant Theatricality in John Bale’s Biblical Plays’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 80 (2011), pp. 1–11. 26 Murray Roston, Biblical Drama in England: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Faber, 1968), p. 62. 27 Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 174. 28 Cited in Clare Costley King’oo, ‘Rightful Penitence and the Publication of Wyatt’s Certayne Psalmes’, in Linda Phyllis Austern, Kari Boyd McBride and Daniel L. Orris (eds), Psalms in the Early Modern World, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 155–74 (p. 173). 29 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 115. For further discussion of Wyatt’s Psalms see also Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 223–31. 30 Whitfield White, Drama and Religion, p. 211. 31 See Clare Costley, ‘David, Bathsheba, and the Penitential Psalms’, Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004), pp. 1235–127; and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the



Biblical tragedy

49

Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 225–6. 32 My thanks to Dr Emma Major for her insightful feedback on this chapter. 33 See Janette Dillon, The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 204–12; and Jenny Sager, The Aesthetics of Spectacle in Early Modern Drama and Modern Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), pp. 53–69. 34 For discussion of the play’s generic affiliations see Robert Kilgore, ‘Mixing Genres in George Peele’s David and Bethsabe’, Renaissance Papers (2010), pp. 11–22. 35 See Sarah Dewar-Watson, ‘Marlowe’s Dramatic Form’, in Emily C. Bartels and Emma Smith (eds), Christopher Marlowe in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 49–56 (p. 50). 36 Electronic resources which offer discussion of the wide range of playing spaces in London during the period include: Before Shakespeare. The Beginnings of London Commercial Theatre 1565–1595, https://beforeshakespeare.com/; and ShaLT Shakespearean London Theatres, http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/locations.html (accessed 17 August 2018). 37 See Dillon, Introduction to Early English Theatre, pp. 71–83. 38 For discussion of repertorial strategy see Roslyn L. Knutson, ‘Marlowe Reruns: Repertorial Commerce and Marlowe’s Plays in Revival’, in Sara Munson Deats and Robert A. Logan (eds), Marlowe’s Empery: Expanding His Critical Contexts (London: Associated University Presses, 2002), p. 25–42; and Alleyn’s career: S. P. Cerasano, ‘Edward Alleyn, the New Model Actor, and the Rise of the Celebrity in the 1590s’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 18 (2005), pp. 47–58. 39 For discussion of connections between David and Tamburlaine see Annaliese Connolly, ‘Peele’s David and Bethsabe: Reconsidering Biblical Drama of the Long 1590s’, Early Modern Literary Studies, 13.2 (October 2007), 9.1–20, https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-16/connpeel.htm (accessed 17 August 2018). 40 David and Bethsabe is entered in the Stationers’ register in 1594 and is printed in 1599 and apart from the detail on the title page suggesting its popularity, ‘As it hath ben diuers times plaied on the stage’, we have no record of performances. Martin Wiggins suggests a ‘best guess date’ of 1590 for David and Bethsabe, see Wiggins, British Drama, Vol III, pp. 57–61. 41 George Peele, David and Bethsabe, in The Dramatic Works of George Peele, ed. Blistein, ll. 1897–907. All further quotations from the play will be taken from this edition and line references will be given in the text. 42 Blistein, ‘Introduction’, p. 255. 43 David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, ‘Introduction’ to Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus A-and B-Texts (1604, 1616), ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 115. 44 Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, ed. J. S. Cunningham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 1.II.vii.12–17. All further quotations from this play will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 45 Chloe Kathleen Preedy, Marlowe’s Literary Scepticism: Politic Religion and PostReformation Polemic (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 121–3. For discussion

50

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

of the Jupiter myth, see also Lisa Hopkins, Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 86–9. 46 My assessment of David’s role as Psalmist and the function of music in the play differs from that of Judith Weil who describes the play as a ‘splendid singing school’, in Judith Weil, ‘George Peele’s Singing School: David and Bethsabe and the Elizabethan History Play’, in Themes in Historical Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 51–66. 47 Robert Kilgore, ‘The Politics of King David in Early Modern English Verse’, Studies in Philology, 111 (2014), pp. 411–41 (p. 420). 48 See Rebekah Owens, ‘Parody and The Spanish Tragedy’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 71 (2007), pp. 27–36; and Emma Smith, ‘Hieronimo’s Afterlives’, in Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedie with Anonymous, The First Part of Jeronimo, ed. Emma Smith (London: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 133–59. 49 Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J. R. Mulryne (London: A&C Black, 1989), III.ii.1. All further quotations from this play will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 50 See Wolfgang Clemen, English Tragedy Before Shakespeare: The Development of Dramatic Speech (London: Methuen, 1961). 51 Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus A-Text, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), I.i.80. All further quotations from this play will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 52 Andrew Gurr, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Mulryne, p. xvii. 53 See Diane K. Jakacki, ‘“Canst paint a doleful cry?”: Promotion and Performance in the Spanish Tragedy Title-Page Illustration’, Early Theatre, 13.1 (2010), pp. 13–36. 54 The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament (Geneva, 1561), sig. Aa5v. 55 Thomas Beard, The Theatre of Gods Judgements (London: A. Islip, 1642), p. 177.

3

Closet tragedy: Fulke Greville’s Mustapha Daniel Cadman

One of the most significant classical authorities to influence the development of early modern English tragedy was the Roman dramatist, Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Colin Burrow notes that ‘Seneca was the high-status model for drama in the formative years of the English professional stage’ and that such popular and influential early tragedians as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd and George Peele ‘not only read but showed their audiences they had read Senecan tragedy’.1 According to T. S. Eliot, ‘no Latin author was more highly esteemed’ or ‘exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca’.2 Eliot went on to argue that there were three distinct routes through which the influence of Seneca was manifested in early modern English tragedy: the first was through the commercial theatres, popularised most notably by the likes of Marlowe and Kyd; the second was in the works of the so-called ‘Senecals’, a very loose coterie of aristocratic wits and professional writers whose dramas, commonly identified as ‘closet’ dramas, were intended for publication or for private reading among a select group of spectators rather than for the public theatres; and the third is constituted by the Roman tragedies of Ben Jonson, which Eliot regards as belonging to a distinct class of their own, based upon their apparent endeavour to ‘improve the form of popular drama by the example of Seneca’.3 It is upon the so-called ‘Senecals’, the second of the three classes identified by Eliot, that this chapter will focus. This particular current of Senecan influence was established in England by the publication in 1592 of Antonius, a translation by Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, of Marc Antoine, a tragedy by the influential French dramatist, Robert Garnier. The years immediately after the publication of Antonius saw the appearance of a number of other tragedies following the precedent it had established. Thomas Kyd, for example, published Cornelia, a translation of an earlier Garnier play, in 1593 and announced

52

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

his intention to produce a translation of Garnier’s later play, Porcie, before his death in 1594. Samuel Daniel, a recipient of Mary Sidney’s patronage, responded even more directly by composing Cleopatra (1594), an original sequel that picks up more or less immediately at the point at which Mary Sidney’s play concludes. Other plays that contributed to this tradition included Samuel Brandon’s Octavia (1598), three tragedies by Fulke Greville (including a lost play about Antony and Cleopatra), the four Monarchicke Tragedies (1603–7) of the Scottish poet and courtier, Sir William Alexander, and Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam (published 1613), the first original work by a female dramatist to be published in England. In common with these dramas, Mary Sidney’s play is characterised by a much more strict adherence to neoclassical principles than would generally be found in the popular tragedies of the era. The play also exhibits a number of features that would come to characterise subsequent closet tragedies; these include the observation of the Aristotelian unities, the inclusion of long rhetorical speeches influenced by Seneca’s style, the use of a chorus, and an abundance of such rhetorical and stylistic features as apostrophe and stichomythia. These formal features would also be complemented by an interest in exploring political ideas and the role of stoicism as a potential response to the tragic situation and its relationship with tragic heroism. This return to these conventions of classical tragedy, along with the genre’s general bypassing of the commercial theatres, has had a considerable bearing upon the critical reception of closet tragedy that persisted throughout the majority of the twentieth century. Numerous twentieth-century commentators tended to regard the development of closet tragedy as something of a backward step, with the plays emerging from a rather reactionary counter-tradition that defined itself in opposition to the innovations of the English commercial theatres. Eliot was one of the most influential proponents of this view, according to which closet tragedy developed along the following lines: It was after Sidney’s death that his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, tried to assemble a body of wits to compose drama in the proper Senecan style, to make head against the popular melodrama of the time. Great poetry should be both an art and a diversion; in a large and cultivated public like the Athenian it can be both; the shy recluses of Lady Pembroke’s circle were bound to fail.4

This kind of narrative helped to promulgate an image of the so-called ‘Senecals’ as a rather pedantic group of wits spearheading an ill-advised and ill-fated campaign to reform, through their ‘slavish imitation’ of the Senecan model of tragedy, the apparent lapses in decorum perpetuated by the popular theatres.5 This is also suggested by Gordon Braden, who regards the development of English imitations of Continental Senecan drama as ‘a fairly elite and circumscribed affair’.6



Closet tragedy

53

It was not until the closing decades of the twentieth century that critics began to reappraise closet tragedy. One of the most influential interventions in this debate was an article by Mary Ellen Lamb, according to whom: There was no dramatic circle surrounding the Countess of Pembroke, and the idea of reforming the English stage probably never entered her head. She would be amazed to read all the descriptions of her misguided idealism, and amazed that, for all her real literary endeavours, it is this one for which she is best remembered.7

Lamb’s article was particularly influential as a challenge to many of the assumptions promulgated in much of the critical commentary of the twentieth century relating to the so-called ‘Senecal’ drama, particularly its relationship with the commercial theatre. Whereas earlier critics had viewed this relationship as essentially antagonistic, more recent criticism has tended to view the popular tragedy and closet dramas as being, in the words of Lukas Erne, ‘complementary rather than antagonistic in the influence they exerted’.8 This is suggested perhaps most readily by the fact that Thomas Kyd, who had helped popularise tragedy on the London stage, adopted the form in his Cornelia. It must also be noted that the adherence to the classical blueprint of tragedy is often far from straightforward or ‘slavish’. Rosemary Kegl, for example, has noted that Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam generates a ‘crisis in genre’ through its compression of a broad span of events into a unified twenty-four hour time period, which is similar to the point raised in Sir Philip Sidney’s criticism of popular theatrical dramas and their tendencies to compress sweeping events into a two-hour performance slot; in this way, Kegl argues, closet dramas tend to ‘replicate rather than reform the excesses of popular productions’.9 Sir William Alexander’s play, The Alexandraean Tragedy, poses similar problems to generic unity in a surprisingly self-conscious way. The titular hero appears only as a ghost who delivers the play’s prologue from the underworld where he laments the factional power struggles caused by the lack of a named heir to his empire. Because of the protracted time scale and the far-reaching impact of the political crisis, William Alexander labels this play as a ‘Polytragicke Tragedie’ because of the difficulty in containing the action within the confines of the classical unities.10 With these points in mind, the label of ‘closet’ tragedy is in need of some qualification, suggesting as it does a stark bifurcation between the apparently public and private currents of tragic drama that implicitly endorses the kind of antagonism and elitism outlined by Eliot and other twentieth-century critics. Coburn Freer, for example, objects that the term ‘closet drama’ gives a false impression of ‘willful obscurity and terminal stuffiness’ through the implied distance of these plays from the practices of the commercial theatre.11 Numerous critics, including Alison Findlay, Stephanie Hodgson-Wright, Gweno Williams and Elizabeth Schafer, have also challenged the assumption

54

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

that these dramas are unperformable, through both theoretical and practical work with the plays, and Yasmin Arshad’s research on Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra has uncovered evidence of a potential performance history for the play.12 It must also be noted that the dramas in this group were subjected to the public eye through such channels as print, manuscript circulation, or performance at one of the aristocratic estates belonging either to the authors themselves or to their patrons. The nature of the audience or readership for these dramas is well demonstrated by Fulke Greville, an author who endeavoured to impose strict limits upon the transmission of his literary output that resulted in the majority of his works not appearing in print during his own lifetime. Nevertheless, Greville still expressed concerns about his readership that led to him destroying a play about Antony and Cleopatra, after being cautioned by the ‘opinion of the few eyes which saw it’ that there were numerous elements of the play that contained ‘some childish wantonness in them apt enough to be construed or strained to a personating of vices in the present governors and government’.13 Even among a readership as closed as that of Greville’s, his attitudes still betray an uneasiness about the potential applications of his tragedy which suggest these works would have been subject to a public audience, however self-limited, that would not necessarily have been indulgent towards the work or sympathetic to its apparent political outlook.14 The use of the closet itself as a symbol of privacy is also in need of some consideration. In his work on the early modern closet, Alan Stewart has challenged the idea that this domestic space would have been one of utter privacy and withdrawal by highlighting the closet as a site of activity between a master and his secretary; for Stewart, the notion that such interactions take place in an ‘impossible space, beyond society’ serves to ‘deliberately obscure the fact that the closet was a real, physical space, within which men transacted in a highly complex and socially resonant way’.15 The idea of the closet as metonymic of the domestic spaces in which these plays were written or performed also has significant implications. Karen Raber draws attention to the fact that Mary Sidney’s Antonius, along with the translation of Mornay’s Discourse of Life and Death which accompanies it, was composed at the Herbert family estates of Wilton and Rasbury, both spaces that were of considerable significance to the militant Protestants who advocated military intervention on the Continent. Raber observes that closet drama is therefore a form with ‘specifically political ends and political ramifications’ and its production within domestic spaces with marked political significance lends it the ability to ‘elide the boundary between households and public spaces’.16 These ambiguities surrounding the status of closet drama in terms of its relationship with the public and private spheres are well demonstrated by Samuel Brandon’s play, The Tragicomoedi of the Vertuous Octavia. At one point in the play, Octavia discusses the effects of examining the ‘closet of



Closet tragedy

55

my heart’ but later encounters the prospect of her heart becoming ‘a stage’ upon which the antagonistic political leaders will ‘play a bloudie tragedie’.17 Octavia’s heart therefore comes to symbolise the attendant ambiguities relating to that which Raber has labelled ‘the equivocal status of closet drama’ as a simultaneously public and private mode of expression.18 Such points are also underlined in Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam, in which the protagonist’s opening soliloquy explores the difficulties for a woman to attain and exercise a ‘public voice’ within a patriarchal culture. It is therefore important to regard closet drama more as a public medium, however mediated, than as a strictly private one. To explore the ways in which the key features associated with closet tragedy could work in practice, I turn to Fulke Greville’s Mustapha. In what follows, I argue that while Mustapha engages in a variety of debates provoked by the political crisis at its core, it also registers a distinct ambivalence about the value of such engagements. This ambivalence is a product of Greville’s awareness of the limitations of political action imposed upon him by his Calvinist outlook and is reflected, particularly, through the characterisations of the two principal protagonists: the submissive Mustapha and his father, the self-divided Solyman, whose actions are driven by a variety of conflicting impulses, including paternal affection, political expediency and sexual passion for his second wife, Rossa. I suggest that Greville’s play provides a distinct perspective on the stoic heroism, consolatory sententiae and multivocality associated with closet tragedy and that the play exploits a number of the genre’s key features as catalysts in the development of the tragic plot. Mustapha differs from the other closet tragedies of the 1590s and early 1600s through its setting and choice of subject matter. Whereas the other tragedies tended to focus on episodes from classical history, such as the collapse of the rule of the triumvirate in ancient Rome or the rise and downfall of Alexander the Great, Greville’s tragedy takes as its inspiration a historical event that took place in 1553 and was recorded in Hugh Goughe’s The Offspring of the House of Ottomano (1569). Mustapha is set at the court of Solyman, who corresponds to the historical Suleiman the Magnificent, and dramatises the events leading up to the Sultan’s decision to execute his son, Mustapha, and its aftermath. Solyman’s second wife, Rossa, attempts to discredit the rightful heir, Mustapha, and thereby disrupt the succession in favour of her son, Zanger. She does so by breeding jealousy and suspicion in Solyman by continually suggesting that Mustapha’s virtues and achievements are merely a smokescreen to disguise a plot to usurp his father. The efforts of the virtuous counsellor, Achmat, to plead Mustapha’s innocence prove to be of no avail and Solyman goes on to order the death of Mustapha, who, with stoic resolution, submits to his fate. The violent death of Mustapha results in a public uprising against Solyman and the play concludes with Achmat debating whether he should support the popular revolt or encourage

56

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

submission to the tyrannical but legitimate rule of Solyman before settling, reluctantly, upon the latter course. Greville’s choice of setting sees him participate in a tradition of plays about Turks that had been enjoying considerable popularity in the commercial theatres. Greville, however, departs from the sensational styles of these plays and moves away from what Daniel Vitkus has labelled as the ‘typical English representation of the Ottoman royal house as a dysfunctional family that is power hungry and unnaturally murderous’.19 In fact, Greville’s play mutes some of the more sensational and ambiguous elements of his own sources; as Katrin Röder argues, some of the material ‘suggests that the Sultan had indeed reason to fear Mustapha because of the Janissaries’ sympathies and because of the Ottoman tradition of violent conflicts about succession to the throne’.20 Jonathan Burton argues that the treatment of his sources suggests that, in a sense, ‘Greville was simply not interested in the significance of his setting’ through his avoidance of sensationalised depictions of Ottoman cruelty or anxieties about enforced conversion.21 Burton also remarks that, rather than appearing inherently corrupt, Greville’s Ottoman characters ‘range from wicked to saintly, and, most importantly, often fall somewhere between these two extremes’.22 Greville therefore resists the opportunity to exploit the sensational potential of his subject matter and setting and instead uses them as vehicles for his critique of early modern monarchy and its attendant political institutions, and to explore such issues as the role of counsel and the dangers of political instability. By considering these issues, we can see how tragedy’s potential to interrogate such issues as sovereignty and political power extended beyond the London theatres. Greville outlines the rationale for his tragedies in A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, a prose work that acts as a preface to his political poetry, which is framed by a reflection upon the legacy of political virtue and militant Protestant activism embodied by his late friend and mentor, along with an implicit critique of the ways in which such exemplary values have been allowed to decline after the death of Elizabeth. Here, Greville insists that his tragedies were ‘no plays for the stage’ and insists that any potential readers or auditors should ‘behold these acts upon their true stage’, which is ‘that stage whereon himself is an actor, even the state he lives in’.23 In this way, Greville highlights the decidedly political nature of his tragedy and the potential for it to interrogate the questions facing those participating at court. Indeed, Marta Straznicky has likened his two extant tragedies to ‘instruction manuals for those who are both marginal to and dependent upon the center of power’.24 Greville’s political outlook is influenced strongly by his pessimistic views on human agency, shaped primarily by a particularly stark interpretation of some of the most troubling tenets of Calvinism. For Greville, the fall of humanity had set in motion an irreversible process of corruption, which he labels ‘declination’, through which humanity is hopelessly alienated from



Closet tragedy

57

God and in which the schism between heaven and earth becomes increasingly pronounced. The essentially corrupt and fallen nature of humanity is emblematised by the various institutions of state, such as the monarchy, the law and the Church, all of which have either exacerbated or are outright complicit in the deepening corruption that is blighting humanity.25 This pessimistic outlook is highlighted in perhaps the most famous passage from the play, the much-anthologised Chorus Sacerdotum, in which the speakers lament upon the ‘wearisome condition of humanity’, which is: Borne under one Law, to another bound: Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity, Created sicke, commanded to be sound. (Chorus Sacerdotum, 1–4)26

The emphasis upon the two laws affecting humanity refers to the conflict between the earthly and the divine, or the sacred and the temporal, and the vain efforts of humankind to transcend their earthly corruption and aspire to the divine grace promised by the earthly institutions. This is a struggle that virtually frames the play. Yet the idea of declination also represents the key to Greville’s political pragmatism, which, as Jonathan Dollimore points out, is manifested in his construct of the shadow which posits that ‘although the discrepancy between divine and secular is appalling (and getting worse), we do at least have the opportunity to try and live according the closest approximation of divine order’.27 It is on these grounds that Greville supports absolute monarchy, or ‘“shaddowed” tyranny’, because it is at least ‘a lesser evil than the tyranny which is not even a shadow of the ideal order’.28 This view of earthly corruption is one that has a profound effect upon the dramatisation of political power in Mustapha and, particularly, upon Greville’s distinctive uses of the principal features of closet drama. ‘Declination’ manifests itself in the dangerous excesses of sovereign power and informs a profound scepticism about the claims of the earthly institutions to embody transcendent truths. One of the key features that contributes to the political dimension of closet tragedy is the genre’s multivocality. Although these dramas typically would represent only a limited number of characters, closet tragedies are notable for providing a range of diverse responses to the political situation by having the action alternate between different groups of characters and by ending each of the acts with a chorus. Closet plays typically made use of the formal and stylistic features of Senecan drama to present political debates that would accommodate a range of perspectives. Joel B. Altman identifies this multivocality as one of the key aspects of traditional Senecan tragedy, and argues that ‘Senecan drama, while deeply concerned with the moral life, is not, strictly speaking, a didactic work – as is the negative morality play or de casibus tragedy. It is a sophistic construction, carefully designed to evoke a wide range of intellectual and emotional responses to the action as it unfolds’.29 Rather than attempting to moralise or promote a particular political or

58

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

ethical outlook, Senecan drama in fact offers a range of diverse perspectives in response to the crises it dramatises. David Norbrook argues that Greville capitalises upon the genre’s potential as a vehicle for an author to ‘explore some radical ideas without publicly committing oneself to them’.30 Related closely to these political and multivocal elements is the chorus, one of the most distinctive features of closet tragedy and one that highlights the form’s debt to the conventions of classical drama. Greville makes particularly distinctive use of this feature in Mustapha by varying its composition from one act to another. This is not to say that other authors did not experiment with the device. In Mary Sidney’s Antonius, the choric voice changes from that of the Egyptian populace to a group of Roman soldiers who lament the consequences of civil war. In a similar manner, the fourth act of Kyd’s Cornelia contains two choruses, one of which advocates the anti-tyrannical outlook of Cassius while the second, a chorus of Caesar’s friends, supports Caesar’s strong governance. According to the play’s argument, the chorus to Samuel Daniel’s Philotas is made up of ‘three Graecians (as of the three estates of a Kingdome) and one Persian’ in order to best represent ‘the multitude and body of a People’;31 however, the choric speeches in the final act fracture into two separate and dialogic voices in a way that hints at the tensions evident in the relations between these two national groups. Ultimately, though, the choruses are voiced from positions of passivity or impotence. Such a view is best summed up in Mustapha by the chorus of bashaws and caddies, a group composed respectively of counsellors and senior judges, who draw on the trope of the body politic to assert that ‘each inferior limbe must from the head / Receive his standard, and be ballanced’ (I.Chor.93–4), even if this involves adhering to the whims of a tyrant. Under a virtuous sovereign the counsellors liken their position to ‘margentes of great volum’d bookes, / The little notes, wheron the reader lookes’ in order to ‘aide his overpressed memorie’ (I.Chor.111–13); even under a good sovereign, their influence is, quite literally, marginal. Even in the third chorus, composed of a dialogue between the allegorical figures of Time and Eternity, the participants actively disclaim responsibility for the events that take place. Time insists that ‘For sonne, or father, to destroy each other, / Are bastard deedes, where Time is not the mother’ (III.Chor.59–60), while Eternity replies that Mustapha will ‘by your course be destroy’d’ (III.Chor.139) after asserting that the corrupt earthly institutions are products of Time and founded ‘Upon the movinge Base of self-conceipt; / Which constant forme can neither take, nor yelde; / But still change shapes, to multiplie deceipt’ (III.Chor.110–12). Brett Roscoe argues that in this chorus the ‘limited, temporal perspective’ of Time is undermined, a strategy Greville extends to the other choruses, including the Chorus Sacerdotum.32 All the choruses are therefore composed of individuals who either voice their inability to influence the actions of their superiors, or actively deny any responsibility or control over the tragic sequence of events.



Closet tragedy

59

While the chorus speakers come to underline their marginalisation, Greville also harnesses the multivocal aspect of closet tragedy as a key catalyst for the political crisis dramatised in the play. This is suggested from the opening scene through Solyman’s articulation of his own divided response to the reports surrounding Mustapha’s alleged conspiracies against him. Solyman underlines the inherent tensions between his political position as king and his role as father to Mustapha. He recalls how his paternal bias towards Mustapha meant that he regularly regarded ‘those light-judginge praises / Of multitudes, whom my love taught to flatter’ as ‘Truthes oracles’ (I.i.6–8) and goes on to observe that ‘nature biddes our owne be loved’ and that ‘So ill a judge is love of thinges beloved’ (I.i.8–9). Solyman’s authority comes to be threatened as a result of the confusion and suspicion caused by the disputed portrayals of Mustapha. As a result of this scenario, Solyman is unable to trust either his own judgements or those of his subjects. In this way, Greville’s depiction of Solyman differs from the kinds of excessive and impulsive portrayals of Ottoman sultans common on the popular stage. Albert Tricomi argues that Greville’s Solyman is ‘self-divided rather than evil’,33 and for Dollimore, his wavering opinion over Mustapha’s guilt makes him the embodiment of a kind of ‘extreme relativism’.34 The good counsellor, Achmat, attempts to curb Solyman’s tyranny and warn him away from bad counsel. His advice takes the form of various sententious remarks, including the caution that ‘sleight’ and ‘plottes, and instrumentes inlay’d with art’ are often more dangerous than open rebellion (II.ii.116–17). Solyman replies in exasperation that, if he were to accept this, he must ‘doubt all to creditte thee’ (II.ii.119). He also concludes the scene by stating that ‘Wordes rather stirre, then quiet fixt impressions’ (II.ii.158). Here, Solyman implies that the provision of a variety of voices and perspectives (a feature central to closet tragedy) is having a decidedly negative impact upon him by contributing further to his confusion and further corrupting his reason. While he may be the nominal protagonist, Mustapha himself is largely marginalised from the play. He is the subject of almost endless discussion, and the nucleus of the tragic events, yet he appears in only one scene of the play and is unable to influence the action. In these senses, he emerges in a similar manner to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as one who is far more potent as an abstract symbol than as a material presence. Mustapha’s marginalisation is highlighted shortly before his sole appearance in the play when he is introduced as a ‘foot-ball to the starres’ (IV.iv.21), a variation on the more familiar trope of the tennis ball to Fortune employed by the likes of Sidney, Alexander and John Webster in order to signify an individual’s passivity in relation to the movements of fate. In one sense, Mustapha occupies a position similar to such closet tragic protagonists as Cleopatra, Cornelia and, in particular, Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam, all of whom come to embody stoic virtue as a response to tyrannical power; the latter is particularly notable for the way in which her suffering rises to the heights of proto-Christian

60

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

martyrdom.35 In the sole scene in which Mustapha appears, he spends much of his time articulating his resolve to submit to his father’s will and debating his proposed course of action with Heli, a priest who is racked with guilt because of his betrayal of Mustapha. Heli urges him to take flight and ‘Preserve thy father, with thy selfe, and me: / Else guiltie of each others death we be’ (IV.iv.84–5), and adds that ‘No man commaunded is by God to die, / As longe as he may persecution flie’ (IV.iv.110–11). Mustapha resists Heli’s calls to ensure his own safety and insists upon the rationality of his proposed submission to the will of Solyman: To flie hath scorne; it argues guiltinesse, Inherites feare, weakly abandons frendes, Gives Tyrantes fame, takes honor from distresse. Death! doe thy worst. The greatest paines have ende. (IV.iv.112–15)

Mustapha here argues that flight from fate would result in an amplification of the fear that promulgates a tyrant’s power and keeps their subjects under their influence. Mustapha therefore sees his own death as a desirable alternative to a course of action that, in his view, would ultimately strengthen the power of a tyrant and undermine the potential for their subjects to endure the consequences of their abuses of power. Heli, nevertheless, still presses on with his attempts to counter Mustapha’s arguments by urging him to ‘Flie to thy strength’ (IV.iv.118) and engage in active resistance against Rossa: ‘Seeke in her bowels for thy father lost: / Who can redeeme a Kinge with a viler cost?’ (IV.iv.120–1). Violent and uncompromising resistance against Rossa’s influence would, according to this view, help to recover the lost virtue of Solyman. Mustapha resists Heli’s calls for pragmatism or any actions that threaten to compromise his virtue or lead him to transgress his responsibilities to his father or to the state. He expresses his aversion to any course of action that would serve to ‘set Realmes on fire’, justify disorder and give ‘golden titles to Rebellions’ (IV.iv.126–7). His views depend upon a clear distinction between temporary earthly goods and the prospect of eternal salvation: Since therefore life is but the throne of woe Which sicknesse, paine, desire, and feare inherit, Ever most worth to men of weakest spirit: Shall we, to languishe in this brittle Jayle, Seeke, by ill deedes, to shunne ill destinie? And so, for toyes, lose immortalitie? (IV.iv.133–8)

Mustapha’s outlook is predicated upon the stoic view that personal fortitude can be a means of overriding the vicissitudes of fate. His argument also points towards one of the central premises of the play by preserving the distinction between two notions of good, as it is defined in terms of the temporary and of the eternal. Mustapha, then, makes an eloquent defence of his stoic resolution, yet, at the same time, his submissiveness is continually left open to question and is



Closet tragedy

61

never entirely free of ambiguity. The debate between Mustapha and Heli reaches its culmination through the use of stichomythia, a common rhetorical feature of closet tragedies and a means to compensate for the lack of direct dramatic action. In these plays, stichomythia most commonly takes the form of a series of rapid, usually single-line and rhymed exchanges between two characters, and is harnessed as an effective vehicle for conveying debate. By its nature, stichomythia typically distinguishes between a privileged interlocutor and a subordinate one, with the former allowed, quite literally, to have the last word and to neutralise the arguments of the first speaker. It is therefore significant that in the stichomythic discussion that takes place in this scene, it is Heli who emerges as the privileged party who can respond to Mustapha’s initial statements. Their discussion is an extension of the debate that takes place throughout the scene and focuses, initially, upon the question of whether it is more virtuous to submit or to resist a tyrant: mustapha: priest: mustapha: priest: mustapha: priest: mustapha: priest: mustapha: priest:

Is it in us to rule a Sultans will. We made them first for good, and not for ill. Our Gods they are, their God remaines above. To thincke against annoynted power is death. To worshippe Tyrantes is no worcke of faith. ’Tis rage of follie that contendes with fate. Yet hazard something to preserve the State. Sedition woundes what should preserved be. To wound Powers humors, keeps their honors free. Admitte this true. What sacrifice prevayles? Force the petition is that never fayles. (IV.iv.148–58)

Mustapha is therefore the weaker party in the discussion, with each of his own views being countered by Heli’s logic. Mustapha’s submissive outlook is continually contradicted by Heli’s insistence that monarchs forfeit their rights to the obedience and loyalty of their subjects as soon as their actions become tyrannical. The stichomythic exchanges take place over the course of twenty lines, in spite of Mustapha’s early attempt to break the rhythm of the stichomythia in his second speech, which consists of two lines. He definitively disrupts the stichomythia with his insistence that the priest should ‘Tempt me no more’ (IV.iv.169) and in his assertion that ‘I constant in my counsayle doe remayne, / And more lives, for my owne life will not venture’ (IV.iv.172–3). This abrupt conclusion to the discussion implies that Mustapha is ultimately unable to definitively undermine the logic of Heli’s views on tyranny. Mustapha exits the scene shortly after the conclusion of this discussion. He rationalises his submission to Solyman’s will by stating that ‘All fates are from above / Chain’d unto humors that must rise, or fall. / Thincke what we will: Men doe but what they shall’ (IV.iv.179–81). In the final act, the details of Mustapha’s death at the hands of Solyman’s eunuchs are related by Achmat, who describes how Mustapha, ‘in hast to be an Angell’ (V.ii.81),

62

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

greets the prospect of his death with ‘heavenlie smiles’ and ‘quiet wordes’ in order to assist his wavering assassins. Achmat also relates the final words of Mustapha, which, in common with the circumstances of the reported execution of Mariam in Elizabeth Cary’s play, abound with echoes of Christ’s passion: His last wordes were: O father! Nowe forgive me. Forgive them too, that wrought my overthrowe: Let my grave never minister offences. For, since my father coveteth my death, Behold, with joy, I offer him my breath. (V.ii.84–8)

As is the case in Mariam, the death of Greville’s protagonist is presented as an act of martyrdom and redemptive self-sacrifice. However, Mustapha’s act of stoic submission is never free from ambiguity. As we have seen, his submission is subject to Heli’s sustained interrogation and Debora Kuller Shuger also highlights the ambiguity over which ‘father’ Mustapha addresses in his last words, arguing that the ‘muddled allusions to the New Testament … force the reader to traverse the distance between its supernatural ethos and Greville’s dark worries about the uses which the passive heroism serves’.36 Shuger also views Mustapha’s death as an example of what Stephen Greenblatt labelled a ‘peculiarly intense submission whose downright violence undermines everything it was meant to shore up’.37 Such an undermining of the virtue of Mustapha’s submission is further suggested by the fact that it is Heli who closes the debate scene with a soliloquy in which he expresses his disgust about the likely fate of Mustapha and the climate of fear generated by the influences of Solyman. He then calls upon the people to rebel against this oppression and ‘Ruine these specious maskes of Tyrannie’ (IV. iv.224) before asserting that ‘The Church absolves you’ and that ‘Crafte, and oppression everie where God hates’ (IV.iv.230–1); both of these assertions counter Mustapha’s submissive rhetoric by locating religious virtue in the resistance to the excesses of tyranny. The Chorus Tartarorum, which concludes the fifth act, expresses similar scepticism towards Mustapha’s submission; indeed Wilkes reads their final words – an assertion that nature ‘neither taught the father to destroy: / Nor promis’d anie man, by dieinge, joy’ (V.Chor.33–4) – as a cynical gloss upon Mustapha’s dying words. While Heli’s final soliloquy has a narrative function in its signposting of the popular rebellion that is due to take place towards the end of the play, it is also notable that this crucial debate scene closes with a speech advocating popular resistance, a move that further undermines Mustapha’s submissive rhetoric and the emphasis upon it in the account of his death. The virtuous stoic hero, as a result, becomes a symptom of the chaos wrought by ‘declination’ rather than a remedy for it. The only other character that comes anywhere close to the attainment of virtue in this corrupt environment is the virtuous counsellor, Achmat, who



Closet tragedy

63

recognises the injustices being committed in the name of the sovereign. He is, however, unwilling to compromise his duty to Solyman by opposing him. As he states in his first appearance, ‘Thus hath the fancie-lawe of power, ordain’d, / That who betrayes it most, is most esteem’d: / Who saith it is betray’d, is traytor deem’d’ (II.i.55–7). Achmat is therefore forced to negotiate a system in which he is likely to compromise his own position and his safety if he highlights the injustices perpetrated in the name of the monarchical system he is duty-bound to support. This dilemma reaches a crisis during the final act when news of Mustapha’s murder triggers a popular uprising to which Achmat is conflicted in his response. Initially, he asserts that Solyman’s actions have compromised his authority and encourages the populace to:    Question theise Thrones of Tyrantes; Revive your old equalities of nature; Authoritie is more then that she maketh. Lende not your strengthes to keepe your owne strengthes under. (V.iii.92–5)

However, he soon wavers in this revolutionary rhetoric and questions whether it is legitimate to allow the people to be ‘the damme, and grave of Crownes’ and ‘With mutenie, pull sacred Sceptres downe’ (V.iii.102–3). He also questions the wisdom of handing over power to ‘People of wisdome voyd, with passion fill’d’ (V.iii.104). In spite of the atrocities the monarchy has perpetrated, Achmat is ultimately unable to offer his support to the disorderly popular rebellion. Though he grudgingly admits the legitimacy of the public’s grievances, he still recognises the ‘sacred’ nature of the monarchy. This again highlights Greville’s construct of the shadow highlighted by Dollimore; in spite of its excesses, absolute tyranny still represents the closest earthly approximation to divine authority. In a similar vein, Tricomi sees Achmat’s outlook as a reflection of the fact that ‘as a seventeenth-century Calvinist who saw in the present age an irreversible pattern of corruption, Greville had no conception of effective political protest. It offended his aesthetics’.38 Nevertheless, Achmat’s rhetoric remains striking and, as David Norbrook points out, his change of tack is marked by its ‘very abruptness’, and is symptomatic of how ‘radical sentiments keep emerging, almost against the author’s will, and have to be repressed’.39 The fact that even the loyal counsellor toys with support for popular rebellion highlights the very extent of the damage that the monarchy has inflicted upon itself. In his challenge to the monarchy’s claims of transcendent power, Greville participates in what Franco Moretti has highlighted as Jacobean tragedy’s ability to ‘deconsecrate’ sovereign power and disentitle ‘the absolute monarch to all ethical and rational legitimation’.40 As Moretti goes on to point out, ‘Power is founded in a transcendent design, in an intentional and significant order. Accordingly, political relations have the right to exist only in so far as they reproduce that order symbolically … absolute monarchy can exist because it has a meaning’.41

64

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Mustapha dramatises the consequences of such a symbolic reproduction of sovereign power becoming all too transparent. In the aftermath of Mustapha’s death, Rosten asserts that ‘The mysteries of Empire are dissolved’ and that ‘Furie hath made the People knowe their forces’ (V.iii.7–8). As Norbrook points out, the actions of the play highlight that ‘the people obeyed only because of a kind of conjuring-trick by which rulers make themselves appear all-powerful’.42 The play therefore struggles to contain its radical rhetoric, yet it ultimately expresses support for that illusion of transcendent power, however compromised it may be, on the grounds that it offers the best source of political stability for a corrupted humanity. Mustapha therefore represents a distinctive example of the potential uses of the features of closet drama. The play explores the interrogative potential of the multiplicity of voices it provides before it offers an ultimately pessimistic view of political agency. In spite of the plurality of voices, the ultimate conclusions they reach are in support of submission to a corrupt and compromised monarch and it is this pessimism that characterises Greville’s use of the generic features of closet tragedy. The oppositional rhetoric, accommodated by the genre, is only able to underline its very redundancy and such features as the multivocality, the virtuous sententiae, and the actions of the submissive stoic hero can only serve as symptoms of or, at worst, as catalysts for the chaos within the framework of a political system beset by ‘declination’. The play therefore confronts the alarming possibility that the institutions whose corrupt and chaotic natures the play lays bare may also be a safeguard against an even greater chaos. This, in turn, highlights Greville’s somewhat ambiguous view of the potential for literature to comment upon these issues. As we have seen, the first chorus likens the role of counsellors to ‘margentes of great volum’d bookes’ (I.Chor.111), whose assistance to their rulers will be limited to helping ‘their greatenesse, with little thinges’ (I.Chor.116), thereby highlighting the sovereign as the centre of authority and the counsellor as, quite literally, of marginal influence. However, Greville continually, and often quite self-consciously, risks venturing beyond that purview and as a result develops a clear element of self-censorship. This is demonstrated most readily by the destruction of his Antony and Cleopatra play and, in Mustapha, by Achmat’s reluctant repudiation of the public rebellion and in the interrogation of Mustapha’s resolve towards passive acceptance of his fate. Mustapha is therefore a play that persistently underlines the necessity of the submission to sovereign authority that it dramatises yet, by doing so, it also unearths the startling implications of this very submission; this results in a radicalism that it struggles to foreclose. Notes 1 Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 162.



Closet tragedy

65

2 T. S. Eliot, Elizabethan Dramatists (London: Faber, 1963), pp. 11–12. 3 Ibid., pp. 25–6. 4 Ibid., p. 43. 5 Ibid., p. 25. 6 Gordon Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger’s Privilege (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 171. See also Alexander Maclaren Witherspoon in The Influence of Robert Garnier on Elizabethan Drama (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924). 7 Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘The Myth of the Countess of Pembroke: The Dramatic Circle’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 11 (1981), pp. 194–202 (p. 196). 8 Lukas Erne, Beyond ‘The Spanish Tragedy’: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 212. 9 Rosemary Kegl, ‘Theaters, Households and a “Kind of History” in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam’, in Viviana Comensoli and Anne Russell (eds), Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp. 135–53 (p. 143). 10 ‘Argument’ to The Alexandræan Tragedie in The Poetical Works of William Alexander, ed. L. E. Kastner and H. B. Charlton, 2 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1921), I. 11 Coburn Freer, ‘Mary Sidney: Countess of Pembroke’, in Katharina M. Wilson (ed.), Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 481–521 (p. 484). 12 See, for example, the essays contained in Alison Findlay and Stephanie HodgsonWright, with Gweno Williams, Women and Dramatic Production 1550–1700 (London: Longman, 2000); and Yasmin Arshad, ‘The Enigma of a Portrait: Lady Anne Clifford and Daniel’s Cleopatra’, The British Art Journal, 11.3 (2011), pp. 30–7; for practical approaches, see Elizabeth Schafer’s work on The Mariam Project which staged site-specific performances in a variety of locations during 2013; accounts of these productions by director Rebecca McCutcheon are available at http://rebeccamccutcheon.com/category/the-mariam-project/ (accessed 20 June 2016). 13 Fulke Greville, A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney in The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, ed. John Gouws (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 3–136 (p. 93). 14 An unauthorised edition of Mustapha appeared in 1609 and a revised version of the play, probably completed during his exile from court during James’s reign, appeared in 1633. Topical readings of the two plays appear in Ronald A. Rebholz, The Life of Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 100–3 and 200–5. For comment upon its responses to the early years of James’s reign, see Albert H. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England 1603–1642 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989); and Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Paulina Kewes has argued that the Antony and Cleopatra plays of Mary Sidney and Samuel Daniel have similarly clear topical resonances as responses to Elizabeth’s foreign policies in the 1590s; see ‘“A Fit Memorial for the Times to Come …”: Admonition and Topical Application in Mary Sidney’s Antonius and Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra’, The Review of English Studies, 63.259 (2012), pp. 243–64.

66

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

15 Alan Stewart, Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 187. 16 Karen Raber, Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001), p. 14. 17 Samuel Brandon, The Tragicomoedi of the Vertuous Octauia (London: William Ponsonbye, 1598), sigs. D3r and E2v. 18 Raber, Dramatic Difference, p. 14. 19 Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 121. 20 Katrin Röder, ‘Intercultural “Traffique” in Fulke Greville’s Mustapha’, Literature Compass, 11.8 (2014), pp. 560–72 (p. 565). 21 Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), p. 189. 22 Ibid., p. 194. 23 Greville, A Dedication, pp. 134–5. 24 Marta Straznicky, ‘“Profane Stoical Paradoxes”: The Tragedie of Mariam and Sidneian Closet Drama’, English Literary Renaissance, 24.1 (1994), pp. 104–34 (p. 111). 25 Jonathan Dollimore argues that, for Greville, the Church represents the ‘major instance of institutional failure’ when it comes to bridging the gulf between divine grace and earthly corruption. See Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, 3rd edn (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) (first published 1984), p. 122. 26 Fulke Greville, Mustapha in The Complete Poems and Plays of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554–1628), ed. G. A. Wilkes, 2 vols (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), I, pp. 210–97. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. 27 Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, p. 122. 28 Ibid., p. 123. 29 Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 231. 30 David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 169. 31 Samuel Daniel, ‘Argument’, in The Tragedy of Philotas, ed. Laurence Michel (Yale: Yale University Press, 1949), ll. 39–41. 32 Brett Roscoe, ‘On Reading Renaissance Closet Drama: A Reconsideration of the Chorus in Fulke Greville’s Alaham and Mustapha’, Studies in Philology, 110.4 (2013), pp. 762–88 (p. 781). 33 Tricomi, Anticourt Drama, p. 70. 34 Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, p. 125. 35 For one of the most notable readings of Mariam’s martyrdom, see Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 151–76. 36 Debora Kuller Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 215.



Closet tragedy

67

37 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 254. See Shuger, Habits of Thought, p. 216. 38 Tricomi, Anticourt Drama, p. 70. 39 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 159. 40 Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms, trans. Susan Fischer, David Forgacs and David Miller (London: Verso, 1983; reprinted 1988), p. 42. 41 Ibid., p. 44. 42 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 159.

4

Tragedy of state: Macbeth Alisa Manninen

In tragedies of state, national unity is sought yet never secured. The past is always present as a warning and a mirror of contemporary fears. These plays address political concerns from behind the shields of fictionality and geographical or historical distance, a strategy that was already familiar to political writers who often drew on the examples of republican and imperial Rome but which became increasingly urgent as England had to define itself in response to external and internal challenges. Though the locations of such plays might include Italy, ancient Rome or mythical Britain, the dangers they staged for an English audience could not be viewed as safely contained by the remoteness of their setting: tragedies of state embody the dread that a ruler’s individual fall, moral and political, can also bring ruin to the realm and its people. More than any other writer, William Shakespeare has come to represent Englishness, while his history plays and tragedies have created an image of him as a political thinker as well as an artist. Yet the modern stagings of his plays revive culturally prominent concerns that were not his alone. What Matthew H. Wikander writes with reference to Hamlet is a particularly appropriate diagnosis for the genre of the tragedy of state: Subject to disease, corruption in a medical sense of the word, the state can sicken, languish for want of a cure, and die. Mismanaged and erring, the state can hurl itself into self-destruction and disaster. The state, the realm, the kingdom, can turn on itself, dismember itself, and die.1

Tragedies of state allow unease with the present to be expressed from the safe distance of the past. They seek to present their own answers as to what might prevent degeneration, but they remain painfully aware of the lasting complications that arise when the structure of the state enables the consequences of human fallibility to acquire nationwide proportions.



