Guilty Creatures : Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

Guilty Creatures This page intentionally left blank GUILTY CREATURE S Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorsh...

Author: Dennis Kezar

158 downloads 1751 Views 5MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Guilty Creatures

This page intentionally left blank

GUILTY CREATURE S Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

Dennis Kezar

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRES S

20O1

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRES S

Oxford Ne w York Athens Aucklan d Bangko k Bogot a Bueno s Aires Calcutt a Cape Town Chenna i Da r es Salaam Delh i Florenc e Hon g Kon g Istanbu l Karachi Kual a Lumpur Madri d Melbourn e Mexic o Cit y Mumba i Nairob i Paris Sa o Paulo Shangha i Singapor e Taipe i Toky o Toront o Warsa w and associate d companie s i n Berlin Ibada n

Copyright © 2001 by Oxford University Pres s

Published b y Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

Oxford i s a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication ma y be reproduced , stored i n a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form o r by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without th e prior permissio n o f Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatio n Dat a Kezar, Dennis, 1968Guilty creatures : Renaissance poetry and the ethics o f authorship / Dennis Kezar. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reference s and index . ISBN 0-19-514295-0 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 2. Death in literature. 3. English drama (Tragedy)—Histor y and criticism . 4. Poetry—Authorship—Psychological aspects . 5. Renaissance—England. 6. Violence in literature. 7. Guilt in literature. I. Title. PR428.D4 K49 2001 821.009'355—dc21 00-03466 0

135798642 Printed i n the Unite d States of America on acid-free paper

For my parents with love and gratitude


Acknowledgments

A shorter version o f chapter 3 appeared a s "Julius Caesar and th e Propertie s of Shakespeare's Globe," English Literary Renaissance 28:1 (Winter 1998), 18-46. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as "Samson's Death by Theater and Milton' s Art of Dying," ELH 66 (1999), 295-336. Part of the conclusion appeared as "Shakespeare's Guil t Tri p i n Henry V " Modern Language Quarterly 61: 3 (November 2000) 431-62.1 thank the editors of these journals for permission t o reprint. I am very grateful to Elissa Morris, my editor at Oxford University Press, for her encouragement of this project and he r patience with me. Karen Leibowitz graciously helped arrange the cover print and allowed me to monkey with the title. My production editor, Robert Milks, has been responsible for some of the kindest and most judicious cuts and suggestions in the final version of this manuscript . Alastair Fowler introduced m e to Milton, frequently helped me realize what not to say, and continue s to read over my shoulder. Jahan Ramazani first interested me i n th e eleg y and it s cultural implications . Debora Shuge r got me thinkin g about ethic s and speec h i n ne w an d ramifyin g ways . Gordon Brade n early on disassembled th e manuscrip t an d helpe d m e rethin k it s organization. I thank Stephen Orge l for suggesting that I throw away my first introduction an d write several more. Arthur Kinney provided important advic e for revision, especially with regard to Skelton and Shakespeare. Albert Labriola and Jonathan Goldberg gave me important criticis m on the Milton chapter. David Bevington was the first non-relative to call the project a book and to encourage its publication. Jonathan Crewe was also a generous advocate for the book, providing substantial suggestions for revision. The Graduate School at Vanderbilt University has supported thi s project with a University Research Grant. It's a pleasant responsibility to record m y debts to colleagues a t Vanderbilt : Hal Weatherb y and Kathry n Schwar z have rea d an d helped me revise my reading of Spenser, who scares me; Lynn Enterline directed

VIII Acknowledgments

me to Harry Berger when I needed to know his work; Drayton Nabers has been a terribly energizing person to argue with and learn from; Tony Earley has been a real friend, a source of good sense and illumination humor, and a prose model I have not followe d as much a s I should . I record special gratitude to Leah Marcus, who in her generous readings of multiple drafts has helped m e articulat e idea s I hadn't recognize d a s mine; and t o Katharine Maus , who keenl y and kindl y oversa w this book a t it s earliest an d weirdest stages . I am prou d t o cal l both Lea h and Katharin e enduring friend s and teachers. L. D . was companio n throughout . Kare n helped wit h e l pelo del perro an d much else.

Contents

Introduction: The Renaissance Killing Poem 3 ONE Courtin g Heresy and Takin g the Subject : John Skelton's Preceden t 1 7 TWO Spense r and th e Poetic s of Indiscretion 5 0 THREE Th e Propertie s o f Shakespeare's Globe 8 6 FOUR Th e Witch o f Edmonton an d th e Guil t of Possession 11 4 FIVE Samson' s Deat h by Theater and Milton' s Ar t o f Dying 33 9 SIX Guil t and the Constitution o f Authorship i n Henry V and th e Antitheatrical Elegies of W. S. and Milto n 17 2 Notes 20 7 Index 26 3


Guilty Creatures

This would be especially dangerous in a case where the fact s follow th e narrative form: in the first act, the defendant dreams about killin g his wife; in the second act , she is killed; and i n the third act the defendant is placed o n trial for the killing. Alan M. Dershowitz

Introduction The Renaissance Killing Poem I dare not, learned Shade , bedew thy Hearse With teares , unless that impudence i n Verse Would cease to be a sinne; and what were crime In Prose, would be no injurie i n Rime. My thoughts ar e so below, I fear to act A sinne, like their black envie, who detract . Dudly Diggs, in Jonsonus Virbius

IN THE FAMILIAR PLATONIC DEBATE between Poet and Philosopher, imitation elicit s indictment an d defense . The failur e o f mimesis t o correspon d exactly with its object does not necessaril y threaten th e objec t itself, but i t constitutes a potential social problem in its seductive distortion o f truth. Early modern poetry, however, engages a Platonic critique that goe s further—substituting for "imitation" a "representation" no t merel y deficient but capabl e o f destroying its subjects. Eve n Si r Philip Sidney' s Defence o f Poesie—which exculpate s the poe t by removin g literatur e fro m histor y an d locatin g i t i n a harmless imaginativ e realm where nothing i s affirmed—concludes by threatening it s critics with this capacity: if the enemies of poetry are not "to be rhymed to death, as it is said to be done i n Ireland," their "memory" will nevertheless "die fro m th e earth" through a reciprocal literary antagonism.1 That this threat seems playful doe s not remove it fro m th e cultura l contex t tha t call s fo r th e Defence, a contex t i n whic h th e boundaries between representation an d sociohistorical violence are increasingly insecure. Indeed , b y claimin g fo r literatur e a n ethica l an d politica l relevance , Sidney himself contributed t o a conception o f poetry that require d this insecurity and an attendant reflexivity . His poet becomes both defensible and i n need of defense in his claim to "the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called architectonike, which stands (as I think) in the knowledge of a man's self, in the ethic and politic consideration, with the end of well doing and not of well knowing only." 2 Cross-examining Sidney' s justification of literature i s the charg e o f destructiv e literary "doing" and consequence. Prosecuting Renaissance authors and audiences 3

4 Introduction

is an allegedly culpable representation and reception. When Renaissance poems perform thi s "ethic and politi c consideration " themselves , they offer u s important evidence of literature's implication in the violence of representation as constituted by historically contingent social relations. This study concerns a poetics of accountability—a poetics defined by its victims, and by the guilt attending their injury. Again and again, and in different genres , the poets and poems considered in the following chapters wrestle with a literary consequence that Sigur d Burckhardt has given a name: "A tragedy—to define i t very simply—is a killing poem; it is designed toward the end of bringing a man to some sort of destruction. And the killer is, quite literally, the poet; it is he, and no on e else , who devise s the deadl y plot; i t is he, therefore, who mus t in some sense accept responsibility for it." 3 Burckhardt assumes for his "killing poem" a number o f terms and relation s I dilate and qualif y fo r my own employment of the phrase here. Specifically, I clarify what I mean by the victim of such a poem, distinguishing this subjec t a s much a s possible fro m wha t seem s to b e Burckhardt's post-Romantic conception of "a man" destroyed by a socially and communicatively autonomous poet "and no one else." 4 Relatedly, I explain what "sort of destruction" such a literary victim can meaningfully be said to experience in the works I consider. The nature of this experience—the degree of vulnerability established by the poet's sympathies, the injuries o f which the poet declares his representation capable-—ca n provid e a n importan t an d dynami c understandin g of both the Renaissance author and the Renaissance literary subject. If an author's acknowledged responsibilit y t o his subject can illuminate his conception of the subject, then we must establish the criteria for evaluating the kind of "responsibility" (even guilt) the poet imagines for himself and his art. An ethical critique of literature that undermines the anti-platonic defense proposed by Sidney5 seems especially timely today. The heterogeneous motivations of this study certainly include aspects o f contemporary discourse, such as hatespeech, that point to certain conceptua l limitations i n the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As we become increasingly familiar with the premise that language ca n hav e deleteriou s socia l consequences , an d tha t i t ca n inflic t rea l harm on it s referents, "free speech " becomes increasingly contingent if not un tenable. The ethic s of representation , in fact , ar e ofte n debate d i n term s mor e analogous to those of America's Second Amendment controversies. 6 But the Renaissance offers example s for which this analogy is less projective than descriptive. In a period o f increasingly substantial "paper bullets" for instance, Milton's Areopagitica assert s that literary proliferation make s recall impossible, an d that if books are strictly licensed only outlaws will have books: I am no t abl e to unfol d how this cautelous enterprise of licensing can be exempted from th e number o f vain and impossible attempts . And he who were pleasantly disposed coul d not wel l avoid to like n it to the exploi t of

Introduction 5

that gallant man who thought to pound u p the crows by shutting his park gate.... Do we not see , not onc e o r oftener , bu t weekly , that continue d court-libel agains t the parliamen t an d city , printed, as the we t sheets can witness, and dispersed among us for all that licensing can do? Yet this is the prime servic e a man woul d think wherein this order should giv e proof of itself. If it were executed, you'll say . But certain, if execution b e remis s o r blindfold now, and in this particular, what will it be hereafter, and in other books? If then the order shall not be vain and frustrate, behold a new labour, lords and commons, ye must repeal and proscribe all scandalous and unlicensed books already printed and divulged, after ye have drawn them up into a list, that al l may know which are condemned an d which not ; and ordai n tha t no foreign books be delivered ou t o f custody till they have been read over . Unwilling t o complet e the transfe r of culpable agenc y (books don' t kill people ; people kil l people) , however , Milto n concede s th e logi c o f censorshi p a s gu n control: I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and common wealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison an d do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the pures t efficac y an d extractio n o f that liv ing intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive a s those fabulou s dragon's teeth ; an d bein g sow n u p an d down , may chance to spring up armed men. 7 Books can act, and act malevolently. We may recognize the social implications in this extravagant admission through our current sensitivity to a language charged with the violence of history, and through new technologies that continue to produce new ethical questions as they alter the nature of representation and commu nication. But in thi s study, such historical sympath y is valid onl y to th e exten t that it helps us take seriously the consequence imagined for early modern poetry by the poets writing it. Prompting this study, then, is the sense that we occupy a historical positio n tha t enable s the appreciatio n o f a n ethica l interrogatio n o f language in Renaissance poetry and culture. This historica l positio n i s arguably complicated , however , by the rhetorica l and ideologica l demand s o f an inalienabl e Freedom o f Speech: as Milton real ized 350 years ago, ethical criticism can quickly entail censorship; absolutely fre e speech mus t be entirely inconsequential. The same tension marks our theoretical moment, i n which radica l ethica l questionin g coexist s wit h a literary criticis m frequently uncomfortabl e with the same consequential poetic s i t has called into

6 Introduction

being.8 Curren t ideologica l commitment s ca n obscur e an d distor t th e ethica l terms by which speech and censorship were understood in earlier periods. If our own age privileges transgression as "an imperative peculiar to literature," 9 it has also made us less responsive to earlie r claims regarding the potentially harmfu l effects of speech on people and society. "Subversion" has not always been conceived as automatically desirable simply because it is defined agains t an automaticall y undesirable hegemony. In this stud y I address the questio n o f representational violence wit h reading s consistentl y focuse d upo n a n ethica l accountabilit y so obscured by formal containment tha t it appears sporadically and elusively in early modern studies . Rather than by any single theoretical commitment, this book's motivations ar e bette r explaine d b y th e dialogu e i t seek s wit h an d betwee n scholarly sources of ethical pressure. My emphasis on the self-consciousness attending literary killing—the representation o f a violence that itself reflects upo n the violence of representation— approaches a familiar paradigm fro m a different angle . I am indebted through out this study to Stephen Greenblatt, who has influentially labeled and explored the Renaissance rituals for such violence: "Self-fashioning i s achieved in relation to something perceive d a s alien, strange , or hostile. This threatening Other .. . must be discovered or invented in order to be attacked or destroyed."10 Kenneth Burke's earlie r description o f self-fashionin g eve n mor e clearl y anticipates m y focus on the conscious aspects of the killing poem, as it anticipates my argument that muc h o f the killing poem's reflexivity arise s from a palpable change in th e poet's conception o f himself and the function of his art: A poet's identification with the imagery of murder ... is , from the "neutral" point of view, merely a concern with terms for transformation i n general.... And the frequent psychoanalyti c search for "unconscious" desires to kill.. . puts the emphasi s at the wron g place. For the so-calle d "desire to kill " a certain person i s much mor e properly analyzable as a desire to transform the principle which that person represents. 11 "When we ask why... analysis comes upon the death experience so often an d in such variety," echoes James Hillman, "we find primarily, death appears in order to mak e way for transformation." 12 Death i s always anthropologically revealing, a telling site of history, an embodiment o f culture;13 and the imposed death , the coextensive creation o f an absence and a body, literally makes history—shaping social texts and selecting cultural subjects. When viewed as an act of imposition , a force d transformatio n o r reinscriptio n o f the socia l text, killing in fac t ha s a poetics remarkably similar to killing in fiction. This poetics both defines an d is defined by the killing poem.14 What happens , however , if we rela x our anti-intentionalis t anxietie s long enough t o acknowledge a truth avoide d by Greenblatt's passiv e constructions15 and Burke' s "'neutral' point o f view" ? Self-fashioning, afte r all , is no t simpl y

Introduction 7

"achieved" by faceless cultura l fiat; in texts as in the world it has specific agents, designated victims, an d collatera l damage . Nor ar e the "term s fo r transformation" negotiated b y the killin g poem bloodless o r unproblematicall y "general. " What happens when the ritual of self-fashioning i s held up to critique by its own priests; when we revoke the taci t benefit o f clergy whereby mastery of the word mitigates authorial responsibilit y fo r the dee d of murder; 16 when the poet's fictions of alterity are also invested with a vulnerable selfhood, and the poet reflects upon his opportunistic role in their victimization? If the social power o f literature involves "the ability to impose one's fictions upon the world,"17 where are the contact point s o f this imposition, an d ho w does suc h contac t blu r boundarie s between fiction and world? If to be imitated or dramatically rendered by Shakespeare is somehow "fatal," 18 what does it really mean for Shakespeare to kill for a living? In what ways do poet and audience collaborate in producing a literary death? Where is the distinction between representational and interpretive killing? Where the boundary between textual and social violence? Such questions defin e the reflexiv e consciousnes s o f the killing poem, which revolve s around th e am biguities engendered by the meeting of literature and crime: the word authentes can mean both "one who does something himself" and "a murderer." Such questions also lead us to reconsider the assumptions of an antihumanist theoretical movement tha t has, in the extreme, "presented languag e and ideology as all-pervasive and ultimately unconscious structuring influences on the individ ual 'subject.'"19 Historicist readings such as those performed here can accommodate many of the terms of speech-act theory, with J. L. Austin's "illocutionary" or contextual significanc e focusin g ou r attentio n o n th e consciou s act s and self conscious concerns of author an d interpretiv e community. We cannot asses s all that a text performs unles s we include for consideration th e ways the text understands its own performanc e a s an exchange between author an d community . If speech-act theor y addresse s th e shortcoming s o f a radica l poststructuralism , however, poststructuralis m provide s it s ow n critiqu e o f blith e invocation s o f agency an d consciou s signification. 20 I n fact , th e reading s tha t follow , whil e positing subjects and objects of speech-acts, treat texts poststructurally. There is no natural antagonism betwee n these approaches, and indeed thei r coexistenc e appears i n the eclecti c "practice theory " o f Pierre Bourdieu an d Anthony Gid dens.21 In an account o f this eclecticism, Giddens constellates a group of social theories that with notable exceptions, such as structuralism an d "post-structuralism" — emphasize the active, reflexive character of human conduct. That is to say, they are unified i n their rejection of the tendency of the orthodox consensus to see human behaviour a s the result of forces that actors neither con trol nor comprehend. In addition (an d this does include both structuralis m and "post-structuralism"), the y accord a fundamental rol e to language and

8 Introduction

to cognitive faculties in the explication of social life. Language use is embedded in the concret e activities of day-to-day life and i s in some sense partly constitutive of those activities.22 Giddens's "practical consciousness"—"wha t agent s know abou t wha t the y do, and wh y they d o it" 23—could labe l m y focu s i n th e text s studie d here . These texts, however, are no t simpl y reflection s o f thi s consciousnes s bu t interroga tions o f its representation in language. Because the consciousnes s considered is one of unconvicted guilt and transgression, my focus is on authors who test and reflect upo n th e effect s o f a language whose entire consequence is by their own admission beyond them. Such analysis is not directe d at holding early modern poets anachronisticall y responsible by convicting them o f some form of guilt apparent only to us ; nor does this study aim at diagnosing unconscious or irrecoverably displaced form s of authorial guilt and anxiety . Any historical analysis invoking suc h phrase s as "authorial responsibility " and "authorial guilt" must appreciate that in literature as in life "murder is where history and crime intersect,"24 a point in texts defined by th e communicativ e condition s an d consequence s conceptuall y availabl e to their author. In what degree does a poem kill? To what extent does it consciously perform violence while admitting the transgression of this performance? To answer these questions, we must consider the audience or receptio n a poet imagine s for his words. Of course the space between authorial intentions an d textual meaning i s always contested; an d an y speech-act can have perlocutionary effects be yond the ken of its original setting. But while the contingencies of interpretation and misconstructio n interes t me as they do all of the author s considered in the following pages, my analytical focus remains on the potentialities of reception as they are meditated i n specifi c texts . This focu s isolate s some o f those puzzling passages in Renaissance literature where the poet seem s to have internalized the arguments of his critics and accepte d the possibility that art can destroy its subject. Such an approach does not entail reinvesting the Renaissance author with an autonomy recen t scholarshi p ha s don e s o muc h t o challenge . Thi s approac h does, however, engage with a relatively "new ethical inquiry" that "tends to favo r recuperation o f authorial agency in the productio n o f texts, without ceasin g to acknowledge that texts are also in some sense socially constructed." 25 Milton himsel f seem s to hav e subscribed t o a similar mode l o f textual pro duction when in Areopagitica h e approved of Parliament's legislation of literary accountability: "Tha t no book b e printed, unles s the printer's an d the author' s name, or at least the printer's be registered."26 Fo r Milton literary accountability should identify both the authors and distributors o f texts, though identifying the person materially responsible for a text's production ca n be enough. On the issue of the reader's individual responsibility Milton i s of course less receptive to gen-

Introduction 9

eral legislation; but Areopagitica leave s little doubt that the individual can interpret any text to unethical ends. When Renaissance authors confront the terms of literary accountability—terms that include themselves, their methods of textual production, thei r audiences—the y offe r u s a n importan t opportunit y fo r his torical understanding. The texts this book considers enact dialogue s with their audiences, and th e ethica l dilemma s of these texts confront author s an d audi ences meditating their functions within literary systems. In a study that anticipates my focus on poetic self-consciousness and accountability, Harry Berger, Jr., has recently distinguished the "reflex" of shame—"th e avoidance of the sight of others"—from the reflexivity of guilt he finds in Shakespearean texts: I wanted to give a more central role to the textual indications of conscience because my interest in the stories speakers tell themselves about themselves and each other was centered on shades of expression that display or betray sensitivity to the failure of acknowledgment—the failure, that is, to acknowledge one's complicity in what has been done to others o r to oneself.... The textual evidence I gathered ... persuade d m e that the sinner's "re flex" or desire isn't reducible to "the reflex... to avoid discovery" and that, indeed, as an ethical language-game the sinner's discourse may tempt thos e to and through whom i t speaks to court exposure and get themselves punished.... Under guilt , what mus t no t remai n covere d u p i s yourself.... and th e sinne r i s forced t o becom e hi s o r he r ow n confessor , audience , judge, and inquisitor.27 For Berger, this realization was the product o f a development fro m whic h I have tried to benefit : I spent severa l years entranced by the sound o f my moral rhetori c befor e coming to the realization ... tha t the whole project of ethical appraisal was misguided s o long a s it le d th e criti c simultaneously to preemp t i t fro m dramatic speakers and ignore the signs of its activity in their speech. 28 Having begun such "imaginary audition," however, "in which one imagines one can 'hear' what speakers hear in their utterances as they listen to themselves an d monitor th e effects o f their speech on others," 29 I was unwilling to follow Berger in limiting it to dramatic speakers. For such limitation, as Peter Erickson has observed, involves a cost: "The self-imposed restriction of [Berger's ] focu s to polit ical effects within the play's community... leaves unanswered the question of the play's political effect s i n the outsid e world of the larger culture."30 A historically responsive metapoetic criticism cannot really limit itself to the ethical reflections

10 Introduction

of literary characters, for the dynamics of metapoetry move outward from textual self-reference to the implications of textual production an d consumption. Whe n the text s I consider thematize themselves , they thematize themselves a s historical artifacts rather than as formal ones. If the literary work's interior communit y can be criticall y confessed , wh y not th e communit y o f which th e autho r an d reader ar e parts? Why should we not includ e the poet and his audience, for instance, in Hamlet's model o f representation an d accountability? I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presentl y They have proclaimed thei r malefactions; For murder, though i t have no tongue, will speak With mos t miraculou s organ. 31 And how should we respond to Stanley Cavell's provocative assertion of our accountable consent to the murder o f Desdemona? Do I believe he will go through with it? I know he will; it is a certainty fixed forever.... I appeal to him, in silent shouts. Then he puts his hands on her throat. The question is : What, if anything, do I do? I do nothing; that is a certainty fixed forever. And it has consequences. Why do I do nothing? Because they are only pretending?... Othell o i s not pretending. 32 Through wha t model o f theatrical "community," then , should we limit th e accusatory you, as Othello nears the en d o f play: "Look o n the tragic loading of this bed. / Thi s i s thy work " (Othello 5.2.373-74) ? What opportunit y fo r historica l and socia l analysis lies in Cavell's claim of a kind of spectatorial Goo d Samarita n Law: "Tragedy shows that we are responsible for the deat h o f others eve n when we have not murdered them... . As though what we have come to regard as our normal existenc e i s itself poisoning."? 33 Suc h questions became mor e pressin g for m e as my investigation too k m e to nondramatic text s in which the speakers more explicitly involved the poet. And Berger's "self-imposed restriction" finally proved impossibl e i n th e contex t o f th e killing s performed by these texts; for their "miraculous organs " often resonat e beyond literary to social communities. But here I wish to address an objection that ha s dogged my study from it s inception. In its most charitable form this objection expresses concern for my critical sanity—m y ability t o distinguis h betwee n fac t an d fiction , t o calibrat e my response appropriatel y t o th e differen t degree s o f literary violence considered. Am I , as Cavell would say , drinking fro m th e finge r bowl? 34 Even Hamlet, afte r all, recognizes with almost clinical interest the "monstrous" rehearsal of an apparently delusional speech-act theory :

Introduction 1 1

Is it not monstrou s tha t thi s player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could forc e his soul so to his own conceit That fro m he r working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction i n his aspect, A broken voice, an' his whole function suiting With form s to his conceit? And all for nothing , For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?35 Hamlet's skeptical analysis here might just as well interrogate Burckhardt's "killing poem," or the unpublished noteboo k i n which Ludwig Wittgenstein pursues the grammar of linguistic violence to its vanishing point: Suppose we ask the question: "Are people murdere d i n tragedies or aren' t they?" One answe r is : "In som e tragedie s some peopl e ar e murdered an d not others." Another answer is, "People aren't really murdere d on the stage and they only pretend to murder and to die." But the use of the word "pretend" here i s again ambiguou s fo r i t ma y be use d i n th e sens e i n whic h Edgar pretends to have led Gloucester t o th e cliff . // Bu t you ma y say: oh no! Som e people reall y die i n Tragedies , e.g. Juliet at th e en d o f the play whereas before she pretended t o have died. // "Oh no they don't pretend at all: Edgar pretends to be a peasant to lead Gloucester to the edge of the clif f [but] h e i s really blind. " // W e shall say the words "really" "pretend" "die " etc. are used in a peculiar way when we talk of a play and differently in ordinary life. Or : the criteria for a man dyin g in a play aren't the same as those of his dying in reality. But are we justified t o say that Lear dies at the end of the play? Why not. 36 In ye t anothe r contrive d dialogu e betwee n th e Poe t an d th e Philosopher , i t would see m that onl y the Philosopher manage s to hypothesize the imaginative terms o n which both th e violence an d th e guil t of the killin g poem ar e predicated. But this is not th e end of the dialogue, for both Hamlet and Hamlet take up Wittgenstein's questions. In the same soliloquy that seems to criticize the player's misguided attempt t o literalize fiction throug h a n acting that borders upo n action , Hamlet hit s upo n a plan for catching the conscience of a criminal.37 It is a plan that entails striking the souls of "guilty creatures sitting at a play" with a cunningly presented scene. Hamlet intends to hail his uncle with the representation of a murder that has not as ye t bee n publicl y owne d i n th e play ; i n it s substitutio n o f a murderin g "nephew" (3.2.244) , this representation furthermore predicts the punishment of

12 Introduction

the crime it works to discover—thereby identifying uncle and nephew as killers. And it makes some sense that Hamlet's par t in this prelude to murder effectivel y marks him a s an author (settin g down an d inserting into the playtext "a speech of some dozen lines , or sixtee n lines" [2.2.541-2]) , for his own attempt s a t self identity repeatedly involve making words kill.38 To argue that i n the play-within-the-pla y Hamlet ha s invested a hollow and inconsequential "fiction" with socia l consequenc e and th e sympatheti c validity denied th e playe r is of course still to stay in some sens e "within th e play' s community." Eve n i n thi s thoroughl y metadramati c play , the "real " killing woul d seem to be defined agains t its representation. Bu t it is precisely in Hamlet's socia l deployment o f drama tha t w e can understand bot h th e conceptua l limitation s and the imaginative force of the killing poem: selves exist in the texts under consideration her e onl y to the extent tha t thei r violation o r nullification occasion s guilt, an admission of injury, or a desire for innocence rendered untenabl e by the evidence the poe t present s agains t himself ; subjects exist i n thes e text s only to the extent that their authors encourage us to reflect sympathetically or with un comfortable alienation upo n the process whereby they are killed into objects. And adjudicating both the conceptual limitations and the imaginative force of such a killing requires attention to its historicity. To illustrate, I cite Plotinus, whose argument ( a commonplace i n earl y modern consolation ) migh t a t firs t soun d like a definitive refutation of Wittgenstein's attemp t to literalize stage violence: [Death] come s to no more than the murder of one of the personages in a play; the acto r alters his make-up and enter s in a new role. The actor, of course, was not reall y killed; but i f dying i s but changin g a body a s th e actor changes a costume, or even an exit from th e body like the exit of an actor from th e boards when he has no more to say or do—though h e will still return t o act on anothe r occasion—wha t i s there so very dreadful i n this transformation o f living beings one into another? 39 For Plotinus, the distinction betwee n disposabl e "personages" and the essential and continuous "actor" was a simple one. But adopted by the mortals of the Renaissance, the theatricalized conception of dying and the blurred distinction between deaths literary and literal could leave Wittgenstein's mor e radical questions unsatisfied. We hear thi s i n Walter Ralegh' s imperfect applicatio n o f Plotinus' s strategy to himself , an applicatio n tha t conclude s wit h th e indispensabilit y o f one's "role, " whic h no w assume s th e suddenl y morta l positio n o f Plotinus' s "actor": "Thus march we playing to our latest rest, / Onely we dye in earnest, that's no Jest." 40 Elegists of Renaissance players similarly conflate th e lif e o f the acto r with thos e of the parts he played. With a pun tha t condense s personhoo d int o internalized "personages," Richard Burbage's elegist laments he will see "No more young Hamlett, ould Heironymo e / Kind Leer, the Greved Moore, and more beside, / That lived in him." Like Plotinus, Burbage's elegist attempts to provide the

Introduction 1 3

actor with an ontological status independent o f the illusive discontinuities of the stage and its "parts" (here, the specifi c part o f Hamlet): Oft hav e I seen him, play this part in jest, So lively, that Spectators, and the rest of his Sad Crew, whilst he but seem' d to bleed, Amazed, thought even then he died indeed. 41 By distinguishing his diachronic witness ("Oft have I seen him") fro m th e syn chronic fiction of a performative stage death ("then he died indeed"), this elegist may present skeptica l limitations t o th e concep t o f an authenti c poetic killing . But an important iron y appears in the fact that this elegy for Burbage has silently become an elegy for Hamlet; Burbage's identity merges with the "part" he has finally perfected in a silence that genuinely is the rest. Such irresolution invites a reevaluation of the age's reciprocal mimesis between dying "in earnest " an d dyin g in fiction. A short bu t significan t conceptual ste p separates Plotinus's analogy for death from Ralegh's—and from Milton's metaphor for censorshi p ("homicide") an d Sidney' s for his mistress (a "book").42 I f in th e Renaissance death indeed "comes to no more than the murder of one of the personages i n a play," the ne w valence o f "no more"—no t minimizin g deat h bu t amplifying it s fictional equivalent—directs u s to the complex logic of early modern sympathies with textual and theatrical homicides. This logic recognizes both the constructed nature of character and its vulnerable consciousness. Ethical analysis directed toward this logic attends t o what I have called admissions of textual agency and responsibility , identifications of the elided murderer strangely introduced by Plotinus's metapho r fo r death. If (as I suggest later) the killing poems of the English Renaissance present us with symptoms o f the contingency and textualize d nature of early modern selfhood , they also offer u s important evidence o f the idea of self that must accompan y any act of victimization. On thi s broader metapoeti c level, the killing poem invite s both our complicit y and ou r censure . We feel bot h invitation s i n ou r recognitio n o f Hamlet's mur derous authorship , brough t t o a poin t i n th e "fair " unblotte d line s tha t kil l Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and in his dying call for a public that will restore his "wounded name. " We may even feel , in our participatio n wit h the desire s of the killing poem, the full metapoetic force of questions such as that which Isabella cries over the bod y of her so n i n Th e Spanish Tragedy: " O where's the autho r of this endless woe?" 43 If the questio n flies beyond th e character s who have mur dered Horatio t o that figure of generic desire, Revenge, who beholds the dramatic action fro m above , why does it not als o hail Kyd? And how are Kyd's paying customers somehow to avoid this interpellation? On the register of authorial, spectatorial, and readerly investment—whereby sympathetic subjectivity or the power to suffe r i s bestowed—we cannot . An d i n thi s limite d bu t forcefu l incapacit y must lie our answer both t o Isabella's question and to Wittgenstein's .

14 Introduction

To do so is not to follow Burckhardt's prosecution of the solitary author "and no one else." The mediations an d complicitie s that shap e any performance of a text, whether through reading or acting, resist such a reductive idea of responsibility. But such focus can provide an introductory gramma r for reading the guilt of representation in each of the poems considered i n the following chapters. For the subjects of these chapters—poets and playwrights, readers and spectators— are responsible no t fo r their self-identification s an d self-presentations , but fo r their representations and interpretations of others. The killing poem can in fac t be define d a s requirin g this extrinsi c an d expandin g ques t fo r responsibility , since in each of the examples offered her e no intermediary interna l to the poem presents itself to absorb and satisf y completely the onus of death. Perhaps because so much of early modern lif e was conceived as an act of representation, representation s were themselves understood a s possessed o f a violable selfhood , a terminable life. Thu s Elain e Scarry, in a n analysi s of Donne' s displacement o f physica l bodie s wit h literar y equivalents , reveal s how suc h a poet could describe texts as if they had vulnerable bodies—and bodies as if they could be read as texts.44 Perhaps too the ontological contingencies understood as shared b y represente d an d representatio n informe d th e frequen t Renaissance practice of destroying by effigy, an d th e relate d belief that uncivil treatment of names should b e criminalized—since such treatment coul d do actual harm t o the thing s the y signified. 45 I f to represen t one' s sel f i s to live , to b e misrepre sented by others i s to underg o a kind o f death, as Hamlet (extendin g Sidney's threat) suggests when he warns Polonius of the players' power: "After your death you were better have a bad epitap h than their ill report while you live" (Hamlet, 2.2.512-14). Such a comparative threat surely takes much of its force from post-Reformation England's legal and doctrinal rejection of the belief that human words or actions had an y consequence fo r the sou l of the deceased. 46 The prohibition o f prayers for th e dea d quit e evidentl y did no t disposses s Protestan t Englan d of many of the cultural practices with which they were imaginatively associated: tombs and corpses were still desecrated in acts of punishment; the bodies of the condemned were still mutilated and displayed according to vestigial or recusant belief in postmortem suffering ; monument s an d effigie s wer e still carved; elegies and funera l sermons still written and read. 47 The theater could be an especially inviting venue for indulgin g in the conceptually proscribed; in the "Catholic" world of Measure for Measure, for instance, Claudio's terrified projections of death include the soul s "of those that lawless and incertain thought / Imagine howling" (3.1.127-28). The Reformation, then, did not put the dead beyond the imaginative reach of the living; rather it officially put their souls beyond the advocacy or prosecution of those who remained behind. And while this development ma y have limited the spiritual consequence o f the living' s treatmen t o f the dead , i t als o raise d th e socia l consequence of representation to a matter of life and death. It is no coincidence,

Introduction 1 5

then, tha t England' s court s di d no t determin e tha t th e dea d coul d i n fac t b e criminally defame d unti l 1604—whe n th e socia l effect s o f theologica l refor m might be understood an d articulated clearly. 48 By this date both the logic and the literal force of Edward Coke's claim that a man's "good name ough t to be mor e precious to him than his life" was recognized by law.49 When the purpose of art is no longer to influence a soul's divine judgment in the hereafter, but instea d to fashion a n individual' s earthl y reception an d afterlif e i n fame an d memory , th e artist's powe r becomes executive . When th e transcendent sou l i s putatively offlimits, th e "social body" 50 i s fair game—an d all the more vulnerable because it not onl y defines but focuse s the power of representation. At the most figurative level—the level at which this study begins—the killing poem destroys its subject not b y representing its death, but b y revealing that subject' s lack of ownership o f its own representation. Befor e exploring tragedy, the killing poem's inevitabl e destination, we start with the funereal poetic s Hamlet subordi nates to the publishing power of theater; for the poetics of commemoration intro duce to the Renaissanc e the possibility, meditated i n Diggs's elegy, of "act [ing] / A sinne" in criminal representation. By starting with the figurative killing in John Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, I acknowledg e tha t th e killin g poem nee d no t she d blood t o produce a body. Skelton's poem, which may introduce the word elegy t o English, also establishes the trajectory of this book, which coordinates specifi c and increasingly consequential instances of self-reflexive textual violence with inaugural moments i n England's literary and social history that reposition th e stakes of artistic performance. Sidney and Milton, conflated here to exemplify an abstract early modern mentality, occupied very different literary and historical moments. I acknowledge some of this differenc e b y accounting fo r th e Reformation' s shaping of the ethic s of representation in chapter 1 (Skelton at the beginning of the sixteenth century) an d chapter 2 (Spenser at the end of the sixteenth century). In the next two chapters, I consider an increasingly self-conscious public theater and the anxieties of its playwrights as they evaluate the consequences of misrepresentation and appropriatio n on a powerful stage . Chapter 3 reads Julius Caesar as an inauguration o f Shakespeare's Globe, an inauguration celebrate d by a theatrical killing that i s at once an admission o f authorial guilt and a declaration o f professional power. Chapte r 4 presents the multi-authored Witch of Edmonton as an anatomy of the courtroo m drama it performs—a performance that compels the audience to question the theatrical execution in which it participates as jury. Both plays—one appearing at the end of the sixteenth century and the other two decades into the seventeenth—are conscious of their victims and critical of their constituency. Both plays might even be called antitheatrical in the ethical questions they pose. More conclusively critical and self-consumin g i s Milton's Samson Agonistes, interpreted i n chapte r 5 as a product o f the Civil War, as a consequence of Milton's participation i n the killing

16 Introduction

of a king, and as an attempt to frustrate the predatory interpretive appropriation that it invites. Chapter 6 reconsiders a generic antagonism, between dram a an d elegy, developed throughout thi s book. Comparing Henry V with two explicitly antitheatrical elegie s (one possibly by Shakespeare, the other written by Milton), I suggest that the antitheatrical elegy articulates many of the ethical tensions con sidered in the earlier chapters. The concluding comparison between Shakespeare's public drama and these two elegies also enables us to understand the function of guilt and responsibility in the Renaissance conception o f authorship . Drama, and particularly the public stage investigated in chapter 3, occupies a thematically central position in this book. This stage presents early modern authors and audiences with a metonym fo r a public recurrently imagined as hostile, and for th e violent communicativ e transaction s of the killing poem. The transitio n from nondramati c t o dramati c text s also has a more specifi c literary-historica l purpose, fo r the continuu m reveal s how reflexivit y and ethica l self-evaluation move from pag e to stage. 51 Discontinuity, however, serves an analytical purpose every bit as important as continuity in this study. While each chapter poses questions that arise from a related set of concerns, each also presents an essay on a poem in which the ramifications of these concerns take different direction s and require different responses . Thi s variety of respons e proceeds necessaril y from m y acknowledgment no t onl y of the differen t context s in which these poems appear , but als o of the individual selves that constitute the subjects of these poems.

1

Courting Heresy and Taking the Subject John Skelton's Preceden t Mens tibi sit consulta, petis? Sic consule menti; Emula sit jani, retro speculetur et ante. Skelton, Garlande o f Laurell

LIKE MOS T O F JOHN SKELTON' S POETRY , Phyllyp Sparowe elude s classification and description, reflecting the spirit of an author who seems to have "tried to write himself out o f literary history" in an almost "perverse refusal t o act like a 'transitional' figure."1 Such an assessment is at least the sensible response to the work's critical history. The poem ha s been labeled both "reactionary" and "revolutionary," "medieval" and "Renaissance." 2 Applauding its bubble-like levity, C. S. Lewis has calle d the poe m England' s "first grea t poem o f childhood." Focusing on it s graver, more disturbin g rhetorica l moments , however , Stanle y Fish has argued tha t th e poe m give s voice to artisti c world-wearines s an d despair . Th e lyric has also presented challenges for those attempting to reconcile Skelton's roles as devout priest and satirical poet. In an early study, Ian Gordon tentatively compared Phyllyp Sparowe ' s liturgical allusions with th e traditio n o f goliardic parody; but mor e recently F. L. Brownlow and Arthur Kinney have claimed that th e poem's liturgical fabric—based specifically and extensively on the Catholic burial service—should b e rea d a s a devotional adaptation o f church ritual . These last two scholars warn u s of the peril of judging an old work by modern sensi bilities—a specia l temptation o f Skelton (who m Pop e found "beastly"), an d of Phyllyp Sparowe (hal f of which seemed scandalously pedophiliac to E. M. Forster, a "supreme blasphemy " t o H . L . R. Edwards). And ye t their salutar y reminde r that the poem's bizarre admixtures might have seemed comfortably familiar to its contemporaries has not satisfie d critics such as Ilona McGuiness, who argues that Phyllyp Sparowe i s a work of conservative Catholicism—parodying both human ist classicism and the quasi-religious language of fin amor to demonstrate the sacrilege and fallac y o f mixing secular art form s wit h traditiona l liturgy. 3 In short the subject of this chapter continues simultaneously to invite and frustrate historical, formal, and biographical analysis; to complicate notions of poetic orthodoxy; 17

18 Guilty Creatures

to require apology from reader s who find the moral censure or critical observa tion of its apparent transgressions either anachronistic o r misconceived. That Phyllyp Sparowe require s apolog y i n ou r ow n tim e seem s appropriat e when we consider tha t it s author sa w fit to defen d i t twice—once by incorpo rating a response within the revised poem , and again some years later in a work that sought to evaluate and justify his own bibliography. The parallel is not lost on Kinney, who aligns himself with Skelton against a succession of unfit audiences : Earlier the poem had been misunderstood too—perhaps , as Skelton implies, by envious poets who deliberately misconstrued the Commendations, much as some modern critic s have—but in a third section to the poem, the Addicyon (1267-1382) , he manage s t o fashio n hi s outspoke n reply... . Yet the Garlande of Laurell tells us that even with a third statement o f what Skelton was attempting to do in "Phyllyp Sparowe " some missed the point. 4 Well, what wa s Skelton "attemptin g to do " in this ambiguou s poem? And ho w does one assess an artist's transactions with a critical audience that seems bent on deliberately and repeatedly misconstruing this attempt, missing his point? These are the questions to which this chapter leads , but I approach the complex issue of Skelton's artisti c purpose by first saying what can be said of the forms in , if not the form of , Phyllyp Sparowe; fo r the genres that this poem explicitly calls to ou r attention reveal an important sourc e of tension fo r the poet-priest writing in the first decade of the sixteent h century , and provide a glimpse of Skelton operatin g as a fascinatingly self-conscious "transitional figure. " W e can observ e this self consciousness as the guilt and anxiety of an artist participating i n a liturgy suddenly rendered unstable and consequential b y poetry. FORMAL ANXIETIE S Phyllyp Sparowe i s as much about the composition o f an elegy and epitap h as it is constituted b y these literary forms; and though bot h genres have liturgical analogues—the eleg y with the Vespers of the Offic e o f the Dead , the epitap h wit h the burial rite's Ordo Commendationis and prayer over the tomb5—their histor y in the early Renaissance records the literary appropriation o f this liturgy. Angelo Poliziano's late-fifteenth-century tribut e to Albiera Albitia, a composite elegy and epitaph strikingly simila r to Skelton' s work i n many respects, suggests the logi c of this appropriation; a s the poem modulate s to epitaph a t its conclusion, mar moreal verse marks the culmination o f liturgical mourning and the installatio n of a literary monument : Praecedit iam pompa frequens, iam moesta sacerdo s Verba canit, sacris turribus aera sonant,. . . O quantum implex i crines, oculique, genaeque

Courting Heresy and Taking the Subject 1 9

Noctis habent! Quantus nubila t or a dolor!... Et tandem gelido s operosi marmoris artu s Includit tumulus, & breve carmen habet. Hoc iacet Albierae pulchrum sub marmore corpu s Nulla quidem tantum marmora laudi s habent Exornat tumulum corpus , sed spiritus astra. O quanta accessit gloria, lausque Polo! [The crowde d processio n no w lead s the way , the pries t sing s sorrowfu l words now, and the bronze bells ring from th e church towers.... Oh how much gloom do their uncombe d hair, their eyes and their cheeks express! How much grief clouds their faces!... And finally the tomb of elaborately worked marble shuts in the icy limbs, and has on it a short verse: "The beautiful bod y o f Albiera lies beneath thi s marble. Surel y no marbl e has suc h fame. He r bod y adorn s th e tomb , but he r spiri t th e stars : oh ho w muc h glory and fam e ar e added to the heavens!"] 6 Poliziano's smoot h transitio n fro m collectiv e lament to figurative tomb inscrip tion glosse s over a claim that later Renaissance poets mad e in increasingly bold and secular terms—that poetry itself can confer a lasting, post mortem fam e an d glory. We may be only vaguely aware, as we read the last four lines of his poem, that Albitia now exists in the lapidary words of a poet rather than in the chanted rhythms of church ritual; but this awareness Poliziano's heirs do not let us escape. The elegy and literary epitaph, as O. B. Hardison has argued, 7 served as critical sites in the early modern poet's redefinition of himself and his art. As conventional consolations, whethe r fo r deat h o r frustrate d love , were replaced b y Petrarchan self-assertion, as the will to create (and to assume the title of author) overpow ered Boethia n apath y an d th e anonymit y o f such medieval form s a s the dans e macabre, a new voice marked the poetry of praise. Indeed, this voice often concur s with a telling generic identification: Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten. From hence your memory death cannot take , Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name fro m henc e immortal lif e shall have, Though I , once gone, to all the world must die. The earth can yield me but a common grave When you entombed i n men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'erread ; And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