Tragedy of state

69

The first English verse drama was Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc (1561), a story of the division of Britain and the rebellious spirit that spreads out from the royal family to devastate the whole realm. While Shakespeare’s King Lear has come to be the dominant image of family conflict in the mythical British past, Gorboduc’s place at the beginning of English-language drama is felicitous. The play illustrates the possibilities of both the specific and the general contextualisation of tragedies of state: on a specific level, it has been convincingly argued that Gorboduc was devised for a political purpose (to promote marriage as a means through which Elizabeth I could prevent her country from falling into chaos), yet at the same time it establishes the general fear of national decay as a consequence of royal failure that will recur throughout English tragedy. In their analysis of an eyewitness account of Gorboduc’s first performance, Henry James and Greg Palmer argue strongly in favour of the recognition of topical relevance: Gorboduc was read by its first audience as a direct commentary upon, and intervention in, contemporary political debates, not just in general terms, but in the specific context of the Swedish suit for Elizabeth’s hand. Drama and politics did not inhabit separate spheres of operation at this time. Contemporaries were accustomed to reading the most direct political relevance into dramatic representations, even where the subject-matter did not immediately suggest it.2

Andrew Hadfield notes that ‘Literary works, especially plays, did deal with the succession, but comment was ever more oblique and nothing could be as open as Gorboduc again’.3 However, by situating tragedies of state in their historical context and teasing out implications to which their audiences would have been receptive, we can make ourselves aware of their specific political moments. The contrast between Gorboduc’s disintegrating Britain and the coming together of England and Scotland in Macbeth reflects how the change in monarch from the unmarried Elizabeth to the married but foreign James VI and I had brought about a rethinking of English national stability. It could be threatened not only by dissolution but by the unification of Britain.4 Yet despite the different emphases of these two plays, written when the last Tudor and the first Stuart began their reigns, they are nonetheless united by their status as tragedies of state. Whereas history plays march forward in time towards the resolution of specific crises and the present England, the kingdoms of Gorboduc and Macbeth, founded wholly or partially on myth, give audiences a nightmare view of what can happen when attempts to achieve national regeneration are pitted against inherent flaws in the state. In 1971, J. W. Lever’s use of the term tragedy of state established a definition for the unease that recurs throughout Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The fear is that the state can be saved by neither orthodoxy’s creation of stability nor transgression’s breaking of established patterns of corruption. Something is wrong with the world itself; therefore both the realm and its

70

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

people face tragedies for which there is no resolution, no cure so complete that it would prevent orthodoxy and transgression from reappearing in their negative forms as stagnation and misrule. To Lever, it is central that ‘The heroes may have their faults of deficiency or excess; but the fundamental flaw is not in them but in the world they inhabit: in the political state, the social order it upholds, and likewise, by projection, in the cosmic state of shifting arbitrary phenomena called “Fortune”’.5 A tragedy of state is not an individual fall alone, but one that is concerned with how society creates the conditions for tragedy and then suffers the consequences. In this spirit, Lever states that ‘[John Webster’s] White Devil is not Vittoria Corombona but Renaissance Europe’.6 Vittoria is the embodiment, not the cause, of the ills for which she becomes the scapegoat; in the trial scene, those who confront her in the spirit of righteousness ultimately appear as her mirrors in their hypocrisy. In tragedies of state, the heart of darkness is ever-present in Renaissance Europe, frustrating efforts to locate and contain it. Tragedies of state ask questions about the nature of legitimate rulership. Without it the nation cannot endure, yet how are the corrosive elements to be isolated from the rest? How to come to terms with the fundamental insecurity of a political and moral situation in which the monarch, who is the state, can cause a national tragedy due to an individual failure and frustrate even the most well-intentioned advice? The Gorboducs and Lears of early modern drama encourage sensible government by presenting the consequences of its neglect, but the plays nonetheless convey a deep scepticism of the idea that the breakdown of the state could truly be prevented once the conditions for its decay are in place. The royal household, in particular, is a site of danger: disease spreads from the head throughout the entire body of the nation, as division and disobedience in the family are followed by disorder in the state and even nature itself. The land becomes one of the victims of the tragic fall, paying the price for the failings of its ruler. The body politic and the king’s body natural are not inseparable in practice, as Lear learns to his horror when his daughters use the power he gave them to cast him out of the household into the inhospitable wilderness of Britain’s physical landscape. Yet their fates are one: Lear is still King Lear and the realm suffers with him, as England does with Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, who also prioritises his private will over his duty to his body politic. The tragedy of state presents the pursuit of power as the driving force of individuals whose actions have far-reaching consequences. This pursuit need not be the transgressive work of the outsider, though the fear of the newly elevated man became notable in Jacobean tragedy due to the new king’s generosity with titles and gifts; Ben Jonson’s Sejanus illustrates the fear of servility and materialism, as well as the censorship that made it safer to use historical settings for commentary on political concerns without ever making it truly safe.7 Destructive power can also be the expression of orthodoxy gone wrong when the ruler misunderstands his rights and abandons public



Tragedy of state

71

responsibility to indulge his personal desires. Seeing himself as above the state, he ultimately causes both individual and universal suffering.8 Though Gaveston’s presence endangers Edward II politically, the king’s support for his favourite expresses a fantasy of free will, a royalty free from rules, which comes into deadly conflict with the nobles’ disagreement with their king.9 Similarly, when Brachiano orders the murder of his aristocratic wife in order to marry Vittoria, he rejects his moral and social ties to his community and neglects his duty to govern his state: in his perceived, supreme isolation there is nothing to halt him from turning desire into reality, yet his power proves vulnerable when others, too, free themselves from their obligations in response. The deaths of Brachiano and Vittoria are brought about by deceit and murder: individual devils are disposed of, but not the conditions which created both them and their enemies, now triumphant yet morally compromised. Though tragedies of state draw on the histories of Renaissance Europe and ancient Rome in addition to British myths, their worlds are ultimately claustrophobic due to a sense of cosmic futility. The immensity of the tragic experience, which affects the entire body politic, is joined to various forms of isolation within the royal family, society and the self. The search for vitality that can renew the land after disaster is a dubious affair when so much depends on the individual. This gives rise to the fear that a faltering monarch and a corrupt court have merely been replaced by less tarnished copies who will, in time, repeat their predecessors’ decline: private and public virtue appear to be incompatible. Thus tragedies of state are also tragedies of succession. In a world where nature can echo the moral rot of the monarch, how can rulership be legitimised and secured for future generations in such a way that the infection is cut from the body? This issue was topical in the reigns of both Elizabeth and James. The death of the aging queen did not end the succession debate: though England once again had a king and a father on its throne, James brought with him strains of Scottishness and Britishness that challenged previous conceptions of unity. In tragedies of state, a host of concerns related to lineage, women and control over fertility are intertwined with the fear that responsible government can slip beyond reach at any moment, dooming both monarch and nation. There is something fitting about the theatrical superstition that has seen Macbeth attain ubiquity as ‘the Scottish play’: it captures both the centrality of Scotland and its simultaneous neglect in the perception of Macbeth. The Gaelic name ensures that every mention of the play is also a reminder of its Scottishness, which is nonetheless often rendered invisible by the cultural associations the play has developed following its first performances in the early seventeenth century.10 It has been grouped with the tragedies rather than the histories ever since the First Folio. Though the historical Macbeth did exist, Shakespeare’s Macbeth has more in common with the mythical Lear than the kings of the English histories: the play is anchored to recorded

72

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

history and contemporary present by references to Edward the Confessor and the reign of the Stuarts, yet it makes the supernatural a genuine and prominent influence in ways that set it apart from the history plays. This sense of a tangible otherworldly presence becomes central to Macbeth as a tragedy of state. The regicide committed by Macbeth becomes the spur to spiritual contagion that spreads throughout Scotland, affecting both the realm and its people. Duncan’s arrival at Macbeth’s castle is the occasion for a rare moment of peace during which nature appears to embody soothing calm and hospitality. Yet even now the air which ‘Nimbly and gently recommends itself / Unto [Duncan’s] gentle senses’ (I.vi.2–3)11 has been tainted by the witches. The pleasantness of the castle and its hostess are illusory, marking the beginning of a new civil conflict that prevents Scotland from enjoying the respite that seemed to have been won with the defeats of the treacherous Macdonald and Cawdor. Sources of infection have been removed only to be replaced by others, with Macbeth threatening the very head of the body politic by his plan of murder under trust; even Banquo, initially wary of the witches’ prophecies, will be tempted into staying silent despite his suspicions about how Macbeth gained all he was promised. As Macbeth endangers the immediate present and the claim of Banquo’s line disturbs the legitimacy of Duncan’s descendants, Scotland is left vulnerable to unnatural intrusions on the order of nature. The witches’ appearance in the first scene ensures that even in the recounted violence of open warfare there is never a moment that could be fully purgative and heroic: at the moment when Duncan is given cause to celebrate his victory, the witches seek out two threats, one aimed at the life of this particular Scottish monarch and the other at the future of his line. ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air’ (I.i.12–13): when Scotland’s climate is contaminated by the witches who stir up the human capacity for treason, neither fair nor foul exists without the other, leaving the cycle of rot and partial cleansing always ready to begin once again.12 Macbeth is set apart from Macdonald and Cawdor by his choice of murder over open rebellion. This brings him greater success, yet through his regicide he destroys both his own sense of shared human nature and the peace of the land itself. When violence is aimed at the sleeping body of the king, the resulting horror is unaccompanied by the validation of martial valour that colours the tales of Macbeth’s bloody feats in Act I, Scene ii: from being something superhuman, like the heroes of myth, he becomes inhuman, alienated from any sense of social connection to his community at large and even his wife, who had been his ‘dearest partner of greatness’ (I.v.7).13 When the body politic is dismembered, first by the murder of Duncan and then by the addition of a grotesque, ill-fitting head as Macbeth becomes king,



Tragedy of state

73

order is undone in the natural world as well. The conversation of Ross and the Old Man is one of many to lament the state into which Scotland falls: old man: ’Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. ross: And Duncan’s horses – a thing most strange and certain – Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending gainst obedience, as they would Make war with mankind. old man: ’Tis said they ate each other. ross: They did so, to th’amazement of mine eyes That looked upon’t. (II.iv.12–23)

The cannibalism in which the horses engage mirrors the way in which Scots, rather than external forces, become Scotland’s most threatening enemy. Like the mutilated corpse of Duncan, this dreadful sight challenges the belief that violence can be contained within acceptable boundaries. Now that Macbeth has exceeded the open defiance practised by previous traitors through his successful deception and murder of the king, no human or natural laws hold true. As the play progresses, the references to upheavals in the natural world are joined by the awareness of human suffering: macduff: ross:

Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country, Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing But who knows nothing is once seen to smile: Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air Are made, not marked: where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or ere they sicken. (IV.iii.183–93)

Scotland’s envisioning as a grave is one of the play’s many images of unnatural births: the land does not bring into being maternal nourishment and the renewal of life, but grief and premature death on such a scale that even the horror with which Duncan’s death was greeted has been dulled by repetition. Bryan Adams Hampton calls Macbeth ‘an exorcism in five acts, a play about domestic purgation that resonates keenly with the tension produced when the categories of material and spiritual, and sacred and profane, are collapsed’.14 Domestic is an appropriate choice of word: Scotland’s troubles are internal, not caused by foreign enemies, and the consequence of corruption in the royal household, where treason manifests as a disease that spreads throughout the whole body. The sense of internal decay is a recurring concern

74

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

in the play. The witches’ presence establishes Scotland as a state of doubtful stability on a supernatural level; Macbeth’s speeches as he seeks to commit himself to murder and Lady Macbeth’s fall into madness explore individual guilt. The imagery of medical and natural cures strengthens as the opposition to Macbeth becomes more open: caithness: lennox:

Well, march we on To give obedience where ’tis truly owed: Meet we the med’cine of the sickly weal, And with him pour we in our country’s purge Each drop of us. Or so much as it needs To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds. (V.ii.30–6)

The Scots return to the purgative violence that was earlier aimed at Macdonald and Cawdor. By shedding their blood in battle, they can restore Malcolm’s kingly blood to the head of the body politic and help the land flourish once more. Yet this cure may be as doubtful as the one carried out in the first act when Macbeth fought Duncan’s foes. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased’ (V.iii.45), Macbeth asks the Doctor, speaking of himself as much as of his wife. The answer offers him no hope. Though external cleansing can dismember the traitor’s body, it has less power over illnesses which breed in the mind: ‘Therein the patient / Must minister to himself’ (V.iii.51–2). The cycle can thus be brought to its conclusion, with violence enacted by the agents of the monarch on the body of the traitor, but there is no assurance that restoration cannot be followed by decline. Both alternatives, of momentary health and encroaching disease, exist simultaneously when the body politic is bound to the king’s body natural: through the fates of Duncan and Macbeth, Shakespeare stages the consequences that the king’s experience of external or internal violence has for the country. Duncan is unable to see treason in the faces of his thanes and so his mutilated corpse becomes a monstrous sight, ‘a new Gorgon’ (II.iii.69), which reveals the failure of earlier efforts of containment. By contrast, Macbeth sees treason everywhere, fearing ‘Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague th’inventor’ (I.vii.9–10). In response, he strikes out indiscriminately at new victims and turns Scotland’s climate into one of suspicion; nobles watch their words, spies report to the king and social generosity is abandoned after the failed banquet. Macbeth began by cleansing Scotland through his destruction of the king’s enemies: now his destructiveness turns on Scotland and transforms him into the body that must be dismembered. Despite its emphatic Scottishness, Macbeth is equivocal regarding the permanence of borders of various kinds. The nation’s physical border will be redefined when Banquo’s Stuart descendants become rulers of England as well as Scotland, but in the immediate present the crossing of borders



Tragedy of state

75

within Scotland, by Scots, only brings about an increase in tragedy.15 The story of the valiant Macbeth who ‘unseamed [Macdonald] from the nave to th’chops’ (I.ii.24) gives less cause for celebration than Duncan recognises: though at this point violence is still confined to the battlefield, it nonetheless introduces the image of the splitting of the natural whole. The temptation of crossing borders becomes irresistible. Macbeth is incapable of prioritising the whole of the body politic and his duty to its head after the witches have made him aware of the difference between his present state and what he might be.16 Similarly, Banquo makes his own moral choice to stay silent when the fulfilment of Macbeth’s hopes implies the witches’ words about his line are also true. The natural order with which legitimate rule is associated is bound to its decay from the beginning. Duncan expresses the same hopes of health and prosperity that colour the speeches of Macbeth’s enemies: duncan: banquo:

Welcome hither: I have begun to plant thee and will labour To make thee full of growing. – Noble Banquo, That hast no less deserved, nor must be known No less to have done so, let me enfold thee And hold thee to my heart. There if I grow, the harvest is your own. (I.iv.30–6)

However, his language proves as fruitless as the Macbeths’ marriage. Macbeth’s regicide and Banquo’s passive disloyalty to Duncan’s memory cast doubt on the efficiency of this practice, which Malcolm seeks to reclaim in the ending. Rebecca Lemon observes that ‘Duncan dismisses interpretive arts partly because he sees his political landscape in terms of absolutes, dividing his soldier friends from his foreign enemies. Such oppositions fail to account for the conceptual fog that hovers over Scotland’.17 Even beyond the irony of Duncan lamenting the impossibility of seeing treasonous intent written in the face as the next traitor enters, the creation of opposites does not necessarily establish barriers. It makes characters aware of divisions without discouraging them from crossing the border from valiant gentleman to traitor. Macdonald and Cawdor took that step, and so does Macbeth despite the warning of their bloody ends. The natural order is further endangered by the imagery of unnatural births. In criticism, Lady Macbeth’s motherhood, like the jokingly superstitious reference to the Scottish play, conjures up immediate extra-textual echoes. The question ‘how many children had Lady Macbeth?’ has acquired a life of its own as a representation of meaningless quibbles that now has little relation to the original context.18 Yet here an irreverent phrase again captures something essential. Lady Macbeth has no living children and any explanation of what happened to them matters less than ‘their parents’ poetically just lack of an heir’.19 Shakespeare’s establishment of a past existence

76

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

draws attention to the present void, as do Lady Macbeth’s speeches in Act I when she first calls on spirits to prepare her for the coming murder and then stiffens Macbeth’s resolve: I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. (I.vii.58–63)

This imaginary act of infanticide is perhaps the most harrowing moment of the play. It requires no belief in the cosmic consequences of regicide or malicious witchcraft: by narrowing down the vulnerability and betrayal of trust that are present in the murder of the sleeping Duncan into an image of absolute helplessness, the speech evokes a human capacity for self-destruction which mirrors the story of the horses that eat each other. If the witches tempt Macbeth by insinuation, Lady Macbeth does so by honesty: the infanticide is almost tangible, so vividly is it described, and contributes to Macbeth’s reshaping. It is a kind of birth, a breeding of corruption in the household that will extend to corruption in Scotland.20 Though Macbeth associates sleep with vulnerability, it also comes to represent a better world which existed briefly between the betrayals of the first and second thane of Cawdor. The other side of vulnerability is security, faith in the place where you go to rest. Julia Reinhard Lupton notes that ‘Of all the needs submitted to hospitable care, sleep is the one in which sovereign personhood, including the person of the sovereign, is most fully abandoned to minimal life processes shared with other living things’.21 When Macbeth breaks the contract of trust and murders his guest, he undoes his own faith in security: Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast’ – (II.ii.42–7)

Sleep is the play’s strongest image of flourishing nature, signifying health in both the land and the state. When the condition of the state no longer allows its people to trust in their environment, their bodies bear the burden of sleeplessness, deprived of its cycle of miniature death and revitalising rebirth. The Macbeths have exposed their moral health to contamination and their punishment comes in the form of nightmares. Macbeth loses his faith in the meaning of time and existence, which he comes to see as mere repetition



Tragedy of state

77

without progress: his attacks on his enemies end lives but achieve nothing. Lady Macbeth is also chained to repetition, trapped in that moment in which she, too, murdered sleep. The varieties of unhealthy influence on Scotland, from the strife of human ambition to the tempting words of the witches, are briefly contrasted with a healing that takes place in England. Acting merely as a brief stage for Scottish visitors and a source of soldiers to accompany Malcolm’s army, it is free to exist as an idealised realm where the king’s virtues are reflected in the health of the body politic. The evil of Macbeth’s regicide manifests in the physical world as a sign of the illegitimacy of his rule, but for Edward the Confessor, a physical manifestation is instead a confirmation of legitimacy: malcolm: doctor:

Comes the king forth, I pray you? Ay, sir, there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art, but at his touch – Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand – They presently amend. (IV.iii.155–60)

Edward’s ability to cure the disease called the King’s Evil validates his position at the head of the English body politic and implies continued national stability through supernatural sanction: ‘’tis spoken / To the succeeding royalty he leaves / The healing benediction’ (IV.iii.171–4). Though James I would, despite his scepticism, take part in the tradition of touching for the evil after he bacame King of England,22 in Macbeth it remains beyond the reach of a Scottish monarch: the touch is a benevolent crossing of borders between heaven and earth that must wait until the glorious future of Banquo’s Stuart descendants becomes the present. To Mary Ann McGrail, the touch is ‘the illustration of an aspect of kingship wholly lacking in Macbeth’s reign, and just barely attempted by Duncan during his rule’,23 yet perhaps more troubling is that the future king who witnesses it remains so seemingly unmoved. Malcolm, the lineal heir of the king whose murder caused such an upheaval in nature, is ignorant of how Edward achieves his miraculous cleansings of diseased bodies. This sets him apart from both Edward’s English monarchy and the Stuarts whose line in the witches’ vision stretches out to eternity. Even in England, Malcolm brings his native political climate with him. The discussion of the touch is preceded by the testing of Macduff, one of the play’s most difficult scenes. It inspires debate on how tyranny can be interpreted as illegitimate or immoral rule, which are not always the same, but in its immediate context it falters.24 The scene allows Macduff to prove his trustworthiness by ultimately flinching from the thought of serving a corrupt man, but Malcolm’s false listing of his vices is so exaggerated and yet so clinical that it cannot evoke the same

78

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

visceral reaction that Lady Macbeth’s imaginary infanticide does. When Malcolm renounces all the vices he spoke of and claims that ‘My first false speaking / Was this upon myself’ (IV.iii.145–6), Macduff responds with silence: he is not the only one who may find the two sides of Malcolm, the manipulative liar and the virtuous heir, ‘hard to reconcile’ (IV.iii.154). Malcolm has learned not from Edward’s example but from Duncan’s death, suspicious even in the safety of England. By presenting one face to his guest while working to discover Macduff’s true nature, Malcolm is a less trusting and less endangered king than Duncan. However, he does not offer an alternative to the state of things in Scotland. He merely claims dissimulation as a strategy to be used by the legitimate heir: the hope is that treason will now be detected sooner, which is a cure for individual cases, not an elimination of the disease. While Malcolm is more skilled than Duncan at seeking out true intentions, he is nonetheless not invested with emotional significance that would make him more than merely Duncan’s lineal heir. If Duncan was too trusting, he was nonetheless associated with images of prosperity and generosity in ways that Malcolm is not. Malcolm himself is curiously incidental to the process of purging Scotland of Macbeth. His most significant contribution to the battle is the plan to hide the soldiers’ numbers by making them carry boughs from Birnam Wood, making the witches’ prophecy come true and turning nature to a deceptive purpose. He is the excuse for, not the cause of, the rebellion against Macbeth, and undergoes no such trial by fire as that which prepares Edgar for leadership; through its acknowledgement of the humbling immensity of what has taken place, the end of King Lear offers a more solid hope for the future than the scapegoating of the ‘dead butcher and his fiend-like queen’ (V.vii.114). As David Margolies says: The heroic tone of the play’s conclusion and Siward’s insistent lack of feeling mark a return to the values of the beginning – blood, machismo, blind heroic confrontation. But the insensitivity at the end is worse than at the beginning because the victors see no contradiction in their attitudes. They have not learned from the experience of the events; Macbeth was the only one who learned, and he is dead.25

For Macbeth, the wheel of fortune has come full circle. For the Scots, the death of Macbeth mirrors the deaths of Macdonald and Cawdor as a warning sign of doubtful efficiency. Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen sees in the absence of the royal touch ‘a degradation of kingship from the realm of the sacred to the realm of the secular’.26 While the sacred was never present in Duncan’s Scotland save in nature’s response to the regicide, Malcolm’s rulership can indeed be characterised as secular. His efforts to curb the spread of treason operate entirely on that level; the renaming of his thanes as earls rewards their service while retaining a purely practical air.



Tragedy of state

79

Arriving with an army, Malcolm has brought English individuals and English titles to Scotland without acquiring any of Edward’s sanctity. Deborah Willis notes that there is a magic that lures men into transgression (associated with the witches’ powers of divination and their suggestive wordplay); there is another sort of magic that punishes or warns of punishment after transgression has occurred (associated with the birds that shriek, the horses that eat each other, the forest that moves); but there is no magic to make the king himself a compelling or charismatic figure who could discourage transgression before it begins.27

Much as Lady Macbeth’s reference to her past childbearing draws attention to the political implications of the Macbeths’ present state of childlessness, the absence of sacred or charismatic benevolence in Malcolm is contrasted with their existence in Edward and Duncan; his continued rulership is dependent on detecting treason rather than inspiring loyalty. Macbeth’s audience was unlikely to know that Malcolm’s sons would have to fight their uncle, called Donalbain by Shakespeare, for the throne. However, even without this historical context the reference to Donalbain’s absence in Act V, Scene ii, with no explanation to follow, creates an uneasy awareness of a potential rival claimant who has not been included in the final scene’s affirmation of allegiance. In other ways as well, the play’s ending concludes the tragedy of Macbeth while leaving the tragedy of Scotland an open question. The tyrant Macbeth, soon abandoned even by his own soldiers, is opposed by Malcolm’s army, where the thanes who set out to cleanse Scotland are accompanied by English allies and untested boys. Their chance to prove themselves on the battlefield brings about the return of natural imagery. When Young Siward dies proclaiming that he does not fear the sight of Macbeth, the display of courage revives martial virtue even as it adds to the play’s reluctance to truly commit to natural regeneration. This boy is not murdered or killed in the act of fleeing, as his father makes sure to ask, but his is nonetheless another life cut short and avenged by Macduff, a man who has lost his family. Lady Macduff had questioned his behaviour in leaving them behind, with ultimately fatal consequences, when he himself fled Scotland: ‘He wants the natural touch, for the poor wren – / The most diminutive of birds – will fight, / Her young ones in the nest, against the owl’ (IV.ii.11–13). Now it is the unnaturalness of Macduff, born by Caesarean section, that enables him to fulfil the witches’ prophecy and kill Macbeth. One source of corruption has thus been violently removed from Scotland’s body politic, but the lineages of the play remain focused on disturbances, not natural continuities. Young Siward will never be Old Siward; Malcolm is ‘Unknown to woman’ (IV.iii.141), restoring Duncan’s line without giving it the political future that Fleance guarantees for Banquo and the Stuarts. There are no fathers of living children in the final scene. Jonathan Goldberg

80

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

argues that the witches’ vision of the line of Stuart kings is a fantasy of replication without women, offering immortality by means of patrilineal descent.28 Yet the lost or absent families of Siward, Macduff and Malcolm exist in relation to natural imagery, not the providence which protects the Stuarts. Without either wives or children, natural generation comes to a stop; there is no Duchess of Malfi here to revitalise a corrupt aristocracy with new blood, paying with her death for crossing the barrier of class yet giving Malfi a healthy heir to rule it. The play ends as it began, with the killing of a thane of Cawdor and the granting of new titles to loyal nobility. These strategies failed to contain Macbeth’s treason. By investing the Stuart line with such assurance of continuity and divine benediction, Macbeth speaks of the present by means of the past: the union of England and Scotland, which the accession of James VI and I had made a reality, will only cross borders in a manner that increases national stability in both kingdoms. Yet the price is that in Macbeth and for centuries to come, Scotland will remain subject to the dangers that create tragedies of state when the household at the head of the body politic falls apart. A cure is offered for society’s ills, but also placed out of reach: both the ambitious pursuit and the misunderstanding of royal power remain possible. In the sense of futility and repetition that Macbeth comes to feel so intensely, the king mirrors the condition of his realm. Notes 1 Matthew H. Wikander, ‘Something is Rotten: English Renaissance Tragedies of State’, in Rebecca Bushnell (ed.), A Companion to Tragedy (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009), pp. 307–27 (p. 307). 2 Henry James and Greg Palmer, ‘The Politics of Gorboduc’, The English Historical Review, 110 (1995), pp. 109–21 (p. 118). For the political context of the play, also see Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977); Susan Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth I’s Marriage in Plays and Entertainments, 1561–1581’, The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 257–74; and Kevin Dunn, ‘Representing Counsel: Gorboduc and the Elizabethan Privy Council’, English Literary Renaissance, 33 (2003), pp. 279–308. 3 Andrew Hadfield, ‘Tragedy and the Nation State’, in Emma Smith and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr (eds), The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 30–43 (p. 36). 4 The renegotiation of nationality can also be seen in two representations of a Scottish Duke of Albany: the Elizabethan Gorboduc gives the title to a devious foreigner who attacks Britain, but Shakespeare’s Jacobean Duke is Lear’s good son-in-law, both British and virtuous, who seeks to restore the state. 5 J. W. Lever, The Tragedy of State: A Study of Jacobean Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 10. 6 Ibid., p. 86. For readings of The White Devil that are relevant to the tragedy of state, see H. Bruce Franklin, ‘The Trial Scene of Webster’s The White Devil



Tragedy of state

81

Examined in Terms of Renaissance Rhetoric’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 1 (1961), pp. 35–51; A. L. and M. K. Kistner, ‘Traditional Structures in The White Devil’, Essays in Literature, 12 (1985), pp. 171–88; and Andrew Strycharski, ‘Ethics, Individualism, and Class in John Webster’s The White Devil’, Criticism, 54 (2012), pp. 291–315. 7 See Philip J. Ayres, ‘Jonson, Northampton, and the “Treason” in Sejanus’, Modern Philology, 80 (1983), pp. 356–63; K. W. Evans, ‘Sejanus and the Ideal Prince Tradition’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 11 (1971), pp. 249–64; and Frederick Kiefer, ‘Pretense in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus’, Essays in Literature, 4 (1977), pp. 19–26. For a general article, see Robert P. Adams, ‘Despotism, Censorship, and Mirrors of Power Politics in Late Elizabethan Times’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 10 (1979), pp. 5–16; and for the most famous Shakespearean debate about censorship, see Paul E. J. Hammer, ‘Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Play of 7 February 1601, and the Essex Rising’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 59 (2008), pp. 1–35. 8 In tragedies of state the ruler is usually male, but the relevance of lineal succession leads to the question of marriage and noblewomen’s political influence. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is the most famous dramatisation of lineage under threat, with the Duchess’s marriage to her steward ultimately offering one solution to the state’s decay: after the deaths of her corrupt brothers, Malfi is given to the son who has a claim to his mother’s lineage and father’s new blood but is hopefully free of his heritage’s negative aspects of selfish luxuriousness and grasping materialism. See Michelle M. Dowd, ‘Delinquent Pedigrees: Revision, Lineage, and Spatial Rhetoric in The Duchess of Malfi’, English Literary Renaissance, 39 (2009), pp. 499–526; and Frank Whigham, ‘Sexual and Social Mobility in The Duchess of Malfi’, PMLA, 100 (1985), pp. 167–86. 9 For Marlowe’s adaptation of Edward II from history into tragedy, see Joan Parks, ‘History, Tragedy, and Truth in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 39 (1999), pp. 275–90; Meg F. Pearson ‘“Die with fame”: Forgiving Infamy in Marlowe’s Edward II’, The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 42 (2009), pp. 97–120; and Irving Ribner, ‘Marlowe’s Edward II and the Tudor History Play’, ELH, 22 (1955), pp. 243–53. 10 For a perspective on the historical development of the play’s theatrical productions, see Rebecca Rogers, ‘How Scottish was “the Scottish play”? Macbeth’s National Identity in the Eighteenth Century’, in Willy Maley and Andrew Murphy (eds), Shakespeare and Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 104–23. 11 William Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2008). All lines from Shakespeare are quoted from this edition. 12 Scotland’s climate is discussed by Lucinda Cole, ‘Of Mice and Moisture: Rats, Witches, Miasma, and Early Modern Theories of Contagion’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 10 (2010), pp. 65–84; and Mary Floyd-Wilson, ‘English Epicures and Scottish Witches’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 57 (2006), pp. 131–61. 13 For the destructive uses of violence, see Derek Cohen, Shakespeare’s Culture of Violence (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993); Michael Davis, ‘Courage and Impotence in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, in Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan (eds),

82

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Shakespeare’s Political Pageant: Essays in Literature and Politics (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996), pp. 219–36; and James J. Greene, ‘Macbeth: Masculinity as Murder’, American Imago, 41 (1984), pp. 155–80. 14 Bryan Adams Hampton, ‘Purgation, Exorcism, and the Civilizing Process in Macbeth’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 51 (2011), pp. 327–47 (p. 331). 15 For the union of the kingdoms, see Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson, ‘Macbeth, the Jacobean Scot, and the Politics of the Union’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 47 (2007), pp. 379–401; Christopher Highley, ‘The Place of Scots in the Scottish Play: Macbeth and the Politics of Language’, in Willy Maley and Andrew Murphy (eds), Shakespeare and Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 53–66; and Lisa Hopkins, Shakespeare on the Edge: Border-crossing in the Tragedies and the Henriad (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 16 The imagery of ill-fitting clothing accompanies Macbeth’s dislocation from his proper role. For social order, see Elizabeth Fowler, ‘Macbeth and the Rhetoric of Political Forms’, in Willy Maley and Andrew Murphy (eds), Shakespeare and Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 67–86; and Bryan Lowrance, ‘“Modern Ecstasy”: Macbeth and the Meaning of the Political’, ELH, 79 (2012), pp. 823–49. 17 Rebecca Lemon, Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 103. 18 L. C. Knights, ‘How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?’, in Explorations: Essays in Criticism Mainly on the Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New York: George W. Stewart, 1947), pp. 15–54. 19 Robert N. Watson, Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 103. 20 For Lady Macbeth and maternal imagery, see Stephanie Chamberlain, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England’, College Literature, 32 (2005), pp. 72–91; and Joanna Levin, ‘Lady Macbeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria’. ELH, 69 (2002), pp. 21–55. 21 Julia Reinhard Lupton, ‘Macbeth’s Martlets: Shakespearean Phenomenologies of Hospitality’, Criticism, 54 (2012), pp. 365–76 (p. 372). 22 Alvin Kernan, Shakespeare, the King’s Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, 1603–1613 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 77. 23 Mary Ann McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002), p. 27. 24 For tyranny, see Rebecca W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990); Grant Havers, ‘Lincoln, Macbeth, and the Illusions of Tyranny’, The European Legacy, 15 (2010), pp. 137–47; Mary Ann McGrail and Alan Sinfield, ‘Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals’, in Colin MacCabe (ed.), Futures for English (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 63–77. 25 David Margolies, Monsters of the Deep: Social Dissolution in Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 102. 26 Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, Devil Theatre: Demonic Possession and Exorcism in English Renaissance Drama, 1558–1642 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), p. 149.



Tragedy of state

83

27 Deborah Willis, ‘The Monarch and the Sacred: Shakespeare and the Ceremony for the Healing of the King’s Evil’, in Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry (eds), True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 147–68 (p. 157). 28 Jonathan Goldberg, ‘Speculations: Macbeth and Source’, in Alan Sinfield (ed.), Macbeth: New Casebooks (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 92–107. For fatherhood, also see Coppélia Kahn, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); and Gloria Olchowy, ‘Murder as Birth in Macbeth’, in Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn R. McPherson (eds), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 197–209.

5

Domestic tragedy: Yarington(?)’s Two Lamentable Tragedies Lisa Hopkins and Gemma Leggott

Domestic tragedy, on the face of it the simplest and most unpretentious of tragic forms, is in fact potentially one of the most ambiguous, for almost every aspect of domestic tragedies is typically susceptible of being read on more than one level. Domestic tragedy, by definition, is set at home, both in the sense of taking place in England rather than being set abroad, as so many other tragedies are, and also in the sense that it is located in one or more private houses rather than in the more public space of the court. At the same time as the genre foregrounds the private house, though, it also calls into question how private it truly is: the technical term for the crime of husbandmurder committed by the heroine of Arden of Faversham is petty treason, and the plays constantly remind us how many aspects of Elizabethan and Jacobean culture conspired to fashion the domestic situation as a mirroring in miniature of the hierarchical ordering of the state as a whole. Moreover, while the focus may be firmly on England, it is on an England troubled and traversed by the tides of humanist learning, which have destabilised traditional shared understandings and offered access to a host of new ideas and new writings, which include erotica and Epicureanism, both of which threaten to bear directly on the structure and economy of the household. Finally, it is a fundamental characteristic of the form that there are often two plots, whose respective endings may be of very different tonalities. A particularly suggestive example of such ambiguities is Two Lamentable Tragedies, which bears the name of Robert Yarington but is generally considered the product of two separate authors who cannot be securely identified, and which will provide our case study.1 This is a play with two plots, one set in Italy and the other in England, linked together by a series of choruses that feature the allegorical characters Truth, Avarice and Homicide. In the play’s first plot, which is set in London, Thomas Merry, a lowly shopkeeper, murders his friend and neighbour, Robert Beech, a chandler, for his ‘score of pounds’.2 Merry invites Beech to his home, which is located above



Domestic tragedy

85

his shop, and strikes him with a hammer fifteen times in the head. Merry’s sister, Rachel, and his servant, Harry Williams, both discover Beech’s corpse. Williams, fearing for his life, moves out of the accommodation he shares with Merry; Rachel, on the other hand, stays and helps Merry dispose of Beech’s body. Merry also murders Thomas Winchester, Beech’s servant, because he thinks he is a potential witness to his master’s murder. Merry murders Winchester in Beech’s candle shop by striking him in the head with the same hammer that murdered his master; rather comically, Merry leaves the hammer sticking out of Winchester’s head. Williams, after many scenes of deliberation, exposes Merry and Rachel to the authorities and they are arrested and hanged. In the second plot, which is set in Italy, Fallerio, a landowner, hires two ruffians to murder his nephew, Pertillo, so that he can receive the large inheritance that was left to Pertillo by his father, Pandino, Fallerio’s brother. The Duke of Padua, who is hunting in the woods with his courtiers, finds Pertillo’s murdered corpse and one of the ruffians fatally wounded; the dying man tells the Duke that it was Fallerio who hired him and the other ruffian to murder Pertillo. Allenso, Fallerio’s son, tries to help his father escape the authorities by pretending to be him; he wears his father’s clothes and a false beard, and Fallerio, meanwhile, disguises himself as a shepherd. However, this fails and the Duke sentences them both to death. Neither plot is based on wholly original material, and the differences between the two sources on which they respectively draw are almost as interesting as the differences between the plots themselves. The play was performed by the Admiral’s Men, and critics such as Andrew Gurr, Bernard Beckerman and Roslyn L. Knutson argue that much of the repertoire of the Admiral’s Men was greatly influenced by the Chamberlain’s Men, and vice versa. Andrew Gurr declares that their ‘repertories […] show clear signs of the close competition they were engaged in. They copied each other, duplicating specific subjects for the plays and the new fashions each introduced’.3 Knutson adds that ‘any number of cross-repertorial parallels is possible […] the strongest connection appears to be with an offering in the Chamberlain’s 1598–99 repertory’.4 Knutson is right that A Warning for Fair Women, which was entered anonymously into the Stationers’ Register on 17 November 1599, was an influential source for the creators of Two Lamentable Tragedies. Not only do both plays open with three squabbling allegorical characters but also Truth in Two Lamentable Tragedies bears an uncanny resemblance to Tragedy from A Warning for Fair Women as they both act as a moral compass, narrate several scenes and show a strong likeness in sentimental qualities. The language used in the two plays is also very similar. Two Lamentable Tragedies also has parallels with other plays. R. A. Law suggests that one of its scenes was influenced by a scene in King Leir, which is noted in Henslowe’s Diary as being performed by ‘the Quenes men & my lord of Susexe to geather’ in April, 1594, a few months before Merry murdered Beech and his servant.5 This play, Law argues, is the same play that

86

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

was printed anonymously in 1605 under the title Leir. He draws attention to the fact that the Merry plot of Two Lamentable Tragedies and Leir both contain the same line, ‘Ah, do not disconsolate your selfe’. He also provides a large amount of credible evidence that shows that the scene where Fallerio hires the two ruffians to murder his nephew in the Italian plot of the play bears considerable similarity to a scene in Leir. Finally Law notes a debt to Shakespeare’s Richard III, as the line ‘lump of foul deformity’ appears in both plays.6 Two Lamentable Tragedies thus responds to history and to tragedy proper as well as to the domestic. Domestic tragedies became popular in the later end of the sixteenth century. They differ from tragedies of state in a variety of ways as their characters are not royalty or of noble birth; they are ordinary people of the lower classes and represent people from all walks of life. However, the position that the protagonists of domestic tragedies occupy in society should not be underestimated; that they are not of royal or noble birth does not mean that they do not hold power in their own community. As Lena Cowen Orlin asserts, domestic tragedies are ‘plays which concern property owners’ and their protagonists are usually middle class.7 However, Two Lamentable Tragedies is unusual not only in that one of its plots is set in Italy but also in that most domestic tragedies feature treacherous wives and husbands whose motive for murder is love. Anne, in A Warning for Fair Women, is partly led by Mistress Drury’s promises of social advancement as she is told that her next husband is ‘one that is beloved / Of great estates’ and that ‘this is called the ladder of promotion’.8 Although Anne is partly persuaded by this to consent to her husband’s murder, the play goes to great lengths to make it clear that the motive of both Anne and her lover is love not social aspiration or avarice. Two Lamentable Tragedies, on the other hand, is concerned not with love but rather greed for money as Fallerio and Merry both commit murder to gain more wealth and advance their social position. Domestic tragedies, like the Merry plot in this play, are often based on real events. A Warning for Fair Women is based on the real life murder of George Sanders, a wealthy London merchant, and Arden of Faversham on the murder of Thomas Arden, a prosperous landowner, a crime charged with such cultural resonance that it is mentioned in Holinshed’s Chronicles. When a domestic tragedy is based on a real crime, playwrights typically try to make their plays as true to actual events as possible by giving precise details of the murder on which their play is based, such as identifying the street or place where the murder took place and referring to real festivities or events that coincided with it. A Warning for Fair Women names the street where the Sanders family lived, gives the time and place where Sanders was murdered, and frequently makes reference to the public holidays that surrounded the murder such as Maundy-Thursday and Lady’s Day. In Two Lamentable Tragedies there are several references to Bartholomew-Day and the fair that was held every year. Such details make it possible for the audience to feel



Domestic tragedy

87

that they are witnessing onstage what happened in real life; Truth alludes to this when she asserts, ‘Your eyes shall witness of their shaded tips, / Which many here did see performed indeed’ (V.ii.19–20). Hearing the names of streets and public holidays, which were so marked in the public consciousness, the audience is able to relate the murders to themselves: ‘Do I live near where the murder took place?’; ‘what was I doing when he/she was murdered?’. The audience and the characters onstage are joined not only by class but by common experiences. Domestic tragedies are so threatening because the characters are ordinary men and women who turn to murder; the message that is conveyed is that murder could touch the lives and thoughts of anyone, anywhere – even the house next door. The way in which anyone might commit murder can be seen in A Woman Killed with Kindness when, after killing a relative stranger, Charles Mountford says: Forgive me, God: ’twas in the heat of blood, And anger quite removes me from myself: It was not I, but rage did this vile murder; Yet I, and not my rage, must answer it.9

Mountford’s assertion that ‘[i]t was not I, but rage did this vile murder’ supports the claim that Truth makes in Two Lamentable Tragedies when she asserts ‘the heart of man’ is ‘open wide to entertain / The harmful baits of self-devouring sin’ (V.v.35–6). The message in both these plays is that men and women are easily corrupted by sin. Domestic tragedies go to great lengths to capture scenes of real life. Anne in A Warning for Fair Women talks to her son about school and the upcoming festivities, prepares dinner for her husband and buys linen to decorate her home. This can also be seen in Two Lamentable Tragedies: neighbours are seen drinking beer and socialising and a maid knocks on Merry’s door selling penny-loaves. Such scenes of domesticity are employed by playwrights to show how murder and adultery disrupt domestic life. In A Woman Killed with Kindness, an innocent game of cards, a common domestic pastime, becomes a metaphor for a wife’s adulterous affair. In Arden of Faversham, Arden is brutally murdered by his wife and her lover while playing a game of backgammon, and in A Warning for Fair Women Anne’s lover interrupts her son and his friend’s game of heads and tails. Such interruptions in domestic life can also be seen in Two Lamentable Tragedies. In Act I, Scene iv, Merry puts his business at risk by committing murder at the busiest time of the day as Rachel asserts, ‘I pray you stay not long, / Guests will come in, ’tis almost suppertime’; Beech, on the other hand, is reluctant to leave his shop, declaring: I pray you, tell them that I cannot come, ’Tis supper time and many will resort For ware at this time above all other times. ’Tis Friday night besides and Bartholomew eve; Therefore, good neighbour, make my just excuse. (I.iv.48–52)

88

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Merry, on the other hand, is so occupied with the thought of murder that he does not care what effect it will have on his business: ‘Let others sup; I’ll make a bloodier feast / Than ever yet was dressed in Merry’s house’ (I.iv.34–5). A man walking with his dog beside the river Thames has his routine disrupted by the discovery of Beech’s body; a salter is disrupted in his day’s work when he is asked to identify a bag which contained part of the dismembered corpse; watermen lose a day’s trade after finding body parts and the murder of Beech’s servant disturbs the neighbours’ sleep when they are roused by the man’s screams. As Catherine Richardson asserts, ‘[t]he first murder threw Merry’s own house into disarray by fracturing the bonds of service; the second brings disorder to the street which stands for the surrounding community’.10 Domestic tragedies are concerned with more than the breakdown of a family: they harbour underlying tensions regarding politics and the state. The contemporary commentators Robert Cleaver and John Dod explained that the household was ‘a little common wealth, by the good government whereof, God’s glory may be advanced, the [larger] common wealth … benefited, and all that live in that family may receive much comfort and commodity’.11 The master of the house was as responsible for the good government of his home as a king was for that of his kingdom; he was in charge of keeping order and avoiding anarchy and chaos because ‘as every man’s house is his castle, so is his family a private commonwealth, wherein if due government be not observed, nothing but confusion is to be expected’.12 One marriage manual even stated that the ‘master over all the house hath as touching his family, more authority than a king in his kingdom’.13 Disorder in the home, therefore, represented disorder in the state; a breakdown of not only the family unit but of society as a whole.14 It is this that makes domestic tragedies so threatening. On discovering Beech’s murdered corpse, Williams tells Merry, ‘I will not stay an hour within your house’ and moves to the Three Cranes Inn. The fact that Williams is forced out of his home, which is also his place of work, threatens social stability; as Orlin asserts, his predicament would not have provoked the audience’s sympathy but rather their apprehension, ‘given [the] contemporary fear of masterless men and vagrants’.15 Good government in both the public and private sphere was metaphorically compared to the human body: the head and the rest of the body were supposed to work together to avoid disorder both in the home and the state. The butchering of Beech’s body into several parts in the Merry plot, therefore, is not only an act of spectacle; it also symbolises the breakdown of domestic harmony which in turn threatens the stability of the state. Beech’s neighbours try to put his corpse back together as Master Loney says, ‘Lay them together; see if they can make / Among them all a sound and solid man’ (IV.ii.71–2); this macabre jigsaw is the neighbours’ way of trying to reinstate order. However, order and stability cannot be regained as their attempt to ‘make […] a sound and solid man’ fails; as one of the neighbours observes, ‘They



Domestic tragedy

89

all agree, but yet they cannot make / That sound and whole, which a remorseless hand / Hath severed with a knife of cruelty’ (IV.ii.73–5). The fact that Beech’s body cannot be made ‘sound and whole’ shows that, despite the neighbours’ efforts, their community has been metaphorically ripped apart and cannot be put back together. It is common in domestic tragedies for murder to be presented almost like a disease that not only infects the community but also leaves its mark on those infected. In the opening scene of Two Lamentable Tragedies Truth asserts: […] the river Thames Doth strive to wash from all impurity. But yet that silver stream can never wash The sad remembrance of that cursèd deed Performèd by cruel Merry on just Beech And his true boy poor Thomas Winchester. (I.i.73–8)

The area where the murders took place is forever tainted; it can never be washed clean. This can also been seen in Arden of Faversham when Franklin tells us that: Arden lay murdered in that plot of ground which he by force and violence held from Reede, And in the grass his body’s print was seen Two years and more after the deed was done.16

Murder stays with the community long after it has been committed. Just as the Thames cannot wash away the murder of Beech and his servant, the grass cannot grow over the print of Arden’s body; the murdered almost become part of the landscape. In domestic tragedies, domestic life is not only disrupted but also perverted. Domestic tools become murderous weapons. In Arden of Faversham Mosby strikes Arden in the head with a pressing iron and in Two Lamentable Tragedies Merry uses a hammer to murder Beech and Winchester. Domestic chores are also perverted; in both Two Lamentable Tragedies and Arden of Faversham the mistress of the house is charged to clean the house not of dust and grime but blood and signs of murder. As Richardson asserts, ‘women are given the task of dealing with the after-effects of the crimes, as households work together, but not equally, to suppress their transgressions’.17 The running of the family household is not only disturbed and perverted but also distorted. Wendy Wall asserts that Renaissance cookbooks indicate that the slaughtering of wild stock as well as the disembowelling, boiling and butchering of animals’ body parts was usually done by the housewife not the husband.18 However, in Two Lamentable Tragedies this image of domestic life is turned on its head: it is Merry who ‘cut[s] and carve[s]’ a body, not Rachel, who exclaims, ‘My heart will not endure to handle it’. Firstly, it is

90

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

the body of a man not an animal which is being butchered and secondly, it is being performed by a man not a woman. This image is invoked again almost two decades later in The Witch of Edmonton where the same knife is used for killing a human and an animal. After Merry murders Beech he places several of his body parts into a salter’s bag; this, one could argue, is a perverse play on the fact that salt was used to preserve and flavour rotten meat. It is almost as if Merry is preserving or seasoning Beech’s flesh as he would an animal’s. Just before Merry goes to murder Beech he says, ‘I’ll make a bloodier feast / Than ever yet was dressed in Merry’s house’ (I.iv.34–5); here, once again, a scene of domesticity such as meal in the family home or a meal served in a tavern is perverted as Merry declares that he will almost decorate his house with Beech’s blood and make a ‘feast’ out of him. It is not only the running of the family household or domestic life that is affected by murder but also social and patriarchal order; it is this that threatens the stability of the state because the breakdown of order and position in the home has a domino effect on the wider community. Family loyalties are put to the test when family members are faced with the decision either to help their loved ones in their transgressions or betray them to the authorities. In ‘An Homily of the State of Matrimony’ women were told ‘as for their husbands, them must they obey and cease commanding and perform subjection’.19 In A Godly Form of Household Government for the Ordering of Private Families, Robert Cleaver and John Dod warned, ‘[I]f she be not subject to her husband, to let him rule all household (especially outward affairs), if she will make head against him and seek to have her own ways, there will be doing and undoing’.20 Rachel owes her brother the obedience that a married woman would owe her husband and follows society’s instructions as she not only obeys Merry but also leaves all ‘outward affairs’ to him. Ironically, if a woman was expected to obey her male governor and avoid ‘poring out all her mind, & babbling of her household matters, that were more fitter to be concealed’, as Cleaver and Dod asserted,21 then Rachel should not be punished for obeying Merry and keeping his sins a secret. Rachel therefore represents the difficulties one faces when one is torn between duty as a family member and duty as a citizen. Household servants too are faced with this dilemma. Merry’s servant, Harry Williams, epitomises this predicament when he asks, ‘Shall I then betray my master’s life?’ (IV.v.41); like Rachel, he is torn between his duty as Merry’s servant and his duty as a citizen to see that Merry is punished for his crimes against society. The home in domestic tragedies is presented as a threatening vehicle that enables people to act one way in public and another in private. Avarice in Two Lamentable Tragedies warns the audience to ‘never credit outward semblances’ (I.i.44); this warning is justified in most domestic tragedies, but especially in this one. The second scene of the play opens with Merry serving drinks to Beech and one of his neighbours who says that Merry’s courteous action ‘shows him for a plain and honest man’ (I.ii.43); in fact, the



Domestic tragedy

91

playwrights of the Merry plot go to great lengths to stress the high regard in which the neighbours hold Merry. In the Italian plot, Fallerio tells the two ruffians he has hired: Know I am named Fallerio, to deceive The world with show of truth and honesty; But yet nor truth nor honesty abides Within my thoughts but falsehood, cruelty, Blood-sucking avarice and all the sins That hale men onto bloody stratagems. (II.iii.18–23)

Both Merry and Fallerio act in the public sphere like decent, honest men but in private they are deceitful, murderous men. In both cases it is the home which enables them to hide their true natures; this is why both of them, once they are discovered to be responsible for murder, are called hypocrites by their communities. They are seen to act one way in public and another in private and it is the home that enables this. Domestic tragedies are arguably more threatening than tragedies of state as they explore what goes on behind closed doors and expose the home as a place where sin and debauchery can be kept hidden. The home is not only presented as a place where you can be your true self or hide your sins but also as a place where you can be safe and find sanctuary. After Merry murders Winchester he runs back to his shop and tells Rachel: Oh sister! Sister! Now I am pursued. The mighty clamour that the boy did make Hath raised the neighbours round about the street So that I know not where to hide myself. (II.ii.92–5)

In fact Merry does know where he should ‘hide’; he knows that his home is a place of safety where he can find refuge. The home offers sanctuary to Rachel too, as Merry tells her, ‘Hide thee above lest that the Salter’s man / Take notice of thee that thou art the maid, /And by that knowledge we be all undone’ (IV.iii.11–13). The home is also presented in this manner in A Warning for Fair Women when Anne says, ‘I’ll hide me in some closet of my house / And there weep out mine eyes or pine to death / That have untimely stopped my husband’s breath’ (IV.i.35–7): the home offers safety and refuge, but the privacy it affords doubles as a hiding place for guilt. Many domestic tragedies suggest that God will expose the murderer through divine intervention. In A Warning for Fair Women, Anne asserts that she had nothing to do with her husband’s murder and as proof of her innocence she attends her trial wearing a white rose and speaks of ‘my spotless innocence, / As free from guilt as is this flower from stain’ (IV.ii.211–12). However, when Anne declares that she is not guilty of the crimes she is charged with, one of the Lords exclaims, ‘It should not seem so by the rose you wear, / His colour now is of another hue’ (V.i.269–70). Here, the

92

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

audience would have been in no doubt that it is God who has changed Anne’s rose from white to red to show that she is guilty of conspiring to murder her husband. One of the more common acts of God in domestic tragedies is cruentation, fresh bleeding from a dead body in response to the presence of the murderer. In Arden of Faversham Alice stands before her husband’s dead body and exclaims: Arden, sweet husband, what shall I say? The more I sound his name, the more he bleeds. This blood condemns me and in gushing forth Speaks as it falls and asks me why I did it. (xvi.3–6)

God, just as He changes Anne’s rose in A Warning for Fair Women, makes Arden’s wounds bleed to show that Alice is guilty of murdering her husband. A very similar scene occurs in A Warning for Fair Women when John Bean’s murderer, George Browne, stands before him and his wounds begin to bleed, as Master Barns exclaims, ‘See how his wounds break out afresh in bleeding’ (IV.iv.135). Browne asserts that the fifteen wounds he inflicted on Bean are: […] fifteen mouths that do accuse me. In every wound there is a bloody tongue Which will all speak, although he hold his peace, By a whole Jury I shall be accused. (IV.iv.139–42)

In both plays the wounds of the murder victims are almost given the power of speech: Alice exclaims, ‘this blood condemns me’ and ‘speaks when it falls’, and Browne asserts that every one of Bean’s wounds is a ‘a bloody tongue / Which will all speak’ against him and declare him to be the murderer. In Two Lamentable Tragedies, however, God does not intervene: cruentation does not occur even though it would be the perfect way to expose Merry as the murderer. Moreover, Williams cannot even denounce Merry as the murderer, as Bean does in A Warning for Fair Women, because he has lost the power of speech. After Merry murders Beech he tells Rachel to ‘Wipe up the blood in every place above / So that no drop be found about the house’ (II.iv.51–2), which she does, managing to successfully clean away all traces of murder. This is strikingly different from Arden of Faversham because after Alice and her lover have murdered her husband she and Susan try to wipe away all the signs of murder but are hindered by divine intervention. No matter how hard Alice and Susan try they cannot wash away Arden’s blood because God has miraculously made the blood ineffaceable. Rachel on the other hand easily washes away Beech’s blood, not only once but twice, as one neighbour testifies: ‘All houses, gutters, sinks and crevices / Have carefully been sought for, for the blood, / Yet there’s no instance found in any place’ (IV.ii.49–51). This absence of divine intervention leaves it up to the community to expose the murderer. Eiichi Hara even goes as far as to suggest that this play



Domestic tragedy

93

could possibly be one of the first to feature some sort of ‘detective’ and ‘would-be Holmeses’.22 In the Merry plot the neighbours work out clues such as who owns the hammer Beech and Winchester are murdered with; they trace the bag that contains Beech’s body parts back to a salter and try to identify a suspect by conducting a house-to-house search. Leanore Lieblein explores the ways in which this play focuses on the role of the community and the part it plays in dealing with household transgressions.23 Two Lamentable Tragedies moves away from plays that feature divine intervention such as A Warning for Fair Women and Arden of Faversham, and anticipates later domestic tragedies such as A Woman Killed with Kindness and A Yorkshire Tragedy, which advance communal responsibility. This is the start of a pattern that gathered force in the later domestic tragedies of the Jacobean period. In A Yorkshire Tragedy a member of the community, named only as Gentleman, enters a man’s home to ‘chide’ him for his scandalous behaviour towards his family. As the Gentleman tells the husband: […] We are now in private; There’s none but thou and I. Thou’rt fond and peevish, An unclean rioter. Thy lands and credit Lie now both sick of a consumption.24

The Gentleman tells the ‘unclean rioter’ that they ‘are now in private’, an assertion which could be taken in two ways: firstly, they are ‘in private’ because there is no one else in the room and secondly, more importantly, the Gentleman has entered the man’s ‘private’ sphere. A member of the community, therefore, has entered another man’s home to resolve problems between him and his family. Increasingly in Jacobean tragedies we see that crimes committed in the home are no longer dealt with from within the household but outside it by the community. As Richardson asserts: Should a wife misbehave and her husband fail to reprimand her, or should a husband use violence to castigate his wife [like in A Yorkshire Tragedy] then the local community had a duty to become involved.25

The blossoming role of the community in dealing with domestic problems can also be seen in A Woman Killed with Kindness, as adultery is no longer presented as an issue between ‘sinner and God’ but one that concerns and involves the whole community.26 Two Lamentable Tragedies rejects the idea of divine intervention because it advocates that it is the responsibility of the surrounding community to act on God’s behalf and resolve transgressions both in the public and private domain. One neighbour asserts, ‘Cease we to wonder at God’s wondrous works / And let us labour for to bring to light / Those maskèd fiends that thus dishonour Him’ (IV.ii.102–4). God, therefore, does not directly expose Merry as the murderer but people inspired by God do. The community is presented as being responsible for carrying out God’s intentions. Merry is exposed as the murderer in Act IV, Scene v, when

94

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Williams accidentally tells Master Cowley. However, Williams would never have exposed Merry if it were not for Cowley consistently questioning him; in fact, the audience sees two full scenes of Cowley trying to persuade Williams to reveal the secret that is causing him so much distress. God, therefore, by inspiring Cowley to keep asking questions, is indirectly responsible for exposing Merry as the murderer. Both Fallerio and Merry exhibit signs symptomatic of a ‘shame culture’ rather than a ‘guilt culture’, keeping their crimes a secret for fear of exposure and showing no fear of the consequences such actions have on their souls. The belief in God’s presence is absolutely essential in a guilt culture, but what matters in a shame culture is public opinion. After Merry murders Beech and Winchester he says to his sister, ‘let us seek to save / Our names, our fames, our lives and all we have’ (II.iv.60–1); all he cares about are his good name and the image his neighbours have of him, even declaring that along with his life, his name and his reputation are the only things he has. He does not mention his soul; he is only concerned about the ‘natural body’ not the ‘spiritual body’.27 This can also be said of Fallerio, who asserts: Know I am named Fallerio, to deceive The world with show of truth and honesty; But yet nor truth nor honesty abides Within my thoughts but falsehood, cruelty, Blood-sucking avarice and all the sins That hale men onto bloody stratagem. (II.iii.18–23)