2O Guilty

Creatures

When al l the breathers of this world are dead. You still shall live (such virtue hath m y pen) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. 8 The "virtue" Shakespear e confidently claims for his "pen" here is a distinctly Renaissance phenomenon . Poliziano' s subtl e contes t betwee n singin g pries t an d writing poet has resolved into a liturgy wholly secular and literary; Shakespeare's "you" (muc h lik e Ben Jonson's elegize d Shakespeare) is promised a monumen t without a tomb, an eternity that only textual circulation and the worship of readers can provide. With this promise, however, come conditions. Like the epitaph, the poetically bestowed "immortal life" enshrines its recipient both in "gentle verse" and in the less fixed medium of "men's eyes." The poetic monument, then , is contingent upon the iterative act of "o'erread[ing]" an d "rehears[ing]," a contingency Shakespeare dilates by fragmenting the reading process into the work of subjective "eyes," articulate "tongues," and exhalant "mouths"; an d by imagining the scrutiny of eyes "not ye t created"—an unforeseeabl e audience that the poet nevertheles s entrusts wit h th e futur e "being " of his poem an d it s subject. If Sta viator is the exhortation o f innumerabl e classica l epitaphs , St a lector become s th e implici t (and sometimes explicit) direction for the commemorative poetry of praise in the Renaissance. But this imperativ e render s the commemorate d subjec t a voiceless object, even as it preserves that object by making it something gazed upon, something talke d about , b y an unending successio n o f passers-by. Much "virtue " i n effigy; and Shakespeare celebrates his representational and eternizing power at the end of a century in which no t a few sonneteers an d elegist s made monumenta l claims for their art . At the beginnin g o f this century, however, this power is for Skelton both mor e strange and more generically inchoate. Phyllyp Sparowe reveals a poet exploring its literary forms anxiously and irresolutely, but not innocently. The poem contains the only reference to "elegy" in Skelton's poetry, perhaps the first such reference in English.9 As we shall see shortly, Phyllyp Sparowe als o contains two references to "epytaphe" that define the poem's structural and thematic center. In the Henrician period , neithe r ter m enjoye d th e precise meaning tha t George Puttenham was still striving to fix well into Elizabeth's reign: An Epitaph is but a kind of Epigram only applied to the report of the dead persons estat e and degree , or o f his other goo d o r bad partes .. . fo r th e passer by to peruse and judge upon withou t an y long tariaunce: So as if it exceede the measure of an Epigram, it is then .. . rathe r an Elegie than an Epitaph which errou r many of these bastard rimers commit, because they be not learned. 10 By the criteria of The Arte of English Poesie, Skelton's sole poem published a s "Epitaphe"—actually a set of biting mock-epitaphs o n "Two Knaves of Diss"—migh t


be judged th e wor k o f a bastard rhymer . Yet in thi s 125-lin e poem, an d i n hi s Latin epitaphia, ther e is evidence tha t Skelto n understood th e convention s an d epigrammatic concision o f this form. 11 Of fa r more confusio n in th e earl y Renaissance, however , was th e designatio n o f "elegy. " Eve n Puttenha m discusse s "elegie" as a "long lamentation" primarily concerned with love rather than funer ary grief; and other English critics frequently employed the label to describe both love poems and funeral laments in the Renaissance, only sometimes distinguish ing between "love elegies" and "mourning elegies." 12 Throughout the Renaissance, of course, elegia referred to a classical meter that ancient poets used in poems of love and mourning; 13 and Skelton' s Latin poetry is hardly unique in its employment of the quantitative elegiac distich.14 But the ambiguity of the elegiac subject was inevitable fo r early modern reader s who encountere d thes e distichs i n th e erotic verse of Catullu s and Ovid , i n the Idylls o f Theocritus, in th e eclogue s of Virgil and Boccaccio, in the neo-Latin elegie s of Petrarch. Scalige r hardly resolve s this ambiguity when he remarks that the love elegy, like the funeral elegy, concerns a kin d o f "death." 15 Petrarc h conclude s his Rime Sparse wit h elegie s on Laura' s death that merg e almost seamlessly with his obsessions o n her living image and its absence; Shakespeare projects epitaphs i n sonnet s that ar e themselves mor e eternizing and eterna l than gilde d monuments : perhaps such generic confusio n troubles Renaissance theorists so little because it suits Renaissance poets so well. In Phyllyp Sparowe, however, the blurry line between In vita and In morte epideictic elicits both concern and excitement; and both emotions are appropriate for Skelton's drama o f generic inauguration, in which the poet explores—throug h personae that include himself—the fatal consequence s of elegizing the living. For this drama Skelton's femal e speaker sets the stage by underscoring her need for a permanent tribut e t o Philip , a need tha t th e traditiona l medieva l lament simply does not satisfy . Jane Scrope finds a certain solace in her conventional excoriation o f th e feloniou s feline an d "th e hol e nacyon/O f cattes"(27-323) ; she reconciles hersel f to Philip' s deat h b y meditating o n th e fickleness of fat e ("O f fortune this the chaunce / Standeth on varyaunce"[365-66]), an d on the de casibus nature of life ("N o man can be sure / Allway to have pleasure" [369-70]); she concludes th e medieva l birdmas s wit h th e comfortin g thought tha t he r "pret y cocke" will take his rightful place in "heven emperyall"(597); and the progression of her mourning—which corresponds precisely with the phrases of the Office of the Dea d echoin g about Carro w Abbey—culminates when sh e declares at line 602, "Amen, amen, amen!" 16 Bu t th e consolatio n o f contemptus mundi leave s Jane with a lack that ca n only be filled by a worldly art that is beyond her : Yet one thyng e is behynde, That now cometh to mynde; An epytaphe I wolde have For Phyllypes grave;

22 Guilty

Creatures

But for I am a mayde, Tymerous, halfe afrayde , That never yet asayde Of Elyconys well, Where the Muses dwell.. . (603-11) This passage equates the aureate style and literar y form she seeks with an experience unthinkable i n the femal e world o f Carrow Abbey. Jane can identif y thi s golden styl e i n a bibliography o f classical and earl y Renaissance writers which later poets would make the gatekeepers of all high art;17 but sh e herself is limited to the copious medieval romances that now leave unsatisfied her desire to commemorate Philip : Thou I have enrold A thousand ne w and old Of these historious tales, To fyll bougets and male s With bokes that I have red, Yet I am nothyn g sped , And can but lytel l skyll Of Ovyd or Virgyll, Or of Plutharke, Or Frauncys Petrarke .. . These poetes of auncyente, They ar to diffus e fo r me. For as I tofore have sayd, I am but a yong mayd, And can not i n effec t My style as yet direct With Englysh wordes elect. (794-58,767-73) Richard Halper n ha s described thi s maid' s inabilit y to "direct" her "style" as a phallic lack that inhibits discursiv e control.18 Jane' s style-envy is directed toward a distinct grou p o f authors credite d i n the sixteenth centur y with monumenta l poetry, and her bibliographical commentary reveals her lack as a generic one as well. That the comparatively modern Petrarch should be numbered among these inaccessible "poetes o f auncyente" suggests the almost immediat e classicism bestowed upo n hi m b y his sixteenth-centur y cult, and effectivel y distinguishe s a Renaissance poeti c genealog y fro m th e medieva l literatur e Jan e comprehend s (including th e wor k o f Gower, Chaucer, an d Lydgate , which sh e evaluates wit h


some sophisticatio n [784-812]) . Necessar y for the commemorativ e poetr y sh e wants, thi s genealog y also exclude s Skelton' s femal e speake r whil e creating a n opportunity fo r Skelton to assert himself "with Englys h wordes elect. " STYLE AN D IT S OBJECT S Stanley Fish has called Phyllyp Sparowe " a drama of style," a study of rhetori cal innocence and experience, 19 and this insight can illuminate the poem's mor e fundamental drama , which concerns fame an d its generic manufacture. Indeed, Jane brings us to the very stage where fame is produced when she decides to create Philip's monument with her verse: But, for my sparowes sake. Yet as a woman may, My wyt I shall assay An epytaphe to wryght In Latyne playne and lyght. Whereof the elegy Foloweth by and by. Flos volucrum formose, vale! Philippe, sub isto Marmore iam recubas, Qui mihi carus eras. Semper erunt nitido Radiantia sydera celo; Impressusque meo Pectore semper eris. (819-33) [Best of birds, beautiful one, farewell. Phillip, beneath that marble now you rest, who were dear to me . Always there will be shinin g star s i n the clear sky; and you will always be stamped i n my heart.] This passage, containing Jane's second call for "an epytaphe" and the poem's only mention o f "elegy, " probabl y reflect s th e indiscriminatio n wit h whic h thes e generic labels would b e applied throug h the mi d sixteent h century . Jane seems to suggest, after all , that elegy is a subgenre of epitaph, or that an elegy will follow the epitaph; later neoclassical authors suc h as Jonson, however, would recognize that the epitaph provides closure to elegiac performances. If Jane's Latin lines are meant as an epitaph, moreover, they also resemble the distichs of classical elegy.20 Does Skelton intend fo r us to ascribe this taxonomic muddl e to the increasingly inadequate speake r he has created, or is the muddl e his ? If the latte r i s the case,

24 Guilty

Creatures

Skelton's understanding of the literary epitaph exceeded his grasp of what would become the Renaissanc e elegy; and thi s is itself significant, for as Joshua Scodel has shown, the literary epitaph—in its concision, classicism, epigrammatic focus on craft , an d pretension s t o permanence—wa s on e o f the earl y Renaissance's most importan t forma l rediscoveries. 21 This confusio n notwithstanding , Jane's authorship clearly ceases to be cred ible as the poe m modulate s t o monumenta l poetics . The Lati n epitaph hardl y strikes u s a s the wor k o f th e "Tymerous , half e afrayde " youn g virgin wh o ha s stood in awe of Parnassus's height; it is, rather, the product o f a masterful hand , as Skelton quickly makes explicit by tearing Jane's "feigned likeness" to assert his own authorial voice. Jane's Latin is claimed by the poet; her words of mourning are overwritten with his of praise: Per me laurigerum Britonum Skeltonida vatem Haec cecinisse licet Ficta sub imagine texta. Cuius eris volucris, Prestanti corpore virgo ... (834-39) [Through me , Skelto n th e laureat e poe t o f Britain , these composition s were allowed to be sung under a feigned likeness. She whose bird you were is a maiden of surpassing physical beauty . . . ] It would be difficult t o exaggerate the importance o f this literary moment, for it interpellates not only the poem we are reading and the voice to which we are listening, but als o th e generi c tradition i n whic h thi s poe m play s a transitiona l part. If, that is, Phyllyp Sparowe belong s in the elegia c tradition, we must recognize in this moment a departure from generi c convention: it is the exposure, and even explosion, of the commemorative speaker or persona that begins to distin guish the Renaissance elegy from it s medieval predecessors. Medieval lament s suc h a s Th e Pearl an d Th e Book o f th e Duchess typically offer n o alternativ e to the perspective of the drea m vision i n which the speaker participates; concluding with th e rupture o f this vision, such ostensibly autobiographical poems afford littl e space between speaker and poet. In their amoebean or dialogic structure, such poems suggest no audience other than the interlocutor with whom the poet-dreamer work s toward consolation . I n contrast, as Renaissance poets begin to reconceive the elegy, the increased value they assign to self assertion seem s t o correspon d wit h bot h a heightened awarenes s o f audienc e and, i n seemin g paradox , a n increasingl y artificial speaker. Spenser' s eleg y for Chaucer, in the "June" section o f The Shepheardes Calender, illustrates: his fictiveness revealed both by archaic diction an d b y the convention s of pastoral elegy ,


Colin distances his "rudely drest, " "rough" rhymes and "pitiful plaints" from th e technical virtuosity of Tityrus's mourning ("Wel l couth he wayle hys Woes"); indeed h e construct s a generic hierarchy distinguishing the lo w style available to him as a shepherd-poet fro m th e epideictic accessible to those with more "skil": Nought weigh I, who my song doth prays e or blame, Ne strive to winne renowne, or passe the rest : With shephear d sittes not, followe flying fame : But feed e his flocke in fields, where falls hem best . I wote my rymes bene rough, and rudely drest : The fytter they , my careful cas e to frame : Enough is me to paint ou t my unrest, And poore my piteous plaints out in the same. 22 Like Jan e Scrope, whose rhetori c i s limited b y he r reading matte r an d whos e mourning takes the shape of archaic lament or simple needlework, Colin's styleheight is determined by his social status and he must be satisfied with a rudimentary "paint [ing] out" of his loss. Like Phyllyp Sparowe, moreover, th e fictive text of the "June" eclogue has been licensed by an extrinsic authority: whatever else they are, E. K.'s glosses serve to supplant the simple pastoral fabric of these poems and to insert a critical apparatus of relative sophistication.23 I t is in anticipation of one of Britain's most ambitious and career-minded sixteenth-century poets, then, that Skelto n effectivel y glosse s his ow n text. Indeed, we might understan d th e allure of the pastoral elegy for most of the vocational poets of the English Renaissance—from Spense r to Milton 24—as a n opportunity thu s to reveal the master' s hand; fo r artificiality presumes an artificer , and th e self-proclaimin g fictions of Renaissance elegies advertise the components o f fame's manufacture: a malleable theme and a protean poet able to present an d re-present this theme to the court of fame which is a public audience. It is therefore no accident that Skelton shows his hand an d rupture s hi s tex t a s it modulate s towar d th e epitaph , th e publi c monument. As in Robert Henryson's Th e Testament of Cresseid, where the "golden leterris " of Troilus' s "superscriptioun" 25 reduc e Cresseid' s woefu l narrativ e t o a perma nent and public account of the way in which she was perceived by others, Skelton's appropriation o f this epitaph mark s a radical shif t i n perspective: hereafter, this mourning girl will be seen through a man's eyes ; the innocenc e of Carrow will become accessible to an experienced male gaze. Investing himself with an epithet that suggests the Renaissance conception o f an inspired and nationalistic poetry (Per m e laurigerum /Britonum Skeltonida vatem), Skelton enters into the commerce of fame-making that Jane could not. He brazenly invokes "the Muses nyne"(858), gratefully thanks Apollo for imbuing his pen "With the aureat droppes" of Tagus (873), and make s it quite clear that hi s illustris stylus will proclaim Jane's merits to the ends of the earth:

26 Guilty

Creatures

Ryght so she doth excede All other of whom we rede, Whose fam e by me shall sprede Into Perce and Mede, From Brytons Albion To the Towr e of Babilon I trust it is no shame , And no man wyll me blame, Though I regester her name In the courte of Fame. (883-92) With Skelton' s assertion of the authoria l "I," Jane is elevated to a poetic theme , and we become aware of our position a s the audience of "The Commendacions " (for th e first time in th e poem , "we" ar e addressed a s Skelton confides tha t hi s lady "doth excede/All other o f whom we rede"). Appropriately, this disorientin g momen t seem s to coincid e with a n allusio n to Chaucer's House of Fame. The poet's reference to "the courte of Fame" is strikingly suggestive of the courtly Castle of Fame that Geffrey tentatively explores in the third par t o f his dream; and Skelton' s boast tha t his high praise will waft all the way to "the Towre of Babilon" echoes the babbling din of Chaucer's Whirling Whicker, that maelstro m o f rumor an d miscommunicatio n wher e no word re mains constant. But this is no dream. Here Skelton actively and consciously performs th e proces s Chaucer's Dreame r merely observed passively . He enter s th e poetry o f public fam e tha t lef t Geffre y somewha t baffled . Th e defensivenes s in Skelton's voice ("I trust it is no shame / And no man wyll me blame ..."), then, may eve n revea l hi s awarenes s of on e o f th e fundamenta l truths disclose d b y Geffrey's vision : poets such as Virgil (and now Skelton) often achiev e lasting fam e at the expens e of the wome n the y celebrate, such a s Dido (an d now Jane). It is Dido, after all, who in the Temple of Venus complains that an ambitious man has caused her infamy, submitting he r to the rumor o f many mouths : "... o f oon he would have fame In magnyfying o f his name .. . O welaway that I was borne, For thorgh yo u is my name lorne, And al myn acte s red and songe Over al thys londe, on every tonge. O wikke Fame, for ther nys Nothing s o swift, lo, as she is! " (305-6, 345-50) 26


And though she explicitly refers t o Aeneas here, we know that i t is really Virgil, who enjoys permanent status in the pantheon o f poets in book 3, through whom Dido's acts are read and sung . As we shall see, these associations with the darker side of The House o f Fame have a special resonance in Skelton's "Adicyon," where the "janglyng e jayes" of gossip an d envy , the uncharitabl e interpreter s o f "Th e Commendacions," seem to elicit Jane's shame and hi s guilt (1269ff.) . But Phyltyp Sparowe offer s us many earlier opportunities to question the morality of a poetry purporting to eternize its theme, of a poet declaring a subject's selfrepresentation his textual property ("Per me.../Haec cecinisse licet"). At the star t o f her lament , for instance , Jane reverently mentions a classical female poe t who has achieved much th e same permanence as those poets "perpetually ystalled" in the Palac e of Fame: Dame Sulpicia at Rome Whose name regystered was For ever in tables of bras, Because that she dyd pas In poesy to endyte, And eloquently to wryte .. . (149-54) In a poem that starkly genders literary ability, Sulpicia would seem to offe r Jan e a solitary model for the role she herself desires as Philip's elegist . Almost imme diately after this reference, however, Jane takes us on a long digression that crystallizes th e tension s betwee n a literary achievement suc h a s Sulpicia's an d th e consequences commemorative poetr y can have for its subject: I toke my sampler ones , Of purpose, for the nones , To sowe with stytchis of sylke My sparow whyte as mylke, That by representacyon Of his image and facyon , To me it myght import e Some pleasure and comforte For my solas and sporte : But whan I was sowing his beke, Methought, my sparow did speke, And opened his prety byll, Saynge, Mayd, ye are in wyll Agayne me for to kyll, Ye prycke me in the head !

28 Guilty

Creatures

With that my nedle waxed red, Methought, of Phyllyps blode. Myne hear ryght upstode , And was in suche a fra y My speche was taken away. I kest downe that there was And sayd , "Alas, alas, How commeth this to pas?" (210-32) If the sample r is in fact Jane's miniature version of Renaissance poesis, an art capable of eternizing the dead through "representacyon" and blazon, 27 then Philip' s words of protest reveal that such art may "kyll" even as it immortalizes. The representation briefly comes alive only to announce its capacity to suffe r an d die in the hands of another. Philip's accusation has the effec t o f recasting Jane's intention, her "wyll," as a redundant murder—recallin g perhaps the "double dying " suffered b y Eurydice under the transgressive gaze of Orpheus, a figure of the poet on whom I focus many of the ethical tensions considered in this study. 28 Out of sympathy fo r Philip , Jan e throw s awa y her needl e "for drede" (236) , retreating into th e mor e familia r (i f now somewha t inadequate ) consolation s o f lamen t and prayer: The best now that I maye, Is for his soule to pray: A porta inferi Good Lorde, have mercy Upon m y sparowes soul, Wryten in my bederoule! (235-42) Jane may want a lasting tribute to her pet, but sh e seems all too awar e that th e poet's power of representation, and of creating a work of epitaphic permanence, in som e way violates the them e being celebrated. What ma y be her "pleasure " and "sporte" draws Philip's blood an d protest a t the precise moment sh e begins to "prycke" hi s beak—the instrumen t o f voice and agency—int o her ow n textual property. 29 This young maid, whose "speche" is about to be "taken away " in another's poem , clearly identifies a potential violence in the literary appropriation of a self's "image and facyon. " As we have seen, when Skelton assumes authorship of the whole poem, when Jane's endearing needlecraf t is succeeded by his "sharp pen," there is much th e same nervous tension betwee n fam e an d injury . Bu t the maste r poe t decisively enters into what John Scattergood has termed the "occupation" o f the neoclassi-

Courting Heresy an d Taking the Subject 2 9

cal elegist.30 Skelton's verse becomes Jane's monument, an d the pious refrain that punctuates the "Commendacions" eternizes this "gloriosa foemina" givin g her an immortality contingent upo n his own poetic powers : For this most goodl y floure , This blossom o f fressh coloure , So Jupiter me succoure, She floryssheth ne w and ne w In beaute and vertew. Where Jane had demurred at the task of reproducing Philip's "image and facyon, " then, Skelton proceeds to publish several descriptions o f her in what can be disturbingly close detail. Even the most reserved of these descriptions borde r on the tactile and gustative: Her lyppes soft an d mer y Emblomed lyke the chery, It were an hevenly blysse Her sugred mouth t o kysse. (1037-40) And the more prurient explore, in Catullan fashion, the darker recesses of an avian fantasy: Her kyrtell so goodly lased, And under that i s brased Such plasures that I may Neyther wryte nor say; Yet though I wryte not with ynke, No man ca n let me thynke, For thought hat h lyberte, Thought i s franke an d fre; To thynke a mery thought It cost me lytell nor nought . (1194-2003) As in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, where the speake r slyl y hints tha t "it were a game to heere n all " o f Emelye' s revealin g rite s t o Dian a (2286) , Jane' s obsequie s t o Philip in Carrow are here thrown open to the libertine imaginations o f poet and reader alike with a n indeterminate occupatio. But Skelton' s freel y roamin g "thought" is also coercive ; and hi s assertio n o f poetic ownership creates a gap of suggestibility (does Jane's sampler associate he r with Philomela's voiceless speech? is her compariso n with "Fayre Lucres" [1018] merely part o f a harmless catalogue of praise? 31) i n which the siniste r is irrevo-

3O Guilty

Creatures

cably possible. Such possibilities flicke r i n one of the poem' s mor e opaque passages. In an episode that echoe s Jane's recollection of her abortiv e effort t o sew Philip int o art , Skelton calls into "remembraunce" a particular encounter wit h the girl—a n encounte r tha t begin s t o soun d lik e Yeats's "Leda and th e Swan " narrated from th e perspective of this different kin d o f bird: And to amende her tale Whan she lyst to avale, And with her fynger s smale, And hande s soft a s sylke, Whyter than the mylke, That are so quyckely vayned, Wherewyth m y hand she strayned, Lorde, how I was payned! Unneth I me refrayned , How she me had reclaymed, And me to her retayned, Embrasynge therewithall Her goodly myddell small With sydes longe and streyte; To tell you what conceyt e I had than in a tryse, The matter were to nyse, And yet there was no vyce, Nor yet no vyllany, But only fantasy . (1116-35) For some time the obscurity of this passage has been compounded b y an earlier editor's conjecture that its first two lines are corrupt;32 but John Scattergood gets us on the right track when he paraphrases their meaning: "'And in order to enhance what she was saying when she wanted to accomplish her purpose ...' (I t seems Jane Scrop e ha d presse d th e poet' s han d t o giv e emphasis t o somethin g sh e said)."33 Perhap s w e might entertai n th e possibilit y that her e Skelto n recall s a moment whe n Jan e tried t o amen d he r "tale " as it is constituted i n hi s poem ; perhaps she has attempted t o persuade the poe t t o revis e by straining with his compositional hand . At the en d o f Phyllyp Sparowe, as we shall see, Skelton admits retrospective evidence for such a reading. In either case, however—whether Jane tries to tell her ow n story or to edi t Skelton's story of her—in this passage it is clear her demonstrative rhetoric fails to move the poet whose "fyst" is led by Apollo (972). Her body language yields to his discursive control, in fact, at the same moment tha t he r authoria l agenc y dissolves, th e momen t whe n he r amendator y hands, metamorphosing into "fyngers smale" and palms "soft a s sylke," touch his.

Courting Heresy an d Taking th e Subject 3 1

The yielding occurs, more accurately, the momen t her hands are touched by his: just as these aestheticized hands are quickly veined in their milky whiteness (the easily inscribed surface of a blank monument an d a n unmarked page), so is their suasor y powe r immediatel y rendere d vai n b y suc h conventiona l blazon ment.34 We witness the gramma r o f this artisti c appropriatio n whe n w e assign subjects to the passage's verbs: Jane's "strayn[ing]" hand seem s to "reclaym" the poet's wandering thoughts (and pen?) at line 1125; but the next line's double object leaves unclear the subject of "retayned"; and by line 1127's "Embrasynge" the subject has become the poet who now holds her securely in his arms and in his "conceyte." Again occupatio exculpate s "fantasy," but onl y by positing a difference o f degree that near s its vanishing point ("An d yet there was no vyce, / No r yet n o vyllany..."). Jane's victimization certainly falls short of Philomela's and Lucrece's; Skelton's will and satisfactio n take a differen t for m tha n Tereu s and Tarquin's . But no, for the poet, means no such thing; and if he ultimately resists comparison with Tarquin, his decision to publish Jan e as an object of praise raises a differen t kind of culpability—that of Collatine. 35 "The Commendacions " hav e the effec t o f a contrapuntal respons e to par t I: in the above passage where Jane unsuccessfully trie s to "amend" her own representation, we hear Skelton's antiphon to Jane's sampler episode, just as his blazons symmetrize Jane's descriptions of her own "spayre," "gore," "fynger," and "lippes " (345,346, 356, 359). But Skelton's are not tru e echoes; they are refracted throug h a different communicativ e situation and medium—songs that publish what had been private . The occupatio itsel f assumes an audienc e ("T o tell you what con ceyte ...") neve r implied when Jane is the direct speaker. We have participated in the private mourning of part I—right up to its rupture at the epitaph—without really questioning our part in the interior monologue of Jane's lament.36 Indeed, Jane never addresses "us" at all, and w e read her lines expecting all the unmedi ated authenticity of soliloquy. Only after we learn that her words were composed "ficta su b imagine" do we cast a suspicious and revisory eye on their Catullan in sinuations; onl y afte r w e become awar e of th e poet' s intermediar y voic e doe s "mery thought " color ou r perceptio n o f th e bird' s transgressiv e meanderings. From th e beginnin g of "The Commendacions, " however , Skelton neve r let s us forget ou r rol e as interpreters of an equivocal text, accessories to the disclaime d disclosures of occupatio. His rhetoric is meant for us; and i n such passages as his long apostrophe to "odyous Envi" (902-69), and his Puckish concluding call for our discretion, he seems to tell us how to read—and how not to read—his eternal tribute: And where my pen hat h offendyd , I pray you it may be amendyd By discrete consyderacyon Of your wyse reformacyon;

32 Guilty

Creatures

I have not offended , I trust, If it be sadly dyscust. It were no gentle gyse This treatyse to despyse Because I have wrytten an d sayd Honour of this fayre mayd; Wherefore shulde I be blamed That I Jane have named, And famously proclamed? She is worthy to be enrolde With letters of golde. (1245-59) The rhetoric of this passage slips from an admission of discursive if not phallic guilt to a displacement o f responsibility ont o those interpreting the poem. Demand ing our "wyse reformacyon" of anything we find amiss , the poet concludes with a casuistica l interrogatio designed t o preclud e an y criticis m o f hi s commerc e with fame, a Skeltonic "blame no t my lute." Perhaps Susan Schibanoff is right to detect i n Skelto n a desire "to posses s Jane, the text , and th e readers." 37 But the problem introduce d b y this passage—a problem to which we and Skelto n shall return—is that its defense rests on collective textual ownership. Jane may be easily "possessed," but the "offendyd" response Skelton here anticipates—the charge of "wantonnes" tha t woul d provok e a n additio n t o Phyllyp Sparowe som e years later—is beyond th e control of an author who invites his readers to refor m his text. By including his reader s in the imaginativ e collaboration o f occupatio, by allowing thes e reader s constitutive powe r ove r his text's meaning , Skelton has fallen into the communicative contingencie s glancingly acknowledged by Shakespeare's "eyes not yet created" and "tongues to be your being." Having inscribed Jane's fame in Henryson-like "letters o f golde," having subsumed her identity in his monumental verse , Skelton turn s with increasin g anxiety toward the refor mational audience he has in a sense created for this poem. The aureate words that follo w are more subtly offere d t o ou r wis e reformation. Concluding the poem wit h wha t amount s t o an epitaph fo r Jane, Skelton echoes his former epitaphic intrusio n i n which he claimed the text as his: Per me laurigerum Britonum Skeltonida vatem Laudibus eximiis merito hec redimita puella est: Formosam cecini, qua non formosior ulla est; Formosam potius quam commendaret Homerus. Sic juvat interdum rigidos recreare labores, Nee minus hoc titulo tersa Minerva mea est. Rien que playsere. (1261-67)


[Through me , Skelton, the laureat e poet o f Britain, this girl is deservedly crowned wit h choic e praises . I have sung of the beautiful girl than who m there i s no on e mor e beautiful ; a beautiful girl preferabl e to an y Home r might commend . Thus , i t is pleasant occasionall y t o refres h har d labors ; nor i s my wisdom an y less brief than thi s inscription. "Only t o please." ] "Rien qu e playsere": i t migh t b e a motto lifte d fro m Maro t i n Th e Shepheardes Calender, which concludes with an Epilogue to the reader enjoining, "The bette r please, the worse despise, I ask nomore." It might be sung by Shakespeare's Feste, whose last line promises to "strive to please you every day." The object of Skelton's pleasing is less determinate than thes e late r example s an d hover s ambiguousl y between th e gir l the poe t crown s wit h praise , th e self-recreatin g poet laureate , and his audience. But the terms of pleasing, in this poem that begins with a liturgical "Pla ce bo," have changed radically by its conclusion . "I shall please the Lord in the land of the living": thus begins and ends the first psalmic unit i n the Offic e o f the Dead. Certainly Skelton continue s t o evoke this liturgy throughout "Th e Commendacions " wit h a refrain o f psalmic allusion — including specific reference s to the burial service's Commendations o f the Soul. 38 Yet th e lor d tha t Skelto n beg s t o pleas e at line s 996, 1061, and 111 4 is gendere d feminine (domina), 39 and in several passages he modifies his psalmic refrain int o an extrabiblical encomiu m o n his "maystres" : Omnibus consideratis, Paradisus voluptatis Hec virgo est dulcissima. (1216-18) [All things considered, thi s sweetest of all girls is a paradise o f delights.] Even i f we accoun t fo r th e argumen t Kinne y makes persuasively—tha t Jane' s "dolorous mater " (398) has made her Skelton's Mater Dolorosa, tha t the sight of the piously grieving girl invites the weirdly erotic aesthetics conventionalized b y the Marian hymn40—we must feel that the language of fin amor obtrudes o n and exploits its occasion in this poem. We must feel this because Skelton makes quite clear the self-serving, appropriative natur e of "The Commendacions' " comfort . A bird's death , and Jane' s inward grief , could no t b e farther fro m th e min d o f a poet wh o declares himself so "ravyshed" by Jane's exterior That in wordes playne I cannot m e refrayn e To loke on her agayne . (1008-10) These "wordes" ar e even more "playne" tha n w e may think; fo r in them Skelto n admits th e dangerously irresistible desire for an image ("I t wol d mak e any man /

34 Guilty

Creatures

To forget deadl y syn," "And any man conver t / To gyve her hi s hole hert" [108081,1101-2]) that can only be placated by looking on that image again in the idolatrous refrains o f his lines. The pain to be consoled in "The Commendacions " i s that of a poet who has seen: She made me sore amase d Upon he r whan I gased, Me thought mi n hert was erased, My eyne were so dased. (1103-6) And the consolation fo r this pain is to represent an amazing presence, "To make a relation / Of her commendation" (961-62) . This desire, and this textual placebo, the poet als o recommends t o his readers (and "any man") wit h a conspiratorial wink. Skelton's commendation , hi s state d purpos e "He r beauty e t o commende " (859), requires an audience responsive to descriptive appetizers but willing to be fed o n the air of occupatio. This air, however, is promise-crammed; and in eating it one finds one's self at Skelton's table, giving hungry ear to a poet in search of an imaginative audience: But whereto shulde I note How often dy d I dote Upon her prety f o t e ? . . . Whereto shul d I disclose The garterynge of her hose? It is for to suppos e How that she can were Gorgiously her gere. (1145-47,1175-79) The invidious reader Skelton protests against throughout "Th e Commendacions " exercises the same invasive supposition an d imputational fantas y invoked in this partial exfoliatio n o f a "daysy delectable " (1051) . Suc h a reade r merel y dilates Skelton's own unprovoked defensivenes s ("Wherefore shulde I be blamed . . .?") into admission s of guilt, thereby assuming th e precarious stance of a censuring voyeur. But envy and innuendo—the "serpentes tonge" that remains "never styll" (920,994)—are possibilities Skelton himself allows by admitting an audience that can take offense (jus t a s easily as pleasure) from hi s interactive text: it is impossible t o inves t th e reade r wit h th e powe r t o refor m an d suppos e withou t als o granting him th e privilege to mak e of the tex t what he will. Skelton's need no t just to represen t Jan e for himself, but t o commen d he r t o someone ("Wheret o shuld I disclos e ...?") , may suggest a n analog y with th e epitaph , which relie s


upon th e passerb y to giv e significance to words tha t mea n nothin g b y them selves. This reliance is of course fundamental to a poetics of praise that pretends to any monumental permanence ; but th e inclusion of a validating public audience—dismissed b y Donne as "the laity"—ca n hav e dire consequences fo r th e object o f praise. It i s instructiv e t o note , fo r instance , tha t i n hi s eroti c poem s o n a girl' s "passer? eve n Catullus makes no explicit reference to an onlooking an d corrob orative reader; and i n his most famous love poem, Song 5, he creates a world of private intercourse—share d onl y wit h hi s love—b y excludin g the rumor s o f senes seueriores and confoundin g the prying eyes of a kiss-counting villain.41 For Catullus publicity is punitive. Only when his beloved has ceased to be a secondperson subject (and ceased to be loved) does he invite others to read between his lines an d gossi p abou t he r expose d sexualit y (se e especially Son g 58). In "th e Commendacions," however , there is no suc h dualism between private exchange and public utterance. Indeed, by referring to Jane in the third person throughout , and b y inviting a vaguely defined spectatorshi p t o gaz e upon her imag e in his verse, Skelton converts his private visions into public property there for the taking. Such is the translation from Petrarch' s Rime 190 to Wyatt's "Who s o list to hount, " a contaminatio anticipate d b y th e advertisement—"Wh o s o lys t beholde " (1073)—that hangs elliptically over Skelton's commendations . The rhetorica l terms o f Song 5, or o f Spenser's Amoretti (introduce d wit h a declaration o f th e importanc e o f pleasin g a n audienc e o f one : "Who m i f ye please, I care for other none") , circumscrib e the contingencie s o f communication and judgment. If Spenser can make his sentiments known and persuasive to Elizabeth Doyle, he can dismiss the "Venemous toung" of public scrutiny as an uninvited guest—retiring to the Epithalamion, where both lovers share "an endlesse moniment" of embowered understanding. As we shall see in chapter 3, this idea of a narrowly defined audienc e distinguishes Jonson's conceptual effort s t o limit th e potentia l fo r misconstructio n inheren t i n publi c drama: "Wher e i f I prove the pleasure but o f one / So he judicious be; He shall b'alone / A Theatre unto me." 42 Bu t the rhetori c o f Skelton' s commendation s ha s fa r less strategic focus; it hovers indeterminately in the space between a poet and his unspecified audience, where it exists "only to please." Nor does Skelton define the purpose of his rhetoric, the nature of its pleasure. We are told, in several prolepses, that h e intends "no vyce," "but onl y fantasy"; that h e deserves no blame for publishing the "honou r o f this fayr e mayd. " But one feel s increasingl y that suc h apologies protest too much . And too little: "fantasy" provides no definitive antithesis for "vyce," and Jane's "honour" hardly seems the epideicti c objec t of the poem' s fantastications . For Alexander Barclay, author of the onl y contemporary criticism of Phyllyp Sparowe that survives, vice and fantas y in fact merg e in Skelton's dishonorable verse :

36 Guilty

Creatures

Holde me excusyd: for why my will is gode Men to induce unto vertue and goodnes , I wryte no jest ne tale of Robyn hode Nor sawe no sparcle s ne sede of vyciousnes. Wyse men love vertue, wylde people wantones; It longeth nat to my scyence nor cunnynge For Phylyp the Sparowe the Dirge to synge. 43 It is easy to discount this censure, as it is easy to discount the puritanical rants of the antitheatricalists later in the sixteenth century, if one adopts an anachronistic notion of literature's intrinsic entertainment value. But such was no defens e i n the early Renaissance, when even the most fervid advocates of humanism sought to legitimize art by demonstrating its ability to induce virtue: Skelton's "Rien que playsere" cut s in half Horace' s imperativ e to teac h an d delight , producing a far less stabl e statemen t o f poetic purpose . O f cours e we can answe r that Barclay reads Skelto n to o literally , takes to o seriousl y hi s tal k o f a desir e vergin g o n "deadly syn. " Skelto n make s thi s hi s ow n defens e i n th e "addicyon, " wher e he claims that Jane's "commendacyon " Can be no derogacyon But myrth and consolacyo n Made by protestacyon, No man to mysconten t With Phillyppes enterement. (1276-81) And reader s such a s Lewis corroborat e thi s defens e b y celebrating the poem' s pleasant levity . Lik e Catullus's , however , Skelton' s i s a n "intens e levity," 44 an d James Russell Lowell comes nearer to its effect i n this poem when he makes "the ignominious confession that [he] relish[es] Skelton's 'Philip Sparowe.'" 45 Fo r the "addicyon" calls into question not only the defense it submits, but also the pleasure the poem has provided—and the transactions that have yielded it. Stopping just short of his own ignominious confession , Skelton turns—like Shakespeare's Pandarus—on a n audience of his own making and seduction . THE POET ' S WORDS AN D TH E WORL D This discussion began with the suggestion that Phyllyp Sparowe i s an exploration of new and poorly articulate d poetic forms, a venture into th e representationa l power o f a distinctly Renaissance conception o f poetry. The danger of such a n approach i s that o f a simplifying retrospectiv e analysi s that impose s upo n hi s work prophecies o f what i s to come. 46 Skelton' s date s do no t encourag e tal k of his influence by what we call Petrarchism, as the conventional terminus a quo of


this aspect of English literary consciousness still lies some years off.47 Indeed, we cannot eve n be certai n o f the exten t o f Skelton' s direc t exposur e t o Petrarch' s vernacular poetry , an d th e seemingl y Petrarchan element s o f Phyllyp Sparowe merge frustratingl y wit h thei r origin s i n th e lyric s o f fi n amor. But Skelton' s poem ca n accurately be read as the mora l drama of an artist entirely conscious of the allurin g and dangerou s powe r held b y such laureate poets a s "Frauncys Petrarke"—the powe r to erec t an ar t o f obsessional desir e with al l the perma nence of a classical monument. A limited justification for this reading lies in the genres transmute d i n thi s diptychou s poem , th e literar y epitap h an d funera l elegy mentioned b y a girl and converte d to a poetics of praise by her admiring poet. A stronger argument for this reading appears in the self-consciousness with which Skelton executes this poetry, the bravura with which he tests it s dissective fetishism, th e frictio n produce d b y his ow n commerc e with fame— a psychomachy no t unlik e tha t o f Petrarch' s De secreto, which equate s the worshi p o f Laura and the desire for the laurel with the sins of lust and pride . We need not loo k forward t o a time when Edmund Waller could knowingly declare of a poet's successful failur e to please his mistress: Yet what he sung in his immortal strain , Though unsuccessful , was not sun g in vain; All, but the nymph that should redres s his wrong, Attend his passion, and approve his song. Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise , He catched at love, and filled his arms with bays. 48 Nor need we wait for Sidney to remind us, in voices both feminine and masculine, that th e poet's ulterior desire to publish ca n threaten the honor o f a woman. 49 For in the middl e of his own defens e i n the "adicyon," "Mayster Skelton , poete laureate" reveals that "Laura" has returned fro m voicelessnes s to make a critical response: Alas, that goodly mayd, Why shuld she be afrayde ? Why shuld sh e take shame That her goodly name, Honorably reported , Sholde be set and sorted , To be matriculate With ladyes of estate?.. . Inferias, Philippe, tuas Scroupe pulchra Joanna Instanter petiit: cur nostri carminis illam Nunc pudet? Est sero; minor est infamia vero. (1282-89,1371-73)

38 Guilty

Creatures

[Phillip, the beautiful Jan e Scrope urgently asked for your obsequies. Why now is she ashamed o f our song ? It is too late ; shame is less than truth.] As Philip returned fro m the dead to object to Jane's commemorative stitching—a bit of poetic ambition that drew his blood and threatened to "kyll" him "agayne"— so here has th e mournin g gir l been newl y pained b y Skelton's shar p style . We learn of this pain as we learn of Philip's, in those textual gaps through which the "dead" speak. The effect o f her displeasure, implied in an otherwise caustic rebuttal and execration of "suche as have disdayned / And of this worke complayned" (1374-75), is unsettling for both Skelton's justification and the reader attempting to accept it. If Jane is among the poem's plaintiffs, how do we distinguish between her shame and Barclay's outrage? If the putative object of the poem's consolation (and this speech situation is quite removed from "The Commendacions'" dramati c monologue) remain s anything but console d by the poem, how do we assess the pleasure of Phyllyp Sparowe* T o whom i s this pleasure offered? What response is left th e reader , after Jane' s demurral, beside s censur e or a guilty interest in th e ambiguous "truth" Skelton seems to have promoted ove r her infamy? 50 "If I speak the truth, " Skelton would wonder at the conclusio n of Agaynst the Scottes, "why do you no t believ e me?" 51 Fish is right t o point t o thi s frustrate d response to skepticism as the Cassandra-lik e stance assumed by Skelton as religious vates.52 And this question, which appears in Latin at the end of an indignant subiectio entitle d "Unt o Dyver s People tha t Remor d thi s Rymyn g Agaynst th e Scot Jemmy"—a defens e mingle d wit h invectiv e against those wh o "wrangyll / Agaynst this my making"—comes very close to the position an d tone of Phyllyp Sparowes "addicyon. " Bu t th e difference s betwee n th e poem s ar e crucial : th e "truth" of the ostensibl y encomiastic "Commendacions" i s far less determinat e than the meaning of Skelton's satirical verse; as a performative utterance, moreover, Phyllyp Sparowe has had the (apparently) unintentional effect tha t is the in tended effec t o f Agaynst the Scottes. The poet can defen d himsel f from th e latter poem's misreaders by claiming that they are simply defending the wrong people. But how can a poet protest against willful misconstruction when his poem offer s only interpretiv e invitation , when Jane herself objects to her ambiguou s representation? Skelton has realized (and allowed us to realize) the displeasure of his "maistres," the poem's failure a t the level of intersubjective rhetoric; but no t fo r him a recusatio of the laure l he ha s embrace d instead . It i s too late . In fac t th e "truth" that Phyllyp Sparowe publishes is an allegory of both the inevitability and the irreparabilit y of fame-making, an allegor y that appear s in th e poem' s ver y structure. As we turn the panels of its diptych, panels that hing e on a neoclassical epitaph, all is changed; and the terrible beauty born—the spawn of revision, interpolation, an d appropriation—is finally one in which the words and wishes of the beautiful gir l no longer matter. Or at least they do not matte r enough t o


return t o the poetics Skelton has rendered belated, anachronistic. This i s not t o say, however, tha t h e ca n kee p fro m lookin g ove r hi s shoulde r a t wha t h e ha s wrought. Near th e en d o f the "addicyon, " Skelto n breaks from 7 0 lines o f cursing th e poem's misreaders to expres s a bewilderment no t unlik e th e Dreame r i n Th e House o f Fame—a futur e shoc k Lewi s has compare d wit h one' s "first introduc tion t o wha t theologian s cal l 'the World ' an d other s 'th e racket ' o r 'rea l life,' " where "things are overheard, things are misunderstood."533Whe n the poem futilel y beckons bac k it s eponym—ignore d throughou t "Th e Commendacions"—t o explain Jane's displeasure, we feel at once a nostalgic urge and the urgency of this new world: But, Phylyp, I conjure thee .. . That thou shortly tell, And she w now unto m e What th e cause may be Of this perplexitie! .. . (1362,1367-70) In the sampler episode, Jane's confusion ("Alas, alas, / How commeth this to pas?") arose fro m th e imagine d complain t o f he r mourne d subject , a complain t tha t caused Jane to abjure the art of commemoration. But the "cause" of Skelton's "per plexitie" is the poetic power he continues to wield despite suc h complaints; an d this power prove s far more adumbrativ e o f Sidney's conceptio n o f poetry tha n reminiscent of Chaucer's . Like Phyllyp Sparowe, Th e Defense o f Poetry end s with a mocking curse of it s misreaders. Stopping just short o f a literal killing poem, Sidney dismisses the enemies of poetry with a declaration o f the power he has defined : Though I will not wish unto you the ass' s ears of Midas, nor t o be drive n by a poet's verses (as Bubonax was) to hang himself, nor t o be rhymed to death, as it is said to be done i n Ireland ; yet thus much curs e I must sen d you in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor fo r lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from th e earth fo r want of an epitaph. 54 Skelton's envoy claims a similar power of erasure; his kills not with malign neglect, however, but wit h a living epitaph: Than such e as have disdayned And of this worke complayned , I pray God they be payned

4O Guilty

Creatures

No worse than is contayned In verses two or three That folow e a s you may se. Luride, cur, livor, volucris pia funera damnas? Talia te rapiant rapiunt que fata volucrem! Est tamen invidia mors tibi continua. (1374-82) [Why, green envy, do you condemn the pious obsequies of a bird? May the same fate which seized the bird also seize you! Yet death i s continuous fo r you through envy.] In th e "addicyon" we may have seen a gesture toward Chaucer' s "Retraction," a momentary admissio n tha t hi s tale "of best sentenc e an d moos t solaas " verged "into synne." 55 Bu t Skelton's fina l defian t not e drown s ou t self-incrimination , reveling i n th e retributiv e infliction of wasting pain, the poeti c confermen t of mors continua. His reference to "the fate that seized the bird" threatens no t simply with death, but with subjection to literary representation: it has been Philip' s fate to become Skelton's poem. I n the period of Phyllyp Sparowe's composition , Skelton in fact use s a poem entitle d "Epitaphe" posthumously t o humiliate two of his enemies—the poetic equivalent to the early modern practice of exhuming bodies for further punishment . The problem wit h Skelton's poetically bestowed "payne" in Phyllyp Sparowe, however, is that it admits the same potential fo r literary harm that his defens e denies. Similarly, his curse upon th e poem's mis readers reminds us of those many instances of parallelism in which Jane has herself experienced "the fat e that seized the bird." "Why should ou r endeavo r be s o loved, an d th e performanc e so loathed? " Pandarus inquires of a theater filled with suddenly uncomfortabl e voyeurs; "O world, world! thus is the poor agen t despised," he complains o f unidentified but imminent censure—befor e promising t o bequeat h t o al l his "diseases."56 Skelton's too is the communicative crisis of an agent of the world—caught betwee n endeavor and performance, between desire and its consummating articulation . Indeed th e poet likel y had caus e to identif y wit h the "Pandaer" disapprovingl y described by Jan e as a bearer o f "bylles / Fro m one t o th e other " (682—83). As Greg Walker has observed, the method i n which Skelton first circulated man y of his manuscripts is less than clear. 57 Speke, Parott, for instance, seems directed to ward a small number of readers in the Court and royal household; like Why Come Ye Nat t o Courte? however, Collyn Clout seems to assume eventual publication a s a broadsheet or pamphlet, since its author complains against the "saducees" who "Nor wyl l suffre thi s boke / By hoke ne by croke / Printed fo r to be." 58 But th e distinction between print and the kind of public dissemination availabl e to Skelton a s priest and performing poet may have been unclear even to him: while Why


Come Y e Nat t o Courte? announces itsel f as a fixtur e "a t ever y solempne feest, " Skelton also calls it a work of "pen [and] inke," a "memoryall," a "wanton scrowle " of fouled paper, and—in th e epilogue—a "byl."59 Though writte n earlie r in the poet's career, Phyllyp Sparowe occupie s the same gray area between confined occasionality and public utterance; it vacillates between an odd form of pastoral comfort (the grieving parish girl, after all, has heard the poem) and divulged confession (we have heard it, too). For Skelton, of course, even court poetry is not privileged with the privacy and guaranteed reception of an ideal coterie audience.60 But the fame Skelton meditates in Phyllyp Sparowe (fo r himself and fo r Jane) requires an even more diffuse audience , in which the possibilities for misunderstanding an d miscommunication proliferate . It requires, in fact, commerce with the world— the unpredictable arbiter but necessary constituent of fame. Uncomfortable with his rol e a s go-between, awar e of the subjectiv e volatility o f voyeurism, Skelton nevertheless conveys his "byl" to customers beyond his interpretive control and evaluative trust. The communicative dram a produce d b y such a transaction i s hardly uniqu e to Phyllyp Sparowe. Indeed , i t is a recurrent theme fo r Skelton, and on e woul d search with difficulty fo r a sixteenth-century poet more consistently torn between the desire to share his works with the world and the contrary urge to retain sole ownership o f their meanin g (agai n Jonson—whose proprietary prologue s and epilogues diffe r s o strikingly from Shakespeare' s in their attempts to control th e interpretive and evaluative contingencies of public theater—comes closest). But this drama i s heightened i n Phyllyp Sparowe, which records the growin g pains, rhetorical and formal, of a public poetics. For neither Jane nor Skelton is the private and belated mourning of part I adequate; for both, the consequences of "The Commendacions" ar e troubling. For Skelton , the poem' s consequence s reache d beyon d it s firs t publication . Evidence of the poet's continued obsession with the fate of Phyllyp Sparowe appears in the Garlands or Chapelet o f Laurell, Skelton's mos t audacious visit to Chaucer' s House o f Fame. This lon g poem , muc h o f whic h concern s th e justificatio n o f Skelton's bibliograph y t o th e "Quen e o f Fame, " spends mor e line s defendin g Phyllyp Sparowe tha n i t devotes to any other work . Skelton's advocate in Fame's court is "Occupacioun," who generally catalogues "sum part e of Skelton's bokes and baladis " with cur t editoria l glosses . When Occupaciou n arrive s at Phyllyp Sparowe, however , sh e transport s Skelton' s entir e 114-lin e "addicyon" int o he r testimony.61 Bu t Occupacioun introduce s this prefabricated defense with an addition of her own, an invitation fo r all readers to fashion the poem a s they like it: Of Phillip Sparo w the lamentable fate , The dolefull desteny , and the carefull chaunce , Dyvysed by Skelton after th e funeral l rate ; Yet sum there be therewith that take grevaunce

42 Guilty

Creatures

And grudge therat with frownyng countenaunce ; But what of that? Hard it is to please all men; Who lis t amende it, let hym set to his penne. 62 In Phyllyp Sparowe Skelto n had briefly solicited the amendatory powers of "wyse reformacyon"; and th e Garlande of Laurell concludes with an envoy in which th e fame of this "litill quaire" "will sprede / In length and brede " "With toleracyon / And supportacyon / Of reformacyon."63 Skelton's mos t ambitious attempt t o assemble his oeuvre, to constitute it s collective merit and meaning in a triumphant courtroom performance , still includes protestations "Ageyn e envy, / And oblo quy." But for the earl y Tudor poe t capabl e of imagining such works as "lykely / Over all the worlde to sprede," 64 th e indeterminacy of textual reformation is an increasingly inescapable occupationa l hazard . Skelton' s desir e to defin e fo r his poetry a fit audience, however few, resist s his need to communicate with "all men." "ENGLISH WORDE S ELECT" AN D TH E REFORME D TEX T The epigraph introducing m y study suggests the self-consciousnes s with which Renaissance poets came to wield their commemorative power, the uncomfortable proximity of apparently genuine elegiac tribute and injurin g verse. Dudly Diggs hesitates t o contribut e t o Jonson' s poeti c monumen t no t becaus e his motiva tions ar e privilege d wit h authenticity , but because the y ar e not—becaus e hi s "thoughts" remain "below, " indistinguishable from th e impudenc e and env y of Jonson's detractors. Shakespeare's Claudius, whom Digg s probably has in mind, dramatizes suc h earthboun d linguisti c hypocrisy as repentance nullifie d b y an unwillingness to let go of property—a tenacity that default s covenants divine as it does contract s mercantile . While "still possessed / O f those effect s fo r which [he] di d the murder," the fratricide's thoughtless words will never to heaven go. 65 Like Diggs, the autho r o f Phyllyp Sparowe invite s a hermeneutics o f suspicion, providing many opportunities to question the true altitude of his "mery thought." And thoug h i n th e "addicyon " Skelton struggle s fiercely to separat e his intentions from thos e invidious readers who twist the poem to Jane's shame, he cannot tenably deny complicity with this reading—he can only condemn those who do not like it. Perhaps Claudius's aborted prayer for forgiveness, however, comes closer to the odd mixture of eruptive guilt and willful tenacity that makes Skelton's posture in Phyllyp Sparowe a contortion of kneeling and standing. If Skelton al lows us to intimate—through Jane' s disembodied complain t and his own uneasy defense—that h e has someho w injure d th e subjec t o f his poem, h e also leaves the poem stil l possessed of those effect s for which he did the injury. For Skelton, as fo r Claudius , thes e unrelinquishabl e "effects " includ e a quee n an d crown ; Skelton's queen, however, is fame, his crown the laurel—both achieved through a kind of killing, perhaps, but both worth the price.