Here Fallerio, like Merry, only cares about deceiving ‘[t]he world’ with false displays of ‘truth and honesty’; all he worries about is his outward appearance and ‘[t]he world[’s]’ good opinion of him. The surrounding community, however, in both the plays’ plots, appear to inhabit a guilt culture: their actions are driven by the idea that it is their God-given duty to punish those who transgress His laws. The play thus explores shifting ideas about God’s role in the world and His relationship with humanity (which in turn maps onto the Protestant view that the age of miracles is past, and that God now moves through men rather than intervening directly in human affairs. The community is presented as being responsible for exposing those who ‘dishonour’ God by committing sin in either the private or public sphere; it was ‘a part of every good neighbour’s Christian duty to ensure that others within their community behaved appropriately’.28 The neighbours’ actions onstage emulate the real life actions of early modern communities; this can be seen in the fact that in 1602 a foreign visitor asserted, ‘In England every citizen is bound by oath to keep a sharp eye on his neighbour’s house, as whether the […] people live in harmony’.29 It is belief in the existence of God, rather than God Himself, which is ultimately responsible for Merry’s apprehension. This sense of an indirect influence from above is supported by the fact that staging, as in most Elizabethan tragedies, has metaphorical and symbolic



Domestic tragedy

95

meaning in ways which support the play’s vision of society. The upper level of the stage in Two Lamentable Tragedies serves as Merry’s home and the lower stage represents the street where Merry and a number of his neighbours work. There are several stage directions that indicate that players were instructed to move between the upper and lower level of the stage; such ‘dramaturgy’, as Richardson asserts, ‘suggests an everyday spatial pragmatics of small commercial London streets with their living accommodation above shops’,30 but it also carries symbolic force. Marissa Greenberg suggests that the ‘spatial indeterminacy’ of the Italian plot serves as a foil to London’s place-specific topography. This comparative strategy parallels the broader trend of setting plays in Italy in order to comment on English events, issues, and values. At times the portrayal of Italian freedom and humanist tradition works to critique English restraint and provincialism.31

Greenberg’s assertion is supported by the fact that Merry and Loney are shown occupying the same space on the upper stage; this emphasises London’s growing population and suggests that people are literally living on top of each other. It is significant that Merry murders Beech on the upper stage because it is this part of the stage that represents Merry’s home, but Merry also asserts that Beech’s murder has been committed under ‘The eye of heaven’ (II.iv.10); the upper stage is closer to God’s gaze, ‘the eye of heaven’, than the lower, where a property called ‘hellmouth’ might sometimes be situated. When Merry and Rachel move Beech’s body from the ‘upper room’ to the ‘low room’ of their house in Act II, Scene iv, murder affects the whole house literally and metaphorically from top to bottom. When Merry tells Rachel to hide from the salter above their shop on the upper stage his instructions have ‘profound metaphorical implications’, as Richardson explains: ‘the further Rachel can move from the street the less chance there is that the crime will be discovered’;32 by the same token the further Merry himself moves away from the street, represented by the lower stage, the safer he feels, believing ‘physical distance from the street to be synonymous with social invisibility and productive of an inviolable space which can remain unseen’,33 yet the retreat from the street takes him closer to the ‘eye of heaven’. Finally in Act IV, Scene ii, the corpses of Beech and Winchester are brought out onto the stage in full view of the neighbours, and we see that murder has affected the whole community: Merry’s murderous actions have literally spilled out onto the very street where he lives, turning it almost into a morgue. The fact that Merry is arrested on the upper stage rather than the lower stage symbolises that no one’s home is beyond the reach of the law; even though Merry murdered Beech in his home it is still a matter of state and still accountable to the state, supporting Greenberg’s assertion that ‘spaces that seem to invite illicit activity are reclaimed as spaces of lawful and law-enforcing activity’.34 When the neighbours find Winchester fatally wounded in Beech’s shop they shout up to Master Loney’s shop to tell him that there has been a murder,

96

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

symbolising the fact that ‘action outside has implications for those indoors, and vice-versa’.35 Actions committed on Loney’s street bring him outside his home just as Merry’s actions inside his home are brought outside when the neighbours lay his murder victims out on the street. The staging of this play, therefore, is just as telling as the dialogue. As Richardson argues, ‘the qualities of the staging concentrate attention not so much on domestic space, but on the crucial point of contact between the house and the town’.36 In particular, the play uses simple but effective stage props like a chair and a candle to symbolise the metaphorical implications of one’s actions. The typical Elizabethan dining chamber, like a standard Elizabethan playhouse, would have had only one chair. In the home, the chair was kept for the master of the house and was a symbol of the authority and power he held in the household.37 When the audience first sees Winchester, he is sitting in front of Beech’s shop. Unfortunately, the stage directions do not make it clear whether he is sitting on the floor or on a stool; either way, once he is the victim of Merry’s murderous attack he is almost promoted to the status of a martyr or, at the very least, a master, because he is placed on a chair, which, considering that he is a servant, would be a first for him because his position in life would have meant that he would usually sit on a stool. When Winchester is brought before Merry in a chair in Act II, Scene v, it symbolises how household transgressions affect patriarchal hierarchy as the power between master and servant is, temporarily, shifted towards the servant’s favour. Candles too bear symbolic and metaphorical meaning. The Merry part of the play is very concerned with the idea of ‘light’ and how it can expose not only dark deeds but also dark characters. In Act I, Scene iv, Merry asserts that he will murder Beech in his ‘garret’ and revels in the fact that ‘The night conceals all in her pitchy cloak, / And none can open what I mean to hide’. However, as Greenberg asserts, Merry’s ‘confidence is misplaced’ because ‘light is literally shed on [his] crimes when his sister Rachel brings him a candle so he and his “guest” need not “tarry in the dark”’.38 Later in the play a constable, on his way to arrest Merry, says, ‘This is the house, come let us knock at door; / I see a light they are not all in bed’ (V.i.14–15). Rachel tries to lie to the constable, telling him that her brother is ‘not within’; however, the constable knows that Merry is at home because he can see a light shining out of Merry’s bedroom window. Just as in A Woman Killed with Kindness when Frankford slides open his ‘dark-lantern’ to shine light on his wife in bed with her lover and expose their adulterous affair, the use of candlelight symbolises that all dark deeds will literally and metaphorically be brought to light in a genre in which the simplest and least sophisticated of communities are always guaranteed justice. Two Lamentable Tragedies, then, offers a very suggestive insight into the genre of domestic tragedy as a whole. Its two ostensibly separate plots in fact prove to comment on each other, and this is also true of other domestic tragedies such as A Woman Killed with Kindness (as was brilliantly



Domestic tragedy

97

demonstrated in the 2011 National Theatre production of Woman Killed where the set showed cutaways of two adjacent houses, invisible to each other but fully visible to the audience, who could see that what happened in one house always produced an effect in the other). Although Two Lamentable Tragedies tells the story of an ordinary family, it is in dialogue with tragedies of state, in the same way as the murder of Thomas Arden, an apparently private crime, found its way into Holinshed’s Chronicle, whose official focus is solely on public events. Two Lamentable Tragedies is both fictional and real, both allegorical and naturalistic; it probes the intersections between private and public, between family and community, and between household and state; and above all, it offers a particularly resonant exploration of the relationship between human and divine justice. Notes 1 The authorship of Two Lamentable Tragedies has been a subject of great debate for over a century. However, more recent critics who refer to the play seem satisfied to attribute its authorship to Robert Yarington, a man about whom we know hardly anything other than that his name appears on the title page of the Quarto that was published in 1601 and who left no other recorded works by Robert Yarington. Greg and Fleay both argue that Two Lamentable Tragedies is an amalgamation of Henry Chettle’s The Orphan’s Tragedy and William Haughton and John Day’s Thomas Merry. Greg also suggests that Day’s Italian Tragedy was somehow involved in the creation of the play but that his contribution was dropped from the final copy. Henslowe’s diary records that Haughton and Day were paid from 21 November to 6 December 1599 for a play entitled Thomas Merry or Beech’s Tragedy, which Henslowe licensed on 7 January 1600 for the sum of seven shillings. Henslowe also paid Chettle ten shillings on 27 November 1599 on promise of a play entitled The Orphan’s Tragedy, and Day forty shillings on 10 January 1600 for a play entitled Italian Tragedy. Fleay and Greg both assert that the second payment made to Chettle on 24 September 1601 is evidence that he was paid to amalgamate these plays and that this was when Day’s contribution was dropped from the final product and it was printed under the title Two Lamentable Tragedies. Greg’s suggestion that Robert Yarington was the scribe who edited the play and wrote his name at the end of the completed manuscript may well be right. Bernard M. Wagner has discovered that in the ‘An Annuall Catalogue . . . of the Company of Scrivenors I of the Citty of London, preserved in the Bodleian MS., Rawl. D. 51, a ‘Robt. Yarrington junr.’ is recorded as having obtained in 1603 his freedom of the Company by apprenticeship served in the shop of John Partridge’. In a transcript of Daborne’s The Poore Mans Comfort, the scribe placed his name at the bottom of the completed manuscript, ‘By P.Massam / FINIS’; this is very much in the style of Robert Yarington which appears as ‘FINIS. / Rob. Yarington’ (Bernard M. Wagner, ‘Robert Yarington’, Modern Language Notes, 45.3 (March 1930), pp. 147–8, p. 148). 2 Anonymous, Two Lamentable Tragedies, ed. Gemma Leggott, I.ii.77, http:// extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/resources.html (accessed 24 August 2018). All further

98

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

quotations will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 3 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 287. 4 Roslyn L. Knutson, ‘Toe to Toe across Maid Lane: Repertorial Competition at the Rose and Globe, 1599–1600’, in Paul Nelson and June Schlueter (eds), Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006), pp. 21–37 (p. 26). 5 R. A. Law, ‘Yarington’s ‘Two Lamentable Tragedies’, The Modern Language Review, 5.2 (April 1910), pp. 167–77 (p. 173). 6 Law, ‘Yarington’s’, p. 176. 7 Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (London: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 9. 8 Anonymous, A Warning for Fair Women, ed. Gemma Leggott, II.i.130–2, http:// extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/resources.html (accessed 24 August 2018). All further quotations will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 9 Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness in A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays, ed. Martin Wiggins (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008), p. 78. (iii.48–51). 10 Catherine Richardson, Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England: The Material Life of the Household (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 140. 11 Robert Cleaver and John Dod, A Godlie Forme of Householde Gouernment for the Ordering of Priuate Families, According to the Direction of Gods Word (London: Felix Kingston for Thomas Man, 1598), p. 13. 12 Cited in Catherine Richardson, ‘Tragedy, Family and Household’, in Emma Smith and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 17–29 (p. 19). 13 Cited in ibid., p. 19. 14 Ibid. 15 Orlin, Private Matters, p. 113. 16 Anonymous, Arden of Faversham in A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays, ed. Wiggins, p. 68 (Epilogue, 10–13). All further quotations will be taken from this edition and references will be given in the text. 17 Richardson, Domestic Life, p. 136. 18 Wendy Wall, Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 192–3. 19 ‘An Homily of the State of Matrimony’ (1563) in The Renaissance: A Sourcebook, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 72. 20 Cleaver and Dod, A Godlie Forme of Householde Gouernment, p. 88. 21 Ibid., p. 96. 22 Eiichi Hara, ‘The Absurd Vision of Elizabethan Crime Drama: A Warning for Fair Women, Two Lamentable Tragedies, and Arden of Faversham’, Shiron, 38 (July 1999), pp. 1–36 (p. 21).



Domestic tragedy

99

23 See Leanore Lieblein, ‘The Context of Murder in English Domestic Plays, 1590–1610’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 23.2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 181–96. 24 Anonymous, A Yorkshire Tragedy, ed. A. C. Cawley and Barry Gaines, Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), p. 65 (II.128–131). 25 Richardson, ‘Tragedy, Family and Household’, p. 20. 26 Lieblein, ‘The Context of Murder’, p. 194. 27 Man’s body ‘is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body’ (Corinthians 15:44), King James Bible online, www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (accessed 28 August 2018). 28 Richardson, ‘Tragedy, Family and Household’, pp. 20–1. 29 Orlin, Private Matters, p. 7. 30 Richardson, Domestic Life, p. 136. 31 Marissa Greenberg, ‘Signs of the Crimes: Topography, Murder, and Early Modern Domestic Tragedy’, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, 40.1–2 (Spring– Summer 2007), pp. 1–29 (p. 20). 32 Richardson, Domestic Life, p. 137. 33 Ibid. 34 Greenberg, ‘Signs of the Crimes’, p. 24. 35 Richardson, Domestic Life, p. 138. 36 Ibid., p. 147. 37 Orlin, Private Matters, p. 38. 38 Greenberg, ‘Signs of the Crimes’, p. 21.

6

Roman tragedy: the case of Jonson’s Sejanus John E. Curran, Jr

In a sense, a ‘Roman’ tragedy in the English Renaissance merely meant one employing a plot from classical Roman history, and harnessing its capacity to amplify standard tragic modes. Well-known stories of the Romans, impressed on learned people from the core of their humanistic education, were conducive to depicting almost any sort of catastrophe. The de casibus tragedy inherited from medieval tradition, with proud worldlings undone by fickle Fortune, and its two major derivations, tyrant tragedy and courtintrigue tragedy, obviously made for skeletons to which Roman storylines could effectively give flesh and sinew. No specimen of tyranny could be purer than Fletcher’s Valentinian, nor of court intrigue than May’s Agrippina. But less obviously, too, a Roman setting could enliven various tragic subgenres: epic/episodic tragedy (the anonymous Caesar’s Revenge), revenge tragedy (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus), sex tragedy (Richards’ Messalina), loveand-honor tragedy (Marston’s Sophonisba), and what we might call philosophical tragedy (Chapman’s Caesar and Pompey) all benefitted from Roman atmospheres. But was there anything distinctive about Roman tragedy? Interestingly enough, Jonson accidentally provided the best articulation for what set Roman tragic subjects apart, even in his explanation for why his Sejanus met the basic qualifications of tragedy in general: the reader critical of the action’s protracted time-scheme must still credit Jonson with having ‘discharged the other offices of a tragic writer’, including ‘truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution’, and ‘fullness and frequency of sentence’ (To the Readers).1 The principles of tragedy stipulated here – an analysis of history, a massive and majestic sense of scale and a sober moral instructiveness – might seem strange to us, inclined as we are towards viewing tragedy as centred on the passions of a central hero. But by the tastes of the time, Jonson’s priorities were fairly familiar, as corroborated by Sir Philip Sidney’s criticisms of native tragedy in the Defence.2 Strange or not,



Roman tragedy

101

however, these three Jonsonian standards for tragedy apply peculiarly to Roman matter, especially if taken together. First, a dramatist might draw a historically grounded plot from any number of traditions, but from the Romans there was a vast and diversified wealth of true stories of remarkable personages, validated by the most authoritative and fascinating body of historiography in the world. In Renaissance intellectual life, revitalised engagement with writers like Julius Caesar, Sallust and Livy went along with the propagation of writers like Polybius, Plutarch and Tacitus, Jonson’s main source; using such serious, famous, detailed and copious history, free from the celebratory and derogatory imperatives, and the relatively low esteem, of English chronicle, a dramatist was particularly well equipped to elevate a play to an exercise in historical reconstruction. Second, homegrown superheroes like Henry V and super-villains like Richard III notwithstanding, with Rome the dramatist had a ready access to titanic scope. The truths of Roman history were great and mighty truths, the disasters recorded in them not merely sad for those involved but awe-inspiring and world-altering. Though they had lived in the real world, the Romans stood as giants who had made it what it was, and they repeatedly illustrated human extremes. Whether exhibiting demi-godlike virtue or devil-worthy depravity, they could endow a dramatis personae with a built-in stateliness and sublimity – and with, also, an undeniable relevance. For, finally, given Roman stories’ truth and importance, they were ubiquitously held to supply moral lessons, utility for personal and political life. For Jonson, any brand of tragedy ought to be sententious, by which he literally means it should be fortified with cleverly formulated aphorisms, and also, I think, he implies its personae should clearly exemplify a sound moral message. But since their lives were so commonly read as universally applicable models, positive or negative, the Romans were unmatched in their usefulness for exemplarity. This special tripartite power in Roman tragedy Jonson would seem to have affirmed, in caring to ensure the survival of only two of his tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline. A Roman subject was unusually suited to make a tragedy all of what he thought tragedy ought to be.3 However, if Roman tragedy had unique potential to realise truth of argument, gravity and dignity, and sententiousness, it also had a unique ambivalence, one created by the tension between these qualities, especially the first with the latter two. As luminaries such as Nietzsche and Northrop Frye have long since helped us to understand, tragedy itself is inherently ambivalent. What I suggest here is that in Roman tragedy, ambivalence takes a form of its own. While some Roman plays, like Fletcher’s Bonduca and two of his collaborations with Massinger, The False One and The Prophetess, show some generic indefiniteness, most Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas on Roman history are, unlike English chronicle plays, properly classifiable as tragedies, merely in that they emphasise calamity and death. And yet the historical component in Roman tragedies is fully as pronounced as it is in

102

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

English history plays, or indeed any sector of the drama. A Roman story offered the dramatist an excellent opportunity to probe into history, but the more this was taken advantage of, the greater was the risk that the history would render human extremes rather more contemptible than grand, and would clutter the moralising beyond all utility – would shake up the hierarchy of values, certainly on the crucial political issue of monarchy, but on many other issues as well.4 Hence it is unsurprising that, in terms of both sublimity and exigency, commentators have often found Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra markedly Janus-faced, even for Shakespeare.5 Renaissance English Roman tragedy is different, then, in its kind of ambivalence – in how it foregrounds truth, grandeur and example, but in how, concomitantly, its concern for history troubles questions of human dignity, along with those of politics and morality. Such troubling can be seen with an overview of three of the main habits of thought playwrights consistently portray in their Romans in order to cultivate a sense of historical context. Romans are imagined as: alive to their own history and their identity as Romans; attuned to their own political traditions and processes; and at least ostensibly dedicated to the directives of Stoicism. All three facets of this imagined Roman mentality add to and detract from grandeur, and clarify as well as obfuscate moral and political meaning. While exploring these dynamics will require me to reference other plays – Lodge’s Wounds of Civil War, Massinger’s Roman Actor, and the anonymous Statelie Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero will recur – I will concentrate on Sejanus as representative. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, memory of Roman history weighs on the characters;6 as Cleopatra mentions, there is something we can call ‘Roman thought’ (I.ii.83), and it seems to consist of the duty, honour, publicspiritedness and fearlessness that Romans should feel bound to, especially in light of this history. And yet, even while Antony cannot suppress ‘Roman thought’, it is also cast painfully as a contrast to his current thought process. In this play, as repeatedly in Roman tragedy, the characters’ self-conscious and historically informed Romanitas has a dubious, double-sided relation to their present – and to our sympathy. In The Wounds of Civil War,7 probably the oldest extant Roman tragedy, the strife in the late Republic between Marius and Sulla is no mere power struggle; Rome is torn asunder because the Roman spirit has been lost, and because of compulsions the Roman rivals feel, qua Romans. Marius’s son sees Sulla’s ascendancy as a total violation of the old Roman ethos, ‘For governance is banish’d out of Rome’, and dies praying it will be restored by some ‘second Brutus with a Roman mind’ (V.iii.70, 76). The Roman way, the mos maiorum, is a guiding force, and yet is relegated to memory and hope – and yet, too, it is such also for Sulla himself. For him, demanding predominance is ‘befitting well a Roman mind’ (II.i.18), and in the Senate his advocate Octavius understands his strongarming as a restoration of ancient, regal-period laws (III.i.52–6). To the Romans, true Romanness is both inaccessible to and inescapably operant in



Roman tragedy

103

the now, and while from their point of view it is wholly admirable, it cannot be so from ours. The Romans suffering under Domitian’s tyranny in The Roman Actor condemn his departure from the benevolent ruling of his predecessors Vespasian and Titus (I.i.81–91), and wonder, ‘What Roman could indure this?’ (I.iv.52).8 And yet Domitian seems in line with precedent, he being comparable to Tiberius, Caligula and Nero (III.i.16–17, 107), and much of the validation of the actors to whom he is singularly responsive stems from their ability to make Rome’s past come to life: portrayals of a Camillus or Scipio will inspire ‘All that haue any sparke of Roman in them’ (I.iii.86–95). So is Domitian Roman or anti-Roman for being as he is? A similar conundrum infuses Claudius Tiberius Nero, hereafter called Tiberius for clarity’s sake.9 Hailed by his fellow Romans for his noble ‘Romaine heart’ (336), Germanicus sums up the best examples of past Roman heroism (338–51, 1055–62), but he is also utterly anomalous: he alone lives up to the standard of the late Augustus (308–10); he himself sees apocalyptic corrosion overtaking all aspects of Roman society (510–30); and his justifications of Roman imperialism fail, since, as his foreign adversary Vonones remarks, no other ‘Romane spirits’ share Germanicus’s courtesy (1854–60). In this play avatars of the ancient Roman ethos, like the Bruti, can be drawn on to exemplify how ‘Romanes haue valiant and vndaunted minds’ (2616–22) – but here, this is merely in aid of a ploy, by the slimy villain Sejanus. Focusing on just this phase of Tiberius’s tyranny, Jonson’s Sejanus treats this problem with more sophistication, but it is the same problem; the Romanitas the characters recall and refer to is both dead and alive, and of questionable goodness either way. As with the Sejanus of Tiberius, in Sejanus the idea of a Roman mind exemplified in Roman history is pervasive and compelling, but it can be voiced as hollow cant, serving the connivance of a spy. Manoeuvring Sabinus into self-incrimination, Latiaris pretends to insist that ‘the genius of the Roman race / Should not be so extinct, but that bright flame / Of liberty might be revived again’ (IV.142–4). Though Latiaris’s falsity would seem to affirm the extinction of that genius, how therefore could the idea of a Roman genius strike a chord? With the play’s action set after Germanicus’s death, this sense is all the more acute, for now he belongs entirely to history, to a bygone time. ‘If there were seeds of the old virtue left, / They lived in him’ (I.119–20), complains Arruntius; Sabinus agrees and catalogues the ways Germanicus exuded ‘touches of late Romans’, mixing ‘Pompey’s dignity, / The innocence of Cato, Caesar’s spirit, / Wise Brutus’ temperance’ (I.149–54). Germanicus proved that the ideal Roman character could be realised, but he was also in a class by himself, superior even to Alexander (I.144–7). He was ‘too great for us’ (I.158), a vivid clarification of what Romanness is, and received as such by the many Romans who recall him, but then again, he was also a unique model of human, not merely Roman, excellence, a one-time-only phenomenon looming accusatorily to set off what Rome isn’t. In a way he lives on in the old general Silius, who

104

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

defiantly holds up his own service record against the senatorial kangaroo court, and refuses to remain silent by declaring, ‘I’am a Roman’ (III.168). His personal history has been one of fighting beneath ‘our Roman eagles’ (III.257), as a proper Roman should, and by many, though quietly, he’s thought an ‘Excellent Roman’ (III.286), for having lived this Roman-like life and then justifying it now with an equally Roman-like spirit. But is he showing that what is Germanican and Roman-like can’t be quelled, is he its last, dying gasp, or is he evidence that the Germanican and the Roman are not the same, but in opposition? Between Silius and the corrupt Senate, which is the Roman rule and which the exception? Though this kind of question is typically posed by Roman tragedy, the historically conscious Jonson is particularly good at bringing it out, with his particularly historically conscious characters.10 Catiline takes place at a singularly pivotal, liminal time in Rome’s history, in between the convulsions of Sulla and Caesar, with the Republic still afloat but just about to sink; thus the characters are everywhere keenly concerned with what aspect of the Roman identity necessarily stays and endures.11 Jonson’s Cicero, just as the real Cicero did, beseeches the Senate to ask, ‘in what clime are we? / What region doe we liue in? in what ayre? / What common-wealth, or state is this we haue?’ (IV.271–73), forcing the issue of Roman identity, and whether the shamefulness of recent events has actually violated or fulfilled it. For, the conspirators themselves and their supporters have their own historically minded views of what Romanness is and how it has been continued or truncated; for Catiline, ‘all / Were well in Rome’ (I.359–60), and Rome’s natural state had been revived, with a return of a Sulla-style reign of terror (I.229–32), and his well-wisher Sempronia delivers a lecture arguing the permanence of Roman class stratification, despite its retaining none of its primeval virtue (II.115–42). In Sejanus, historical reflection is undertaken almost exclusively by the good, and, the empire having been long settled, it has not the same urgency – but it does intervene a lot, and it yields a similar dissonance. Reacting to Sabinus’s rebuke of the times, Arruntius answers that ‘The men, / The men are not the same! ’Tis we are base, / Poor, and degenerate from th’exalted strain / Of our great fathers. … There’s nothing Roman in us, nothing good, / Gallant, or great’ (I.86–103). Arruntius is appalled, much like Cicero, because of a conviction that the present Romans fail as Romans, and so we see the paradox: the deep-seatedness of this conviction in itself disproves the accusation, for only true Romans have it in them to be appalled at a lapse from Romanitas; but all at once, if the men have changed, there might never have been any such thing. We are thus led to ponder on how societies change through time, as well as on whether a given nation has an essential character; moreover, we must wonder, too, specifically about the Roman character, for what Arruntius mourns is the ‘soul / Of godlike Cato’, that ‘durst be good / When Caesar durst be evil’, and other ‘mighty spirits’ like that of ‘constant Brutus’. History, it may well seem, exemplifies



Roman tragedy

105

Romanness only intermittently through lonely rectitude against a status quo of Roman ‘evil’. Soon the historian Cordus is referenced, Arruntius quoting him on how Cassius was the last of the Romans (I.103–4); Jonson proceeds to use Cordus as a showcase for the play’s analysis of Roman historical self-consciousness. It is Cordus who has envisioned the parallel between Germanicus and Alexander (I.136–42), and Cordus who joins Silius in setting off, through wrongful prosecution, the tyranny of the Sejanus phase of the Tiberian regime. Cordus, whispered about for researching events from the civil war between Caesar and Pompey onward, times ‘somewhat queasy to be touched’ (I.82), is marked for death by Sejanus, whose report to Tiberius couches commemoration of the past as necessarily scandalous to the present:   Then is there one Cremutius Cordus, a writing fellow they have got To gather notes of the precedent times, And make them into annals–a most tart And bitter spirit, I hear, who under color Of praising those, doth tax the present state, Censures the men, the actions, leaves no trick, No practice unexamined, parallels The times, the governments, a professed champion For the old liberty. (II.303–12)

Sejanus rightly anticipates Tiberius’s insecurity about being unfavourably compared to a former, better Rome, but the insecurity does more than merely clinch that unfavourable comparison; it also establishes the reality of that former, better Rome. Tiberius’s Rome seems a cancer metastasising out of a much different, healthy body. That Sejanus tries to redefine unvarnished historical truth – annals – as ‘colour’, what we’d call ‘spin’, suggests how acceptance of Tiberius’s changed, debased version of Rome can only come from falsification of Roman tradition – only, that is, from Sejanus’s propaganda or from intimidation. On trial (III.370–487), Cordus drives home this suggestion by asserting that an accurate account of the previous generations entails their tolerance of accurate accounts. Noting that Augustus permitted Livy to write sympathetically of anti-Caesarians, Cordus makes openness to historical truth a historically true feature of the Roman mos, and his partisans affirm this by observing the folly of Sejanus’s flunkies’ efforts to gag history and burn Cordus’s books, and thereby ‘colour’ the ugliness of a monstrous, anti-Roman Rome: ‘how ridiculous / Appears the Senate’s brainless diligence, / Who think they can, with present power, extinguish / The memory of all succeeding times!’ (III.471–4), says Arruntius. Time reveals truth, and no true Roman fears this; indeed, since, as Cordus claims, ‘Posterity pays every man his honor’ (III.456), a Roman acting as a proper Roman will inevitably be known as such by other proper Romans. But Cordus’s historical perspective, which posits historical perspective as a Roman

106

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

tradition consonant with a traditional Roman goodness, also points in the other direction: perhaps the only real tradition is conflict, pitting Roman authority against the best Romans, the most principled and civic-minded. From this direction Sejanus is quite correct about Cordus, for Cordus’s intent to ‘tax’ Tiberius is all too plain, as is the damage done not only to Tiberius, but also to Augustus and to Julius Caesar, by the lionising of figures like Scipio, Brutus and Cassius. Perhaps the true Roman spirit flashes out only sometimes in history, and only to be beaten down, with memory of it entirely accidental: Tacitus’s words, luckily, survived to tell Jonson something about Cordus, but those of Cordus himself did not. Noting this pessimistic strain, with Romanitas subsisting either in brief, defeated strikes against authority, or, signifying vice rather than virtue, in the authority itself, turns us to portrayals of Roman systems of government. In Roman tragedy, Romans are made to participate vigorously in their distinctive polity, mindful of its time-honoured modus operandi. Even Shakespeare’s Coriolanus has this mindfulness in him, for though he dislikes the ritual of the napless vesture of humility (see II.i.231–6), its sanctity is a fact of life in his world, and he is deeply affected by this fact. And yet, in its gravitation to political crisis points, Roman tragedy almost always lays siege to such sanctity, showing disturbances or even revolutions in it, whether it be republican or imperial. We are prompted to shock at nigh-blasphemous political transgression, of the kind that cannot go uncorrected, and simultaneously to suspicion that whatever seems to stand as the legitimate polity is ripe to be transgressed. The ferocious battle for supremacy between Marius and Sulla in The Wounds of Civil War burns with each man’s private power-greed, pride and animosity, and yet the fire seems contained in the strictures of republican formality, with the play punctuated thoroughly with senatorial protocols and oratory. To protest Sulla’s temerity, Lepidus need only point out that ‘The name of tribune hath continued long’ (II.i.199); to support Sulla’s programme, the smooth-talking Anthony calls on ‘the Senate’s name’, and cries, ‘O citizens, are laws of country left? / Is justice banish’d from this Capitol?’ (III.i.18–22). In Act IV, Scene i this juxtaposition of rampant rulesbreaking with scrupulous rules-following verges on absurdity, as, with Marius’s gang tossing out a consul pell-mell – ‘Is then the reverence of this robe contemned?’, rages the victim (IV.i.135) – Marius voices his decorous obedience to the other consul: ‘Cinna, you know I am a private man / That still submit my censures to your will’ (IV.i.128–9). Domitian’s Rome in The Roman Actor has an almost completely degraded polity, with the emperor’s will flouting legality (I.ii.84–5), and with oratory, though duly addressed to the ‘Fathers conscript’, devoted to preposterous flattery of him (I.iii.1–22). And yet, as with the national character, with the national polity the play, especially via the voice of Paris the actor, makes us wonder how much Rome has actually departed from itself. Paris’s persecutor is the Senate, not the Caesar, who, Paris is confident, would judge him much more wisely (I.iii.50–5).



Roman tragedy

107

To a large extent, Domitian’s iniquity is so virulent that it infects even the Senate; but then, to that extent, it seems the Senate is malleable, and fails to function as any enduring force for righteous government. In Tiberius, imperial tyrannical novelty displaces the old ways – ‘no state of Senate is requested, / But olde establisht orders quite detested’ (1600–1) – and yet also seems coordinated with them; the army’s accustomed forms for conferring honours – what ‘The Romaine millitarie lawes enforce’ (2000) – are what Piso uses to assassinate Germanicus. The play’s opening has Tiberius pretending not to want to succeed Augustus, and though he is dissembling (126), and though some of the plebeians come away reading something ominous in his looks (291–8), he seems comfortable with the conventions of Roman public life, not an interloper alien to it but an integral part of it. He betrays not a hint of strain in hitting all the prescribed notes of the idiom of Roman statesmanship, for he comes to it fully from within: Now Fathers, we will to the Sacrifice, Saluting all the Gods in visitation: Let Lectisternia three daies be proclaimed, The Sibbels, counsels, and Flaminies, Ianus shut vp, and Vestaes fier blaze, Into the middle region of the ayre, Wee all my Lords will to the Cappitoll, In siluer seale, our records to enrole. (280–7)

Jonson’s Tiberius has even more of this double-sidedness to him. Appearing later in his reign, when we meet him the Tiberius of Sejanus has already eviscerated the mechanisms of the Roman state nearly beyond recognition, so that what’s left of Roman political forms is mere theatrics devoid of substance; and yet, since there is no alternative to this theatrics, no going outside of it, and since it is presided over by so consummate an actor, who never lets fall his mask of abiding by Roman political decorum, a kind of substance is strangely reified. It seems both that what constitutes the Roman state has been irretrievably gone for a long time, and that what constitutes it can be nothing other than the Rome we see. With his measures to placate the censorious eyes of his own government, Jonson intensifies this problem. As his Tiberius first enters, his guise of humility also one of identification with Roman political tradition – ‘Our empire, ensigns, axes, rods, and state / Take not away our human nature from us’ (I.376–7) – Silius is made to observe that the guise is bad neither in content nor in form, but for being a guise:   If this man Had but a mind allied unto his words, How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome! We could not think that state for which to change, Although the aim were our old liberty. The ghosts of those that fell for that would grieve

108

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Their bodies lived not, now, again to serve. Men are deceived who think there can be thrall Beneath a virtuous prince. Wished liberty Ne’er lovelier looks than under such a crown. (I.400–9)

The most Roman Romans of the Republic would feel right at home in the Tiberian empire – if only we could believe Tiberius meant what he says, and viewed the fasces with sincere rather than pro forma reverence. Of course Jonson had every incentive to disclaim any implied critique of monarchy per se, but if this disclaimer protects him in his own, Jacobean time, it confuses us about what we should make of his picture of Tiberian time.12 A free, fundamentally Roman past is totally disconnected from the tyrannised, fundamentally anti-Roman present – and yet the difference is by no means fundamental. Spies and toadies afflict Tiberius’s Rome, but only because of his secret, unseen and idiosyncratic receptiveness to them. Everything looks as it should, and might be made to operate as it should were the emperor someone else. The general political question is certainly part of this confusion: if good or ill government does hinge this much on the monarch’s idiosyncrasy, monarchy would seem much dispraised; too, though, republicanism is here argued no better at defending liberty, an argument buttressed by the fact of its utter eclipse. But the confusion also lies in the more specific question of how we should conceptualise what has happened to the Roman state, if indeed anything has really happened to it at all. Tiberius’s oratory captures this. Here as in many Roman tragedies, oratory is the representation of the Roman polity, as regards both its practical workings and its shaping of the Roman mentality, the political paradigm the Romans are imagined as having. In both Sejanus and Catiline, this representation is particularly important for that historical reconstruction, that ‘integrity in the story’ (To the Readers), which Jonson went to such great lengths to achieve, with the characters’ public utterances often tightly bound to what his sources allow them to say. With Tiberius’s public speaking, then, we have an egregious case of truth of argument in tension with dignity and utility, for Jonson is making an educated guess as to how Tiberius actually sounded, and his words sound unrelentingly hypocritical. And yet, we cannot be sure how this hypocrisy reflects on the institutions to which the words pay lipservice. Tiberius assures Rome that he knows himself ‘The servant of the Senate’ and ‘their creature’ (I.393, 439), and carefully decides on what monuments to himself in the provinces are inappropriate, compliant as he is with the precedents set down by Augustus (I.465–8), and cognisant that he is but ‘mortal, / And can but deeds of men’ (I.475–8). Later, in a similar vein, he addresses the Senate to console Rome mourning the death of his own son, Drusus, enjoining them to maintain proper Roman, stately bearing – ‘Wherefore sit / Rome’s consuls thus dissolved, as they had lost / All the remembrance both of style and place?’ (III.36–8) – and putting Germanicus’s sons under their custody, equating the boys’ good or ill with ‘the commonwealth’s’



Roman tragedy

109

(III.80–1). Tiberius’s contempt for the cowed Senate and intent to murder the Germanici make the fullness of his performance of Roman statesmanship all the more disturbing, and even when his base motives come closer to the surface, he attends, chillingly enough, to Roman political appropriateness: to slither into a life of debauchery, Tiberius must ‘beg it of this Senate’, and ask that power be ‘reconferred / Upon the consuls’ (III.111–17); to set up Silius’s kangaroo court, Tiberius refers to Roman prosecutorial ‘custom’, and to the capitol, the gods, ‘the dear republic, / Our sacred laws, and just authority’ (III.201–19). Tiberius reduces the entire Roman governing apparatus to mere ornament, as though it can exist as nothing more than an array of topoi for rhetorical amplification; and yet because he cannot not employ this rhetoric, it takes on the force of a framework of ideas. It comes across as a mere script he follows and as a condition of his reality. We are suspended between these two possibilities, and cannot even surely tell which is the better – for if the traditional political system does have substance to it and does ultimately determine what Tiberius can say and do, then it is one that, while it may foster Roman virtue, must also be able to accommodate the rankest tyranny. Jonson keeps us in suspension as to this sense of determinism by having Tiberius conform seamlessly to his conscientiousRoman-statesman role well outside the realm of public oratory. Recruiting Macro as an agent, with no one to overhear, and with Macro more than disposed to pliancy – ‘I will not ask why Caesar bids do this, / But joy that he bids me’, says the henchman to himself (III.714–15) – Tiberius nevertheless takes it upon himself to excuse his imminent hedonistic vacation as public service: he goes ‘Not for our pleasures, but to dedicate / A pair of temples, one to Jupiter / At Capua, th’other at Nola, to Augustus, / In which great work, perhaps our stay will be / Beyond our will produced’ (III.671–5). Almost comically, the marching orders essentially grant Macro a free hand for whatever rottenness might be convenient, but the words quasi-officially deputise him as a proxy for the weal public: ‘All thou dost in this / Shall be as if the Senate or the laws / Had giv’n it privilege’ (III.704–6). Also bordering on the grimly comical is the tortuous letter from the still-vacationing Tiberius to the Senate, its brutally simple gist, Sejanus’s immediate and total destruction, conveyed unmistakably, though through a dense cloud of etiquette-laden verbiage. Safely miles away and immersed in his perversions, his ruthless and bloody command read aloud to the Senate only after Macro has arranged the logistics of Sejanus’s fall, Tiberius has troubled himself to compose his minion’s death-warrant in the deferential terms of administrative procedure: ‘If, conscript fathers, to your more searching wisdoms there shall appear farther cause – or of farther proceeding, either to seizure of lands, goods, or more – it is not our power that shall limit your authority, or our favor that must corrupt your justice’ (V.631–5). These terms can easily appear as a parcel of his sadism, as he can enjoy even from afar the cruelty of enacting an orgy of death through a veneer of civility; and yet,

110

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

for a final and resounding time, he proves his dedication to his role, despite the craziness of the occasion and despite speaking through someone else’s voice. The letter epitomises how Roman governmental forms are a front for barbarism, but also the sole stay against it. In fact, in a certain light they comprise a rather potent one, for they place constraints of a sort on Tiberius himself. The theatre of politics leads us, finally, to the theatre of philosophy, and the substantiality of the Roman performance of Stoicism. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is the drama’s most incisive treatment of how the dilemma of Stoicism would tell on the Roman mentality, as both Caesar and Brutus hold themselves to an ideal of constancy of mind, unperturbed by circumstances, and yet might seem to do so mostly to protect the image of Caesar-ness and Brutus-ness; is Caesar genuinely ‘constant as the northern star’ (III.i.60), or is he assuming a posture of constancy in order to carry himself as Caesar would do? If truly viable as a response to shifts of Fortune, is Stoicism the expression of inward integrity or of the need to live up to a reputation for such? While Shakespeare’s is the subtlest rendering of it, this line of inquiry threads all through Roman tragedy, with the dramatists’ historical imagination turning out Romans constantly preoccupied with their constancy of mind and temper.13 Striking about The Wounds of Civil War is how completely under the slippery sway of Fortune the furious antagonists are, even as they lay claim to patience and fortitude. Thus Marius at a low ebb: ‘Believe me, lords, I know and am assur’d / That magnanimity can never fear, / And fortitude so conquer silly fate, / As Scilla, when he hopes to have my head, / May hap, ere long, on sudden lose his own’ (II.ii.26–30). Report of Young Marius’s ‘constancy and courage’, and ‘worthy resolution’ as he committed suicide to avoid capture (V.v.66–76), inspires Sulla to a Stoic retirement, admiring the Marii, since ‘Nor Fortune’s laughs nor lowers their minds could tame’ (V.v.83). We learn that even the most voracious and malicious Romans are Romans after all, and will invariably assert mind over worldly change; but it also must occur to us that Marius’s mind’s fortitude is built on hope for a turn-around and for revenge, Sulla’s on the annihilation of enemies, and Young Marius’s on imitation of Cato (V.v.57), the anachronism here (Cato died a long while afterwards) suggesting how commonly Roman Stoic comportment was thought of as a following of models. In The Roman Actor, ironically enough considering the play’s theme of theatrum mundi, committed Stoics do achieve an immunity to Fortune, one not predicated on any desire for praise, but this philosophical authenticity has a high price. The Stoic innocents are an affront to the mad emperor with their ‘passiue fortitude’ (I.i.118), the philosophers’ smiling at his tortures a torture to him, and a mockery of his mockery at ‘the Stoicks frozen principles’ (III.ii.71–89). But in a way they do seem frozen, consigning good persons to sheer victimhood, if indeed they seem practicable by any warm-blooded person at all. Stoicism is appropriate to Romans, then, but it can entail performativity on one side



Roman tragedy

111

and helplessness or inhumanity on the other. We see instances of each in Tiberius: Germanicus’s self-mastery against ambition is won by his considering what the legions love in him, what makes his virtue shine, and what affords him honour (III.ii.577–84); meanwhile, as we’d expect in Roman tragedy, Celsus’s method of declaring truth to himself and defiance of Tiberius is to kill himself, since ‘My minde was neuer feuer-shooke with feare / Of Meagre death, lifes due priuation’ (3173–4). The Stoicism of the Stoical Romans in the drama thus has divergent strands to it, and this we certainly see in Sejanus.14 With Arruntius’s paean to ‘godlike Cato’ and ‘constant Brutus’, we’ve already noted how, early in the play, distinctly Roman virtue is explicitly identified with Stoicism. Cato’s Romanness shows through, as usual, in his suicide, by which he triumphed over Caesar and chose heroically ‘As not to live his slave, to die his master’ (I.92); Brutus when he assassinated Caesar proved himself utterly incorruptible, pure ‘Against all charm of benefits’ (I.93–4). But the darker shades of Stoicism are also in evidence. On the one hand, the play’s surviving virtuous and Stoical Romans are uniformly miserable and futile, stretching to its absolute limit our acceptance that virtue is its own reward. Agrippina, Germanicus’s widow, refuses to sneak around in an environment teeming with informers, since ‘Virtue’s forces / Show ever noblest in conspicuous courses’ (II.456–7); hence her doom is sealed, as is that of her sons, whom she instructs to ‘stand upright, / And though you do not act, yet suffer nobly … What we do know will come, we should not fear’ (IV.73–6). She is both impressive and persuasive, in that, composure being the sole avenue to dignity and self-actualisation in such vicious times, the few true Romans left ought to strive for it; but therefore, not only must we wonder if such composure is really attainable, but we must also be prepared to locate dignity in silence and self-actualisation in self-slaughter. Old Lepidus’s managing to survive by ‘plain and passive fortitude / To suffer and be silent’ (IV.294–5) might seem somewhat less than dignified, and Silius’s very public suicide – ‘The coward and the valiant man must fall; / Only the cause and manner how, discerns them … . Look upon Silius, and so learn to die’, he proclaims (III.334–9) – might not seem so grand a victory. It is applauded only in asides, and when it is denounced as a ‘desperate act’ (III.340), we might not wholeheartedly disagree. Moreover, on the other hand, the applause, while silent, raises the idea of theatrics; Silius has staged his Stoic death, and Arruntius reacts in kind: ‘Be famous ever for thy great example’. The possible association of Stoicism with display and dramatics is underscored by Tiberius’s skill at playing equanimity. His humility act includes aspiring to be counted ‘constant in dangers / And not afraid of any private frown / For public good’ (I.482–4), his address to the Senate grief-stricken over Drusus includes counselling emotional self-discipline despite ‘natural ways’ (III.49), and even his withdrawal into his debaucheries includes a whiff of Stoic retirement. ‘Well acted, Caesar’, thinks Arruntius (III.105).

112

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Yet perhaps more than anyone else it is the titular character who problematises the Stoicism of Jonson’s Romans. Sejanus is obviously the very inversion of Stoicism, and so bolsters its claims by negative example. A lover of the world, bottomlessly hungry after its fruits, crushed by a sudden turn of Fortune’s wheel, he furnishes the play with much of its moralising capacity. In this way Jonson is able to align truth of argument and sententiousness, for the de casibus cautionary tale can be proposed to us through an imagined Stoical Roman sensibility: at Sejanus’s spectacular tailspin, Arruntius exclaims, ‘Forbear, you things, / That stand upon the pinnacle of state, / To boast your slippery height’; Terentius adds, ‘Let this example move th’insolent man / Not to grow proud and careless of the gods’ (V.893–5, 898–9). Furthermore, as the quintessential Machiavel, Sejanus provides a counterpoint to such reservations as we may have regarding Stoical self-control and selfpresentation; if virtuous Romans like Silius do make a show out of Stoicism, with their self-governance appearing futile, impossible or self-aggrandising, this show is much preferable to the foulness of Sejanus. The upstart would-be tyrant is anti-Stoic from opposing directions, excess and defect: he is completely wild with the most bestial passion and completely, horridly rational in calculating every move in his rise to the top, and he is also completely theatrical, with nothing to him but his duplicity, and completely undramatic, increasingly heedless as to the obnoxiousness of his public persona. These variant directions are at one point packed together, in the soliloquy he delivers after being struck by Drusus:   [his] fury shall admit no shame or mean. Adultery? It is the lightest ill I will commit. A race of wicked acts Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread The world’s wide face, which no posterity Shall e’er approve, nor yet keep silent–things That for their cunning, close and cruel mark, Thy father [i.e. Tiberius] would wish his, and shall, perhaps, Carry the empty name, but we the prize. On then, my soul, and start not in thy course. (II.149–58)

Histrionic or not, inhumanly self-controlled or overflowing with passion, this seems appreciably worse than any Stoicism. And yet, as hinted at by his soul’s determination to stay on ‘course’, Sejanus also ends up semi-fulfilling the cardinal directive of Stoicism, the opposition of self to Fortune. As is becoming for an anti-Stoic, Sejanus gleefully blasphemes all the gods except for Fortune – religion is only for ‘excellent fools’, but ‘Her I indeed adore’ (V.69–89) – which is basically tantamount to his worshipping himself and solidifying his confidence in his climb. But when, in an omen terrifying for the other Romans witnessing the ceremony to her, his statue of Fortune supernaturally averts her face from him, Sejanus is shaken, but not terrified – and soon, regaining something



Roman tragedy

113

akin to composure, he openly rejects her: ‘Be thou dumb, scrupulous priest, / And gather up thyself, with these thy wares, / Which I, in spite of thy blind mistress, or / Thy juggling mystery, religion, throw / Thus scorned on the earth’ (V.190–4). Jonson tries to enfold this rejection into Sejanus’s general scoffing at the gods, but it is not quite the same. Though Sejanus is becoming even more thoroughly mired in worldliness, losing his only tenuous tie to a transcendent principle, he nevertheless also comes weirdly close to that disdain for submission to the world’s instability, and that insistence on self-definition, which mark Stoicism. His outrageous pride is not Stoicism, but we seem invited to think on how there might be overlap between them. With his throwing down the blind goddess’s statue, liberating himself from her influence, and holding himself far above and beyond her, is Sejanus’s stance towards Fortune so much at odds with what a true Roman’s should be? And if not, does this mean that Roman values were excellent enough to give a fiend like Sejanus a trace of nobility? Or does it mean that, since those values had their inadequacies, we should qualify our urge to emulate them? Other Roman tragedies, including all of Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s own Catiline, seem more optimistic than Sejanus does towards human nobility, but they almost always in some fashion elicit similar questions about it, as well as about what message to glean from the moral and political Rome they present for us. What I have argued here is that the historical dimension in such presentations gives a special edge to this questioning. Few made as painstaking an effort at historical reconstruction as did the scholarly Jonson, but such reconstruction, trying to take into account the imagined Romans’ historical, political and philosophical frame of mind, is a defining feature of Roman tragedy, as are its vagarious results. We meet a Roman world much bigger and much better, and yet much smaller and meaner, than anyone else’s world. Notes 1 References are from Ben Jonson, Sejanus, ed. Jonas A. Barish (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). On the text and on Jonson’s historical sources (Tacitus and Dio Cassius) I have consulted Sejanus His Fall, ed. Tom Cain, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, Vol. 2, ed. David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 2 Sir Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poetry, ed. J. A. Van Dorsten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 65–7. 3 On this passage and Jonson’s concept of historically based tragedy, see for example J. A. Bryant, ‘The Significance of Ben Jonson’s First Requirement for Tragedy: “Truth of Argument”’, Studies in Philology, 49 (1952), pp. 195–293; John Henderson, ‘Jonson’s Too Roman Plays: From Julius Caesar to Sejanus and Catiline’, in Sarah Annes Brown and Catherine Silverstone (eds), Tragedy in Transition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 103–22; John E. Curran, Jr, Character

114

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2014), pp. 251–6. 4 For the ambivalent effects of ideas of Rome on the drama, see for example T. J. B. Spencer, ‘Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans’, Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957), pp. 27–38; Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Lisa Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Warren Chernaik, The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For the republican or subversive strain, see Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge University Press, 2005). For republican valences in Jonson’s Roman tragedies, see Julie Sanders, Ben Jonson’s Theatrical Republics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 11–33. 5 The seminal accounts are Ernest Schanzer, ‘The Problem of Julius Caesar’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 6 (1955), pp. 297–308; Janet Adelman, The Common Liar: An Essay on Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). 6 References to Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). 7 References are from Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Civil War, ed. Joseph W. Houppert (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969). 8 References to The Roman Actor are from The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, Vol. 3, ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 9 References are from The Tragedy of Tiberius 1607, ed. W. W. Greg (Oxford: Malone Society, 1914). 10 For a different view, that the Romans of Sejanus have ‘anachronistic minds’ illustrative more of Renaissance Machiavellianism than a historically imagined Rome, see Philip Goldfarb, ‘Jonson’s Renaissance Romans: Classical Adaptation in Sejanus’, Interdisciplinary Humanities, 31 (2014), pp. 53–62. 11 References are from Ben Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, ed. Lynn Harold Harris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916). 12 For the topicality of Sejanus and its slipperiness, see for example Annabel Patterson, ‘“Roman-cast Similitude”: Ben Jonson and the English Use of Roman History’, in P. A. Ramsey (ed.), Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1982), pp. 381–94; Ian Donaldson, Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 186–92; Cain, Introduction, Cambridge Edition, pp. 199–209. 13 For a thorough discussion see Geoffrey Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 14 For Jonson’s concept of Stoicism as applied to Sejanus, see for example Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 3–18, 31–9; Adriana McCrea, Constant Minds: The Lipsian Paradigm in England, 1584–1650 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 138–70, esp. 163–8.