What killing has Phyllyp Sparowe performed ? What price has the author paid for th e poem ? We need no t trivializ e with hyperbol e th e subtlet y wit h whic h Skelton explores the injury of representation; nor ignore the obvious difference s between Jane' s horrible vision o f murderous "representacyon"—which ha s her needle waxing red with Phillip's blood—and he r less violent (mis)treatmen t by Skelton's pen. It would seem that Skelton has chosen the most innocen t and in consequential of poetic occasions to ponder the physics of a poetry of experience and potentia l consequence ; an d thoug h i n th e nex t chapte r late r Renaissance poets mak e the connection betwee n representation an d killing more unmistak ably literal,66 Skelton's early contribution to this genealogy is principally allegorical: Jane dies only to the extent that sh e is put t o silence and shame by the gaze of readers invited to an interpretive feast, only to the extent that the objections she is allowed to voice after Skelto n kills off his speaker are those of a ghost. But the pric e of Phyllyp Sparowe i s nevertheless significant, for what Skelton surrenders in this poem i s the possibility o f an entirely defensible poetry—the inten tions an d consequence s of which the autho r ca n claim a s his private property . Entrusting Phyllyp Sparowe t o hi s readers ' "reformacyon" ma y affor d a kind o f expedience, but Barclay' s response would no t b e the onl y instanc e i n th e first decades of the sixteenth century when this bird came home to roost. In fac t th e interpretiv e energie s and textua l reassessment s of a more radica l reformation wer e already sweeping Europe during thes e years, perhaps giving Skelton cause to reconsider the collaborative participation he had solicited fro m his individual readers . In 1522—a year before the publicatio n o f the Garlande of Laurell an d it s open invitation t o se t a pen t o an y offensive passage s in Phyllyp Sparowe—Skelton protest s agains t Cardina l Wolsey' s dissolut e an d parasitica l court in lines that startle us with a political and theological resonance conferred by history: "God o f his miseracyon / Send better reformacyon." 67 Six years later, however, when the pressures of the Reformation began to consolidate the cause of conservative Catholics in England, Skelton's ideal poetic communication becam e much les s open-ended. In the Replycacion, th e poet's last work and "final statement" on his craft, 68 Skelto n narrows the scope of his text's meanin g by declaring it "alway canonically prepensed [premeditated]" ; and h e is just as careful t o delimit the audience and the interpretation he expects for this poem, submitting it only "unto the ryght discrete reformacyon of the reverende prelates and moche noble doctours o f our mothe r Holy Churche."69 Th e Replycacion i s many things. It is almost certainly an answer to two Cambridge scholars—Thomas Arthur and Thomas Bilney—recentl y abjured for preaching the "literalist heresy " against the "idolatrous" veneration of the Virgin Mary and other saints. 70 It may also represent Skelton' s mor e genera l participation i n an officiall y orchestrate d attemp t t o eradicate the "heretical movement" in England with "the weapon of eloquence." 71 And i t surely constitutes Skelton's grandes t claim s fo r a poetry a t once socially salutary and heavenl y inspired. Bu t as a poem that put s Skelto n o n th e givin g

44 Guilty

Creatures

end of censure, the Replycacion als o becomes an ironic companion piece to Phyllyp Sparowe. Indeed , in its critique of a false an d dangerou s theologica l poetics , Skelton's last poem replicates many of the ethical and artistic issues provocatively raised by his earlier work; and this chapter concludes with a brief consideration of how the Replycacion's respons e to the threat of heresy redounds onto Phyllyp Sparowe's invitation s t o haeresis, or textual "taking. " The verses of the Replycacion see m easily distracted fro m the purpose Skelton announces in prose: to controvert thos e who have preached "howe it was idolatry to offr e t o ymages of our blesse d lady, or t o pray and g o on pylgrimages , or t o make oblacions to any ymages of sayntes in churches or elsewhere." In a few verse passages Skelto n doe s rais e specifi c doctrina l charges, 72 but hi s rea l concer n is with th e motivatio n behin d suc h heterodoxy. Th e abjured scholar s ar e aligned with a triad o f heretical reformers, for instance, but principall y to illustrate th e graspingness for individual fame that has led them to doctrinal nonconformity: Ye scored ove r hye In the ierarchy Of Jovenyans heresy, Your names t o magnifye , Among the scabbed skyes Of Wycliffes flessh e fives . Ye strynged so Luthers lute That ye dawns all in a sute The heritykes ragge d ray , That bringes you out of the way Of Holy Churches lay. (161-71) If "Luthers lute" merely hints a t Skelton's conceptio n o f heresy as a poetic phe nomenon, elsewher e in the poe m thi s figuratio n i s made mor e explicit . In fac t Skelton seem s to echo Barclay's criticism o f Phyllyp Sparowe a s he complains of the heretics' "wytlesse wantonnese, enbrased and enterlased with a moche fantas ticall frenesy o f their insensate sensualyte." In Skelton's eye s the abjured preachers are predatory poets who have sought "to magnifye their names" (10) through prurient representation tha t confuses sacre d and erotic : Ye heretykes recrayed, Wotte ye what ye sayed Of Mary, mother an d mayed? With baudri e at her ye brayed; With baudy wordes unmet e Your tonges were to flete ; Your sermon was nat swete;


Ye were nothyng discrete; Ye were in a dronken hete... For shamefully ye have wrought, And to shame your selfe have brought. Bycause ye her mysnamed, And wold have her defamed . (45-53, 57-60) For Skelton at the end of his career, "discrete[ness]" is the better part of virtue for an epideictic poetics that ventures into the religious realm; and he blasts the fameseeking reformers fo r a "fantasticall frenesy" that is anything but contained—for "Wytless wandring to an d fro " (74) that fashion s Mar y ("mother an d mayed" ) into the bawdy body imputed by Jovinian. This may seem an odd rhetori c with which t o counter the reformers' iconoclasm: if anything, it was the perception tha t Marian devotion ha d become to o distractingly erotic and extraliturgical that motivated their scriptural purification; one may feel, moreover, that the author of Phyllyp Sparowe project s too much by attacking thes e reformer s fo r exploitin g Mar y as an eroti c objec t i n thei r ow n soaring ques t fo r fame . An d ye t Skelton' s rhetoric— a rhetori c w e shal l hear again fro m sixteenth-centur y Purita n antitheatricalists—ha s a kin d o f logic . Arthur and Bilney are "bad poets" because they have disturbed a text that should not b e disturbed , hel d u p t o scrutin y an d reinterpretatio n ritualize d readin g practices, thrown ope n to indeterminacy the continent an d contained imag e of the Virgin Mary, and solicite d from thei r audience s a participatory response— actions Skelton rightly identifies as socially seductive and disruptive : Before ope n audyence, Howe falsely ye had surmysed , And devyllysshel y devysed The people to seduce, And chase them thorowe the muse Of your noghty counsell.. . Of the gospell and the pystels Ye pyke out man y thystels, And bremely with your bristels Ye cobble and y e clout Holy scripture so about, That people are in great dout And feare leest they be ou t Of all good Christen order. Thus all thyng ye disorder Thorowe out ever y border. (208-13, 219-28)

46 Guilty

Creatures

Barclay ha d accuse d Skelto n o f sowin g seed s o f "vyciousness"—of panderin g "wantones" t o "wyld e people"—i n Phyllyp Sparowe. Nearl y twenty years later, Skelton level s much th e sam e charg e against two threatening harbinger s o f an international movemen t ("Befor e open audyence," "Thorowe ou t every border") that wil l soon fin d a kind o f patronag e i n Englan d fro m hi s sometim e pupil , Henry VIII. The transformatio n fro m Phyllyp Sparowe t o th e Replycacion resemble s th e transformation that led Thomas More, a more direct prosecutor of the ultimately executed Bilney , to reasses s Erasmus's Praise o f Folly; an d Skelton' s lat e career certainly finds an analogu e i n the trajector y Stephe n Greenblat t ha s plotted in More, a movement toward a consensus fidelium that ha d th e qualit y of a palinode. I n hi s Confutation o f Tyndale's Answer, More remark s how Erasmu s coul d once safel y "jes t upo n th e abuses " o f saints ' image s "afte r th e manne r o f th e dysours [jester's ] part in a play,... yet hath Tyndale by erroneous books in setting forth Luther' s pestilen t heresies , so envenome d th e heart s o f lewdl y dispose d persons that me n can not almos t no w speak of such things in so much as a play, but tha t suc h evil hearers wax a great deal the worse." 73 More' s lat e antitheatri calism echoes in Skelton' s poetic critiqu e of heresy; and we might even identif y in Skelton's Replycacion More' s tendency—in anxiou s response to Reformatio n contagion—to exorcis e many aspects of his earlie r self. But More's strateg y for such exorcism depends upon a n abjuration and distinction tha t Skelto n cannot really make: "And as for my poetry verily I can little else, and yet not that neither. But it had been good for Tyndale's soul and a thousand soul s beside that he had meddled but wit h poetry instead of holy scripture all the days of his life."74 Skelton, by contrast, cannot cede a harmless poetry to the heretics because poetry and scripture, for this poet-priest, are inseparable from eac h other and from himself. Whether o r not McGuines s is right to detect in Phyllyp Sparowe a satire of liturgical corruption, moreover , the problem fo r the author o f the Replycacion i s that his earlier "play" has become the ambiguou s property of an untrustworthy audience and an uncertain history. The "open audyence" solicited by Phyllyp Sparowe returns as a stranger to its creator; and the authorial drama of the Replycacion — an intensification of tensions in Phyllyp Sparowe —involves th e washing of hands. The Replycacion conclude s with a defense of poetry just as assured as the "addicyon" is truculent and equivocal. Placing himself in the tradition o f "Kyng David the prophete, of prophetes principall, / Of poetes chefe poete" (329-30), Skelto n declares the divine provenance of his commendatory power : Than, if this noble kyng, Thus can harpe and syng With his harpe of prophecy And spirituall poetry , And saynt Jerome saythe,


To whom w e must gyve faythe, Warblynge with his strynges Of suche theologicall thynges, Why have ye than disdayne At poetes, and complayne Howe poetes do but fayne?.. . With m e ye must consen t And infallibl y agre Of necessyte, Howe there is a spyrituall, And a mysteriall, And a mystical Effecte energiall , As Grekes do it call, Of suche an industr y And suche a pregnacy, Of hevenly inspyracio n In laureate creacyon, Of poetes commendacion . (333-53, 362—74) Skelton can make this bold justification of poetry (he enlists the authority of Plato to his defense i n the poem's coda 75) in part because he has identified an external poetic threat that only "spirituall poetry" can counter ("For be ye wele assured, / That frensy nor jelousy / Nor heresy wyll never dye" [406-8]); in part because the Replycacion, written "Cumprivilegio a rege indulto" enjoyes a propagandistic status conferred by the state; but chiefl y because he has siphoned of f as heresy the very qualities that make Phyllyp Sparowe indefensible . Having himself brought a girl to shame by praising her publicly in a poem that extracts freely fro m scriptur e an d th e tradition of Marian devotion , he indicts the reformer s for cobblin g together scriptura l passage s i n a n effor t t o defam e Mary. Having reveled in "mery thought" and invite d his readers to shar e in the fantasy of his para-erotic verse, he condemns the heretics for preaching similarly open-ended seductions . Havin g flirted with a commendatory poetic s i n whic h his own fame overshadowed th e fat e of his subject, in which interpretive license took the place of authorial responsibility, he charges them with seeking to magnify thei r names by erasing Mary's saintly identity—and b y empowering every reader to reinterpret sacred text. The dreamy author of Phyllyp Sparowe coul d no t specify the "truth" that was more important tha n Jane' s shame, could not defin e the "pleasing" that was his vague intention, (lik e Claudius) could not even identify a single audience as the proper recipient of his unyoked thoughts and words . The propheti c autho r o f the Replycacion speak s a fac t define d diametricall y by

48 Guilty

Creatures

others' fiction, finds a purpose i n defending a virgin from misrepresentation, and designates the exegetica l boundaries o f his utterance by invoking only the "dis crete reformacyon" of orthodox interpreters . By silencing Jane and subjecting her ambiguous image to the undetermined construction s o f the world, Skelton ventures into the killing poetry that i s the focus of the following chapters. By removing Mary from th e interpretive maelstrom of the world, by refuting th e heretics' representation o f her as an accessible object of revisionary reading, he attempt s to police such poetry. In her stud y of the "Renaissance Voyeuristic Text," Wendy Wall identifies a representational strateg y in late-sixteenth-century poetry: by figuring their texts as female bodies imperiled by a rapacious public readership, transgressive authors at once advertise their titillating crimes and displac e ont o their audienc e the violent disclosure s th e author s themselve s commit. 76 "Th e Wif e i s another man s commoditie," argue s a fictiona l bookselle r t o a prospectiv e buye r i n Samue l Rowlands's 'Tis Merrie When Gossips Meete (1602) ; "is i t no t a prettie thin g t o carry Wife, Mayd e and Widdo w in youre pocket.. .?"77 My reading of Phyllyp Sparowe locate s th e frisso n o f such commodificatio n i n Skelton' s muc h earlie r poem. And while in both Phyllyp Sparowe an d the Replycacion Skelto n certainl y experiments with th e strateg y of displacing guilt onto a profane audience tha t mis-takes texts , th e forme r poe m reveal s a fascinatin g instanc e i n whic h thi s strategy does not entirel y succeed. In a passage through which we can look both back to this poem and forwar d to the subject of chapter 2, the printer of Norton's an d Sackville's Gorboduc (1570) complains against a rogue printer who has released an unauthorized an d corrup t version of the text : As if by meanes of a broker for hire, he should hav e entised int o his house a fair e maid e an d don e her villaine, an d afte r al l to hav e bescratched he r face, torne her apparell, berayed and disfigured her, and then thrust her out of dores dishonested. 78 In this printer's continued analogy, the authors (an d the authorized printer him self) seek to provide the violated text a haven from shame and violence by amending the corruption it has suffered in the hands of others : In such plight afte r long wandring she came at length home to the sight of her frende s wh o scant kne w her but b y a few tokens and marke s remayning. They , the authors , I meane , thoug h they wer e very much displease d that she so ranne abroa d without leave , whereby she caught her shame , as many wantons do , yet seing the cas e as it is remedilesse, have for commo n honestie an d shamefastnesse new apparelled, trimmed , an d attired he r in such forme as she was before.79


If, warns the printer, the reader does not similarly observe the honesty of the text by taking it home fo r private consumption, "the poor e gentlewoma n wi l surely play Lucreces part & of her sel f di e fo r shame , an d I shal l wishe that sh e ha d taried still at home with me." 80 In the literary period o f which Wall writes, those concerned with textual and communicative integrit y frequently avail themselves of such mythological paradigms—i n whic h an utterance, invested with vulnerable subjectivity, might be beset upon by a savage public. In subsequent chapters we shall in fact see that several Renaissance authors seek to identify with this vulnerability, fashioning themselves and thei r text s into figures of Orphi c victimization.81 Fo r the autho r o f Phyllyp Sparowe, however , the poet' s complicit y i n having both hi s text and it s subject figuratively "play Lucreces part" is too mes merizing to be displaced entirely by myths of poetic self-pity. Before discovering , in th e Replycacion, a n effectiv e strateg y for thi s exculpation , Skelto n gives us a glimpse of the poetic hand that first silenced Jane and offered he r to us as a body. It i s a sight reveale d again in Th e Faerie Queene, where the poe t agai n brings a woman to the point o f "d[ying] for shame. "

2

Spenser and the Poetics of Indiscretion Shee, after whom , what forme soe'r e we see, Is discord, and rud e incongruitee, Shee, shee is dead, she's dead; when thou knowst this, Thou knowst how ugly a monster this world is: And learnst thus much by our Anatomee, That here is nothing to enamor thee: And that, not onel y faults in inward parts, Corruptions in our braines, or in our harts , Poysoning the fountaines , whence our actions spring, Endanger us: but tha t if every thing Be not don e fitly'and in proportion , To satisfie wise, and goo d lookers on, (Since most men be such as most thinke they bee) They're lothsome too, by this Deformitee. For good, and well, must in our action s meete: Wicked i s not much worse then indiscreet. John Donne, An Anatomy o f the World

HH

OW CAN THE ELEGIST DISCLAIM culpable opportunism when his poem renders its subject a spectacularly linguistic "occasion";1 when the theatrical audience of his poem i s imagined as a predatory "monster" o f misconstruction and slander; and when the poet's epistemological transactions with a sick world, a world apparently bereft o f "good lookers on," necessarily implicates him in the economy he would abjure? Like Phyllyp Sparowe, Donne's Anatomy presents less a precise example of elegy than a fascinating exploration o f generic motivations, consequences, and contaminations. 2 I n fac t th e possibilit y of forma l "discord " and confusion inform s one of the most startling lines in a poem full of surprises: "Wicked i s not muc h wors e then indiscreet." 3 A s for Skelton , Donne's ventur e into the poetry of praise coextends with a recognition of the "rude incongruitee"

50

Spenser an d th e Poetics of Indiscretion 5 1

between private and public modes of expression.4 Even more clearly than Phyllyp Sparowe, th e Anatomy register s the indiscret e relation between lyri c praise an d the public theatricalism implie d b y an audience of "lookers on. " Donne's awarenes s in this poe m thrust s u s into the midst o f an increasingly pressing and articulate self-consciousness in English poets writing in the late sixteenth an d earl y seventeenth centuries : one nee d no t writ e specificall y for the theater to be involved with a potentially dangerous publi c spectatorship. Whe n one's audience is so conceived, violent "actions" become a possibility of any artistic transaction; "Deformitee" becomes a possible consequenc e o f any representation. In a discussion of the literalized performance of killing in The Spanish Tragedy, Peter Sack s has suggested that suc h deformity has its origins in the breakdow n of elegiac conventions: when the mourner behaves not as Orpheus, but a s one of the Maenads, the lyric voice devolves into a public theater wher e violent actio n subsumes mediating language. 5 The generic choices of my own study reflect a n appreciation o f this insight, but als o a desire to extend it into other Renaissance literary forms. In this chapter the threatening ethical proximity of wickedness and indiscretion (an d indiscreteness) 6 meditate d i n Donne's first public poe m illu minates a trajectory between Phyllyp Sparowe an d a poem tha t appeared fifteen years before the Anatomy. Through Donne' s later poem we can plot the connections between Skelton's realization that the encomiast ca n murder to dissect and Spenser's recognition that discourtesy is not muc h worse than publicity . In the sixth book of The Faerie Queene, Jane Scrope has become Serena; Skelton's predatory poetics has been distille d into a scene of savagery and cannibal ism preside d ove r b y anothe r poet-priest ; an d th e vagu e imag e o f a miscon structing, heretical audienc e ha s resolved int o th e peripateti c Blatan t Beast—a creature identified by one Spenserian as Skeltonic.7 Such genealogies become more apparent when we collate Jane, Serena, and Elizabeth Drury; when we frame th e self-conscious indiscretion s o f Skelto n an d Spense r wit h thos e o f Donne ; an d when we understand the threat of poetic heresy—of a textual opportunism com mitted collaboratively by speaker and audience—as a source of energy and concern for al l three poets. Chapter 1 argued tha t Skelton' s "elegy " (lik e Poliziano's ) participate s i n th e complex process whereby the commemoration o f the Requiem Mass—"with its potential fo r infinite repetition, endles s accumulation" 8—was appropriate d a s a distinctly poetic liturgy, and tha t i n Skelton's cas e this appropriation coextend s with a troubled loo k at the potential fat e of such representations i n the hands of a mis-taking audience. Moving us more recognizably into the realm of Renaissance funeral elegy , and more clearly into the world divided by the Reformation, Donne writes from the other side of the confusingly unassimilable "nuw fassyon" recorded by a London undertaker who in 1559 witnessed with bewilderment his first Protestant funeral :

52 Guilty

Creatures

Ther was a gret compene of pepull, ii and i i together, and nodu r pres t no r clarke, the new prychers in ther gowne lyk ley [-men,] nodur syngyn g nor sayhyng tyll they cam [t o the grave,] and a-fo r she was pute into the grayf f a [collect ] i n Englys, and then put in-t o th e grayff , an d afte r [too k some] heythe and caste yt on the corse, and red a thynge... for the sam, and contenent cast the heth in-to the [grave] , and contenent re d the pystyll of sant Poll to the Stesselonyans t h e . .. chapter, and after thay song pater-noster in Englys, boyth prychers and odur, and [women, ] of a nuw fassyon, and afte r on of them whent in-to the pulpytt an d mad a sermon. 9 Dennis Kay has observed much of the significance of this diary entry for the history of the increasingly secularized Renaissance elegy: What struck [the undertaker] was the disruption of accustomed order. The new preachers, "in their gowns lik e laymen," were indistinguishabl e fro m the company of people; the congregatio n seeme d t o him t o be assembled indiscriminately, mingling ranks and sexe s both as they walked in procession an d a s they prayed . Perhap s becaus e English rathe r tha n Lati n was used, he could not tel l which chapter of the Epistle to the Thessalonians was read; and to him the Lord's Prayer was the "pater-noster" eve n in his native tongue. For the sam e reason, perhaps, he record s merely that on e o f this assembly "red a thynge"—some sor t o f prayer over th e body—and the n that one of them "made a sermon." Confronted with these shocking sights and sounds, [the diarist's] system of note-taking seems to have broken down. He could not recor d what was happening before his eyes... . No less crucial to the development of the funeral elegy was the example of the funeral sermon, the innovation which, within weeks of being remarked by [th e undertaker], had become , accordin g to th e evidenc e of his diary, common practice.10 At the broader level of this study, however, the undertaker records an anxiety and confusion tha t both precedes and lingers after th e specifi c funerea l innovation s of mid-sixteenth-century England— a disruption audibl e in Skelton's ow n supplanting of familiar Latin cadences with his own vulgar praise, and in the cacophonous "noyse" through whic h Spenser' s savages pray over Serena's body. Symptoms of the poetics o f indiscretion, such anxiety and confusio n ca n be referred to—but not cleanly circumscribed by—the communicative consequences of the Reformation, which ordained the individual with an exegetical power that could a t th e sam e time destabilize th e interpretiv e community . I n th e passage above, the undertaker observes a scene in which every person (ma n and woman) is a poet and a priest: it is not clea r whether the "thynge" they read is from th e recently revised Book of Common Prayer 1: or whether it is a recently penned eulogy, nor i s it clear which o f them goe s into the "pulpytt" to preach . What doe s be-


come clea r i n bot h th e funera l custom s an d th e literar y responses to deat h i n post-Reformation England , however, is that the questio n o f "decencie" becomes increasingly controversial an d urgent. 12 "Decent buriall, " writes John Weever in 1631, "according t o the qualities o f the person decease d .. . i s an honour t o th e defunct."13 Suc h an esthetic and moral emphasis on propriety makes sense as an anxious respons e t o th e Reformation' s devolution o f interpretation, an d t o th e improvisational nature of the sermo n an d eulogy—whic h like Phyllyp Sparowe supplanted shared liturgical traditions wit h individualize d texts. Less obvious, though, is why this concern with decency should coextend with the doctrinal an d legal rejection of the belief that huma n word s or actions ha d any consequence fo r the deceased: "The mos t shatterin g and irreversibl e action of the Reformatio n in England," claims on e historian, "wa s the proscriptio n o f prayers for the repos e of the soul s of the dead." 14 I f funereal prayer s and verses are in vain, wholly unable to help or hurt their subject, why construct social cat egories of the decent and indecent (le t alone the notion o f "sinne" mentioned in Diggs' elegy)? 15 Such a question contain s it s own subtle answer: when the legitimizing efficacy an d purpos e o f a speech-act ar e revoked, the speaker' s burde n becomes on e of justifying hi s own motivations. Compoundin g thi s burden i s a correlative to Protestant poetics: if words can do no harm t o the dead's soterio logical status, they can do mortal injury to the very representation b y which the dead ar e offered a n individualized an d secula r life on earth. By denning biographical representation, rathe r tha n spiritua l advocacy , as the service of the living to the dead, post-Reformation England left it s poets the problem of distinguishing such service from disservice . Donne's anxious fascinatio n with the limits of discretion arise s fro m th e potentiall y indiscrete relation betwee n devotion an d "mis-devotion" that troubles Spense r as it troubled Skelton . Like Phyllyp Sparowe, Donne's First Anniversarie met with the censure of contemporary readers troubled by the poem's failures of categorization, by its startling mixture o f religiou s and secula r praise. Finding the poe m "profan e and ful l o f Blasphemies," Ben Jonson is reported t o have informed the author that "if it had been written of the Virgin Marie it had been something."16 Jonso n is not far from Barclay's ow n objection s ove r th e blurrin g of subject s in Phyllyp Sparowe; no r does Donne seem far from Skelto n when he defends his rhetorical extravagance in the First Anniversarie by claiming that "i t became m e to say , not wha t I was sure was just truth, but the best that I could conceive," that for his poetic subject he "took such a person, as might be capable of all that I could say." 17 As we shall see, the poet-priest who prepares Serena for sacrifice in Spenser's epic also brings the poetry of hyperbolic praise (in this case, a clearly erotic praise) into dangerous intersection with sacrilege. But in order to understand the reflexive poetic indiscretions wickedly enacted in the cannibals' anatomy of Serena, it will be helpfu l first to ponder th e ful l weigh t of Donne's taking of "such a person, as might be capable o f al l that I could say. " For thi s imaginativ e acquisitio n implicate s th e

54 Guilty

Creatures

poet with an audience similarly given to haeresis and assumption; this opportunistic dispossession o f a subject ("suc h a person") wit h matte r ("al l tha t I could say") defines representatio n as a violent act of appropriation an d disclosure . Of cours e th e First Anniversarie is not th e onl y Renaissanc e elegy to strik e readers as "not don e fitly'and in proportion." Valuing epanorthosis an d discreteness more than Milton, Samuel Johnson famously condemned Lycidas as "indecent," as an indecorou s an d "irreveren t combination " o f "trifling fictions" with "the mos t awfu l an d sacred truths" that "approachfed] ... impiety. " Twentiethcentury readers sometimes echo Johnson in their description of the poem's lack of integrity—its "willful an d illegal.. . form," its "accumulation o f fragments."18 But as Zailig Pollock has argued, modern scholarshi p has with some success answered Johnson's objections to Lycidas's formal crimes by appreciating more fully the conventions evoke d by the poem; by contrast Jonson's criticism o f the First Anniversarie remains a problem fo r readers today. Like its bewildering formal admixtures, the poem' s disproportio n betwee n occasio n an d rhetori c continue s t o provok e anxious debate. 19 What particularly interest s m e in Pollock' s ow n brilliant engagement with this debate is the argument that our seemingl y intractable critical problem "is not a n unfortunate flaw; it is what the poem i s about": "That is , the poet's essentiall y fanciful claim s for Elizabeth Drury, so obviously ungrounded in reality, should be seen, in dramatic terms, as an enactment of the concern which is central to the Anatomy a s a whole, the gap between the object and the wit." 20 By this argument, the Anatomy's essential indecorum—the "desperat e fictions " and "obtrusive ingenuity" that give its language its distinctly violent energy—reflects o n both th e epistemological diseas e of the world, and th e epistemologica l exploitation performe d by the poem. 21 Observin g that Donne' s imagine d audi ence silently transmogrifies, in the Anatomy, fro m a select grou p o f regenerate readers to a thoroughly deprave d world , Pollock claim s that the degenerate wit projected onto the poem's audienc e also reflects back onto the poem itself. 22 By taking for his occasional subject "such a person, as might be capable of all that I could say, " Donne converts Elizabeth Drury into a fanciful palimpses t not un like those astronomical chart s variously inscribed and contested by Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo . He subject s her t o th e radica l subjectivis m of which th e poe m i s critical: the "new Philosophy" that renders "all in pieces, all cohaerence gone; / All just supply, and al l Relation" (Anatomy, lines 213-14) thus infects the poet's ow n panegyric, ironically appearing in verse that i s itself "not don e fitly' and i n pro portion." Donne's famous lines on the "new Philosophy" have often been read as an acknowledgmen t o f the forc e o f empiricism, as a rather terrifie d acceptanc e of th e mess y consequences of scientifi c objectivity . But the Anatomy represent s the new Philosophy, no less than the old, as a mode of perception necessaril y involved wit h violen t misconstruction . Brahe' s more recen t observation s i n Cas siopeia, fo r instance , appear just as roughly subjective as the zodiaca l construct s they antiquate: 23


But yet [th e heavens'] various and perplexe d course, Observ'd i n divers ages doth enforc e Men to finde out so many Eccentrique parts, Such divers downe-right lines, such overthwarts, As disproportion that pure forme. It teares The Firmament in eight and forti e sheeres, And in those constellations there arise New starres, and ol d do vanish fro m ou r eyes: As though heav' n suffre d earth-quakes , peace or war, When new Townes rise, and olde demolish'd are. (Anatomy, line s 253-62) As Frank Manley has observed of this passage, "In referring to the loss of old stars Donne has shifted his ground from th e disproportion observabl e in the sky to the disproportion projecte d upo n i t by the confuse d notion s o f the astronomers." 24 Like the old , the ne w science thus becomes a play of wit, an act of imaginativ e imposition that vainly tries to "controule" and "net" the cosmos but instead contributes to a "Disformity of parts," a "disproportion [of ] that pure forme." Having represented the world as an epistemological abattoir, Donne presents in his anatomy the poetic equivalent to such appropriative stargazing. The irony of the First Anniversaries conclusion, which modulates rather awkwardly to a more conventional elegiac closure,25 is the affinities i t admits with the poem's violently dissective astronomers . Eve n a s he excuse s his presumptio n b y comparin g hi s elegiac and devotiona l "song" with Moses' divinely appointed "Office," Donn e reveals in his language the violence of his cartographic lines: Such an opinion (i n due measure) mad e Me this great Office boldl y to invade . Nor could incomprehensibleness e deterre Me, from thu s trying to emprison her . Which when I saw that a strict grave could do, I saw not wh y verse might not do e so too. Verse hath a middle nature : heaven keepes soules, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enroules . (Anatomy, line s 467-74) Barbara Kiefe r Lewalsk i remarks the parado x of this passage (onl y to dismiss it as witty levity): "The son g ... intend s praise and the preservation o f Elizabeth Drury's fame in this world, even while it anatomizes and displays the world's rot tenness."26 I n fact th e passage presents us with a distinction tha t collapse s upo n itself. The parenthetical "in due measure" is belied by a poetics that has arrogated the distorting and killing power of the grave; that has imprisoned it s incomprehensible subject i n what Donne , i n Th e Funeral! Elegie, critically terms "Thos e

56 Guilty

Creatures

Carkas verses " (lin e 14); that ha s participate d i n th e sam e degenerat e science lamented by the poem: "The ar t is lost, and correspondence too" (Anatomy, line 396). In a coda that ostensibly fixes the proportion an d "measure" of his elegiac performance, Donne reveals the "Deformitee" Elizabeth Drury suffers in his own imagination. The Anatomy finally offer s itsel f as evidence for it s central ethical and estheti c claim: "She, after whom , what forme soe're we see, / Is discord, an d rude incongruitee. " Before turnin g t o simila r moment s o f professed "measure" an d underlyin g immoderation i n Spenser' s epic, I briefl y elaborat e o n th e violen t heres y that Donne's Anatomy both represents and performs, and suggest some of the consequences of indiscretion for a poet who imagines his audience as heretical. Clearly I assume some latitude i n my equation o f heresy with radical subjectivity, but I do so mindful that in post-Reformation England the notion of a heretical reader, interpreting not by institutional canons of legitimacy but by individual criteria, was often s o equated. In fact Donne's trenchant comment on mental illnesses— pathologies Polloc k find s explore d an d enacte d in the Anatomy—employs th e metaphor of a schism of one: "But, of the diseases of the mind ther e is no criterion, no canon, no rule, for our ow n taste an d apprehension and interpretation should be the judge, and that is the disease itself." 27 Donne's "new Philosophy," in which "every man alon e thinkes he hath got / To be a Phoenix, and that there can bee / None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee " (Anatomy, lines 216-18), similarly turns upon th e ide a of interpretive solipsism (directed in this case toward a celestial text, but stil l referee d onl y by the self) . And thoug h thi s "new Philosophy" i s inevitably historicized wit h referenc e t o th e late-sixteenth - an d early-seventeenth-century astronomical discoveries that would seem to be among the poem' s mos t explici t concerns , the threa t o f scientific heterodox y figures a much mor e pervasive cultural anxiety in the England of Spenser and Donne. Writing seven years after th e publication of Brahe's De Nova Stella (1573), for instance, Gabrie l Harvey describes Cambridg e University as disintegrated b y a new philosophy that pays no respect to disciplines: All inquistive after Newes , newe Bookes, newe fashions, newe Lawes, newe Officers, and some after new Elements ... a s of olde Bookes, so of auntient Vertue, Honestie, Fidelitie, Equitie, new Abridgements: every day freshe span newe Opinions: Heresie in Divinitie, in Philosophic, in Humanitie, in Manners, grounded muc h upon heresay: Doctors contemned: the Text knowen of moste, understood o f fewe, magnified o f all, practised of none. 28 Harvey describes a universal interpretive energy that would complicate th e pronouncements o f Spense r n o les s than thos e o f Donne . Hi s imag e of a "mag nified" text, "knowen o f moste" but "understood o f fewe," suggests the "violen t enlargement" tha t Wendy Wall ha s characterize d a s a self-consciou s aspect of late-sixteenth-century poetry , a preoccupation wit h exposur e that respond s to


the changin g communicativ e condition s an d consequence s o f prin t technol ogy.29 Hi s depictio n o f a n interdisciplinar y heres y that ha s abridge d no t onl y "olde Bookes, " but als o familiar humanisti c conceptions o f "Vertue" and "Equitie," suggests the discourteou s an d misconstructin g world tha t impinge s upo n The Faerie Queene and th e Anatomy: not onel y faults i n inward parts , Corruptions i n our braines, or in our harts , Poysoning the fountaines, whence our action s spring, Endanger us: but tha t i f everything Be not don e fitly'and in proportion , To satisfie wise, and goo d looker s on , (Since most me n be such as most thinke they bee) They're lothsome too , by this Deformitee . For good, and well, must in our action s meete: Wicked is not muc h worse then indiscreet. Donne's contemp t fo r th e world succeed s Harvey's contemp t fo r the academy : "Since most be such as most thinke they bee"—in a poem that has provided n o examples of "wise, and goo d lookers on"—can onl y be read as a cynical confirmation o f misanthropi c skepticism . But how ca n on e delive r epideicti c in th e same breath tha t utter s corrosiv e contemptus mundi? How can the poet distin guish his own violent abridgements and disfiguring imagination 30 from thos e of his unfit audience (in the Second Anniversarie, the "worthiest booke" of Elizabeth Drury has become a "worse edition" [lines 309,320])? How can the act of publication be much bette r than wickedly indiscreet when the medium an d foundation o f heresy is hearsay, when th e epistemologica l an d consequentia l infection is shared by author an d reade r ("our braines," "our harts," "our actions")? Such questions lie beneath fascinating authorial dramas in which Renaissance poets see k t o defin e themselve s a s priests, no t a s prurient an d dismemberin g savages; as types of Orpheus, not a s associates of the Bacchantes. This drama of self-definition, however, coextends with the possibility of a more fearsome metamorphosis: when the Renaissance poet's self-legitimizing identification with the music of natural and social order is disturbed—when h e finds in his craft not an embattled an d solitary verbal harmony but th e sticks and stone s that victimiz e others—the sel f threaten s t o collaps e upo n th e predator y worl d aroun d it. 31 When mer e anarchy is loosed upo n the world, the ceremony of innocence that survives ceases to convince. In Donne's Holy Sonnets, perhaps the most obviou s stag e for this drama, th e rhetoric of erotic violence competes with sanctified devotionalism for the poet's pen and our attention. The Communion o f the Church, in "Show me deare Christ," threatens to become a communal rap e perpetrated by "adventuring Knights" :

58 Guilty

Creatures

Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights, And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove , Who i s most trew, and pleasing to thee, then When she'i s embrac' d an d open t o most men . (lines 11-14) We have here the rhetorica l invers e of a poem suc h a s "Epithalamion mad e a t Lincolnes Inne," where a literalized sacrific e disturb s the quotidia n fact s o f sex, where familiar liturgies estrange each other—reminding us of the potential violence of truly'knowing' a sacrament (pascha l or matrimonial): 32 And at the Bridegroomes wished approach doth lye, Like an appointed lambe , when tenderly The priest comes on his knees t'embowell her . (lines 88-90) In "Show m e dear e Christ, " Donne's provocativ e associatio n o f disclosure wit h betrayal relies upon suc h a violent an d profan e caesura , and upo n th e double edged possibilities explored in the Anatomy, where the violation of satirical exposure complicates the strategies of encomiastic display: if the Church is to be opened up t o th e sam e "most men" surveyed i n the elegy , she will be betrayed indeed . While thi s hol y poe m attempt s t o defin e a fit spectatorship fo r it s imperativ e "Betray," moreover, it s geographica l and theologica l distinction s provid e littl e assurance of a gentle reception anywhere: What! i s it she, which o n the other shore Goes richly painted? or which rob'd an d tor e Laments and mournes i n Germany and here? (lines 2—4) Have England's Protestants and Germany's Lutherans provided a less hostile world than Rome ? Ca n Donne' s courtin g "amorou s soule " b e distinguished—i n a poem that prays for publicity—from the social energies that have left it s subject "rob'd and tore"? Can the poet fashion himsel f into an innocent pries t when his subject is necessarily betrayed by language, exposed to the dubious "sights" of his audience? With suc h question s i n mind , I turn t o Serena' s beastl y receptio n i n The Faerie Queene. NAMING TH E BEAS T It is never safe to wander or rest in Spenser's epic , even (especially) in its legend "Of Covrtesie." In book 6, still suffering ranklin g wounds got through error, Serena makes the mistake of seeking Morpheus's bosom. The "wylde deserts" in which


she alights are inhabited by a "saluage nation" that subsists on the labor and flesh of those who come too near its amorphous "border," a boundary improvised upon the opportunities of preying: So round about her they them selues did place Vpon the grasse, and diuersely dispose, As each thought best to spend the lingring space. Some with their eyes the daintest morsels chose ; Some praise her paps, some praise her lips and nose; Some whet their kniues, and strip their elboes bare: The Priest him self e a garland doth compose Of fines t flowers, and wit h ful l busie care His bloudy vessels wash; and holy fire prepare.33 The allegory concentrated in this stanza, and developed throughout th e scene in which the savages intend to make a "common feast " of Serena, has recently been treated as ecclesiastical satire in which preying represents a perverse praying and unholy Communion . Observin g th e rhetori c wit h whic h Protestant s suc h a s Reginald Sco t and Huldreic h Zwingl i likened the doctrin e o f the Rea l Presence to anthropophagy, James Nohrnberg suggests that Spenser's scene can be read as a critical representation o f the Roma n Catholic Mass. 34 In a subsequent article , however, Kenneth Borris persuasively argues that Serena's episode in this canto allegorizes the extreme liturgies of radical Protestantism.35 Marshallin g contemporary controversialis t rhetori c that compare d Puritan s wit h cannibals , Borris claims that Spenser's theologica l politic s had shifted , b y book 6 , from th e stri dent anti-Catholicis m o f book 1 to th e fashionabl e anti-Purita n satir e of 1596. Serena, in this reading , figures a vulnerably languid Churc h o f England threatened by the zealous schism of bare-elbowed reformers.36 The possibilities opened up by such ecclesiastical interpretations are important for m y own analysis, but Spenser' s savages—like his Blatant Beast—are hard t o capture with any single chain of exegesis, however long and tight the reasoning. If, fo r instance , w e infe r fro m Be n Jonson' s identificatio n of th e Blatan t Beast with Puritanism that the radical reformers are Spenser's only religious target in book 6, 37 we construct a rather artificial division between this book and book 5, where the "sinful l sacrifice " an d idolatrou s "altar " in Gerioneo' s chape l clearly represent th e Catholi c liturgy (5.10.28-29) ; and i f the episod e o f Serena's near sacrifice upo n th e cannibals ' alta r represents a narrowly focused satir e of Puritanism, Borris's conclusion appear s problematic t o say the least: Whether Spenser' s religiou s affinities ca n best be described a s Puritan o r Anglican ha s bee n ofte n disputed ; but , whateve r hi s earlie r sympathies , Spenser totall y reject s Puritanis m an d th e whol e radica l Reformation in

60 Guilty

Creatures

Book VI. When the Blatant Beast attacks "the sacred Church," Spenser finds "Images" "goodly" and monasti c vows "holy," in ful l conservativ e reaction against felt Protestant excesses (VI.xii.24-25). The Beast's befouling of "Altars" and robber y o f "the Chancell " furthe r evidenc e Spenser' s religiou s conservativism, because Puritans objected to altars and chancels, and even to favourable use of the term "altar." 38 The cannibals, of course, do not hesitate to erect and decorate an altar (6.8.44); nor do the y refrai n fro m th e idolatrou s and sacrificia l liturgie s with which Spenser associates Catholicism i n book 5. In fact , the difficult y o f assigning a specific doctrinal position t o the allegory of book 6 confronts the reader of many coeval satires that touch upon theology. An intriguingly apposite case appears in "The Lie," a poem that has been attributed to atheists and radical Puritan reformers—though more generally and convincingly judge d th e heterodo x wor k o f Walter Ralegh . If written by Spenser's patron, and i f composed (a s most scholars agree) in the mid-i59os, 39 "The Lie " presents a startling example of the ambiguou s versatility of satirical paradigms in late-sixteenth-century England. For in this poem the anarchic and calumnious spirit of the Blatant Beast has been transfused int o the virtuously defiant "soul" of the morally outraged speaker. Like Spenser's neological monster, the maw invoked b y this poem i s a blatant o r "blabbing" one, 40 respectin g the sanctit y of neither cour t nor church: Say to the Court i t glowes, and shines like rotten wood , Say to the Church it showes whats good, and doth n o good. If Church an d Cour t reply, then giue them both the lie. ("The Lie," lines 7-12 ) Spenser's Beast spares "Ne Kesars... nor Kings," blotting lovers and leaders alike with "infamie" (6.12.28) and biting even the poet's back with his "venemous de spite" (6.12.41); "The Lie " extends to "Potentates" and "me n o f high condition " (lines 13,19), exposing all love as lust and all arts as unsound. So convincingly does the speaker of "The Lie" play the part of the Blatant Beast in his own peripatetic pasquinade tha t on e censoriou s contemporar y call s the poe m th e "Age s mon ster."41 Unlike the author of "The Lie," of course, Spenser in the sixth book of The Faerie Queene is at pains t o distinguis h himself fro m th e invasiv e slander o f an entirely unbridled satire: his Blatant Beast may in part represent the dangerously tumultuous satir e that woul d caus e parliamentary and episcopa l authorities t o shut dow n England' s busy broadside industr y in the las t years of the sixteenth


century.42 If Spenser's portrayal of the Beas t constitutes a "full conservativ e reaction," then, it would see m to take the for m o f a general caricature of the un courtly beastliness that threatens to leave neither religious nor politica l subjects sacred during this period. But Spenser is not alway s as far fro m th e speake r o f "The Lie " as this juxtaposition migh t suggest, nor i s his attitude toward the Beast's wide-ranging rampage alway s a s obvious a s Borris claims. In th e proe m t o boo k 6 , for instance, Spenser gives the lie to a hypocritical court; and the church "Images" the Beast casts to the ground in 6.12 are described by the narrator not simpl y as "goodly," but o f "goodly hew," leaving the reader to wonder if theirs is merely the sheen of "rotten wood"—showin g "what s good, " perhaps , but doin g "no good. " In his search for doctrinal tidiness, Borris also overlooks the fac t tha t the Beas t in 6.12 follows the narrator's tracks through Gerioneo's chapel. Perhaps only a beast can enact satire in the Legend of Courtesy, but the narrator does not refrain entirely from a n opportunistic hint at the monster's discoveries in the "Monastere": "Int o their cloyster s now he broken had, / .. . An d searched all their eel s and secrets neare; / In which what filth and ordure did appeare, / Were yrkesome to report" (6.12.24). We remember that the Beas t annoys the guilt y as well as the innocent , "Albe they worthy blame, or cleare of crime" (6.12.40). Reading Spenser's Blatant Beast alongside "The Lie" is salutary for several reasons: it remind s u s that th e satir e of the perio d wa s often concerne d les s with defining religious orthodoxy than with exploding pervasive cultural enormities, and that the Cankered Muse could muddle doctrinal issues to such an extent that even a strong attribution of "The Lie" to Ralegh (who by all accounts despised the Puritans) must conced e "that the poem could have been written by a Puritan"; 43 it reminds us, too, that such broad satir e could itself assume a generically monstrous pose, and tha t Spenser' s apparently obvious self-differentiatio n fro m th e "Ages monster" in book 6 is in fact complicated by some subtle affinities. And it reminds us, perhaps most importantly, that any satire enacted by this book func tions antithetically to the nominal topic of the book: echoing Sidney's description of the poet's ethical and political function, Franci s Bacon advised the would-be courtier that "a habit of secrecie is both political and moral" ; satirists , observed George Puttenham, ar e "spiers out o f all secret faults" who flouris h b y publishing the private. 44 We have seen in Donne's Anatomy the disharmonious union of satire an d encomium : praisin g Elizabet h Drur y befor e th e worl d become s a morally dubious enterpris e for the very reason tha t th e poe m define s it s audience—the world—as violently misinterpretive; having discovered hi s audience as inherentl y monstrous , however , Donn e recognize s the possibilit y tha t an y public speech-act can have violent consequences. "For good , and well, must i n our action s meete : Wicked i s not muc h wors e then indiscreet" : th e physics of satire and anatomy have rendered discourteous the poetry of praise.

62 Guilty

Creatures

Shortly we shall conside r Spenser' s meditatio n o n th e intrinsi c problems of praising discreetl y i n boo k 6—problem s crystallize d i n th e cannibals ' killin g "praise" of Serena , problems figure d a s well by Calidore an d Colin . But in th e criticism o f Spenser' s essa y on courtesy , i t shoul d b e note d tha t th e palpabl e satire to which scholar s suc h as Borris respond i s itself a t odds with th e virtu e explored b y the book , a virtue threatene d b y "spiers out " an d maintaine d b y those who make "an habit of secrecy." Keeping in mind the allegorical satire that Borris detects i n book 6 , we must also remember tha t thi s important an d com plex aspect o f the poe m put s th e poe t i n a difficult position . T o be satirical, as Puttenham, Ralegh, and Donne remind us , is to be blatant. But if the imagine d audience o f one' s satir e consist s o f heretics , o f textua l takers , praise itsel f ca n transform int o violent exposure. We have seen Skelton in a similar dilemma. Though the theological world figured i n th e 159 6 installment o f Th e Faerie Queene —like the worl d i n whic h it appeared—is in many respects more blurred than the dichotomies tendentiousl y assumed in the Replycacion, Spenser , like Skelton, seems responsive to the atmosphere o f interpretive carnival permeating so much Reformation controversy. As for Skelton , moreover, Spenser's authoria l dram a involve s both th e rejectio n of this carniva l an d th e recognitio n tha t th e poe t i s necessarily implicated i n its rites. The surprising moment o f analogy that briefly joins Beast and narrator in the monastery points t o a recurrent episod e i n Book 6: the collaps e of carefull y constructed boundarie s betwee n th e predato r an d th e poet . Suc h fusion , th e focus of this chapter, appears with unmistakable literality in the scene of Serena's near sacrifice among the cannibals; and it is toward the poetic coordinates o f this scene that Borris' s thesis shoul d be aligned . If the cannibals ' intende d sacrific e represents the energie s and anxietie s attendin g the Reformation, such religious allegory frames and amplifies a violence that is also a primitively poetic act. Before interpreting th e encomiasti c savage s and thei r self-laureatin g priest a s satirized alterities, then, we should conside r th e exten t to which Serena's victimization is for Spense r a self-reflexively poeti c one . The fifth book of Spenser's epic concludes with a reformation that has, if anything, not gone far enough; and we may hear echoes of Skelton's "God of his miseracyon / Sen d better reformacyon " in the regretfu l narratio n o f Artegall's premature departure fro m Irenae' s "ragged common-weale " "ere he could reform e it thoroughly" (5.12.26-27). Primarily, of course, Artegall's imperfect reformation has redressed social injustice. But into the void left by his return to Faerie Court rush Skelton's figures of poetic and scriptural heresy—agents of a predatory hermeneutics who revel in textual carnage. Accompanying Envy—who feeds on others' injuries "like one vnto a banquet bid" (5.12.32), and whose mouth inscribes her victims with a "marke" tha t is "long ... t o be read" (5.12.39)—i s Detraction, who exists "to misconstrue of a man's intent," and whose joy is "to publish" her corrupt


readings "to many" (5.12.34-35). The Blatant Beast enters the poem a s the conscripted pet of these two furies, but we may note in passing that this creature (who receives more than on e genealogy in the epic) 45 first appears to be the progen y of a beast with two backs, begotten b y the perverse copulation o f Envy and Detraction: These two now had themselues combynd i n one, And linckt together gainst Sir Artegall... Besides vnto themselues they gotten ha d A monster, which the Blatant beast men call.. . (5-12.37) Such is at least the figurative genesis of the "open mouth " that marauds through book 6—first , injuring Serena with a rankling wound tha t become s "inwardl y vnsound" (4.16) ; second, defilin g churc h an d clerg y with "the tract" ( a phrase with alimentar y an d literar y associations) "o f his outragiou s spoile " (6.12.22) ; and third , biting th e han d tha t mad e hi m a s he "raungeth throug h th e worl d againe" wit h al l th e unconstraine d socia l energ y o f th e "Age s monster" : "N e spareth h e th e gentl e Poets rime , / Bu t rend s withou t regar d o f perso n o r o f time" (6.12.40). It wa s the fea r o f "gealous opinion s an d misconstructions " tha t motivate d Spenser to discover , in his Letter to Ralegh, "the general intention & meaning" of his allegory, "which i n the whole course thereof I haue fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes or by accidents therein occasioned." The author who realized in this letter "how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed," and who sought safety from invidious misconstruction by moving his poem into a past "furthest fro m th e daunger of enuy, and suspition o f present time," complains in the final stanza of book 6 that he is still being misread by the wicked and misrepresented before the great. Thus summarized, this book would seem neatly to catalogue the poet among the victims of a world "runne quite out of square" and growing "dail y wours e an d wourse " (5.Proem.1). 46 We could i n fac t conclud e with a generalization of Borris's argument: the bestial and cannibalistic energies that victimize both Serena and "the sacred Church" in a parody of the radical reformation take a secular and diffuse for m in the perverse interpretive community that jeapordize s all communication i n th e poem : "the malice o f evil l mouths , which are alwaies wide open to carpe at and misconstrue my simple meaning."47 But complications appear as soon as we interrogate Spenser's victimized pos e with th e question s w e have asked o f Skelton. What doe s i t mean, fo r instance, that book 6 concludes with an ambiguous negotiation with this misinterpreting world, with an emphasis on duke (divorced of utile) that seems to echo Skelton's problematic "Rien qu e playsere"? 48

64 Guilty Creatures

Therefore d o you my rimes keep better measure , And seeke to please, that now is counted wisemens threasure. (6.12.41) What doe s i t mea n tha t thi s stanza' s protestation s o f innocenc e towar d th e "mighty Peres displeasure" are undercut with the admission that the poet's "rimes" have in fac t been out o f "measure"; an d tha t Spense r has repeatedly repented th e licentious "faults" of his "looser rimes" and "lew d layes"—no t onl y to William Burghley, Th e Faerie Queene's highes t placed negativ e critic, but als o to friend s and patron s suc h a s the countesse s o f Cumberlan d an d Warwick? 49 Even th e cannibals, afte r all , are held i n "measure" by an authority who restricts their appetite with cultural ceremony; from hi m they learn to locate their "sacred threasure" in the act of pleasing the gods with sacrifice (6.8.43). Like the Blatant Beast—whose bite causes Serena to depart "her fraile mansio n of mortality" (6.3.28), and whose shaming afterimage has her flinchingly "afeard / Of villany to be to her inferd " several cantos later (6.8.31)—th e cannibals bring her to the point of "Being alreadie dead" with apprehension (6.8.45) , a mortification that linger s in the "inward shame " with which she leaves the poem (6.8.51) . Clearly there is a strong analogical relation between both episodes of victimization; and i t would see m equall y clear that thi s relation suggest s a typology whereby the Beast's broad cultura l ruination receives a local habitation an d a name in the cannibals' religio. Again, though, Spenser's religious affinities prov e most elusive when most apparentl y obvious. Why, for instance, do the monotheistic cannibals who prepare Serena as a sacrifice "Vnto their God" (6.8.38 ) become, five stanzas later, sacerdotalists vowing obedience "to the gods" ? This shift, ignored b y Borris, might furthe r complicat e his argument—since from th e Protestant poin t of view, it was the Catholic s wh o riske d polytheism i n their iconi c worship of the saints. Donne reminds us that this view was not restricted to the Puritans: Here in a place, where mis-devotion frame s A thousand praiers to saints, whose very names The ancient Churc h knew not, Heaven knowes not yet, And where, what lawes of poetry admit, Lawes of religion, have at least the same , Immortall Maid, I might invoque thy name. Could an y Saint provoke that appetite , Thou here shouldst mak e mee a french convertite . (The Second Anniversarie, lines 511-18) Coinciding with th e marke d i f less than determinat e ecclesiastica l allegory that distinguishes the cannibals from th e Beast , however, is a distinction tha t ca n be made with greate r certainty: if the Beas t represents the kin d o f slanderous an d satirical pamphleteering from which Spenser studiously distances himself through-


out his career,50 the cannibals who bestow upon Seren a a murderous "praise" — and who deck their sacrifice with "flowres" (6.8.39, 40)—mix their religion with the poetica l tool s of Spenser' s trade. 51 As in Th e Second Anniversarie, "lawes of religion" and "lawes of poetry" blur in an act of "mis-devotion." In th e scen e of the cannibals ' congregatio n around Serena , the Beast' s spoliating energies have been ritualized not onl y by a liturgy but als o by the cadences of a specifically erotic encomium ("Som e praise her paps , some prais e he r lip s and nose") . Near the en d o f this chapter , we will see how Spenser's poetic self consciousness in this scene coextends with the topicality of his representation of Serena, a recognizabl e figure he coul d hardl y expec t t o b e "furthes t fro m th e daunger o f enuy, and suspitio n o f present time"; whe n rea d alongside the dis claiming Letter to Ralegh , in fact , this scene presents the kin d o f transparentl y "coded" commentary—the deniable transgression—that Annabel Patterson has associated with communication that would otherwise be censored.52 But first we should consider how the expressly poetic aspects of this scene implicate the poet in a ceremony no less violent fo r its ritualism, and why the language of the Elizabethan love lyric should resonate so clearly in Spenser's dramatization of a cannibalism converted to sacrifice, of a predatory desire passed off as pious devotion. STEALING AN D REVEALIN G Book 6 has long been rea d as a general portrait o f the mora l turpitude o f perverted love, and the specific questions I ask of Serena's fate in this book have been in par t anticipate d b y Donald Cheney' s argumen t tha t th e savage s represent a Petrarchism run amok. Cheney's broad point, that the savages bring to the surface both the latent primitivism and the idolatrous tendencies of the Elizabethan erotic lyric, seems to me an incisive one. With his conclusion that the scene of Serena's near sacrific e present s a simple an d localize d warning against excessive poetic praise, which becomes mor e moderat e i n th e idea l glorifications of Pastorell a (6.9) an d the poet's lady (6.10), however, I agree less.53 Put very simply, the image of the self-laureatin g priest is less easily contained, for the epicist, than Cheney' s reading suggests; and th e violence of this scene problematizes, rather than validates, Spenser's excursions into pastoral as it complicates his meditation on proper courtesy. Serena wakes as the host of a voracious congregation, and for three stanzas it seems as though her body—which provide s its own "Altar" (6.8.42)—will suffer the same fate as did her clothes: "The which amongs t them they in peeces teare, / And of the pray each one a part doth beare" (6.8.41). The irony into which Serena awakens is that of a guest only belatedly conscious of her provisional status , for th e cannibal s have decided "to let her / Sleepe out he r fill" (6.8.38-39) while with their eyes they begin an imaginative banquet. Sinc e C. S. Lewis, critics have

66 Guilty

Creatures

found an analogous iron y in the hero's encounter with the Lestrigoni in Orlando Innamorato: "Now th e coun t hear d on e o f them whispering to another:—He' s nice and fat.—and the other replied:— I don't know; once I see him roasted , or for tha t matter when I have a taste of him, I'll kno w better whethe r I'l l want a full helping.—Orland o wasn' t payin g attention t o thi s conversation... . " 54 At this point w e can only ask if a similar irony might have presented itself , in 1596, to the author and addressees of the final dedicatory sonnet to The Faerie Queene, "To All The Gratious and Beautiful l Ladie s in the Court": The Chian Peincter, when he was requirde To pourtraict Venus in her perfect hew, To make his worke more absolute, desird Of all the fairest Maides to haue the vew. Much more me needs to draw the semblant trew, Of beauties Queene, the worlds sole wonderment, To sharpe my sence with sundry Beauties vew, And stealefrom each some part of ornament. If all the world to seeke I ouerwent, A fairer crew yet no where could I see, Then that braue court doth to mine eie present, That the worlds pride seemes gathered there to bee, Of each a part I stole by cunning thefte: Forgiue it mefaire Dames, sith lesseye haue not lefte. Before taking at face value the apology of the final line here, we should consider for a moment the "cunning thefte " revealed in this poem . The referenc e t o th e painter from Chios, who assembled the features of various courtesans into the perfect imag e of the cour t lady, is somewhat misleading : Apelles, as Spenser makes even more clear in a subsequent referenc e (4.5.12), depended upon posing mod els for his montage. I n a disclosure suggestive of the fals e foca l poin t o f certain forms o f Renaissanc e portraiture, 55 however , the autho r o f Th e Faerie Queene admits that while he has seemed to gaze upon his nominal subjec t at the center of court his eyes have actually been bearing away "parts" from unwittin g beauties that happen into his view. Like Serena and Orlando, these women have been the subject o f cannibalistic discourse— a gourmandizin g tha t i s in thi s cas e poetic connoisseurship—without knowin g it . In a sonnet tha t serve s both a s courtly compliment an d wake-up call, Spenser alerts the handmaids of the Faerie Queen that his composition consist s of their dismembered bodies . Though "To All the Gratious and Beautifull Ladie s in the Court" had appeared in 1590 , its republicatio n si x years later situate d i t i n a significantly expanded historical an d literar y context . I n th e 159 6 publication o f th e six-boo k poem , Spenser's letter t o Ralegh—emphasizin g The Faerie Queene's ethical exemplar-


ity and defending the poem against misconstruction—is not reprinted, as if tensions between ethics and text had resulted in a kind of architectural breakdown. 56 The absenc e of this letter , if read a s a retraction, change s the resonanc e of th e sonnet's disclaimer . Indeed th e ironic etymology Spense r provides for the topi c of his 1596 installment's final book—"Of Cour t i t seems, men Courtesie doe call" (6.1.1)—returns us to the scen e of this sonnet's crime. 57 Certainly the proem to book 6 expresses skepticism toward this venue, portraying it as a glass of "forgerie, / Fashion'd to please the eies of them, that pas." And Spenser suggests a radical alternative to theatrical courtiership when he states, in anticipation of Hamlet' s distinction between "seems" and "that within," that "vertues seat is deepe within the mynde, / And not i n outward shows, but inwar d thoughts defynd" (6.Proem.5). But even here the idea of courtesy is remanded to the "patterne" and "mirrour " of Elizabeth and her "Court, where courtesies excell" (6.Proem.6-7); thi s proem may introduce a " [re] defyned" virtue resident in "inward thoughts," but such courteous inwardness cannot exist apart from the public and theatrical epistemology of the cour t critically described in Donne's Second Anniversarie: Are there not som e Courts, (And then, no things bee So like as Courts) which, in this let us see, That wits and tongues of Libellars are weake, Because they doe more ill, then these can speak? The poyson'is gon e through a l l . .. (lines 331-35 ) Theresa M. Krier ha s observed tha t fo r Spense r the questio n o f "How t o sho w hiddenness without violating it and turning it into display becomes [in The Faerie Queene] a n ethical issue and... a representative problem."58 And Richard Rambuss offers a n importan t coordinat e t o th e Chia n painter' s awkwar d position i n his discussion of the problematic conclusion o f Mother Hubberds Tale, published between Th e Faerie Queene's installments: Even Mercury, eventually sent by Jove to impose order in the animal kingdom and depose the "impostors," too closely resembles them to secure the impression at the end of the poem that th e court has been wholly purged of what the y represent. For like the Fo x and th e Ape , Mercury is characterized by his "cunning theeueries " [Mother Hubberds Tale, line 1287] , by his skill at altering his shape [line s 1266,1289-90], and o f course—being the go d of secrecy, Hermes—by his ability to pry "into eac h secrete part" [line 1303].59 Like the mercurial pose of the satirist, a "spier out o f all ... secre t faults, " the shape-shifting guis e of the Chian painter collapses the distinction betwee n poet and beast . For Spenser, the admittedl y voyeuristi c thie f of others' parts , the re-

68 Guilty

Creatures

peated violations of privacy that constitute the action of The Faerie Queene 6 would thus see m t o represen t a dilativ e exploratio n o f th e proble m se t fort h i n th e book's proem: how can one bear witness to courtesy in a poetics of praise without also exposing it in a discourteous act of display? How can the publishe d poet' s appreciation of an inward virtue escape the strategies of espionage through which secrets are rendered public property? If the court itself threatens a slander more consequential than the libelous world around it, to what court ca n the poet innocently appeal? Observing that book 6 is "the only one in the entire epic that lacks a suitable allegorical representative for Elizabeth in its fiction," Rambuss has argued that the tensions introduced in the proem are resolved in a recession from the court, "from the realm of public conduct i n the direction of a secret, interior condition." 60 I n his reading, this movemen t toward interiorit y peak s on Mt . Acidale, where the proem's promise d imag e o f Elizabetha n concentricity ("Righ t so fro m yo u al l goodly vertues well / Int o th e rest , which roun d abou t yo u ring " [6.Proem.7]) yields instead the scene of Colin Clout's lady dancing within "a ring most richly well enchaced" by three Graces, themselves surrounded b y "An hundred naked maidens lilly white, / All raunged in a ring" (6.10.11-12). 61 Thi s pastoral substitution does indeed seem to signal a truancy from court : Colin in fact admits th e digression fro m epi c tha t ha s foregrounde d his "countre y lasse " a t th e Faer y Queen's epideictic expens e (6.10.28), a nervous apology that recall s similar mo ments in the Amoretti where Spenser enjoys a lyric otium at The Faerie Queene's expense.62 And the relation between Colin and his mistress ("sh e to whom tha t shepheard pyp t alone " [6.10.15] ) resembles the exclusivit y sought o f Elizabet h Boyle in the Amoretti; and o f Rosalind elsewhere in Spenser' s poetry. 63 But th e "pleasant mew " that i s Spenser's imag e o f a saf e an d privat e retrea t into lyric (Amoretti So , line 9) becomes, in his epic, an embattled pastoral vision similar to Prospero's masque—no t only surrounded by a world in which beasts and brigands walk at large, but als o gazed upon by a courtier in shepherd's clothing . It is unnecessary to quarrel with the rather inevitable reading of Colin ("who knowes not Colin CloutV} a s a representative of Spenser's lyric self o n Mt . Acidale: the dance that he orchestrates, protected from "all noysome things" and embowered by woods tha t answe r with a ringing "Eccho" (6.10.7 , 10), could appea r i n th e Epithalamion. I t i s crucial , however, to recogniz e tha t i n thi s passag e Spenser dramatizes an interview between such lyric self-presentation and what we might call hi s publi c pose. 64 I f Colin, i n what Harr y Berge r ha s terme d " a digression from a digression,"65 figures a strikingly anachronistic version of this former self , Calidore figure s th e "Chia n Peincter " o f Venus' s court, "Beholdin g all , yet o f them vnespyde" (6.10.11). Before treating Acidale as a complete escape from th e court, we should recall that the Grace s and naked "Damzels" of Venus are similarly gazed upon fro m behin d th e ease l in "T o All the Beautiful l Ladie s i n th e Court." Th e onlookin g outside r wh o threaten s th e privat e intercours e o f th e


Amoretti an d Epithalamion continues t o defin e an d imping e upo n the boundaries of Acidale; but her e he does so in a guise resembling the epic poet's. "But why when I them saw, fled the y away from me? " (6.10.19): the gramma r of Calidore' s plaintiv e questio n t o Coli n ma y betray some discomfor t with th e facts o f the precedin g stanzas, in which the ladie s flee the voyeur when they see him; and perhap s the fain t skepticisi m in Colin' s reply , "Then wote tho u shep heard, whatsoever tho u bee " (6.10.21) , suggests a hypocrisy beyon d Calidore' s borrowed weeds. Spenserians, at any rate, have found it difficult to take at face value Calidore's protestations of innocence in this episode, and in his earlier intrusion upon th e cover t "solace" of Serena and Calepin e (6.3.20-22). 66 An d while Krier offers a salutary corrective to the complete suspicion that can obscure Calidore' s acts of genuine courtesy, she nevertheless fail s t o interrogat e th e signale d envy with whic h he behold s th e Acidalean pageant.67 Viewing Serena's dainty part s with "loose lasciuious sight" and "craftie spyes," the cannibals become solipsistic in their "lustfull fantasyes": "Each wisheth t o him selfe , and t o the res t enuyes " (6.8.41). We cannot kno w fo r certai n whethe r Seren a has earlier enjoye d tru e protection "fro m enuiou s eyes " in her dallianc e with Calepin e (6.3.20). But o n Acidale Calidore becomes a civilized microcosm o f the cannibal s as he behold s the nake d ladies: "There he did see, that pleased much hi s sight, / That euen he him self e hi s eye s enuyde" (6.10.11) . Nor i s Calidore's defens e withou t incrimi nating echoes. Indeed the "fortune" he invokes to exculpate his intrusions upo n Serena and Calepin e (6.3.21) , and upo n Coli n an d th e ladies of Venus (6.10.20), resembles the "fortune blynde" that graciously provides the cannibals with thei r prey (6.8.36). Even the chastening exchange between Colin and Calidore, through which the latter realizes he has "rashly sought that, which I mote not see" (6.10.29), recalls the priest's (and narrator's) rebuke of the cannibals for prophaning "sacred threasure" with "common eyes " (6.8.43). "But why when I them saw, fled they away from me?": the question rings with the sam e poignancy , with muc h th e sam e bewilderment , tha t mark s Thoma s Wyatt's comment o n changed subjec t relations—"They fle from m e that sometyme did m e seke." Krier is right to remind u s that Calidor e learns from hi s encounter with Colin o n Acidale; 68 as a juxtaposition of two modes o f poetic self presentation, however, this encounter illustrates not moral progress but the almost elegiac los s o f a forme r innocence . Willin g t o "pu t theimsel f i n daunger " a t Colin's hand, 69 the Grace s vanish befor e th e advancin g interloper, leaving not a rack behind. Calidore's desir e "to know" through autops y never finds complete satisfaction o n Acidale; as in Wyatt's poem, the rule s of the gam e seem to have changed in the space between Colin and Calidore, and accustomed poetic subjects have new motive to flee the latter's courtly gaze. It says much of book 6, and much of the poetic s i n which this invasive shepherd-courtier i s somehow implicated , that—as w e watch hi m feedin g hi s "greedy fancy" on Colin' s words—w e tak e some comfort in Calidore's inability to "restore" this fugitiv e vision (6.10.20).

70 Guilty Creatures

Even as we observe Calidore's implicatio n i n the predatory poetics illustrated so graphically elsewhere in book 6, we must acknowledge the manners and social graces that seem to distinguish his intrusions upon privacy from th e more violent violations carried out by the cannibals, the Blatant Beast, and the brigands. Indeed, situating Calidor e i n th e comple x allegor y o f courtes y represent s on e o f th e more difficul t interpretiv e challenge s in this book. Should th e reade r fin d hi m guilty by association with these more obviously discourteous figures? There i s a continuum, afte r all , between th e courtie r gone native and th e courtl y savages; and Rambus s has suggestively described the relatio n between Calidore an d th e Beast not a s adversarial, but a s catalytic: It is significant, then, that the Blatant Beast makes its initial appearance in the Legend of Courtesy only after Calidore himself has first intruded upo n Serena and Calepine' s secre t lovemaking in the glade . The Blatant Beast is soon to follow—as though it were the knight's originary violation of a private space tha t ha s create d a n openin g for th e monster' s disruptiv e entranc e into the narrative... Calidore and the Blatant Beast thus appear to be nearly inseparable: where there is one, the other is sure to follow. And rather than containing th e monster, Calidor e appear s to be disseminating it s destructive energies in every corner o f Faery Land.70 But Spenser never lets us forget that Calidore's nature is essentially opposed to the bestial and rude; as even a skeptic toward Calidore's behavior observes, Spenser's character is no more ambiguous than the virtue with which book 6 is concerned: Calidore—the extraordinaril y gifte d ma n wh o combine s graciousnes s with the physical prowess necessary to impose his standards of behavior on others—is an appropriate arbiter in a society which at least pays lip service to those standards; he is a fitting champion o f courtesy against its ultimate opponents.71 Again, however, we confront an interpretive problem, a distinction that collapses the moment w e rely upon i t too heavily : even the cannibals say grace (6.8.37).72 In fact the difficulties we encounter in such attempts to discriminate between the savages an d Calidore— a figur e wanderin g betwee n ceremonia l courtes y an d effective discourtesy—canno t b e resolved entirely by the reader because they are not entirely resolved by the poem. This analogical irresolution is Spenser's point; but t o bring this point int o som e kind of focus, we must coordinat e it with his meditation, throughou t boo k 6 , of the publi c poet' s similarl y bleared implication i n the hostile world fro m whic h he would differentiate himself. A paradigmatic moment in Spenser's Legend of Courtesy—a recurrent moment in Spenser's struggle , throughout hi s literary career, to defin e a virtuous poetics by exorcising the bestial—appears in the preparations for Serena's sacrifice, where the cannibals get religion:


Those daintie parts, the dearlings of delight, Which mote not be prophan'd of common eyes, Those villeins vew'd with loos e lasciuious sight, And closely tempted with their craftie spyes; And some of them gan mongst themselues diuize, Thereof by force to take their beastly pleasure. But them the Priest rebuking, did aduize To dare not t o pollute so sacred threasure, Vow'd to the gods: religion held euen theeues in measure. (6.8.43) John Upton's rathe r startling eighteenth-century gloss on this allusive passage, a comment tha t "our trul y theistical and Christia n Poe t exclaim s 'Tantum religio potuit suadere bonorum,'" has been moderate d b y Cheney: "The 'temperance' t o which their religion enjoins them is clearly of scant consolatio n t o Serena; there is no substantial difference between the 'beastly pleasure' of the savages and tha t of their hungry gods.... Spenser's echo of Lucretius' description of the sacrific e of Iphigenia confirms rathe r than refute s th e Roman' s argument." 73 Yet Upton's instinct to view the cannibals' religio as redemptive of an otherwise carnal appetite seems to find sanction elsewhere in Spenser's poetry. In Amoretti 77, for instance, the poet's lady—like Serena described as the eroticized banquet table of the Song of Songs 74—provides food fo r thought : Was it a dreame, or di d I see it playne, A goodly table of pure yvory: All spred with juncats, fit to entertayne The greatest Prince with pompous roialty . Mongst which there in a silver dish did ly Twoo golden apples of unvalewd price: Far passing those which Hercules came by, Or those which Atalanta did entice: Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice, That many sought yet none could ever taste, Sweet fruit o f pleasure brought fro m paradic e By love himselfe and i n his garden plaste. Her brest that table was, so richly spredd, My thoughts the guests, which would thereon have fedd. Like Seren a among th e cannibals , the poet' s beloved become s th e hostes s o f a whetted imagination. And like Serena in the gustative eyes of her beholders, this lady is conceived as manna fro m heaven , not a s forbidden fruit. 75 "Yet voyd of sinfull vice": we may hear in this qualification an echo of Skelton's "And yet there was no vyce"; we certainly hear in it the anxiet y over a prodigal

72 Guilty

Creatures

delight sans instruction tha t Richard Helgerson ha s described as Spenser's laureate burden.76 It is as an emblem of such anxiety that the savage priest becomes most like a neoplatonic poet, cleansing his instruments of corporal residue with purgative ardor: The Priest him self e a garland doth compos e Of finest flowers , and wit h ful l busi e care His bloudy vessels wash, and holy fire prepare. Ceremonial formalism, however, fails to contain the carnality of this transaction (or its final extrasyllabic line—"Vow'd to the gods: religion held euen theeues in measure"). Rather than confine to a single definitive act (such as the destructio n of the Bower of Bliss)77 Spenser's self-reflexive struggl e against the threateningly predatory and bestial, we must recognize that his too is the "full busie" and assiduous "care" of one who would have his garland without blood: "Let's be sacrifi cers," as Shakespeare's Brutus will untenably enjoin his fellow conspirators in the next chapter, "not butchers. " We must also realize that this habitual self-ablution reveals, in book 6 , some of the same indelibility encountered by Ruddymane in book 2 , and by Lady Macbeth after sh e has become an accessory to murder . ORPHEUS AN D TH E THEATE R O F HOSTIL E WITNES S In Sonne t i n Shakespear e laments a vocational "infection" that ha s marked him with a damned spot : The guilty goddess of my harmfull deeds, That did not bette r for my life provid e Than publi c means which public manners breeds : Thence comes it that my name receives a brand; And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. (lines 2-7 ) Not only is this plainant's name passively branded with the social stigma attached to popula r drama ; his hand als o testifie s to hi s participation i n the "harmfull deeds" of thi s corruptin g venue . As we shal l se e i n chapte r 3 , the mean s an d manners of the public theater elicit from Shakespear e metadramatic reflection s upon th e playwright' s red-hande d complicit y wit h "wha t [he ] works in" ; an d Serena's victimization b y the "common eyes" of a congregated mob easily translates to the violence performed for and by Shakespeare's spectators. Indeed, there is a possibility that Spenser presents Serena's episode among the cannibals as an antitheatrical critique. The savages resemble groundlings as they "diuersely dispose" themselves "Vpon th e grass" (6.8.39); and Serena is raised above them no t


only as an altar, but als o as an actor upon a proscenium. As critics of the Renaissance stage portrayed its actors as social parasites who produced nothing , so does Spenser represent the cannibals as fed by the work of others (6.8.35; compare th e brigands' predator y economy at 6.10.39). More suggestive is Spenser's description of the mobile vulgus that "round about her flocke[s], like many flies, / Whooping, and hallowin g on euer y part" (6.8.40), a near approximatio n o f Michael Drayton's descriptio n o f the terribl e an d tempting energie s of public theater and it s crowds: In pride of wit, when high desire of fam e Gave life an d courage to my lab'ring pen , And first the sound an d virtue of my name Won grace and credit in the ears of men, With those the thronged theaters that press, I in the circui t for the laurel strove, Where the ful l praise , I freely must confess , In heat of blood a modest min d migh t move . With shout s and claps at every little pause, When th e proud roun d o n every side hath rung. 78 We kno w tha t Spense r scrupulousl y resiste d Gabrie l Harvey' s prompting s t o turn from epi c to the "circuit" of this other generic career; and it is plausible that Spenser's laureate cannibal represents a satiric response t o the increasingly successful dramatis t o f the 1590s—the "servant o f the manie" mocked in Th e Teares of the Muses. 79 But to read Serena as a victim only of the "loose lasciuious sight" that aroused so much antitheatrical anxiety in this period is to ignore the lyric aspect of the savages' blazonic praise. Rather than a narrowly focused condemnation o f the theatrical economy fro m whic h Spenser is safely remove d by his own mor e legitimate vocation, his portrayal of the cannibals and their priest—his garland compose d of th e "finest flowers" of poesie—represents a n econom y fro m whic h h e is less easily sequestered : a lyric celebration o n th e verg e of savag e theater; a scopo philia blurrin g almos t imperceptibl y wit h participatory , hands-o n sacrifice ; a verse overflowin g it s measur e and thereb y engendering "loose affection." 80 W e remember from chapte r 1 the weird fantasy of Gorboducs printer, in which a text violated by unauthorized publication return s "after lon g wandring ... whereb y she caught her shame"; further hostile reception, we are told, will lead "the poore gentlewoman" t o "pla y Lucrece s part & of he r sel f di e fo r shame. " I f Seren a is brought t o the point of "being alreadi e dead" through "inward shame " and fea r "of villany to be to her inferd," does not this mortification result from a similarly coerced publication? In Serena, the trope of gendered text threatens to become a primitively textualized gender, a transformation that reveals the violently theatrical commerce that lyric poetry is often a t pains to conceal .

74 Guilty

Creatures

Etymologically and rhetorically, the poetry of praise that the cannibals take to dissective extreme s evokes th e theatron, where things are exposed t o commo n view. The verbal root of panegyric roughly means "to convene a public meeting," while that o f epideictic mean s "to sho w around"; an d t o engage in encomium is to participate i n a komos, or "staged revel" . In the Renaissance, however, this revealing nexus was frequently denied by poets who perceived an essential enmity between lyric and drama. The irresistible figure of self-identification—for thos e Renaissance poets concerne d bot h with th e threa t o f popular dram a an d with distinguishing thei r ar t fro m thi s degenerat e influence—wa s Orpheus , whos e dismemberment b y the Thracian wome n coul d offe r a euhemeristic accoun t of lyric poetry's violen t replacement by Dionysiac drama. 81 In his reading of Milton's A Masque Presented a t Ludlow Castle, for instance, Donald Bouchar d perceives a "mythic antagonism " between Dionysus, "the god of crowds, of'the rou t o f Monsters,'" an d Orpheus , "the harmonize r o f misrule and undiscipline d crowds." 82 A self-conscious dramatizatio n o f th e poetic s o f praise, Milton's Masque at once stages the earl of Bridgewater's family in a highly wrought encomiu m an d represent s the danger s t o inward , continent virtu e as the "barbarous dissonance" of Cornus and his rout.83 As in Lycidas, where elegist and elegized ar e aligned with an Orpheus victimized by "the rou t that made the hideous roar, " the Lad y of the Masque adopt s the embattled pos e of the Lad y of Cambridge as she threatens Comu s with Orpheus' s power: 84 Yet should I try, the uncontrolled wort h Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits To such a flame o f sacred vehemence, That dum b thing s would be moved to sympathize, And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, Till all thy magic structures reared so high, Were shattered int o heaps o'er th y false head. (Ludlow Masque, lines 792-98) The situational correspondences between Serena and Milton's Lady, who is finally rescued by a Spenserian character ("Whic h onc e of Meliboeus old I learnt"), are suggestive: both have been lef t b y their male protectors; an d both are held captive by a bacchant, theatrical mob led by a priest figure who perverts the poetry of praise into penetrative coercion. For both Spenser and Milton, moreover, this theatrical mo b would seem to offe r a clearly defined antithesi s to the genuinely courteous regar d for privacy and inwar d virtue with which the Masque an d th e sixth boo k o f Th e Faerie Queene are concerned. Comus' s "well placed words of glozing courtesy" specifically affor d th e power to intrude upon "th e unpollute d temple of the mind," to "wind .. . int o th e easy-hearted man" (Ludlow Masque, lines 161 , 460,163); while the cannibals ' disclothin g an d planne d vivisectio n of Serena, an extreme version o f Comus's "b e not coy, " renders absurd th e agend a


of such "gay rhetoric" (Ludlow Masque, line 789). If the Lady's "marble venome d seat" bear s th e glutinou s evidenc e o f a breache d sexua l an d philosophica l chastity (Ludlow Masque, lines 915-16), Serena's "inward shame of her vncomely case" reveals a similar collapse o f mind-body dualism , a collapse effecte d b y the cannibals' performative word s and invasive gaze . For both Spense r and Milton , o n th e othe r hand , the Dionysia c energies of drama woul d see m t o represen t a threatening alternativ e to thei r ow n artisti c values: if Comus's insinuating "power to cheat the eye with blear illusion" (Ludlow Masque, line 155) figures the hypocrisy Milton would deny in his own poetic tribute, for instance, it also reminds us of the genr e Milton ha s chosen for his own patronage performance . Like Milton's Masque, the sixth book o f Spenser's epic alludes to the "mythic antagonism " between Orpheus an d Dionysus—betwee n lyric and dramatic forms of poetic presentation—as i t considers the violence of publishing the private.85 Even more strikingly than for Milton, however, Spenser's identification with Orpheus in this antagonism becomes complicated, in book 6, by his involvement i n the poetics of display. Several fine studies have claimed convincingly that Orpheus's dismembermen t at th e hand s o f a debased an d invidiou s communit y provide s Spense r with a n image for the interpretive contingencies surrounding his poetic self. 86 And though he does not expres s his vocational anxieties in the explicitly generic terms that distinguish Jonson' s Orphic antitheatricalism i n chapter 3, Spenser nevertheless suggests—in his most extensive meditation o n the contemporary decline of poetry—the victimization o f the solitar y voice of social and natura l orde r b y the Bacchantes of public drama. Significantly, Th e Teares o f th e Muses begin s wit h referenc e t o th e deat h o f Calliope's "Twinnes," a mythological revisio n that would see m to offe r Spense r the necessar y imaginative space for his claim to Orphea n consanguinity. 87 Th e refrain o f this serial elegy is a distortion o f the pleasant antiphony celebrated in the Epithalamion, where song is answered with a confirmatory echo that suggests Orpheus's lyric harmonizing o f the stones and trees: For all their groves, which with the heavenly noyses Of their sweete instruments were wont t o sound , And th' hollow hills, from whic h their silver voyces Were wont redoubled Echoe s to rebound , Did now rebound wit h nought but rueful l cries , And yelling shrieks throwne up into the skies. (Teares, lines 19-24) A consequence of Spenser's disposition o f the Muses' plaints in this poem, moreover, is an implied causal relation between the degeneration of drama and the general falling of f of poetry. 88 Onl y afte r Melpomen e ha s lamented a world populated b y men "withou t understanding, " a world filled with "ruful l spectacles "

76 Guilty

Creatures

(lines 128,163); only after Thali a has bewailed a "Barbarisme" and "brutish Igno rance" that "in th e minde s of men no w tyrannize, / And the fair e Scen e wit h rudenes foule disguize" (lines 187-88,191-92); does Euterpe observe the ruinatio n of pastoral tha t Spense r holds of f by prayer in the twentiet h stanz a of the Epithalamion: Our pleasan t groves, which planted wer e with paines, That with our music k wont so oft to ring , And arbors sweet, in which th e Shepheards swaines Were wont s o oft their Pastoralls to sing, They have cut downe an d all their pleasaunce mard , That now no pastorall is to bee hard. In stead of them fowl e Goblin s and Shriekowles , With fearful l howlin g do all places fill; And feebl e Eccho now laments an d howles, The dreadfull accents of their outcries shrill . So all is turned int o wilderness, Whilest ignorance th e Muses doth oppresse . (lines 277-88 ) It was the "wilderness" of England's popular drama, according to Philip Sidney, that caused "her mothe r Poesy' s honesty to be called into question." 89 Spenser' s Erato seems to suggest a similar contamination whe n she ascribes the defloration of "Sweete Love devoyd of villanie or ill, / But pure and spotles" to a "base-born brood" prone to "lewdness" and "riot" (lines 387-88,384,392,395). In such a world, the Muse of love poetry asserts, once sacrosanct generic conventions are vitiated by common use, and only one legitimate note remains to mark their passing: Now change the tenor of your joyous layes, With whic h ye use your loves to deifie , And blazon foort h an earthlie beauties praise, Above the compasse of the arched skie : Now change your praises into piteous cries, And Eulogies turne into Elegies. (lines 367-72) 90 The last to elegiz e poetry's appropriatio n a s public entertainment, Polyhymni a memorably represent s the declensio n o f rhetoric int o babbl e a s both an architectural event and a disfiguring rape : Heapes of huge words uphoorded hideously, With horri d soun d thoug h having little sence, They thinke to be chiefe praise of Poetry;