7

Satiric tragedy: The Revenger’s Tragedy Gabriel A. Rieger

Satiric tragedy is a subgenre which casts a long shadow over the early modern stage, but setting its parameters is problematic. The most prominent dramatists of the early seventeenth century produced satirically inflected tragic or tragicomic drama, including Shakespeare (Hamlet), Jonson (Sejanus), Marston (The Malcontent), Webster (The Duchess of Malfi), and Beaumont and Fletcher (The Maid’s Tragedy), and this list is merely a representative sample. Even those tragedies not typically classified as ‘satiric tragedies’ often contain satiric elements, or characters that function satirically. We might not overstate the matter to say that the satiric and the tragic are all but inextricable in early modern drama, and so delineating a body of texts which are precisely, or chiefly, ‘satiric tragedy’ presents the critic with a challenge. The juxtaposition, and the interbleeding, of the tragic and the satiric on the early modern English stage is unsurprising when we consider the relationship between verse satire and tragedy in the English imagination. English literary practice was predicated upon modelling, and the models for both genres, satire and tragedy, were lifted from classical Latin.1 Indeed, verse satire is the only literary genre believed to have originated in ancient Rome, the society which was so central to the early modern English identity, and whose tragic constructions, specifically those tragedies attributed to Seneca, defined the practice of early modern English tragedy.2 Beyond this, verse satire and tragedy share a common impulse to expose and punish vice, folly and corruption; the tragic hero is destroyed by hamartia.3 The two genres bleed easily into one another, both in classical Rome and in early modern England. The proper origins of classical verse satire are unclear, although if Quintilian is to be believed ‘satira … tota nostra est’ (‘satire … is entirely ours’).4 While the genre certainly shows the influence of earlier Greek literature (specifically the lost writings of Menippus, filtered through fragments and imitations), the ancient Romans, and subsequently the English, believed it to

116

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

be indigenously Roman, and this belief appears to have given the genre a particular status. Prominent English satirists of the sixteenth century adopted classical inflections in their verse, including John Marston who concludes his satiric verse ‘The Author in prayse of his precedent Poem’ with an ironic plea to the Roman Emperor Augustus, asking, ‘[e]nds not my poem then surpassing ill?’ before entreating, ‘Come, come, Augustus, crown my laureate quill’.5 The glorying, ironic or otherwise, in that which ‘surpass[es] ill’ is a hallmark of satire, Roman and English alike, and serves to complicate the satirist’s status as moralist. The satirist stands as a censor, castigating vice and corruption, and yet his art requires that he show some familiarity with those subjects which he castigates. Beyond this, satire is a fundamentally comic genre, and the application of comedy to the subject of vice opens the satirist to the charge of complicity.6 Taken together, the satirist’s proximity to his subject, and the comic tone which he is required to adopt in engaging it, renders the satirist, at least potentially, morally suspect. As John Webster observes in his satirically inflected tragedy The White Devil, ‘they that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas’.7 The satiric impulse to castigate vice and corruption stands as a constant in the satiric literature of both late first-/early second-century Rome and late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century England, not surprising given the parallels between the two societies. Both societies existed as absolute, hereditary monarchies; both commanded empires and both saw themselves as societies in decline. Juvenal, arguably the most influential of the Roman satirists, declares in his first satire ‘omne in praecipiti vitium stetit’ (‘all vice stands in its greatest condition’).8 The poet wrote those words during the reign of Domitian (whose tyranny led to his assassination and a senatorial decree of Damnatio Memoriae), while the leading lights of Elizabethan satire wrote in the waning years of Elizabeth, when the nation was consumed with anxiety regarding the future of the monarchy, anxiety which would be largely justified in the reign of her successor. This perceived decadence may account for the conspicuous ambiguity of tone which we find in the satiric literature of both civilisations. As we have established, satire is essentially a comic form, and it draws its energy from the carnivalesque, the mocking of the powerful and the puncturing of pretence.9 At the same time, satire is fundamentally normative, concerned as it is with the exposure of vice and corruption, with social policing. These two dynamics, the subversive and the normative, the comedian and the moralist, create a tension in satire that is fundamentally destabilising. The poet Martial, an author of satiric epigrams, speaks to this tension in the fourth epigram of his first book when he writes ‘innocuous censura potest permittere lusus: lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba’ (‘A censor can permit innocuous play: lascivious is my page, proper is my life’).10 A similar tension occurs in classical Roman tragedy, as well. The only extant Roman tragedies are the tragedies of Seneca, the Neronian moralist who held to his Stoic principles to the point of suicide yet who was, in the



Satiric tragedy

117

view of many of his contemporaries, a hypocrite complicit in the crimes and excesses of Nero. His harshest critic is perhaps the historian Cassius Dio, who writes in his Roman History: while denouncing tyranny, [Seneca] was making himself the teacher of a tyrant; while inveighing against the associates of the powerful, he did not hold aloof from the palace himself; and though he had nothing good to say of flatterers, he always fawned upon Messalina and the freedman of Claudius … Though finding fault with the rich, he himself acquired a fortune of 300,000,000 sesterces; and though he had censured the extravagances of others, he had five hundred tables of citrus wood with legs of ivory, all identically alike, and he served banquets on them.11

The sentiment of these charges has echoed throughout history, earning the playwright an enduring reputation for hypocrisy which finds its most succinct, and acerbic, expression in an early modern English satiric tragicomedy, John Marston’s The Malcontent, in which Pietro Jacomo, the Duke of Genoa, declares of Seneca: ‘Out upon him! he writ of temperance and fortitude, yet lived like a voluptuous epicure, and died like an effeminate coward’.12 In classical tragedy the moral condemnation is not typically expressed in comic form as it is in verse satire, but the fundamental impulse remains the same, and it invites a similar charge of hypocrisy. The boundary between the censor and the sinner is porous, be it in verse satire or in satiric tragedy, and this porous boundary begets an ambiguity which provides satire with much of its emotional energy. One reason why the boundary is so particularly porous in Roman tragedy may be that Roman tragedy lacked the figure of the malcontent, the satiristfigure who gives voice to early modern tragedy’s satiric condemnation. In the tragedies of Seneca, the condemnation of vice typically emerges explicitly from the chorus, or implicitly from the interplay between the tyrant and his Stoic counsellor (e.g. Atreus and his Satelles in Thyestes), providing no single character to directly express satiric sentiment. Thus, any moral suspicion which the drama invites needs must be displaced onto the playwright. In early modern satiric tragedy, the malcontent character functions in a similar fashion to the persona of the verse satirist, standing as a satirist-figure and providing a space for separation between playwrights and the potentially corrupted, or subversive, ideas that they articulate. This dramatic innovation did not exist in the first century, and would not exist for another millennium and a half, until the rise of the English commercial theatre. The immediate question is, why? What causes the figure of the malcontent, this figure which is so central to English satiric tragedy and yet which has no recognisable antecedent in the drama of antiquity, to emerge on the commercial stage in the early seventeenth century? The answer may reside in the particular cultural circumstances which shaped England’s nascent literary commercial market at the close of the sixteenth century.

118

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

England had produced satirically inflected tragedy as early as the 1550s when the tragedies of Seneca, with their florid and extensive representations of vice and corruption, were being performed at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Senecan imitation Gorboduc, presented at the Christmas feast of the Inner Temple in 1561–62, features instances of what we might plausibly term satiric raillery, such as when the chorus declares in Act II, Scene ii: When growing pride doth fill the swelling breast And greedy lust doth raise the climbing mind, O, hardly may the peril be repressed … Woe to the prince that pliant ear inclines And yields his mind to poisonous tale that floweth From flattering mouth …! Lo, thus it is, poison in gold to take And wholesome drink in homely cup forsake.13

The blending of satiric elements with tragedy continued with the rise of the commercial theatre. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, written in the 1580s, includes recognisably satiric elements (expressed, as in Gorboduc, in Senecan imitation), as do other late sixteenth-century tragedies. However, it was not until the aftermath of the Bishops’ Ban of 1599 that the genre of satiric tragedy emerged as a recognisable category in itself. The reasons for this are necessarily conjectural, but we might draw some educated conclusions by examining the specifics of the ban. The ban was an edict issued to the Stationers’ Company on the first of June 1599 by John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard Bancroft, the Bishop of London, decreeing as follows: That noe Satyres or Epigrams be printed hereafter That noe Englishe historyes be printed excepte they bee allowed by some of her maiesties privy Counsell / That noe playes be printed excepte they bee allowed by suche as haue auchtorytie / That all NASSHes bookes and Doctor HARVEYes bookes be taken wheresoeuerthey maye be found and that none of theire bookes bee euer printed hereafter / That thoughe any booke of the nature of theise heretofore expressed shalbe brought vnto yow vnder the hands of the Lord Archebisshop of CANTERBURYE or the Lord Bishop of LONDON yet the said booke shall not bee printed vntill the master or wardens haue acquainted the said Lord Archbishop, or the Lord Bishop with the same to knowe wether it be theire hand or no / …. Suche bookes as can be found or are allready taken of the Argumentes aforesaid or any of the bookes aboue expressed lett them bee presently be brought to the Bishop of LONDON to be burnte.14



Satiric tragedy

119

Immediately following this edict in the registry is the notation that ‘Theis bookes presently therevppon were burnte in the hall’. Given the circumstances of the ban, we might logically conclude that the ban was an attempt to curtail content which was perceived to be seditious. This would explain the ban on ‘Satyres or Epigrams’, and it might also account for the restrictions placed on unauthorised ‘English historyes’ and ‘playes’; Jonson and Nashe’s Isle of Dogs, ‘a lewd plaie that was plaied in one of the plaiehowses on the Bancke Side, contanyinge very seditious and sclanderous matter’, had been banned some two years earlier.15 In the face of this ban, it seems likely that the verse satirists of the late sixteenth century, being deprived of an outlet for their art, turned their attention to the stage and incorporated their satiric impulses into the production of drama, taking care to distance their satire from immediately recognisable targets.16 As Lynda Boose writes: In 1599, when razors of restraint were effectively turned against the print medium, the writers had somewhere else to go. And Marston and Middleton set a pattern that, in a way, bespeaks the times: they ceased writing for print and turned their prodigious energies toward the medium where the most gratifying form of ‘publication’ was instant, ephemeral, and constituted within performance. This move to the drama provided the Jacobean writers with a sanctuary that was itself strangely constituted by the spatial, the literary, and the cultural liminality of the theatres they wrote for. Inside that margin they could postpone any effective censorship of their texts by submerging themselves in the very instabilities of the medium they were producing, a medium in which discourse is suspended inside dialogue, dialogue inside performance, and performance inside its own unlocatable ephemerality.17

While ‘the spatial, the literary, and the cultural liminality’ of the theatres doubtless allowed the satirists-cum-playwrights ‘a sanctuary’, the performative aspect of theatre opened vistas for satiric expression far beyond what had been possible in the print medium, while the tradition of English verse satire, cut off so abruptly, provided the prototype for the malcontent, the satirist-figure who expresses subversive rhetoric and, in the case of satiric tragedy, enacts violence against the corrupted state. Indeed, dramatic performance allowed the authors to move from more or less abstract condemnation of vice to more pointed political critique, culminating in ‘endless narrative refigurations of killing the king’;18 the malcontent does not merely castigate vice, he punishes it. Read in this light, the satiric tragedies of the early seventeenth century appear less an outgrowth of either verse satire or Senecan imitation and more a realisation of the satiric impulse, a pursuance of that impulse to its terminus. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, in which the malcontent Vindice enacts an elaborate and bloody vengeance against a Duke and his heirs, all the while voicing the sort of

120

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

satiric invective which would not be out of place in outlawed verse satires such as John Marston’s The Scourge of Villanie, or in Middleton’s own collection of satires, the Microcynicon (both of which were included in the Bishops’ Ban). Indeed, The Revenger’s Tragedy epitomises satiric tragedy, and an examination of that play compels insight into the workings of the genre. The Revenger’s Tragedy is a notoriously unstable play. It is generically unstable, being a tragedy which replicates the structure and rhythms of comedy (specifically the city comedies upon which Middleton had built his reputation in the first decade of the seventeenth century).19 It is tonally unstable, juxtaposing moments of real pathos with moments of absurd comedy, which scholars have traditionally (although not universally) read as bathetic.20 It is, as Karin Coddon has noted, semiotically unstable, presenting the audience with referents (the painted skull, the masque of murderers) which conflate eros and thanatos, pleasure and pain.21 Even the authorship of the tragedy has long been in dispute (having been attributed for centuries to Cyril Tourneur before recent scholarship settled more or less conclusively on Middleton), and yet despite this instability, or perhaps because of it, the tragedy retains a compelling power. In its instability, the play is of a piece with satire. Satire is likewise unstable, flickering ever between moralism and vice, between laughter and vitriol. To the extent that these paradoxes are resolved, they are resolved through irony, the quality of which all but defines The Revenger’s Tragedy. From its inception, the tragedy is ironically engaged. The play opens with the stage direction, ‘Enter Vindice, the Duke, Duchess, Lussurioso his son, Spurio the Bastard, with a train …’). Immediately the reader recognises, as the viewer will come to recognise, the tradition of the medieval morality play, in which each character’s name allegorises his or her dramatic function. In the case of The Revenger’s Tragedy, the names are lifted directly from John Florio’s 1598 Italian dictionary A World of Words: Vindice is the ‘reuenger of wrongs’; Lussurioso is ‘leacherous, luxurious, lustful, wanton, riotous [and] ranke’, while Spurio the bastard is ‘a whores sonne …, a bastard, one base borne, used also for a counterfeit’ (which the character becomes when he usurps his father’s bed).22 This connection to the morality play tradition not only underscores the tragedy’s moral perspective, i.e. the castigation of sin and the ostensive affirmation of virtue; it also connects the tragedy to the morality play’s familiar irony. The most conspicuous character of the morality play tradition is the personified Vice, whose name derives from the Latin vitium (‘offence’) and who is himself an unstable construction, owing partly to the ambiguity of his function. Vice is a warning, an illustration of sin to avoid just as allegorical characters such as Mercy are illustrations of virtues to emulate, and yet, as F. P. Wilson writes, the Vice ‘is always the chief comic character’, delighting audiences with his charisma in the service of (dramatic) evil. According to Wilson, in the figure of Vice we see ‘the wanton word, the obscene jest, the



Satiric tragedy

121

oaths which … had grown to such perfection that no part of Christ’s body was left untorn … placed in the mouths of the representatives of evil’.23 The Vice is a seducer, using his language to a didactic purpose (as a functionary in a larger narrative of repentance) but inviting the audience to revel in his evil nevertheless. As one of his most famous dramatic descendants would note a century later, Vice could ‘moralize two meanings in one word.24 The energy of the Vice is destabilising, and his presence is bound in irony. Early modern tragedy is rich with the dramatic descendants of Vice, most famously Shakespeare’s Richard III and Iago, but the fundamental irony of the Vice figure is perhaps most apparent in Vindice, whose moral purpose (to avenge his dead lady Gloriana and protect the chastity of his sister Castiza) is complicated by his revenge plot, which requires him to adopt the persona Piato the bawd (whose name, meaning piety, embodies his ironic function), speaking seductively of the very vices he seeks to punish. Even before he adopts the persona, Vindice is defined by instability, which he expresses initially through the irony of his language. In his opening monologue, delivered while he observes the ducal procession, he addresses the Duke as ‘royal lecher’ and ‘gray-haired adultery’, the oppositions collapsing the dignity of his office and his age into the shame of his vice. He addresses the Duke’s ‘bastard’ as ‘true-begot in evil’, using the linguistic paradox to expose the fundamental instability of the character and, by extension, the political world which he represents. Vindice defines the four of them (Duke, Lussurioso, Spurio and Duchess) as ‘exc’llent characters’, and in so doing ‘moralize[s] two meanings in one word’; the characters are ironically ‘exc’llent’ in that they are the antithesis of moral excellence, but they literally excel in moral reprobation. Vindice builds upon this irony in the following lines when he declares:   O that marrowless age Should stuff the hollow bones with damned desires And, ‘stead of heat, kindle infernal fires Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke, A parched and juiceless luxur! O God, one That has scarce blood to live upon, And he to riot it like a son and heir? (I.v.5–11)

The lines are bound in ambiguity and paradox. The age of the Duke is ‘marrowless’ and ‘hollow’, and yet it is ‘stuff[ed]’. ‘Age’ in this instance refers to the Duke’s senescence, but it also carries the implication of the immoral ‘age’, or era, in which all of the characters live; the condemnation may be specific or general. The Duke’s bones lack ‘heat’ and ‘juice’, and yet they draw an energy from their very ‘dry[ness]’, which renders them fit to ‘kindle’ the ‘infernal fires’ that simultaneously embody lust, damnation and the burning pains of the Pox, the consequence of his ‘spendthrift veins’, which have expended their natural vitality in sin.25 Despite the fact that he ‘has scarce

122

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

blood to live upon’ he is able to ‘riot it like a son and heir’ because he draws vitality from his loss. In a grotesque irony, the Duke’s sin has simultaneously ‘hollow[ed]’ him and ‘stuff[ed]’ him. It has stolen his energy, and it has provided him with a monstrous new energy. Vindice uses his linguistic irony as a weapon to define and destabilise his targets, but irony is not merely his weapon, it is his essence, and he does not produce it so much as he absorbs it. Irony suffuses the world of The Revenger’s Tragedy like a contagion, and like a contagion it infects nearly everyone (the most prominent exception being Castiza, whose fundamental honesty, in both senses of the word, seems to repel it): Lussurioso and the Duke take their mortal enemy into their confidences; Gratiana (whose name means ‘grace’ – simultaneously ironic to her sin and appropriate to her repentance) seeks to sustain her daughter by ruining her, and Spurio seeks to avenge his bastardy by cuckolding his father. Irony touches practically all of the characters of The Revenger’s Tragedy, and yet no character internalises it to the extent that Vindice does. This is not surprising considering Vindice’s literary ancestry. He is descended from both the Vice of the morality play and the persona of the verse satirist, and he shares their ambiguous relationship to sin. Vindice is ostensibly a moralist, exposing and punishing moral corruption, but his own motivations are not morally pure; they are mercenary. His language highlights this mercenary aspect later in Act I, Scene i, when he invokes ‘Vengeance, thou murder’s quit-rent’ who shows herself ‘tenant to tragedy’, and calls upon murder to be ‘paid’, the economic metaphors underscoring his personal investment in moral order (I.i.39–42). In lines 124 to 127 he reveals that the Duke ‘through disgrace oft smothered’ his father’s ‘spirit / When it would mount’, so that Vindice’s father died ‘Of discontent, the nobleman’s consumption’. For all that the satirist attacks general corruption, his investment in the royal family’s specific transgressions is personal and mercenary; Vindice’s father was a nobleman disgraced by the Duke, leaving Vindice displaced. As Antonio notes of the malcontent Bosola in John Webster’s satiric tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi: [H]is railing / Is not for simple love of piety: Indeed he rails at those things which he wants; Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud, Bloody, or envious, as any man, If he had means to be so.26

When Vindice is able to inaugurate his plot in Act I, Scene iii, he acknowledges, and embraces, the irony that has already come to define him. As he prepares to meet with Lussurioso he undertakes a prayer to ‘Impudence’, the ‘goddess of the palace, mistress of mistresses, / To whom the costly perfumed people pray’ (I.iii.5–7). In a parody of the chivalric quest, which begins with a prayer of humility, Vindice prays to a constructed goddess, Impudence, the



Satiric tragedy

123

perfect antithesis of humility. He addresses her as the ‘mistress of mistresses’, an ambiguity which defines her both as the goddess of whores (the object of their veneration) and the chief whore herself. The ambiguity of his prayer highlights the moral ambiguity of his quest; he is pursuing justice, but this pursuit requires the embrace of evil which will strip him of his humanity, transforming his ‘forehead into dauntless marble’ and his ‘eyes to steady sapphires’ (I.iii.8–9). He will become a ‘costly’ thing, but something less than human. The goddess will rob Vindice of his humanity (and, in Middleton’s Calvinist imagination, his soul) by transforming his flesh into something paradoxically more and less precious. He concludes his prayer with an entreaty that he not reveal the maid ‘fool-bashfulness’ whose ‘flush of grace / Would never suffer her to get good clothes’, before observing that ‘Our maids are bolder and are less ashamed; / Save Grace the bawd, I seldom hear grace named!’ (I.iii.12–15). His jest foreshadows the loss of his humanity that will follow from the symbolic loss for which he prays. His mother Gratiana, the embodiment of grace, will be transformed to ‘Grace the bawd’ by the power of Impudence, after her son (disguised as Piato the bawd) offers her the chance to become a commodity of the court, one of the ‘costly perfumed people’. All of this irony energises Vindice’s revenge plot. Having disguised himself as Piato the bawd, the ‘bone-setter … one that sets bones together’, he infiltrates the service of Lussurioso and receives a commission to seduce his own sister, Castiza. His persona of Piato sets him at another remove from truth, but paradoxically allows him to express something of his true motivations. In defining the bawd as a ‘bone-setter’, he conflates sexual sin with the art of medicine, although as MacDonald Jackson notes, ‘Vindice’s jocular application of it to the trade of bawd is a macabre reminder of the skeleton beneath the copulating flesh’ (I.iii.42, n.). The line is not anomalous; practically all of Vindice/Piato’s speeches of seduction evince a similar irony. He presents his seducer bona fides to Lussurioso by declaring:   I have been witness To the surrenders of a thousand virgins, And not so little. I have seen patrimonies washed a-pieces, Fruit-fields turned into bastards, And in a world of acres Not so much dust due to the heir ’twas left to As would well gravel a petition. (I.iii.48–55)

Again, Vindice uses the language of paradox to collapse sin into its consequence. The ‘surrenders of a thousand virgins’ which, in the natural world, ought to be generative, generate only loss – ‘patrimonies washed a-pieces’ and ‘Fruit-fields turned into bastards’. Vindice echoes his economic metaphor from Act I, Scene i, when he collapses prostitution into destruction, both

124

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

economic and, implicitly, corporeal; the ‘dust’, carrying the association of fleshly decay, gravels the ‘petition’ which signifies the forfeiture of lands. In the world constructed through Vindice’s language, sexual sin generates material wealth but no proper progeny; the ‘secret’ which a man tells a woman ‘overnight’, the ‘doctor may find … in the urinal i’ th’ morning’ (I.iii.84–5). The suggestion is of an induced miscarriage, the wilful destruction of pregnancy which follows illicit coition. Note how, as in Vindice’s opening lines from Act I, Scene i, the description of destruction takes on a paradoxical, and monstrous, vigour. As Dollimore writes, ‘[t]he assertion of life energy does not stand in simple contrast to the process of disintegration but rather seems to feed – to become – the very process itself’.27 The world of The Revenger’s Tragedy teems with a kind of rot in motion, an amalgam of generation and decay. This paradoxical tone defines not only Vindice/Piato’s seduction of the jaded whoremonger Lussurioso; the same tone pervades his attempted seduction of his own mother and sister. When he propositions the two of them in Act II, Scene i, he implores them to:   Think upon the pleasure of the palace, Secured ease and state, the stirring meats Ready to move out of the dishes, that e’en now Quicken when they’re eaten; Banquets abroad by torch-light, musics, sports, Bare-headed vassals that had ne’er the fortune To keep on their own hats, but let horns wear ’em, … (II.i.193–9)

Vindice/Piato cannot evoke the pleasure of sin without simultaneously evoking its obverse: disgust. The ‘pleasure of the palace’, given emphasis through alliteration, embodies revulsion as well as attraction. The meats are ‘stirring’ in that they are aphrodisiacal, but they are also ‘Ready to move out of the dishes’; they ‘Quicken when they’re eaten’. In his revolting image of the consumption of living, and implicitly resistant, flesh, Vindice returns to his ubiquitous metaphor of consumption; sinful pleasure (luxury collapsed into lust, as in the name of Lussurioso) consumes the living flesh. At the same time, it consumes honour; the ‘musics’ and ‘sports’ are attended by ‘Bare-headed vassals’ who have forfeited their hats, the mark of their social statuses, to become cuckolds. They have paradoxically gained and lost through their embrace of sin. The irony and the ambiguity of Vindice’s language evinces his connection with the medieval Vice; he expresses multiple, often paradoxical, ideas simultaneously, pretending evil in order to facilitate virtue. The same language connects him to the tradition of the verse satirist; he engages evil in the ironic pursuit of justice, and he must stand guard against becoming the thing he condemns. At the same time, his engagement with evil achieves an unintended effect. His mother is actually seduced by his ironic language, and so,



Satiric tragedy

125

at the end of the scene, he cries out in his grief, ‘Why does not heaven turn black, or with a frown / Undo the world? Why does not earth start up / And strike the sins that tread upon’t?’ (II.i.247–9), moving from the specific destruction (of his own family) to the general destruction of humankind. Indeed, throughout the tragedy, his language flickers between the general sins, and consequent destruction, of humankind to the specific destruction of his targets, and of himself. The genre of tragedy compels Vindice to suffer a personal destruction beyond that of the verse satirist. Martial could distance himself from his satires by declaring vita proba (‘my life is proper’); Vindice is too intimately engaged to allow for such an out. Of course, if tragedy compels the satirist-figure to suffer a personal destruction beyond that of the verse satirist, it also allows him to realise a satiric aggression beyond what is available to the verse satirist. As Ornstein notes, in The Revenger’s Tragedy ‘there is no disjunction of moral argument and revenge fable … ethical vision is perfectly imaged in the dramatic action … [the playwright’s] moral argument and his plot are one’.28 Dramatic performance opens new vistas of satiric aggression, allowing the character to reify his linguistic attack. The ‘infernal fires’ which Vindice imagines in Act I, Scene i give way to the corrosive that literally burns the Duke’s flesh in Act III, Scene v. Vindice transfers his ironic sensibility from rhetoric to action in that scene when, having received a commission from the Duke to serve as his bawd, he paints the skull of the dead Gloriana with poisoned cosmetics and passes her off as a prostitute. Revealing the painted skull to his brother (and the audience) he asks, ‘Have I not fitted the old surfeiter / With a quaint piece of beauty?’ before declaring:   Age and bare bone Are e’er allied in action. Here’s an eye Able to tempt a great man – to serve God; A pretty hanging lip, that has forgot now to dissemble. Me thinks this lip should make a swearer tremble, A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo ’em To suffer wet damnation to run through ’em. (III.v.54–60)

The ironies of this scene are complex and layered, and they are forecast in these lines which accompany the revelation of Gloriana. The ‘quaint piece of beauty’ which Vindice has provided for the Duke is a woman who died for her chastity; in death, Vindice subjects her to the whoredom which she sacrificed her life to avoid. He constructs her as an object of enticement, with ‘an eye able to tempt a great man’ and ‘a pretty hanging lip’, both qualities being subsumed into her ‘quaint’ beauty, connecting them implicitly to the sexual sin which, in the corrupted social economy of the court, they inspire. At the same time, in Vindice’s reconstructed satiric economy, the eye and lip have ironically become instruments of virtue; the eye tempts the great man ‘to serve God’, while the lip ‘has forgot now to dissemble’, not only because

126

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

it has no agency, but also because, in the clarity of torchlight, it is obviously painted onto a skull. The painted lip, which in the conventional realm of the court would swear, has been ironically reconstructed to prevent that sin; it will ‘make a swearer tremble’. The implicitly open mouth of the skull (‘quite chapfallen’, to borrow Hamlet’s phrase) paradoxically inspires the drunkard to ‘clasp his teeth’. Feminine beauty, the instrument of sin which is, as Vindice observes in II.i.261, one of ‘the hooks that catch at man’ has been appropriated as an instrument of terror, and thus of repentance. Of course, paradoxically, that appropriation of beauty can only be achieved through the destruction of beauty. If Gloriana’s beauty, or the inversion of that beauty, exists as an instrument of general justice (inspiring repentance in swearers and drunkards generally), it becomes an instrument of particular justice when Vindice finally presents it to the Duke. After introducing her as having ‘somewhat a grave look’ and disguising her stench with perfumes, Vindice allows the Duke to kiss her. What follows is perhaps the clearest reifying of the satiric impulse anywhere on the early modern stage. The Duke is consumed, over the course of the scene, by the corrosive poison which he has kissed. The sin of lust, which Vindice has to this point imagined, described and entreated, is finally depicted literally, but in a horrifying ironic inversion. The ‘old surfeiter’ is himself consumed; the Duke’s sin, which a verse satirist might have described and reviled (as Vindice does in the tragedy’s first two acts), is presented directly and punished, or rather, in an ironic inversion, it punishes itself. If Gloriana’s painted skull represents a semiotic ambiguity (embodying both beauty and horror, representing both sin and punishment), the tone of the scene is likewise ambiguous. Vindice and his brother are jovial throughout, punning on matters of death and ironically joining the Duke as he calls treason, stomping on him the while. There follows an exchange among the three characters, the absurdity of which can scarcely be overstated: vindice: duke: vindice: hippolito: vindice: duke: vindice:

Alas, poor lecher, in the hands of knaves, A slavish Duke is baser than his slaves. My teeth are eaten out. Hadst any left? I think but few. Then those that did eat are eaten. O, my tongue! Your tongue? ’Twill teach you to kiss closer, Not like a slobbering Dutchman. You have eyes still: Look, monster, what a lady hast thou made me My once betrothed wife. (III.v.157–66)

In the tradition of both the medieval Vice and the verse satirist, Vindice (and his co-conspirator) bleed together wit and comedy with disgust, in the service of satiric aggression. The result of this is a paradox which creates an ambiguity, or perhaps an instability, of tone. This instability is familiar from



Satiric tragedy

127

both verse satire and the morality play, but in satiric tragedy the instability is intensified by dramatic performance. Vindice does not merely describe sin and its consequences with an ironic relish; he actually presents the spectacle of sin (the Duke kissing a whore) and its consequences (the Duke being ‘eaten’), to the extent that the staging technologies permit. Once again we see the language of consumption used to attack moral corruption, but in this scene the satirist is able to do more than merely describe; he is able to enact. The stage allows him to physically, as opposed to rhetorically, depict both crime and punishment. This visual depiction intensifies both the horror of the Duke’s punishment and the black comedy of the conspirators’ jests, allowing for a deployment of satire beyond anything one might find in either the morality play or in verse satire. Middleton exploits the satiric possibilities of dramatic performance with a difference in Act V, Scene iii, the scene in which Vindice and his coconspirators murder Lussurioso and his courtiers at the climax of a masque held in celebration of his ascension to the duchy. The masque is significant here because, as Dollimore notes, it functions as a ‘symbolic and ritualistic celebration of royal power’, but in The Revenger’s Tragedy, the ceremonial is inverted, and thereby ironised.29 The revengers disguise themselves as dancers and, in the midst of their preparations, Vindice declares: The masquing suites are fashioning, now comes in That which must glad us all: we to take pattern Of all those suits, the colour, trimming, fashion, E’en to an undistinguished hair almost. Then entering first, observing the true form, Within a strain or two we shall find leisure, To steal our swords out handsomely, And when they think their pleasure sweet and good, In midst of all their joys, they shall sigh blood. (V.iii.14–22)

In this instance, Vindice does not lead his target into sin. Indeed, Lussurioso is required to take no action at all; rather Vindice acts, appropriating the court mask, with all of its attendant associations of aristocratic privilege, as a weapon of satiric attack. He and his fellow revengers prepare to take ‘pattern’ of the suits, inhabiting the vehicle for aristocratic flattery and refiguring it as a weapon. The revengers will not only inhabit the costumes of the masquers; they will become masquers, ‘observing the true form’ and keeping pace with the music such that they find ‘leisure’ to strike ‘within a strain or two’. He underscores the fundamental irony of his plot in the couplet, observing that ‘In midst of all their joys, they shall sigh blood’, conflating the conventional association of erotic ‘sighing’ with the violent spectacle of the murders. The structure of the irony in this scene is somewhat different, but there are significant parallels with the murder of the Duke in Act III, Scene ii. By

128

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

the fifth act, the court masque has already been established as not only a mark of aristocratic privilege, but as a vehicle for sin; Antonio describes in Act I, Scene iv how Junior Brother used the masque, ‘full of fraud and flattery’, as a cover for his rape of Antonio’s wife. Vindice echoes that earlier description in the murder of Lussurioso, using the masque as a cover for his own attack and revisiting the aristocratic privilege upon the royal party as an attack in a violent ironic inversion. As with the murder of the Duke in Act III, Scene ii, sin is revisited as punishment in a scene which bleeds together comedy and horror.30 If satiric tragedy intensifies the force of the satiric impulse as it reifies it, it also intensifies the consequences for the satirist-figure. If verse satirists expose themselves to implicit condemnation through the familiarity necessitated by their attacks on moral corruption, the satirist-figures in satiric tragedy invite literal destruction, becoming ensnared within the irony which has served as their weaponry. In Act V, Scene iii, Vindice, having achieved his revenge and escaped detection, confesses to Antonio the murder of the Duke, after which Antonio orders Vindice and his brother borne ‘to speedy execution’ (V.iii.101). Vindice reacts to the sentence with a philosophical irony, observing that: ’Tis time to die when we are ourselves our foes. When murd’rers shut deeds close, this curse does seal ’em: If none disclose ’em they themselves reveal ’em. This murder might have slept in tongueless brass, But for ourselves, and the world died an ass. Now I remember too, here was Piato Brought forth a knavish sentence one: ‘No doubt’, said he ‘but time Will make the murderer bring forth himself’. ’Tis well he died; he was a witch. (V.iii.109–17)

The irony that suffuses The Revenger’s Tragedy, and which Vindice has appropriated as his weaponry, finally consumes the satirist-figure himself. The revenger, having avenged the crimes of his enemies, finds that he is his own foe. The cosmic irony of justice, which ordains that ‘when murd’rers shut deeds close … they themselves reveal ’em’, eventually consumes even the revenger who served as its agent. The verse satirist must express some familiarity with vice in order to attack it, but in the intensified milieu of satiric tragedy, in which rhetorical attack is displaced onto physical attack, the satirist-figure must actually become the vice he would attack. Vindice the revenger becomes Piato the bawd, and in so doing pronounces his own sentence: ‘time will make the murderer bring forth himself’. Piato, the moral revenger who posed as a bawd to kill a Duke before displacing his identity onto that Duke, has been revealed finally as the prophet of truth, a truth spoken in irony which is, paradoxically, fulfilled in earnest.



Satiric tragedy

129

We see in The Revenger’s Tragedy the fulfilment of both the satiric and the tragic traditions, which are its antecedents. The blending together of the two nascent commercial products, of verse satire and the public theatre, produces a commodity which appropriates the force of verse satire and the structure of tragedy to an effect more radical than anything which was previously available in either product alone. Satiric tragedy reveals the potential of tragedy to undertake social commentary and subversion, all bound together in a structure which, by virtue of being implicitly approved by the Master of the Revels, gives it the legitimacy which had been stripped away from satire, making it paradoxically far more transgressive than the verses which it displaced. Notes 1 Roger Ascham is perhaps the most famous advocate for this practice, recommending in his Scholemaster the translation of the epistles of Cicero from Latin to English and back into Latin, after which ‘the master must compare it with Tullies booke, and laie them both togither: and where the childe doth well, either in chosing, or true placing of Tullies wordes, let the master praise him, and saie here ye do well’. See Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster [London, 1570]. Renascence Editions. www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/ascham1.htm (accessed 30 August 2018). Ascham’s theories largely defined Elizabethan grammar school education and, by extension, the practice of tragedy by his students on the early modern stage. 2 As Eliot famously notes, ‘No author exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca’. See T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (1951) (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), p. 65. While recent criticism has been more reserved in its assessment, there is little doubt that the Senecan tradition exerts a powerful influence on the development of English Renaissance tragedy. See also Gordon Braden’s ‘Stoicism and Renaissance’, in Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger’s Privilege (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 63. 3 Hamartia is most frequently translated as the ‘tragic flaw,’ a defect of character which often carries moral implications. See Aristotle, Poetics, ed. Malcolm Heath (New York: Penguin, 1996), p. 25. For a further consideration of the moral dimensions of hamartia, see also J. M. Bremer, Hamartia: Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, Adolf M. Hakkert, 1969), p. 155. 4 Quintilian, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), X.i.93. 5 John Marston, The Poems of John Marston (London: Liverpool, 1961), p. 262. 6 Marston was himself subject to such suspicion, as the author of The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image, an erotic epyllion and the ‘precedent poem’, which the poet claimed to have written as an ironic mockery of vice. See also Arthur Davenport’s introduction to The Poems of John Marston (London: Liverpool, 1961), p. 7, and my own Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England: Penetrating Wit (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), p. 19.

130

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

7 John Webster, The White Devil, ed. Elizabeth Brennan (London: A&C Black, 1966), V.i.165. 8 Juvenal, Juvenal and Perseus, trans. G. G. Ramsay (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1918), I.149. 9 As Bakhtin writes, in the carnivalesque, ‘abuse reveals the other, the true face of the abused, it tears off his disguise and mask. It is the king’s uncrowning’. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. 197. 10 Martial, The Epigrams of Martial, trans. Walter C. A. Ker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), p. 32. 11 Cassius Dio, Dio’s Roman History, trans. Earnest Cary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1914), p. 57. 12 John Marston, The Malcontent, ed. G. K. Hunter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), III.i.25–7. 13 Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, ed. Irby B. Cauthen, Jr (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), II.ii.89–108. 14 Edward Arber, Edward (ed.), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (v. 3) (London: Birmingham: Priv. Print., 1875–77; 1894). www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6177070_003/ pages/ldpd_6177070_003_00000679.html (accessed 31 August 2018). 15 Acts of the Privy Council of England, volume 27, ed. John Roche Dasent (1597; 1903). www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1177 (accessed 31 August 2018). 16 Writing in ‘Satire’, Chapter 6 of The Cambridge Introduction to Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), Julie Sanders remarks upon the displacement of the satiric content onto humoral comedy, noting that in the aftermath of the ban, Jonson used humoral theory ‘as an inspirational framework for early plays such as Every Man in His Humor and Every Man Out of His Humor’, and that the theory ‘was also visible in [Thomas] Middleton’s contributions to the early modern repertoire’ (p. 157). According to Sanders: ‘Jonson … seized on a particular opportunity to rethink the satirical form through drama, and his innovative brand of social satirical comedy was to gain considerable credence on the early modern stage in the ensuing decades. While satire certainly found its voice and place in tragedy through the specific figure of the malcontent, it is in alignment to comedy that early modern audiences most readily understood the satiric impulse’ (p. 159). Sanders’s assessment may be correct, although it understates the extraordinary proximity of the satiric and the tragic in the early modern English consciousness. I will examine this proximity through the case study of Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, but Middleton’s conflation of the satiric and the tragic is not unique in the period; as Sanders notes, satire ‘found its voice and place in tragedy’. 17 Lynda Boose, ‘The 1599 Bishop’s Ban, Elizabethan Pornography, and the Sexualization of the Jacobean Stage’, in Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (eds), Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornel Universty Press, 1994), pp. 185–200 (p. 197). 18 Ibid., p. 198. 19 See also MacDonald Jackson’s introduction to The Revenger’s Tragedy in The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino



Satiric tragedy

131

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 543–7 (p. 543). All subsequent quotations from The Revenger’s Tragedy are taken from this edition. 20 See also Nicholas Brooke’s Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979). 21 Karin S. Coddon, ‘“For Show or Useless P:roperty”: Necrophilia and The Revenger’s Tragedy’, in Stevie Simkin (ed.), Revenge Tragedy: Contemporary Critical Essays (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 121–141 (p. 127). 22 John Florio, A World of Words (1598). www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio1598/ (accessed 3 September 2018). 23 F. P. Wilson, The English Drama, 1485–1585 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 59–60. 24 William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third, ed. James R. Siemon (London, Methuen, 2009), III.i.83. 25 Gordon Williams, A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language (London: The Athlone Press, 1997), p. 125. 26 John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. Leah Marcus (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), I.i.23–8. 27 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, 3rd edn (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) (first published 1984), p. 114. 28 Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 107. 29 Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, p. 26. 30 Middleton was, of course, a prominent writer of court masques. He reimagines the masque as a satiric device in his commercial tragedies, not only in The Revenger’s Tragedy but also, perhaps most famously, in Women Beware Women.

8

Revenge tragedy: Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman Derek Dunne

On 25 September 2010, a production of Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman was staged in Magdalen College, Oxford, as part of a one-day conference on the play.1 Instead of giving the text its early modern subtitle of A Revenge for a Father, the cover of the conference programme read Hoffman, or Hamlet without the Prince. This invented subtitle points towards just how difficult it can be to discuss early modern revenge tragedies without recourse to Hamlet – in asserting its difference from Shakespeare’s play, the programme simultaneously invites comparison with it.2 In what follows I seek to treat early modern revenge tragedy more broadly, which means addressing the central place of Hamlet in discussions of the genre, while also recognising the many instances where revenge plays owe little to Shakespeare’s melancholic prince. Instead of focusing on questions of Shakespeare’s influence, it is more productive to explore the common characteristics of other stage revengers, and how they use revenge to expose tensions in the social fabric of early modern England. Such a change of focus, seeing Shakespeare’s Hamlet not as a culmination but as an aberration, has the dual advantage of helping us to understand what makes Shakespeare’s Hamlet so unique, while also revealing the socio-political critique embedded in a genre rarely studied for its cultural commentary. To enable new avenues for research to emerge, it is first necessary to reexamine the critical preoccupations surrounding early modern revenge tragedy. Some of these, such as metatheatricality and intertextuality, have long been a cornerstone of revenge tragedy criticism, due to the genre’s selfconsciousness and its playful use of theatrical conventions such as the playwithin-the-play. While its importance cannot be denied, an over-reliance on revenge tragedy’s theatricality can make the genre appear introspective and self-absorbed, which is something that this chapter challenges.3 Other assumptions about the reasons for revenge tragedy’s popularity at the turn



Revenge tragedy

133

of the century are in need of updating, in light of what we now know about conflict resolution in early modern England. The idea that revenge tragedy vicariously satisfied Elizabethans’ thirst for vengeance has persisted for too long, obstructing a more sophisticated approach to why the genre flourished at this particular historical juncture. This chapter will offer fresh solutions to the puzzle of revenge tragedy, outlining in the process an entirely new representation of collective action on the early modern stage. Such a view has been obscured by the myth of the lone stage revenger, and this too will be overturned to show that revenge tragedy is more politically engaged than our over-familiarity with Hamlet might imply. In my case study, I take Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman as an example of revenge tragedy that combines intertextuality with sophisticated social commentary, showcasing the genre’s radical potential even as it parodies Shakespeare’s depressive Dane. In order to get new answers from these revenge plays, we must change the terms of the questions being asked. Popular revenge He that will swear, Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays, yet shall pass unexcepted at, here, as a man whose judgement shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five and twenty or thirty years.4

These words are drawn from the induction to Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, showing that the popularity of revenge tragedy provoked comment even in the early modern period. (Ironically, Henslowe records a payment to Jonson for his additions to The Spanish Tragedy in 1601.5) Kyd’s play is known to have been performed at least twenty-nine times between 1592 and 1597, with the text going through eleven editions by 1633.6 Various historical factors have been put forward to explain such immense popularity. A dominant strand of criticism has linked the genre’s preoccupation with mourning and memory to a post-Reformation belief system struggling to memorialise its dead.7 From such a perspective, Ophelia’s ‘maimed’ funerary rites in Hamlet (V.i.208) stand in for the suppression of pre-Reformation rituals of the dead, while the ghostly return of Hamlet’s father ignites debates over the status of purgatory in early modern England.8 This makes sense up to a point, yet surely major societal changes in the late sixteenth century – when the plays were being composed – have as much claim to influencing the revenge genre as religious upheaval in the first part of the century. For example, the conversation preceding Ophelia’s funeral sees two gravediggers debating the relative merits of her legal status, rather than her position in the afterlife: ‘It must be se offendendo … Argal, she drowned herself wittingly’ (V.i.9–13).9 This leads to the assertion that ‘[i]f this had not been a gentlewoman she should have been buried out o’Christian burial’ (V.i.23–5), tapping into class tensions that belong firmly to the late Elizabethan moment.10

134

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Revenge tragedy is capable of prompting debates among the living as well as speaking with the dead. One of the most prevalent ways of thinking about revenge tragedy and its popularity has been to assume that the popularity of revenge tragedy in the theatre can be equated with an appetite for revenge among early modern audiences. Yet the abiding popularity of revenge as a theme in our own time should caution us from reading any specific eruption as a species of wishfulfilment on the part of the audience. Fredson Bowers put forward the theory that ‘[t]he right to punish their own wrongs was dear to many Elizabethans’, citing ‘the Elizabethan inheritance of private justice from earlier ages’.11 According to Bowers, Elizabethans knew revenge was wrong, but because of this deep-seated inheritance of revenge, ‘[t]here would be few Elizabethans who would condemn the son’s blood-revenge on a treacherous murderer whom the law could not apprehend for lack of proper legal evidence’.12 This of course succinctly describes the plot of a number of revenge tragedies, including Antonio’s Revenge, Hamlet, The Tragedy of Hoffman, and to some extent The Revenger’s Tragedy. Revenge tragedy, then, is seen as participating in the transition from private to public modes of justice, with the underlying assumption that revenge and law are polar opposites. Yet such an evolutionary approach, moving from lawlessness to a functioning legal system, is too neat a narrative for the realities of early modern England and Renaissance drama. While many presuppositions surrounding revenge tragedy have been challenged since the time of Bowers’ writing, the overall architecture of the argument has remained in place. John Kerrigan speaks of law and revenge in binary terms when he says how revenge tragedies ‘explore the differences between what social institutions offer and what full retribution urges’.13 In the influential Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, Richard Posner claims that the ‘ambivalent attitude toward revenge that one senses in Hamlet mirrors the prevailing attitude in Shakespeare’s society’.14 With little evidence to support them, critics talk confidently of how revenge is ‘a chronic Elizabethan malady’.15 Gregory Semenza says of Elizabethan revenge that ‘the impulse toward self-government was greater [than it is today], however, because the legal system was less effective … and because the old familial obligations and rights, as defined by the wergild system, were less distant’.16 The wergild system referred to is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and is therefore as close to the early modern period as the early modern period is to our own time. Reading revenge tragedy in terms of clan-like kinship ties and a resistance to state justice relies on an outdated and inaccurate picture of early modern citizens and their attitudes towards revenge. To overcome such binary thinking, we must first recognise the compatibility of revenge with the justice system of the time, which was far more effective than Semenza allows. When discussing the close relation between



Revenge tragedy

135

the threat of violence and litigation in the early modern period, social historian Steve Hindle writes: Indeed, the tendency to place violence and the law at opposite moral poles is arguably a very modern one, which ignores the extent to which they might operate in tandem to establish and protect divinely ordained social and political order.17

Literary critics have been slow to adopt such a non-oppositional approach, but the shared ancestry of law and revenge has long been recognised by legal historians. In 1881 Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that the common law grew directly out of the practice of vengeance, even going so far as to say, ‘[i]t certainly may be argued, with some force, that it has never ceased to be one object of punishment to satisfy the desire for vengeance’.18 In her book Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, Susan Jacoby discusses how law is designed ‘to regulate the vindictive impulse’, containing the desire for revenge rather than erasing it.19 If all law is to some extent vindictive, then early modern law is firmly rooted in vengeance. Not only positive (human) law, but even divine law is imagined to be grounded in direct and violent reciprocity, evident in such titles as John Reynolds’ The Triumphs of Gods Revenge against the crying and execrable Sinne of Murther (London, 1621). The clearest example that revenge is not necessarily pejorative comes from the New Testament dictum, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord’ (Romans 12.19), famously quoted by Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy (III. xiii.1).20 The divine sanction of vengeance is one of the cornerstones of early modern law, which metes out punishment according to retributive principles. While the vindictiveness of early modern law makes a binary opposition between revenge and law unsustainable, even more pertinent is the fact that in early modern England, citizens were notoriously legal-minded.21 The penchant for litigation has become a defining feature of English legal history, which directly contradicts the presumed ‘impulse towards self-government’.22 Cases at advanced stages of the King’s Bench and the Court of Common Pleas combined had risen from 2,100 in 1490 to 13,300 in 1580 and 23,453 by 1606.23 Neighbours sought to settle their differences amicably, but if informal methods of reconciliation failed, it was to the law, not to vigilante justice, that they turned. In the words of James Sharpe, ‘[t]he veneration of the common law in general, and of the rule of law in particular, was one of the most important intellectual legacies which the seventeenth century handed down to the eighteenth’.24 Sir Edward Coke describes the relationship between the English and their common law in glowing terms: ‘the ancient and excellent laws of England are the birthright, and the most ancient and best inheritance that the subjects of this realm have’.25 In the more cynical formulation of Robert Burton, ‘now for euery toy and trifle they goe to law’.26

136

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Thus the popularity of revenge tragedy is not to be confused with the popularity of revenge, since the law had such an active role to play in the lives of early modern citizens.27 Turning to the plays, trial scenes are a staple of the genre, showing an active engagement with the legal system. The Spanish Tragedy stages no fewer than four trials, with one culminating in an onstage execution. The protagonist Hieronimo pleads with his sovereign for due process: ‘I will go plain me to my lord the King, / And cry aloud for justice through the court’ (III.vii.69–70). Similarly, Titus Andronicus kneels in the dust begging for his sons’ lives as the judges pass over in silence (III.i.26), indicating that the path of vengeance is not the revenger’s first choice, but rather imposed upon him by an ineffectual legal system.28 In both Antonio’s Revenge and The Revenger’s Tragedy, we are shown trial scenes where the head of state actively manipulates the workings of justice, undermining the supposed distinction between revenge and law. It makes more sense to view such scenes as a critical commentary of contemporary law, rather than didactic encouragement to audiences – including students of law at the Inns of Court – to seek out legal remedies instead of violent revenge. The idea that revenge tragedy may be critical of law more so than revenge has remained submerged, with the plays rarely being examined for their socio-legal content.29 Before repositioning The Tragedy of Hoffman within its larger cultural context, two further points need to be made about stage revengers in general, which go against the critical consensus that has built up around these plays. Firstly, critics most often talk of the lone stage revenger as a staple of the genre, when in fact the acting of revenge is rarely solitary. Kerrigan in his discussion of revenge literature throughout the ages claims: ‘Group violence makes for lively theatre because its ambushes are spectacular, but Elizabethan revengers – much given to soliloquy – are often individual and isolated’.30 While such a statement applies to Hamlet, the same cannot be said of other revengers; Titus Andronicus never delivers a soliloquy, and Vindice is inseparable from his brother Hippolito. Nevertheless, Hallett and Hallett focus on the alienation of the revenger who ‘usually acts alone, and with secrecy’, and Michael Neill echoes the sentiment when he asserts that the revenger ‘has ceased to be a social man’.31 So prevalent is the isolated revenger in the criticism that it comes as a surprise to find that most revengers act as part of a group. Hieronimo gives Bel-imperia a part to play in his revenge drama (The Spanish Tragedy, IV.iv); Titus enlists the help of Lavinia while his son Lucius recruits the Goths to their cause (Titus Andronicus, V.ii); Vindice and his brother are aided by other lords in their masque of revenge (The Revenger’s Tragedy, V.iii).32 Most clearly of all, in Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, Antonio, Pandulpho and Alberto exit with ‘their armes wreathed’ to show the united nature of their action (original stage direction at IV.v.98). The group dynamic identified here in revenge plays is an important and new development in early modern tragedy, which



Revenge tragedy

137

more often focuses on the fortunes of a single individual such as King Lear, Macbeth or Hamlet. Indeed, it is Hamlet’s prominent place in revenge tragedy criticism that is partially responsible for occluding the collective action of other revengers. While the group violence that caps plays like Titus Andronicus or Antonio’s Revenge may be lacking in ‘interiority’, what these plays do offer is a new representation of collectivity hitherto missing from early modern drama. This gives the genre its socio-political edge; group action against a head of state is unmistakeably radical. Such an innovation deserves greater attention as a viable alternative to the psychological soliloquising of other tragic protagonists. Secondly, stage revengers are for the most part drawn from outside the ruling elite. They are Knights Marshal like Hieronimo, or generals like Titus Andronicus, who hold their position at the behest of their superiors, usually the head of state.33 Coming from outside the establishment, and seeking justice against those who hold power, heroes of revenge tragedy can easily be conceived as anti-establishment. As Linda Woodbridge has it, ‘[m]any revengers are disempowered people, unjustly treated, who step up and take control’.34 While the eponymous hero of Antonio’s Revenge seeks revenge for the death of his father, his target happens to be the tyrannical Duke Piero. This means that revenge and tyrannicide overlap, lending weight to Bacon’s assertion that ‘[p]ublic revenges are for the most part fortunate’: Antonio’s personal grievance is transformed into a public good.35 Shakespeare’s Hamlet also ends with the death of a king, but this murder is less politically charged since Prince Hamlet himself is part of the establishment, and not in opposition to it.36 Hamlet’s royal lineage sets him apart from other stage revengers; his deeply personal struggle with the duty of revenge is in marked contrast to Antonio’s public gathering of supporters before the climactic group revenge. Even though both plays end with the same outcome, the death of a head of state, only in the latter are the revengers praised for doing their duty to the commonwealth (V.vi.12ff). We can see from these few examples the dangers of a Hamlet-centric approach to revenge tragedy, when Shakespeare’s play so actively avoids the trappings of the genre from which it springs. The Tragedy of Hoffman, on the other hand, fully and enthusiastically embraces its generic identity, but, as will be shown, this does not imply a lack of social engagement. ‘Hence clouds of melancholy’ Henry Chettle is a somewhat enigmatic figure, who is known to have been involved in shady printing practices, most notably concerning an early quarto of Romeo and Juliet.37 There is evidence of widespread collaboration with other early modern dramatists – Francis Meres lists him, somewhat surprisingly, among ‘the best for comedy’38 – and John Jowett has discussed his likely contribution to Sir Thomas More, alongside Shakespeare’s own.39

138

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Chettle’s level of involvement with Greenes Groatsworth of witte continues to be debated, in particular whether he was the author of the infamous comment on ‘an upstart Crow … with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde’ (original emphasis), which again has direct implications for his relationship with Shakespeare.40 While we have evidence for Chettle as an influential figure on the early modern dramatic scene, The Tragedy of Hoffman is the only extant play believed to be solely authored by him. Despite this, the attention the play has received from the academic community is scant: half a dozen articles in over two decades.41 Emma Smith’s 2012 edition of five revenge tragedies includes The Tragedy of Hoffman, which may facilitate a renewal of scholarly interest.42 In comparison to Hamlet the dearth of critical material on The Tragedy of Hoffman is surprising, especially considering the relationship between Chettle’s play and Shakespeare’s. Parallels of plot, structure and even characterisation between the two texts have long been noted; for example, Lucibella’s madness bears a striking resemblance to that of Ophelia.43 Where Old Hamlet returns from the grave to spur his son to revenge, Old Hoffman’s skeleton acts as a grim reminder for Chettle’s protagonist, who stole his father’s corpse down from the gallows after he had been executed for piracy. Filial obligation underlies the action in both plays, even as the respective protagonists go about achieving their revenge by radically different means. Yet a ‘compare and contrast’ approach does not do justice to Chettle’s play. In what follows, I examine the various discourses activated by Hoffman’s revenge and the counter-revenge it engenders, including piracy, insurrection and popular justice. Such social engagement is more present in Chettle’s play than in Shakespeare’s, especially in the scenes of popular insurrection led by Prince Jerome. In recognising this, a more politically inflected intertextuality is revealed to be at work, one which highlights Hamlet’s shortcomings rather than Hoffman’s. A final look at the group justice achieved in Act V once again showcases revenge tragedy’s underappreciated representation of collective action on the early modern stage. The play’s main plot focuses on the fortunes of Hoffman, whose father was at one time vice-admiral but who turned to piracy before being captured and executed by the Duke of Luningberg by means of a burning iron crown. Hoffman stalks onstage to declare, ‘Hence clouds of melancholy’ (I.i.1), evoking Hamlet even as he rejects it.44 His commitment to revenge is clear from the outset, and a peal of thunder suggests divine assent as he swears vengeance: ‘I’ll execute justly in such a cause. / Where truth leadeth, what coward would not fight? / Ill acts move some, but mine’s a cause is right’ (I.i.8). Providence seems to favour Hoffman, when a shipwreck delivers to him Prince Otho, son to the Duke of Luningberg, with his servant Lorrique. Gesturing to the skeleton, Hoffman tells the newly arrived Lorrique ‘Here were arms / That served the trothless state of Luningberg’ (I.i.49). Instead of being cast as a pirate and outlaw, Old Hoffman is first characterised as a



Revenge tragedy

139

servant of the state, while it is the state of Luningberg that is called ‘trothless’. The exact nature of that service is left for Lorrique to expound to Otho: ‘’tis, I take it, the son to that vice-admiral that turned a terrible pirate’ (I.i.122). Hoffman recounts how, as vice-admiral, Old Hoffman was involved in thirty sea-fights with hostile powers, providing a substantial source of income to the state before running into debt in order to pay his own men (I.i.150–8). Otho responds with, ‘Prithee speak no more: / Thou raisest new doubts in my troubled heart, / By repetition of thy father’s wrongs’ (I.i.159). Hoffman picks up on this last word, ‘wrongs’, turning it against Otho’s intended meaning: ‘Then he was wronged, you grant, but not by you’ (I.i.162). Presumably Otho is referring to Old Hoffman’s crimes, but Hoffman exposes the inherent ambiguity in the word. Are we to understand Old Hoffman as ‘he who wrongs’ or ‘he who has been wronged’? Hoffman maintaining that his father is a victim might seem untenable, but we must be careful not to impose present-day conceptions of piracy onto a period when such terminology was far more fluid. In fact, it is Chettle’s perceptive choice of piracy as the primum mobile of this drama that marks it out as a play that contests questions of legality and legitimacy at every step. To decide whether an act was considered piracy or privateering in early modern Europe was not so much a matter of what crimes were committed on the high seas, but rather, whether or not the ship in question had the necessary letter of marque.45 Christopher Harding describes ‘the fine line between descriptions of the same conduct as legal or illegal’, and this relativistic view is reiterated by Matthew Dimmock who sees the early modern pirate as embodying ‘the unstable boundaries between legality and illegality, loyal subject and renegade, and between a righteous national cause and individual gain’.46 Such a description seems custom-made for a vice-admiral turned pirate, who filled the national coffers but was proclaimed an outlaw for a little debt. Old Hoffman’s actions cannot be simply consigned to the criminal end of the spectrum, with lawful characters like the Duke of Luningberg safely at the other end. Chettle implies a more complex relationship between citizen and sovereign, through the ambivalent figure of the early modern pirate. While his father’s activities elude simple legal categorisation, Hoffman’s own actions are firmly outside the law from the beginning. He proceeds to murder the innocent Otho by means of a burning crown like his father, appropriating the method of state execution for his own vengeful purposes. A symbol of royal authority, the burning crown takes on a more radical quality in Hoffman’s hands, as it is used not against a convicted pirate but a crown prince.47 The symbol returns in the final moments of the play, again in the hands of vigilantes; yet this is lent an air of legitimacy by Chettle, for reasons that will become clear. Before this, I want to turn our attention from the young Hoffman’s villainous exploits – including several more murders and poisonings – to examine the impact of his presence on the Prussian court.

140

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Disguising himself as his victim, Otho, Hoffman is made most welcome by Duke Ferdinand of Prussia on arrival, to such an extent that he inadvertently precipitates another crisis of succession. ‘[W]e’ll have a prince of our own choosing: Prince Jerome!’ As Chettle’s protagonist continues his campaign of indiscriminate violence with the help of Lorrique – who has been converted to ‘murder’s slave’ (I.iii.25) – the audience are given a second character bent on vengeance in the figure of Prince Jerome. Ironically, the reason for Jerome seeking revenge is that Hoffman has supplanted him in his father’s affections. When Duke Ferdinand is presented with ‘Otho’, he immediately announces his intention to ‘disinherit our fond son’ and install the disguised Hoffman in his place as ‘our son elect’ (I.ii.131). This leads Jerome to mobilise a rabble of his own, and his subsequent rising of the people sits at the textual and thematic centre of The Tragedy of Hoffman. Therefore, while the prince who writes poetry in praise of toothpicks may be a figure of fun in Chettle’s play, he also shows his potential as a political rebel when expelled from court. When Prince Jerome announces in his opening line, ‘I am no fool, I have been at Wittenburg, where wit grows’ (I.ii.36), it is clear that he has much in common with another dispossessed student prince of the early modern stage. Jerome’s opening speech is preoccupied with the death of a parent, before he declares ‘but I am a prince, and princes have power more than common people to subdue their passions’ (I.ii.31–3) – it would seem that Hamlet is not the only one to have that within which passeth show. Furthermore, both princes share a poetic sensibility that is at times prone to patches of purpleness: ‘till red revenge in robes of fire and madding mischief run and rave’ (The Tragedy of Hoffman, II.i.67–8); ‘Now could I drink hot blood / And do such business as the bitter day / Would quake to look on’ (Hamlet, III.ii.380–2). The Senecan rhetoric expresses how deeply both parties desire to be revenged, but also how easily that desire is converted into ineffectual speeches as they unpack their hearts with words. Beyond such verbal echoes, Jerome shares with Hamlet the frustration of being passed over for the throne, following Hoffman’s arrival. But just as Hoffman had earlier rejected melancholic thoughts in order to move forward with his plans for revenge, Jerome too refuses to accept the status quo. Therefore the intertextual relationship between Chettle’s play and Shakespeare’s constitutes more than literary brinkmanship, and instead becomes a way of understanding the political distance between both plays. This becomes most immediately apparent if we look at Jerome’s somewhat ludicrous plan for regaining power. After intimations of revenge in Act II, Scene i, Jerome reappears in Act III, Scene ii as the leader of a popular uprising. His servant Stilt together with his father Old Stilt lead a ‘rabble of poor soldiers’ onstage first, who perform a ‘scurvy march’ (III.ii.1, SD). While such actions may be



Revenge tragedy

141

presented in a comic vein, the representation of rebellion on the early modern stage is never simply a laughing matter. Stilt tries to inspire ‘the general folks’ he has assembled (III.ii.1), but his speech is littered with malapropisms: ‘remember this, that more than mortality fights on our side; for we have treason and iniquity to maintain our quarrel’ (III.ii.6). When his father queries the words he corrects himself, but not before the audience registers a radical ambivalence at work here: ‘Reason, and equity I meant, father; there’s little controversity [sic] in the words’ (III. ii.10). Much like Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, Stilt insists that despite choosing the wrong word, his meaning is sound. The slippage created between reason/treason and equity/iniquity serves an important function for Chettle. The grounds of the quarrel is Jerome’s dispossession, and so while their activity is a species of treason, at the same time it calls into question the ‘equity’ of Duke Ferdinand’s decision to disinherit his son. By invoking equity at the outset, Stilt subtly suggests that Jerome’s actions may not be quite as iniquitous as they at first appear. It is not that Chettle is trying to justify rebellion, rather that he carefully juxtaposes both sides: ‘reason and equity’ alongside ‘treason and iniquity’. As with the legal ambiguity that enshrouds Old Hoffman’s execution, Chettle challenges conceptions of what is lawful or unlawful even in the matter of rebellion. The scene is full of pregnant malapropisms, for example Old Stilt’s slippage between resurrection/insurrection (III.ii.36) and inspire/ conspire (III.ii.37), or when he calls Jerome ‘the unlawful heir of this land’ when he clearly means to say lawful (III.ii.34). By drawing attention to the fine linguistic line between opposing meanings, Chettle’s staging of insurrection becomes a ‘resurrection’ of sorts. Old Hoffman’s presence looms large in this scene also, as Old Stilt recalls his campaign in Norway before he was outlawed. We are told he was a gentleman who was ‘cut off, as all valiant cavalieros shall, and they be no more negligent of themselves’ (III.ii.29). Once again, it is implied that heroism and piracy are not mutually exclusive. The alignment of the cavalier Old Hoffman and the ‘respectless Prince’ Jerome can only be deliberate, furthering as it does the destabilisation of legal categories in the play.48 The former was ‘cut off’ for his involvement in an activity that could be defined as lawful or lawless on the basis of documentary evidence, while the latter wishes to reclaim by force his birthright to succeed despite his father’s public disavowal. At their core both are predicated on the question of what it means to be legitimate, where legitimacy is a matter of opposing interpretations. Jerome’s popular rising is a clear and strong political statement, which his father the duke is forced to acknowledge. When his soldiers arrive to suppress the rebellion, Jerome’s followers are labelled traitors, and Duke Ferdinand orders his men to ‘[s]trike their Typhoean body down to fire, / That dare ‘gainst us, their sovereign, conspire’ (III.ii.55). The duke’s antiinsurrectionist rhetoric is conventional, with Jerome’s men described as ‘that

142

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

beast the multitude’ (III.ii.52). Such sentiments bring to the surface the class antagonism latent in the clash between a sovereign and his disenfranchised populace. The impending assault is averted when Hoffman ‘kneels between the armies’ (III.ii.64, SD), reuniting father and son, while asking pardon on behalf of the rebels. And so while the insurrection fails to achieve its aim of reinstating Jerome, it succeeds insofar as the voice of the people is heard. Moments before the two sides are to join battle, Stilt cries out, ‘we’ll have a prince of our own choosing: Prince Jerome!’ (III.ii.76). The suggestion of elective monarchy on the English stage in the closing moments of Queen Elizabeth’s reign could potentially be incendiary, if not downright treasonous. The closest parallel available in Hamlet is of course Laertes’ arrival in Act IV, Scene v: They cry, ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king’ – Caps, hands and tongue, applaud it to the clouds – ‘Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!’ (IV.v.106)

The difference is that this refers not to the darling prince of the people, but to his enemy Laertes. Where Chettle physically stages the rabble’s cries – ‘All on Jerome’s side cast up their caps and cry “a Jerome”’ (III.ii.50, SD) – in Hamlet the account comes to us as reported speech, literalising the play’s distance from the representation of social protest. Furthermore, Laertes’s potential as a spokesman for a discontented populace dissipates as quickly as it emerges, when he forgets his common cause with the people at the bidding of Claudius. In The Tragedy of Hoffman, Jerome is reunited with his father, but not before a general pardon is granted. Where Hamlet failed to capitalise on the ‘great love the general gender bear him’ (IV.vii.19), Jerome’s status as a popular leader remains intact. Taken together with the deliberate parallels between Hamlet and Jerome already noted, Chettle’s portrayal of Jerome’s uprising seems calculated to contrast with Hamlet’s distinct lack of social solidarity. It also speaks to a late Elizabethan population who had a strong tradition of popular protest, reflecting onstage some of the changes occurring outside the confines of the early modern theatre.49 ‘And each man be a justice in this act’ The Tragedy of Hoffman is a play that revels in spectacular violence, but this does not preclude a more meaningful engagement with its particular historical moment. Old Hoffman’s chequered nautical career carries with it echoes of Sir Walter Ralegh,50 while Prince Jerome’s insurrection tapped into deepseated fears over popular rebellion. In this final section, I want to look at the play’s climactic act of violence – both a crime and a punishment – and how it too goes beyond sensational blood-letting to make a larger point about social justice. As Hoffman’s enemies gather together to have their



Revenge tragedy

143

vengeance, the play appears to come full circle, as the protagonist is punished with yet another burning crown. But here the differences become as important as the similarities: where Hoffman acted on his own, executing an innocent Otho for the actions of his father, the group revenge against Hoffman take steps to ensure their actions are justified. Firstly, they gather evidence after discovering the body of Otho at Hoffman’s cave in the woods (V.i.31), while Hoffman’s role in the murder is corroborated by a confession from Lorrique (V.i.180). The notion of collective action becomes more pronounced as the play builds towards its catastrophe, while also taking on quasi-legal status by adopting terms like ‘just’ and ‘justice’. As Lorrique goes through Hoffman’s catalogue of crimes, the Duke of Saxony declares, ‘Let’s hear no more. Seek out the hated wretch, / And with due torture let his life be forced / From his despised body’ (V.i.242). He then goes on to assert that ‘All the land will help, / And each man be a justice in this act’ (V.i.246). This shift from the language of personal vendetta to that of public justice lifts the counterrevenge out of any straightforward revenge/law binary. By now the vigilantes consist of the Duke of Saxony, Martha, Otho’s mother, the mad Lucibella and Mathias, the brother of her murdered beloved, who together come up with a plan to entrap Hoffman by luring him to the cave where he first killed Otho. Thinking that he is about to ravish Martha, Hoffman enters the cave expectantly with the line, ‘I am crowned the king of pleasure’ (V.iii.105). This crowning is soon to be literalised in a way he neither intends nor wishes, as Martha gives the others the signal: ‘Come forth dear friends, murder is in our powers’ (V.iii.122). There is an unmistakeable emphasis on plurality – ‘our powers’ – as the community bands together to deal with an enemy of the people. When Hoffman questions their authority – ‘Whom have I murdered; wherefore bind ye me?’ (V.iii.129) – Martha tells him of Lorrique’s confession and once again the counter-revenge takes on the garb of official justice: ‘They are justices to punish thy bare bones’ (V.iii.130). The skeletons of Otho and Old Hoffman become both witnesses and evidence of his crimes, and Hoffman is forced to confess (V.iii.134). The method of punishment is inevitable, if not over-determined, as Saxony gives the order to ‘[b]ring forth the burning crown there’ (V.iii.143). The reciprocity is undeniable, as Hoffman himself is forced to admit: ‘’tis well, ’tis fit’ (V.iii.145). As the play returns to its point of origin, Hoffman suffers the same torture that he had inflicted on Otho. But where Otho’s dying words were, ‘Mount soul to heaven, my body burns in fire’ (I.i.227), Hoffman focuses exclusively on hell and its torments (V.iii.150; V.iii.172). Hoffman may have argued for his father’s innocence as he placed the crown on Otho’s head (I.i.212), but there is no doubt about the guilt of Hoffman himself. The oppositional attitude identified here in The Tragedy of Hoffman is part of a larger theme at work in revenge tragedy, which exceeds both

144

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

metatheatricality and intertextuality. Yet such social commentary can easily be passed over if the genre is treated in isolation from its cultural context. Indeed, it is the isolation of the genre’s most well-known representative that has led critics to over-emphasise the lone stage revenger at the expense of these plays’ radical group dynamics. In Chettle’s play, collective action can be seen first in Jerome’s rabble of poor soldiers seeking an elective monarchy, and then in the climactic action as the enemies of Hoffman unite to put an end to his villainy. What the play lacks in soliloquies it makes up for in popular justice, and this wholly new representation of collective action deserves greater recognition. The irreverent attitude towards Hamlet that Chettle displays through the figure of Prince Jerome is perhaps something more critics should aspire to when dealing with early modern revenge tragedy, which frequently shows itself to be greater than the sum of its parts. Notes 1 This appears to be the first recorded performance in modern history, sponsored by the Malone Society and directed by Elisabeth Dutton. Available online at: http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/engfac/hoffman/hoffman_act1.mp4 (accessed 28 August 2018). 2 Due to inconclusive dating for both Hoffman and Hamlet, it cannot be said definitively that Chettle’s play comes in the wake of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Jerome’s time in Wittenberg (I.ii.36), for example, could conceivably be a reference to the Ur-Hamlet, In the absence of firm evidence to the contrary, I argue for Jerome as an intertextual response to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 3 Linda Woodbridge’s English Revenge Drama: Money, Resistance, Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) has also gained important ground in this area. 4 Bartholomew Fair, in The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 332. 5 The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards (London: Methuen, 1959), p. lxvi. 6 The Spanish Tragedie, ed. Emma Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), p. xiii; James Shapiro, ‘“Tragedies Naturally Performed”: Kyd’s Representation of Violence’, in David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (eds), Staging the Renaissance: Re-interpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 99–113 (p. 112, n. 14). 7 Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Robert N. Watson, ‘The Rest is Silence’: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance (California: University of California Press, 1994); Thomas Anderson, Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare to Milton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), chapter 5, pp. 125–68; Thomas Rist, Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 8 Michael MacDonald, ‘Ophelia’s Maimed Rites’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 37 (1986), 309–17; Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). All references to Hamlet are taken from Hamlet, ed.



Revenge tragedy

145

Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Arden Shakespeare third series (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). 9 For more on this see Luke Wilson, ‘Hamlet, Hales v. Petit, and the Hysteresis of Action’, English Literary History, 60 (1993), 17–55; Carolyn Sale, ‘The “Amending Hand”: Hales v. Petit, Eyston v. Studd, and Equitable Action in Hamlet’, in Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (eds), The Law in Shakespeare (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 189–207. 10 Peter Clark (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985); Ian Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Jim Sharpe, ‘Social Strain and Social Dislocation, 1585–1603’, in John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 192–211. 11 Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587–1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), pp. 10–11. 12 Ibid., p. 40. 13 John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 25. 14 Richard Posner, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, 3rd edn (London: Harvard University Press, 2009) (first published 1988), p. 108. 15 Anselm Haverkamp, ‘The Ghost of History: Hamlet and the Politics of Paternity’, Law and Literature, 18 (2006), pp. 171–97 (p. 192, n. 10). See also Peter Mercer, Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 4; Robert N. Watson, ‘Tragedies of Revenge and Ambition’, in Claire McEachern (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 160–81 (p. 160). 16 Gregory M. Colón Semenza, ‘The Spanish Tragedy and Revenge’, in Garrett A. Sullivan Jr, Patrick Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield (eds), Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 50–60 (p. 54). 17 Steve Hindle, ‘The Keeping of the Public Peace’, in Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 213–48 (p. 227). 18 Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2009) (first published 1881), p. 38. This far predates Michel Foucault’s exploration of the ‘active forces of revenge’ in France’s judicial system, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1979), p. 48. 19 Susan Jacoby, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (London: Collins, 1985), p. 153. 20 All references to The Spanish Tragedy taken from The Spanish Tragedy, in Five Revenge Tragedies: Kyd, Shakespeare, Marston, Chettle, Middleton, ed. Emma Smith (Oxford: Penguin, 2012). 21 Hindle, ‘The Keeping of the Public Peace’, p. 226. 22 For more on Elizabethan litigiousness see C. W. Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 95–101.

146

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

23 C. W. Brooks, ‘Litigants and Attorneys in the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, 1560–1640’, in J. H. Baker (ed.), Legal Records and the Historian (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), pp. 41–59 (p. 43). 24 James Sharpe, ‘The People and The Law’, in Barry Reay (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 244–70 (p. 245). 25 Sir Edward Coke, The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, 13 vols (Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2002), III, Part V, p. v. 26 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1621) (available on EEBO, STC no. 4159), sig. C3v. 27 See for example Cynthia B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 28 For more on the revengers’ forensic method, see Lorna Hutson ‘Rethinking the “Spectacle of the Scaffold”: Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy’, Representations, 89 (2005), pp. 30–58. All references to Titus Andronicus taken from Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate, Arden Shakespeare third series (London: Routledge, 1995). 29 Lorna Hutson’s The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) is the exception here, and has provided an invaluable basis for my own monograph, Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law: Vindictive Justice (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016). 30 John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 204. 31 Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallett, ‘Antonio’s Revenge and the Integrity of the Revenge Tragedy Motifs’, Studies in Philology, 76 (1979), pp. 366–86 (p. 380); Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). See also Sandra Clark’s assertion in discussing Hieronimo’s plight, that ‘[s]ocial bonds and obligations have no currency; Hieronimo is driven back on his own sense of family loyalty and the archaic compulsion to revenge’, Renaissance Drama, Cultural History of Literature series (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), p. 136. 32 The Revenger’s Tragedy, in Five Revenge Tragedies: Kyd, Shakespeare, Marston, Chettle, Middleton, ed. Emma Smith (Oxford: Penguin, 2012). 33 In the opening scene, Titus explicitly denies the role of emperor offered to him (I.i.190ff). 34 Woodbridge, English Revenge Drama, p. 6. 35 Francis Bacon, ‘Of Revenge’, in The Essays, ed. John Pitcher (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 72–3 (p. 73). 36 For a more developed exploration of Hamlet’s apolitical stance compared to other revenge tragedies, see Derek Dunne, ‘Decentring the Law in Hamlet’, Law and Humanities, 9.1 (2015), pp. 55–77. 37 John Jowett, ‘Notes on Henry Chettle [pt 2]’, The Review of English Studies, 45 (1994), pp. 517–22 (p. 518ff). 38 Francis Meres, Palladis tamia Wits treasury being the second part of Wits common wealth (London, 1598) (available on EEBO, STC no. 17834), p. 284, sig. Oo4v.



Revenge tragedy

147

39 Jowett, ‘Notes on Henry Chettle [pt 2]’, p. 519; p. 517. 40 John Jowett, ‘Notes on Henry Chettle [pt 1]’, The Review of English Studies, 45 (1994), pp. 384–8 (p. 386ff). See also Katherine Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare from Upstart Crow to Sweet Swan: 1592–1623, Arden Shakespeare series (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 37ff. 41 Richard Brucher, ‘Piracy and Parody in Chettle’s Hoffman’, The Ben Jonson Journal, 6 (1999), pp. 209–22; Sarah J. Glady, ‘Revenge as Double Standard in The Tragedy of Hoffman’, Discoveries: South-Central Renaissance Conference News and Notes, 18 (2001), pp. 3–4; Paul Browne, ‘A Source for the “Burning Crown” in Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman’, Notes & Queries, 51 (2004), pp. 297–9; Duke Pesta, ‘Articulating Skeletons: Hamlet, Hoffman, and the Anatomical Graveyard’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 69 (2006), pp. 21–39; Marie Honda, ‘The Tragedy of Hoffman and Elizabethan Military Affairs’, 演劇研究センター紀要 [Bulletin for the Centre of Theatre Research, Waseda University Japan], 6 (2006), pp. 197–207, http://dspace.wul.waseda.ac.jp/ dspace/bitstream/2065/26864/1/019.pdf (accessed 27 July 2015); Tom Rutter, ‘Marlowe, Hoffman, and the Admiral’s Men’, Marlowe Studies: An Annual, 3 (2013), pp. 49–62. Janet Clare also touches on the play briefly in Revenge Tragedies of the Renaissance (Devon: Northcote House, 2007), pp. 49–54. 42 Previously the play was available either in an out-of-print edition by the Malone Society (London: Malone Society, 1951), or a little known edition by John Jowett (Nottingham: Nottingham Dramatic Texts, 1983). 43 Harold Jenkins looked at this relationship as far back as 1934, The Life and Work of Henry Chettle (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1934), p. 79. 44 The echo of Hamlet continues when Hoffman says he will act rapidly, ‘with a heart as air, swift as thought’ (I.i.7), reminiscent of Hamlet’s resolution to sweep to revenge ‘as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love’ (I.v.29–30). 45 Christopher Harding, ‘“Hostis Humani Generis” – The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea’, in Claire Jowitt (ed.), Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 20–38 (p. 25). 46 Ibid., p. 24; Matthew Dimmock, ‘Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95’, in Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, pp. 74–89 (p. 75). 47 For more on this method of punishment and its symbolism see Browne, ‘A Source for the “Burning Crown”’. 48 See also Brucher, ‘Piracy and Parody’, on this crossover, p. 215. 49 See for example Peter Clark, ‘A Crisis Contained? The Condition of English Towns in the 1590s’, in The European Crisis of the 1590s, pp. 44–66; Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 50 Ralegh too held important positions like Governor of Jersey before conviction, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, written by Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams. www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23039 (accessed 26 August 2015).

9

‘Ha, O my horror!’ Grotesque tragedy in John Webster’s The White Devil1 Paul Frazer

We use the word grotesque to describe the weird and unexpected, with particular emphasis upon unpalatable combinations – things that unsettle us because they don’t belong together. The word descends from the same Italian stem as ‘grotto’ (grottesca), which was used to describe the cavernous galleries popular among the aristocracy in Renaissance Italy. Like those preserved at the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italian Renaissance grottos were decorated with wall paintings of sensationally hybrid mythological figures and creatures (like centaurs), designed to both delight and repulse their visitors. Michel Jenneret traces the hybrid forms that adorned these spaces as exemplary of the early modern fascination with metamorphosis, flux and change: When serpent is crossed with man, column with flowers, bird with foliage, the door is open to any and all alliances. People cut off from religious and magical thought might see the grotesques as amusing, ornamental caprices; to the sixteenth-century mind these composite figures represent a world animated by continuous metamorphosis, where all parts communicate and combine: whether delighted or horrified by this nature deprived of stable structures and predictable evolution, they certainly did not disqualify it.2

So the original function of the Renaissance grotesque was to delight and horrify through hybrid forms, in an age characterised by artistic responses to cultural change. And when John Florio translated the word grotesque in 1598 as ‘a kinde of rugged unpolished painter’s work’, he also termed it an ‘anticke work’.3 Equivalent to the Italian grottesca, derivations of antico originally applied to ‘fantastic representations of human, animal, and floral forms, incongruously running into one another’, and was used to define the ‘uncouthly ludicrous’, decorative things ‘grouped or figured with fantastic incongruity’, and of faces having ‘the features grotesquely distorted … grinning’.4 The ‘antic’ also had important theatrical applications (‘a performer



Grotesque tragedy

149

who plays a grotesque or ludicrous part’ (OED, adj. & n., 4a)) from around 1568, and his performance was – according to John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice (1633) – expected to embody ‘newness strange, and much commended’ (III.ii.19–21).5 The staged grotesque encapsulated the unusual and the new through paradoxical combinations, interweaving forms of fantastical doubleness in ways that simultaneously attracted and repulsed.6 This grotesque effect was in full vogue on the Jacobean stage, and found most powerful expressive paradoxes within revenge tragedy. Moments of gallows humour surround famous scenes like Hamlet’s sojourn in the graveyard, Macbeth’s Porter and Lear’s Fool, but other revenge tragedies reach levels of grotesquery that threaten to derail them from the tragic genre entirely. In these performances, early modern playgoers were confronted with confusing moments of grotesque violence that moved beyond tragicomedy, veering towards chaos and lunacy. Consider D’Amville clownishly braining himself with his own axe in The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611), Ferdinand handing his sister the severed limb of her (apparently) murdered lover in The Duchess of Malfi (1614), or Vindice wielding the poisoned skull of his fallen beloved in The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606). Such moments of horror-comedy are often made all the more baffling by their intrinsic associations with themes of lust. In his dying utterance, for instance, the hapless D’Amville scorns how, ‘The lust of death commits a rape upon me, / As I would ha’ done on Castabella’ (The Atheist’s Tragedy, V.ii.265–6).7 Grotesque fusions of violence and laughter present an inherently sexualised union of opposites, which has long been associated with forbidden (and even bestial) urges.8 So like the subjects who enjoyed the grottesca paintings and sculptures of Renaissance Florence, Jacobean playgoers were invited to marvel at performances that deliberately fused the incompatible. Of all surviving Jacobean revenge tragedies, the violence employed in John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) is perhaps the most consistently weird, horrible and funny; and, in relation to the above etymologies and definitions, the play is certainly an archetype of the grotesque. Webster’s play confronts its audience with a dizzying array of violent deaths, including strangulation, two counts of poison-asphyxiation, four stabbings (and one further attempted stabbing), a fake execution at gunpoint (immediately followed by a body seemingly being trampled to death), and an undeniably strange murder-byvaulting-horse. By coupling its vicious moments with dark comedy at almost every stage, The White Devil epitomises the grotesque fusion of generic opposites, exuding ‘horrid laughter’9 and sitting uncomfortably even within the capacious ‘shifting values and ironic double-visions of tragicomedy’.10 A recent literary encyclopaedia entry goes so far as comparing Webster’s style to that of iconic filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, finding parallels in their ‘mordant wit, grotesque caricatures of the human body, and cheery good humor at (other people’s) torture’ – reading his art as, in some respects, more attuned to revenge comedy.11 But if Webster’s play deliberately unsettles

150

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

through its chaotic blends of violence and amusement, why does it do so? What, beyond sensationalism, did Webster hope it to achieve? In this chapter I pose an answer these questions by looking beneath The White Devil’s grinning façade, to find a committed intellectual attachment to a classical philosophical debate. I argue that The White Devil’s weirdness stems from a central (grotesque) ‘cut and shut’ of opposing philosophical ideas – and that Webster clashes them to trigger an explosive finale centred upon his favourite topic: the experience of death. Anchoring my reading on the play’s most violent antagonists (Flamineo and Lodovico), I trace philosophical ties to the ancient Greek traditions of Stoicism and Epicureanism, which The White Devil uses to reflect upon the individual’s perception, experience and acceptance of death. Black laughter Ancient Greek and Roman traditions fascinated Renaissance thinkers, and two dominant ‘life philosophies’ – that is, rules that an individual might try to live by, in the hope of attaining happiness and peace – were categorised under the rubrics of ‘Stoic’ and ‘Epicurean’. Echoes of these opposing philosophical standpoints informed intellectual cultures of early modern England in important ways, and preoccupied Stuart thinkers to the extent that Reid Barbour describes them as ‘diacritically obsessed’ with their reinvention: ‘apart from and in relation to one another’.12 However, to understand how these concepts function in Webster’s grotesque tragedy, we must first unpack how they were perceived in relation to emotional experience and control. The Stoic ethos insisted upon control of passions through reason, and asserted that the subject must ‘deeply and rightly ponder the nature of man and of one’s self in order to rise above Fortune and attain peace’.13 This emphasis upon complete emotional control was satirised by Thomas Nashe in 1589, writing of ‘the old question … whether it were better to have moderate affections, or no affections?’, Nashe quipped that ‘The Stoics said none’.14 But the principles of curbing emotionality became important measures of piety, class and masculinity for English Protestants, so influenced by Jean Calvin’s ostensibly Stoic teachings about devotional behaviour.15 Thus the literary afterlives of great Stoics like Seneca and Cicero in the tragedies of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson animated theatrical mediations upon the nature of Stoic belief, and its complex connections to Calvinist English subjectivity.16 Yet at a time at which, Samuel Schoenfeldt argues, ‘the early modern regime seems to entail a fear of emotion’, Stoic principles of control were deconstructed through comparative readings of their notional philosophical opposite: Epicureanism.17 With decisive origins in the essays of French Catholic Michel de Montaigne, writers probed ‘the compelling yet fraudulent relationship between Christianity and Stoicism’18 (with increasing



Grotesque tragedy

151

recourse to the philosophical system of Epicure and the atomists), which was perceived to encourage the pursuit of bodily and emotional pleasure.19 For in contrast to the emotional retardation favoured by the Stoics, followers of Epicurus believed in the importance of relieving oneself of pain and suffering, and finding peace in and through pleasure.20 Epicurus wrote of the need to escape pain and suffering through the pursuit of pleasure, advocating a life free from fear, including (and especially) fear of the gods and death. Epicurus taught that escaping fear of death through material, sensory pleasure offered the subject the prospect of a peaceful and happy life, because the gods took no interest in human affairs; and Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul and any notion of a celestial afterlife. Perceptions of the Epicurean emphasis on pleasure led to the philosophy being held up for ridicule, as hedonistic and atheistic anathema to Christianity – being especially scorned for its conceptual remoteness from the Stoic principles of Calvinist Protestantism. As Adrian Streete explains, the ‘term “Epicurean” and its cognates were commonly used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as catch-all terms to refer to any kind of skeptical philosophy’, and were employed ‘as a general term of approbation and abuse in early modern writing’.21 Like Jonson’s ludicrous Sir Epicure Mammon, to be termed an Epicurean was (for many) to embody hedonistic folly – in both philosophical grounding and intellectual capacity. Nevertheless, Webster’s The White Devil situates its interest in Epicurean philosophy within its opening lines: lodovico: Banished? antonelli: It grieved me much to hear the sentence. lodovico: Ha, ha, O Democritus, thy gods That govern the whole world: courtly reward, And punishment. (I.i.1–4)22

Lodovico’s snarling amusement at his Roman exile invokes the grotesque smiling face of the Greek atomist and forefather to the Epicurean school, Democritus (c. 460–380 BC).23 So-called ‘laughing philosopher’ for his perceived emphasis upon materialist pleasure (‘courtly reward’), his symbolic smile fascinated European thinkers and artists. In the Baroque period, Democritus became an important subject of portraiture, including a range of works by Johannes Paulus Moreelse, Rembrandt, Rubens and Velázquez.24 Such pieces render Democritus’s (at times ghoulish) grin, overseeing and overshadowing the globe, and often mirrored in contrast to the weeping (pre-) Stoic Heraclitus.25 Smiling Democritus embodies the act of laughter as unique to humanity; mirth is a fundamental and exclusive property of mankind, and assumes an important epistemological function: that we might follow Democritus’s example and laugh at our own existential folly.26 In this way, Democritan laughter operates as a unifying epistemological principle of man, especially when contrasted with a world of hardship, fear and pain.

152

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

Such fascination with Democritan mirth draws upon the energies of Rabelais in Mikhail Bakhtin’s famous study of the carnivalesque. According to Bakhtin, laughter ‘has a deep philosophical meaning, it is one of the essential forms of truth concerning the world as a whole, concerning history and man; it is a peculiar point of view relative to the world … laughter is just as admissible in great literature, posing universal problems, as seriousness’.27 And Democritus’s importance to this school of thought was vital: In the ‘Hippocratic novel’ the laughter of Democritus has a philosophical character, being directed at the life of man and at all the vain fears and hopes related to the gods and to life after death. Democritus here made of his laughter a whole philosophy, a certain spiritual premise of the awakened man who has attained virility.28

The idea of the rejuvenated man, awakening to find his virility, is explored in The White Devil – where laughter becomes an important (anarchic) escape from fears of death, divine judgement and aspects of providence, which were heightened in Webster’s Jacobean context. Calvinistic influence had by then culminated in an English devotional culture saturated by the doctrine of double pre-destination, and Webster’s audiences had been long steeped in pressures of deterministic logic, both through the theology of Calvin and the Aristotelian principles of tragic narrative.29 For audiences accustomed to the bleak prospect of gazing forwards to a future moment of fixed salvation/ damnation, with what John Stachniewski termed ‘the persecutory imagination’, it is perhaps unsurprising that where we do find moments of laughter among the tragic debris of The White Devil, they can feel awkward, unsettling and pressurised – at times heightening rather than relieving violent tones of death and loss.30 Through his repeated reversion to providence and emotional restraint, the play’s chief malcontent Flamineo most often embodies Stoic resolve. He disdains emotionality of other characters, and pointedly states his inability to ‘counterfeit a whining passion’ for Isabella (III.ii.303–4), in whose murder he colluded. In his ensuing attempts to appear ‘a politic madman’ (III.ii.308) to deflect attention from his emotional detachment, Flamineo inflates his Stoic resolve by insisting that ‘We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel, / Till pain itself make us no pain to feel’ (III.iii.1–2); and he later scorns that Fate’s a spaniel, We cannot beat it from us: what remains now? Let all that do ill take this precedent: Man may his fate foresee, but not prevent. (V.vi.173–6)

Here Webster plays with the Stoic insistence of the subject’s helpless subjection to the forces of providence: [Zeno and Chrysippus] themselves emphasised that everything was according to fate using the following example, that if a dog is tied, as it were, to a wagon, then



Grotesque tragedy

153

if the dog wishes to follow, it will both be pulled and follow, acting by its own choice together with the necessity; but if it does not wish to follow, it will in any case be compelled. The same I suppose applies to human beings; even if they do not wish to follow they will in any case be compelled to go where fate decrees.31

Set against the crushing pressures of fate, The White Devil’s weirder parts more closely resemble what Bakhtin terms ‘the world of Romantic grotesque’ – in part because they are characterised by the alienating fusion of horror and mirth.32 That Webster thought incorporating laughter important for the play’s success is suggested by revenger Francisco’s plotting lines – ‘My tragedy must have some idle mirth in’t, / Else it will never pass’ (IV.ii.118–19), and a jarring synthesis of comedy and horror runs through a range of the play’s important scenes.33 While it is difficult to speculate about what an early modern audience might have found funny, the concept of wicked laughter is explored quite extensively at a thematic level. According to Pearson, ‘laughter echoes through [Webster’s] plays’, and is most deliberate and prominent in The White Devil, with ‘grotesque comedy modifying even the play’s treatment of romantic love’.34 Indeed most of the play’s laughter gravitates around moments and themes that marry forms of graphic violence with sexual release. In the opening act Flamineo crudely baits his sister about her infidelity: ‘So now you are safe. Ha ha ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm’ (I.ii.178–9) (where he adapts Vittoria’s thread-/semen- spinning pun several lines hence).35 Brachiano’s use of the interjection ‘Ha?’ immediately follows Flamineo’s wordplay: ‘we fear / When Tiber to each prowling passenger / Discovers flocks of wild ducks’ – which he uses to slander Vittoria as prostitute (II.i.84–93). And when the hysterical Brachiano slumps closer to death he imagines the devil at the very brink of sexual release: ‘Ha, ha, ha, / Look you his codpiece is stuck full of pins / With pearls o’th’head of them’ (V.iii.99); and he then fails to recognise Vittoria: ‘Ha, ha, ha. Her hair is sprinkled with arras powder, that makes her look as if she had sinned in the pastry’ (V.iii.116–17). Elsewhere Francisco anticipates the risible spectacle of Isabella fulfilling her pledge for scorpion-whipping revenge: ‘To see her come / To my lord cardinal for a dispensation / Of her rash vow will beget excellent laughter’ (II.i.273–5); and in the dumb show the conjurer Doctor Julio and his assistant ‘depart laughing’ after poisoning Brachiano’s portrait – in anticipation of Isabella’s bizarre death by osculation. When Francisco (in Moorish disguise) courts Zanche, he too invokes laughter and emotional excess: ‘When I threw the mantle o’er thee, thou didst laugh / Exceedingly methought … And cried’st out, / The hair did tickle thee’ (V.iii.235–7), evoking the same pleasure–pain dichotomy as Flamineo’s warnings of the ‘Machiavellian’ who ‘tickles you to death, makes you die laughing’ (V.iii.194). Bridget Escolme’s recent study of emotional excess emphasises that ‘laughter in the early modern theatre is ambivalent and multi-directional rather than simply excessive and cruel’,36 and the consistency of its deployment

154

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

alongside themes of lust and grotesque death suggests a measure of careful and deliberate design. Throughout the play, moreover, facial appearances are untrustworthy emotional and/or moral barometers. For example, Flamineo pokes fun at the Spanish Ambassador who ‘carries his face’s ruff, as I have seen a serving-man carry glasses in a cypress hat-band, monstrous steady for fear of breaking’ (III.i.71–2), and again seeks Stoic appearance: ‘this face of mine / I’ll arm and fortify with lusty wine / ’Gainst shame and blushing’ (I.ii.312–14). Laughter and emotional excess lurk especially within the play’s darkest characters and moments. The exiled revenger Lodovico is, however, the character most animated by themes of dark laughter. Following his reference to Democritus in the opening lines of the play, his companion Gasparo reflects upon how the Roman court ‘Laugh at your misery’ (I.i.24); and he is elsewhere associated with emotional excess by the Conjurer, as one who ‘did most passionately dote’ upon the fallen Isabella (II.ii.33). When he clashes with the Stoic Flamineo in Act III, Scene iii, Webster heightens Lodovico’s Democritan mirth and uses the quarrel to stage a coded philosophical debate. Just before Marcello marks the ‘strange encounter’ (III.iii.60) in an aside to the audience, Lodovico states his intent to ‘wind’ (III.iii.53) Flamineo. The ambiguous transitive verb ‘wind’ could, in early modern parlance, have referred to moving or steering something by force (OED, v., 1.6b, 1.8b), to draw something out with a twisting motion (OED, v., 1.10), and to ‘bring (a thing) in by insinuating methods’ (OED, v., 1.16c).37 Rhetorical manoeuvring here resonates with Aristotle’s precepts of ‘delighting the hearers, and stirring them to laughter’, whereby the comical ‘turning of a word … doth often move the hearer’, and in which an orator who will ‘move sport’ must know within ‘what compass he should keep, that should thus be merry. For fear he take too much ground and go beyond his bounds’.38 Unconcerned about transgressing boundaries of social etiquette, Lodovico’s intent to wind Flamineo seems to be to provoke from him an emotional response. It makes sense, then, that when the verbal sparring begins Flamineo reacts to Lodovico as if he were smiling: flamineo: The god of melancholy turn thy gall to poison, And let the stigmatic wrinkles of thy face Like to the boisterous waves in a rough tide One still overtake another. lodovico: I do thank thee And I do wish ingeniously for thy sake The dog-days all year long. flamineo: How croaks the raven? Is our good Duchess dead? lodovico: Dead. flamineo: O fate! Misfortune comes like the crowner’s business, Huddle upon huddle. (III.iii.61–9)



Grotesque tragedy

155

Flamineo sees the wrinkled expression of his Epicurean opponent as ‘stigmatic’ (deformed), and his reversion to fate, fortune and his allusion to the raven (harbinger of ill omens) again reinforce his Stoic ethos. Flamineo’s words are reactive, echoing Montaigne’s description that ‘the most dangerous of distempers are those which contort the face’.39 In contrast, Lodovico’s blunt repetition of ‘Dead’ chimes with the Epicurean resolve against death – explored by Montaigne in the essay ‘Of Glory’, wherein ‘our soul must play her part, but inwardly within ourselves, where no eyes shine but ours: There it doth shroud us from the fear of death, of sorrows and of shame’.40 As the exchange between Lodovico and Flamineo escalates, they refer to ‘making faces’ (III.iii.73), to ‘gentle melancholy’ (III.iii.76), and to the ‘melancholic hare’ (III.iii.77) immediately before Antonelli and Gasparo (Lodovico’s men) enter ‘laughing’ in an important moment that prompts: lodovico: flamineo: lodovico:

What a strange creature is a laughing fool, As if man were created to no use But only to show his teeth. I’ll tell thee what, It would do well instead of looking-glasses To set one’s face each morning by a saucer Of a witch’s congealed blood. Precious girn, rogue. We’ll never part. (III.iii.80–6)

Here Lodovico combines viciousness with laughter again, because to ‘girn’ means both to ‘snarl as a dog’ and ‘show the teeth in laughing’ (grin); and his juxtaposition yields a grotesque effect – much like the rubber-faced participants in bizarre girning contests (OED, v., 1a, 2). Flamineo threatens to ‘set’, or fix, Lodovico’s Democritan face through allusion to Stoic association of witchcraft with foretelling – in Lucan’s Pharsalia, for example, the serpentheaded witch Erictho helps reveal the outcome of the Battle of Pharsalus (VI.507–830).41 Offering his combatant a Stoic mirror of witch’s blood, Flamineo’s gruesome threat hinges upon Stoic belief in providential reckoning. Indeed Flamineo goes on to challenge Lodovico to act more stoically when he rails: You shall not seem a happier man than I … Do it i’th’like posture, as if some great man Sat while his enemy were executed: Though it be very lechery unto thee, Do’t with a crabb’d politician’s face. (III.iii.98–103)

Lodovico’s response reasserts his antagonistic assumption of Epicurean resolve (‘Your sister is a damnable whore … Look you; I spake that laughing’), and after more bating he finally riles Flamineo into action: ‘This

156

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

laughter scurvily becomes your face; / If you will not be melancholy, be angry. [Strikes him] / See, now I laugh too’ (III.iii.115–17). Here Lodovico ‘winds’ Flamineo into a fury that wrenches him away from the detached Stoic reserve that we see him assume elsewhere in the play. And this prolonged, fiery exchange is the first of only two encounters between the play’s philosophical polarities; when they cross paths again (in the tragedy’s crescendo) their conflict swerves violently into bloodshed. I have argued elsewhere that Webster’s play is animated by a deliberate jarring of Calvinist and Montaignian models of introspection.42 And while Webster undoubtedly derived much of his interest in and knowledge of Epicureanism through Montaigne, earlier works might also have piqued his interest. In 1573, for instance, James Sanforde translated The Garden of Pleasure by Florentine merchant and writer Lodovico Guicciardini (1521–89) – a scrapbook of quotations and philosophical positions from Socrates to Erasmus, including a range of references to both Epicurus and Democritus. Guicciardini was a controversial figure, and was imprisoned several times on the continent for political collusion with reformers, and then also for his alleged involvement in the assassination plot against William the Silent, Prince of Orange in 1582.43 His inclusion of Democritus places importance upon the dualism of laughter and misery in relation to the (pre-Stoic) monist Heraclitus: ‘the one considering ye follies of men did ever laugh: the other considering their miseries, did always weep’ patched against Andrea Alciato’s Emblem 152: ‘Thee Democrite also laugh I more to see, / Than thou art wont, thy hand doth point to me’.44 Heraclitus held important influence over the development of Stoicism, and was also used by Montaigne as a counterpoint to Epicurean mirth in his essay ‘Of Democritus and Heraclitus’.45 Montaigne describes how Democritus, ‘finding and deeming human condition to be vain and ridiculous, did never walk abroad, but with a laughing, scornful and mocking countenance: whereas Heraclitus taking pity and compassion of the very same condition of ours, was continually seen with a sad, mournful, and heavy cheer, and with tears trickling down his blubbered eyes’ (I.50). Exploring dialectics of folly and melancholy through the forefathers to the Epicurean and Stoic schools was a conventional trope in contemporary philosophical discourse, and Montaigne finds preference in Democritus’s materialism: ‘not because it is more pleasing to laugh, than to weep; but for it is more disdainful, and doth more condemn us than the other’. The Democritan laughing condition brings Webster’s chief influence to a point of grotesque fascination with man’s ‘risible’, ‘ridiculous’ fallen state (I.50). And learning to laugh at one’s existential deficiency brings Montaigne another step closer to his central (Epicurean) aim: to learn how to escape the fear of death. This impulse animates The White Devil too, and in Webster’s attempts to dramatise Montaigne’s concerns, the clash between horror and comedy fulfils an important philosophical role.