And thereby wanting due intelligence, Have mard th e fac e o f goodly Poesie, And made a monster of their fantasie : Whilom in ages past none might profess e But Princes and hig h Priests that secret skill, The sacred lawes therein they wont expresse, And with deepe Oracles their verses fill: Then was shee held in soveraigne dignitie, And made the noursling of Nobilitie. But now nor Prince nor Pries t doth her maintayne, But suffer he r prophaned t o be Of the base vulgar, that with hands uncleane Dares to pollute her hidden mysterie. And treadeth unde r foot e hir holie things, Which wa s the car e of Kesars and o f Kings. (lines 553-70) The Muses ' tear s flow for the entropi c worl d represente d in th e sixt h boo k o f Spenser's epic, where a peripatetic monster spare s "Ne Kesars ... no r Kings " as it paws through "cels and secret s neare" (6.12.28, 24); where harmonious sylva n echo is rent by shrieking bagpipes that make "the woods to tremble at the noyce" (6.8.46); where "inward thoughts" succumb to "outward shows" as even the most private pastoral vision—"in the couert of the wood," but "Simple and tru e from couert malice free" (6.10.11,24)—is subjected to hostile witness; where serene interlude yields to savage serenade, the venerated poetic subject to the grasping hands and "peoples voyce / Confused" (8.46) of public drama. If book 6 portrays this devolution with something of the generic antagonism suggested in The Teares of the Muses, however, it also complicates the mythologica l coordinates of this antagonism. For while we may find an etiolation of the Orpheu s myth in Colin, whose Graces recede from view like Eurydice, we find in the cannibal priest a complete perversion of this figure: Polyhymnia's high priest, wont to fil l verse s "with dee p Oracles " an d "secre t skill, " has becom e i n Th e Faerie Queene a Magus of the theater; no longer a victim of the maenads but their ringleader, this Orpheus metamorphosed preside s over the "diuelish ceremonies " of Dionysian carnival as an agent of dismemberment (6.8.45) . In its devilishness, the theatricalized poetry of praise he directs not only slanders (diaballein) bu t tears asunder (divellere). 91 Such claim s appea r mor e credibl e whe n w e conside r th e ambiguit y wit h which Orpheu s sometime s appear s i n Spenser' s earlier poetry . When h e turn s from Orpheus' s dismemberment by the Bacchantes to the fatal respect shown to Eurydice, in fact , Spense r indicts the archetypa l poet fo r discourtesy; an d th e

78 Guilty Creatures

nature o f Orpheus's transgression , a killing gaze, provides a n importan t moti f for the visual violence enacted throughout Th e Faerie Queene's sixth book. Indeed, attention t o this aspect of Spenser's conception o f Orpheus will help us understand that the Orphic avatars in book 6 represent not simpl y an injured poetry, but als o an injuring poetry—embattled, perhaps, by the savag e theater around it, but als o implicated in this theater. The blame attache d t o Orpheu s i n Virgils Gnat (1579), exceeding that o f th e Culex and departing entirely from the sympathetic defense offered in the Georgics, 92 startles most : And sad Eurydice thenc e now no mor e Must turne to life, but ther e detained bee , For looking back, being forbid before: Yet was the guil t thereof, Orpheus, in thee . Bold sure he was, and worthie spirit bore, That durst those lowest shadowes goe to see, And could believe that ani e thing could please Fell Cerberus, or Stygian powres appease .. . But cruell Orpheus, thou much crueller, Seeking to kisse her, brok'st th e God s decree, And thereby mad'st he r ever damn'd to be. (lines 433-40, 470-72) In a poem late r included in the Complaints volume with Th e Teares o f the Muses and Virgils Gnat, but first published in the English translation of Jan van der Noot's A Theatre for Worldlings (1569) , Spenser sees Eurydice through Orpheus' s fata l eyes.93 This poem, which epigrammatizes the sixth vision in Petrarch's Rime 323, does not make explicit the culpable cruelty of Orpheus's gaze ; but by translating Petrarch's "vid' io" as "did I spie," Spenser seems to intensify the causality already implied in the Canzoniere. Eurydice is no sooner spie d than stung : Above the waste a darke cloude shrouded hir , A stinging Serpent by the heele hir caught , Wherewith sh e languisht as the gathered floure . (Epigram 6, lines 7-9 ) Serena's first appearance in Spenser's epic has suggested to some readers the figure of Proserpina. 94 Spie d by Calidore, however , and consequentl y "caught" b y the Cerberus-mouthed an d aspic-tongue d Blatan t Beast (6.3.23-24) , Seren a seems closer to the Eurydice Spenser imagines as victimized by his own Orphic gaze . Throughout boo k 6 , in fact, Calidore plays Orpheus's part : it is his desire "to know," to allay his epistemological doubt s with a forbidden interview, that causes the Acidalean vision to recede (6.10.17); and his rescue of Pastorella from the brigands' sunles s netherworl d suggest s the Eurydic e Redux nearly achieved by Or -


pheus's katabasis. But Calidore's espial of Serena not only exposes her to the cur of Detraction, "that closel y kils, / O r cruell y does wound" (5.12.36); it also prefig ures the cannibalistic "craftie spyes" that render her "alreadie dead with feareful l fright" (6.8.43 , 45)- In book 6, even the mos t courteou s gaze can cooperate with the Blatan t Beast an d anticipat e the glancin g murder enacte d b y the savage s in their theater-in-the-round . Lik e the Orpheu s o f Virgils Gnat an d Epigra m 6 , Calidore's respec t seems to precipitate (not merely precede) a mortifying doom. We may now ask why Spenser, the "Chian Peincter" of Elizabeth's court , migh t dwell in book 6, and particularly in the episode of Serena's near sacrifice, on such consequences. BEYOND REPENTANCE ? The Renaissance poet's concern that his verse may inflict harm is not confine d to the elegiac anxieties we have seen in Diggs, who worries that his stated intention to praise the deceased in rhyme may paper over an affinity with "their black envie, who detract" in criminal prose. Shakespeare gives this same concern memo rably epigrammatic expression in a quite different lyri c setting: "Were it not sinfu l then, striving to mend , / To mar th e subjec t that before was well?" (Sonnet 103, lines 9-10). A familiar humility topos, "thou art too great a theme for my rough and rudel y dressed lines," has reflected back on itself to consider the effect s such poetic ungentleness can have upon "the subject." Like the sixth book of Spenser's epic, Shakespeare's sonnet s depic t a world in whic h communicativ e privac y is threatened by the prying eyes and traducing mouths of a predatory public; and the speaker of these poems, realizing that "that love is merchandized whose rich esteeming / The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere" (Sonnet 102, lines 3-4) , also realizes that failure to hold one's tongue in such a world can expose the poetic subject t o th e "hands o f falsehood" as "the pre y of every vulgar thief" (Sonnet 48, lines 4, 8). A certai n sincerit y ma y underli e Shakespeare' s emphasi s o n a n embattle d lyric privacy, since what we know o f his sonnets suggest s that they were originally intended fo r limited circulation and first merchandized i n a pirated publi cation.95 Four years prior to the divulgence of two of Shakespeare's poems, however, Spenser went public with the Amoretti an d Epithalamion. And though th e antagonism o f an invidious and misconstruing publi c provides both poets with a paradigm through which their idea of lyric exclusivity can be defined, Spenser's complicity in the business of publication complicate s an y disavowal of a "merchandized" love: Ye tradefull Merchants that with weary toyle doe seeke most pretious things to make your gaine: and both the Indias of their treasures spoile,

8o Guilty

Creatures

what needeth you to seeke so farre i n vaine? For loe my love doth in her selfe containe all this worlds riches that may farre be found: if Saphyres, loe her eies be Saphyres plaine, if Rubies, loe her lips be Rubies sound: If Pearles, hir teeth be pearles both pure and round ; if Yvorie, her forhea d yvory weene; if Gold, her locks are finest gol d on ground ; if silver, her fair e hand s are silver sheene, But that which fairest is , but fe w behold, her mind adornd wit h vertues manifold. (Amoretti, 15) Can religion hold even thieves in measure? Certainly the neoplatonic couplet here, like the cannibals' restrictive high priest, suggests a dainty part "whiche mote not be prophan' d o f commo n eyes. " Bu t lik e the priest' s injunction , thi s couple t serves ironically to underscore, rather than escape, the plunderous economy that is its setting and occasion . In body and mind , the lady of Amoretti 15 i s offered a s a homegrown India, a continent o f convenient discovery , "gaine," and "spoile. " In suc h a poem, "that which ... fe w behold" functions not to preserve an ineffable secrecy , but to advertise—to the commodities traders Spenser has invoked—yet another acquisition to be held and exchanged upon, yet another content to be itemized and catalogued as an availabl e rarity. If Shakespeare in Sonne t n o lament s suc h commerc e as selling "cheap what is most dear" (line 3), Spenser in Amoretti 15 seems to cater to Renaissance ambition a t its most opportunistic; h e becomes the poet dismisse d by Shakespeare's twenty-firs t sonnet: "Let them sa y more that like of heare-say well, /1 wil l not prais e that purpos e not t o sell " (lines 13—14). By presenting his lady as a microcosm o f "all this worlds riches," as the foca l poin t o f eyes intent on gettin g the goods , Spense r makes spoliation a literary business legitimize d only by the couplet's subclause. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he allows the dubious economy of mercantilism to subtend the immaterialism o f this couplet, subverting the neoplatonic maneuver of his final lines by reminding us that his lady's "mind" is no less up for grabs than her blazoned body. Of course an audienc e composed o f opportunistic takers can elicit authorial anxiety as well as professional aspiration. Not only does such an audience define the subject of the poem as merchandise; it can also raise troubling questions about textual property and ownership. As Rambuss observes, William Ponsonby's pref ace to the 159 1 Complaints volume , "The Printer to the Gentle Reader" expresses an "Orphean anxiet y of scattered limbs, a response of poets of this period mor e regularly associated with the recent practice of anthologization, which presented variously authored small lyric poems in piecemeal miscellanies": 96


Since my late setting foorth of the Faerie Queene, finding that it hath found a fauorable passage amongst you; I haue sithence endeauored b y all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishmen t of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale Poemes of the same Authors; as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easi e to bee come by, by himselfe; som e of them hauin g been diuerslie imbeziled an d purloyne d fro m him, since his departure ouer Sea.97 If we accept the rather persuasive argument that Spenser here speaks through his printer ventriloquially, 98 this Orphic pose may seem slightly disingenuous. Association with the maenads may serve to stigmatize those who have not paid Spenser for hi s own "weary toyle," but gettin g a text "disperst abroad i n sundrie hands" is of course the printer's task. Ponsonby's "Gentle Reader' differs fro m his Thracian counterparts merely, it would seem, by observing a set of commercial rules only vaguely establishe d i n th e 1590s . Th e "Orphea n anxiety " relate d b y Spenser' s printer becomes even more complicated when one considers that th e autho r of the Complaints, at least from the perspective of state censors, would himself appear (like "Mother Hubberds" Mercury ) an embezzler, divulging purloined court secrets to the greedy hands of a broad public audience. In his Black Book, Thomas Middleton explain s tha t Mother Hubberd i n fac t occasione d th e "callin g in " of th e Complaints volum e fo r "sellin g he r workin g bottle-al e t o book-binders , an d spurting the frot h upo n courtiers' noses." 99 Th e differenc e betwee n Ponsonby' s and th e state' s "calling in" of Spenser's widely distributed text s is revealing: the first figures the poet as the victim of unauthorized publication, the second as an agent of such injurious scattering—as a blatant ma w spurting venom o n thos e at court ; th e firs t portray s hi s work s as pirated, the secon d a s the pirating s o f others' secrets—as the caricatures of a mercenary Chian painter. From it s prefatory Letter t o Raleg h to it s last injured stanza s i n book 6, The Faerie Queene represents its make r as a victim of misconstruction , th e "gentl e Poets rime " as rent an d backbi t by an invidiou s and bacchan t audience. But as already demonstrated, th e poet's identification with the victims of book 6 is complicated by the poetic nature of their victimization: Serena is rendered effectivel y "dead" by a beast in priest's clothing , by a murderous act of poetic indiscretio n disguised as an innocent ceremon y "which mot e not b e prophan'd o f common eyes." Calidore' s suppressio n o f th e Beas t ma y rea d a s a n allegor y of censor ship,100 a silencing like that encountered by Artegall and Arthur as they approach Mercilla's throne: they saw Some one, whose tongue was for his trespasse Nayld to a post, adiudged by law: For that therewith he falsely did reuyle, And foul e blaspheme tha t Queene for forged guyle,

82 Guilty

Creatures

Both with bold speaches , which he blazed had, And with lewd poems, which he did compyle; For the bold title of a Poet bad He on himselfe had ta'en, and raylin g rymes had sprad . (5-9-25) But the clarity by which Malfont "was plainely to be red" in book 5—the correspondence between ascribed name and "th'euill, which he did" (5.9.26)—proves a fantasy of reformation i n book 6 . The Beast has no single , determinate name ; and the fainter "title of a Poet bad" hovers threateningly above all those who venture i n the profession. If book 6 does not mak e the poem's projecte d continua tion ethicall y impossible, i t certainl y make s untenable th e clai m t o allegorical legibility and ethical purpose in the Letter to Ralegh. Book 6 also contradicts the Letter's claim of topical innocence. Both the indiscretion an d th e indiscretenes s o f Serena's episode—its violen t divulgence s an d its failure t o distinguish between poets an d cannibals—reflec t and concentrat e Spenser's own occupational concern s in his legend of courtesy. "Despite the pressures of his generation, Spenser took poetry beyond repentance and, in so doing, gave Englan d it s first laureate poet": 101 i n thi s summationa l commen t o n Th e Faerie Queene and its author, Helgerson makes an astute point about the careerist's rescue of English literature from apologeti c amateurism. But it is not impenitenc e that characterize s the poetr y an d th e poet s i n th e las t book o f Spenser's epic . Rather, as the garlande d priest's fervi d washin g of his "bloudy vessels" suggests, the newly consequential poetics presented in this book would see m to require a different kin d of atonement—directed no t toward inutility, but toward a violent potential. If, in Spenser's famous rejoinder to Sidney, "verses are not vaine," their consequence depends upon their contents . What newl y consequential poetics does this book present ? Part of the answer lies in Spenser's rhetorical question, "Who knowe s not Colin Clout?"—a questio n that by 1596 would have received knowing nods not onl y from a relatively small coterie audience, but also from a much broader readership familiar with Spenser's printed texts. 102 We cannot know whether this book's references to Ralegh's poetic name for Elizabeth Throckmorton—"who know s not Serena?" —would have had a similarl y wide currency in thi s year. 103 But these much-remarke d an d thinl y veiled allusion s to Elizabeth' s lady in waiting—impregnated an d secretl y married by Ralegh in 1591, and discovered, disgraced, and imprisoned with Ralegh in the Tower by an angry queen the next year104—represent a significant departure from th e discreet Colin Clou t we know and love . In Th e Shepheardes Calender, for instance, Colin presents his "countrie lasse " in a perfect Acidalean vision, inaccessible to topically minded readers. Rosalind's name, notes E.K., is a "feigned" anagram, "which being wel ordered, wil bewray the very name of hys love and mistress." 105 Bu t it is precisely the indecipherability


of this name that protects his lady from the possibilities of "betrayal" we have seen meditated in Donne's "Show me deare Christ." The speaker in Colin Clouts Come HomeAgaine may come a shade closer to divulging the identities highly allegorized in the story of Bregog and Mulla;106 but this shepherd firmly denounces the publication of one's love for political purposes, portraying the discourteous courtiers who d o so as so many savages: All full o f love, and love , and lov e my dear, And all their talke and studi e is of it. Ne any there doth brave or valiant seeme, Unless that som e gay Mistresse badge he beares .. . But they of love and o f his sacred lere, (As it should be) al l otherwise devise, Then we poore shepheards are accustomd here, And him d o sue and serve all otherwise. For with lewd speeches and licentious deeds, His mightie mysteries they do prophan e And use his ydle name to other needs, But as a complement fo r courting vaine. So him the y do not serv e as they professe , But make him serv e to them fo r sordid uses, Ah my dread Lord , that doest lieg e hearts possesse, Avenge thy selfe o n them fo r their abuses. But we poore shepheards whether rightly so, Or through ou r rudenesse into errour led , Do make religion how we rashly go, To serve that God , that is so greatly dred. (Colin Clouts Come Home Again, lines 777-80,783-98 ) The last four lines construct an opposition betwee n the courtly and the pastoral, between the exploitative and the devotional, that is more subtly explored on Acidale—but tha t dissolve s i n the cannibals ' sacrific e o f Serena, where such "religion" mixe s wit h "lew d speeche s and licentiou s deeds, " wher e predato r poet s "serue their owne necessities with others need" (6.8.35). By 1596, the oppositio n between private devotion t o the god of love and suc h public manipulation had also become muddled for Colin's creator—who could not stay long from England or its court.107 We remember tha t the Chian painter serves Venus ("as a complement fo r courting vaine"?) by displaying parts stolen fro m he r "fairest Maides," a group that a t one time included Elizabeth Throckmorton. Of course the representation of Serena in Th e Faerie Queene 6.8 seems to comment criticall y on more than the "cunning theeueries" and "craftie spyes " of an epic poet who, like Mother Hubberd's Mercury , is a journalistic voyeur at court:

84 Guilty

Creatures

Which yet to prove more true, he meant to see, And an ey-witness of each thing to bee. Tho on his head his dreadfull ha t he dight, Which maket h him invisibl e in sight, And mocketh th'eyes of all the lookers on . (Mother Hubberds Tale, lines 1277-81) Earlier in the poem, Spenser seems to have indicted Ralegh for unwittingly wounding Amore t (probabl y anothe r figur e o f Throckmorton ) wit h "hi s ow n ras h hand" (4.7.35).I08 And it is possible that in the Serena episode Spenser obliquely blames Ralegh for exposing Throckmorton t o the ruinous envy of the queen and her court, for failing to practice the poetic discretion he had preached in his own courtly verse: Thus those desires that aime to high, For any mortall Louer, When Reaso n cannot make them dye, Discretion will them Couer. 109 Certainly poems suc h as "Now Serena bee not coy " and "Nature that washt her hands i n milke"—however limite d their origina l manuscript circulation—ha d constituted a potentially dangerous indiscretion; and the latter's lingering blazon of the mistress's succulent lips and belly "of the softest downe" echoes in the cannibals' "lustfull fantasyes"—directe d toward Serena' s lips and nose , her "yvorie necke" and "alabaster brest," her paps "which like white silken pillowes were," and "her belli e white an d clere. " Spenser's pregnan t description o f Serena's stomach , moreover—"which lik e a n Altar did i t self e vprere"—ma y allud e to th e mos t undeniable evidence that Ralegh's wooing of "Serena" had bee n consummately successful. Serena's departure from th e epic, in fact, suggests the shamed and burdened condition i n which Throckmorton wa s permanently banished from court : So inward shame of her vncomely case She did conceiue, through car e of womanhood... (6.8.51) Like Calepine—wh o poltroonishl y hide s behin d Seren a when attacke d b y th e Blatant Beast (6.3.49), and who has left her vulnerably alone in this scene—Ralegh failed t o stand by his woman a s their affai r becam e public, disclaiming his love for Throckmorto n an d leavin g her to languish in the Tower three months afte r his early release. 110 But just as the allegory of this scene cannot b e reduced to simpl e and unre flexive satire, so its criticism of an indiscreet and discourteous poetics cannot be removed fro m self-criticism . The ethical and representationa l proble m of book 6, as Krier remind s us, is Spenser's. Writing not onl y for an invidious court bu t


also for the misconstructive world around it, the epicist (muc h more so than his patron, who typically resisted publication) come s neare r t o the parado x o f the cannibal priest—fashioning gentlemen out of savages by presenting an act of violent disclosure as a virtue. As in Donne's Anatomy, the consequence s o f display in th e sixt h book o f Th e Faerie Queene are conceive d i n term s of th e poem' s imagined audience—an audienc e that had receive d Elizabeth Throckmorton i n fact muc h a s it receives Serena in fiction. And a s in Donne's Anatomy, negative exemplum threaten s to become poetic practic e i n Spenser's legend o f courtesy: like his reader, the poet cannot witness Colin's vision on Acidale except through the eye s of Calidore . O f cours e fo r Calidor e a s fo r Spenser—-movin g a t large across a literary landscape, negotiatin g th e contingencie s o f the wid e world as well as the court's gravitational pull—such a way of seeing could be a career requirement: "Ou r indiscretion, " as another Renaissanc e man remind s us, having judiciously sacrificed two o f his forme r friend s t o fata l interpretation , "some times serves us well."111 But if the sixth book o f Spenser's epic enacts the poetics it criticizes, it also criticizes the poetics it enacts. The cannibals' ceremony in this sense functions like the "monster" Harry Berger invokes to describe Shakespearean performance: In a manner simila r to such Spenserian monsters a s ... th e Blatant Beast in book 6 [Shakespeare's performance] diverts us with perceptible embod iments tha t concea l thei r tru e nature by their ver y form an d existenc e as embodiments. T o externalize what the monste r mean s a s a monster i s to make us forget temporarily that the meaning lie s within the observer, and thus to covert spectatorship t o scapegoating. 112 Nor will this monstrous ceremon y completely enabl e the conversion o f authorship into scapegoating: the bloody vessels attending the garland are washed, bu t we never see them clean . As we turn no w to th e public drama o f a Renaissance poet who, as far as we know, never claimed the laurel, we will hear Spenser's muffled confessio n of guilt rephrased as a complex declaratio n o f power. I n the theater fo r worldlings that terrified and repelled Spenser, Shakespeare accepts as customers the spectatorshi p that intrudes upon Th e Faerie Queene 6. On a stage where secrecy and discretion are epistemologically impossibl e an d commerciall y undesirable , the tensions of the sacrificial priest resolve in the professional playwright, who collaborates with this spectatorshi p t o kil l hi s poeti c subject s int o interpretiv e property . Sigur d Burckhardt has observed that, for Shakespeare, "it is not i n dreams but i n names that responsibilitie s begin."113 I n the foregoing analysis Spenser's poetic respon sibility has become more legible in both a name, "Serena," and the fat e to which its signified i s subjected. If Julius Caesar appears in chapter 3 as a "power play " familiar t o today' s critica l audience , m y emphasis o n a name an d a killing i n Shakespeare's text will show that this power also comes with responsibility .

3

The Properties of Shakespeare's Globe The World makes many vntrue Constructions o f these Speaches. Rowland Whyte, describing the interpretive response to a device displayed b y Essex at an entertainment fo r the quee n i n 1595 Of unconcerning things, matters o f fact ; How others on our stag e their parts did Act; What Caesa r did, yea, and what Cicero said. John Donne, O f th e Progress of th e Soule

FOR AN ANTITHEATRICALIS T LIK E STEPHE N GossoN , th e Renaissanc e

stage travesties the courtroom, leavin g the defendant with no voice and replacing a single judge with an injudicious jury: At stage plays it is ridiculous, for the parties accused to reply, no indifference of judgment can be had, because the worst sort of people have the hearing of it , which i n respec t o f their ignorance , of their fickleness , an d o f thei r fury, ar e not t o be admitte d i n place of judgment. A judge must be grave, sober, discreet, wise, well exercised in cases of government, which qualities are never found i n the baser sort. 1

In his indictment o f drama, Gosson charges poets and players with reducing the accused to a lifeless and common text , "openly blown int o the ears of many and made a byword" (167) ; an d h e charge s the audience , "carried awa y with ever y rumor," with blind injustice: "they run together by heaps, they know not whither; and lay about with their clubs, they see not why. Which thing the ancient Philosophers considering called them a monster of many heads" (164). 2 In his sympathy with "the parties accused" by the stage, and in his anxious sense of a "baser sort" given to traducement, Gosso n adapts an early modern concern with defamation 86

The Properties of Shakespeare's Globe 8 7

that paid particular respect to the dead—in whom, according to Samuel Daniel, "no power remains ... t o hold / The tongues of men, that will be talking now":3 The worthier sort , who know we do not liue With perfect men , will neuer be so vnkinde; They will the right to the disceased giue, Knowing themselues must likewise leaue behind, Those that will censure them .. . And will not vrge a passed error now, Whenas he hath no party to consult , Nor tongue, nor aduocate, to shew his minde. 4 While the representations o f theater might seem to offe r a means both fo r biographical advocac y an d fo r showin g th e "minde " o f a historica l personage , Gosson's theatrica l victim—lik e Daniel' s dead—enjoy s n o "reply, " relyin g in stead on the questionable judgment of those who survive. Conspicuously, few apologists for Renaissance theater directly engage Gosson's assertion that the stage is a law court perverted, that it harms its object of representation, that i t submits fals e evidenc e to a biased, bacchant audience. Indeed , Thomas Heywood admits the malleability of this audience only when insistin g upon the virtues of fictionalized exempla: "Lively and well spirited action... hath power to new mold th e hearts o f the spectators and fashio n the m t o the shap e of an y noble an d notabl e attempt." 5 Phili p Sidne y may obliquely conced e th e contingency of such modeling upo n the audience's evaluation when, for instance, he claims for the poet power "to bestow a Cyrus upon th e world t o make many Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how that maker made him"6 But Sidney and the protheatricalists celebrat e the bloodless "sweet violence" 7 of an exemplary and embellished dram a that move s the spectator t o virtuous and prescribed behavior; Gosson argues not only that this same transaction ca n promulgate vice— both intentionally an d unintentionally 8—but als o that it commits feloniou s violence against the objec t of representation itself. 9 Fa r fro m a "glass of behavior, " Gosson's theater presents men as silent exteriors before a dangerously subjective audience, an inversion of the ideal courtroom: "For the place, no private man's life ought to be brought in question or accused, but where he may plead i n his own defense and have indifferent judges to determine the case" (163). Thus he approves of Roma n theatrica l censorshi p fo r restoring th e judiciar y to it s rightfu l place : "[the Roman censors] would not have the life and behavior of the citizens, subject either to a poet's inkhorn, or a player's tongue, but to the seat of justice" (165). In contrast to this fixed institution o f judgment, he finds the Renaissance "common" stage an interpretively open-ended venue, where the inwardness of a "private man's life" becomes the property of a public both ductile and unpredictable. 10 At its most penetrating, Gosson's criticism of drama reveals the violence of other-fashioning—

88 Guilty Creatures

the coercion involved when a playwright silences a subject, appropriates tha t subject as spectacle, and displays it before dubious and numberless judges. Ironically, we find the most unflinching response to this definition of theatrical violence not in the prose of Gosson's opponents, but in the very public drama he seek s to censor . In th e readin g o f Th e Tragedy o f Julius Caesar that follows , Shakespeare explore s thi s sam e violenc e wit h acut e self-consciousness ; more specifically, the dismemberment of Cinna the poet at the center of the dramati c action emblemizes the potentially ruinous energies of other-fashioning—focuse s the anxieties about theatrical appropriation and audience response—that preside with thematic centrality over the play. Such a reading will involve an inversion of the paradigm typically imposed on the Renaissance stage when "self-fashioning" is the emphasis: rather than a cultural space that enables or contains a potentially subversive auto-poesis, 11 Shakespear e represents in this play a stage selfless an d incontinent, a theater i n whic h self-presentatio n dissolve s before th e alterative gaze and indeterminat e interpretation o f the spectator . Julius Caesar has a dual role in this chapter, however. While I demonstrate tha t in his play Shakespeare metatheatrically considers the relation—as conceived by the antitheatricalists— between th e playwright, his matter, and hi s audience, I also historicize this self consciousness, arguin g that the pla y appears i n a time (1599 ) an d a place (The Globe) a t which the natur e of this relation is being energetically redefined and debated. In reading Julius Caesar, then, I present the play as a dramatic reading of a contentious contemporary issue, a critical representation o f the public theater's epistemological economy. For it is through this critique that Shakespeare defines both th e dramatis t an d hi s customers a s possible rough handlers o f the representations they fashion an d watch ; i t is through thi s critiqu e that Shakespeare considers public drama's potential for irresponsibility. In so doing, he defines the playwright as implicated in a process of which many apologists for theater would absolve him : guilt y by association wit h a n untrustworth y audience , a corrupt jury, Shakespeare's dramatist knowingl y violates the subjects he stages.

"FASHION I T THUS " It might be objected that Gosson' s view of theater a s mistrial arises merely from his concern with a topical stage's potential for libel, a concern in fact shared by the state censors in Renaissance England.12 But Gosson conceive s the injury of theatrical misrepresentation muc h mor e broadly , so that even Roman history can be victimized by Elizabethan dramatic adaptations : If a true history be taken in hand... the poets drive it most commonly unto such points, as may best sho w the majest y o f their pen .. . o r wring in a show, to furnis h th e stage , when i t i s too bare ; when th e matte r o f itself


comes short o f this, they follo w th e practic e of the cobbler , an d se t their teeth to the leather to pull it out. So was the history of Caesar and Pompey... when th e history swelled, and ran too high for the number of the persons that should play it, the poet with Procrustes13 cut the same fit to his own measure; when it afforded n o pomp at all, he brought it to the rack, to make it serve . (Plays Confuted i n Five Actions, 168-69) Sidney's alchemy, whereby the brazen world of nature and history becomes golden, is here described as a violent and opportunisti c craft . For Gosson does not seem to share Sidney's view of the inutile specificity of history; nor does he justify poeti c fiction as the conversion of mundane fact into Neoplatonic Truth. Rather, Gosson's "true history" exist s as a prior authenticit y endangere d b y subsequent author s who tak e it "in hand " and "make i t serve" their ow n artistic designs—by play wrights who falsif y historica l evidence and wring in shows in order to construct compelling theatrica l cases. Something of this rhetoric of coercive and manipulative representation distin guishes Shakespeare's own metadramatic reflection s upon the act of staging history. In the prologue to The Life o f Henry th e Fifth, fo r instance, the Chorus admits the difficulty of dramatizing epic and concedes the impossibility if not the impropriety of "cram [ming]" the play's historical subject "Within this wooden O" ; and as the audience, we become accomplices to this constrictive, farcical force when we are instructed to "suppose withi n the girdle of these walls / Are now confined tw o mighty monarchies."14 While Shakespeare's "Chorus to this history" grapples with the presentational problem o f daring "to bring forth / So great an object... O n this unworthy scaffold," however, it also introduces the interpretive consequence s of treating an historical subject as a spectacular "object": b y invoking the audi ence's "imaginar y forces, " this Choru s indicate s tha t dramatis t an d spectato r must collaborate in fashioning and evaluating the evidence before them, and implies that the ultimate meaning of dramatic representation resides in the response of the audience . If one subscribe s to Gosson' s dark vie w of the playwrigh t an d the "imaginary forces" of his audience, moreover, this collaboration not only misrepresents "true history" through the dramatist's self-intereste d manipulation of the record, but als o subjects the characters of that history to the equally suspect reception o f spectator s who—lik e a n autonomou s o r nullifie d jury—follo w their own ends in arriving at their verdict. Julius Caesar dramatizes both side s of this exchange, demonstrating the poten tial violation o f history and its subjects by theatrical representation an d audience response. Replyin g skeptically to Casca' s readin g of the wonder s an d prodigie s that herald the fifteenth of March, in fact, Cicero might be said to epigrammatize the open-ended process of other-fashioning:

90 Guilty

Creatures

Indeed it is a strange-disposed time . But men may construe things after thei r fashion , Clean from th e purpose of the things themselves. (1.3.33-35) Primarily, of course, these lines warn against the inadvertent misprision central to tragedy—the defiance of augury, omens, and prophecy that generically signals Caesar's fall; the "hateful Error" that ruins Cassius, who dies having "misconstrued everything" (5.3.84) . But i n Shakespeare' s history play , Cicero's word s resonat e with a significance beyond the tragic myopia that can doom such interpreters. For the hermeneutic he describes—the subjective speculation and objectified specta cle that, for Gosson, corrupts the courtroom and reduces history to histrionics— also describes the theatrical mode by which men knowingly victimize others in Julius Caesar. 15 Lik e the wor d theater itself (a t onc e a place where one goe s "to view" and a place where scenes are staged "to the view"), his verb construe blurs the distinction between the act of interpretation and the act of representation. Indeed, Cicero's insigh t becomes the conspirators ' strateg y as they construct thei r plot. Like the portent s an d soothsayin g Caesar must ignore if this plot is to succeed, for instance, Calphurnia's drea m has an internal validity and "purpose" that the conspirators must construe "after their fashion" if the show is to go on: thus Decius claims that she has "all amiss interpreted" (2.2.83 ) her vision, and he provides an alternative reading that effectively leads Caesar to his slaughter. Similarly Brutus, though regrettin g "that ever y like is not th e same" (2.2.128), realizes the republicans must represent Caesa r as a simulacrum of himself in order to alienate him in the people's eyes. Thus he admits—in a soliloquy that rehearses the apology for tyrannicide he will soon deliver to the plebeians—the expediency of construing Caesar after hi s own fashion, clean from th e purpose o f the thing himself: And since the quarrel Will bear no color for the thing he is, Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented, Would run to these and these extremities. (2.1.28-31) For Brutus as for Gosson's violato r o f "true history," "the matter of itself comes short"; and the solution t o the troublesome limitations of fact which threaten to impede his plot and obstruct his case lies in theatricalized fiction, in fashioning the audience's perspective on the scene he is to perform by altering the evidence and ascribing to Caesar a new telos. Refusing th e passive role of Sidney's historian — "so tied not to what should be but to what is, to the particular truth of things and not to the general reason of things"16—Brutus instead plays the poet and force s the awkwardl y sui generis Caesar into th e generi c catastrophe o f the d e casibus tradition.


This scene, however, draws blood, and herein lies the play's specifi c self-consciousness: me n di e i n Julius Caesar no t onl y fro m accidenta l misreading , no t only fro m acceptin g th e intentiona l misreading s o f others , bu t also—muc h more unusually—fro m being consciously misread . As we shall see , Cinna th e poet, dismembered fo r his name by an audience that has become actors, falls as the superlativ e victim o f this last category, the archetypa l sacrifice o f a "private man's life" to the mistrial of public theater. For Cicero's words apply as much t o the plebeia n audienc e o f this theate r a s to thos e who attemp t t o contro l thei r perspective on the evidence put befor e them: if representations can be manipu lated afte r th e politicians ' fashion, so can they be misconstrued b y the people' s reception; if men and women can be appropriated by the political theater, so can they become the property of those who observe them. And i f men an d wome n ca n be subjecte d to thi s estranging process, so can "true history." If Cicero's observation pertains to those who inhabit Shakespeare's play, it als o pertains t o th e playwrigh t himself. On thi s metadramati c level , in fact, Cicero' s acknowledgmen t o f the constructio n t o whic h omen s an d prog nostications are susceptible attains further significance and irony. For by the late sixteenth century, a great deal of skepticism had arise n in England over an illusionistic strategy that Julius Caesar, like many Renaissance history plays, employs dramaturgically: the temporal sleight of hand whereby history is fashioned into ex post fact o prophecy, the revisionism whereby past events are given a compelling predictive force and narrative shape. As Marjorie Garber and others have demonstrated, thi s ar t o f retrospectiv e anticipation—stretchin g bac k i n a venerable tradition t o Virgil's deterministic national history, biblical typology, and Augustinian providentia l design—provoke d i n Renaissanc e Englan d a heightene d scrutiny as self-authenticating political teleologies (fro m th e Tudo r an d Stuar t "myths" t o imperialis t an d revolutionar y movements ) wer e manufactured by much th e sam e method. 17 Th e strong rhetori c with which suc h manipulations of omens and prophec y were attacked, moreover, suggestively resembles that of the antitheatricalists. Most shrill, perhaps, is Raphael Holinshed's condemnatio n of Peter of Pomfret, "a man in great reputation with the common people" whom Holinshed brands a "pseudoprophet o r false foreteller o f afterclaps... a deluder of the people."18 Francis Bacon likewise regrets that "the nature of Man... coveteth divination"; approves of the "many severe laws made to suppress" such prophecies, "for they have done muc h mischief" ; an d claim s "that almost al l of them , being infinit e i n number, have been impostures , an d b y idle and craft y brains , merely contrive d an d feigned , afte r th e even t passed." 19 Holinshe d an d Baco n object to these anachronistic predictions for much the same reason that Gosso n objects to the dramatization of history; facilitating the "emplotment"20 o r arrangement of history's chaos into an orderly story, they are the instruments of deceivers rather tha n decipherers , the mean s by which th e pas t ca n be exploite d b y the present in the collaborativ e "force" invoked by Henry V s Chorus : "Linger your

92 Guilty

Creatures

patience on, and we'l l digest / Th' abuse of distance, forc e a play."21 If we accept that the status of all prodigies and prophecies in a history play is similarly suspect, then Cicero' s lines also speak for Shakespeare and hi s dramatic transformation of the casual into the causal. There are obvious reasons for the author o f Julius Caesar to consider his use of history so self-consciously. Of course Shakespeare's principal source for the play— North's translatio n o f Amyot's French version of a Latin translation of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans—already suggest s the transformatio n of historical fac t b y collaborative huma n manufacture . As Sidney remarks, moreover, this poeticizing of history began with the first chronicler: "And who reads Plutarch's either history or philosophy, shall find he trimmeth both their garments with guards of poetry."22 Shakespeare fashions his play, then, from a text already read an d fashioned , moralize d an d translated . Significantly , th e shor t scen e of Cinna's apprehensio n occasion s a disproportionate degre e of poetic departur e from thi s text : Shakespear e chooses t o specif y tha t thi s Cinn a i s "the poet" ; chooses t o subjec t this poet t o a crowd that, realizing he is not Cinn a the con spirator, nevertheles s kills him because "his name' s Cinna" ; an d chooses to suggest that Cinna's offstag e fat e will be dismemberment. In contrast, only one of the two accounts of "the murther o f Cinna" in North's Plutarch describes the victim, in passing, as "a Poet." In this account, moreover, the crowd that kills Cinna genuinely confuses hi m with the conspirator ; an d o f his death thi s account tells us only that the plebeians "presently dispatched him " and "slue him outright." 23 In his first dramatic adaptation o f a Plutarchan narrative, the playwright thus reads into, and in some cases clean from the purpose of, his historical source to present us with an innocent poet' s dismembermen t b y an inquisitorial crow d that con sciously misreads his words. Focusing o n thes e and simila r authorial decisions , Gar y Taylor has recently concluded the most extended discussio n of Cinna's death to date with a judgment that would have pleased Gosson: "To tell the truth boldly, the more I think about Shakespeare's scene , the less I like it. It is wrong historically, it is wrong morally; it was wrong then, it is still wrong now."24 Taylor does not, however, share Gosson's conception o f the dramatist a s an unabashed panderer to "the worst sort of people." Instead he indicts Shakespear e for both exaggerating the historical rabble' s indiscriminate violenc e i n this scene , and depictin g a n apolitical poet's victimization a t their hands—thereb y creatin g a false oppositio n "betwee n poe t an d plebeians, between poe t and conspirator." 25 The playwright, charges Taylor, creates a defense of poetry at the expense of truth; he stages "a dramatic opposition between th e mus e an d th e masses, " between a poet wh o affirm s nothin g an d a politically corrupted mobile vulgus: "For Shakespear e ... th e poet i s not par t of a complex economic , political, an d cultural system ... h e envisages poetry as a publicly intimate relationship between poet and patron. The plebeians are vulgar


interlopers who do not understand what Cinna is." 26 If we accept this argument, then Cinna' s murder b y the mo b i n 3.3 involves a program—extending to th e camp poet' s encounte r wit h Cassiu s and Brutu s in 4.3—whereb y Shakespeare erects a false distinction between the poetic and political spheres. Far from a selfconscious exploratio n o f the potentia l violenc e o f the publi c theater, the scen e appears b y this readin g a facade o f fals e consciousness , a nefariou s attemp t t o deny the implication o f art i n the chaotic social world around it . Is this the case ? Taylor marshals strong evidence for his assertion tha t Shakespeare goes out o f his way to enhance the fickleness of the rabble in this play:27 in North's Plutarch, for instance, the funeral orations that precede Cinna's murder are separated by a day, and the crowd is constant in its disapproval of Caesar's assassination;28 i n Shakespeare's version, the orations ar e juxtaposed, and "the popula r voice" becomes a rhetorical barometer. Taylor also seems justified in arguing that the poets i n this play conspicuously mak e nothing happen : whereas in Plutarch it i s a philosopher wh o intervene s in th e quarre l betwee n Brutu s and Cassius , successfully reconciling them, in Shakespeare a poet enters after the reconciliatio n has already occurred, and his well-intended but untimely doggerel is subsequently ridiculed (4.2.187-91) . Bu t the distinction between the men of the word and the men o f the world i n Julius Caesar is not a s clear as this reading suggests. And if the nominal poet s in this play seem to emphasize the division betwee n art an d politics, the politicians bridge this gulf in their representation as dramatists playing to an audience . Taylor foists upon the author o f Julius Caesar (1599) the conceptio n o f poetry expressed by the autho r o f Venus an d Adonis (1592—93)—"a publicly intimat e relationship between poet and patron" above history, ideology, and the vulgus. 29 A skeptic might object, of course, that intimac y is always a fictive pose for poets operating in a print culture ; that by submitting their words to fame's court suc h poets consciousl y (if surreptitiously) offer the m as public property.30 Whether o r not this was Shakespeare's awareness when he composed hi s nondramatic poetr y for individua l patrons , however , it must hav e become s o in 1599, when a pirate divulged tw o o f "his sugre d Sonnets"—previousl y circulate d onl y "among hi s priuate friends"—to the world. 31 Thus by 1599, if not before , there was irony, intentional o r imposed, in the patronage poet's occupatio: That lov e is merchandized whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. (Sonnet 102, 3-4 ) But the protoromantic view of the poet Taylor ascribes to the author o f Julius Caesar ignores more than the complex status of patronage poetry in the late sixteenth century (an d the significant body of recent criticism tha t has demonstrated thi s complexity).32 It also ignores Shakespeare's awareness of the altogether differen t

94 Guilty

Creatures

socioeconomic mise en scene that produce d th e pla y itself. Indeed, Julius Caesar dramatizes the irrelevanc e and obsolescenc e o f the very mode o f poetry Taylor accuses Shakespeare of perpetuating unde r fals e pretenses . "A S T R A N G E - D I S P O S E D TIME "

Though poet remained both the popular and technical term for "playwright" during Shakespeare's lifetime,33 there are reasons both historical and textual to suppose that dramatists working in England's increasingly public theaters had occasion to reevaluate and revalu e this appellation. As Elizabeth's cour t blurred the distinction betwee n privat e courtship an d publi c courtiership , so did he r elaboratel y theatricalized self-presentatio n eras e th e boundarie s betwee n stagecraf t an d statecraft.34 When politica l powe r ca n be dramatized, however, drama i s necessarily invested with political consequence. And when the audience is socially heterogeneous—when the relatively focused and confined communicative venue of the royal court opens ou t int o th e court of common opinion—powe r itsel f devolves to a public where interpretive possibilities ramif y and proliferate. On the Renaissance public stage, sovereign self-presentatio n is necessarily subjected t o representation; the autonomous production of ideology (like selfhood) i s rendered an object of the contingencies of reproduction. I t was less theatrical self-assertion, therefore, than a complaint o f theatrical vulnerability that underla y Elizabeth's remark to a deputation o f Lords and Commons: "We princes are set upon stages in the sight and view of all the world."35 Shakespeare's Hamlet shares this insight, fears becoming such a prince; like Elizabeth, he realizes the danger of playing to the world, recognizes that those words and thoughts are merchandised whose private meaning the owner' s tongu e publishes everywhere . The collaborative socia l act of public theater, however, demands this economy, and Hamlet mus t finall y submit to theatrical appropriation: "High o n a stage ... place d to the view"; reduced, like the court jester he has elegized, to a silent and portable synecdoche of the self; he becomes a n erase d mouth , a silence inviting spectators' glosses, the quietu s ultimately required o f the observe d o f all observers. For Hamlet an d Elizabeth, the stage inexorably transforms the self into a passive spectacle fashioned for and by "the sight and view" of others. In 1601—while the prince of Denmark was vainly struggling to be the subject, not a n object, of his play—the quee n o f England identified herself as the prop erty of a politicized theater beyond he r control : "I am Richard II. Know ye not that?... He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors; this tragedy was played 40 times in open street s and houses." 36 Stephen Greenblat t has observed that Elizabet h responds her e to the potential for iteration an d indeterminacy— the "open"-ness—of a play construed afte r a subversive fashion, a play that seems to have broken the boundaries o f its house and emerge d into a world o f limitless audience and multipl e factions. 37 To this we should add that her response is


concomitant wit h a perceive d disintegratio n o f patronag e assumption s ("H e that will forget God , will also forget hi s benefactors"), and with her recognitio n that sh e has become a victim o f other-fashioning. "I am Richard II. Know ye not that?": this royal self-identification—an ironi c anagnorisis for a monarch who subscribes herself, like an emblem of immutable essentiality , with the motto "Semper Eadem"—is literall y a world apar t from th e allegoric narcissism produce d b y the sanctioned patronage poet ("I am Gloriana. Who knows not that?"). 38 Whether referring to Shakespeare's play or to Hayward's tract, the anger and anxiety of Elizabeth's self-identification wit h Richard responds to the fact that this identification is thrust upon her, and it threatens her identity. Like the commissioning viewer of an anamorphic painting, she looks to the story of Henry of Lancaster and Richard of Bordeaux for a familiar reflection of her self-imag e and find s instead—fro m another's perspective— a radically subversive alterity, a subrogated person a tha t troubles the semiotics of the whole composition. 39 Neither England's queen nor England' s playwrights, however, needed to wait until th e Februar y 7 , 1601 , performanc e o f Richard I I t o recogniz e tha t th e dramatist writing for the world is implicated in the world. Two years earlier the Chamberlain's Me n had completed a metaphoric transition—from the Theatre , through th e Curtain, to the Globe— 40 that seem s appropriately responsive to a self-conscious shift , i n England's public drama , fro m th e aesthetically insulate d to the politically fraught. It was on the Globe's stage, in 1599, that an actor playing the Chorus in Henry V anticipated "the general of our gracious Empress" returning triumphantly from Ireland (5.30-34). And it was earlier in this same year, most scholars agree, that Julius Caesar was first produced as the inaugural play in "this wooden O." 41 1599 , the yea r th e "newl y built" Glob e becam e "the possessio n o f William Shakespeare and others," 42 would have been particularly unaccommodating for the vision of playwrighting "as a publicly intimate relationship between poet and patron." For the preceding year, the Privy Council responde d t o the annual letter of complaint from th e lord mayo r and the Court of Aldermen (containin g the usua l antitheatrical invective ) with a resolution tha t wa s unprecedented: i t declared tha t al l public playhouses were to be "plucked down " due to the "lewd matters that ar e handled o n th e stages" and the "very great disorders" resulting from the "resort and confluence of bad people." This Privy Council order (28 July 1598), which might have given specific topical resonance to the antitheatrical and anticongregational Tribunes in the first scene of Julius Caesar, was of course never executed; but i t marked the beginning of an intense period of legislation against London's public theaters. In 1599, the year satires were prohibited, th e bishops also forbade the printing of any English histories unless approved by the Privy Council. Apparently responding to much th e same anxiety Elizabeth would locat e in the Essex party's commissioned play—th e potential for interpretive license and proliferative reenactment—the Priv y Council would pass another order i n 1600 restricting to two both the number of London playhouses and the number of public