Grotesque tragedy

157

Colliding atoms Given the affinity between Webster and Montaigne, it seems reasonable to read Lodovico and Flamineo’s clash as one that resembles the Democritus– Heraclitus dualism.46 If these characters do represent the opposing extremes of Epicurean emotionality (with particular emphasis upon pleasure and laughter) and Stoic restraint, it is worth considering how far, and to what ends, Webster pursues this motif.47 Both characters are, of course, most obviously associated with their violent acts, which can often only be described as grotesque. A full production of The White Devil sees at least seven staged murders: four stabbings, two poison-asphyxiations, and Camillo’s un­deniably weird neck-break-by-vaulting-horse; these are followed by one pseudoexecution at gunpoint and an unspecified body-count in the closing scene when the conspirators (including Lodovico) are shot by Prince Giovanni’s guards. All of these acts of violence involve Lodovico or Flamineo, and the frenetic – and at times comical – waves of violence seem again to emulate Montaigne. In his essay ‘That to Philosophie is to learn how to die’ (I.19), Montaigne marvels at ‘How many several means and ways hath death to surprise us’, listing a series of bizarre, accidental fatalities including those of French kings John II, who was ‘stifled to death in a throng of people’, and Henry II, who died in a tournament – along with an ‘ancestor’ of the latter, who died ‘miserably by the chocke [violent knock48] of a hog’. He also lists Aeschylus who was ‘struck dead by the fall of a tortoise shell’, and ‘another [who] choked with the kernel of a grape’ before recounting the slapstick deaths of ‘Lepidus with hitting his foot against a door-sill’ and ‘Aufidius with stumbling against the council-chamber door’ (I.19) – both of which make more than passing resemblance to The White Devil’s Camillo, who is tripped and knocks himself unconscious against the vaulting horse in the second dumbshow at the start of Act II, Scene ii. These deaths are not just curiosities to Montaigne, he uses their randomness and perversity to treat death as something ludicrously inescapable, and to render fear of death as therefore illogical. Within Webster’s play, Flamineo’s assurance that ‘My death shall serve mine own turn’ (V.vi.50), and his resolution to ‘Defy the worst of fate, not fear to bleed’ (V.vi.277) anticipates a dramatic philosophical swerve from Stoic to Epicurean principles (set in motion by the interventions of his philosophical opposite Lodovico). To grasp the dynamics of this swerve, it is necessary first to explore the latent presence of the writings of Roman Epicurean and atomist Caius Lucretius within Webster’s tragedy. Lucretius was an inheritor of the Epicurean school, and foremost among the ideas articulated by his long poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), was a central belief in atomism. All matter, Lucretius contended, consists of microscopic, indestructible, indivisible parts: ‘Matter, atoms, generative bodies, elements, and seeds, / And first-beginnings since it is from these that all proceed’ (I.60–1).49 These atoms

158

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

move relentlessly through space, cascading back and forth randomly, colliding and combining en masse to create compounds of what humans perceive in the world around them.50 A range of important critical works have stressed the influence of Lucretius over Jacobean intellectual culture (with heavy emphasis on Shakespearean drama), paving the way for the Pulitzer Prize winning claims of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the Renaissace Began in 2011.51 Deeply influenced by Democritus, Lucretius denied that the gods took any interest in human affairs, and rejected any notion of spiritual afterlife whatsoever. After death, Lucretius claimed, the spirit atoms departed into the atmosphere and settled in other organisms, maintaining a perennial cycle of life and death. The White Devil animates similar ideas in relation to Vittoria’s death in at least three places: when Brachiano threatens to cut her ‘into atomies / And let th’irregular north-wind sweep her up / And blow her int’ his nostrils’ (IV.ii.40–2); when Lodovico terms her ‘glorious strumpet’ and threatens that ‘Could I divide thy body from this pure air / When’t leaves thy body, I would suck it up / And breathe’t upon some dunghill’ (V.vi.202–5); and again when he threatens her that ‘fear should dissolve thee into thin air’ (V.vi.218).52 When, however, immediately before his mock-execution Flamineo ‘acts out’ what Pearson terms ‘a grotesque fiction of his own death’,53 he too invokes atomist discourse: Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not Nor greatly care – Shoot, shoot, Of all deaths the violent death is best, For from our selves, it steals our selves so fast The pain once apprehended is quite past. (V.vi.111–16)

William M. Hamlin describes Flamineo’s apparent death as a ‘particularly complex example of Webster’s illusory violence’, because his subsequent (pseudo) resurrection becomes ‘a dramatic volte-face that must inevitably strike audiences as comical’.54 But the weird comical tone should not be overlooked, and seems to relate to his Epicurean choice of verb: for ‘resolve’ means to move between solid, liquid and vapour forms (OED, v., 1). So Flamineo imagines dissolving into particles of elemental purity, ‘by scruples’ – that is, measurements: weight and angles of movement he knows not.55 And, crucially, Flamineo fails to grasp the fifth element – that of the soul, which according to Lucretius ‘consists of very tiny seeds / Bound up in sinews, flesh and veins’.56 Unlike Democritus, Lucretius argued that the atoms of flesh and spirit were distinct, and did not alternate (see III.370–6). For Lucretius, the spirit atom is far smaller and more mobile than the flesh: ‘its texture is a gauzy one, / And that its particles are tiny – tinier for that matter / Than are the particles of fog, or smoke, or liquid water – / For it is nimbler by far’ (III.426–9). The size and speed of the spirit atom ‘drives the body forward’ (III.160), transmits messages from the sensory organs to the mind, and



Grotesque tragedy

159

regulates unconscious activities like dreaming (by moving images around). The atoms were interspersed (and widely spaced) throughout the body, and were continually in motion. Lucretius uses the extreme examples of how the body can fail to sense the ‘flimsy threads’ of a spider’s web, ‘Nor feel its shrivelled remnant dropping down upon our heads’ (III.383–5); yet, the body can withstand the mutilation of losing limbs (III.403–15) without losing its spirit – both explicable by the ‘ceaseless motion’ (III.34) of the atoms, which can retreat and relocate in response to degrees of sensory stimulus. These ideas fascinate Montaigne, whose essays are pervaded by an appreciation and fascination with perpetual change and flux wrought by the ceaseless shifting nature of the world: ‘The world runs all on wheels: all things therein move without intermission; yea the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt, both with the public and their own motion. Constancy it self is nothing but a languishing and wavering dance’.57 When he uses his own near-death experience (of being trampled by a horse) to contemplate the function and consistency of the soul, Montaigne fixates upon the self-estrangement experienced through extreme physical trauma: ‘I could not believe that at so great an astonishment of members, and de’failance of senses, the soul could maintain any force within, to know herself; and therefore had no manner of discourse tormenting them, which might make them judge and feel the misery of their condition’.58 In the aftermath of the near-death experience, the soul and sensory system are jolted, and result in ‘motions in us which proceed not of our free will’: There are many creatures, yea and some men, in whom after they are dead we may see their muscles to close and stir. All men know by experience, there be some parts of our bodies which often without any consent of ours do stir, stand, and lie down again. Now these passions, which but exteriorly touch us, cannot properly be termed ours; for, to make them ours, a man must wholly be engaged unto them. (II.6)

Montaigne reads the uncanny agency of the involuntary reaction (from instinctively raising one’s hands during a fall, to the convulsions of the epileptic) as proof that ‘our members have certain offices, which they lend to one another, and possess certain agitations apart from our discourse’ (II.6); and he accords this agency to the soul in a momentary state of flux, a state that it must assume with finality at the brink of death. Montaigne makes repeated reference to Book III of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura in this sequence. Here Lucretius places special emphasis on the capacity of the badly injured body to annihilate its fear of death: So when the bond is put asunder between body and soul The two from which we are composed into a single whole, Nothing can befall us, we who shall no longer be, Nor move our senses, no, not even if the earth and sea Were confounded with one another, and the sea mixed with the sky.59

160

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

The final moments of life enact a grotesque fusion of the body and soul atoms, and in so doing the human capacity for reason and fear dissolves, bringing with it a unique fleeting invulnerability which holds deep affinity with the Epicurean goal of escaping pain and fear. So when, in the final scene of The White Devil, the conspirators arrive and it is Vittoria and Zanche who show masculine, Stoic resolve in the face of certain death (‘VITT: Yes, I shall welcome death … I will not in my death shed one base tear; ZAN: I am proud / Death cannot alter my complexion’ (V.vi.215–21; 226–7)), they serve to highlight Flamineo’s change in tack – as his Stoicism assumes an Epicurean bent and introspective Montaignian edge: lodovico: Dost laugh? flamineo: Woulst have me die, as I was born, in whining? lodovico:           … What dost think on? flamineo: Nothing, of nothing: leave thy idle questions; I am in’th’way to study a long silence. To prate were idle – I remember nothing. There’s nothing of so infinite vexation As man’s own thoughts. (V.vi.190–202)

Flamineo’s meditative state echoes the Lucretian line, ‘Nothing can be made from nothing’ (I.155); and after he is stabbed, the misogynist and panderer achieves a level of clarity and ostensible affection for his sister (‘I love thee now. If woman do breed man / She ought to teach him manhood’ (V.vi.239–40)) and admiration for her capacity to mask her inward self: ‘She hath no faults, who hath the art to hide them’ (V.vi.243). Though her stoicism buys her dignity, Vittoria’s final utterance is marked by uncertainty and fear, whereas Flamineo continues to calmly rationalise and hypothesise: vittoria:     My soul, like to a ship in a black storm, Is driven I know not whither. flamineo:   Then cast anchor. ‘Prosperity doth bewitch men seeming clear, But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near. We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune’s slaves, Nay cease to die by dying’. (V.vi.244–9)

In this moment and Flamineo’s final lines, Brooke identifies a conclusive thematic concern with there being ‘some goodness in death’, and finds its definition ‘far too subtle to be contained in a term such as stoicism’.60 Similarly, Gunnar Boklund termed the malefactor’s death as ‘more than a final expression of a perverted stoicism’.61 The missing link here is Flamineo’s embracement of Epicurean philosophy in his final moments. For the brink of death brings Flamineo close to Lucretius’s image of the mixing particles of land and the erosive sea. Furthermore, the smiling visage that he imagines in the foaming waves again returns him to the haunting Democritan mirth



Grotesque tragedy

161

of his assailant Lodovico. That ‘seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near’ once again frames the jarring blend of laughter and perilous violence. To underscore the hybridity, moreover, this fleeting shift to Epicurean thinking is drawn from the neo-Senecan closet tragedy, William Alexander’s Tragedy of Croesus (1604).62 So rather than leave his Stoicism behind, Flamineo’s detaching, dying self uses and builds upon it to reach a distinctly Epicurean freedom from fear of death and the afterlife. The weirder parts of The White Devil do, then, seem to bridge important connections to the writings of Montaigne and the resurgent interest in the atomist Epicurean tradition in the early seventeenth century. In this play Webster’s grotesque fusion of horror and comedy is not merely gratuitous or sensationalist; or, at least, it is not just those things. The White Devil has a deep philosophical interest in issues of death and soteriology, and its strange generic blends echo the dialectical nature of early modern philosophical deliberation more generally. In Montaigne, Webster and his contemporaries found a model of self-exploration that used the Epicurean atomist tradition to probe the limits and flaws of their Stoic Calvinist devotional cultures. Just as Montaigne uses Heraclitus and Democritus to think dialectically about issues of providence, free will, death and soteriology, Webster embeds this paradigm in his tragedy, and clashes Lodovico’s Epicureanism with Flamineo’s Stoicism. That Webster was thinking in these terms does not, however, suggest that his audiences and peers were also doing so. In his preface to the play he famously complained that the playgoers who received (and apparently maligned) the play’s first performance at the Red Bull ‘resemble these ignorant asses (who visiting stationers’ shops, their use not to enquire for good books, but new books)’;63 so his EpicureanStoic grotesquery may well have escaped the attention of his audiences, just as it has evaded his later critics. Nevertheless, Webster’s engagement with Lucretius does raise further questions about the dynamic relationship between playwriting, philosophy and spirituality in these years – and concepts like the grotesque can help us identify previously unnoticed forms, fusions and patterns in even the blackest shadows of early modern tragic discourse.

Notes 1 Many thanks to Adrian Streete for alerting me to some Lucretian shapes in the evidence of a White Devil conference paper that I delivered at Northumbria University in April 2013. 2 Michel Jenneret, Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance: From da Vinci to Montaigne, trans. Nidra Poller (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 139–40. And see Jenneret’s fascinating wider discussion of Renaissance ‘Grotesques and Monstrosities’, pp. 104–43. 3 John Florio, World of Words (London: 1598; STC 11098), Sig. O1r.

162

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

4 Oxford English Dictionary Online (hereafter OED), ‘antic’, adj. & n., etym., 1., 2. www.oed.com (accessed 7 June 2016). 5 See Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), p. 251. Florio’s use of antic relates to remains ‘found in exhuming some ancient remains (as the Baths of Titus) in Rome, whence extended to anything similarly incongruous or bizarre’ (OED, ‘antic’, adj. & n., etym.). The Works of John Ford, ed. William Gifford and Rev. Alexander Dyce, 3 vols. (London: James Toovey, 1869), III, p. 61. Gifford and Dyce read Fernando’s use of ‘antic’ here in relation to ‘anti-masque’: ‘in which the characters were always grotesque and extravagant’ (fn. 9). 6 See C. T. Onions (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), p. 416. 7 Four Revenge Tragedies, ed. Katharine Eisaman Maus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 8 Markku Salmela and Jarkko Toikkanen, ‘Introduction: Reading the Grotesque through the Unnatural’, in Salmela and Toikkanen (eds), The Grotesque and the Unnatural (Amherst and New York: Cambris Press, 2011), pp. 1–16 (p. 3). 9 Nicholas Brooke, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979). 10 Jacqueline Pearson, Tragedy and Tragicomedy in the Plays of John Webster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 60. 11 Ceri Sullivan, ‘John Webster’, in David Scott Kastan (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, 5 vols (Oxford University Press, 2006), V, p. 260. 12 Reid Barbour, English Epicures and Stoics: Ancient Legacies in Early Stuart Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), p. 2. 13 Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 54. 14 Thomas Nashe, Anatomy of Absurdity (London: 1589; STC 18364), sig. C1v. 15 On Calvin’s initial sympathies with and subsequent antagonism of the Stoic tradition see Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1977; rpr. 2005), pp. 95–145. 16 See Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy, pp. 53–67. For a useful introduction to Renaissance European interest in Stoicism see John Sellars, Stoicism (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 139–50. On early modern English poetry (Golding, Marlowe and Herrick) and these classical traditions see Gordon Braden, The Classics and English Poetry: Three Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). 17 Samuel Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 15–16. Schoenfeldt’s emphasis on restraint has been somewhat revised and nuanced by Richard Strier’s The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 18 Barbour, English Epicures, p. 2. 19 On Montaigne’s Stoicism see Geoffrey Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 86–90. 20 For an overview of the school of Epicurus see R. W. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1996; rpr. 2002), pp. 5–8; 59–66; 84–99.



Grotesque tragedy

163

21 Adrian Streete, ‘Calvin, Lucretius, and Natural Law in Measure for Measure’, in David Lowenstein and Michael Witmore (eds), Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 131–54 (p. 133). 22 All references from The White Devil, 3rd edn, ed. Christina Luckyj (London: New Mermaids, 2008). 23 To my knowledge, only one critic has unpacked the significance of the reference to Democritus. See Norma Kroll’s neglected ‘The Democritan Universe in Webster’s The White Devil’, Comparative Drama, 7.1 (1973), pp. 3–22. 24 See Peter Paul Rubens, Democritus and Heraclitus [Oil on canvas] Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid (1603); Rembrandt, The Young Rembrandt as Democretes the Laughing Philosopher [Oil on copper] Private collection, England (c. 1628); Diego Velázquez, Democritus [Oil on canvas] Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Céramique, Rouen (c. 1628–29); Johannes Moreelse, Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher [Oil on canvas] Mauritshuis, The Hague (c. 1630). 25 On the importance of Heraclitus to Stoicism see A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 35–57; and Matthew Colvin, ‘Heraclitus and Material Flux in Stoic Psychology’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 28 (2005), pp. 257–72. 26 On ancient Greek cultures of laughter and mirth see two essays by Stephen Halliwell, ‘The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture’, The Classical Quarterly, 41.2 (1991), pp. 279–96; and ‘Greek Laughter and the Problem of the Absurd’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 13.2 (2005), pp. 121–46. 27 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 66. 28 Ibid., p. 77. 29 On the protagonists and devotional environs of preaching predestination see Leif Dixon, Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590–1640 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 30 John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Culture of Religious Despair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 31 Hippolytus, Philos. 21 = LS 62A. Cited in Sharples, Stoics, p. 77. 32 Bakhtin, Rabelais, p. 38. 33 Marcello’s later line, ‘Publish not a fear / Which would convert to laughter’ (V.ii.8–9) perhaps suggests the difficulty faced by tragedians’ attempts to incorporate laughter in their works. 34 Pearson, Tragedy and Tragicomedy, pp. 65–7. Pearson counts ‘Forty examples of laughter and of the words “laugh”, “jest”, “smiling”, “merry”, “laughter”, “laughing”, “mirth”, “ridiculous”, “simpers”, “smiles”, and “ridiculously”. This compares with thirty in Duchess of Malfi, twenty-four in The Devil’s Law Case … and twenty in A Cure for a Cuckold’ (p. 139, n. 11). 35 See The White Devil, ed. Luckyj, p. 19, n. 164. 36 Bridget Escolme, Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage: Passion’s Slaves (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 57. 37 There is also a parallel with Cornelia and Zanche’s literal winding of Marcello’s corpse. See stage directions at V.iv.60–1. 38 The Art of Rhetorique, trans. Thomas Wilson (London: 1553; STC 25799), p. 77r; p. 75v.

164

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

39 Montaigne draws the point from Hippocrates in his essay ‘Of Anger and Choler’ (II.31). All references to Montaigne’s Essays from Essays of Michel Lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio, 3 vols (London: Grant Richards, 1898). See also Escolme’s brief discussion of Montaigne and emotional repression and display (Emotional Excess, pp. 15–18). 40 Montaigne, Essays, II.16, p. 431. 41 Pharsalia, trans. Jane Wilson Joyce (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). 42 ‘Unbridled Selfhood in The White Devil: Webster’s Use of Calvin and Montaigne’, The White Devil: A Critical Companion (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016). On Webster’s use of Montaigne see also R. W. Dent, John Webster’s Borrowings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), passim; and Robert Freeman Whitman, Beyond Melancholy: John Webster and the Tragedy of Darkness (Salzburge: Institut Für Englische pp. 159–91. 43 Lee Sorensen, ‘Guicciardini, Lodovico’, in Sorensen (ed.), Dictionary of Art Historians, https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/guicciardinil.htm (accessed 24 October 2015). 44 The Garden of Pleasure containing most pleasant tales, worthy deeds and witty sayings of noble princes [et] learned philosophers, moralized. No less delectable, than profitable, trans. James Sandforde (London: 1573; STC 12464). The collection was reprinted (corrected, enlarged and retitled as Hours of Recreation, or Afterdinners, which may aptly be called The garden of pleasure) in 1576 (STC 12465). See also Geffrey Whitney’s inclusion of the dualism in his similar Choice of Emblems (London: 1586; STC 25438), p. 14. 45 See note 23 above. 46 See note 37 above. 47 Webster may have borrowed this trope from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. See George Coffin Taylor’s claims in ‘Is Shakespeare’s Antonio the “Weeping Philosopher” Heraclitus?’, Modern Philology, 26.2 (1928), pp. 161–7. 48 Textual gloss from Peter J. Platt, Shakespeare’s Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, ed. Platt and Stephen Greenblatt (New York: New York Review Books, 2014), p. 358, n. 32. 49 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. A. E. Stallings (London and New York: Penguin, 2007), p. 5. 50 On ‘The Dance of the Atoms’ see Don Fowler’s magnificent Lucretius on Atomic Motion: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura, Book Two, Lines 1–332 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 51 See Jonathan Gil Harris, ‘Atomic Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Studies, 30 (2002), pp. 47–51; William Hamlin, Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005); Eric Langley, Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Jonathan Goldberg, The Seeds of Things: Theorizing Sexuality and Materiality in Renaissance Representations (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009); R. Allen Shoaf, ‘“if imagination amend them”: Lucretius, Marlowe, Shakespeare’, in David Schalkwyk (ed.), The Shakespearean International Yearbook (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 257–80; Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011); and most recently: R. Allen Shoaf, Shakespeare and Lucretius on the Nature of Things



Grotesque tragedy

165

(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014). For a more comprehensive list see Streete, ‘Calvin, Lucretius, and Natural Law’, p. 131, n. 1. 52 The word ‘particle’ is also used at IV.ii.232 when Flamineo describes Vittoria’s ingratitude with the crocodile and bird analogy. 53 Pearson, Tragedy and Tragicomedy, p. 60. 54 William M. Hamlin, Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), pp. 217; 218. 55 OED, ‘Scruple’, n., 1: 1.a: ‘A unit of weight = 20 grains, 1/ 3 drachm, 1/ 24 oz. Apothecaries’ weight. Denoted by the character ℈’; 1.b: ‘Alleged values of doubtful authority’; 2: ‘One-sixtieth of a degree; a minute of arc’. 56 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, III.218–19. 57 Montaigne, ‘Of Repenting’, III.2, p. 29. Emphasis in original. 58 Montaigne, ‘Of Exercise or Practice’, II.6, p. 61. 59 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, III.838–43. 60 Brooke, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy, p. 46. 61 Gunnar Boklund, The Sources of The White Devil (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard; and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 176. 62 Luckyj notes this allusion (p. 163, n. 246–7), but does not quote these lines fully: ‘Each surge, we see, doth drive the first away, / The foam is whitest, where the Rock is near, / And as one grows, another doth decay, / The greatest dangers oft do least appear … A secret destiny does guide great states’. The Monarchic Tragedies Croesus, Darius, The Alexandraean, Julius Caesar (London: 1607; STC 344), Sig. B2r. 63 ‘To the Reader’, 7–9 (The White Devil, ed. Luckyj, p. 5).

10

She-tragedy: lust, luxury and empire in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One Domenico Lovascio

Even though women were not allowed to perform on stage, and female roles accordingly had to be taken on by young male players, tragedies focusing on women – which usually took their titles from their central female character – populated English drama from the Elizabethan period on, though notably growing in number and complexity in the Jacobean and Caroline era. Tragedies about women often proved to be a vehicle of choice for playwrights to explore and comment implicitly on topical and often incendiary contemporary issues like gender relationships, marriage, mothering, misogyny, sexuality, the relationship between body and soul and between men’s and women’s bodies, the value of virginity, the expression of emotions, the hardships of being a female ruler, the marginalisation of women in the political world, their place in the social hierarchy and the degree of their agency or autonomy. Tragedies about women also turned out to be instrumental in the development of new tragic patterns by influencing subsequent tragic writings, by and about both men and women. A favourite tragic subject for Renaissance dramatists was Cleopatra. Though not really popular until the 1580s, she rapidly became a habitual presence in English drama after Mary Sidney translated Robert Garnier’s Marc-Antoine as Antonius in 1592. From then onwards, Cleopatra went on to appear as a speaking character in Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra (1594), the anonymous Caesar’s Revenge (c. 1595, publ. 1606), William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606, publ. 1623), John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One (c. 1620, publ. 1647) and Thomas May’s Cleopatra (1626, publ. 1639). In addition, she appeared or might have appeared in a handful of lost plays such as Ptolemy (performed at the Bull Inn in 1578), Caesar and Pompey (possibly performed at the Theatre by Warwick’s Men in 1581), the Admiral’s Men’s two-part Caesar and Pompey (performed at the Rose in 1594–95), Fulke Greville’s Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1600) and May’s neo-Latin Julius Caesar (1625–30).

She-tragedy 167 In the early modern as in today’s social and cultural imagination, the name Cleopatra was practically synonymous with tragedy, the image of her last fatal moments with Mark Antony and her tragic suicide almost invariably overshadowing the remaining periods of her life, including her infamous nine-month affair with Julius Caesar in Egypt. As a matter of fact, all the extant plays listed above, apart from Caesar’s Revenge and The False One, do focus on her love story with Antony – and even those two exceptions both alter the historical record in order to portray Antony as meeting and falling in love with Cleopatra in Egypt at the same time as Caesar. While the liaison between Caesar and Cleopatra is only one of the many episodes dramatised in Caesar’s Revenge, The False One is the first ever literary work completely to revolve around the affair. This sets the play apart from others featuring the Egyptian queen and prompts the question as to where Fletcher and Massinger’s young Cleopatra is located with regard to preceding and subsequent dramatic treatments of her. Previous plays variously portray Cleopatra as an adulterous temptress, a lofty queen, an unscrupulous schemer, a paradigm of dignity and nobility, an enticing sorceress, an accomplished actress, a constant wife, an insatiable seductress, a passionate lover.1 The False One clearly reveals Fletcher and Massinger’s keen awareness of previous theatrical depictions of Cleopatra (especially Shakespeare’s). This results in most of those portrayals being mixed together in ways that produce unexpected results and make this Cleopatra emerge as gloriously unforgettable, if not in her death – admittedly, in no other play of the period is she as alive as in this one – certainly in her many-sidedness, a sign of complexity rather than inconsistency, as one might be tempted dismissively to suggest. Fletcher and Massinger’s composite Cleopatra is in other words at once paradigmatic and innovative, implying in herself a whole tradition of tragic female characters by way of either contrast or assimilation.2 The False One follows Caesar’s Revenge in depicting the process of emasculation that Caesar experiences by dint of his inability to resist the sensual pleasures Cleopatra offers him. More importantly, however, it also links Caesar’s feminisation to his unbounded attraction to material riches, a feature the two dramatists foreground in order to voice a series of perplexities raised by the British colonial ventures in the New World. Caesar’s characterisation as effeminate therefore not only seeks to criticise James I’s passive foreign policy in Europe during the 1619 Palatinate crisis, as interestingly noted by Marina Hila, but also channels anxieties that the foreign luxury goods and practices that might start flowing from the colonies – though arguably no such thing had yet happened – might end up weakening and corrupting England, just as the opening to the East had progressively enfeebled and ultimately destroyed Rome.3 Fletcher and Massinger’s focus on these issues ultimately results in the play becoming especially interesting as an infrequent case of a female-centred early modern play that does not prioritise the exploration of a woman’s plight within an oppressive patriarchal regime – as, for

168

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

instance, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1602–8, publ. 1613) or John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612–13, publ. 1623) – but, instead, uses female-centred drama as a vehicle for commenting on contemporary (masculine) political manoeuvring. The first act offers a traditional Lucan-inspired depiction of Caesar as an unstoppable, blood-lusting, ‘all-conquering’ (I.ii.70) destroyer.4 These traits, however, are soon overshadowed by the process of emasculation Caesar undergoes at the hands of Cleopatra, who is here at once the origin and the object of dangerous desire as in several other early modern texts. The negative fashioning of Cleopatra as a figure of base and weakening luxuria was so commonplace in Renaissance England that in his Virgidemiarum (1598) Bishop Joseph Hall coined the adjective ‘Cleopatrical’ to label the consumption of superfluous objects in the developing marketplace.5 Cleopatra is a crucial character in the play, insofar as she determines the two decisive turns in the plot, thereby managing to rise to the role of Caesar’s deuteragonist. Aware that her only hope of regaining the throne from which her brother Ptolemy has banished her lies in the existence of ‘a Rome, a Senate, and a Cæsar’ (I.ii.62), she has already devised a plan to seduce him. She intends to appeal to Caesar’s Achilles heel: his (historically documented) sexual incontinence and, specifically, his intense attraction to queens (I.ii.91–9). The aside with which she concludes Act I, Scene ii perfectly epitomises her opportunistic determination: ‘though I purchase / His grace, with losse of my virginity, / It skills not, if it bring home Majesty’ (I.ii.104–6). All in all, despite her still-preserved virginity – an unusual albeit credible trait for Fletcher and Massinger’s Cleopatra, in that her husband-brother Ptolemy XIII was only thirteen when Caesar arrived in Egypt – at the beginning of the play the Egyptian queen seems far from an exemplum of nobility, an impression confirmed by the stratagem she devises in order to gain secret access to Caesar’s presence. Through a slight modification to Plutarch’s account,6 Cleopatra orders her servant Apollodorus to roll her up in a mattress to be offered as a gift to the unknowing Caesar. The ‘delivery’ of the Egyptian queen in a ‘packet’ (II.iii.61, SD) – specifically marked ‘for Cæsars use’ (III.i.20) – calls attention to Cleopatra’s commercial value and proves to be an effective coup de théâtre, perhaps also intended to develop the measly allusion to the episode by an embarrassed Enobarbus in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.7 Fletcher and Massinger’s decision to give so much importance to this sequence also springs from their desire to set their work in programmatic contrast with the majoritarian theatrical tradition of Cleopatra by opposing a dazzling birth-like debut to a glorious death. As soon as Cleopatra springs out from the unrolled mattress, Caesar starts addressing her in courtly Petrarchan fashion (II.iii.102–5). The inappropriateness of such a language, which sounds ‘mangely, / Poorely; and scurvely’ in a Roman general’s mouth, is immediately censured by the disgusted Scaeva (historically one of the bravest centurions Caesar ever had), who does not

She-tragedy 169 hesitate to make fun of Caesar’s dreamlike amorous rantings, all the more ridiculous by dint of his age (II.iii.105–11): Caesar was fifty-two (and Cleopatra only twenty-one!) at the time and therefore already in old age by Renaissance standards.8 While Caesar is already convinced that Cleopatra is ‘a thing divine’ (II.iii.98), Scaeva keeps labelling her as an ‘apparition’, a ‘Spirit’, a ‘tempting Devill’, a ‘damned woman’, ‘sent to dispossesse you of your honour, / A spunge, a spunge, to wipe away your victories’ (II.iii.79–90). The image of the sponge is metaphorically deployed with regard to the weakening consequences of an immoderate sexual activity and reveals Scaeva’s awareness of the terrible danger Cleopatra’s allure embodies for Caesar’s military ethos. Scaeva tries to explain to him that Cleopatra certainly has a hidden agenda and that a general as renowned as he should not let a lewd courtesan stain his glory, thereby debasing the dangers his soldiers have faced for him during numerous military campaigns (II.iii.112–24). Scaeva therefore decides momentarily to abandon his general to his ‘women’s war’, not before mocking Caesar with words associating him with objects of typical female usage, thereby poignantly prophesising his imminent feminisation: ‘You’le conquer Rome now, and the Capitoll / With Fans, and Looking-glasses, farwell Cæsar’ (II.iii.127–8). While Scaeva takes his leave, Cleopatra kneels before the general in order to submit to him completely, thereby prompting another salacious line by the centurion – ‘Lower you’le be anon. […] And privater’ (II.iii.131) – which, in spite of its predictability, effectively emphasises the sexual overtones of this first encounter, while at the same time ridiculing the chivalrous register used earlier. Cleopatra appeals to Caesar’s generosity as much as to his masculinity, just as a damsel in distress would conventionally address a noble knight in a medieval romance (II.iii.143–55): she begs him to help ‘one distressd, that flyes unto thy justice, / One that layes sacred hold on thy protection / As on a holy Altar, to preserve me’ (II.iii.136–8). Complying with the conventions of courtly romance, Caesar explains that a request made by ‘A suitor of your sort, and blessed sweetnesse, / That hath adventur’d thus to see great Cæsar, / Must never be denied’ (II.iii.160–4) and promises he will make her the queen of Egypt again (II.iii.165–9). Cleopatra – in an aside whose ultimate source is Lucan but which also seems influenced by the portrayal of Caesar as a slave to Love offered in Petrarch’s Triumphs – instantly rejoices at the success of her plan: ‘He is my conquest now, and so I’le worke him, / The conquerour of the world will I lead captive’ (II.iii.170–1).9 Caesar may well be regarding Cleopatra as a goddess, but she looks all too human in the pursuit of her strategy, through which she easily manages ‘to invade / [His] noble minde’ (II.i.184–5). It does not take long for the news of the dangerous liaison to reach the Roman soldiers, who start criticising and deriding Caesar for forgetting ‘his wisedome, / His age, and honour’ (III.ii.10–1). Dolabella believes the general is ‘bewitchd sure, / His noble blood crudled, and cold within him; / Growne

170

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

now a womans warriour’ (III.ii.1–3), too busy employing his strategic skills not at war but in sex. As Scaeva explains – in a sequence of doubles entendres leaving no room for imagination and framing ‘Cleopatra as a besieged city and her suitor more as a rapist/conqueror than a lover’, as suggested by Sarah Hatchuel – Caesar’s mind is no longer turned to military conflicts, concerned as he is with studying ‘her fortifications, and her breaches, / And how he may advance his ram to batter / The bullworke of her chastitie’ (III.ii.4–6).10 The time and energies devoted to sex have dulled Caesar’s martial zeal, thereby fulfilling the sponge metaphor/prophecy. Quite unsurprisingly, even though Caesar has his own share of responsibility, the more significant part of blame falls on Cleopatra, that ‘Tempter’ (II.iii.182), that ‘wanton bane of warr, […] / In whose embraces, ease (the rust of Armes) / And pleasure (that makes Souldiers poore) inhabites’ (II.iii.186–8). Caesar’s feminising process, however, is not limited to the loss of his self-governance and a softening of his military vigour. What is even more debasing, he now spends his days writing sonnets for his paramour and in a number of degrading womanish occupations: dolabella: scaeva:

Cæsar writes Sonnetts now, the sound of war Is growne too boystrous for his mouth: he sighes too. And learnes to fidle most mellodiously, And sings, ’twould make your eares prick up, to heare him (Gentlemen) Shortly shee’le make him spin: and ’tis thought He will prove an admirable maker of Bonelace, And what a rare guift will that be in a generall? (III.ii.25–31)

The hilariously scorching comments by Dolabella and Scaeva describe an inversion of roles that seems to look back to the myth of Hercules and Omphale, the queen of Lydia, which had previously been referenced in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (c. 1579) and his sister’s Antonius, as well as hinting at the clothes-swapping anecdote in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.11 These comments are later substantiated by the bitter complaints of three soldiers, who perceive Caesar’s change of attitude as an insult to the great sacrifices and dangers they faced for him in battle (III.ii.159–63). The Roman soldiers cannot but despise Cleopatra. Scaeva calls her a ‘harlot’, a ‘Cow-Calfe’, ‘his whore’ and may well affirm that ‘She is a witch sure, / And workes upon him with some damn’d inchantment’ (III.ii.24, 44, 48, 32–3), but he and his fellow soldiers actually know that she should be more properly judged as an astute schemer rather than an enticing witch: dolabella: How cunning she will cary her behaviours, And set her countenance in a thousand postures, To catch her ends? scaeva:          She will be sick, well, sullen, Merry, coy, over-joyd, and seeme to dye All in one halfe an houre, to make an asse of him:

She-tragedy 171

I make no doubt she will be drunk too, damnably, And in her drinke will fight, then she fitts him. (III.ii.34–40)

The passage – again closely recalling Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra – obviously foregrounds Cleopatra’s theatrical personality as well as her devious manipulation of Caesar. Scaeva himself already suspected something shady while loading the mattress on his shoulders: ‘I am a Porter, / A strong one too, or else my sides would cracke Sir: / And my sinnes were as waighty, I should scarce walke with ’em’ (II.iii.62–4). Retrospectively, the unusual weight of the mattress and its association with the noun sins could be interpreted as a metaphor of the baleful consequences Cleopatra’s seduction would have on Caesar. Such a presentiment was correct, as Scaeva acknowledges: ‘My shoulders told me, by the waite ’twas wicked’ (III.ii.42). The False One therefore dramatises a set of early modern anxieties regarding the peril of feminisation embodied by erotic relationships infused with excessive passion for all men, but especially for rulers and men of war, insofar as such relationships were perceived as likely to ‘disrupt the very groundwork of cultural conceptions that define[d] the essence of masculinity in strict selfdiscipline and psychic disavowals’, as Gary Spear points out.12 Intemperance and lack of self-governance were regarded as signs of effeminacy according to a frame of mind borrowed from ancient Greece; a man not sufficiently in control of his pleasures was regarded as feminine, because he was under the power of his own and others’ appetites.13 In The False One, these traits are significantly associated with the man often regarded as the mightiest general in history, a choice seeking to intensify the sense of danger female sexuality allegedly represented for the military ethos, insofar as it hindered great enterprises and put the greater good in jeopardy for the sake of individual pleasure.14 It was customary in the period to portray women as possessed of a powerful, disruptive sexuality, the embodiment of ‘the principle of the lower and ferocious power of desire usurping the sovereignty of reason’, in Rebecca Bushnell’s felicitous phrasing.15 The popular stereotype of the sexually insatiable seductress was pervasive at all levels of literature.16 As Natalie ZemonDavis sums up, ‘[t]he female sex was thought the disorderly one par excellence […]. Une beste imparfaicte, went one adage, san foy, sans loy, sans crainte, sans constance’.17 The man seduced by a lustful woman placed in jeopardy the well-being of his mind, body and soul: in early modern English ‘effeminate could also be used as a verb, meaning to weaken, to corrupt, to cause to degenerate’.18 In this sense, The False One can at least partly be construed as a cautionary tale against intemperance, whose result is a disregard for military activities and matters of state on Caesar’s part, which proves to be particularly dangerous for Rome. This was not a new theme for the two playwrights, as numerous examples of tyrants feminised by an excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures and an insane submission to their own urges

172

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

populate Fletcher’s canon – e.g. The Maid’s Tragedy (1608–11), Philaster (1609), Valentinian (1610–14), A King and No King (1611) and A Wife for a Month (1624). Massinger himself would offer a disturbing portrayal of the tyrant Domitian, crazed by lust and bursting into violence in The Roman Actor in 1626. However, though sighing, singing ballads and spinning probably appear as the most indecently emasculating activities in which Caesar might be engaged, Fletcher and Massinger manage to demonstrate that he can sink even lower. This happens when his love for Cleopatra is momentarily eclipsed by the dazzling exhibition of ‘the glory, / And wealth of Egypt’ (III.iii.7–8) during what the captain of Ptolemy’s guard Achillas – with a blatant allusion to the excesses of the Jacobean court – calls a ‘Masque’ (IV.i.44). Caesar’s attraction to riches is so unwholesome that he has to leave the room abruptly after crying ‘The wonder of this wealth, so troubles me, / I am not well: good-night’ (III.iv.100–1). The association of a love for lust and luxury on the one side and effeminacy and loss of courage and military virtues on the other is customary in the history of Western thought, though emerging more evidently at the beginning of the capitalistic mode of production.19 As for the Jacobean period, it is worth recalling that, for example, in 1607 Francis Bacon had called attention to the association between effeminacy and luxury in the speech Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain, delivered before the monarch. He observed that ‘excess of riches, neither in public nor private, ever hath any good effects, but maketh men either slothful and effeminate, and so no enterprisers, or insolent and arrogant, and so overgreat embracers, but most generally cowardly’.20 As David Kuchta remarks: As a concept used in political, economic, and moral literature, luxury was more a social and cultural term than a stable economic concept. Luxury was the evil twin of consumption, the debased, debauched, and debilitating form of consumption that effeminated and impoverished England. […] From 1550 to 1850, effeminacy and luxury were seen as being among the chief ‘political vices’, along with corruption, anarchy, and tyranny.21

Alison V. Scott has recently demonstrated that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a very important stage in the evolution of the notion of luxury.22 From its meaning of lechery or lust in Middle English, it gradually came to be ‘defined in terms of riot, excess, indulgence, rankness, revelry and dissipation, and its disordering effects were applied to diverse situations including mockery of wealth, ill rule, and sedition’.23 In the Jacobean reign luxury was indeed felt, at least in some quarters, as a crucial problem: debates on how to protect England’s wealth against the ruinous waste of foreign imports intensified and numerous attacks were addressed especially against the consumption of imported luxury goods. The Puritans got the lion’s share. They considered money not as a private but as

She-tragedy 173 a social good, a gift from God to the community. Individual wealth had to be kept under check, lest it replaced God as the object of devotion: William Perkins even compared luxury to ‘a knife in the hands of a child, likely to hurt, if not taken away’.24 As Scott observes, in several puritanical works merchants were understood ‘to flood the country with unnecessary goods stimulating pride and luxury’ rather than serving necessity, and were regarded ‘as complicit in defrauding England of his lifeblood (wealth) and of introducing to the body-state a potentially fatal disease (luxury)’.25 In Act IV, Scene ii Cleopatra, enraged at Caesar for ‘the basenesse of his usage’ (IV.ii.5) during the masque, violently rails against him for having turned out to be little more than an ‘ambitious Broker’ (IV.ii.70). She claims that Caesar is ‘no Souldier, / (All honourable souldiers are Loves servants) / He is a Merchant: a meere wandring Merchant, / Servile to gaine’ (IV.ii.20–3), ‘so base and covetous, / Hee’l sell his sword for gold’ (IV.ii.27–8). The sarcastic insistence on the image of Caesar as a merchant willing even to trade his own sword seeks to highlight his greed in all its pettiness, and trenchantly illustrates the association between luxury and emasculation, thereby also echoing the puritanical attacks on merchants and framing Caesar as the perfect conflation of the classical sense of luxuria and its later meaning of temptation to concupiscence. Right in the middle of the masque, Caesar, flabbergasted at the sight of the infinite Egyptian riches, proclaims himself ashamed for embarking on a bloody civil conflict against Pompey when he could have easily taken hold of such staggering sums abroad. He cries out I am asham’d I warr’d at home (my friends) When such wealth may be got abroad? what honour, Nay everlasting glory had Rome purchas’d, Had she a just cause but to visit Ægypt? (III.iv.77–80)

Apart from the irony implied in the scene, there are two aspects that cast a particularly negative light on Caesar’s words. First, it is possible that Fletcher and Massinger wanted to hint at the now controversial lines of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – ‘Know Caesar doth not wrong but with just cause, / Nor without cause will he be satisfied’ – not as they appear in the First Folio but as are mockingly cited in Ben Jonson’s Discoveries (1641) and The Staple of News (1626).26 Fletcher and Massinger were aware that a play focusing on Caesar and Cleopatra would be expected to reckon with Shakespeare’s two previous successful Roman plays, as demonstrated by the various references to both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra scattered in the prologue, where The False One is advertised as a sort of prequel to those plays.27 The two dramatists may well have chosen a line uttered by Shakespeare’s Caesar that had impressed them and stayed with them since they had first heard it, and inserted it at a crucial moment in their play. They may have thought that such an allusion – oblique as it

174

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

might have been – would hardly escape the mind of the most attentive playgoers and readers, who would easily be able to identify the reference to the ‘just cause’ flaunted by Shakespeare’s Caesar. By foregrounding the idea that all Caesar would have needed in order unbridledly to plunder Egypt was to find – or, perhaps, to invent – a ‘just cause’ like the one Shakespeare’s Caesar maintained always to have on his side when ‘doing wrong’ would cast Fletcher and Massinger’s Caesar’s shamelessly predatory stance in quite a grim light. Second, Caesar’s exclamation has to be read in the light of an earlier soliloquy, where he showed no regrets for the massacres of foreign populations: I am dull, and heavy, yet I cannot sleepe: How happy was I, in my lawfull warrs In Germany, and Gaul, and Britany? When every night with pleasure I set downe What the day ministred? then sleep came sweetely. But since I undertooke this home-division, This civill war, and past the Rubicon, What have I done, that speakes an antient Roman? A good, great Man? (II.iii.29–37)

In the lines immediately following, Caesar goes on to express his remorse over the carnage and destruction brought about by internecine strife but he shows no regret for the destruction and pillage of foreign countries and populations: in fact, he considers them absolutely ‘lawful’. Combined with Caesar’s words during the masque, this soliloquy decisively contributes to casting a negative light on his rapacious and violent expansionism, which is also subjected to harsh criticism by the Egyptians Pothinus and Septimius. The former contemptuously recalls that ‘The glebe of Empire [is] manur’d [in blood]’ (V.ii.11), while the latter observes how the desire to take hold of other peoples’ possessions has been inscribed in the Roman people’s genetic inheritance since the very foundation of the city: Rome, that from Romulus first tooke her name, Had her walls watered with a Crymson showr Draind from a Brothers heart: nor was she rais’d To this prodigious height, that overlooks Three full parts of the Earth, that pay her tribute, But by enlarging of her narrow bounds By the Sack of Neighbour Cities, nere made hers Till they were Cemented with the Blood of those That did possesse ’em. (V.ii.12–20)

Here, Pothinus stresses the fact that Roman glory is built on blood and fratricide rather than nobility, and maintained through rapine and violence. It is true that the two Egyptians are biased against Caesar and that they are two very despicable men. Pothinus is an unscrupulous social climber who

She-tragedy 175 repeatedly tries speciously to appropriate Caesar’s most famous maxims as a way to provide nihilist justifications of his own political Machiavellianism; Septimius is a greedy, bloodthirsty and miserable villain, as well as probably ‘the false one’ of the title by his own admission. Yet, their words, joined with Cleopatra’s accusations and the foregrounding of Caesar’s rapacious attraction to riches, certainly contribute to blackening his claims to foreign conquest. In short, Caesar seems to deserve the label of ‘armed thiefe’ (IV.i.28) that Pothinus attributes to him while recounting the moment when he saw ‘how Faulcon-like [Caesar’s eyes] towr’d, and flew / Upon the wealthy Quarry: how round [they] mark’d it’ (IV.i.9–11) during the masque. The play would therefore seem to host a veiled attack against the ‘westward course of the British empire’, as fleetingly suggested by Clifford J. Ronan.28 Despite the fact that, as David Armitage contends, ‘no lasting colonies were planted before 1603 (in fact, none could be said to be permanent until the late 1620s)’, scepticism about the British colonial enterprise in the New World informs – though often marginally – more than a few plays of the period.29 Fletcher himself had already or would again deal with the issue, though from a different standpoint, in Bonduca (1610–14), The Island Princess (1619–21) and The Sea Voyage (1623, again with Massinger). In England more than anywhere else, colonising projects were long dominated by the humanist imagination.30 As Armitage remarks, early modern English promoters of colonisation ‘repeatedly invoked the language of classical republicanism as they justified their enterprise by appealing to the potential benefits to the commonwealth’.31 However, as Andrew Fitzmaurice argues, ‘humanists were deeply sceptical of profit and nervous of foreign possession at the same time that they saw both as possible sources of glory’.32 The conceptual framework informing British colonial theory at the time was largely borrowed from classical authorities including Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Juvenal, Quintilian and Seneca. They effectively showed that the luxury of Rome’s Eastern colonies had been a source of feminising influence as well as the main cause of the decline in martial virtues, the fall of the Republic and the rise of tyranny. Looking at their own encounters with the New World in the light of the experience of Rome, humanists voiced their fears that the supposed inflow of superfluous wealth from the conquered territories might end up weakening the English just as the Asiatic riches had enfeebled the warlike temper of the ancient Romans – even though English colonising projects were persistently unsuccessful in this period, consuming rather than producing resources, through to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. The exhortation by Alexander Whitaker, the administrator of the Henrico settlement in Virginia, is typical: Be bould, my Hearers, to contemne riches, and frame your selues to walke worthie of God; for none other be worthie of God, but those that lightly esteeme

176

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

of riches. […] [V]ertue is the only thing that makes vs rich and honourable in the eyes of wise men […] [Riches] are but an heauy burthen to some, an Idoll to others, and profitable to few.33

Quite differently from the essential coincidence of power and plenty that would characterise later mercantilist and colonial theories, and unlike the post-industrial revolution perception of selfishness and profit as potentially positive social forces, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries it was repeatedly emphasised that profit and possession were secondary aims or no aims at all, as they threatened the very fabric of the community. Honestas ought to come before utilitas, which could be a legitimate goal only if subordinate to the pursuit of honourable and virtuous ends. Even when someone like Walter Ralegh extolled colonial profit, he meant common profit or the common good and not private or commercial gain. The scepticism about the idleness, effeminacy and luxury that the colonial enterprise might bring into England was shared by opponents and promoters of colonisation alike and, already circulating under Elizabeth, even increased under James I. To quote just one example, the publicist of the Virginia Company Robert Gray plainly wrote that ‘they which preferre their money before vertue, their pleasure before honour, and their sensual security before heroical adventures, shall perish with their money, die with their pleasures, and be buried in everlasting forgetfulnes’.34 Courage and temperance were the necessary qualities to overcome disaster and achieve a balance between honour and profit. However, as Fitzmaurice explains, ‘these problems of conquest also reached further’ – albeit less frequently – ‘into a more general concern about the justice of the empire, a concern that exceed[ed] fears for the Republic and extend[ed] to the treatment of other peoples’.35 These are concerns that clearly emerge in Pothinus’s and Septimius’s aforementioned remarks and also reverberate, for example, in Thomas Kyd’s Cornelia (1594), where Cicero seems to regard Caesar’s rise to power as deserved retribution for the injustice done by the Romans to foreign populations: For heaven delights not in us when we do That to another, which ourselves disdain: Judge others as thou wouldst be judged again And do but as thou wouldst be done unto. For, sooth to say, in reason, we deserve To have the self-same measure that we serve. What right had our ambitious ancestors, Ignobly issued from the cart and plough, To enter Asia? What, were they the heirs To Persia or the Medes, first monarchies? What interest had they to Africa, To Gaul or Spain? Or what did Neptune owe us Within the bounds of further Britain? Are we not thieves and robbers of those realms That ought us nothing but revenge for wrongs?36

She-tragedy 177 Such claims partake of ‘an anti-imperial strain within European humanism’ that had been alive since ‘Erasmus had refused to edit Dante’s Monarchia in support of Charles V’s claims to the Holy Roman Empire’.37 Similar views had also been expressed by authors such as George Buchanan, Michel de Montaigne, Sebastian Brant and Francis Bacon. Even more interesting for the present argument, however, is a passage taken from Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper’s 1549 Epitome of Chronicle. Lanquet pointed out, curiously addressing Caesar’s enterprises, that when Caesar was assassinated [he] lost all that which with the blood of lxM [60,000] citizens and 1,192,000 [one million, one hundred ninety two thousand of] his enemies he had gotten. And as he had filled all the world with civil blood, likewise now he filled the Senate with his own blood.38

Lanquet’s remark is especially interesting in its implicit negative judgement on Roman expansionism, in that Caesar’s death is conceptualised as ‘deserved’ retribution for his massacres. The False One is informed by both strains of scepticism about colonisation, although the danger embodied by luxury is clearly felt as the most crucial, especially by virtue of its link with the question of feminisation. In epitomising the idea of luxury as both a category of infectious goods and a powerful spectacle, the masque represents the turning point in the play, inasmuch as it provokes a reaction on Cleopatra’s part, which ultimately makes Caesar realise he must regain his manhood if he wants to avoid significant damage to himself and Rome. Cleopatra attacks the ‘unthankfull Cæsar’ (IV.ii.64), accusing him of having dishonoured her before the court with his petty materialism, thereby demonstrating he cannot be numbered among ‘men of glory, / And minds adorn’d with noble love, […] / Souldiers of royall marke’ (IV.ii.106–8), since ‘Beauty and honour are the marks they shoot at’ (IV.ii.109), not gold. Cleopatra now demands that Caesar recover his noble self, and it does not seem coincidental that she speaks of honour and glory, the same ideals informing humanist writings on colonisation. Cleopatra’s strategy is ultimately successful. Surrounded by the Egyptians and forced to suffer the scoffs of his subordinates, who mockingly ask him, ‘Can you kisse away this conspiracy, and set us free? / Or will the Giant god of love, fight for ye?’ (IV.ii.171–2), Caesar heroically decides to ‘run the hazard: Fire the Pallace, / And the rich Magazines that neighbour it, / In which the wealth of Ægypt is contain’d’ (V.ii.78–80), thereby seeking to create a diversion while he tries to open a breach ‘to / [His] conquering Legions’ (V.ii.84–5). The Savonarola-like act to set the palace afire with all its riches carries a crucial symbolic value, whose significance is further underlined by its implying a deviation from the historical account. As Lucan vividly recounts, Caesar had actually ordered incendiary projectiles to be fired on the Egyptian fleet from the roof in order to cause confusion among enemy lines.39 The decision to burn the palace itself is therefore the authors’ own invention and seeks to symbolise Caesar’s rejection of material riches and

178

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

personal profit, and his decision to pursue honour and glory in their stead.40 It is a veritable bonfire of the vanities that might have even perversely reminded the audience of the destruction of the sumptuous sceneries at the end of the Jacobean court masques.41 But honour and glory can finally be joined with love. As Caesar reveals, his feelings for Cleopatra are unaltered at the end of the play (V.i.19–25). That credit for Caesar’s redemption should primarily go to Cleopatra might appear unreasonable in the light of her characterisation in the first part as an unscrupulous swindler and a peevishly vengeful lover. Nevertheless, the concluding scenes foreground a very different side of her personality. Confronted with the danger embodied by the siege to the palace, Cleopatra turns out to be able to ‘stand unmov’d’ (V.iv.15), ‘and / With a masculine constancy deride / Fortunes worst malice’ (V.iv.17–9), displaying dignity, courage and nobility in front of potentially imminent death (V.iv.22–34) and rising as a positive example that even infuses courage in her sister Arsinoe (V.iv.34–7). What is more, the queen manages to maintain a scornful attitude towards the eunuch Pothinus’s threats and his insistent, albeit ridiculous, cravings for carnal possession (V.iv.49–70). Cleopatra is stoically willing to die nobly rather than live in shame (V.iv.139) and has nerve enough disdainfully to address Pothinus: ‘I am the Mistress of my fate: / […] to confirme it, / I spit at thee, and scorn thee / […] / I was borne to command and I will dye so’ (V.iv.130–2, 134). The queen has such strength of mind that she does not even surrender to tears upon seeing her brother Ptolemy’s corpse, shockingly ‘trod to death’ (V.iv.168–9), because only ‘common women doe so’ (V.iv.137). All in all, Cleopatra’s superb exhibition of dignity and fortitude in the play’s concluding segment does offset ‘her earlier willingness to sleep with [Caesar] in return for political support’, as Julia Griffin points out.42 The complete recovery of Caesar’s former masculinity and nobility bears down on the Egyptians like a bolt from the blue. In Achillas’s account of the decisive battle, Caesar’s martial zeal is hailed as superior to Mars’s: the general has finally retrieved ‘his dreadfull lookes’ (V.iv.155) and taken on quasi-supernatural features (V.iv.149–53). He is again wearing the Lucanic mantle that fascinated so many English playwrights; he is once again a god of war in his destructive splendour, as vividly epitomised by his swim towards Pharos:              [I]n one hand Holding a scroll he had, above the waves, And in the other grasping fast his sword As it had bin a trident, forg’d by Vulcan, To calme the raging Ocean, he made a way As if he had bin Neptune. (V.iv.157–62)

The anecdote is found with slight variations in Plutarch, Suetonius and Dio Cassius.43 All tell that Caesar swam keeping a parchment roll out of the

She-tragedy 179 water in order not to get it wet, but no one mentions the sword. The trenchant image of Caesar keeping the roll above the waves while hitting them with his sword – likened to Neptune’s trident to underscore the ‘divine’ connotations of Caesar’s power – testifies to the completion of his process of regeneration, in sharp contrast to the depiction offered in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where the titular character is said to have had to be saved from drowning by Cassius.44 ‘’Twas like my Cæsar’ (V.iv.153), had remarked a relieved Cleopatra, whose love has proved able to reawaken his noble martial spirit. The play therefore seems to suggest that love, when joined with measure, can be reconciled with martial virtue, because Caesar demonstrates in the end that he can be a soldier, a general and a man while loving Cleopatra, the unexpected deuteragonist that ultimately proves central – both directly and obliquely – to the treatment of all the crucial topical issues raised by the play. The reconciliation between Venus and Mars can also be linked to a specific literary vogue of the period, whose salient traits Jennifer C. Vaught has outlined, observing how English writers tended to combine the emphasis placed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on the possibility of moderating rather than eliminating potentially destructive emotions with the criticism levelled at stoicism in Augustine’s City of God.45 Fletcher and Massinger seem to imply not only that a balance can be struck between martial ethos and an amorous disposition but also that love can even turn into a positive force and inspire heroic enterprises when joined with measure and temperance, in a sort of Ciceronean moderated indulgence.46 Nevertheless, one might argue that Caesar’s healing seems worryingly incomplete, inasmuch as he needs to destroy those riches in order not to be tempted by them and, in destroying them, he actually imitates one of the defining disordering actions of luxury, namely riot.47 Moreover, Caesar’s last words carry disturbingly tyrannical overtones, which may foreshadow his imminent downgrading of the Senate to a mere office rubberstamping his decrees.48 As he proudly tells Cleopatra, ‘wee’le for Rome, where Cæsar / Will shew he can give Kingdomes, for the Senate, / (Thy brother dead) shall willingly decree / The Crowne of Egypt (that was his) to thee’ (V.iv.205–8). Here, Fletcher and Massinger seem to hint at another sinister line by Shakespeare’s Caesar – ‘What is now amiss / That Caesar and his Senate must redress?’ – where Caesar shows that he regards the Senate as his own property.49 It is a notion consistent with the words Fletcher and Massinger’s Caesar pronounces before setting the palace afire, claiming that Fortune would never allow the man ‘she hath led triumphant / Through the whole Western world, and Rome acknowledg’d / Her Soveraign Lord, to end ingloriously, / A life admir’d by all’ (V.ii.73–6, my emphasis). A few shadows keep hovering on Cleopatra as well. Her conclusive remark reminds the audience of her original motivations: ‘He is all honour, / Nor do I now repent me of my favours; / Nor can I thinke nature e’re made

180

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

a woman, / That in her prime deserv’d him’ (V.iv.192–5, my emphasis).50 However, I believe that the primary goal of such an observation is to underline that at the end of this path Caesar, consciously re-masculated, is again worthy of her love (V.iv.203–4), rather than simply to design their affair as a straightforward sexual transaction between virginity and crown as Ira Clark contends – although it is undeniable that Cleopatra ultimately obtains what she wanted all along, ‘The Crowne of Egypt’ (V.iv.208).51 This chapter should make Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One emerge as a play developing and intertwining issues and concerns central to the socio-political and cultural debate under James I, though always treating them with the fair dose of irony. Among the several themes, gender preoccupations and the link between effeminacy and luxury are the most important, in that they turn out to be the pivot around which the whole play ultimately revolves. In particular, Fletcher and Massinger’s foray into this connection enables the expression of scepticism about the pursuit of profit as the primary driving force of colonial ventures, a scepticism that appears to be by no means marginal but organically interlocked with the other issues at stake in the play. In its unusual deployment of she-tragedy as a venue for the exploration and criticism of contemporary (masculine) political manoeuvring, its highspirited and pungent appropriation of Roman history, its freshly composite characterisation of Cleopatra as the play’s deuteragonist and as an actively decisive force in determining Caesar’s path of temptation, fall and regeneration, The False One proves to be one of the most captivating plays dealing with ancient Rome written in early modern England, as well as far more entertaining and politically relevant than often assumed. Notes 1 For recent surveys of depictions of Cleopatra in early modern English drama, see Pascale Aebischer, ‘The Properties of Whiteness: Renaissance Cleopatras from Jodelle to Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Survey, 65 (2011), pp. 221–38; Sarah Hatchuel, Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext: Sequel, Conflation, Remake (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), pp. 83–132; Freyja Cox Jensen, Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 163–85; Alison V. Scott, Literature and the Idea of Luxury in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 53–82. 2 The present discussion of The False One significantly develops an argument put forward in my Un nome, mille volti. Giulio Cesare nel teatro inglese della prima età moderna (Rome: Carocci, 2015), pp. 156–78. 3 Marina Hila, ‘Dishonourable Peace: Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One and Jacobean Foreign Policy’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 72 (2007), pp. 21–30. 4 All in-text references to The False One are to Robert Kean Turner’s edition in The Dramatic Works of the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers, 10 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966–96), VIII (1992).

She-tragedy 181 5 Scott, Literature and the Idea of Luxury, p. 65. 6 While in the play Cleopatra’s encounter with Caesar is completely her idea, Plutarch, The Life of Julius Caesar, in Parallel Lives, ed. Bernadotte Perrin, 11 vols (London: Heinemann, 1919), VII (1919), XLVIII.9, narrates that Caesar had secretly sent for her to come to him. 7 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. John Wilders (London: Routledge, 1995), II.vi.65–72. 8 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 55. 9 Lucan, Civil War, ed. Susan H. Braund (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), X.65. 10 Hatchuel, Shakespeare, p. 110. 11 Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II.v.18–24. 12 Gary Spear, ‘Shakespeare’s “Manly” Parts: Masculinity and Effeminacy in Troilus and Cressida’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 (1993), pp. 409–22 (p. 417). 13 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols (New York: Vintage, 1978–86), II (1985), pp. 78–93; Rebecca W. Bushnell, ‘Tyranny and Effeminacy in Early Modern England’, in Mario A. Di Cesare (ed.), Reconsidering the Renaissance (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), pp. 339–54 (p. 339). See also Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 14 Spear, ‘Shakespeare’s “Manly” Parts’, p. 418. 15 Bushnell, ‘Tyranny and Effeminacy’, p. 342. 16 Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. Mcmanus, Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), pp. 47–59. 17 Natalie Zemon-Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 124. 18 Spear, ‘Shakespeare’s “Manly” Parts’, p. 411. 19 Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase, The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 38. 20 Francis Bacon, Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain, in The Works of Francis Bacon ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, 15 vols (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1857–74), XIII (1860), p. 284. 21 David Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 13, 10. 22 Scott, Literature and the Idea of Luxury, esp. pp. 1–21. 23 Ibid., p. 7. 24 Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), pp. 57–65. 25 Scott, Literature and the Idea of Luxury, pp. 143, 177. 26 William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. Sarah Neville, in The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, ed. Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terri Bourus and Gabriel Egan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), III.i.47–8 (my emphasis). For a more detailed discussion, see Domenico Lovascio, ‘Julius Caesar’s “just cause” in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One’, Notes and Queries, 62 (2015), pp. 245–7.

182

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

27 Paulina Kewes, ‘Julius Caesar in Jacobean England’, Seventeenth Century, 17 (2002), pp. 155–86 (p. 173). 28 Clifford J. Ronan, ‘Caesar On and Off the Renaissance English Stage’, in Horst Zander (ed.), Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 71–89 (p. 82). 29 David Armitage, ‘Literature and Empire’, in William Roger Louis, Alaine M. Low and Nicholas P. Canny (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Origins of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 99–123 (pp. 101–2). 30 The two ensuing paragraphs are heavily indebted to Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. pp. 1–7, 38, 56–8. 31 Armitage, ‘Literature and Empire’, p. 106. 32 Fitzmaurice, Humanism, p. 2. 33 Alexander Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia (London: Felix Kyngston, 1613), pp. 1–2. 34 Robert Gray, A Good Speed to Virginia (London: Felix Kyngston, 1609), sigs. A3r–v. 35 Fitzmaurice, Humanism, p. 3. 36 Thomas Kyd, Cornelia, in The Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. Frederick Samuel Boas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), I.132–46. 37 Armitage, ‘Literature and Empire’, p. 109. 38 Thomas Lanquet, An Epitome of Chronicles, ed. Thomas Cooper (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1549), 87r. 39 Lucan, Civil War, X.491–2. 40 John E. Curran, Jr, ‘Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character’, Comparative Drama, 43 (2009), pp. 317–54 (pp. 326–7). 41 ‘Perversely’ because the destruction of sceneries was, if anything, a demonstration of aristocratic conspicuous consumption, the exact opposite of Savonarola’s bonfire. 42 Julia Griffin, ‘Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the Dramatic Tradition’, in Miriam Tamara Griffin (ed.), A Companion to Julius Caesar (Hoboken: Wiley, 2009), pp. 371–98 (p. 377). 43 Plutarch, The Life of Julius Caesar, XLIX.8; Suetonius, The Life of Julius Caesar, in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, ed. J. C. Rolfe (London: Heinemann, 1913), LIIV.1; Cassius Dio, Roman History, ed. Earnest Cary and Herbert Baldwin Foster, 9 vols (London: Heinemann, 1914–27), IV (1916), XLII.40.4–5. 44 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I.ii.100–15. 45 Jennifer C. Vaught, Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 13. 46 Cicero, On Duties, ed. and trans. Walter Miller (London: Heinemann, 1913), I.29–30. 47 Scott, Literature and the Idea of Luxury, p. 37; Curran, ‘Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character’, p. 327. 48 Kewes, ‘Julius Caesar’, p. 178. 49 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.i.31–2.

She-tragedy 183 50 The play never clarifies whether Cleopatra is actually in love with Caesar, but I do not think that ‘she feels no love or affection for him and is guided solely by cold political calculations’ (Kewes, ‘Julius Caesar’, p. 178, my emphasis). 51 Ira Clark, The Moral Art of Philip Massinger (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1993), pp. 108–9.

11

Ford’s Perkin Warbeck as historical tragedy Sarah Dewar-Watson

When he first appears at the court of King James, Perkin Warbeck refers to his story as ‘The vulgar story of a prince’s ruin’ (II.i.44). Perkin hereby aligns the play with the genres of history and tragedy – genres which, as we shall see, intersect thematically and topically in their common focus on the fall of great men. In referring to his story as commonplace (‘vulgar’), Perkin is elevating rather than diminishing its significance; he is laying claim to the kind of exemplarity afforded by the genres of history and tragedy. He is, in essence, presenting himself not only as a king but as a literary archetype. In fact, the story – and the play – are far from commonplace (‘vulgar’) in the way that Perkin suggests. Rather, Ford’s Perkin Warbeck can be seen as something of an anomaly. Indeed, the play’s subtitle, ‘A Strange Truth,’ draws our attention to the singular nature of the narrative which is presented.1 Perhaps most strikingly, unlike Shakespeare’s history plays, Ford’s play is not called after the king but the man who would be king: moreover, Perkin constitutes a threat to the narrative of Tudor succession as Shakespeare records it. It is commonly asserted that history is a tale told by the winners: by centralising Perkin as the eponymous hero, Ford radically subverts this convention. For all its idiosyncrasies, Perkin Warbeck provides a crucial lens through which we can view, and review, the genre of historical tragedy, particularly in terms of the play’s relationship with Shakespeare and his legacy. Written c. 1629–34, at a time when the history play was no longer at the height of its popularity, Perkin Warbeck is self-conscious about its unfashionable status: ‘Studies have, of this nature, been of late / So out of fashion, so unfollowed …’ (Prologue, 1–2).2 By acknowledging its own distance from Shakespeare’s history plays of the 1590s, the play appears to look at the genre as itself a kind of historical artefact – antiquated and all but obsolete. Yet, although Perkin Warbeck is written some three decades after the majority of Shakespeare’s histories were first written and performed, its composition is historically more proximate to the publication of Shakespeare’s First



Historical tragedy

185

Folio in 1623. The Folio is roughly contemporaneous with one of Ford’s sources for the play, Bacon’s The History of the Reign of King Henry VII (1622); the other main source, Gainsford’s The True and Wonderful History of Perkin Warbeck, was published not long before, in 1618. The Folio constitutes an important retrospective of Shakespeare’s achievements as a writer of history plays; this is reflected in the title of the volume, Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, and in its catalogue of plays in which the histories are grouped as a discrete category. The Folio can be regarded, in some sense, as a source text for Perkin Warbeck since Ford’s play extends and revises the retrospective of Shakespeare’s history plays which the Folio began. Ford’s engagement with Shakespeare is particularly evident when we consider that in chronological terms, the narrative of Perkin Warbeck can be inserted between Shakespeare’s Richard III (written c. 1591) and Henry VIII (written 1612–13) and it explicitly alludes to events in each of these plays. In this sense, Perkin Warbeck is not just in dialogue with the history play as a genre but specifically with Shakespeare and his legacy: arguably, to write any history play after 1623 is to rewrite Shakespeare. It is against this background of intertextual relationships with Shakespeare that Perkin Warbeck engages with the genres of history and tragedy. In terms of its early publication history, the play stands in a fluid relationship with these two genres. The play was entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1634 as ‘a Tragedy called Perkin Warbecke’ but it is called ‘The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck’ on the title page of the first edition. Perkin Warbeck is, of course, not the only play to undergo this kind of reclassification. Richard III – with which Perkin Warbeck is closely in contact – is styled as a tragedy in the 1597 quarto, yet as a history in the 1623 Folio. In the title pages of printed texts in the period, the terms ‘history’ and ‘tragedy’ often appear together or are used interchangeably. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus was published as The Tragic-all History of D. Faustus (1604), while both quartos of Hamlet were published as The tragicall historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke by William Shakespeare. In this context, we can see that the separation of tragedy and history in the Folio’s title and catalogue of plays is rather strenuous and even counter-intuitive in this period. A number of Shakespeare’s tragedies are based on historical sources: the Roman plays are based on North’s Plutarch, while tragedies such as Macbeth or King Lear draw on chronicle sources. Within the compass of the First Folio, the history play is defined exclusively in terms of English history. Perkin Warbeck explores this relationship between Englishness and the history play. The Prologue draws heightened attention to the English roots of the narrative: ‘Not forged from Italy, from France, from Spain, / But chronicled at home …’ (Prologue, 17–18). The native setting of the play is in contrast to the geographically more distant settings which Ford largely favours in his other plays: ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (published in 1633) is set in Parma and The Broken Heart (also published in 1633) in Sparta. Yet,

186

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

although the sources of Perkin Warbeck are English and much of the play is set in England, the political horizons of the play are particularly wideranging, as the Prologue also points out: We cannot limit scenes, for the whole land Itself, appeared too narrow to withstand Competitors for kingdoms. (21–3)

Much of the action of the play alternates between the Scottish and English courts; however, the play offers a striking sense of the way in which English and Scottish affairs are embedded in a much wider diplomatic landscape and in this respect the play registers its differences from Shakespeare’s history plays. As Lisa Hopkins remarks, ‘This is a play which insistently registers the impact of foreign affairs’.3 This idea is foregrounded in the opening scene, as we hear in striking detail about the involvement of Margaret of Burgundy (to whom Daubeney refers as ‘this woman-monster’, I.i.49) in Perkin’s claim to the throne. The international dimensions of the action are restated with the appearance of Hialas, the Spanish ambassador, in Act III, Scene iii and his subsequent reporting of international support for peace between Scotland and England: France, Spain, and Germany combine a league Of amity with England; nothing wants For setting peace through Christendom but love Between the British monarchs, James and Henry. (IV.iii.1–4)

The reference to ‘peace through Christendom’ is repeated by James when he withdraws his support for Perkin (IV.iii.76). When Daubeney introduces the pretender to Henry in Act V, Scene ii, he presents him as ‘Perkin, the Christian world’s strange wonder’ (V.ii.36). Through these references to Christendom and the Christian world, Ford makes it clear that the action of the play is not localised to England and Scotland but is instead concerned with global politics. In so doing, Ford demonstrates that his play expands upon and revises Shakespeare’s model of history and its close attention to the fortunes of the English nation. As well as this wide geographical compass, the play contemplates a long chronological span. The action of the play compresses events that take place between 1496–99 but the play contextualises its narrative in much broader terms than this. In the opening scene of the play, Durham provides a retrospective of almost a century of English history: For ninety years ten English kings and princes, Threescore great dukes and earls, a thousand lords And valiant knights, two hundred fifty thousand Of English subjects have in civil wars Been sacrificed to an uncivil thirst Of discord and ambition. (I.i.16–20)



Historical tragedy

187

Here, the catalogue of nobles and subjects suggests that the play is not just concerned with a long chronology; there is a sense of a broad human scale indicative of the play’s engagement not just with historical models but also with epic.4 The sense of chronological range established by Durham in his opening speech is echoed in Perkin’s final speech when he says that his death (and that of Warwick):          … conclude the wonder Of Henry’s fears; and then the glorious race Of fourteen kings, Plantagenets, determines In this last issue male. (V.iii.191–4)

This backward glance through centuries of Plantagenet rule is strikingly bold on the part of Perkin. The word ‘determines’ here means ‘to reach an end’ but it resonates with the sense of the resolution and decisiveness which are characteristic of Perkin throughout the play and never more so than here. In this word, Perkin both acknowledges a sense of finality and, at the same time, renews his claim to a place in history. In referring to himself as among the ‘last issue male’ of the Plantagenets, Perkin defiantly asserts, even in these final moments of the play, his claim to the throne. In this speech, Perkin is intent on figuring the final events of the play not in terms of his own death but as the end of an era. In framing the play with these references to the royal line, Ford situates Perkin Warbeck in a much larger narrative. One of the key ways in which Perkin Warbeck explores and articulates its relationship with the genre of the history play is through its attention to the idea of truth. In the Prologue, Ford announces that his play takes ‘A history of noble mention, known, / Famous, and true …’ (Prologue, 15–16). This suggestion that story is well attested is rather misleading: in excluding Perkin’s confession of imposture, Ford makes a highly significant departure from the story as it is recorded in the source texts. The play’s subtitle, ‘A Strange Truth’, underscores the problematic and sometimes elusive nature of historical veracity. The subtitle may represent a nod to Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII, which is subtitled All Is True.5 However, while Henry VIII’s subtitle seemingly accommodates a relativist notion of historical truth, the subtitle of Perkin Warbeck more radically suggests that truth is strange and yet, at the same time, singular.6 The idea of truth is further problematised in the Prologue’s claim that: ‘On these two rests the fate / Of worthy expectation: Truth and State’ (Prologue, 25–6). The conjunction ‘and’ is ambiguous: on the one hand, it can suggest that the ideas of Truth and State are connected and it can also suggest that these ideas are separate or even opposed. It is significant that in a Prologue of such programmatic intent, it is not clear that the State embodies Truth or is even necessarily aligned with it. It is through the idea of truth that history and tragedy were understood in the early modern period to be intimately related. The commentary tradition

188

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

of Donatus-Evanthius, one of the most widely circulated and cited accounts of dramatic genre in the period, holds that tragedy is often derived from the facts of history (‘tragoedia saepe de historia fide petitur’).7 Early modern history plays and tragedies shared common roots in the de casibus tradition which traces the life and death of nobles and rulers.8 Texts such as Lydgate’s The Fall of Princes, based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium and written c. 1431–38, and A Mirror for Magistrates, first published in 1559, present exemplary tales of a ruler’s fall from greatness and often warned against the dangers of ambition. The first English tragedy in blank verse, Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc (1561) emerges from this tradition. Based on an historical source, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (1135–38), the play is written as a piece of advice literature for Queen Elizabeth and straddles the genres of tragedy and history.9 Later tragedies of the period – including those of Ford himself – move away from the de casibus model and are less concerned with exemplarity. Jacobean and Caroline tragedies are less concerned with advice to the king and instead pay heightened attention to questions of sexual morality and intrigue. To the extent that these plays are didactic, their lessons are directed towards London audiences rather than to an individual monarch. Here too, Perkin Warbeck constitutes something of an anomaly when we consider readings of the play as a warning to the king to pay attention to the counsel of the nobility.10 Viewed in this light, Perkin Warbeck returns to the roots of historical tragedy in the form of advice literature. While seventeenth-century tragedy had to a large degree moved away from the de casibus model, the English history play also evolved in new directions. While the de casibus tradition places the spotlight on the fortunes of a central protagonist, one of Shakespeare’s central achievements as a writer of history plays was to fuse the de casibus model with chronicle sources such as Hall and Holinshed (as well as fictional characters such as Falstaff) to create a complex sense of the interplay between the fortunes of the king and those of the nation. Among the most notable examples of this dual focus are the Eastcheap scenes in the Henry IV plays, which are crucial in the coming of age narrative which the Henriad presents. The story of Perkin Warbeck allows Ford to go even further than this. While Shakespeare shows us a prince in the taverns of Eastcheap, Ford brings a cast of merchants and tradesmen into the heart of the court. When Perkin first appears in Act II, Scene i, James greets him as his equal. However, there is an awkward moment in the stage business which accompanies this greeting, as indicated by the stage direction: ‘During which ceremony the noblemen slightly salute Frion, Heron a mercer, Sketon a tailor, Astley a scrivener, with John-A-Water, all Perkin’ followers’. The reserved greeting offered by the noblemen to Perkin’s entourage highlights the incongruity of their presence at court. When Prince Hal consorts with the ordinary citizenry of London, this clearly threatens to jeopardise the dignity of his position and



Historical tragedy

189

potentially to divert him from his future role. Conversely, Perkin’s involvement with his merchant followers paradoxically confers a kind of dignity on him: he seems kingly by contrast. One of the ways that Ford indicates this is through Perkin’s elevated language; he consistently speaks in verse while his followers (with the exception of Frion) speak in prose.11 According to James, Perkin’s command of language confirms the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, as James observes during their first meeting: ‘He must be more than subject who can utter / The language of a king’ (II.i.103–4). As we have seen, Ford’s play is highly explicit about its intertextual relationships with Shakespearean drama. One of the key moments from Richard III – Henry’s crowning at the Battle of Bosworth (Richard III, V.v) – is alluded to twice in the play. Stanley’s betrayal of Henry (I.iii) undermines this key moment in Tudor history. In disbelief, Henry repeats the name of Stanley three times in the scene as he contemplates the implications of this betrayal:          Sir William Stanley! O do not blame me; he, ’twas only he, Who having rescued me in Bosworth Field From Richard’s bloody sword, snatched from his head The kingly crown, and placed it first on mine. (I.iii.113–17)

In terms of the relationship between Ford and Shakespeare, it is significant that we first see this crucial moment through the lens of Stanley’s subsequent betrayal. The man who placed the crown on Henry’s head now conspires against him and this threatens to reverse the authority of Henry’s coronation and to lend weight to questions about the legitimacy of his reign. There is a further iteration of this key moment in the meeting between Perkin and Henry in Act V, Scene ii. Perkin tells the story of Henry’s victory: Where, at an instant, to the world’s amazement, A morn to Richmond and a night to Richard Appeared at once. (V.ii.70–2)

By placing this narrative in the mouth of Perkin, the story of Henry’s accession is not clearly legitimised nor its rightfulness asserted. In this reference to the symmetrical relationship between Richard’s defeat and Richmond’s victory, Perkin alludes to the wheel of fortune; it is an image that highlights the precarious and transient nature of power and presents Henry, like his predecessor, as vulnerable. To reinforce the point, Perkin speaks disarmingly about the outcome of the day’s events: ‘Fate, which crowned these attempts when least assured, / Might have befriended others, like resolved’ (V.ii.73–4). The weight of history is dismissed as mere contingency and we are left with a sense of other eventualities that might have transpired that day. With his deft personification of Fate and his nimble use of the crowning metaphor, Perkin threatens to vanquish Henry in rhetorical terms, even when otherwise

190

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

defeated. Henry’s response is no match for Perkin’s rhetorical skill: Henry remains silent on the subject of his accession and instead displaces the verbal exchange into the realm of personal attack: A pretty gallant! Thus your aunt of Burgundy, Your duchess-aunt, informed her nephew; so, The lesson, prompted and well conned, was moulded Into familiar dialogue, oft rehearsed, Till, learnt by heart, ’tis now received for truth. (V.ii.75–9)

There is an irony in Henry’s use of theatrical imagery in this response and in his earlier reference to Perkin as a ‘player’ (‘The player’s on the stage still; ’tis his part; / ’A does but act’, V.ii.68–9). The metatheatrical language which Henry uses to characterise Perkin’s fraudulence reminds us that performance and role play are features of kingship, not – as Henry tries to suggest here – something at odds with it.12 In Act IV, Surrey remarks admiringly of James: ‘So speaks King James; so like a king ’a speaks’ (IV.i.36), a comment which does not assume a perfect correspondence between being a king and acting or speaking like one. Here, James’ ability to play the part confirms his aptness for the role. More equivocally, James himself earlier comments on Perkin: ‘How like a king ’a looks!’ (II.iii.73). The verbal echo between these two lines shows that Perkin’s authority and his claim to kingship are described in terms that are closely analogous to those of James himself. In the encounter with Perkin in Act V, Scene ii, Henry suggests that the more rehearsed, the more repeated, the narrative, the more it is ‘received for truth’.13 Here again, this points to the precarious nature of the way that historical narratives are presented and received. Once again, Perkin employs the device of personification in an elegant rebuttal of Henry’s scathing attack: ‘Truth in her pure simplicity wants art / To put a feigned blush on’ (V.ii.80–1). There is a profound contrast between Henry’s repetitious, scoffing remarks and Perkin’s more elevated register and his sense of abstract ideals (‘Truth’, ‘Wisdom’ and ‘gravity’). As Joseph Candido remarks, in this scene, ‘The roles of king and pretender suddenly are inverted, and the tenuous distinction between truth and falsehood, for a moment at least, blurs’.14 Many critics have remarked on the tension between the play’s historical and dramatic priorities. The sober pragmatism of Henry is frequently and robustly contrasted with the dynamic figure of Perkin who is seen by many as a compelling protagonist. As Miles Taylor has claimed, the play stages a ‘collision between a rhetorical and theatrical Warbeck and a pragmatic and undramatic Henry VII’ and further claims that ‘the play seems palpably more energetic, more theatrical, when focused on the pretender’.15 Yet Henry is a more dramatically complex character than the cool, clinical bureaucrat which Taylor and others claim him to be.16 There is a marked contrast between Ford’s characterisation of Henry and Shakespeare’s characterisation of Richmond in Richard III. In Shakespeare’s play, it is Richard



Historical tragedy

191

who is haunted by ghosts (V.iii) and the play ends with a powerfully assertive speech by Richmond. Perkin Warbeck opens with the same character, now King Henry VII, showing a new vulnerability: ‘Still to be haunted, still to be pursued, / Still to be frighted with false apparitions …’ (I.i.1–2).17 While Shakespeare’s play ends with a sense of antithesis between victor and vanquished, at the beginning of Perkin Warbeck, we feel that the wheel of fortune may once again be turning. We see this same vulnerability in Henry’s response to Stanley’s betrayal (I.iii). As well as his sense of personal indebtedness to Stanley, Henry confesses a tender side when he refers to ‘Our mercy, and the softness of our nature …’ (II.ii.9). His hope of reprieving Stanley from the death sentence is sharply reproved by the Bishop of Durham who sees Henry’s merciful inclinations as a form of political weakness. As Stanley is about to come on stage, Henry makes a hasty exit to avoid meeting him. As Oxford remarks: ‘upon my life, he would have pardoned / The traitor had ’a seen him’ (II.ii.48–9). Like Perkin’s account of the Battle of Bosworth, this is a moment when key events seem contingent upon chance. Stanley’s betrayal and Henry’s response to that betrayal set the tone for a play which is very much concerned with loss. If we are to look at Perkin Warbeck as a tragedy, it is not about the loss of political power or the failure to seize the throne: it is a tragedy of personal relationships. As we have seen, the loss of Stanley is keenly mourned by Henry; Stanley’s own demise is itself presented in tragic terms when he addresses the assembled courtiers: I was as you are once, great, and stood hopeful Of many flourishing years; but fate and time Have wheeled about, to turn me into nothing. (II.ii.72–5)

Stanley here alludes explicitly to the idea of a wheel of fortune familiar from the de casibus tradition. The pathos of Stanley’s speech as he takes his farewell recall Buckingham’s last words in Henry VIII (‘I am the shadow of poor Buckingham …’, I.i. 224); like Henry VIII, Perkin Warbeck presents us not with a single tragic action but with a series of tragic vignettes. Much of the pathos of the play focuses on the figure of Katherine and those who are close to her. When James decides to offer Katherine’s hand in marriage to Perkin, Huntly, her father, responds with intense grief for the loss of her prospective match with Daliell: ‘Break my heart, / Do, do king!’ (II.ii.26–7), saying to Daliell, ‘I feel thy griefs as full / As mine; let’s steal away and cry together’ (II.iii.100–1).18 The alliance of grief between Huntly and Daliell is affirmed in Act III, Scene ii, when Huntly disowns his daughter, observing that there is no physical ailment to match the pain of his estrangement from Katherine: The losing of a daughter, though I doted On every hair that grew to trim her head, Admits not any pain like one of these … (III.ii.39–41)

192

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

While Huntly is a figure of some pathos in his own right, Katherine’s alienation from her father serves to raise the stakes of her union with Perkin and to accentuate the pathos of her loyalty to him during their short-lived marriage. The first hint of this comes as they prepare to part after their wedding night; in a possible echo of Desdemona (Othello, I.iii.243–54), Katherine asks to accompany her husband when he goes to war (III.ii.147–8), a request which Perkin denies. From this first parting, the marriage is overshadowed by the inevitability of a longer separation. When James withdraws his support for Perkin in Act IV, Scene iii, Perkin is quick to ask for an assurance that Katherine will remain his wife. Significantly, Katherine does not wait for the king to reply, but interjects with her own declaration of devotion:          I am your wife; No human power can or shall divorce My faith from duty. (IV.iii.101–2)

Here, as the union between Katherine and Perkin appears ever more vulnerable and transient, conversely Katherine’s vows of fidelity become increasingly extravagant and unconditional. Parted from Perkin in Act V, Scene i, Katherine shows a sober realisation of defeat; in this respect, she is intellectually as well as physically separated from her husband, whom we have just seen rousing his troops for the march on Exeter (IV.v). In sharp contrast to her husband’s ebullient display in the previous scene, Katherine explicitly figures her exile from Scotland in terms of a tragic fall: As for my native country, since it once Saw me as a princess in the height of greatness My birth allowed me, here I make a vow Scotland shall never see me, being fallen Or lessened in my fortunes. Never, Jane: Never to Scotland more will I return. (V.i.19–24)

‘Never’ is a key word in this speech, repeated twice here and twice again in line 33. Katherine’s understanding of the finality of defeat shows a kind of tragic knowledge which contrasts with her husband’s survivalism. When Katherine alludes to fate (‘It is decreed; and we must yield to fate’, V.i.1), she recognises its immovability, in contrast to Perkin’s understanding of fate as flexible and contingent upon chance. Somewhat paradoxically, the pathos of Katherine’s position is intensified in Act V, Scene ii when she is offered a comfortable living at Henry’s court and here again, she ascribes her suffering to fate: ‘Cruel misery / Of fate’ (V.ii.168–9). Katherine’s reminder to Henry that she has a husband is met with only an oblique response (‘We’ll prove your father, husband, friend and servant …’, V.ii.154) and her subsequent attempt to push the question more directly (‘But my husband?’, V.ii.160) is entirely ignored by Henry. When the final farewell between Perkin and



Historical tragedy

193

Katherine is tenderly conducted in Act V, Scene iii, she reiterates the ‘never’ of her earlier vow: By this sweet pledge of both our souls, I swear To die a faithful widow to thy bed, Not to be forced or won. O, never, never! (150–2)

This is in sharp distinction from the historical Katherine who married a further three times. In this final meeting, Katherine’s insistence on the validity and enduring nature of her marriage vows – even in death – shows us that in Perkin Warbeck, loyalty is as freighted with pathos as betrayal. As we have seen, Henry VIII offers a model of historical drama in which we witness a series of tragedies rather than one single tragic fall. As she heads into exile, faithful to a doomed marriage, Katherine recalls the dignity and pathos of her namesake in Henry VIII. Perkin, on the other hand, strikingly resists any attempt to cast him in a tragic light. For him, tragedy is something that happens to other people: ‘Edward the Fifth, our brother, in his tragedy …’ (II.i.59). And in his final speech, Perkin refers to Warwick’s tragedy rather than to his own (‘we are prologue / But to his tragedy’, V.iii.190–1). Perkin seems intent on making his death as anti-climactic as possible. Death? Pish, ’tis but a sound, a name of air, A minute’s storm, or not so much. To tumble From bed to bed, be massacred alive By some physicians for a month or two In hope of freedom from a fever’s torments, Might stagger manhood: here the pain is passed ’Ere sensibly ’tis felt. (V.iii.198–204)

In characterising death as not only insignificant but even as a deliverance from a worse fate, Perkin appears to decentralise himself as the potential tragic hero of the play. He scorns the opportunity to elevate his death or characterise it as political martyrdom. His characteristic rhetorical poise and eloquence momentarily lapses into prosaic dismissiveness: ‘Pish’. There is a new realism here in the way that Perkin contemplates sickness as an alternative mode of dying. As death approaches, we see a new pragmatism in Perkin; paradoxically, he is temperamentally aligned with Henry at the very moment Perkin is vanquished by him. At the end of the speech, the rhetorical pitch of the speech picks up as Perkin returns once more to the theme of fame as he looks beyond death to immortality: ‘So illustrious mention / Shall blaze our names and style us Kings o’er Death’ (V.iii.205–6). Perkin’s regal use of the first person plural casts a final, emphatic challenge to Henry. In classical definitions of genre, tragedies end in death and comedies end in marriage. In history plays, endings are merely provisional because the narrative is always ongoing. Perkin Warbeck seems to preserve a sense of its own open endedness. We are presented with a marriage which will be

194

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

honoured even in death and a protagonist who claims that he will be immortalised through fame. In this respect, the play itself seems to bend to Perkin’s wishes: the play ensures that Perkin is not displaced from the historical record as he is in Shakespeare’s account of the Tudor monarchy. In the end, the extent to which we read Perkin Warbeck as a tragedy is intimately connected with the identity of Perkin himself. If Perkin is indeed the rightful monarch – and critics have suggested that Ford goes some way towards entertaining this possibility – then the play can be seen as a version of de casibus tragedy since it traces his fall from greatness. If Perkin is an imposter, then he is justly punished for treason and the play moves towards a tragicomic resolution in which social order and stability are reaffirmed. Arguably, the centre of tragic interest in the play is not Perkin but Katherine, through her estrangement from her father, her homeland and the husband to whom she is so devoted. Perkin Warbeck has been called the end of the history play because it wrests apart dramatic imperatives and historical ones: Perkin may not be able to usurp the king’s position but he is certainly able to upstage him. Rather than confirming the end of the history play, Perkin Warbeck should instead be seen as a radical experiment with the genre. As George Crymes’ commendatory verse suggests to Ford: ‘[Perkin’s] fame / Thou hast eternized’ (5–6). Read in this way, the play can be seen as a performative utterance which assures the place of Perkin Warbeck in the national memory. The play explores an important lacuna in Shakespeare’s account of Tudor history, not only in terms of the chronology but in terms of point of view; in so doing, Perkin Warbeck does not just stage a moment in history, but rather the very process of historical revisionism itself. Notes 1 The play draws attention to its anomalies with references from the semantic field of wonder, e.g. ‘the wonder’ of Margaret of Burgundy and the idea of monstrous birth (I.i.53); the reference to ‘Perkin, the Christian world’s strange wonder’ (V.ii.36) and Perkin’s reference to himself as ‘the wonder / Of Henry’s fears’ (V.iii.191–2). 2 Quotations are taken from John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays, ed. Marion Lomax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 3 Lisa Hopkins, ‘John Ford: Suffering and Silence in Perkin Warbeck and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, in Ton Hoenselaars (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 197–211 (p. 205), https://doi.org./10.1017/CCO9780511994524 (accessed 24 August 2018). 4 Gainsford, one of Ford’s main sources for the play, intersperses his narrative with a number of quotations from Lucan’s Pharsalia as well as Euripides and Ovid. 5 On the role of truth, see Gordon McMullan, ‘Shakespeare and the End of History’, Essays and Studies, 48 (1995), pp. 16–37; and Anston Bosman, ‘Seeing



Historical tragedy

195

Tears: Truth and Sense in All is True’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 50 (1999), pp. 459–76. 6 On this point, see Mario Di Gangi, ‘John Ford’, in Arthur F. Kinney (ed.), A Companion to Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), pp. 567–83. 7 Evanthius, ‘De Fabula: Excerpta De Comoedia’, IV.ii.9–17. 8 For a full account of this tradition, see Andrew Duxfield’s chapter, ‘De Casibus Tragedy: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great’, in this volume. 9 See Henry James and Greg Walker, ‘The Politics of Gorboduc’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), pp. 109–21. 10 See Lisa Hopkins, John Ford’s Political Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 45 and p. 59. 11 Henry sees Perkin’s language as a sign of his insolence, threatening that: ‘We shall teach the lad another language’ (V.ii.132). Verna Ann Foster sees Perkin’s elevated language as evidence of his hollowness as a character. See Foster, ‘Perkin without the Pretender: Reexamining the Dramatic Center of Ford’s Play’, Renaissance Drama, New Series, 16 (1985), pp. 141–58. 12 The seminal study is Anne (Righter) Barton, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962). 13 Henry’s reference to Perkin’s ‘lesson’ recalls Perkin’s earlier claim that in his childhood at Tournai ‘I was … taught to unlearn myself’ (II.i. 67–9), a powerful oxymoron. 14 Joseph Candido, ‘The “Strange Truth” of Perkin Warbeck’, Philological Quarterly, 59.3 (1980), pp. 300–16 (p. 310). 15 Miles Taylor, ‘The End of the English History Play in Perkin Warbeck’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 48.2 (2008), pp. 395–418 (p. 402 and p. 411). 16 See also Donald K. Anderson, Jr, ‘Kingship in Ford’s Perkin Warbeck’, English Literary History, 27.3 (1960), pp. 177–93. 17 Barish notes here an echo with the opening lines of 1 Henry IV. See Jonas A. Barish, ‘Perkin Warbeck as Anti-History’, Essays in Criticism, 20 (1970), pp. 151–71 (p. 158). 18 Huntly’s empathetic bond with his daughter’s would-be suitor hints at the presence of a submerged incest motif in the play. When Daliell is courting Katherine in I.ii, Huntly avows in one of his many asides: ‘O that I were young again! / She’d make me court proud danger …’ (I.ii.156–7). This motif emerges again when Huntley bids goodbye to Katherine in IV.iii. He advises Perkin: ‘Then be not jealous of a parting kiss, / It is a father’s not a lover’s offring’ (IV.iii.159–60). That Huntly should feel the need to make this distinction is striking.

12

Caroline tragedy: James Shirley’s The Traitor Jessica Dyson

Most of the extant drama from the Caroline professional stage is not tragic in genre. Of the major Caroline professional playwrights – Ben Jonson, Richard Brome, John Ford, Philip Massinger and James Shirley – the surviving plays are predominantly comedy and tragicomedy. Nevertheless, Massinger, Shirley and John Ford did write some tragedy for the Caroline stage amid comic and tragicomic writing, presenting tragedies of power in Massinger’s The Roman Actor (1626) and Believe as You List (1631), domestic tragedy in Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629–33?) and Shirley’s The Maid’s Revenge (1626), and court-based tragedy in Ford’s The Broken Heart (1629?) and Shirley’s The Traitor (1631) and The Cardinal (1641). The distinctions I have made here in type of tragedy hold true only to an extent; all of these tragedies find room to comment on the social mores and political and/or religious ideas of the period, but their plots put emphasis on different socio-political areas. The overbearing father of The Maid’s Revenge is countered by the generous and gentle father of ’Tis Pity; the good king (and then, briefly, queen) of The Broken Heart is countered by the lecherous Duke of The Traitor, the absolute and tyrannous emperor of The Roman Actor, the usurping and usurped rulers of Believe as You List and the seemingly powerless king of The Cardinal. The well-meaning friar and the atheist Giovanni of ’Tis Pity comes up against the ruthless Catholic Cardinal of Shirley’s eponymous play. Friendship, family honour, gender roles and identity, religious belief and practice, love, desire, incest and power all come under scrutiny in more than one of these tragedies. Despite this range of topics and emphasis, though, there is a relative paucity in the number of new tragedies written for the Caroline stage. Since tragedy had been a strong favourite of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages, its relative absence from the Caroline corpus might require some explanation. This chapter will situate this seeming movement away from new tragedy in favour of tragicomedy within the political climate of the Caroline period, and offer a reading of James Shirley’s



Caroline tragedy

197

The Traitor, a play that engages with contemporary tragicomic modes to heighten its tragic effect, while commenting on its contemporary sociopolitical Caroline context. Margot Heinemann has suggested that serious politicised tragedy became ‘impracticable’ under Caroline censorship and power centralisation, and this, Rebecca Bushnell notes, has been seen to lead to a turn towards escapist tragicomedy.1 However, work by Martin Butler, Julie Sanders, Matthew Steggle, Rebecca Bailey and me, among others, has demonstrated clearly that drama – including tragedy – written during the Caroline period was not escapist, nor was the fashion for tragicomedy a turn away from politicised theatre.2 Indeed, both modern and early modern conceptions of tragicomedy recognise its potential for political commentary: ‘Tragicomedy served … as a sort of primitive political dialectic whereby two opposing forms of thought could be fused or brought into dialogue’,3 thus allowing the theatre to dramatise contemporary debate over the relative importance of royal prerogative powers and the customary and statute laws of the land in maintaining peace and order in the country. In the Caroline period, when the relationship between Parliament, the people and the king was becoming increasingly unstable, the possibility of monarchical conversion from personal, capricious rule to rule by law and reason shown in such tragicomedies as Philip Massinger’s Emperor of the East (1631) and Richard Brome’s The Queen and Concubine (1635–39) shows professional playwrights deeply engaged with contemporary political argument, playing out not the tragedies of fallen tyrants but the comedy of reformed monarchy.4 Caroline tragicomedy, then, traded in hope and persuasion rather than catharsis and fear. It may be that this both created and reflected the mood of the period; the dramatic return from the brink of tragedy rehearsed a desire for Charles I to moderate his own wilful rule for the good of the country. Bushnell positions Massinger’s The Roman Actor, written at the cusp of the Jacobean and Caroline periods, as the last great ‘tyrant tragedy’ of the Renaissance, noting that Stuart tragedy developed the presentation of the tyrant as desire-driven in morality plays and Elizabethan drama to raise new concerns: what happens in the Stuart plays does not merely symbolize the state of the tyrant’s soul: instead they clearly delineate the effect of the tyrant’s actions on his subjects’ liberty and property. The tyrant’s victims begin to ask whether the tyrant’s actions are legal, as well as right or wrong.5

In The Roman Actor, as in later Caroline drama, a woman usually stands in place of subjects’ property. Emperor Domitian is consumed with desire for Lamia’s wife, Domitia. He seduces her away from her husband, leaving Lamia to ask, ‘Is this legal?’.6 But Massinger’s play is not the last to use this image of the desiring tyrant. Desire in tyranny and the tyranny of desire is

198

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

maintained throughout Caroline drama, both in tragicomedy and in tragedy. Caroline tragicomedy, however, allows the monarch to overcome such powerful passions, either in moderating his behaviour to rule better (Massinger’s Emperor of the East), uniting with a more suitable romantic partner and submitting to the laws of the land (Brome’s The Queen’s Exchange), or reuniting with a lawful wife and abdicating in favour of a new, more moderate, law-ruled monarch (Brome’s The Queen and Concubine). Such reconciliations to law and reason restore stability to the country. In Caroline tragedy, however, such destructive passions are not so straightforwardly contained. Rather, monarchs and patriarchs (domestic monarchs in contemporary father-king analogies) may initiate tragic plots by a potentially unwise or damaging act or decision but they are not, as is usual in Caroline tragicomedy, the driving force of the following catastrophe. Caroline tragedy explores the dangers of wrangling for power, undeserved courtly positions and uncontrolled passion among those surrounding the monarch/patriarch, too. Such tragedy still suggests a need for political reform but its concerns are wider than the king alone. In what follows I will offer a reading of Shirley’s The Traitor that positions it firmly within this Caroline theatrical and socio-political context. The Duke’s lust, Lorenzo’s ambition for more power, and Sciarrha’s uncontrollable anger at real and perceived insults to his family honour combine to bring about the tragic denouement of this play through the destruction of any meaningful socio-political bonds. In this, it engages with contemporary concerns over Catholic loyalty, law versus prerogative and the rights and liberties of the subject, and the role and responsibility of the king and the aristocracy. I will also examine some of the ways in which it engages meaningfully with its theatrical contexts in reworking scenes from Jacobean tragedy, and in engaging with the structure of Caroline tragicomedy for its tragic effect. Like several of the other Caroline tragedies, The Traitor (licensed for performance 1631, first published 1635) is in essence a revenge tragedy. Sciarrha, a gentleman, rages for revenge on the lustful Duke, Alexander, who wants to seduce his sister, Amidea. It is Amidea herself who prevents the Duke’s assault and her brother’s plans for regicide. However, Lorenzo, Alexander’s kinsman and favourite, wants him dead to take his power, and so engineers a situation in which Sciarrha’s life is forfeit. Prompted by Lorenzo’s agent, Amidea’s fiancé (Pisano) abandons her in favour of another woman – the beloved of his closest friend, Cosmo, who, in turn, persuades this reluctant lady to marry Pisano instead. Sciarrha avenges the slight to his family by killing Pisano on his wedding day. Lorenzo offers him his life if Amidea will give herself to the Duke. Amidea refuses and, pretending in order to test her virtue, Sciarrha threatens to kill her. To buy time, she pretends to consent. Sciarrha is enraged by her apparent loss of virtue and kills her. He plots to kill the Duke after luring him to bed with the now dead Amidea,



Caroline tragedy

199

but is prevented from doing so by Lorenzo who strikes the regicidal blow himself. Lorenzo and Sciarrha fight; both are killed. The dukedom falls to Cosmo as next in the bloodline. It may seem that the subplot of the friendship between Cosmo and Pisano is merely incidental to the main plot, offering murderous motive to Sciarrha and nothing more. Indeed, A. P. Riemer complains that: [t]his tragedy is notable for the less than customary integration between its two plots; the connecting link between the two stories, apart from Cosmo’s rise to power at the end, which is handled by Shirley in a rather perfunctory manner, is Amidea and her misfortunes.7

This assessment, however, ignores the ways in which the friendship subplot provides commentary on and contrast with the regicidal plot at court. Indeed, it is in the opening scene presenting Cosmo and Pisano that ideas of treason are first raised. Full of concern, Cosmo exclaims:             Y’ave no Suspicion I can be guilty of A treason to our friendship? Be so just, If malice have been busy with my fame, To let me know.8

To have made advances on his friend’s beloved would be to Cosmo an act of treason, not to his friend but upon their friendship, which both men seem to hold ‘more precious than his life’ (I.i.69). The danger of such ‘treason’ to the social (and often socio-political) bond of friendship rather than the personal insult is what matters here. Cosmo assumes that someone has been setting out to undermine him and his reputation. This, of course, turns out to be true: Lorenzo has actively interfered to draw Pisano to Oriana in order to prevent her marriage to Cosmo and, thus, her wealth transferring to him (‘we shall prune his fortune thus’, says Lorenzo, I.i.119). Pisano, however, hastes to confirm he has no suspicions about his friend, but rather he is guilty of desiring Cosmo’s beloved. The opening scene focusing on the subplot, then, sets up both the idea of treachery where it is least expected that underpins Duke Alexander’s fatal faith in Lorenzo, and the significance of social bonds in the play that informs the construction, and later allows for the destruction, of Florence’s aristocratic society. Lorenzo’s interference here is undertaken to secure his own power above Cosmo because his role as court favourite can never be entirely secure. His position is symptomatic of the Duke’s rule by personal power: ‘[t]hinking about royal favourites inevitably meant thinking about the uneasy intersection of the personal and the public in a political system traditionally organised around patronage and intimacy’, and so favourites become fundamental in plays that explore the nature of personal power, and are, therefore, a staple of the Jacobean and Caroline stage.9 In particular in the Caroline period, the

200

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

shadow of the Duke of Buckingham’s influence on Charles I and its seeming interference in a good relationship between Parliament, people and king loomed large, even after his assassination in 1628. In drama, favourites often bear the blame for ill-deeds carried out by the monarch, something of which Lorenzo himself is aware: Tis policy in princes to create A favourite who must bear all the guilt Of things ill manag’d in the state. (II.i.6–9)

While in tragicomedy shifting the blame to figures of ill-counsel allows the monarch to resume legitimate control at the end of the play (not always without some discomfort and anxiety, Perry notes),10 in tragedy the favourite is more obviously a symbol and extension of the absolute power under scrutiny. This is made clear in the Duke’s reaction when he first hears of Lorenzo’s plotting against him: he exclaims, ‘Most ingrateful man! / Turn rebel? I have worn him in my blood’ (I.ii.14–15). Lorenzo is Alexander’s nearest kinsman, but this line implies more, suggesting that the Duke has treated him as almost the same as himself. On learning of his alleged treachery, Alexander threatens to ‘purge the humor’ (I.ii.16), the imbalance, or excess, in his blood that Lorenzo presents, associating Lorenzo with his illicit, excessive desire. This construction also distinguishes their blood-tie and power relationship from the kind of spiritual friendship enjoyed by Pisano and Cosmo: ‘Were he more precious, had he shar’d / Our soul as he but borrows of our flesh / This action [imputed treason] makes him nothing’ (I.ii.17–19). The image of borrowed flesh clearly illustrates that Lorenzo’s authority comes directly and only from the Duke, and that it can be revoked at any time. The close association between the Duke’s favourite and his unruly passions is emphasised in The Traitor through Lorenzo acting as intermediary in arranging the Duke’s tryst with Amidea. Arranging this type of illicit activity is, Mario DiGangi argues, a consistent role of the Caroline dramatic favourite: Caroline playwrights emphasize how the favorite strategically uses his position to fashion or to disrupt sexual and marital alliances. Favoritism is thus understood not as a homoerotic relationship in competition with heteroerotic relationships, but as a public and affective relationship between men that provides privileged access to women’s sexuality and their disposal in marriage. Favoritism, in short, is represented as a practice that destabilizes and dislocates the foundational institutions of early modern social order.11

The return to order of Caroline tragicomedy is often figured in successful and appropriate marriage.12 It is unsurprising, then, that Caroline tragedy shows the disruption of these bonds for the advancement of corrupt personal power and ambition. Lorenzo secures his place in the Duke’s affection with



Caroline tragedy

201

two separate promises to bring him to Amidea’s bedchamber, and we have already seen that the play opens with disruption to two marriages (Cosmo and Oriana, Pisano and Amidea) engineered by Lorenzo for his own ends. The plot and subplot combine, as Pisano’s abandonment of his engagement to Amidea in favour of Oriana leads to the crisis that later puts Sciarrha temporarily in Lorenzo’s power. Thus, the Duke’s exercise of personal power in Lorenzo, and Lorenzo’s own personal ambition, create a situation whereby the whole of the play’s Florentine aristocracy becomes destabilised in the disruption of appropriate socio-political marriage alliances. While procuring Amidea enhances Lorenzo’s position with the Duke, he also sees an opportunity to plot Duke Alexander’s death by inciting Sciarrha to vengeance over his family honour. Before he appears on stage, Sciarrha’s excessive temper is noted as the Duke says to Lorenzo, ‘Prepare Sciarrha, but be very wise / In the discovery. He is all touchwood’ (II.i.170–1). So, to gain Sciarrha’s trust and engage him in his own plot, Lorenzo pretends to share his outrage and his desire for reformation of government:          Let me advance Our liberty, restore the ancient laws Of the republic, rescue from the jaw Of lust your mothers, wives, your daughters, sisters – (II.i.141–4)

Lorenzo’s language here recalls the discourse of the ancient constitution (laws of ancient custom before kings made or exercised law) current in Caroline political debate around the supremacy of the common law or prerogative rule, and these ancient laws were thought to provide inviolable rights and liberties to the subject.13 To ‘restore’ them would be to return England, or here Florence, to an idealised ancient proto-parliamentary/republican past and to do so would mean that subjects’ rights and liberties were respected. Lorenzo is careful to couch this discourse in familial ties (mothers, wives, daughters, sisters) to make sure Sciarrha does not miss the danger to Amidea in the Duke’s absolute power. The excessiveness of the Duke’s power and cupidity is highlighted in Sciarrha’s angry outburst, ‘Has he not sins enough in’s court to damn him, / But my roof must be guilty of new lusts?’ (II.i.8–9). Not content with corrupting his own palace, the Duke’s corruption literally and metaphorically spreads. It is not only the Duke who is guilty of sin in Sciarrha’s house but Sciarrha’s house itself. James Condon highlights what is at stake in the monarchvillain’s incursions into domestic space: The villain’s infiltration of the architectural confines of gardens and bedchambers often leads to a far more insidious breach of the female body, but even when those royals are unsuccessful in their designs, the mere threat of this transgression produces a palpable male anxiety that suggests even more is at stake than the chastity of their beloved sisters and daughters.14

202

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

What is at stake in the Duke’s potential ravishing of Amidea is Sciarrha’s sense of self as patriarch-protector. It is, indeed, this fear of impotence that Lorenzo later plays on to persuade Sciarrha to send his sister to the Duke to buy his pardon, saying she will be ravished anyway once he has been executed. The Traitor, like Shirley’s tragedy The Cardinal, also ‘works on [the audience’s] insecurities, fears, and sense of emasculation at the hands of a corrupt monarchy’.15 When there is no real hope of legal redress, vengeance or violent anger are the only defence Sciarrha can mount against this threat. What enrages Sciarrha most is that the Duke expects him to act as pander to his sister under his own roof, symbolising a complete loss of power and honour for Sciarrha. The command to turn pander turns Sciarrha from ‘noble anger’ (ii.1.34) in response to Alexander’s desire for his sister to A fire within. My soul is but one flame Extended to all parts of this frail building. I shall to ashes. (II.i.73–5)