96 Guilty

Creatures

performances allowed per week.43 To gain "possession" of the Globe near the end of the sixteenth century was to enter a theater of contest in which topicality was increasingly dangerous, in which th e theater's capacit y to rende r proper "judgment" was increasingly questioned, i n which private enterprise and stat e power were frequently at odds. Indeed, the Globe itself was constructed of contested property: on 28 December 1598, James and Richard Burbage, together with a master carpenter and a dozen tradesmen, dismantled th e deserted Theatre and transported its valuable timber to th e Bankside , where i t wa s erected a s the ne w hom e o f th e Chamberlain' s Men; Giles Allen, the increasingly antitheatrical landlord of the Theatre who had requested the departure of his tenants earlier that year, seems to have desired to "convert th e wood and timber thereof to some better use." In the lawsuit that inevitably followed, Allen's plaint is remarkable for its representation of the defen dants a s a mob ru n amok , threatening city and crown . The Burbages and their accessories, he charged, then and there armed themselves with divers and many unlawful and offen sive weapons, as, namely, swords, daggers, bills, axes, and suc h like, and so armed did then repair unto the said Theatre. And then and there, armed as aforesaid, in very riotous, outrageous, and forcible manner, and contrary to the laws of your Highness' realm , attempted t o pull down the said Theatre, whereupon divers of your subjects, servants, and farmers, then going about in peaceable manner t o procur e them to desis t fro m tha t thei r unlawfu l enterprise, the y (th e said riotous person s aforesaid ) notwithstandin g pro cured the n therei n wit h grea t violence , not onl y then an d ther e forcibl y and riotousl y resisting your subjects , servants, and farmers , but als o then and ther e pulling, breaking, and throwin g down th e sai d Theatre in very outrageous, violent, and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and terrify ing not onl y of your subjects , said servants , and farmers , but of diverse others of your Majesty's loving subjects there near inhabiting. 44 It is tempting to compare this riotous representation to Shakespeare's of the plebeians, "moved"—by Antony's promise of a new recreational park "On this side Tiber" fit for "common pleasures" (3.2.249—50)—to "Pluck down benches! Pluck down forms, windows, anything!" (3.2.258-59). Less conjecturally, we can observe that Allen' s no doub t embellishe d accoun t o f the ruinou s energie s with which the Globe was built come s very near the energies Shakespeare represents in the Globe—the energies of which he declares the Globe capable in its inaugural play. It seems appropriate, then, that immediately upon its construction the Globe became a contested site among the poets themselves as they variously negotiated the terms of theatrical "ownership" on its new stage. The Globe was not the first or the only theater in England, of course, to mediate "the law of writ and the liberty"45


as a public stag e constrained b y government jurisdiction yet appealing inconti nently to popular judgment. But Hercules' load rested heavily upon the shoulders of England' s playwrights, working in th e las t years of Elizabeth's reign, as they sought to define the poet's place in this politically consequential space. An intriguing insigh t into Shakespeare' s comple x respons e to thi s moment o f artistic reassessment appears in Andrew Gurr's demonstration that, around the year 1600, the dramatist began to reconceive his customers as spectators rathe r than auditors.46 Shakespeare's dramatic "cases" were increasingly seen, not heard. Some of the epistemological and political implications of this transformation appear mos t clearly when we consider the altogethe r differen t respons e o f a rival playwright to this same period of change. For Ben Jonson, always preoccupied wit h th e occupatio n o f poetry, the War of the Theaters provided a dramatic context in which to consider the power and danger o f a profession conducted in , for, and wit h "this faire-fil d Globe." 47 Th e recurrent metaphor o f the "Poetomachia" i s that of the trial or arraignment, so that the warring dramatists present, in Tibullus's phrase, competing "Law-cases in verse." 48 But Jonson's problem, eve n as he goes about dennin g th e rol e of the socially relevant public poet, lies in determining that court to which he wishes to appeal his case. In Poetaster (1601), for instance, he legitimizes his ideal, politically and morall y salutar y poets (Horac e and Virgil) by banishing th e sociall y mar ginal (Ovid), and by purging the civically deleterious (Crispinu s and Fannius). 49 Jonson's poeti c idea l proves less than efficaciou s o n th e publi c stage , however, where cases are tried not i n Augustus's court, but by a corrupt jury finally resem bling Gosson's descriptio n o f the theate r milieu . Jonson send s "An armed Pro logue" to defend hi s play from room s filled with "base detractors, and illiterate apes."50 And in his "apologeticall Dialogue," addressing not a multitudinous spec tatorship but a n individual reader, he declares the world a "baud" and promises his next dramatic effor t wil l seek a fit audience, however few: "Where, if I prove the pleasure but of one / So he judicious be; He shall b'alone / A Theatre unto me" (213-15). But in the public theater, such retreats into Stoic self-sufficiency ar e as impossible as imposing a fixed, textual meaning on a script intended for common consumption.51 I n the Globe, to turn one's back on the world is inevitably to invite backstabbing; to solicit an audience of one is simply not to play the game. Though he has his own harsh words for the world, Thomas Dekker therefore prefaces his theatrical response to Jonson in terms perfectly pitched to elicit the latter's anxiety: Horace hal'd hi s Poetasters to the barre, the Poetaster s untruss' d Horace : how worthily eyther, or how wrongfully, (World ) leave it to the jurie.52 Before this jury, Dekker in Satiro-Mastix (1601) does with Horace much what the Essex party does with Richard II in the sam e year: as a deposition scen e appears subversive when placed i n the contemporar y politica l context , s o does Horac e

98 Guilty

Creatures

look ridiculou s whe n droppe d "int o th e middl e o f a flamboyantl y romantic tragi-comedy."53 Fo r Jonson, as for his queen, the public theater submit s on e t o an audienc e compose d o f bot h predator y riva l playwrights—barrister s bent upon injurious misrepresentation, recontextualization , an d reiteration—and a n injudicious an d ductile tribunal. Finding his case altered by 1603, then, Jonson replaces the Augustan court with the Tiberian t o reflec t th e willful misreadin g and misinterpretatio n o f evidence to whic h th e publi c poe t i s vulnerable; an d i n hi s dedicator y epistl e t o Lor d Aubigny, he at once identifies th e receptio n o f Sejanus wit h that o f its dismem bered "subject" and seeks to appeal the Globe's unjust verdict to a single patron: It is a poem that—i f I well remember—in you r Lordship's sight, suffere d no les s violence fro m ou r peopl e here than th e subjec t of it did fro m th e rage of the people o f Rome, but wit h a different fate , as (I hope) merit. 54 Here, perhaps , i s a cas e fo r Taylor' s criticis m o f th e dramatis t disingenuously posing as an apolitical creature victimized by a world he claims the right to ignore, a playwright for whom "our people here" are indeed "vulgar interlopers" intruding upon an d mangling the intimate artistic utterance of a play that has silently become "a poem."55 For Jonson, at least for the Jonso n of 1603, theatrical values ultimately prove corrosive to his conception o f artistic integrity; the Globe, engaged in a bacchanalia of epistemological and evaluative indiscrimination, must either consume the Orphic poet or exile him to a private, meritocratic world elsewhere. What would later in his dramatic career become an effort t o prevent thi s indiscrimination b y seeking a poetic audience , not a theatrical spectatorship, 56 takes a n earl y shape i n hi s desir e to plac e his literar y evidenc e before a single judge, not a common la w jury. As late as 1611, in fact , he intermittentl y appeal s to a higher evaluative court. His epistle to the earl of Pembroke, published prefa torily to Catiline, reveals an attemp t t o conver t dram a int o patronag e poetry : "Now, it approcheth your censure cheerefully, and with the same assurance, that innocency would appear e before a magistrate." 57 Lik e Milton afte r him , Jonson inhabits a "solitude" threatened by "evil tongues," a fragile kingdom o f intentionality "with dangers compassed round"; and he seeks to define his hermeneutically "fit audience" by insulating it from "the barbarous dissonance" of those inimical to his poetic meaning. 58 But this defiant, embattled stance must not be confused with Shakespeare's in the same period. If any Shakespearean dramatic text seems to invite such confu sion, it is that problematic aggregate we now cal l The History o f Troilus and Cressida (1601-03?)—wit h it s appended prefac e addressing an "eternal" reader in an ideal act of literary communication independen t of history, the staling stage, and "the palme s of the vulger." 59 To the extent that one can speak of a play proper,60 however, Troilus an d Cressida i n fac t represent s a self-conscious departure fro m Jonson's conception o f the theate r poet . Thi s strange pla y may even be Shake-


speare's fullest acknowledgment of the fact that the public playwright is complicit in, not an innocent victim of, the interpretive energies of a place such as The Globe. His revision o f Poetaster's "armed Prologue," for instance, underscores the futil ity of authorial prophylactics against interpretively promiscuous reading or watching; rather than guarding his play from the audience's subjective misconstruction, Shakespeare's "prologue arm'd" (Prologue, 23) invites the audience to participate in this martial drama as autonomous, potentiall y combative judges: Like or find fault, do as your pleasures are, Now good or bad, 'tis but th e chance of war. (30-31) If the prefac e contemptuousl y dismisse s the clapper-clawing hands of the mul titude, this prologue submits the play's reception to the multiple "pleasures" of a similarly arbitrary jury. And in his epilogue Pandarus suggests that all those who have participated in this sullying "performance" are not only infected by a venereal clap, but als o equipped with a rapacious claw. The "traders i n the flesh" (5.10.45) who fill "Pandar's hall" (47) figure the collaborative spectatorship of a disturbingly carnal theater, a spectatorship tha t would hypocritically distance itself from th e prurient an d purveyan t drama—and dramatist—i t ha s employed. I n a rebuke that reminds us his name means nothing but "to go between," however, Pandarus refuses hi s customers such a voyeuristic withdrawal: O world, world, world! thus is the poor agent despis'd! O traders and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why shoul d our endeavo r be so lov'd and the performance so loath'd? (36-39) Pandarus's diction here, if not hi s sense, is that of the antitheatricalist excoriation of a Babylonian stag e endeavoring t o satisf y a devouring world— a panderin g playwright vendin g hi s disease d image s to a n easil y infected audienc e i n th e market o f bawdry. 61 Hi s almost postcoita l regre t and eruptiv e self-aversion, in fact, seems to anticipate the contrition, as described by I. G. in A Refutation o f the Apology for Actors, of playgoer s who "kno w the Historie s befor e the y se e them acted [and ] are very ashamed when they have heard what lies the Player s insert among them, and ho w greatly they deprave them."52 Far from a defense o f po etry, this epilogue incorporates the antitheatrical position in an unrepentant admission o f dramati c guil t tha t finall y indict s th e audienc e a s a n accessory . To show, claims Pandarus, is to violate; to watch is to participate . Such a conclusion i s the causti c culmination of a play that metatheatrically considers its own role in the deflation , even perversion, of classical heroic characterology. The "strange fellow" whose argument Ulysses reiterates to lure Achilles to battle, for instance, articulates merely a benign version of this role:

100 Guilty

Creatures

[N]o ma n i s the lord o f any thing, Though i n and of him there be much consisting , Till he communicate his parts to others ; Nor doth he of himself know them fo r aught, Till he behold them formed i n th' applause Where th' are extended; who like an arch reverb'rate The voice again, or like a gate of steel, Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. (3.3.115-23) Of cours e on e mus t alway s quote Shakespeare' s Ulysses with suspicion . But as James Calderwoo d ha s argued , the manipulativ e Gree k here speaks what i s by this point i n the English dramatist's caree r an occupational verity: the collabo rative enterprise of representation necessarily involves "a generative intercourse between bearer and observer." 63 Indeed , we might go further an d suggest that in Ulysses' theatrical conception o f public display, the communication o f one's self depends entirel y upon th e formativ e process o f reception : thoug h i n an d o f a subject there be much consisting, selfhood count s for no "thing" until recognized by the constitutive and appropriative applause of "others." In a play that itself refracts the epics of Homer and Virgil through several generically and perspectivally divergent "recuyells" of the histories of Troy,64 the fat e of history and it s subjects ultimately rests in the hands of the dramatist an d hi s audience. Like Pandarus, the playwright can commodify the "parts" of historical subjects by assembling a textual pastiche for a predatory public; like Thersites—who is himself addressed as a "fragment"65—the playgoe r can reduce all such representations to scabrous objects through dissective evaluation: the same hands that manufacture validating applause can serve as claws of misconstruction.66 B y dramatizing such a transaction and transformation, Troilus and Cressida explores the darker possibilities of a theatrical economy that defines the dramatist not a s a victim, but a s a conspirator. We can trace the trajectory of this exploration back to the Globe's inaugural play—in which the problematic implications of producing spectacle for a world peopled by patrons, of offering words as currency in the exchange of multiple interpretations, receive metadramatic attention . "CENSURING ROME " Julius Caesar seems to know no other medium than the public stage, as critics have long demonstrated by pointing out its preference for the rhetorical mode over the lyrical, for publi c declamation an d customar y proverb s ove r privat e reflectio n and soliloquy. 67 Few suggestions of an extrapolitical, offstage, o r private life, more-


over, provide the sens e of inwardness we find in the character s o f Shakespeare' s other tragedies. No mention is made, for instance, of the literary careers of Caesar and Cicero; and the brief domestic moments in this childless play are quickly intruded upo n by public men who call husbands fro m thei r wives. While the exteriorized self is a major concer n in all of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Julius Caesar investigates with special interest the definitio n o f the sel f by public representa tion. As Brutus responds when asked if one can ever properly know one's self: No, Cassius, for the ey e sees not itsel f But by reflection, by some other thing . (1.2.52-53)68 Frequently, this "other thing" proves to be the speculum of theater itself, and almost all of the play's main characters come to know themselves or others in this dramatic epistemology. Cassius himself, fo r example, offer s t o serv e a s a "glass" whereby Brutus may discover "that of yourself which you yet know not of" (1.2.68,70). In a marketplace reekin g of the commoners ' breath , Caesar is clapped an d hisse d for hi s political dumbshow "accordin g as he pleas'd and displeas'd " hi s plebeian audience, "as they use to do the players in the theatre" (1.3.259-61). Brutus urges his fellow conspirator s t o dissemble their purpose b y bearing the staid counte nance of "our Roma n actors" (2.1.226) . And Antony, the lover of plays who mos t successfully exploits political theater, drops a telling term as he urges Octavius to reevaluate Lepidus, the least consequential and most easily manipulated membe r of the triumvirate : Do not talk of him But as a property. (4.1.39-40) Indeed, one o f Julius Caesar's centra l dramas i s the appropriatio n o f the privat e by the public ; th e denotatio n o f "that within whic h passet h show " by "action s that a man might play"; the reduction o f autonomous me n into communicabl e parts and transferable stage properties. It is the potential violence of this dram a that our play concedes in the central, emblematic scene of Cinna's dismemberment. In Julius Caesars earlier consumption o f its eponym, however, the pla y suggests that suc h physical violence can serv e as a metaphor fo r the injur y o f theatrica l other-fashioning. Shakespeare's late r Roman tragedies pluck out th e heart o f mystery with th e ceremony of sacrifice and the savag e coolness of an anatomy. 69 Cleopatra would prefer t o lie a "stark-nak'd" corpse rather than fac e he r audienc e as a conscious property in the figurative dismemberment sh e imagines Octavius staging in his theatrical triumph—"pinion'd," "hoist, " and displayed "to the shouting varlotr y

1O2 Guilty

Creatures

I O f censuring Rome." And sh e ruins her morta l hous e unwilling to become an audience t o th e "Mechanic slaves " who wil l expose Antony an d hersel f "to th e view," distorting their biographies through mannered theatricalism. 70 Bu t while Cleopatra may resist theatrical appropriation b y playing the Roman, the irony of this refug e i s as inescapable a s the theate r tha t subsume s her . Fo r th e theate r imagined i n Shakespeare's Roman tragedies is populated b y an intrusive public and exploitativ e actors ; it tolerates n o inscrutabl e inwardness, no self-sufficien t independence from th e theatrical economy; it sheds blood an d breaks bodies to render the private public, to sacrifice individual subjectivity to theatrical viability and spectacle . Coriolanus ma y refuse t o play to such a crowd—"turn[ing]" hi s "back" in a consummately antitheatrical gesture of introversion; standing instead "as if a man were author of himself"; seeking, in fact, to be "every man himself " and "no t .. . othe r tha n on e thing. " Bu t he i s stabbed t o deat h a s the peopl e shout, "Tear him to pieces!" He is downtrodden, like Tamburlaine's Turkish footstool, o n a stage that require s "some death more lon g i n spectatorship," a stage that allows no man to be a theater unt o himself. 71 For what is the public theater but the people? What are these people but Gosson's Hydra-like "monster"? Wha t is the carefull y fashione d self i n thi s theate r bu t th e pre y o f "the beas t / Wit h many heads," the property of numberless "voices" ? As a proleptic and definitiv e answer t o suc h questions, Julius Caesar digests its subject (wh o has proclaime d "always I am Caesar" [1.2.212 ] with the same self-consciousness, the same ironic untenability, and perhaps the same anxiety toward protean theatricality that un derlies Elizabeth's "Semper Eadem") earl y in the third act, when the conspirators decide that Caesar must die to be seen. Brutus tries and condemns his friend no t for what he is, but fo r what he might be, for the undetermined an d undisclose d subjunctive mood o f his spirit : He would be crown' d How that might chang e his nature, there's the question. (2.1.12-13) O that we then could com e by Caesar's spirit , And no t dismembe r Caesar! But, alas, Caesar must bleed fo r it! (2.1.168-70) Caesar must bleed becaus e the conspirac y of Caesar can have no unscrutinize d spirits. Caesar must bleed because the conspirators—no less than the plebeians who come to hi s funeral shouting , "We will be satisfied! Let us be satisfied! (3.2.1) — wish to see his body opened before them like a text. Caesar must bleed for a theater whose liturgy is hamspication,72 whos e medium is synecdoche, and whose privileged jury invariably comprises multiple observer s of a silenced object.


The constituents of this jury, however, proliferate wildly the moment the courtroom i s confused wit h theater, the moment th e accused is converted into evidentiary spectacle. A number of critics have demonstrated that Caesar's death coincides with his historicization an d textualization. 73 His famous (paene) ultima verba, in fact, seem to function antitheticall y to the infamous anachronism tha t strikes in 2.1: a s Sigurd Burckhardt has argued, the clock that punctuates the conspirators ' plot resonate s with the timelessness and interpretiv e indeterminac y o f their action;74 i n a n Englis h stage-play , however, Caesar' s marmorea l Lati n appear s t o italicize the alterity of history, its distance from th e drama that relate s it. Yet his last words ar e themselves th e product o f theatrical appropriation : thoug h the y live in the popular memory in Shakespeare's translation, they were originally delivered in Greek.75 Caesar may die in his native tongue, then, but his speech is rendered alien by his maker. It is a fundamental irony of Julius Caesar that it s most self-conscious presentation o f the autonomous pas t of history proves inextrica bly bound t o the eternal present o f dramatic reenactment an d reinterpretation , a fac t o f which Polonius (o f all people) reminds us : "I did enac t Julius Caesar. I was killed i' th' Capitol; Brutus killed me" (Hamlet, 3.2.99-100) . Indeed, while Caesar's blood i s still warm, this metadramatic iron y operates at the conspirators' expense as they celebrate the conclusion of their case and their authorship of a history play: CASSIUS: Stoo p then, and wash. How many ages hence Shall this our loft y scen e be acted over In states unborn an d accents yet unknown. BRUTUS: Ho w many times shall Caesar bleed in sport ; That now on Pompey's basi s lies along No worthier tha n the dust! (3.1.111-16) Cassius and Brutus here assert the historical primacy of their action while anticipating the futur e stag e history of this "lofty scene"; they attempt t o distinguish between a gory event and it s aestheticized dramatization as "sport." But history exists as no such privileged terminus a quo in Julius Caesar. Rather, it is conceived a priori i n theatrical terms, by actors who recognize its perspectival malleability. It is his presumed dramatica l control over the histor y i n which h e participates , in fact, that signal s Brutus's hubris. Just as he seeks to mold Caesa r into a figure of deservingly punished pleonexia, for instance, so does Brutus attempt to assign and direct the roles of his fellow conspirators. Calling for Caius Ligarius, he prepares to convert a man with undetermine d politica l allegiances into a character with a n unambiguous part t o play: "Send hi m but hither , and I'll fashion him "

1O4 Guilty Creatures

(2.1.220); thought by some stage historians to have been played by the same actor who played Cassius, Caius exists as a less determined role to be filled by a "Roman actor" of more "formal constancy" (2.1.225,226). 76 And after assumin g direction of a n assassinatio n rehearse d i n "Pompey's Theatre" (1.3.152) , Brutus insists o n the conspirators' billing as sacrificers, not butchers, as purgers, not murderers— ever regardin g thei r receptio n b y "th e commo n eyes " (2.1.179) . Julius Caesar, however, proves to be beyond Brutus's perspectival management; and his reversal from conspirato r t o conspired against coincides with the depositio n o f his self presentation an d a n authorial usurpation of the play for which it was intended. Restaging th e scen e o f tyrannicid e aroun d th e propert y o f Caesar' s corpse , Antony in 3.2 assigns to the conspirators the very parts they had eschewed. Cassius and Brutus condemn themselve s when they draw a false distinction between bloody histor y and bloodles s drama ; whe n the y practic e Jonson's Roma n law and ignor e Shakespeare's common law ; when they declare the case closed while the jury is still out; when the y abandon th e public stage to Antony and permi t him to construe them afte r hi s fashion. Having reduced Caesar's body to a text with wound s that gap e "like dumb mouths" (3.1.260), they forget the instability of this text; they fail to recognize the invitation to alternative readings presented by the ambiguous body of the condemned, "that may signify equally well the truth of the crim e or the erro r o f the judges, the goodnes s or evil of the criminal."77 Thus, like their victim, the conspirators become objects of other-fashioning. A much more perspicacious conspirator, Shakespeare reveals his awareness that his own plotting of history is subject to the same interpretive energies it employs. Critics suc h a s Taylor would den y thi s consciousnes s o f contingency , reading Shakespeare's publi c drama a s the literar y "work" o f an entrenche d patronag e poet rathe r than the "play" of an author willingl y de-centered by the commo n theater.78 An instructive corrective to this anachronism, however , appears in the complaint of an eighteenth-century editor , not unfamilia r with the stage and its actors, who also seeks to treat Shakespeare's plays as "works": But of the works of Shakespeare the condition has been far different [fro m that of works published under the direct supervision of their authors] : he sold them , not to be printed , but to be played . They wer e immediatel y copied for the actors, and multiplied by transcript, vitiated by the blunders of the penmen, or changed by the affectation o f the player; perhaps enlarged to introduce a jest, or mutilated to shorten the representation; and printed at last without the concurrenc e of the author , without th e consen t o f the proprietor, from compilations mad e by chance or by stealth out of the separate parts written for the theatre. 79 In Samuel Johnson's description, the original "condition" of Shakespeare's dramatic texts resembles Gosson's description of history adapted to the theater, a description


that applie s equally well to Caesar's body: "mutilated" as occasion demand s and opportunity allows ; divided into, and reconstituted from , th e "separate parts " of different participator y perspectives ; they exist less as intrinsic meaning than as material to be reinscribed by performance, interpretation, reproduction . If this metaphor of a corporeal text subjected to the unkindest cuts of all implies a distinction between victimhood an d aggression, moreover, it is clear that Shakespeare identifie s with th e latter . To insist—like a Jonsonian prologue—upon a fixed, hermeneutically determined textualism i s almost invariably to be a victim or a fool on Shakespeare's stage. Calling for a judgment consonant with his inflexible reading of a bond he has authored, Shylock becomes a victim of alternative interpretation when the court to which he appeals continues to construe this text after anothe r fashion . Fashionin g himsel f i n a lette r tha t seem s t o reflec t th e greatness of his own self-image , Malvolio becomes a "propertied" fool when he realizes his ridiculous part and cross-gartered fashion have been assigned by unseen witnesses who appropriate his amour-propre as spectacle.80 Nobody's fool and never—outside o f th e sonnets— a self-proclaime d victim, Shakespear e recog nizes the terms of the theatrical economy in which he operates: while the theater is open, n o cas e is closed; when the jury is "the commo n eyes, " a moment ca n transform plaintiff into defendant, text into pretext, the carefully wrought self into an appropriate d other ; when th e pric e of admissio n buy s the audienc e some thing as insubstantial a s a play, the theater compensates by procuring al l that it represents a s the interpretive propert y of this audience. There is evidence suggesting the specia l inevitability of this economy for th e Renaissance author o f Julius Caesar. By imagining "states unborn" and "accent s yet unknown," of course, Cassius prophesies the linguistic and cultural difference s Shakespeare encounters as he recover s this "lofty scene " from history . Simultaneously, then, this play looks back to a n anterior futur e whe n th e Englis h state and languag e were "yet unknown " an d forwar d t o a present when those restaging the scen e might have "Small Latin e and Less e Greek," a time when Cicero' s linguistic inaccessibility to Casc a might reflec t Plutarch' s to Shakespeare : it was Greek t o bot h o f them. But like th e playwright's history, Cassius's prophecy is construed afte r a dramatic fashio n clea n from th e conspirator' s purpose . On a level we have already considered, this prophecy becomes for Shakespeare an op portunity for dramatic irony; we know what for Casca is tragically "unknown" and "unborn"—that the conspirators' "lofty scene" will be first "acted over" by Antony's accent, that the play will conclude with the conspirators' deaths and the birth of the Secon d Triumvirate . Fro m Shakespeare' s literar y an d historica l moment , however, the irony goes further. Fo r by the end of the sixteenth century, Cassius and Brutus's first performance had long been the stock of artists and the debated exemplum o f moralists an d politica l theorists—receivin g different "accents " o r evaluative emphases as monarchy and republicanism , tyrants and traitors, were

106 Guilty Creatures

viewed from differen t perspectives . The words and actions o f the dead had long been modified in the guts of successive generations of the living.81 For a playwright capable of imagining an audience of "eyes not yet created,"82 though , the shortest path to obsolescence and revisionary victimization i s to deny the contingency of such accentuatio n upo n th e historica l moment , t o assum e a unanimou s an d monological interpretiv e community, and to forget that his play is the property of th e ver y histor y i t represents—tha t hi s tex t (befor e th e posthumou s Firs t Folio) has no status , only unforeseen "states." The stubborn politica l ambiguit y of Julius Caesa.r —its diptychou s structur e an d bifurcatio n o f the tragi c hero's role—is therefore th e desig n o f a survivor, not a victim. With Aufidius , Shakespeare acknowledges a theatrical and historical truth fatall y denied by Coriolanus: the doors of the public theater and the limina of history are presided over by Janus, and i n both history play s and history , "virtues / Lie in th' interpretatio n o f the time."83 Accordingly, if Julius Caesar has a central referenc e point, it i s assigned to none of the main characters, but to an audience at once constitutive and prone to metamorphosis . The plebeians who compose this audience, however, also embody the ruinously misconstructive jury , the bacchanalian rout , posite d b y the antitheatricalists i n their indictmen t o f th e publi c stag e a s a courtroom travestied . Indeed , i n th e central scen e of Cinna' s apprehensio n b y this audience , Shakespear e seem s to concede many of the terms of the antitheatrical position as he looks critically at the economy in which he is implicated. Thi s scene presents a mock treason trial, made disturbingl y ridiculous by the fac t tha t the accused withholds no interio r allegiances to be discovered. I f Caesar represented fo r the conspirators a mysterious "serpent's egg" of potentiality (2.1.32) , Cinna disclose s his innocence i n direct, brief, wise, and tru e replies to his interrogators. Th e plebeians' respons e is to collapse the distinction betwee n body and spirit that Brutus himself honore d in the breach his dagger made; and th e result is a savage farce, a brutal simplifi cation o f the theatrical appropriation that pervades the play. As Cinna speaks his last vain words , he becomes wha t th e plebeian s wish him t o be—a silen t stage property to be mentioned i n the third person , a dramatis persona fashione d as an insistent audience likes it: CINNA: I am not Cinn a the conspirator . 4. PLEBEIAN: I t is no matter, his name's Cinna . Pluck but hi s name out of his heart, and turn him going . 3. PLEBEIAN: Tea r him, tear him! Exeunt all the Plebeians dragging off Cinna. (3.3.32-35)


We might follo w Taylo r in readin g this passage as a self-conscious referenc e t o Orpheus's dismemberment. 84 But we must mak e a crucial distinctio n between Shakespeare's apparent allusion to the archetypal poet-victim here and the similarly oblique suggestion of Orpheus's fat e we have seen in Jonson's dedication to Sejanus. Unlike Jonson, Shakespeare does not represent this figure—and the violence inflicted upon hi m by "the rage of the people o f Rome"—in a moment of injured self-identification . Rather, Shakespeare seems to conjur e the specte r o f Orpheus's sparagmos t o demonstrat e th e fat e o f a kind o f poet, a kind o f voice, when subjected to the abattoir that is public theater's courtroom. Suc h a generic application, in fact, had precedent i n the Renaissance: the euhemeristi c reading of the Orpheus myth as the displacement of Greek lyric poetry by Dionysiac ritual drama might , fo r instance, have presented itsel f t o th e playwrigh t in Golding' s Ovid.85 I f Cinna indeed serve s as a figure for Orpheus , moreover , the n w e have in Julius Caesar an important earl y example of what Kenneth Gros Luis has described as a seventeenth-century poetic and iconographic development : th e shif t from representation s o f Orpheus triumphant t o representations of Orpheus dismembered—a shift (b y Luis's reading) that reflects an emergent skepticism toward poetry's abilit y t o communicat e clearl y and t o achiev e it s desire d humanisti c effects on its audience.86 In the world of Julius Caesar, at any rate, to treat the nom inal poets a s Shakespeare's self-representation s is to confus e th e purpos e o f th e play's conscious differentiation betwee n victims and victimizers, between an obsolescent mode o f poetic subjectivity and the drama tha t consume s it. Far fro m an insidious defense of drama's innocence and inconsequence, Julius Caesar enacts a farsighted, metatheatrical critiqu e of the dramatist and his diverse clientele. Cinna is no more Shakespeare than is the officious cam p poet dismissed late r in the play for his inutility and fo r his decidedly unheroic couplet : POET: Fo r shame, you generals! what d o you mean? Love, and b e friends, a s two such men shoul d be , For I have seen more years, I'm sure , than ye. CASSIUS: Ha , ha! how vilely does this cynic rhyme! BRUTUS: Ge t you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence ! CASSIUS: Bea r with him, Brutus, 'tis his fashion. BRUTUS: I'l l know his humor, when he knows his time. What shoul d the wars do with these jigging fools? Companion, hence ! (4.3.130-38)


Like Cinna, though by verbal rather than physical violence, this poet is removed from th e stage because he is an anachronism, a "fashion" i n the wrong place a t the wrong time. Nearly ten years before Julius Caesar first appeared, Christophe r Marlowe had introduced a revolutionary play with a prologue defining his theater in negative terms remarkably similar to Brutus's rejection of the camp poet : From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits , And suc h conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with his high astounding terms , And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword . View but hi s picture in this tragic glass, And then applaud hi s fortunes as you please. 87 For Shakespeare as for Marlowe, "the statel y tent o f war" offers littl e shelter for poets who do not know their time or stage, exposing them instead to ridicule and to the ruinous energies of a theater that has overtaken them. For Shakespeare as for Marlowe, the "tragic glass" of this public theater confines mighty men in little room, represent s historical figures through dramati c spectacle, and proffers thi s dramatized exterio r t o an uncertain reception . The final line of Marlowe's pro logue reveals this evaluative uncertainty and attests to the difference between the Elizabethan public playhouse of the 1590s and private poetry kept in pay by patron or coterie: if the patronage poe t knows his audience and ca n fashion hi s rhetoric toward the focal point o f a highly specific, private, and determined communicative occasion, th e theater poe t write s for a miscellaneous, public , and undeter mined audience . If Jonson belatedly appeals to Roman law in an effor t t o focu s and limit the court of judgment, the public playwright accepts the mobilities and indeterminacies of common law—it s many-headed jury endowed with the multiple and mobile sight-lines of the groundlings . Regardless o f hi s authorial intentions , therefore , the dramatis t wh o accept s the terms of this epistemological economy can hope for no more control over his customers tha n Antony claims ove r the people he has "moved" through a carefully staged scene: Now let it work. Mischief, thou ar t afoot , Take thou what course thou wilt! (3.2.259-60) In this mischievous envoy, Antony articulates a potential tacitly assumed by the interpretive licens e of the public stage, a license explicitl y transferred t o the audience by not a few Renaissance prologues and epilogues . When ever y man i s a


patron an d a juror, when a heterogeneous group of spectators views a spectacle from multiple perspectives, miscommunication becomes the dramatist's donnee; for thes e men ma y construe things afte r thei r fashion . And when the dramatis t presents historica l figure s a s evaluatively ambiguous as Tamburlaine or Caesa r or Brutus—thei r characters fashioned from receive d texts—it i s far fro m clea r that suc h a n audienc e can or will learn aright wh y and ho w that make r mad e them. When th e stage is the world, every act of reading or writing, watching or showing, may have unpredictable interpretive consequence s that reac h well beyond th e originative occasion an d venue. Significantly, ever y ac t o f writin g i n Julius Caesar draw s blood . I n severa l cases—such a s the broadsheets Cassiu s writes "in severa l hands," "wherein ob scurely Caesar's ambition shal l be glanced at" (1.2.316,319-20); th e anonymou s notes Cinna the conspirator throws in Brutus's way (1.3.145); and the proscription list on which Antony damns lives with spots of ink (4.1.6) 88—the injury textually inflicted seems to correspond with the author's intention. And yet the conspirators, as we have seen, involuntarily involve themselves in their own plot the momen t they script it and declar e it finished. Antony, moreover, loses sole authorship of his counterplot a s it becomes the collaborativ e produc t o f the othe r triumvirs : having judged the proscription lis t complete, he is forced by Octavius to add the name of Lepidus's brother, a revision Lepidus makes contingent upon the inclusion of Antony's nephew. Similarly, once a text i s composed i n this play, it is subject to politicized readings beyond the author's control; and of this pervasive process the poet's death onc e again provides a central, emblematic image. Culminating a scen e i n whic h h e amplifie s the plebeians ' outrag e b y graduall y undressing Caesar's torn corpse, Antony publicly reads the dead man's will as a last incitement to rio t (3.2.240-52) . Just two scene s later, however, Caesar's wil l is figuratively dismembered a s Antony determines "ho w t o cu t of f some charg e in legacies " (4.1.9). The intervenin g scen e of Cinna's murder , o f course, presents th e litera l dismemberment o f an autho r whos e will counts fo r nothing and whos e audi ence chooses to misread him . In this scene, Shakespeare schematizes the fat e of all communication i n the play: when the audience is both mobile and prone t o action, when spectators become collaborators, when the jury arrogates the dual privilege of constituting meaning and executing its sentence, a speech-act's illocutionary intention dissolve s into its perlocutionary effect. From the vantage point of 1601 , suc h a n awarenes s ca n onl y appea r prophetic ; fo r tw o year s earlie r Shakespeare claims for his drama th e dangerou s power t o bestow an Exton o n the world to make many Extons. 89 But what justification hav e we for treating Julius Caesar's plebeians as an un flattering, unmitigated representation of the Globe audience's potential? To what extent i s Shakespeare's metadramatic antitheatricalism containe d b y Rome and the pla y that concern s it ? A limited answe r lie s i n recognizin g the diachroni c

no Guilty

Creatures

transformation of the crowd in Julius Caesar. The plebeians who make their final exit bearing Cinna at the end of act 3 first took the stage preparing for Caesar's triumph a t the beginnin g of act 1, and w e must includ e the fact s o f this meta morphosis in our assessmen t of Shakespeare's representation o f the audience in this play. Instead o f a pack of marauding plebeians pursuin g a poet, we find in 1.1 "certain commoners " (s.d.) se t upon b y inquisitorial tribunes ; instead o f a n indistinct rabbl e seekin g blood we find a remarkably individuated cobble r abl e to pun with the best of Shakespeare's English tradesmen.90 Indeed, the line distinguishing sixteenth-century Englan d and ancien t Rom e in Julius Caesar is never more blurred than in this scene. The tribunes alternately seem like London aldermen policing sumptuary laws and Puritan antitheatricalists censuring the license, social confusion and spectacle of the public theater:91 Flavius and Murellus chastise the keepers of this shoemaker's holida y for doffing "the sign" of their profes sion and donning their "best attire" (4,48); and having dispersed the crowd, they set out to "Disrobe the images" decked with Caesar's "ceremonies" (64-65). The "certain Commoners " who cros s the stag e in 1.1 would appea r to have no mor e objectionable motiv e than th e desir e for spectacle , the wish "to se e Caesar an d rejoice i n hi s triumph" (31) . And yet the tribunes ' antitheatrica l anxiet y in thi s scene i s justified (and , significantly , left unchallenge d b y a pla y that doe s no t make them the conventional object of pro theatrical satire). Not only do the masquerading commoners represent a mobile vulgus, ranging about the liberties dislocated fro m thei r social station; they also represent—as the cobbler's relentless punning reveals— a miscellan y o f individuals , each capabl e o f construin g th e meaning o f words afte r hi s fashion . When th e vulga r can dives t themselve s o f their socia l signifiers, whe n th e vernacula r can be investe d wit h paronomasia l significance, the theatrical audience acquires interpretive agency and the theate r itself thereby becomes epistemologicall y open-ende d an d politically consequen tial. In 1.1, the plebeians ente r a s political innocents, an d Murellus remonstrates them fo r failing to realize that the triumph they yearn to watch "comes... over Pompey's blood" (51); in 3.3, the plebeian s exit bloodied wit h the experienc e of political theater, having demonstrated tha t to watch in this play is also to act. In 1.1, they observe a social carnival; in 3.3, they effec t politica l carnage . In 1.1 , th e cobbler's playfulnes s wit h language, his witty misreading of the tribunes' sense, appears innocuous; in 3.3, the fourt h plebeian' s wordplay is fatal, his misreading of Cinn a a literal pun tha t tear s nam e fro m thing . In 1.1 , finally, Shakespeare's sixteenth-century audienc e migh t hav e recognize d itsel f i n th e protheatrica l image of a harmless, recreational spectatorship; in 3.3, this audience would have seen itself transformed into (or revealed as?) the misconstruing miscreation that elicited Roman theatrical censorship . Such is the plebeians' metamorphosis fro m "stones" (1.1.36) to "men" (3.2.142), 92 from theatrica l nai'fs to initiates in the political theater. Like all metamorphoses,


it involve s less a break than a continuum: th e differenc e betwee n cullin g out a holiday and killing a man depends only upon the degree of the spectators' participation, the consequence of their perspective. And like many initiations, it involves a ceremonia l rite . I f Caesar die s a t th e hand s o f republica n fello w player s un willing to cede the theater to a single monarchical actor, Cinna dies as a sacrifice to an audience that ha s taken the stage. It may seem strange for Shakespeare to inaugurate his Globe in these terms, to baptize his audience with the blood of a poet, to figur e it s interpretive autonomy in a literal act of dismemberment. But dismemberment is his metaphor when , less than a year after Julius Caesar's first performance, Shakespear e invokes hi s audience' s imaginativ e collaboratio n i n Henry V: Piece out our imperfection s with your thoughts; Into a thousand part s divide one man. 93 In th e theate r o f th e world , ever y character i s subject to synecdochi c reading , every act and representatio n is imperfect and unfinished , every text is submitted to the cutting room—the deceptivel y "little room" where spectators, no less than actors, conspire to "force a play." It is as an emble m o f this theater's censurabl e energies and properties tha t Cinn a i s dragged offstage . Throughout thi s chapte r I have avoided countles s tempting pun s o n th e word Caesarean, but the term here is a reminder that those who enter the social world by such a process rely to an extraordinary degree upon th e grasping hands and cutting instruments of those already in that world. To borrow from th e language of Macbeth, agency in birth is defined by the one who does the ripping. 94 Of cours e such agency can also be cooperative. If we can spea k of appropri ability as an authoria l intention, it would see m that in th e cas e of Julius Caesar Shakespeare's will has bee n observe d t o th e letter . As Caesar's triumph come s "over Pompey's blood," so has Shakespeare's laureation been achieved by the violent other-fashionin g tha t the pla y both participate s i n an d represents ; i n thi s sense th e dram a render s unt o Shakespear e what i s Caesar's . Michael Dobso n has recently observed—in an extensive account of the various Royalist and Parliamentarian employment s o f Julius Caesar fro m th e Restoratio n t o th e mid eighteenth century—that the play's adaptability (and indeed mutilatability) has been instrumenta l i n Shakespeare' s canonization. 95 On 2 8 April 1738, the com mittee appointed to erect Shakespeare's monument in Westminster Abbe y inaugurated it s project by commissioning a performance o f Julius Caesar a t Drur y Lane. In Noel Porter's explicitly Whiggish, pro-Brutus prologue to this performance, Shakespeare enjoys th e coronation denie d Caesar : While Brutus bleeds for liberty and Rome, Let Britons crowd to deck his Poet's tomb.


To future time s recorded let it stand, This head was lawrel'd by the public hand.96 Like Caesar's ghost, the disembodied playwrigh t became for this memorial committee a name to conjure with; in 1739 Lewis Theobald invoked both spirits for the final theatrical observation o f Shakespeare's monumentalization, a n exhumatio n of Hamlet at Covent Garden : Immortal Shakespearl w e thy claim admit; For, like thy Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad; and a t our hand s The honorary tomb, thy right, demands. 97 Like Brutus, who must "dismember Caesar" to "come by Caesar's spirit," Shakespeare's executors abstract his genius in the sam e stroke that render s his image (and his texts) the property of a less predictable "public hand." Nothing is more conducive to the ideological appropriation o f literature than the creatio n o f suc h a malleable author an d authority ; an d fe w things ensur e canonicity more effectively than ideological appropriability.98 It is not surprising, then, that Shakespeare's Abbey monument was constructed in a period during which his plays were willfully misconstructe d fo r blatantl y political purposes; a period during which the invocation of his transcendent and timeless spirit could serve the mos t transitor y and historicall y specific ends . We do not kno w if the dramatist eve r meditated the laure l crown , but i n Julius Caesar he accepts th e "accents yet unknown" that will continue to provide him with it. In chapter 1 of this study, I argued that Skelton reflects upon a poetic triumph that comes over Jane's objection and objectification, a self-laureation that makes her public property with a dismembering blazo n and a literary monument. We have seen this process intensified i n Spenser' s representatio n o f Seren a among the cannibals—where a predatory poetics is both critically emblemized and self consciously performed. I have claimed in this chapter that Julius Caesar dramatizes Shakespeare's investmen t in , an d investitur e with, th e econom y o f th e killing poem. Th e strong reading that kill s Cinna, like the on e that render s Plutarch' s Lives victims of Shakespeare's dramatic executions, is what Julius Caesar has invited generations o f audiences—startin g wit h it s first—t o perform . On on e level , then, Taylor's objection t o thi s bardicida l pla y is valid: Cinna' s death , and th e transformation o f the poet's place in the theater it represents, does constitute an invitation t o customer s who wil l seek to cove r Shakespeare with th e mantl e of bardolatry. But only by ignoring the self-consciousness with which Julius Caesar explores the powe r of playwright and audienc e can one forget tha t thi s mantle, like those which cove r Caesar and Agamemnon, bears its own scars of imperfect violence. Whatever powe r Shakespear e assert s in thi s pla y in fac t result s fro m and coextends with a comfortable, continued vulnerability.


We turn no w to playwrights who look at Shakespeare's declaration of power with increased suspicion, an d who deploy the theatricalized death les s in complicit y with a self-serving audience than i n critical reaction to that audience's interpre tive appetites. In chapter 4, Dekker, Ford, and Rowle y submit Mothe r Sawye r to much the same process that yields Cinna a stage property. And like Julius Caesar, The Witch o f Edmonton centers upon th e theatrica l production o f guilt and exe cution. While Julius Caesar offer s n o epistemolog y othe r tha n th e publi c stage, however, Th e Witch suggest s the radica l incompatibility betwee n thi s stage an d the subject s it violates an d falsifies . While Shakespeare' s play invites us into the jury box, eve n a s it admit s th e lac k of judgment we may exercise , Dekker an d Ford reject th e theater's fatal arrogation o f the law.