While it is likely that Lorenzo praises Sciarrha’s ‘noble anger’ to manipulate him, it is worth noting that early modern society did not reject anger as a whole; ‘Moderate anger and anger with cause were socially acceptable emotional states in the English elite. What was less tolerated was immoderate rage’.16 It is the latter that afflicts Sciarrha; his all-encompassing rage is emphasised by the image he presents of his body as a house entirely consumed by the fire of his soul, incensed at the thought of Alexander’s proposition. The image suggests that both Sciarrha’s house itself and his body (here the metaphorical house of his soul) may be destroyed through the violent anger he feels. Excessive cupidity in the Duke and excessive ambition in the Duke’s instrument, Lorenzo, raises excessive anger in the subject Sciarrha, and it is this excess of anger that ultimately leads to the play’s tragic denouement in which his family is all but destroyed. Directing his anger towards vengeance, Sciarrha promises to kill the Duke, planning to ‘dispose / [his] house for this great scene of death’ (II.i.152–3). As part of this extensive revenge performance, in a reworking of Hamlet, Sciarrha arranges a masque for the Duke in which his sins are revealed and punished. Lest the significance of the performance pass the Duke or the theatre audience by, Sciarrha offers a commentary on the meaning of the whole performance; even Lorenzo notes, ‘This is too plain’ (III.ii.34), offering a nod towards Caroline censorship that prevented overt criticism of the king and court on stage. Lorenzo’s next criticism, that all the protagonist’s tormentors should have been part of an antimasque, is rebuffed as Sciarrha notes: ‘In hell they do not stand upon the method / As we at court’ (III.ii.38–9). Shirley here takes aim at contemporary Caroline court masques, which presented antimasques of disorder that were dispelled or brought to order by the appearance of the king or queen performing an idealised version of



Caroline tragedy

203

themselves. Such a structure echoes the promise of tragicomedy – danger and then reform. But in Sciarrha’s revenge tragedy there can be no idealised Alexander; his court as presented in this masque is hell and punishment is his reward. But despite its obviousness, Sciarrha’s masque ‘conspicuously fail[s] to have any didactic effect on [its] audience’.17 This is, of course, because the Duke is more interested in Amidea than the performance. In Hamlet, all informed eyes are on the king watching the play. Here, all eyes but the Duke’s can see the Duke’s sins revealed. Thus it is that, unlike Hamlet’s Claudius who calls for light in his own darkness in Act 3, Scene ii, here it is Sciarrha who has to call for more lights to help his plot along. Alexander’s inability to learn to leave sin from the drama before him because he is too busy attempting to seduce Amidea highlights that only those who wish to do so will learn from seeing a negative image of themselves. This problem had already been raised by Philip Massinger in The Roman Actor Act 2, Scene i, where Paris attempts to reform the miser Philargus by showing him the reform of a miser in an interlude called The Cure for Avarice. Unlike Shirley’s Duke, Philargus does recognise himself in the miser, but he only laments how easily the play-miser is converted, not his own miserly ways. For his refusal to respond to the interlude, Philargus is put to death by order of the emperor. Death, of course, is also to await Duke Alexander’s inability to respond to Sciarrha’s masque. Where Caroline court masques presented idealised monarchy in the hope of inspiring virtue through performance, Caroline tragedy faced what James Bulman has called a ‘crisis of identity in which dramatists asserted their power to influence an audience while in fact fearing their own impotence’.18 For the virtuous in Sciarrha’s onstage audience, his meaning is too plain: amidea:         You wo’not kill him? sciarrha: I am not of your mind. amidea:            I know you cannot. sciarrha: You are not so studied in His destiny, I hope. I will endeavour – amidea: To kill your prince? florio: What, here? sciarrha: No, in his chamber. amidea: Shall it be read in stories of our Florence, Sciarrha did stain his family With such a treason? florio: Was he not invited? sciarrha: Yes, by his lust. florio: And in your crowned tables And hospitality will you murder him? (III.ii.66–75)

Here the Duke’s and Sciarrha’s unruly passions are brought into collision with socio-political bonds that maintain social order: the bond of allegiance to a monarch voiced by Amidea and the bond between host and guest in the

204

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

demands of aristocratic hospitality raised by Florio. Amidea’s argument that Sciarrha owes allegiance to the Duke, however tyrannous he may be, and will bring dishonour to their family name forever in killing him under their roof, relies on political philosophy that makes the monarch unconditionally sovereign through divine right. This kind of argument is made in political writings throughout the Renaissance period, and was the way in which Charles I understood his power.19 Amidea’s certainty that Sciarrha cannot murder the Duke is based in her absolute allegiance to a divinely appointed monarch. To Sciarrha, who believes in a law-governed republic as opposed to the desire-driven Dukedom of Alexander, the monarch who attempts to dishonour his nobles and deals corruptly with this people becomes a ‘great state / Impostume’ (II.i.95–6) rather than a monarch to whom he owes allegiance. In lancing the abscess, Sciarrha believes he can remove the sickness of corruption stifling the commonwealth. Florio’s objection to regicide connects less obviously to royal power and is based in the socio-political bonds of aristocratic hospitality. The importance of aristocratic and gentry hospitality for maintaining social order was increasingly emphasised in the Caroline period as Charles sought to tighten his personal control over areas further from court.20 Malcolm Smuts notes that Charles believed his dominions were held together by the paternalistic influence of major landed families over the localities, and the personal ties of loyalty and obligation that connected those families to himself. These values find expressions in court culture through evocative descriptions of hospitality in country houses and other rituals associated with peaceful, hierarchically structured communities.21

The Traitor highlights the way in which gentlemen could help maintain the king’s will away from the centre in Depazzi’s desire to leave court and return to relative peace at his country seat where he offers to use his influence in the countryside for Lorenzo’s benefit, promising to be ‘the miracle of a courtier, and keep good hospitality’ (IV.i.277). In Florio’s objection to regicide on grounds of hospitality, the severity of the destruction of the bond of trust between host and guest, monarch and aristocrat is emphasised in its collocation with ‘treason’ in the shared line of Amidea and Florio (line 73). The excessive, uncontrolled desires of Alexander and Lorenzo have corrupted the expected bonds of allegiance and hospitality in aristocrats loyal to Florence to such an extent that a household as close-knit as Sciarrha’s (illustrated by the number of lines they share)22 is divided and fractured in response to it, and good hospitality is seen as miraculous. In an extraordinarily brave act, Amidea risks her chastity in order to protect both her brother (from the sin of regicide) and her Duke, asking Sciarrha to trust her alone with him. The scene that follows revises and rewrites the revenge scenario envisaged by Sciarrha, and instead of lancing



Caroline tragedy

205

the boil of state, Amidea attempts a cure for the disease. First she tries to remind the Duke of his responsibilities in bonds of allegiance, both to his people and to God: Your title speaks you nearest heaven, and points You out a glorious reign among the angels. Do not depose yourself of one, and be Of the other disinherited. (III.iii.69–73)

To act sinfully is to declare himself unworthy of his title; to be thus unworthy subjects him to divine judgement. But Alexander rejects her counsel, and, assuming she is disobeying her brother’s command to dally with the Duke, attempts to reinstate some masculine control: ‘I would / Your brother heard you’ (III.iii.73–4). This is a metadramatic comment: Sciarrha is listening behind the arras, waiting to take his revenge on both of them should his sister fail and give in to the Duke. More broadly, however, this could be seen as an iteration of Shirley’s royalism, which is often noted:23 Shirley wishes that all potentially disloyal subjects heard and understood this declaration of an untouchably divine duke’s position. If this is the case, though, Shirley also calls here for monarchs to hear and understand their responsibilities to rule with reason not passion, too. To emphasise this, Amidea continues by drawing out a dagger, saying: Although I bow in duty to your person, I hate your black thoughts. Tempt not my just hand With violent approach. I dare and will Do that will grieve you if you have a soul. (III.iii.79–82)

The surprise this must cause for an audience emphasises the impact of the Duke’s corruption: can even Amidea be persuaded to abandon bonds of allegiance because of Alexander’s persistent corruption? This moment of surprise suggests a danger to the king in persisting in unruly desire over good governance: even loyal subjects might be tempted to take action. But instead of attacking the Duke, Amidea subjects herself to violence, preferring to bleed, and possibly die, herself than to break her bond of allegiance to him through regicide, or her allegiance to God through wantonness. More than this, though, Rebecca Bailey sees this scene as engaging specifically with Caroline concerns over the loyalty of Catholics at a time when, through the continued use of the Oath of Allegiance, ‘spiritual allegiance to England’s old faith remained inextricably entwined in the wider Protestant consciousness with treason against the state and monarch’.24 And so, Bailey argues, ‘in the hands of a Protestant polemicist [Amidea’s speech] would be the cue for recusant regicide, but on the platform of the Phoenix theatre Shirley stages the possibility of displaying loyalty to both temporal and spiritual rulers’ in Amidea’s threatening suicide to convert the Duke to goodness.25 Amidea succeeds in her attempts to reform the Duke, and he declares, ‘In thy

206

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

innocence, I see / My own deformity’ and promises to ‘begin to be thy lord’ (III.iii.120–1, 128), acknowledging that until now he has not held up his part of the two way bonds of allegiance. Shirley shows that not only can those who are loyal to their faith be so without threat to their king, but they can also prove strong advisers to them. In light of this, Bailey reads Amidea’s beauty and zeal as a call to the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria to do more as a leader for loyal Catholics in Caroline England to improve their position.26 But Bailey’s reading is also problematic, since, had the Duke not repented, Amidea would have lost her life. In this, Shirley highlights to his audience that monarchs who force their subjects to choose between their corrupt rule and bonds of loyalty to family or faith bring destruction upon their subjects. And this is, indeed, what happens. Lorenzo continues to work towards his own ambitious desires by manipulating the passions of both the Duke and Sciarrha, encouraging Alexander’s returning desire for Amidea and raising Sciarrha to murderous anger against Pisano for breaking his engagement with her. Under his influence, Sciarrha kills Pisano, leaving his own life forfeit to law. In an echo of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the Duke, at Lorenzo’s suggestion, offers Sciarrha his life if Amidea will give herself to him:             Your mercy shall Purchase what you can wish for in his sister, And he acknowledge rifling of her honor A fair and cheap redemption. (IV.i.373–6)

Having not long since witnessed the vehemence with which Amidea defended her chastity, the audience must find the image of such ‘rifling’ as ‘cheap’ abhorrent. But, at this corrupt court, everything is up for sale because nothing has any intrinsic value. Unlike Caroline tragicomedy, monarchical conversion to good rule does not last. Amidea tries to warn Pisano of his impending doom, but he dismisses her concerns, lamenting, ‘Alas her grief has made her go wild, poor lady’ (IV.ii.40). The audience, however, must know that Amidea, of all the characters in this play, is fully in control of her emotions, and offers a contrast with Oriana whose grief at being forced to part with Cosmo overwhelms her, causing her to faint. Wrapped up in his own happiness, Pisano asks, ‘what grief is so unmannerly / To interrupt thee now, Oriana?’ (IV.ii.10). Neither Pisano nor Cosmo really consider what effect privileging the desire of a friend over existing social bonds might have on the women involved.27 Oriana’s ‘unmannerly’ collapse is a symbol of the potential collapse of stable aristocratic society (as illustrated in appropriate marriage) through the interference of corrupt monarchical agents. Moreover, Oriana finds herself widowed by Sciarrha before she was even married, and Amidea has lost



Caroline tragedy

207

the man she loved at her brother’s hand, and will now pay the price of the murder. Sciarrha returns from his meeting with Lorenzo and demands that his sister, to save his life and prevent the stain on family honour his execution will bring, offers herself to the Duke or he will kill her. Thinking he is in earnest, Amidea, fatally, agrees: amidea: I will obey the duke. sciarrha: Dar’st thou consent? Wounds her amidea: Oh let me see the wound. ’Tis well, if any other hand had done it. Some angel tell my brother now I did But seem consenting? sciarrha: Ha! But seem? amidea: You may believe my last breath. sciarrha: Why didst say so? amidea: To gain some time in hope you might call in Your bloody purpose, and prevent the guilt Of being my murdered. But heaven forgive thee. (V.i.133–44)

Ravelhofer’s reading of this exchange offers great insight into its tragic effect: What makes this scene so painful is the sense that we are listening in to siblings who are deeply attached to each other. Shirley highlights the close relationship with many shared lines, which give the impression not of stichomythic antagonism (as might well be expected for this kind of scene) but of characters who effortlessly take the cue from each other and yet make fatally wrong moves. If Shirley achieved, with The Traitor, an accomplished tragedy of cabinet intrigue, he also delivered a poignant portrait of a family’s destruction.28

An alternative, or even complementary, reading of these broken lines would be that each acts precipitately – jumping in too soon where delay might have brought clarity. Had Sciarrha acted with more reason and less passion, he might have realised that Amidea had already given too many assurances of her virtue to be in earnest. The problem Amidea and Sciarrha face is one of not being sure of the truth; failing to perceive who is feigning and who is in earnest. Ira Clark notes that ‘plays that feature testing patterns were enormously popular’ in this period.29 In comedy and tragicomedy, passing one chastity test is usually enough to confirm virtue and bring about a happy ending, and, as with the tragicomic trope of the reformed ruler, the audience might assume a happy resolution. But in this play, when Cosmo asks Oriana to take his friend instead, she agrees, thinking he is testing her, only to find he is in earnest and she is forced towards an unwelcome bed anyway;30 Amidea suggests that Pisano’s breaking off of their engagement might be a test of her constancy, only to find that it is not; Sciarrha tests his sister not once, not twice, but three times. Despite passing twice, the moment

208

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

she seems to fail, he kills her. In this play, both ladies are spotless in their chastity, faith and loyalty, and both are, seemingly, punished for their love and honesty. Worse, had Amidea passed the third test, Sciarrha was planning to kill her anyway to protect her from the Duke’s lust after his own execution. Chastity and duty are no protection in a world where bonds are persistently broken and power and passion reign. In contrast, Lorenzo anticipates the test of his loyalty to the Duke, so when Sciarrha tries to make him reveal his treason to the duke who is hiding behind the arras, he covers Sciarrha’s accusation with a claim that Sciarrha ‘made this trial of my faith, / And I forgive him’ (III.iii.194–5). In Alexander’s corrupt court, it is only those who understand the nature of feigning, and who know how to control and manipulate others’ passions and desires, that thrive. Ravelhofer notes that, unlike Vindice’s Gloriana of The Revenger’s Tragedy, who also dies to protect her chastity, Shirley allows his heroine in this play to speak for herself.31 Amidea does, as we have seen, mount a startling defence of her chastity in Act III, but her female voice is not radical. Rather it speaks, as many strong female voices in drama of this period, in a way contained by ‘rigid role norms’, to preserve chastity, underline obedience and allegiance, and protect her family;32 ‘female agency, in a similar fashion to female performance, is seemingly celebrated but only within strict guidelines and under the adoring gaze of the male writer’.33 She does not condemn her brother’s unruly passion that kills her, rather she rewrites it into a narrative of brotherly affection and protection by claiming that she has killed herself. Ultimately, when it comes to the final revenge action of the play Amidea is merely a prop for Sciarrha’s plot. As Vindice does with Gloriana’s dressed up skull, Florio sets the scene for revenge by performing an act of persuading the reluctant Amidea to sleep with the Duke (V.iii.21–6). The parallel between the two plays is unmistakable. But the dark comedy of Vindice’s ventriloquised discussion with and introduction of the bony lady is rewritten into a painful and poignant moment for Florio with Amidea. He speaks similar words, but their impact is far from comic, since we have watched Amidea’s unnecessary death on stage moments before. And it is not, I would argue, a parallel that presents Amidea as more powerful than Gloriana. Gloriana’s skull, not merely a ‘useless property’, at least administers the poison to kill the Duke whose advances led to her death.34 This comparison is clearly and painstaking drawn out by Shirley, as Alexander kisses Amidea’s lifeless lips and claims, ‘I have / Drunk ice, and feel a numbness spread though / My blood at once’ (V.iii.43–5), suggestive of poisoning. But he is not poisoned. He is not even killed by Sciarrha in revenge for his sister’s death. Rather, on discovering Amidea dead, Alexander emphasises his shock by responding, ‘I prithee kill me’ (V.iii.52), and Lorenzo and Petruchio are more than happy to oblige. The moment is half-comic in Lorenzo’s opportunism, and it resolves a problem of regicide in a play that has roundly condemned the act under any political circumstances: ‘the murder is determined by an



Caroline tragedy

209

usurper’s ambition, and is therefore unjustifiable’.35 Nor does Shirley allow the potential regicides to profit from the murder: Sciarrha and Lorenzo fight and both are killed. The Dukedom falls to Cosmo, completing the defeat of Lorenzo’s plans both to undermine Cosmo and to take the throne himself. Yet there is something uncomfortable about this ending. Bushnell argues that ‘the tyrant’s death scene may be meant to restore the image of pure sovereignty [as opposed to tyranny] insofar as the restored and legitimate prince has the last word. Yet that closure is not often complete’.36 And, indeed, Cosmo’s instatement leaves something of a sour taste. The distinction made between Cosmo’s generosity towards Pisano’s admission of ‘treason’ (I.i.58) and the Duke’s plan to punish Lorenzo’s imputed treason with things never known before (I.ii.29–36), suggest the plot and subplot will stand against one another, criticising court machinations through a contrasting ideal of friendship bonds. But, by the end of the play, such a hopeful distinction of idealised friendship over corruption and favouritism has disintegrated. Oriana and Amidea are both damaged by this initial act of favour, and in this the two traitors become aligned. Amidea is dead, merely a prize, a prop and bargaining chip in the men’s world of uncontrolled passions. Cosmo’s willingness to throw Oriana off for a favourite, and then his assumption that he can at the end ‘make satisfaction to Oriana’ (V.iii.176–7) and marry her himself after the emotional turmoil he has caused her suggests that little will change in Florence under the new Duke. On learning who murdered Alexander, Cosmo questions, ‘But who kill’d Amidea?’. This question and Florio’s answers highlight the unnecessary tragedy of Amidea’s death. His first answer, ‘The duke’s lust’ (V.iii.166), reminds the audience that the Duke’s unchecked desire began and continued the tragic spiral; his second, ‘There was no other way to save her honor’ (V.iii.167) raises the issue of Sciarrha’s precipitate violence but also his inability to protect his sister from Lorenzo and Alexander’s unreformable corruption. Florio’s following claim – that Sciarrha has revenged Amidea’s death but ‘fate / denied him triumph’ (V.iii.168–9) – is truthful in so far as Sciarrha killed Lorenzo, and Lorenzo’s machinations led to Amidea’s fatal misreading of Sciarrha’s intentions. The excessive cupidity of the Duke, the excessive anger of Sciarrha and the excessive ambition of Lorenzo are brought together and set starkly alongside the needless tragedy they have caused. Yet, to claim that ‘fate’ played a part in the play’s climax is disingenuous. Shirley gives all of these characters the opportunity to choose to act differently. The deepest tragedy of Shirley’s play is that tragicomic reconciliation after chastity tests and reform after revelation of the damage caused by corruption are held out for the taking but, like the Duke unable to see his sins in Sciarrha’s masque, the characters driven by power and passion do not heed such warnings and change the ending for the better. Even Cosmo’s accession does not raise hope. Where Caroline tragicomedy engaged with contemporary political debate

210

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

and offered means to a peaceful resolution of discord, Caroline tragedy highlighted the dangers to monarchs and subjects if such opportunities for reconciliation were to be ignored. Notes 1 Margo Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980/82), p. 46; Rebecca Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 156–7. 2 See Rebecca Bailey, Staging the Old Faith: Queen Henrietta Maria and the Theatre of Caroline England, 1625–1642 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Jessica Dyson, Staging Authority in Caroline England: Prerogative, Law and Order in Drama, 1625–1642 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Julie Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 1999); Matthew Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 3 Gary Schmidt, Renaissance Hybrids: Culture and Genre in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 188. 4 For a detailed discussion of the ways in which Caroline tragicomedy directly engaged with political and legal debate of the Caroline period, see Dyson, Staging Authority in Caroline England, especially Chapters 2 and 3. 5 Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 158. 6 Philip Massinger, The Roman Actor, ed. Martin White (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2007), I.ii.84. I discuss this move towards what is legal versus what power can do in Staging Authority in Caroline England. For a reading of The Roman Actor see pp. 55–67. 7 A. P. Riemer, ‘A Source for Shirley’s The Traitor’, The Review of English Studies, 14 (1963), pp. 381–3 (p. 381). 8 All references to this play come from James Shirley, The Traitor, ed. John Stewart Carter (London: Edward Arnold, 1965). Quotation, I.i.56–60. Subsequent references to this text will appear in parentheses. 9 Curtis Perry, Literature and Favouritism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 1. 10 Ibid., p. 137. 11 Mario DiGangi, Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), p. 201. 12 See Dyson, Staging Authority in Caroline England, chapter 3. 13 See J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 261. 14 James J. Condon, ‘Setting the Stage for Revenge: Space, Performance, and Power in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 25 (2012), pp. 62–82 (pp. 70–1).



Caroline tragedy

211

15 Deborah Burks, ‘“This sight doth shake all that is man within me”: Sexual Violation and the Rhetoric of Dissent in The Cardinal’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 26 (1996), pp. 153–90 (p. 165). 16 Linda A. Pollock, ‘Anger and the Negotiation of Relationships in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal, 47.3 (2004), pp. 567–90 (p. 586). 17 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Shirley’s Tragedies’, in Barbara Ravelhofer (ed.), James Shirley and Early Modern Theatre: New Critical Perspectives (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 86–107 (p. 90). 18 James Bulman, ‘Caroline Drama’, in A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (eds), Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 344–71 (p. 365). 19 See J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640, 2nd edn (London; Longman, 1999), p. 37. 20 Martin Butler argues that Charles I’s 1632 Proclamation ‘Commanding the gentry to keep their residence at the Mansions in the Country, and forbidding them to make their habitations in London and places adjoining’ was, in part, designed to maintain order through such gentry hospitality and to maintain communication between Whitehall and the country during Charles’s personal rule. See Martin Butler, ‘Late Jonson’, in Gordon McMullan and Jonathan Hope (eds), The Politics of Tragicomedy (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 166–88 (pp. 181–2). 21 Malcolm Smuts, ‘Force, Love and Authority in Caroline Political Culture’, in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 28–49 (p. 39). 22 Ravelhofer, ‘Shirley’s Tragedies’, p. 93. 23 Ira Clark, Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Kentucky, University Press of Kentucky, 1992), p. 119. 24 Bailey, Staging the Old Faith, pp. 96–7. 25 Ibid., p. 99. While suicide was also considered a sin, and one greater than wantonness as the Duke notes (III.iii.86–7), there is evidence suggesting that it was considered more leniently if women, particularly nuns, took their own lives to preserve their chastity. See Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, ‘The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation’, in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 29–72 (pp. 34 and 35). 26 Bailey, Staging the Old Faith, p. 118. 27 Ford’s tragic play The Broken Heart explores further the damage forcing a chaste lady to break off one engagement to marry another – implicating herself as potentially unchaste – can do to a woman, in the character of Penthea who seems to starve to death, thinking herself a whore. John Ford, The Broken Heart, in Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays, ed. Marion Lomax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), III.ii.70. 28 Ravelhofer, ‘Shirley’s Tragedies’, p. 93. 29 Clark, Professional Playwrights, p. 26. 30 Phoebe S. Spinrad, ‘James Shirley: Decadent or Realist’, English Language Notes, 25 (1988) pp. 24–32 (p. 30). 31 Ravelhofer, ‘Shirley’s Tragedies’, p. 91.

212

The genres of Renaissance tragedy

32 Clark, Professional Playwrights, p. 129. 33 Jerome DeGroot, ‘Coteries, Complications and the Question of Female Agency’, in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 189–209 (p. 200). 34 Thomas Middleton/Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, ed. R. A. Foakes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), III.v.101. 35 Paola Catenaccio, ‘From Bed to Worse: Eroticized Politics on the Caroline Stage’, Textus: English Studies in Italy, 17 (2004), pp. 291–308 (p. 302). 36 Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 185.

Selected bibliography

Adams, Henry H. English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy, 1575 to 1642. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Belsey, Catherine. The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama. London: Methuen, 1985. Bowers, Fredson T. Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587–1642. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940. Braden, Gordon. Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger’s Privilege. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Brooke, Nicholas. Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979. Brown, Sarah Annes and Catherine Silverstone, eds. Tragedy in Transition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Bryant, J. A. ‘The Significance of Ben Jonson’s First Requirement for Tragedy: “Truth of Argument”’. Studies in Philology, 49 (1952), pp. 195–293. Bushnell, Rebecca W. Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Cadman, Daniel. Sovereigns and Subjects in Early Modern Neo-Senecan Drama. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Campbell, Lily B. Tudor Conceptions of History and Tragedy in ‘The Mirror for Magistrates’. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936. Clemen, Wolfgang. English Tragedy Before Shakespeare: The Development of Dramatic Speech. London: Methuen, 1961. Cohen, Derek. Shakespeare’s Culture of Violence. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993. Curran, John E., Jr. Character and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2014. Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, 3rd edn. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 (first published 1984).

214

Selected bibliography

Dunn, Kevin. ‘Representing Counsel: Gorboduc and the Elizabethan Privy Council’. English Literary Renaissance, 33 (2003), pp. 279–308. Dunne, Derek. Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy and Early Modern Law. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Duxfield, Andrew. Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Dyson, Jessica. Staging Authority in Caroline England: Prerogative, Law and Order in Drama, 1625–1642. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Edwards, A. S. G. ‘Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: Translation, Re-translation and History’. In Sara K. Barker and Brenda M. Hosington (eds), Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473–1640. Leiden: Brill, 2013. pp. 21–34. Erne, Lukas. Beyond ‘The Spanish Tragedy’: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Farnham, William. The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936. Repr. Oxford: Blackwell, 1970. Findlay, Alison and Stephanie Hodgson-Wright, with Gweno Williams, Women and Dramatic Production 1550–1700. London: Longman, 2000. Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Hamlin, William. Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Hammond, Paul. The Strangeness of Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hopkins, Lisa. Shakespeare on the Edge: Border-crossing in the Tragedies and the Henriad. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. James, Henry, and Greg Palmer. ‘The Politics of Gorboduc’. The English Historical Review, 110 (1995), pp. 109–21. Kerrigan, John. Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Kottman, Paul A. Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting the Globe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Lever, J. W. The Tragedy of State: A Study of Jacobean Drama. London and New York: Methuen, 1987. Margolies, David. Monsters of the Deep: Social Dissolution in Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992. McEachern, Claire, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca. Oxford University Press, 1992. Neill, Michael. Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Neill, Michael and David Schalkwyk, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Orlin, Lena Cowen. Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England. London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Ornstein, Robert. The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.



Selected bibliography

215

Pearson, Jacqueline. Tragedy and Tragicomedy in the Plays of John Webster. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. Raber, Karen. Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Ravelhofer, Barbara. ‘Shirley’s Tragedies’. In Barbara Ravelhofer (ed.), James Shirley and Early Modern Theatre. New Critical Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. pp. 86–107. Richardson, Catherine. Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England: The Material Life of the Household. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Rieger, Gabriel. Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England: Penetrating Wit. Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. Rist, Thomas. Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Sanders, Julie. Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 1999. Simkin, Stevie, ed. Revenge Tragedy: Contemporary Critical Essays. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Smith, Emma, and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, eds. The Cambridge Companion To Renaissance Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Streete, Adrian. Early Modern Drama and the Bible, Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012. Vitkus, Daniel. Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Watson, Robert N. ‘The Rest is Silence’: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance. California: University of California Press, 1994. Woodbridge, Linda. English Revenge Drama: Money, Resistance, Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Index

Adams, Henry H. 16 Adams, Robert P. 81n.7 Adelman, Janet 114n.5 Admiral’s Men 37, 85, 166 Aebischer, Pascale 180n.1 Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling 59 The Alexandraean Tragedy 53 The Monarchicke Tragedies 52 The Tragedy of Croesus 161 Alker, Sharon 82n.15 Alleyn, Edward 37 Altman, Joel B. 57 Anderson, Donald K. 195n.16 Anderson, Thomas 144n.7 Archer, Ian 145n.10 Arden of Faversham (anonymous) 1, 2, 4, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 97 Aristotle 3–4, 11, 152, 154 Nicomachean Ethics 179 unities of time, place and action 3, 52–3 Armitage, David 175 Arshad, Yasmin 54 Ascham, Roger The Scholemaster 129n.1 Astington, John H. 47n.8 Augustine of Hippo City of God 179 Axton, Marie 80n.2 Ayres, Philip J. 81n.7 Bacon, Francis 172, 177 The History of the Reign of King Henry VII 185 Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain 172 Bailey, Rebecca 197, 205, 206 Bakhtin, Mikhail 130n.9, 152, 153 Baldwin, William The Mirror for Magistrates 13, 15, 18, 22, 188

Bale, John 32–3, 37 God's Promises 29–30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 45–6 John the Baptist's Preaching 33 The Temptation of Our Lord 33 Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London 118 Barbour, Reid 150 Barish, Jonas A. 195n.17 Barton, Anne 195n.12 Battenhouse, Roy 23 Beard, Thomas The Theatre of God's Judgements 45 Beaumont, Francis A King and No King 172 The Maid's Tragedy (with John Fletcher) 115, 172 Philaster (with John Fletcher) 172 Beckerman, Bernard 85 Beilin, Elaine V. 66n.35 Bellinger, Martha 31 Belsey, Catherine 5 Benkert, Lysbeth 26n.19 Betteridge, Thomas 47n.2 Bevington, David 40 Bible 1 Kings 45 New Testament 62 Old Testament 38, 40 Psalms 33–4 Romans 44, 135 2 Samuel 29, 39 biblical tragedy 3, 29–50 lost plays 30–1 Bishops’ Ban (1599) 118–19 Blenerhasset, Thomas 14 The Second Part of The Mirror for Magistrates 14 Blistein, Elmer M. 31, 40, 47n.9 Boccaccio, Giovanni 12, 16 De Casibus 11, 12, 188

Index 217 body politic 58, 70–2, 74–5, 77, 79, 80 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus The Consolation of Philosophy 15–16 Boklund, Gunnar 160 Boleyn, Ann 32 Boose, Lynda 119 Bosman, Anston 194n.5 Bowers, Fredson 134 Braden, Gordon 52, 129n.2, 162n.16 Brandon, Samuel Octavia 52, 54–5 Brant, Sebastian 177 Breitenberg, Mark 181n.13 Bremer, J. M. 129n.3 Brome, Richard 196 The Queen and Concubine 197, 198 The Queen's Exchange 198 Brooke, Nicholas 9n.2, 131n.20, 160 Brooks, C. W. 145n.22 Browne, Paul 147n.41, 147n.47 Brucher, Richard 147n.41, 147n.48 Bryant, J. A. 113n.3 Buchanan, George 177 Bulman, James 203 Bunyan, John The Pilgrim's Progress 35 Burbage, James 37 Burrow, Colin 51 Burton, Jonathan 56 Burton, Robert 135 Bushnell, Rebecca W. 82n.24, 171, 181n.13, 197, 209 Butler, Martin 197, 211n.20 Caesar and Pompey (1581, anonymous, lost play) 166 Caesar and Pompey (1594–95, anonymous, lost play) 166 Caesar's Revenge (anonymous) 100, 166, 167 Cain, Tom 114n.12 Callaghan, Dympna 4 Calvin, Jean 35, 150, 152 Calvinism 7, 34–5, 36–7, 38–40, 45, 55–7, 63, 123, 150, 151, 152, 156, 161 Cameron, John H. 6 Campbell, Lily B. 26n.9, 26n.13, 26n.23 Candido, Joseph 190 carnivalesque 116, 152 Caroline tragedy 9 Cary, Elizabeth The Tragedy of Mariam 2, 52, 53, 55, 59, 62, 168 Cassius Dio 178 Roman History 117 Catenaccio, Paola 212n.35 catharsis 4 Catherine of Aragon 32

Catholicism 2, 30, 31–7, 150, 196, 198, 205–6 censorship 202 Cerasano, S. P. 49n.38 Chamberlain, Stephanie 82n.20 Chamberlain’s Men 85 Chapman, George Caesar and Pompey 100 Charles I 197, 200, 202, 204, 211n.20 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 177 Chase, Malcolm 181n.19 Chaucer, Geoffrey 13, 16 The Canterbury Tales 11–12 Chernaik, Warren 114n.4 Chettle, Henry 2 The Orphan's Tragedy 97n.1 The Tragedy of Hoffman 8, 132–47 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 150, 175, 176–7, 179 Clare, Janet 147n.41 Clark, Ira 180, 207 Clark, Peter 147n.49 Clark, Sandra 146n.31 Cleaver, Robert see Dod, John Clemen, Wolfgang 50n.50 closet tragedy 3, 51–67, 161 Coddon, Karin 120 Cohen, Derek 81n.13 Coke, Sir Edward 135 Cole, Lucinda 81n.12 Colvin, Matthew 163n.25 Condon, James 201 Connolly, Annaliese 49n.39 contemptus mundi tradition 15–16, 19, 23, 24–5 Cooper, Thomas see Lanquet, Thomas Crymes, George 194 cultural materialism 3 Cummings, Brian 48n.29 Curran, John E. Jr 113n.3, 182n.40 Daborne, Robert The Poore Mans Comfort 97n.1 Daniel, Samuel Cleopatra 52, 54, 166 Philotas 58 Dante Alighieri Monarchia 177 Davenport, Arthur 129n.6 Davis, Michael 81n.13 Day, John The Italian Tragedy 97n.1 see also Haughton, William Deats, Sara Munson 27n.31 de casibus tradition 7, 11–28, 36, 42, 57, 100, 112, 188, 191, 194 DeGroot, Jerome 212n.33 Dekker, Thomas see Ford, John

218 Index Democritus 151–2, 155, 156, 157–8, 160–1 Dent, R. W. 164n.42 Dewar-Watson, Sarah 49n.35 Di Gangi, Mario 195n.6, 200 Dillon, Jannette 3–4, 49n.33, 49n.37 Dimmock, Matthew 139, 147n.46 Dixon, Leif 163n.29 Dod, John A Godlie Forme of Householde Government (with Robert Cleaver) 88, 90 Dollimore, Jonathan 5, 57, 59, 63, 124, 127 domestic tragedy 2, 7–8, 84–99 Donatus 188 Doran, Susan 80n.2 Dowd, Michelle M. 81n.8 Duffy, Eamon 48n.31 Duncan-Jones, Katherine 147n.40 Dunn, Kevin 80n.2 Dunne, Derek 10n.15, 146n.36 Dutton, Elisabeth 144n.1 Duxfield, Andrew 28n.41, 195n.8 Dyce, Alexander 162n.5 Dyson, Jessica 197, 210n.4, 210n.12 Earl of Leicester’s Men 37 Edward the Confessor 72, 77 Edwards, A. S. G. 13 Eliot, T. S. 51, 52, 53, 129n.2 Elizabeth I 26n.19, 69, 71, 116, 188 Epicureanism 84, 150–61 Erasmus 156 Erne, Lukas 53 Escolme, Bridget 153 Euripides 194n.4 Evans, K. W. 81n.7 Evanthius 188 Everyman (morality play) 36 Farnham, Willard 14, 17, 18, 27n.25, 27n.28 feminism 3 Findlay, Alison 53–4 Fitzmaurice, Andrew 175, 176, 182n.30 Fleay, F. W. 97n.1 Fletcher, John 2 Bonduca 101, 175 The False One (with Philip Massinger) 9, 101, 166–83 The Island Princess 175 The Prophetess (with Philip Massinger) 101 The Sea Voyage (with Philip Massinger) 175 Valentinian 100, 172 A Wife for a Month 172 see also Beaumont, Francis Florio, John 148, 162n.5 A World of Words 120

Floyd-Wilson, Mary 81n.12 Ford, John 2, 196 The Broken Heart 1, 185, 196, 211n.27 Love's Sacrifice 149 Perkin Warbeck 9, 184–95 'Tis Pity She's a Whore 185 The Witch of Edmonton (with Thomas Dekker and William Rowley) 90 Fortescue, Thomas The Forest 21 fortune 4–5, 11–28, 70, 100, 110, 112–13, 150, 155, 178 Foster, Verna Ann 195n.11 Foucault, Michel 145n.18, 181n.13 Fowler, Don 164n.50 Fowler, Elizabeth 82n.16 Franklin, H. Bruce 80n.6 Freer, Coburn 53 Frye, Northrop 101 Gainsford, Thomas The True and Wonderful History of Perkin Warbeck 185 Garnier, Robert 51–2 Marc Antoine 51, 166 Porcie 52 Geoffrey of Monmouth Historia regum Britanniae 188 Gifford, William 162n.5 Gillen, Katherine A. 48n.25 Gillespie, Alexandra 26n.9 Glady, Sarah J. 147n.41 Globe, the (London theatre) 37 Goldberg, Jonathan 79–80, 164n.51 Goldfarb, Philip 114n.10 Goughe, Hugh The Offspring of the House of Ottomano 55 Grande, Troni Y. 17–18, 19 Gray, Robert 176 Greenberg, Marissa 95–6 Greenblatt, Stephen 34, 62, 144n.8, 158, 164n.51 Greene, James J. 82n.13 Greene, Robert 30 Greenes Groatsworth of witte 138 Greg, W. W. 97n.1 Greville, Fulke 2, 51–67 Antony and Cleopatra (lost play) 52, 54, 64, 166 A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney 56 Mustapha 7, 51–67 Griffin, Julia 178 grotesque tragedy 2, 8, 148–65 Guicciardini, Lodovico The Garden of Pleasure 156 Gurr, Andrew 43, 85

Index 219 Hadfield, Andrew 27n.39, 69, 114n.4 Hall, Edward 188 Chronicles 14 Hall, Bishop Joseph Virgidemiarum 168 Hallett, Charles A. 136 Hallett, Elaine S. 136 Halliwell, Stephen 163n.26 hamartia 4, 115 Hamlin, Hannibal 34 Hamlin, William H. 158, 164n.51 Hammer, Paul E. J. 81n.7 Hammond, Paul 6 Hampton, Bryan Adams 73 Happé, Peter 48n.25 Hara, Eiichi 92–3 Harding, Christopher 139 Harris, Jonathan Gil 164n.51 Hatchuel, Sarah 170, 180n.1 Haughton, William Thomas Merry (with John Day) 97n.1 Haverkamp, Anselm 145n.15 Havers, Grant 82n.24 Heinemann, Margot 197 Henderson, John 113n.3 Henderson, Katherine Usher 181n.16 Henrietta Maria, Queen 206 Henry II, King of France 157 Henry VIII 32 Henslowe, Philip 31 Henslowe’s Diary 85, 97n.1 Heraclitus 151, 156, 157, 161 Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke 52, 53 Antonius 51, 54, 58, 166, 170 Herrup, Cynthia B. 146n.27 Heywood, Thomas 36 A Woman Killed with Kindness 87, 93, 96–7 Higgins, John The First Part of the Mirror for Magistrates 14 Highley, Christopher 82n.15 Hila, Marina 167 Hindle, Steve 135 historical tragedy 9, 184–95 Hodgson-Wright, Stephanie 53–4 Holinshed, Raphael 86, 97, 188 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 135 ‘Homily of the State of Matrimony, An’ 90 Honda, Marie 147n.41 Hopkins, Lisa 50n.45, 82n.15, 114n.4, 186, 195n.10 Hutchings, Mark 23 Hutson, Lorna 146n.28, 146n.29 Inns of Court 136

Jackson, MacDonald 123, 130n.19 Jacoby, Susan 135 Jakacki, Diane K. 50n.53 James I (and VI of Scotland) 9, 69, 71, 77, 80, 167, 176, 180 James, Henry 69, 195n.9 Jeanneret, Michel 148 Jensen, Freyja Cox 180n.1 John II, King of France 157 Johnson, Samuel 1 Jonson, Ben 2, 51, 150, 196 The Alchemist 151 Bartholomew Fair 133 Catiline 101, 104, 108, 113 Discoveries 173 Isle of Dogs (lost play, with Thomas Nashe) 119 Sejanus 8, 70, 100–14, 115 The Staple of News 173 Jowett, John 137, 147n.42 Julius Caesar 101 Juvenal 116, 175 Kahn, Coppélia 83n.28 Kegl, Rosemary 53 Kerrigan, John 10n.15, 134, 136 Kewes, Paulina 65n.14, 182n.27, 182n.48, 183n.50 Kiefer, Frederick 17, 27n.26, 81n.7 Kilgore, Robert 42, 49n.34 King Leir (anonymous) 85–6 King'oo, Clare Costley 48n.28, 48n.31 Kistner, A. L. and M. K. 81n.6 Knutson, Roslyn L. 49n.38, 85 Kottman, Paul A. 6 Kroll, Norma 163n.23 Kuchta, David 172 Kyd, Thomas 51–2 Cornelia 51–2, 53, 58, 59, 176–7 The Spanish Tragedy 4, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 118, 133, 135, 136 Lamb, Mary Ellen 53 Langley, Eric 164n.51 Lanquet, Thomas Epitome of Chronicle (with Thomas Cooper) 177 Law, R. A. 85 Lawton, Davis 25n.4, 25n.6 Lemon, Rebecca 75 Lever, J. W. 69–70 Levin, Joanna 82n.20 Lieblein, Leanore 93 Livy 101 Lodge, Thomas The Wounds of Civil War 102, 106, 108 Logan, Robert A. 27n.31 Long, A. A. 163n.25

220 Index Lovascio, Domenico 181n.26 Lowrance, Bryan 82n.16 Lucan 168 Pharsalia 155, 177–8, 194n.4 Lucas, Scott 26n.12 Luckyj, Christina 165n.62 Lucretius, Caius 157–8, 159 De Rerum Natura 157–8 Lupton, Julia Reinhard 76 Luther, Martin 32 Lutheranism 34 Lydgate, John 16, 17 The Fall of Princes 12–15, 17, 20–1, 22, 188

Microcynicon 120 The Revenger's Tragedy 2, 8, 115–31, 134, 136–7, 149, 208 Women Beware Women 131n.30 Miles, Geoffrey 114n.13, 162n.19 Miola, Robert S. 114n.4, 162n.13, 162n.16 Montaigne, Michel de 150–1, 153, 156, 157 159–61 morality plays 36, 120 Vice figure 120–1 Moreelse, Johannes Paulus 151 Moretti, Franco 63–4 Mortimer, Nigel 17, 25n.4, 25n.6, 26n.19, 27n.27

McCrea, Adriana 114n.14 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 48n.21 MacDonald, Michael 144n.8 McGrail, Mary Ann 77, 82n.24 Machiavelli, Niccolò Machiavellianism 17, 112, 114n.10, 153, 175 McInnis, David 30–1 McManus, Barbara F. 181n.16 McMullan, Gordon 194n.5 Marcus, Leah S. 47n.2 Margolies, David 78 Marlowe, Christopher 2, 51, 150 Doctor Faustus 37, 38, 40, 42, 46, 185 Edward II 19, 27n.33, 70, 71 Tamburlaine the Great 7, 11–28, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43 Marshe, Thomas 14 Marston, John 116 Antonio's Revenge 134, 136–7 The Malcontent 115 The Scourge of Villainy 120 Sophonisba 100 Martial 116 masques 120, 127, 128, 131n.30, 136, 172–5, 177–8, 202–3 Massinger, Philip 196 Believe as You List 196 Emperor of the East 197, 198 The Roman Actor 102, 103, 106, 108, 172, 196, 197, 203 see also Fletcher, John Master of the Revels 129 Maus, Katharine Eisaman 114n.14 May, Thomas Agrippina 100 Cleopatra 166 Julius Caesar (lost play) 166 Menippus 115 Mercer, Peter 145n.15 Meres, Francis 137 Mexia, Pedro Silva de Varia Leción 21 Middleton, Thomas 2

Nashe, Thomas 150 and Ben Jonson 119 Neill, Michael 6, 136 Nelson, Holly Faith 82n.15 new historicism 3 New World 167, 175–6 Nietzsche, Friedrich 101 Norbrook, David 58, 63, 64 North, Sir Thomas see Plutarch Norton, Thomas Gorboduc (with Thomas Sackville) 3, 69, 70, 118, 188 Norwich Grocers’ Play 30 Oath of Allegiance 205 Olchowy, Gloria 83n.28 Onions, C. T. 162n.6 Orlin, Lena Cowen 86, 88 Ornstein, Robert 125 Ottoman Empire 7, 55–6, 59 Ovid 194n.4 Owens, Rebekah 50n.48 Palatine crisis (1619) 167 Palmer, Greg 69 Parks, Joan 81n.9 Parliament 197, 200, 201 Partee, Charles 162n.15 Patterson, Annabel 114n.12 Pearson, Jacqueline 153, 158 Pearson, Meg 81n.9 Peele, George 2, 51 Battle of Alcazar, The 41 David and Bethsabe 7, 29–50 Peery, William 17, 27n.26 Perkins, William 173 Perondinus, Petrus Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum Imperatoris Vita 21 Perry, Curtis 65n.14, 200 Pesta, Duke 147n.41 Petrarch, Francesco Petrarchanism 168–9 Triumphs 169

Index 221 Phoenix theatre 205 Platt, Peter J. 164n.48 Plutarch 101, 168, 178, 185 Pocock, J. G. A. 210n.13 Polybius 101 Poole, Kristen 48n.21 Posner, Richard 134 Predestination see Calvinism Preedy, Chloe 41 Premierfait, Laurent de 17 Protestantism 30, 31–50, 150, 205 militant Protestantism 54 providence 4–5, 14–17, 36, 92–5, 155, 161 Puritanism 172–3 Pynson, Richard 13 Quintillian 116, 175 Rabelais, François 152 Raber, Karen 54, 55 Ralegh, Sir Walter 142, 147n.50, 176 Ravelhofer, Barbara 207, 208 Rebholz, Ronald A. 65n.14 Records of Early English Drama (REED) 30 Red Bull (London theatre) 161 Red Lion (London theatre) 37 Reformation 6, 30, 31–50 regicide 204, 205 Rembrandt 151 repertory studies 3, 30–1 republicanism 68, 102, 104, 106, 108–9, 114n.4, 175–6, 201, 204 revenge tragedy 6, 8, 43, 100, 132–47, 149–50 Reynolds, John The Triumph of Gods Revenge against the crying and execrable Sinne of Murther 135 Ribner, Irving 81n.9 Richards, Nathaniel Messalina 100 Richardson, Catherine 88, 89, 93, 95, 96 Richardson, William 1 Riemer, A. P. 199 Rieger, Gabriel A. 129n.5 Rist, Thomas 10n.15, 144n.7 Ritson, Joseph Bibliographia Poetica 13 Röder, Katrin 56 Rogers, Rebecca 81n.10 Roman tragedy 2, 8, 100–14 Ronan, Clifford J. 175 Roscoe, Brett 58 Roston, Murray 33 Rowley, William see Ford, John Rubens, Peter Paul 151 Rutter, Tom 147n.41

Sackville, Thomas see Norton, Thomas Sale, Carolyn 145n.9 Sallust 101, 175 Salmela, Markku 162n.8 Sanders, Julie 114n.4, 130n.16 Sanforde, James 156 satire see satiric tragedy satiric tragedy 8, 115–31 Savonarola, Girolamo 177 Schafer, Elizabeth 53–4 Schanzer, Ernest 114n.5 Schoenfeldt, Samuel 150 Schulenburg, Jane Tibbets 211n.25 Scott, Alison V. 172, 173, 180n.1 Sellars, John 162n.16 Semenza, Gregory 134 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 12, 51, 116–17, 118, 119, 150, 175 Senecan tragedy 51–67, 140 Thyestes 117 Shakespeare, William 1, 2–3, 30, 137–8, 140, 184–5, 186, 188–9, 194 Antony and Cleopatra 102, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173 As You Like It 6 Coriolanus 106 First Folio 71, 173, 184–5 Hamlet 1, 4, 68, 115, 126, 132, 133–4, 136–7, 138, 140, 142, 144, 149, 185, 202, 203 Henry IV 188 Henry V 101 Henry VIII (All is True, with John Fletcher) 185, 187, 191, 193 Julius Caesar 1, 59, 102, 108, 173–4, 179 King Lear 1, 4–5, 69, 70, 71–2, 78, 137, 149, 185 Macbeth 1, 7, 68–83, 137, 149, 185 Measure for Measure 206 Much Ado About Nothing 141 Othello 1, 121, 192 Richard III 1, 86, 101, 121, 185, 189, 190–1 Romeo and Juliet 137 The Tempest 6 Titus Andronicus 100, 133, 136–7 Shapiro, James 144n.6 Sharp, Buchanan 147n.49 Sharpe, James 135, 145n.10 Sharples, R. W. 162n.20 Shaw, Christopher 181n.19 Shepard, Alan 27n.31 Shepard, Alexandra 181n.8 she-tragedy 9, 166–83 Shirley, James 2 The Cardinal 196, 202 The Maid's Revenge 196 The Traitor 9, 196–212

222 Index Shoaf, R. Allen 164n.51, 165n.51 Shuger, Debora Kuller 62 Sidney, Sir Philip 59 An Apology for Poetry 3, 53, 100 Arcadia 170 Sinfield, Alan 82n.24 Sir Thomas More (collaborative play) 137 Skeat, Walter W. 162n.5 Smith, Emma 50n.48, 138 Smuts, Malcolm 204 sovereignty 3 Spear, Gary 171 Spencer, T. J. B. 114n.4 Stachniewski, John 152 Stanivukovic, Goran 6 Stationers’ Register 31, 85, 185 Steane, J. B. 24, 28n.42 Steggle, Matthew 30–1 Stewart, Alan 54 stichomythia 52, 61, 207 stoicism 52, 59–61, 62, 64, 102, 110–13, 114n.14, 116–17, 150–61 Straznicky, Marta 56 Streete, Adrian 47n.2, 151, 165n.51 Strohm, Paul 17, 25n.6, 26n.9 Strycharski, Andrew 81n.6 Stuart dynasty 80 Suetonius 178 Sullivan, Ceri 162 n.11 Tacitus 101, 175 Tarantino, Quentin 149 Taunton, Nina 27n.31 Taylor, George Coffin 164n.47 Taylor, Miles 190 Terence 36 Theatre, the (London theatre) 37 theatrum mundi 110 Thomas, Vivien 27n.36 Tiberius (anonymous) 102, 103, 107, 111 Toikkanen, Jarkko 162n.8 Tourneur, Cyril 120 The Atheist's Tragedy 1, 149 tragedy of state 7, 68–83 tragicomedy 196–212 Tricomi, Albert H. 59, 63, 65n.14 Tudor dynasty 9, 184, 189, 194 Tydeman, William 27n.36

tyranny 7, 8, 9, 16, 56–63, 77, 79, 100, 103, 105, 107–9, 112, 116, 117, 137, 171–2, 175, 179, 196, 197–8, 204, 209 van Dijkhuizen, Jan Frans 78 Vaught, Jennifer C. 179 Velázquez, Diego 151 Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham 199–200 Virginia Company 176 Vitkus, Daniel 24, 27n.31, 56 Wagner, Bernard M. 97n.1 Walker, Greg 47n.2, 195n.9 Wall, Wendy 89 Warning for Fair Women, A (anonymous) 85, 86, 87, 91–2, 93 Warwick’s Men 166 Watson, Robert N. 144n.7, 145n.15 Webster, John 2, 59 The Duchess of Malfi 1, 4, 115, 122, 149, 168 The White Devil 8, 70, 71, 116, 148–65 Weil, Judith 50n.46 Whigham, Frank 81n.8 Whitaker, Alexander 175 White, Paul Whitfield 35, 47n.4, 48n.24 Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury 118 Whitman, Robert Freeman 164n.42 Whitney, Geffrey 164n.44 Wiggins, Martin 47nn.9–16, 48nn.17–20, 48n.25, 49n.40 Wikander, Matthew H. 68 William, Prince of Orange 156 Williams, Gweno 53–4 Willis, Deborah 79 Wilson, F. P. 120–1 Wilson, Luke 145n.9 Witherspoon, Alexander Maclaren 65n.6 Woodbridge, Linda 10n.15, 137 Wyatt, Thomas 13, 34 Yarington, Robert Two Lamentable Tragedies (attributed) 2, 7–8, 84–99 Yorkshire Tragedy, A (anonymous) 2, 93 Zemon Davis, Natalie 171