4

The Witch o f Edmonton an d the Guilt of Possession These are no jestes, for they be written by them that were and are judges upon th e lives and deaths of those persons . Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft

I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been strook so to the soul, that presently They have proclaim'd thei r malefactions: For murther, though i t have no tongue , will speak With mos t miraculous organ . Hamlet

nNo RENAISSANC E ART FORM calls more loudly for our ethical response

than that representing the persecution and execution of witches; and none raise s more clearly the analytical problem of "guilt" or "responsibility" in historical discussions of early modern texts . If, more than an y other literary genre, drama interacts with a culture's ways of seeing, the theater of witchcraft involves an epistemology in which looks really can kill. And yet, though works of dramatic journalism such as The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) 1 may have influenced the legal process in offstage witch trials, we search in vain for an actual corpse with which to accuse Renaissance drama's fascination with the subject.2 Though there is much to suggest that early modern skeptics such as Reginald Scot and Samuel Harsnett recognized the function of theatricality in the cultural production o f the bewitched and bedeviled, moreover, these skeptic s never charge the institutio n o f the stag e with responsibility for persecution an d execution. In fact , a s Stephen Greenblat t has demonstrated, the opposit e is the case: The "freely acknowledged fictionality" of 114

The Witch o f Edmonton an d th e Guilt o f Possession 11 5

the theater provides Renaissance skeptics with a zone of inconsequentiality where otherwise dangerous witch belief s ca n be safel y contained . In th e Renaissance , only a thoroughgoing antitheatricalist lik e Stephen Gosson, suspicious not o f the theatricalization of evil but o f the evil of theater, seems willing to blame plays for performing th e devil's work: "The Devi l is the efficien t caus e of plays."3 But Gosson's voice, though muffled, is audible in criticism implicitly concerned with the instrumentalit y o f the stage in perpetuating an d enablin g social persecution. Etta Soiref Onat's response to The Late Lancashire Witches illustrates what has for some time been the fashion of displacing ethical with formal or aesthetic criticism when the subject is the damningly orthodox representation o f witches. Observing that th e play was produced between the examinatio n o f the accused and their pardon by King Charles, and that the playwrights "undoubtedly kne w the rumors which wer e circulating abou t th e pardon an d the suspicion s o f the good faith of t h e . .. chief witnesses for the prosecution," Onat struggles with the dramatists' decision to represent the accused as unquestionably bewitched : Such a choice is, of course, entirely within the provinc e of the playwright; even when he is working with sources of such topical nature, he does no t work like a reporter.... We do have the right , however, to as k that, once having made a choice, he should no t b e superficial i n his portrayal. Thus, without agreeing that the authors "hadpendente lite, done their utmost t o intensify publi c feelin g agains t witches," we may regret perhap s tha t Th e Late Lancashire Witches is so completely orthodox and positive in its presentation of the popular superstitions. But we cannot really censure the authors for making that choice. What we can censure them for is that their portrayal is superficial an d trivial ; throughout th e entir e play the emphasis is upon the sensationa l for its own sake.4 In earlier debates over Shakespeare's troubling dramatization of witches, the underlying assumption that such representation ca n have harmful social consequences seems to inform the desire to exculpate Shakespeare for authorial responsibility, even if this defense require s aesthetic condemnation. Joa n la Pucelle in 1 Henry VI, fo r instance , has been indignantl y labeled "un-Shakespearean"— a produc t of a disintegrated text that does not reflec t Shakespeare's intentions and does not, therefore, require his accountability.5 The "interpolated" witches' song in Macbeth, a crowd-pleasin g roun d take n fro m Thoma s Middleton' s Th e Witch, has simi larly appeared "spurious"—a dismissa l tha t ha s until quit e recentl y foreclose d analysis of Shakespeare's employment o f it. 6 The bold questions beneat h such partial indictments and defensive strategies have recently been brought into open air by Greenblatt, who responds to feminis t and psychoanalyti c recognition of Macbeth's "radica l excision of the female" 7 by


asking why the play should no t be equated with such socially consequential texts as the witchmongering Malleus maleficarum: Why should w e not sa y that th e play , with immeasurabl y greate r literary force, undertakes to reenchant the world, to shape misogyny to political ends, to counteract the corrosive skepticism that had called into question both the existence of witches and the sacredness of royal authority?... Why should we not sa y that thi s play about evi l is evil?... What i s the point o f speaking at all about the historical situation o f works of art i f ideological entail ments an d practica l consequence s ar e somehow off-limits , an d i f they are not off-limits , how can we avoid moral judgments?8 Inevitable objections present themselves to such questions, which Greenblatt himself finally disregards as "smug mora l critique": 9 post-Enlightenmen t rationalis m and tests of "progressive politics" are notorious impediments to historical empathy with early modern texts; assessing the artistic intentions and social consequences of a play such as Macbeth require s missing biographical an d historical evidence ; and, perhaps most importantly, subjecting Macbeth to a modern-day inquisitio n ignores the ways in which the play "questions from withi n itself its own theatrical representation o f witchcraft."10 Metadramatic reflexivit y woul d indee d see m to offe r th e theate r a powerfu l defense against such probing questions: ho w can we indict the stage for substantiating the theatricalism for which and by which witches were killed, after all , if the theater clearly designates such imaginary enchantment a s manipulative illusion? Does the explici t and self-conscious dramatization o f witchcraft no t alway s pro vide its own skeptical critique? Interestingly, such questions are posed forcefull y by the very play Greenblatt chooses to contrast with Macbeth in an effort partiall y to exonerate Shakespeare's play ; unlike Macbeth, he claims, The Witch of Edmonton apparently "sanction[s]" th e lega l prosecution an d executio n o f witches. 11 This chapter argue s largely to th e contrary—suggestin g tha t Thoma s Dekker , John Ford, an d Willia m Rowle y collaboratively produc e i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton (1621) one of the most radica l dramatic challenge s to the legal and cultural production o f witches in the Renaissance. 12 Complicating thi s argument , however, is the coextensive claim that suc h a reading—which locates invitations to skepticism within a text—should no t necessarily disentangle or exculpate a text fro m its acknowledged legal and cultura l complicities. Calls for light within the theater can hav e enchantments o f thei r own ; they ca n als o cas t lon g shadow s o f guilt across the text that give s them being . The contributio n o f Greenblatt' s reading o f Macbeth i n "Shakespear e Be witched" lies in its articulation o f the possibility that witchcraft dram a might be socially consequential and ethically accountable—an anxiet y harbored no t only by critics of this drama but als o by Renaissance playwrights. By identifying the terms by which theater can both collude with and skeptically destabilize a culture's


witch beliefs, Greenblatt subjects to historical analysis the question of literary responsibility. If his essay has a disabling omission, however, it is an inattendance to the textua l experienc e o f this responsibility . When aske d t o choos e whethe r a play like Macbeth "i s evil" or "about evil," the latte r proves more demonstrable , and more historically responsible, than the retrospective ascription o f guilt. And this i s presumably why Greenblatt's analysi s of the play' s "political and ethica l consequences" becomes increasingly attenuated by qualification until Shakespeare is finally placed "on the sid e of a liberating, tolerant doubt." 13 But if, in a historicist reading of Macbeth, "objective" guilt ultimately proves inapplicable, the forma l defense o f reflexivit y would a t least seem limited; reflexivity , after all , does no t automatically exculpate a text from th e consequences of what it self-consciously performs, any more than a flickering expression of social conscience justifies attendant, strategic evil: If th'assassinatio n Could trammel u p the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success; that but thi s blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and [shoal ] of time, We'ld jump the lif e to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here, that we but teac h Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague th'inventor . (Macbeth, 1.7.2-10) Even to imply that the author of a witchcraft play could consider his part in and responsibility fo r "teach [ing] / Blood y instructions," however , is to suppl y th e missing category in Greenblatt's analysis—th e category of subjective guilt. This categor y i s accessible to historica l analysi s precisel y because i t i s produced by, and responden t to , historical an d cultura l pressures. In the following reading of The Witch o f Edmonton, listening for expressions o f subjective guilt can expand th e possibilitie s of metadramatic reflexivity to include not onl y skeptical challenges to the theatricalization of witchcraft, but also complex confessions of the theater's capitalizatio n o n this phenomenon. Suc h a reading concerns th e playwright's acknowledged complicit y with the fairl y diffuse econom y that supported witchmongerin g in Renaissance England. We see the ways in which this complicity is "redistributed"14 i n the play's deceptively collaborative plots, and in the terribl e collusio n the y reveal between the tragicomed y o f religious punish ment and forgiveness and the entertainment industr y of the stage. First, though, we consider the chie f complicity Dekker, Ford, and Rowle y undertook th e mo ment they chose the subject of their play—a complicity with the law that had already provided fo r Elizabeth Sawyer's representation and execution .


THE LAW' S EY E AND TH E THEATER' S CAPITA L Though in obvious ways the playwright does not, in Onat's words, "work like a reporter," authors of Renaissance witchcraft dramas had special reason to meditat e upon th e mediation performe d by their texts. Their subjects could be unusually topical, recognizable as offstage person s unprotected by the laws against libel and slander that customarily governed the stage. As a legal category, the Renaissance "subject" o f witchcraft was for severa l more specifi c reason s exposed t o acut e theatrical vulnerability. In early modern England , where uniquely in Europe the jury (rather than the bench) was charged with "finding fact" in the adjudication of guilt or innocence, the theater could influence not only the court of public opinion but also the generic perspective of potential jurors. 15 When we consider a related legal distinction betwee n Renaissanc e England and th e rest of Europe—that i n England criminal trials were typically public and well-reported affairs , while on the Continen t the y were conducte d i n relativ e secrecy 16—the epistemologica l analogies between courtroo m an d dram a furthe r sugges t consequentia l socia l connections. Indeed, if the English theater occupied a position o f what we might cal l "culpable mediacy" i n a culture that created an d killed witches, it was because these analogies placed the stage on the verge of the legally produced "real" : the episte mological conviction deliberate d b y jurors and require d of spectators sough t t o alter the ontology of the accused an d staged. 17 The plea we have heard i n Henry Vs Prologue to see more than meets the eye, for instance, echoes in John Gaule's mid-seventeenth-century cal l for evidentiary latitud e in judging a witch: "Nei ther is it requisite that so palpable evidence for conviction shoul d her e come in, as in more sensible matters. It is enough if there be but s o much circumstantia l proof or evidence, as the substance, matter , and nature of such an abstruse mystery will well admit."18 In 1616, John Cotta similarl y recommends a fantastically "curious view " of witchcraft cases, since (as Duke Theseus observe s of the the atergoer's need for epistemological charit y in A Midsummer Night's Dream) such cases are "neither manifest to sense, nor eviden t to reason"; without the active engagement of the juror's "presumptions," Cott a suggests, the theatrical mysteries of witchcraft wil l fail to convince. 19 Fiv e years later another interpretive communit y is enjoined "from suspicion to proceed to great presumptions," a reliance upon th e evidence o f things not see n that produces bot h a witch "on whose body law was justly inflicted" and a made-for-theater account. 20 I n Th e Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer a "Witch, Late of Edmonton, Her Conviction and Condemnation and Death, the ministe r Henr y Goodcole provide s a catalogue of witnesses an d transcripts of testimony in defense of the prosecution—"thereof t o stop all contradictions o f so palpable a verity" as that whic h he represents in narrative an d dialogue (388) . As hard a s he strive s to leave nothing t o th e imaginatio n i n his proof of Sawyer's guilt, however, Goodcole must finally resort to the imaginatio n


as he confronts the airy nothing of her possession. In order to ascribe to Sawyer the agency that will define a host of unfortunate event s as her evi l acts, Goodcole mus t demonstrat e tha t sh e reall y trafficke d wit h a spiri t unwitnesse d b y anyone else in the courtroom . T o do so he requires that Sawyer produce agains t herself a convincing bit of theater that renders tangible the privately spectacular: "Did yo u eve r handl e th e Devi l when h e cam e unt o you? ( I asked o f he r thi s question because some might think this was a visible delusion o f her sight only)" (Wonderful Discoverie, 396).21 Goodcole never comes closer to fantasizing of the special effects—th e talkin g dog , th e touchin g "familiar"—with whic h th e au thors o f Th e Witch o f Edmonton give the devi l a local habitation an d a name in the play. But the circumstantial proof and spectacularly produced "real" of the theater always, at the final curtain, discredit themselves as insubstantial pageantry. In fac t we might take any theatrical representation (howeve r orthodox o r unreflective) of an embattled lega l belief structure as a subversive call to skepticism; Thespis, after all , has always made Solon nervous—perhap s by drawing attention t o th e uncomfortable homologie s betwee n courtroo m an d drama , lega l fictio n an d theatrical illusion. 22 The Renaissance stage, moreover, was especially well situated to expose the machinery and motivations of illusion-mongering, the contingency and capitalis m of credibility. When, for example, two characters in Th e Witch of Edmonton's comi c subplot propos e addin g a make-believe witc h t o th e cas t of their morri s dance, we are reminded wit h a metadramatic win k that the play's 'real' witch is really a counterfeit too: YOUNG BANKS : I'l l have a Witch; I love a Witch. 1.MORICE-DANCER: Faith , Witches themselves are so common no w a days, that the counterfeit will not be regarded. They say we have three or four in Edmonton, besides Mother Sawyer. Such winks , however (an d th e pla y i s replete wit h them) , ca n als o produc e a blind eye : by establishing a distant foca l point o n the obviou s fiction of a playwithin-the-play (here , the carnivalesque morris), the dramatist als o blurs thos e categories by which his spectators maintain distinction between the framing action and the real world that frames it. The self-conscious deployment o f an act of makebelieve, as the mannered mimesis of The Murder o f Gonzago famously illustrates, can paradoxically contribut e t o the makin g o f consequential belief—especially when accompanied by appeals to the process of legal conviction. By reifying "th e play" as the conscience-catching "thing," Hamlet joins his spectators in a theater transformed by the judicial discovery of fact and production o f evidence. Hamlet performatively authenticates itsel f by producing, in a case of conscience, an authentes, or "murderer," who interrupts the theatrical counterfeit of his crime with a disillusioning cal l for light. 23 The Witch o f Edmonton, first published wit h th e


subtitle "A known tru e Story," 24 achieves an eve n firmer referentia l authenticit y by borrowing from the specifi c legal preceden t represented by Goodcole: "For my part I meddle here with nothing but matter of fact, and to that end produce the testimony o f the living and th e dead , which I hope shal l be authentical for the confirmatio n of this Narration" (Wonderful Discoverie, 381). I say "borrowing" because the prologu e attached t o a revival of the play , acknowledging tha t Edmonto n ha s already provided th e theate r wit h diabolica l source material, 25 describes the transaction in these terms: The Town of Edmonton hat h lent the Stag e A Devil and a Witch, both i n an Age. (Prologue, 1-2 ) In th e scen e o f the Young Banks' s morris preparations , thi s conceptio n o f th e witch as theatrical capital appears in the diabolical "Spirit's" distinction between comic subplot an d the play's more serious economy : We'll sport with [Youn g Banks]; but when reckoning call, We know where to receive: th'Witch pay s for all. (3.1.75-76) Certainly these lines reveal the terrible calculus of scapegoating—a symbolic math that th e pla y frequently graphs metadramatically : "The Witc h mus t b e beaten out o f her Cock-pit " (5.1.49). 26 More specifically, they unravel the twiste d logic of a culture whose king (the play was performed not only "often at the Cock-pit " but "onc e at Court, with singular Applause"27) authored both the Book o f Sports and Daemonologie—the first an advocation o f the kind of spirited civi c revelry represented by the morris, the latter a complex legitimization of the prosecution of witches that accommodates skepticism. 28 When sanctioned play threatens to undo suc h cultura l work , a scapegoa t typicall y get s stuc k wit h th e bill . Thu s when Young Banks unwittingly contaminates the morri s with th e evi l familiar, thereby confirmin g the Purita n argumen t tha t suc h festivitie s transfor m their participants int o "deuil s incarnate, " a genuin e crim e intercede s t o excus e his "deuil's dance" as innocent.29 "This news of Murder," he exclaims when informed of the main plot's homicide , "has slain the Morrice" (3.4.63-64); an d the investigation o f this crime, after fals e accusations, ultimately convicts Mother Sawyer as the efficien t cause . But if "th'Witch pays for all" as the price of playing, the expense o f spiri t tha t satisfie s socia l accounts , sh e also provide s credi t a s a convincing spectacle— a commercia l resourc e o f theatrica l prejudice . As capital , Elizabeth Sawye r offer s th e stag e a prepai d produc t o f it s genuinel y forensi c counterpart, already examined and convicted fo r capital crimes by the jury which theatergoers can only approximate .

The Witch o f Edmonton and th e Guilt of Possession 12 1

That the transactions between legal and fictional representation can challenge the former's legitimacy appears in Goodcole's explanatio n of his desire to defen d th e trut h o f the cause , which in som e measure hath receive d a wound already, by most base and false ballads, which were sung at the time of our returning from the Witch's execution. In them I was ashamed to see and hear such ridiculous fictions of her bewitching corn on the ground, of a ferret and an owl daily sporting before her, of the bewitched woman braining herself, of the spirits attending in the Prison: all which I knew to be fitter for a n Alebench than fo r a relation of proceeding in Court of Justice. And thereupon I wonder that suc h lewd Balladmongers should b e suffere d t o creep into the Printers' presses and people's ears. (Wonderful Discoverie, 381-82) Here as throughout the narrative Goodcole acknowledges the vulnerability of "the cause" to parodic devolution and textual circulation.30 Indeed in a few instances he i s surprisingly willing to conced e the dubiet y of specific aspects of Sawyer's trial in order to contain the more radical skepticism that would expose his Wonderful Discoverie as tragic or farcical misapprehension. 31 When relating the town' s superstitious method of determining who was responsible for "the death of nursechildren and cattle," for instance, Goodcole interjects an editorial note that anticipates the commonsense objection to such a test: And to find out who should be the author of this mischief, an old ridiculous custom was used, which was to pluck the thatch of her house and to burn it, and i t bein g so burned, th e autho r o f suc h mischie f should presentl y come out: an d i t was observed, and affirme d t o th e Court , that Elizabeth Sawyer would presently frequent the house of them that burn t the thatc h which they plucked of her house, and come without sending for. (Wonderful Discoverie, 382-83) Goodcole similarl y acknowledges the uncomfortabl e fact tha t in prison Sawyer has confessed to him th e murder of the two nurse-children "for the which I was now indicted and acquitted , by the Jury. " On th e other han d sh e has remained resolute to the gallows that she is innocent of the death of one "Agnes Ratcliefe," "for which [sh e was] found guilty by the Jury " (Wonderful Discoverie, 391). For Goodcole the "old ridiculous custom" of thatch-burning, like the "ridiculous fictions" of the "lewd Balladmongers," must be dutifully marked as suspect and counterfeit if his audience's limited credulity is to be reserved for, and focused upon, the central drama of his narrative. If in the faithfu l representatio n o f this drama Goodcol e mus t als o admit th e potentia l fallabilit y of the jury that pro nounced Sawyer guilty, moreover, he defends all the more firmly the fundamental


justice of her convictio n an d execution . B y converting the bod y and speec h of the accused into self-incriminating evidence, the courtroom becomes an authentic and providentially directe d theater: The Bench commande d officers appointe d for those purposes, to fetch in three women to search the body of Elizabeth Sawyer, to see if they could find any such unwonted mar k as they were informed o f . . . That tongue which by cursing, swearing, blaspheming, and imprecating, as afterward sh e confessed , was th e occasionin g caus e o f th e Devil' s acces s unto h e r . .. and to claim her thereby as his own, by it discovered her lying, swearing, and blaspheming as also evident proofs produced against her, to stop her mouth with Truth's authority... Thu s God did wonderfully overtake her in her own wickedness, to make her tongue to be the means of her own destruction, whic h had destroyed man y before. (Wonderful Discoverie, 387,383-84) Like the author s o f Th e Witch o f Edmonton, Goodcole advertises the marvelou s fact of his discovery—a fact established by Sawyer's essential role as a legible body and a possessed tongue—b y distinguishin g i t parentheticall y fro m untenabl e fiction and corruptin g superstition . In thei r simila r an d ofte n complementar y attempts to render Sawyer's case "a known true Story" with a future stage history, The Wonderful Discoverie and Th e Witch o f Edmonton in fac t sugges t a coopera tion betwee n lega l apolog y an d self-authenticatin g theater. If in th e defens e of the law the condemned mus t be convincingly made-for-theater, the theater's appropriation of this product can involve a "loan" that respects the principle as the immutable stipulatio n o f the borrower. Indeed, Greenblatt's argument that The Witch o f Edmonton actually sanctions the legal execution of witches suggests how such a loan may be repaid with interest: theatrical representation , with its potential for limitless reproduction, ca n contribute t o the process whereby an individual legal case lives in history as a constantly relevant and applicabl e precedent.32 Goodcole's strategies of incorporating skepticis m for the purpose of authentic conviction a t least provide th e playwright s with a representational model . I n a scene that may recall the morris dancers' rejection of a "counterfeit" witch for their festivities, the Justice examining Sawyer dismisses the bogus proofs of witchcraft offered b y Young Banks's father an d a group of rustics: 1.COUNTRY-MAN: Thi s Thatch is as good as a Jury to prove she is a Witch.... OLD BANKS : .. . a Witch: t o prov e her one , we no soone r se t fire on th e Thatch o f her House, but in she came running....


JUSTICE: Come , come; firin g he r Thatch ? ridiculous: tak e heed Sir s wha t you do: unless your proofs come better arm'd , instead of turning her int o a Witch, you'll prov e yourselves starke Fools. (4.1.25,34-36,39-41) Like Hamlet, the playwrights' Justice (whose localized skepticism, sensitivity toward the judiciall y "ridiculous," an d empirica l focu s upo n th e bod y o f the accuse d transcribe Goodcole ) wil l hav e "grounds / Mor e relativ e than this." 33 And th e play obliges by arming its proofs against such popular superstitions and dubiou s juries; the play, in fact, enlists its spectators as jury, resolving into spectacle some of the evidentiary ambiguities raised by Goodcole's narrative . The instant Sawyer is left alone in the scene above, for example, the "Familiar" enters to "have th e Teat" ("dri'd u p / With cursin g and with madness") , an d t o inform Sawye r that he has lamed a horse "and nip'd the sucking-childe" (4.1.151, 153, 159-60). In this very brief exchange, the playwrights compress the damnin g anatomical examination reported i n Th e Wonderful Discoverie (387-88); they also establish Sawyer's role in the death of at least one of "those two nurse-children" — a crime of which she has been acquitted (apparentl y erroneously) in Goodcole' s account. Such maleficia typically , as in Th e Wonderful Discoverie, can b e recon structed only in the confession of the accused or in the charges of the prosecution. Onstage, though, the Witch's commands to her familiar reveal what even a skeptic must acknowledge as a crime of intention. In a passage to which we shall return, moreover, Th e Witch o f Edmonton redresse s a further ambiguit y i n Goodcole' s account by representing the consequences of Sawyer's cursing of Agnes Ratcleife: her commands that the Dog "pinch tha t Quean to th'heart" and "Touch her" are followed (post ho c if no t propter hoc) by "Anne Ratcliff s" madness an d suicid e (4.1.71-207). Thoug h the playwrights' witch, like Goodcole's, will deny in the end any responsibility for this crime (5.3.33-35), our witnessin g of this scene amplifies and confirm s the "insight" o f those who hav e examined Sawyer' s body fo r witch's mark s in Th e Wonderful Discoverie: This view of theirs... gave some insight to the Jury, of her: who upon thei r consciences returned th e sai d Elizabeth Sawyer, to be guilty, by diabolical help, of the deat h o f Agnes Ratcleife... An d thus muc h o f the means tha t brought he r to her deserved death an d destruction .

(388) One cannot read substantial portions of the play without sensing the commercial value of this "insight" to the theater. As a satisfying supplement to interpretive appetizers offered i n the courtroom, such a gaze endows the observed with enough agency to register the significanc e o f its appropriation b y the observer: "she has


done killing now, but mus t b e kill'd fo r what sh e has done: she' s shortl y to be hang'd" (The Witch o f Edmonton, 5.1.101). As a solution t o any perceived antagonism between the licit and the entertaining, legal and theatrical imperatives merge in a play that invite s its spectators to continue the law's work. Of cours e reliance upon theatrical prejudic e to establis h an d perpetuat e th e essential justice of legal precedent entails obvious liabilities. In Measure for Measure, Angelo's desire to execut e a sex offender a s a future warnin g to th e res t of Vienna requires an admission of juristic hypocrisy that will return to haunt him: I do not deny The jury, passing on the prisoner's life , May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try. What's open mad e to justice, That justice seizes. (2.1.18-22) The Witch o f Edmonton involves theatrical exposures of legal abuse similar to th e Duke's ultimate discovery of Angelo. The play's Justice may peremptorily claim, in response to Sawyer's indictment o f socially tolerated forms of ruinous "Inchantment," "Yes, yes, but th e La w / Casts not a n eye on these" (The Witch o f Edmonton, 4.1.117-18), but i t i s the panopti c privileg e o f theater t o examin e jus t suc h in equities. My foregoing analysis of The Witch o f Edmontons substantial connivance with the law, however, has aimed at revealing the central complicity that define s much of the play's remarkable social criticism as self-criticism. If the play finally allows no uncomplicated scapegoating , the text forbids even itself the purifyin g displacement of its social implications. Before recognizing The Witch o f Edmonton's representatio n o f the socia l guilt that underlie s local blame, then, I exemplify the play's reflection o n the culpability of its own representations . The example focuses on what we have seen to be the playwrights' intertextual self-consciousness, their awareness of Goodcole's prio r accoun t as authenticating source an d theatrical capital. Any latent tension betwee n these two conception s of their legal source has thus far, in my analysis, been resolved in the playwrights' "supplemental" representatio n o f Sawyer's case. In th e scen e of Anne RatclifF s bewitching, however, the dramatist s depar t fro m Goodcole' s narrative in an especially significant way; they create , in fact , a glaring intertextual contradiction that exposes the exploitative nature of Goodcole's account and their dramatization of it. In his trenchant discussio n o f cultural conflict in the play , Anthony Dawson has described thi s contradiction a s "in essence an addition t o the source" : In Goodcole's pamphlet, Agnes Ratcliffe die s bewitched, a victim of Mother Sawyer's revenge for a petty neighborly trespass. In the play she runs ma d and subsequentl y commit s suicide . The difference ma y seem slight, moti-

The Witch o f Edmonton and th e Guilt of Possession 12 5

vated perhaps by the opportunity the change offered th e dramatists for a theatrically effective ma d scene. But I think there is more to it than that... As a social critic, sh e is allied with he r enem y in th e sam e scene, Mothe r Sawyer... So, Anne Ratcliffe, victim of witchcraft, is linked in her madnes s to th e transgressiv e marginality of witchcraft itself . Sh e thus joins hand s with Mother Sawyer. 34 Dawson's sensitivity to the passage's theatrical opportunism an d legal satire is illuminating;35 but his premise that the exchange is "an addition t o the source" leads him t o conclud e wit h a distorted sens e of the dramatists' ventriloquized socia l criticism an d sympath y in this passage. In this part o f the scen e the dramatist s have not , strictl y speaking , added t o thei r sources ; the y hav e instead incorpo rated those "most base and false ballads" whose "ridiculous fictions.. . of the bewitched woma n brainin g herself" Goodcol e mention s i n his pamphlet onl y to discount: and nothing in her mouth bein g heard, but th e Devil, the Witch the Witch, the Devil; she beat out her own brains, and s o she died. (The Witch o f Edmonton, 4.1.205-7) What ca n seem (an d what o n on e level is) a dramatic libert y taken t o enhanc e social protest an d margina l sympathy i s actually (or perhap s also ) an intrusiv e reminder o f the commercial interests of theater. 36 "Performance," writes Berger, "asks us to submit to its spell, and the text asks us to examine the implications of that submission."37 Like the authors of The Witch of Edmonton, Goodcole avails himself of illusionistic strategies—such a s present tense dialogue—whereb y a tex t ca n becom e a script . I n s o doin g h e strive s mightily to distinguis h hi s production an d distributio n o f numerous "writte n copies o f thi s .. . Declaration " fro m th e "lewd Balladmonger s .. . suffere d t o creep into the Printers'presses and people's ears" (Wonderful Discoverie, 381-82). To the exten t tha t Goodcol e make s u s forget tha t "as Ordinary at Newgate [he] heard th e dyin g confession s of the prisoner s [and ] eke d ou t hi s livelihood b y publishing the details of their trial s and confessions," 38 thi s performance is successful. Bu t as the profitabl e packaging of a prior performance, his text expose s itself and its consumers as implicated in a potentially insidious yellow journalism. If this self-interrogation appears only as an unwelcome by-product o f Goodcole' s text, moreover, it seems volunteered by a play that registers its own textual (an d intertextual) self-consciousness. We can attribute this self-consciousness to the fac t that the dramatists' capitalization on their sources is less easily effaced o r ignored than the clerical reporter's; and to the ways in which their script authenticates itself on Goodcole's precedent eve n as it challenges the legitimizing disclaimers of his


text. By considering those plots i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton less obviously impli cated i n Th e Wonderful Discoverie, however, we can understan d th e play' s self consciousness a s a more genera l product o f tension s betwee n socia l criticis m and the conventions o f dramatic representation . THINGS O F DARKNES S AN D TH E COMMUNIO N O F GUIL T In 1658, Jacobean performance becomes Protectorate text when Th e Witch o f Edmonton first appears in print. The date speaks both to the play's ideological adaptability an d t o it s ability to satisf y theatrica l appetite s eve n without th e stage. 39 On the title-page of this publication, in type larger than th e play's title, appears a generic identification every bit as arresting as this date: "Composed int o A TRAGICOMEDY." We cannot kno w for certain whether the playwrights ever intende d this specific label, though in its homiletic closure and gestures toward socia l rein tegration th e text seem s to anticipate such an advertisement. 40 Th e final scene's orgy of forgiveness, which pointedly exclude s Mother Sawyer , defines th e mur dering bigamist Frank Thorney as the central spectacle of a communal drama of redemption. In the eyes of his father, Frank approaches his execution lost only to the law, not to this drama : Here's the sad Object which yet I must mee t With hop e o f comfort, if a repentant en d Make him more happy then mis-fortun e would Suffer him to be. (5-3.53-56) In contrast t o Sawyer, whose "resolution] / To die in my repentance" waiver s as her zealous accusers tempt her with anger and despair (5.3.21-51) , Fran k is guided along an ideal preparatio mortis. Upon hearin g evidence o f his penitence, Winnifride (th e surviving victim of the bigamy plot) inform s him tha t "this Repentance makes thee / As white as innocence" (5.3.94-95) . When asked for forgiveness, Winnifride acknowledges her required role ("'Tis my part / To use that Language" [5.3.106-7]), just as Sir Arthur Clarington, Frank's evil counselor i n the bigam y plot, renounces hi s prior "part in thy wrongs" (5.3.127) . The metadramatic hypostatization o f these roles opens up a skeptical space in which th e scene' s scapegoatin g ca n appear mechanicall y imposed; but th e self conscious assignment of "parts" in this scene also reveals the playwrights' participation i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton's ambiguou s tragicomic machinery. Such machinery was exactly what Harsnett ha d marked off as fraudulent theater when he described Joh n Darrel's exorcism of William Sommer s (whic h included accusa tions of witchcraft): "Of all the partes of the tragicall Comedie acting between him and Somers, there was no Scene in it, wherein M. Darrell did with more courage

The Witch o f Edmonton an d th e Guilt of Possession 12 7

and boldnes acte his part, then i n this of the discouerie of witches."41 Elsewhere Harsnett refer s more generally to the "tragi-comedy" of exorcism,42 but his linking of witchcraft and exorcis m i n the exposur e of Darrel seems especially apposite to Th e Witch o f Edmontons fina l scene—where the community (an d specifically the murderer Frank) is effectively exorcised through the identification of a witch as the all-responsibl e "instrument of mischief" (5.3.21) . Recognizing the resonance of Harsnett's "tragi-comedy" in this play certainly helps us recalibrate any generic expectations derived from John Fletcher's bloodless definition: "A tragi-comedy i s not s o called in respect o f mirth and killing, but i n respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy: which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned .. . " 43 Reading The Witch o f Edmonton's witchcraf t scenes within the contex t of an exorcistic tragicomedy also provides an interesting explanatory model for the play's tenuously connected structur e and puzzling emphases: the witch plot's subordination t o the bigamy-murder-repentance-forgiveness plot ma y suggest that the play should be understood primaril y as an exploration o f the social act of exorcism;44 as the scapegoat (she is unconvincingly accused of everything from Frank's murder o f Susan to Ol d Banks's unnatural interes t in his cow and a n epidemi c of male impotence and female promiscuity), Sawyer is also the symbolically exorcised, the thing of darkness whose violent removal makes the community "white as innocence. " While "witchcraft " and "possession " should no t b e conceptuall y conflated—since the first ascribes agency while the second records its absence— there is in fact reason to allow some analogical intercourse between the terms in our analysis of this play. The possession/exorcism model best describes the social and theatrical transactions that mark the identification and persecution of witches. When these transactions are viewed from the social level, the community behaves like a possessed body and the witch like the threatening demon; in order for the community t o regai n possession o f itself, it must effectively exorcis e the witch . When these transactions ar e viewed through the playwright's eyes, the witch is always the possessed—alway s speakin g words an d performin g acts not he r own . Conceiving witchcraft as possession, in other words, results from th e same kind of social criticism and dramatic reflexivity performed by the authors of The Witch of Edmonton. But Harsnett's skeptica l dismissal of the "tragicall Comedie" of exorcism, while relevant to Th e Witch o f Edmonton and certainl y to the play' s 1658 appearance in print, does not provid e u s with clea r criteria for assessing the socia l function of the tragicomedy that appears on stage and page. If by labeling exorcism a "tragicomedy" Harsnett assumes that the mere acknowledgment of theater kills belief, the title of one of Goodcole's survivin g pamphlets reveals a comfortable faith i n tragicomic theater's servic e to belie f in killing: A True Declaration o f th e happy Conuersion, contrition, and Christian preparation of Francis Robinson, Gentle-


man. Who for covnterfetting the Create Scale of England, was drawen, Hang'd, and quartered at Charing Crosse... ,45 For Harsnett, to expose the theatricality of exorcism in A Discovery o f the Fraudulent Practices of]. Darrel (1599 ) is to emplo y the skeptica l strategy of Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)— a strategy of tearing illusio n int o actor s an d roles . Fo r Goodcole , however , the sam e rhetoric o f "Discoverie" ca n stag e Sawyer's witchcraft a s an essential role; what the skeptic discovers a s rough magic, the smooth magicia n discovers as wonderful fact : Here Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda playing at chess. Paulina draws a curtain, and discovers Hermione standing like a statue.46 The shared rhetoric, the reliance upon theate r both to challenge and create credibility, present little difficulty in distinguishing between a Harsnett and a Goodcole: one writes a text against performance, the other a text in defense of performance. In a text intended for performance, however, skepticism itsel f has a tendency t o become labil e a s the theate r assert s its will to belief. If by marking of f the con ventional "parts" of their characters the authors o f The Witch o f Edmonton shine daylight on the social theater of scapegoating, they also write these parts for social consumption—a digestio n tha t begin s with the actor's internalization o f his or her role and lead s finally to Paulina's imperative to all witnesses of fiction: "It is required / You do awake your faith." 47 Thus Sawyer's introduction to the stage, a soliloquy remarkable for its anatomy of scapegoating , also present s Renaissanc e drama wit h it s only exampl e of a n actor being possessed b y the witch's part: 48 And why on me? why should th e envious world Throw all their scandalous malic e upon me? 'Cause I am poor, deform'd and ignorant? And like a Bow buckl'd an d bent together , By some more strong in mischiefs then m y self ? Must I for that be made a common sink , For all the filth and rubbis h o f Men's tongues To fall and ru n into ? Some call me Witch ; And being ignorant of my self, they go About to teach me how to be one: urging , That m y bad tongue (b y their bad usage made so) Forespeaks their Cattle, doth bewitch their Corn , Themselves, thei r Servants, and their Babes at nurse. This they enforce upo n me : and in part Make me credit to it. (2.1.1-15)


With Dawson we can read Sawyer's partial "credit" as the cooperation o f a conscious victim with the terms of her misrepresentation: "She complie s with th e process of social representation—indeed, what else can she do?—even as she insists on it s injustice. Hers is a strong cas e of labeling." 49 We can go even further : hers is a strong case of theatricalized power, which requires a Faustian pact with representation, a submission that i n Sawyer's case promises the power of transgression, the ability to curs e her enemie s "to death o r shame." Beyond the the atrical appropriation considered i n chapte r 3 , where the selve s of Shakespeare' s theater futilely resis t their fashionin g into passive stage spectacle, Sawyer's "possession" involves the deceptive ownership of method acting : in owning her role, she is owned by it.50 But it would be a mistake to treat this passage's dramatization of such possession simpl y as another face t o f its penetrating but unimpli cated socia l criticism—for the simpl e fac t tha t Sawyer' s role here i s "in part" a product o f the dramatists ' ow n "bad usage. " Indeed thi s soliloquy, which bot h analyzes th e scripte d fiction s o f th e witch' s par t an d prepare s u s fo r Sawyer's convincing performance of it, establishes the ethica l problem tha t Th e Witch of Edmonton puts not onl y to its audience but t o itself: when a thing of darkness is acknowledged u p fron t a s "mine," at once a product and a possession o f theater, all subsequent representation and interpretation is charged with the responsibility of ownership. When th e play itself both admits the injustice of social representation an d complie s with i t ("'Ti s all one, / To be a Witch, as to be counte d one" [2.1.114-15]) , th e guilt y self-consciousness tha t trouble s Goodcol e no t i n the least becomes an inevitable consequence of dramatic participation . In the last section of this chapter we return to the partial "credit" Sawyer gives to her own representation, coordinating this unstable belief with the playwright's problematic "loan" from thei r lega l sources, and wit h a final discussion o f self reflexive tension s in Th e Witch o f Edmontons tragicomi c machinery . Bu t here I suggest that allowin g Sawyer's soliloquy to criticiz e not onl y social representa tion, but als o the specifi c dramati c representation o f which i t i s a part, reveals the self-consciousness beneath what Dawson describes as "the play's dividedness " and the text's "ambivalence." That grounds can be found i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton for both the skeptical discovery and the theatrical perpetuation of witch belief seems clear; nearly as persuasive is Dawson's claim that the play's conclusion reveals how "the text and its authors, in speaking to the predominantly upper-class audience fo r whom th e play was first performed ... , were seeking to assuag e anxieties that the y were at the sam e time raising about socia l division an d con flict."51 Bu t even such a pliant containmen t mode l doe s not accommodat e dis turbances introduced by the play's self-criticism—disturbances produced by the text's complicity wit h th e sam e "bad usage " it dissects. The metadramatic self consciousness that surround s th e morris provide s th e most glaring example of such disturbance, and no w we briefly conside r th e reflexiv e functio n of this in terlude in the play's complication o f tragicomedy.52


Dawson insightfull y demonstrate s that Th e Witch o f Edmonton dramatizes a breakdown of communal charity that in fact motivated many accusations of witchcraft i n the period. 53 From this perspective, witchcraft accusation s are compensatory: "the accused is first a victim [of an emergent 'individualistic set of values'], and th e accuse r is assuaging his socia l guilt by proclaiming he r evil , and hence undeserving of charity." 54 When Dawso n applies this insight to Th e Witch o f Edmontons deploymen t o f th e morris , however , he ha s difficult y reconcilin g th e play's subversive exposure of such scapegoating with the apparently conservative intentions of the text and its authors. On the one hand, he claims social criticism as a possible accident of the text : The morri s ca n be seen a s a comi c alternativ e t o witchcraft... . Bu t th e text's yoking of morris and witchcraft reveals, perhaps unwittingly [my emphases] , contradictory ideological positions i n regard to value and change; that is, the playwrights, exactl y like King James, treat the morris as a positive, if naive, force for communal solidarity and witchcraft as antisocial, bu t at the same time, by focusing on the similar social dynamics that give rise to thes e divers e practices, the y undermine th e stabilit y of the oppositio n they seek to assert . On the other hand , he suggests that "the text's support fo r the morris" serves to enable th e displacemen t enacte d b y witchcraft accusation s wit h a simpl e an d purposed "gesture aimed at assuaging social guilt."55 More recently Leah S. Marcus has powerfull y argue d that Th e Witch o f Edmonton's probin g of "a hypothetical connection betwee n old holiday custom s an d demonism .. . canno t be read as either advocac y or condemnation o f the Stuar t position," but tha t the play "repeatedly employs Stuar t themes to undo th e Stuart idealisatio n o f the country side and to expose the oversimplicity o f the standard Stuar t dichotomy betwee n urban vic e and pastoral virtue." 56 Whil e I agree with Dawso n that the commu nal an d comicall y clown y morri s danc e provides a seductive alternativ e t o th e failures o f charity that resul t in Sawyer's persecution, Marcus's argumen t offer s an importan t corrective : what i s intentionally reveale d i n th e morri s i s not a clear ideological program, but the fallacies and collapses that prevent the plausible displacement an d limitation o f a pervasive social guilt . I plac e Dawson an d Marcu s in dialogue , however , because th e term s intro duced by each can extend the reading of the other in an important ne w direction. If we agree that The Witch of Edmonton, in its representation of the morris, subverts the strategies of containment, we must also acknowledge the play's repeated emphasis upon the theatricality of social guilt—an emphasis that does not limit the play's criticism to "contradictory ideologica l positions" but intentionally includes the textua l instabilitie s produce d b y its own negotiatio n wit h thes e positions . Adapting Dawson' s terms , w e ca n rea d th e morri s a s a self-consciou s gestur e aimed at assuaging theatrical guilt, a gesture that metadramatically expose s itself


as culpably complicit with the social maneuvers criticized by the play. Thus The Witch o f Edmontons generi c and economic discrimination between plots ("We'll sport with [Youn g Banks]; but when reckoning call, / We know where to receive: th'Witch pay s fo r all") , lik e it s acknowledgmen t o f generic imperative s ("Th e Witch mus t be beaten out of her Cock-pit") , advertise s a performance at once conventional and untenable . As we have alread y seen, the morris—whic h the play presents as a carefully marked zone of innocence—is infiltrated by Dog (the Familiar) an d interrupte d b y the "new s o f Murder" fro m th e mai n plot . Thi s prophylactic failur e certainl y reveals "the oversimplicit y of the standar d Stuar t dichotomy between urban vice and pastoral virtue"; but we should add here that the morris' s failure to defend itself from th e play's ambient evi l also admits evidence of the play' s indefensibility. The "news o f Murder " tha t kill s th e morri s come s fro m th e author' s mos t substantial addition to their legal source:57 in the bigamy plot, Frank kills his second wife after being touched by Dog (3.3.15); though Dog' s part in Frank's crime has not been authorized or even recognized by Sawyer, the Familiar's role in this murder incriminates her in the eyes of the town. That Dog serves as the only real suture betwee n bigam y and witc h plo t (an d indeed , comi c subplot ) elicite d a revelatory complaint fro m Algerno n Swinburne: The wan t o f connectio n betwee n th e tw o subject s o f th e play , Mothe r Sawyer's witchcraft and Fran k Thorney's bigamy, is a defect commo n t o many plays of the time... but in this case the tenuity of the connecting link is such that despit e the momentary interventio n o f her familiar th e witch is able with perfect truth to disclaim all complicity with the murderer. Such a communio n o f guil t migh t easil y have bee n managed , an d th e tragi c structure of the poem would have been complete in harmony of interest.58 In calling for firmer causal links and a "tragic structure... complet e in harmony of interest," Swinburne seems actually to wish for a play that woul d justif y th e social scapegoating The Witch o f Edmonton performs critically;59 his formal criticism establishe s criteria for ignoring or containin g th e play' s unsettlin g socia l criticism. But Swinburne's dissatisfaction with the play's structure is also a symptom o f th e play' s self-criticism . By disrupting th e morri s wit h Dog , an d wit h news of the crime he seems to have caused, the playwrights reveal the tenuity of the plot connections the y also serve. Their dramaturgic desire to portray a communicable guilt , passed fro m Sawye r to Thorne y throug h Dog , i s undercut b y the genuin e and les s exclusive "communion o f guilt" in which the y knowingly participate. Th e morri s disappears fro m th e play , then, a s its enabling distinc tions betwee n socia l guil t an d theatrica l innocenc e collapse ; though rendere d unsustainable, however, it remains in the text as evidence of a desire for such distinctions that the playwrights share with their audience. Swinburne's reading of the pla y as a collaborative failur e ca n therefor e be redirecte d fro m artisti c dis -


missal or bibliographic conjecture to a complex level of signification: Th e Witch of Edmonton's "want o f [simplifying ] connection" between plots, like its generic antagonisms and it s vacillations between skepticism and belief, self-consciously reflects upo n th e theater's collaboratio n wit h its audience. By producing a connective "want" (desire and lack), the play confronts expectations it creates but refuses entirel y to meet. In a discussion of the counterfeit witch's exploitation of credibility, Scot suggests how a desire for plot an d unambiguou s causalit y provides idea l customers for theater: "Men i n all ages have been so desirous to know the effec t o f their pur poses, the sequele of things to come , and t o se e the en d of their fea r an d hope ; that a seelie witch, which had learne d ani e thing i n th e ar t o f cousenage, may make a great manie jolli e fooles. " And a s Greenblatt has shown , an importan t strategy in Scot's response to this desire is to disenchant witchcraft b y revealing it as a metaphor that onl y the "carnallie minded" would murderousl y literalize. The tenor is a culturally pervasive tendency to misprision: "the world is now so bewitched .. . wit h this fond error"; the baud's "eie infecteth, entiseth, and (i f I maie so saie) bewitcheth"; "illusions ar e right inchantments." 60 I n A Mirrour of Monsters (1587) , the antitheatricalist writer William Rankins turns such rhetoric against plays, accusing them of "inchaunting Charmes, and bewitched wyles," and urging his reader s to "arm e ourselve s agains t th e damnabl e enticing s o f these hellish feende s [th e players] with th e wis e regard of prudent Ulises." 61 I n bot h the bigamy and the witch plot, the authors of The Witch o f Edmonton deploy strikingly similar metaphors in an apparent effort to divest witchcraft and demonism of literal power, and to distribute guilt across the community. Thus Frank Thorney, who conceive s the bigamy stratagem a s an evil necessitated by his financial need for a paternal blessing, figures "beggery and want " as "two Devil s that ar e occasions to enforc e / A shameful end" (1.1.18-20). Thus Sir Arthur Clarington describes Frank's sexual desire for his first wife as "the nimble devil / That wanton'd in [his ] blood" (1.1.78-79), a prelude to Frank's father calling his dishonest son "a Devil like a Man" (1.2.154). Thus Sawyer in her defens e powerfull y presents courtier s a s "more Witch-like " tha n herself , just a s she indicts th e femal e "painted things " at court fo r "Inchantments" tha t "burn Men s Souls in sensual hot desires " and reduc e "Lordships" "to Trunk s of ric h Attire" (4.1.88, 103, 105, 109-10). Sawyer's parting shot at "Men-witches" who "without the Fangs of Law" enchant women out of their honor elicit s an anxious response from Clarington , who has seduced Frank's first wife in just such a manner. The threatening incontinence of her metaphor and its obvious application to him leads Sir Arthur to insist upon the literal fact o f Sawyer's witchcraft (4.1.138-46).62 Clarington's emphatic literalism certainly appears suspect in a play that follow s Scot in warning the superstitious tha t their gullibilit y may "prove" them "starke Fools"; but i t also reminds u s of the morris dancers' distinction betwee n "real " witches and the "counterfeits'" who "will not be regarded" by a community both


suspicious of representation and desirous of authentication. The morris dancers' savvy sense of theatrical "regard" in fact reflect s the playwrights' commercial in terest i n satisfyin g th e "carnallie minded" with a n utterl y convincin g body— a body resistant t o the disenchantmen t an d dilutio n o f Scot's skeptical wordplay. This commercial interest, we should note, is hardly conducive to what Swinburne calls dramatic "harmony o f interest": the desir e to convince , enchant, and con centrate the figure of witchcraft actuall y contradicts the play' s skeptica l distri bution of evil and illusion through metaphor; and in this contradiction th e playwrights confront the culpability of their own dramatic needs. In the character of Dog—an avata r of the demoni c tha t provide s th e play with a n apparent crite rion for the real—the playwrights incarnate evil as an instrument o f plot. To the extent that th e Familia r establishes the guil t of Sawyer and Fran k Thorney, th e innocence of the morris, it presents the audience with the same literalistic escape desired by Sir Arthur. Ontologically distinc t fro m the play's figurative distribution of evil, Dog offers a seemingly unshakable justification fo r scapegoating, and for th e play' s carefully calibrated degrees of guilt. But while The Witch o f Edmonton acknowledges the theatrical and social desirability of such a justification, the playwrights admit antitheatrical evidence against its validity. They self-consciously present th e Familiar , in fact , a s a hallucinatory product o f theater—a produc t that reveal s once again the theater's capitalizatio n on legal sources, its exploitation o f tragicomic expectations, it s collaboration with cultural fantasies o f persecution. THE HAI R O F TH E DO G Renaissance spectators clearly brought a wide range of reflexes to a theater that represented demonism with similar variety. If a play such as Doctor Faustus could in cite a few of the hyper-credulous to see more devils than the actors onstage might account for , it no doubt reassured a great many more with the palpable theatri cality—if no t th e completel y saf e fictionality—o f it s diaboli c representations . When compare d wit h th e awesom e otherness o f Marlowe's devils , Th e Witch of Edmonton's furr y Familiar would hardly seem a character designed to exploit th e credibility and anxiety of such an audience. Renaissance England's broad cultural recognition o f "the familiar " notwithstanding, th e obvious contortions necessar y for a n actor t o play a devil-dog in fac t sugges t an element of farce. 63 And indee d in some of his comic interactions, such as his enticement of Young Banks into a muddy pond, Dog conjures up th e disenchanting 'low' burlesqu e that appear s especially in th e B text o f Faustus. It i s therefore necessar y to qualif y th e clai m that Do g offer s th e playwright s a criterion fo r the rea l and a body resistant t o metaphorical disenchantment, since both the canine and the diabolical status of this character constantl y reveal themselves as ludicrously contrary t o fact . Tha t Dog presents so many obstacles to complete plausibility need not prevent us from


observing his dramatic service to the interpretive desire—"Resolve me of all ambiguities"—that cues the devil's entrance in Faustus.64 As a domestication of the supernatural, thi s Familia r introduce s t o th e pla y a mean s fo r distinguishing Sawyer's guilt from that circulating in much of the play's community;65 her pact, which enlists Dog as an instrument of revenge, defines even the hypocritical Banks as supernaturally innocent an d invulnerabl e (2.1.152—61). We can certainly interject tha t th e very implausibility of Dog's supernatural agency exposes such a distinction t o skeptical critique; but t o do so is both t o ignore the play's substantial support fo r this distinction, and to foreclose analysis of the dramatists' more subtle interrogation o f its construction. The legal and dramatic allure of the diabolic pact lies in the possession of the soul of the accused. Proof of such a pact provides the courtroom with evidence that its execution of justice upon the body of the accused reflects, and is confirmed by, divine punishment; proof o f such a pact provides the theatergoer with the experience of soteriological access, an experience that offers body and spirit as properties of the stage. If the pact promises a kind of spiritual ownership not simply to its demonic signatory, but to its judicial and theatrical witnesses, an interesting contrast appear s in the release of ownership that is forgiveness. In Th e Witch of Edmonton, Frank Thorney prepares us for the forgivenes s that will render his soul "as white as innocence" by confessing his murder to Winnifride (his surviving wife) a s a microcosm o f the courtroom : for tho u m y evidence art, Jurie and Judge: sit quiet, and I'll tell all. (4.2.108-9) Winnifride is not alone in her quick forgiveness: the father of Frank's victim pronounces Fran k "well prepared to follow" her to heaven (5.3.116), and on e of the men Frank has blamed fo r his own crime laments the fact that such a redeemed character must stil l "make satisfactio n to th e Law " (5.3.122). By forgiving Frank and collaborativel y preparing his spirit fo r its divine reception, the communit y assembled onstage in the final scene makes a proprietary distinction between his body (which still belongs to the law and the theater) and his soul (which belongs now t o heave n alone). That thi s distinctio n doe s no t appl y to Sawyer , who is forced by the same community to spend her last words "in bawling" rather than in the resolution and prayer she desires (5.3.48—49), suggests a tenacious grasp on the absolute possession sh e has become. In important ways the play allows Sawyer to speak against this presumed legal and theatrical ownership of the spirit of the possessed. In a debate with the Justice over the charge s of Old Banks , her chie f persecutor , Sawye r invokes the socio economic oppressio n criticall y represented by the play to revea l the materialist component of Banks's accusations:


By what commissio n ca n h e sen d m y Sou l o n th e Divel' s Errand , mor e then I can his? is he a Landlord of my Soul, to thrust it when he list out of door? (4.1.82-84) And i n a complaint agains t th e bayin g communit y tha t surround s he r i n th e final scene, Sawyer employs a rare metaphorical adaptatio n o f her Familia r to describe Edmonton's effor t t o possess her spirit: These dogs will mad me : I was well resolv'd To die in my repentance. (5-3.41-42) Sawyer's languag e here ma y als o recal l the bear-baitin g imag e throug h whic h Malvolio figures his exorcistic victimization in Twelfth Night, 66 but i n Th e Witch of Edmonton th e "propertied " victim o f tragicomedy i s the muc h mor e secur e possession of a community that has underwritten the diabolic pact. This commu nity becomes a figurative pack of "Dogs" not a s evidence against Sawyer's literal forfeiture o f he r soul , but a s testimony t o th e socia l appropriatio n o f this de monic deal. That the play does not enjo y a position of complete critical detachment fro m the communit y i t represents , however, appears mos t clearl y in th e onl y othe r clear instance of a metaphorical adaptation o f the Familiar . In her first scene— shortly after Old Banks has attacked her for gathering "a few rotten sticks" on the land o f which he is lord, an d afte r th e morri s dancer s have fled from he r while threatening "Away with the Witch of Edmonton"—Sawyer describe s Banks as this black Cur, That barks, and bites, and sucks the very blood Of me, and o f my credit. (2.1.112-14) Here Sawyer may recall Shylock, another tragicomic victim of a play that largely excludes hi m fro m it s ethi c o f Christia n forgivenes s whil e preyin g upo n hi s "credit." Bu t i n Sawyer' s case the justificatio n for persecution i s presented no t only in the dubious social terms of the play's community, but als o in the equally suspect dramatic terms of the play itself. Banks's social power to scandalize Sawyer and suck "the very blood" of her credit in the community merges, just a few lines later, wit h th e playwrights ' exploitation o f the theatrica l credi t offere d b y th e witch to the stage: the moment Sawyer's metaphorical complaint ends , the literalized Dog enters to suck her blood, an act accompanied by thunder and lightening and witnesse d onl y by the play' s spectators . Such parasitism characterize s The Witch o f Edmontons self-consciou s borrowing o f legal credit, and th e portraya l


of Do g reveal s the dramatists ' indictmen t o f themselve s (an d no t simpl y th e community they represent) a s guilty landlords o f Sawyer's soul. In Goodcole's dialogu e with Sawyer, several particulars emerge in her confes sion that she withheld at her trial ("thereby hoping to avoid shame" [Wonderful Discoverie, 397]). Among the details dramatically useful t o the playwrights, such as those related to her metho d o f nursing th e familiar , Sawyer' s disclosure tha t the devil-dog appeared to her in "two colours, sometimes of black and sometimes of white" receives special interest. When prayin g to the dog in the perversion of the Lord's Prayer he has taught her, 67 Sawyer relates, "he then would come to me in the white colour" (Wonderful Discoverie, 391,397). In the play, this detail is imported but also italicized as the kind of textual disturbance I have ascribed to the playwrights' intertextual self-consciousness . No mentio n o r indicatio n i s made of Dog' s whiteness , for instance , when Sawye r prays to hi m i n act s 2, 3, and 4 ; and whe n sh e conjure s hi m wit h praye r a t th e beginnin g o f ac t 5 , she seem s baffled b y his chromatic transformation : SAWYER: Why dost thou appea r to me in white, as if thou wert the Ghost of my dear love? DOG: I am dogged, list not to tell thee, yet to torment thee. (5.1.34-36) Dog goes on to explai n tha t hi s whiteness i s meant t o put Sawye r "in minde of thy winding Sheet," that the devil's paradoxical appearance "as a Lamb" signals her imminent deat h (5.1.37,40) . When Dog briefly attempts to account for his peculiar metamorphosi s b y referring Sawye r to th e explanatio n provide d i n Good cole's pamphlet, sh e still insists upon the novelty of this episode : DOG: Wh y am I in white? didst thou not pray to me? SAWYER: Yes , thou dissembling Hell-hound: why now in white more then at other times? (5.1.44-46) Only afte r Sawyer' s reiteration o f the questio n raise s Dog's colo r to a pressin g interpretive issue does he provide an answer that allows us to make sense of the exchange: Be blasted with the News ; whiteness is days Foot-boy, a forerunner t o light; which shews thy old rivel'd face : Villaines are strip't naked, the Witch must be beaten ou t of her Cock-pit . (5.1-47-49) In these lines, Dog reveals his lamblike appearance "in white" as a costume change that serve s the play's grinding tragicomic machinery. Here, in other words, Dog


discovers himself a s a theatrical invention , a special effec t create d b y the play wrights' alteratio n o f thei r sourc e fo r thei r ow n dramati c needs—need s tha t generically reflect th e desires of the community they represent. As a spokesperson for genre, the white Dog, like the black Dog that substitutes himself fo r Ol d Bank s in 2.1 , admits th e rol e of theate r i n shapin g fantasies o f persecution. As the protean connection between plots, he identifies Sawyer as an expendable propert y o f the stag e while adumbrating a conclusion tha t render s Frank's guilt "as white as innocence." Th e devil' s desertio n o f the possesse d a s death approache s ma y be a common occurrenc e i n Renaissance witchlore, but Dog's forsakin g o f Sawye r speak s powerfull y (and , i f m y argumen t ha s per suaded, self-consciously) to the playwrights' "bad usage " of the subject they have borrowed fro m Edmonton : Out Witch! Thy tryal is at hand: Our prey being had, the Devil does laughing stand. (5.1.76-77) Such laughter is of course an impossibl e emotiona l respons e t o the scene s that follow, despite some last-ditch fooler y fro m Youn g Banks and Ol d Cartwright' s concluding effort t o leave us "as merry as we can" (5.3.169) . But the dramatists' occupational proximity to Dog, whose whiteness Sawyer describes as a "puritanpaleness" (5.1.54), has created an alliance that causes shivers in their text. That alliance i s not simpl y with Ministe r Goodcole an d hi s commodifie d confession; nor i s it simply an accedence to the dictates of genre. It also lies in a tense cooperation with the enemy: not Satan , but th e Puritan appetite s that i n 1658 would provide Th e Witch o f Edmonton its readership. This is not t o imply that the play, first performed fo r altogether differen t audiences , eve r had suc h a reception a s its specific intention; nor i s it to claim that Puritans ever cornered the market on the persecutio n performe d by the play. Instead, it is to suggest how the play survived the closing of the theaters and the scrutiny of England's most antitheatrical period: suspicious of its own theatricalism an d the economies it serves, The Witch of Edmonton also exploits the desir e for materia l possession—a desir e satisfie d not by plays, but by texts. We now consider a Puritan text "never intended" for the stage, a text that responds to the spectator' s possessive desire for the sou l by amplifying the skepticis m we have seen in Th e Witch o f Edmonton, Like the author s of The Witch o f Edmonton, Milton is suspicious of the audience for which he writes, and he allows this suspicion to reflect back on the motivations of his own text. Samson Agonistes goes farther than the muddled blen d o f opportunism an d guilt that characterize The Witch o f Edmonton, however; Milton's drama raises intertextual self-consciousness and self-reflexiv e antitheatricalit y to a point that finally frustrates the interpre tive appetites stimulated by the text .


The fift h chapte r concern s anothe r self-crowne d laureate, just a s critical as Spenser of those bays bestowed i n a public theater, yet just as conscious as Shakespeare of the energies and expectations excited by a theatricalized death. In chapter 5 I show that Samson Agonistes frustrates these energies and expectation s b y moving its dying protagonist off the sacrificial stage, beyond the bounds of iconic representation and interpretive appropriation. Bu t this frustration must be gauged in terms of the expectations Milton's closet drama itself creates. My chief interest in this play lies not i n the fact that its hero dies (or is killed) into interpretive inaccessibility, since in itself the offstag e deat h was nothing new. 68 Rather, Samson Agonistes invite s it s spectatorship— a squintin g grou p tha t include s th e play' s surviving characters and its readers—to a killing poem, to a theatrical death that will present Samson as interpretive property. That this proprietary urge is not ultimately satisfie d appears in the contrast betwee n the plebeians, who exit "dragging off Cinna," and the Danites, who leave their play planning to fetch Samso n home t o hi s father's house. Julius Caesar give s us no reaso n t o doub t th e tota l ownership of those who stake such claims (Antony's words on Lepidus, "Do no t talk of him / But as a property," could just as well have been spoken over Caesar's corpse o r Cinna' s body) ; but Samson Agonistes reminds u s that bodies ar e also actors—stubbornly resistant to such reduction, never entirel y analyzable by the parts the y pla y an d di e in . Thu s whil e Plutarch's Caesa r definitivel y becomes Shakespeare's, Milton' s Samso n play s others ' character s (Shakespeare' s Roman hero, as we shall see, among them) to the end. And while we may share the Danites' desire to appropriate Samson's remain s and interpret his dying roles, doing so does not provide the one revelation this mortality play makes us need the most.

5

Samson's Death by Theater an d Milton's Art of Dying In everything else there may be sham: the fine reasonings of philosophy may be a mere pose in us; or else our trials, by not testing us to the quick , give us a chance to keep our fac e always composed. Bu t in the last scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more pretending.... In judging the life o f another, I always observe how it ended.... All the other actions of our life must be tried and teste d by this last act. Montaigne, Essais O, Death's a great disguiser! Vincentio, Measure for Measure Breath inward comforts t o his heart, and affoor d hi m th e power of giving such outward testimonies thereof, as all that ar e about him ma y derive comforts from thence , and have this edification, even in this dissolution .. . John Donne, Devotion 17 To die is to be counterfeit . Falstaff, 1 Henry IV

IN A HIGHLY THEATRICAL CULTURE that also invests a great deal of ideological energy in questions of soteriology, one is not surprise d to find death privileged as a uniquely authentic and revelatory drama: a faithful pictur e of "that within" somehow unobscured by "actions that a man might play." But John Donne's prayer for a correspondence between "inward comforts" and "outward testimonies " reveals a source of anxiety for spectators in the Renaissance theater of death.1 On 139


a stage inhabited by the likes of Falstaff and the first thane of Cawdor (the latter dying "as one that had been studie d in his death"), nothing guarantees that one will perform one's last act with any more authenticit y or biographical integrit y than mark countless preceding acts. Mortal drama does not necessaril y provide transparency; its actors might counterfeit and its spectators misconstrue. In Robert Browning's "Fra Lippo Lippi," the medieval advice to the painter may echo with a consummation stil l devoutly wished in the earl y modern period: "Give u s no more body than shows soul!" But to such a representational theory we must add the interpretive doubts (here voiced by Macbeth's Duncan ) produced by Renaissance theatricality itself: "There's no art / To find the mind's construction i n the face." 2 In an effort to keep the theater of death epistemologically viable, the Renaissance did i n fac t offe r man y form s o f suc h a n "art, " providing self-representationa l ground rule s for the dying actor and hermeneutic guidelines for the living spectators. Casuistica l tracts , consolator y treatises , heavil y glossed account s o f th e deaths of martyrs and reprobates, and especially the ars moriendi or art of dying literature, which provided the period with its ultimate conduct book tradition — all offered theatrica l conventions whereby the dying could present themselves as interpretively accessible to the living. For reasons that will be clear as we proceed, the theatrica l convention s of the Renaissanc e art of dying must be adduced to Milton's interpretivel y vexed play if we are to appreciate the historicit y of Samson Agonistes' representation of both dying and the hermeneutics of dying. First, though, this chapter begins with the faith and skepticism that cohabit in the Renaissance theater of death and its utterly displayed, yet utterly inscrutable, subject. This epistemological tension ca n explain no t onl y Milton's dramati c treatmen t of seventeenth-century history, but als o the central debate shaping Samson Agonistes' more recen t and stil l unfolding critical history. To a degree unmatched b y any other Renaissanc e play, the critica l history of Samson Agonistes is preoccupied with interpreting its hero's death. Manoa's crucial question, "How died he?" 3 speaks at some level for every interpretation o f Samson Agonistes. But if Milton achieved this interpretive focus by deliberately designing the play as an art o f dying, it is less clear that hi s text presents what the Choru s calls "self-satisfying solution " (SA, 306). After all , Samson Agonistes proves fata l to those spectators who directly witness the event defined as the play's central interpretive moment. Countless passages, moreover, remind u s of the eye's vulnerability and epistemological limitations : why was the sight To such a tender ball as the ey e confined? So obvious and s o easy to be quenched, And not a s feeling through al l parts diffused , That sh e might look at will through ever y pore? (SA, 93-97)

Samsons Death by Theater an d Milton's Art o f Dying 14 1

If th e pla y reminds u s o f the interpreter' s liabilit y t o aporia , moreover , i t also challenges u s with th e impossibilit y of representin g a subject as inward a s th e human soul : "For inwar d ligh t ala s / Put s fort h n o visua l beam" (SA, 162-63). The solutions that have been offered t o such challenges define the two broad interpretive categories of much o f the play' s criticism: one, that Samson Agonistes represents more than meets the eye; the other, that in Milton's play what we see is what we get. The former assumption underlies the more traditional regenerationist and typological readings of Samson Agonistes, which invoke the protagonist's deep ening insight an d th e play' s biblio-historical foresight , respectively, as heuristic guides to dramatic structure and imagery. The latter informs more recen t skeptical or revisionist readings of Samson Agonistes, which assert the total unreliability of al l its characterologica l perspectives; the causa l indeterminacy tha t render s Samson's words, actions, and "rousing motions" (SA, 1382) radically inscrutable; and the essential ambiguity of all things visible in a play that converts all interpretation into groundless speculation, a play that leaves us feeling as though we have watched Hamlet in the dark. The former allow s us confidently to read Samson' s death a s a proto-martyr's definitiv e act; the latte r accept s our inabilit y eve r to pronounce with confidenc e on this performance. Illuminating as the exchange between these scholarly semichoruses continues to be, it also tends to prescribe and limit the terms of our discussio n of Samson Agonistes, often elidin g the prior question of Milton's purpose in simultaneously inviting us to interpret a n act of dying, and presenting us with an apparent "ab sence o f . .. intelligibilit y t h a t . .. disables us at what is supposed t o be its climactic moment."4 Thus Barbara Kiefer Lewalski calls for our card s upfront: "anyone who would join—or rejoin—thi s critical debate at this juncture should declar e his o r he r assumption s a t the outset." 5 Befor e joinin g "this critica l debate, " we should ask how and why Milton might have produced it. Both the regenerationist and skeptical analyses of the events culminating in Samson's death represent symptoms of an undiagnosed crisis—the crisi s of soteriology that makes the "interpretation" of his death such an imperative . This diagnosis involves two steps: first, to contextualize Milton's play within a set of literary conventions and cultural practices specifically devoted to the representation and evaluation of death in the Renaissance. In the diverse ars moriendi literature o f the sixteent h an d seventeent h centuries , we find the roles of dying actors and livin g spectators, the rule s for the theater of death, most clearl y and self-consciously defined ; and i t i s with referenc e t o som e specifi c cases of th e Protestant ar t of dying that we can provide some overlooked generi c context, perhaps even some intertextual coordinates, for Samson Agonistes.6 One consequenc e of this alignment will be a clarification of several conventions by which the play invites a regenerationist reading . Second, however, the increase d scrutiny, even satire, to which the ar s moriendi conventions were subjected in the late English Renaissance can help to explain the ambiguity with which these conventions appear


in Milton's text . The skeptical response to Samson Agonistes need not b e a postmodern phenomenon; rather, it should be historicized with reference to the representational an d interpretiv e problems posed b y the Renaissanc e ars moriendi— and posed by Milton himself in his skeptical response to that royal art o f dying, Eikon Basilike. But first we must recogniz e the way s in which Samson Agonistes asks to be read as an art of dying, for it is only by recognizing those conventions the play ultimately complicates that we can coordinate our entrenched regenerationistskeptical debate with Milton's history. "To VISITANT S A GAZE" : READING SAMSON CONVENTIONALLY In his famous complaint tha t Milton' s play "must b e allowed to want a middle, since nothing passes between the first act and the last, that either hastens or delays the death of Samson," 7 Dr . Johnson provided regenerationis t readers of Samson Agonistes with a point of contention and skeptics with a point d'appui. Th e play's lack of a middle has thus become an inherited crux, and "the deat h of Samson " continues to strike many as an apparent non sequitu r or mystery of motivation. When th e pla y is read against the ar s moriendi conventions i t seems crafted t o evoke, however, Johnson's Aristotelian objection proves an analytical red herring. For the arts of dying familiar to the Renaissance reader were concerned from th e first with ending, almost exclusively beginning in extremis. Limited in scope to "the fifth act" of a central figure's life—beyond which (t o quote Milton's remark s on tragedy that preface the play) "the whole drama" was "not produced"—th e art of dying's mimetic emphasis on "the passion s well imitated"8 designate d the busy deathbed a s th e focu s o f activit y an d interpretiv e attention , represente d th e dying man a s the observe d o f all observers, and define d thos e attending him as participants in a Visitatio infirmi. 99I n such works, the causalit y Johnson considers dramatically essential might appl y to the dyin g man's final choices and hi s corresponding spiritual conversion, or to the life—preceding the represented action—that necessitate s an d inform s his repentance. But death itself , in the ars moriendi (a s in a morality play such a s Everyman, similarly liable to Johnson' s complaint),10 was less an effect than an imminence or dramatic donnee; the object of the dying man's choice was not lif e or death, but how to die well; the plot consisted of choosing this good death, the denouement of its achievement and verifi cation by spectators. From thi s generi c point o f view , in fact , Stanle y Fish' s startlin g clai m tha t Samson's death is "the bes t of all possible things, the thing everyone in the play most desires" 11 prove s an astut e an d suggestiv e observation: Milton' s dram a is indeed a mortality play, a play that requires Samson's death as it seeks to ascribe to him a narratable life. For the characters who attempt to witness his dying and


provide this narrative, interpretation takes a peculiar form of anatomy; the Danites seem to desire "no more of body than shows soul." Such observations must be referred t o the ar s moriendi tradition, however, if they are to distinguish between the remarkably idiosyncratic and the conventional. Before dwelling upon what seems strange to us in Milton's play, we should consider what would have been familiar fo r his contemporary audience . The seventeenth-centur y reade r of Samson Agonistes might hav e recognized several resemblances to the earliest xylographic arts of dying—pre-Reformation works that remained extant i n Protestant England . Indeed "the dyin g one," one of severa l possible Renaissance readings o f Samson's epithet , suggests Mortens, the participia l nam e ascribe d t o th e protagonis t o f the first ars moriendi block books and tracts. 12 And though the image of a man attacked by a series of temptations and comforted by a series of inspirations is a literary device as old as the book o f Job , i t wa s th e ar s moriendi that locate d thi s ago n specificall y a t th e deathbed—in a few instances representing even the dying man's wife as an instrument of temptation.13 The recumbent figure of Samson—"afflicted" by Harapha and Dalila , and administere d "Counsel o r consolation " (183 ) by the Danites — vaguely conjures the stage picture of Moriens, lying below a diabolic and angelic contest fo r his soul. But the externalized psychomachia o f the late medieval arts of dying is hardly the most apposite mode l for Milton's interior drama . A closer analogue appears in those Protestant artes moriendi responsive to the Reformation's critique of such ceremonial dying. Despite the fact that this critique, as David W. Atkinson has observed,14 sought to deemphasize the ritualized hora mortis a s determinate o f a man' s spiritua l status , i t nevertheles s developed — under the influence of Calvinism—its own set of formalized criteria for judging the election or reprobation of a dying man. Samson, whose fear and fat e is to lie "to visitants a gaze" (567), becomes the object of an interpretive scrutiny remarkably similar t o that directed towar d "th e morpholog y o f conversion" 15 i n suc h post-Reformation works. We can understand the interpretive frenzy surrounding Samson's body as it approaches the "double darkness " (593) of death, in fact , as an exercise in the hermeneutics of election—which becomes all the mor e clear when we compare Samson Agonistes with th e mos t popular ar t o f dying in th e English Renaissance. Thomas Becon's The Sick Man's Salve (1561) 16—a Calvinist closet drama concerned, like Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563) , with teaching Protestants ho w to interpret the semiotics of election at the moment of death—reveals some of the strongest affinitie s betwee n Samson Agonistes an d th e ar s moriendi tradition . Becon's dramati c treatis e begins with a group o f Puritan burghers (Philemon, Eusebius, Theophile , an d Christopher ) preparin g t o visi t a biblicall y name d Moriens (Epaphroditus).17 Like Samson, Epaphroditus initially laments his condition i n a foregrounded complaint whil e his approaching visitants discus s his


case among themselves in a parodos. Concludin g his soliloquy with a catalogue of physical ailment s that includes his wasted strength and failing eyesight, Epaphroditus asks, "What other thing am I than a dead corpse breathing?" (Salve, 94). Near the end of his own Jobean soliloquy, Samson declares himself "a living death," a self-sepulchred "moving grave" awaiting only the "privilege of death and burial" (SA, wo , 102,104) . (Indeed, the submerge d literalis m o f this self-identificatio n may lend specia l point to Harapha's insul t that th e "assassinated" Samso n "ha s need much washing to be touched" [1107], since such ablution—as Manoa later makes clear [1725-28]—i s best performe d with the bod y stil l warm). 18 A brief bout o f aphasia grips both Epaphroditu s an d Samso n when the y are joined by their visitants.19 The prostrate figure of Epaphroditus, who "cannot hold up [his] head for weakness" (Salve, 94) , resembles Samson lying "at random," "with lan guished head unpropped" (SA , 119). Epaphroditus complains tha t "the sorrow s of death have compassed me round" (Salve, 159), while Samson enjoins his friend s to se e "how many evils have enclosed me round" (SA, 194). And both sprawled spectacles elicit elegiac commonplaces fro m startle d witnesses who have known these men in better times: "What a sudden change is this!... O what a change is this, yea, and that within two days," declares Philemon as he beholds his "neighbor's agony" (Salve, 94-95) ; "O change beyond report, thought, or belief!" (SA, 117) crie s th e Choru s o f Samson' s "friend s an d neighbours " ove r hi s dejecte d body—a prologu e t o Manoa' s "O miserable change ! is this th e ma n . . .?"(SA , 340). Becon's comforters conceive Epaphroditus's cas e as a predictive reflection of their own: "For in you, as in a clear mirror, we behold ourselves , and se e what shall become o f u s hereafter " (Salve, 185) . Milton's Choru s similarl y describes Samson as a "mirror of our fickle state" (SA, 164). Of course such rhetoric and imagery are as ubiquitous as the ubi sunt? and de casibus traditions from whic h both authors draw; and the Danites' lamentation at the most obvious level bewails Samson's fall from national heroism into blindness and servile captivity, not his approaching death. But like Epaphroditus, who feels withi n himsel f "presen t token s o f death " as his "body grow s weaker an d weaker" (Salve, 185) , Samson's physical suffering portend s a literal death well before he makes his end in the Philistine theater: So much I feel my genial spirits droop , My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In all her function s weary of herself; My race of glory run, and rac e of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest. (SA, 594-98) As Adam and Ev e are forced, at the Expulsion , to determine "where to choose / Their place of rest" (PI , 12.646-47) , Samson' s entir e drama move s him towar d the choice of a final resting place. Where to die and how—tha t i s the question.

Samsons Death by Theater and Milton's Art o f Dying 14 5

Where and how can Samson "quit himself like Samson" and heroically finish "A life heroic" (SA, 1709-11)—constructing th e tautologies necessary for a coherent subject of death? "Bed-rid" and "unemployed" at his earthly father's house (579 80); folded within th e annihilatin g "leisure and domesti c ease " of Dalila's "widowed bed" (917,806) ; or "dispense[d] with" by God "for some important" though undisclosed "cause" (1377,1379)? Such paralyzing uncertainties and their attendant doubt an d despai r constitut e th e centra l passion that Johnso n mistoo k fo r the omitted middle action of Samson Agonistes. Later in this essay I consider Samson's final response to this passion—his "resolution" t o "go along" with the Office r t o the Dagonalia (1410,1384)—as consonant with the one "great act" (1389) require d of the subject o f the ars moriendi. But first we must recognize that this passional aspect of Samson's agony designates him a s a Moriens, a dying man, and thus a spectacular object of intense interpretive interest to the Renaissance reader. Further reference to Becon's work reveals the roles played by spectators in the Puritan art of dying—conventional roles approximated by those who attend and scrutinize Samson's drama . For both Epaphroditus an d Samson, physical suffering signal s a more funda mental and "more intense" crisis of conscience that their visitants attempt t o address. Philemon invokes the "God of all consolation" as Epaphroditus's "grievously vexed, troubled, and disquieted conscience" creates "a very hell within [his] breast" (Salve, 156) ; reminding him o f the divinel y proffered "salv e against this plague " (Salve, 106), Philemon counsels a "quiet conscience" for Epaphroditus's deliverance "out o f this agony " (Salve, 160) . Like Milton's Satan—whos e conscienc e muc h more literall y an d irredeemabl y locate s "Hell withi n him " throug h "th e bitte r memory / Of what he was, what is" (PL, 4.20, 24-25)—Samson's malad y moves inward a s he contemplates "what onc e I was, and what am now" (SA , 22): O that torment shoul d no t be confined To the body's wounds and sores.. . But must secret passage fin d To the inmost mind , There exercise all his fierce accidents, And on her purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints, and limbs , With answerable pains, but more intense , Though void of corporal sense .. . Thoughts my tormentors arme d with deadly stings Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts . (SA, 606-7, 610—16, 623-24 ) With characteristi c incrementality, the Choru s proposes t o comfort Samso n by finding the same "secret passage" gained by his torment :


We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown .. . To visit or bewail thee, or if better, Counsel or consolation w e may bring, Salve to thy sores, apt words have power to 'suage The tumours o f a troubled mind , And are as balm to festered wounds . (SA, 180,182—86) Applying the medicina l metapho r o f Becon's treatise (an d o f its many obviou s imitations, such as William Perkins's Th e Salve for a Sicke Man [1595]) , the Danite s seek to minister no t to a body, finally, but t o a mind. For Epaphroditus and Samson, consolation take s the form o f a narrative reconciliation o f past an d present—two state s separated b y a disjunctive "change" (seemingly "beyond report, thought, or belief") that threatens to throw their lives into unintelligibility. Of course in theory those branches of Protestantism mos t opposed t o mediation urge d that the patient, in such cases, minister t o himself. But in practice the Purita n way of death (an d Calvinis t soteriology ) demande d public intelligibility, if not o f an "unsearchable" God, then at least of His ways to dying members of the "solemnly elected " (SA, 1746,678). However dubious doc trine rendered assurance, however private and inscrutable the terms of salvation were conceived , bot h th e "interna l peace " of th e dyin g ma n an d th e "cal m o f mind" (SA, 1344,1758) of those attending his death depende d upo n representing the spiritua l conditio n o f God's secretar y as an open secret. 20 Thus the Puritan "salve" tha t replace s Catholic extrem e unctio n operate s no t a s a salvifi c agent , but a s an interpretive solvent. Thus healing takes the form o f revealing; consolation become s a mode o f spectatorship, a surrogate performanc e fo r the divin e witness who observes the formal logic and generic expectation o f the Puritan ars moriendi: "Of a good life cometh a good end" (Salve, 99). Thus the spectator becomes an interpreter of the past lif e o f the dying man, an analyst of his present state of mind, and a judge of the signs accompanying hi s death—asking eschatological version s o f the questio n s o crucial to, and pu t s o bluntly by , Manoa: "How die d he? death to lif e i s crown o r shame" (SA, 1579). Camille Wells Slights has extensively and persuasively demonstrated tha t "in subject matter , structure, and language, " the dynamic between Samso n an d his visitants "strongly resembles the prose cases of conscience in which English clergymen analyzed the workings of the Christian conscience"; and though he r reading of Samson Agonistes does not conside r th e ars moriendi tradition, she suggestively illustrates the influence, on Milton's play, of Protestant casuistical authors who also contributed importantl y to this tradition i n England.21 In fact a work like Becon's reveals the special pertinence of the ars moriendi to Samson's case and can provide a partial solutio n t o th e proble m Slight s encounters i n trying to contextualiz e Samson Agonistes within a casuistical tradition less directly concerned wit h dying.


Much of The Sick Man's Salve falls within the casuistical program Slights identifies i n Milton's play—th e program o f rehearsing the past action s an d presen t situation of a troubled ma n in an effort t o detect a comforting and unifying pattern, vindicating evidence for his case of conscience. Philemon an d his cohorts, for instance, discover "sure tokens" and "manifest arguments" for Epaphroditus's godliness by recounting his faithful participatio n a s a churchman. Excusing his lack of good works, however, they "certify" his conscience by finding in his biography "evident testimony" of his election (Salve, 172,185); and they alleviate his concern tha t h e has "many time s grievousl y offended th e Lord ... an d broke n his hol y commandments " b y judging that "thi s i s no le t unt o you r salvation " (Salve, 168) . In Slight' s analysis, the Choru s an d Mano a participate in a similar process as they "tell and retel l their versions of Samson's marriages, his exploits as a champio n o f Israel , and hi s bondage," helpin g th e Nazarit e negotiate th e strictures of "legal debt" (SA , 313) and th e contingencie s o f his ow n case. 22 The Chorus's exculpatory pronouncement o n Samson's conduct with the Philistines, "Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee witness" (SA, 239), thus begins an exegetical narrative that concludes with the announcement that God "to his faithful cham pion hath in place / Bore witness gloriously" (SA, 1751-72). But Slights concedes that the evidentiary, indeed legalistic method of the traditional case of conscience does not adequatel y explain th e ambiguit y o f Samson's "rousing motions " (the skeptics'trump): Traditionally [i n prose case s of conscience] , the movemen t fro m genera l law to particula r actio n proceede d b y logical demonstration. In Milton's poetic drama, the transition i s more complex, since the resolution of particular cases of conscience combines with the psychological recovery of the conscience, processe s the casuist s trea t separately . After all of Samson' s vocal debate s an d self-analysis , silence envelopes th e crucia l moment s o f his last decisions. He enunciates the concep t of freedom from th e letter of the law before h e decides to accompany the officer , bu t th e actual process of applying the concep t t o his own situation defie s analysis . The "rousing motions" signal his breakthrough, but th e respectiv e role s o f reason an d divine grace remain mysterious. 23 Though this passage appears in an essay that contributes strongl y to the regenerationist reading of the play, its implications diffe r onl y in degree from Fish' s willful suspension of belief: "there i s no way to be confident those motions correspon d to some communication tha t is occurring between [Samson ] and God." 24 While it is questionable whether the "confidence" Fish problematizes (by finding Samson's "rousing motions" indeterminate) can ever be fully enjoyed by a spectator, the ar s moriendi offered conventions—wit h whic h I supplement Slights' s reading—for witnessing such ambiguous movements with faith .


An irony of many Protestant arts of dying is that, like many casuistical works, they seek to provide general rules while at the same time recognizing their potential inapplicability to specific cases. In one of its more reflective moments, Milton's Chorus similarly questions no t onl y the utilit y of its own "apt words, " but als o the efficac y o f the literary tradition that include d th e ars moriendi: Many are the sayings of the wise In ancient and in modern books enroled; Extolling patience as the truest fortitude; And to the bearing well of all calamities, All chances incident to man' s frail lif e Consolatories writ With studied argument, and much persuasion sought Lenient of grief and anxiou s thought, But with the afflicted i n his pangs their sound Little prevails, or rather seems a tune, Harsh, and of dissonant mood fro m hi s complaint.. . (652-62) These line s introduc e a chora l meditatio n uncharacteristi c fo r it s theologica l doubt, and for its sympathy with Samson's suffering; and its singularity may also be fel t a s a gentl e anachronis m (on e wonder s wha t "ancient " an d "moder n books" the Danites might consul t i n the dust an d heat of the Old Testament).25 But the Chorus's historical perspective would certainly have been familiar to the Renaissance student of humanist consolatio n literature , for whom classical models were frequently assimilated wit h modern. 26 Moreover , the Chorus' s shifte d psychological perspective—from rigorist, formulai c comfort to a less restrained expression o f share d grief—parallels a movement G . W. Pigman has trace d i n the elegies and consolatorie s o f the Englis h Renaissance.27 Indeed, the Chorus' s surprising critique of proverbial consolation in this passage might have struck the seventeenth-century student of the ars moriendi as entirely contemporary: in his "modern " Rule and Exercises o f Holy Dying (1651) , Jeremy Taylor observed that "men that are in health are severe exactors of patience at the hands of them that ar e sicke, and the y usually judge it not b y terms o f relation, between God and the sufferin g man ; but between him an d the friend s that stand by the bedside." Noting the dissonance often produced by too much "studied argument " in such cases, Taylor counsels against burdening a dying man's last hour with "knotty discourses of philosophy," recognizing with sympathy that, in extremis, "a Syllogisme makes our hea d ake." 28 But Taylor's insight here is theological and epistemologica l as well: he realizes that the dying man moves beyond the register and "relation" of human intercession, beyond th e probativ e logic of casuistry, beyond th e realm of empiricism.

Samson's Death by Theater and Milton's Art o f Dying 14 9

Samsons Choru s similarly delimits its own effectiv e an d cognitiv e threshold by declaring the afflicte d ma n remediles s unless he experience a comfort necessarily inaccessible to spectators , Unless he feel within Some source of consolation fro m above ; Secret refreshings... (SA, 663-65 ) In a passage with obviou s relevanc e t o Milton' s play , Becon's work also reveals the limits of its own consolatory and interpretive program. Responding to a long homiletic performanc e b y Philemon , Epaphroditu s relate s th e passag e o f a n event unwitnesse d by any other characte r i n the close t drama , a n even t whos e cause and significance the dying man onl y intimates: In the time of this your godly communication ha d with me, (the Lord my God be thanked for it!) I felt the heaviness, trouble, and disquietness of my conscience by little an d littl e g o away, and certai n swee t motion s o f true and inwar d joy to arise in my heart. (Salve, 161 )

It is after a long and fa r from clearl y resolved casuistical debate over the Mosai c law and individual action, an exchange concluded with the Chorus protesting its diagnostic and prognostic incapacity ("Ho w thou wilt here come off surmounts my reach" [SA, 1380]), that the object of interpretive comfort becomes the interpreting comforter in Samson Agonistes: Be of good courage , I begin to fee l Some rousing motions i n me which dispos e To something extraordinary m y thoughts. (SA, 1381-83) Like Epaphroditus' s "certai n swee t motions, " Samson' s "rousin g motions " ar e not a product o r discover y of the huma n dialogue , the tria l of interpretation , that the y interrupt; 29 nor ar e they an effec t o f the conscienc e or consciousnes s (the "thoughts" ) the y influence . Tangibl e onl y t o th e sic k me n fo r who m s o much analytica l salv e is spilt, they inhabit th e interpretiv e blind spo t of the ars moriendi, the private relation "between Go d and the suffering man. " For a genre devoted t o th e "resolution" 30 o f such uncertaintie s through dis cursive performanc e an d revelator y spectacle , a conduc t literatur e concerne d with literall y going throug h th e motion s o f death, this invisibilit y may indee d seem to threaten impasse ; and one may hear the frustration o f Milton's Choru s (and not a few Miltonists) i n George Herbert's complain t o f his library's refer -


ential inadequacy at a similar moment: "No w I am here, what thou wilt do with me / None of my books will show."31 Th e period between Samson' s "resolution " to depart (SA , 1390,1410) and th e Hebrew messenger's repor t o f his death (SA, 1570)—the period durin g which the spectacle of collective interpretation move s completely beyond their eyewitness—does dislocate the Chorus and Manoa fro m their prescribe d literar y roles: the uncharacteristi c speculations ascribe d t o th e Danites in the omissa (SA, 1527-35,1537), and the effects o f this decontextualized passage itself,32 may reflect a disjointed narrativ e framework unable to assimilate the "noise" (SA, 1508) issued from th e theater. But with the messenger's accoun t of th e "horri d spectacle " (SA , 1542) that i s Samson's fina l act , th e Choru s an d Manoa regain both their interpretive "courage" and their purchase on the conventions of the ars moriendi. Indeed, they enter a mode of interpretation with which works suc h as Becon's stopped th e ga p created by the dyin g man's inaccessible inwardness: glossing the theatrical gestures of death in an effort a t psychological and forma l closure , an effort t o comfort not th e departed, but th e surviving interpretive community. The relation between the removed, news-starved Hebrews and their eye-witnessing messenger suggestively resembles that which William Halle r has demonstrated between the autho r of Acts and Monuments an d hi s historical sources: like Foxe, the Hebrews seek to translate a primary account into "a coherent narrative with a single sustained point of view," to integrate an independent documen t into a pre-existing literary form. 33 Manoa' s plan s t o "fetch " his son's mangle d body home fo r burial, in fact, may suggest in their evocatio n o f the martyrolo gist's famous title a desire to appropriate Samso n generically: there will I build hi m A monument, an d plant i t round wit h shade Of laurel ever green, and branching palm , With all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled In copious legend .. . (SA, 1733-37, my emphasis) The Chorus's concluding declaration similarly attempts to entomb the remnants of histor y within a monumental teleology , to subordinat e tragi c actio n t o th e providential rubri c of the art of dying ('all's well that end s well'): All is best, though w e oft doubt, What th e unsearchable dispos e Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found i n the close .. . His servants he with new acquist Of true experience from thi s great event


With peace and consolation hat h dismissed , And calm of mind al l passion spent. (SA, 1745- 48,1755-58) This closure may indeed seem to strain against the messenger's relatively objective report, which describe s with "particular an d distinct " detai l th e visual scene in the theater but leave s unglossed the import o f Samson's meditation (SA, 1635-37) and th e significanc e of his last words (1640-45) . Only on the topic of Samson's doubtful deat h does the messenger contribute a n evaluative note (1657), joining the play' s Argument (79 ) and th e Chorus' s judgmen t (1664-68 ) i n deemin g it accidental.34 Otherwise , however, ambiguous gestures ("hi s arm s o n thos e two massy pillars," "with hea d a while inclined / And eyes fast fixed he stood, as one who prayed") ar e left t o speak for themselves, and to be spoken for by remove d exegetes who try to stabilize the messenger's simile. Such gesture s are o f course a staple i n Foxe' s retrospectiv e analysis, 35 which encloses the various dramas of history within the parentheses of Protestant England. But simple gesture s also figure crucially in th e ar s moriendi, marking th e moment whe n th e dying man i s converted entirel y into a textual bod y and in scribed with imputed meaning, when the impulse to see and open up to show is replaced by a desire to clos e off and bury . In Th e Sick Man's Salve —a book first published by the future publisher of Acts and Monuments, a book whose author would become a character in Foxe's work36—the mer e report of Epaphroditus' s last vague act ( a raised hand ) provide s al l the "outwar d sig n an d token " of his "faith an d godl y departure" (SA, 189) require d by Philemon. If, after th e mes senger's account, Manoa makes an interpretive leap by declaring that "nothing is here for tears" since Samson died "with God not parted fro m him, as was feared" (SA, 1721,1719), it is a leap familiar in such earlier texts. If, as Fish claims, the firs t untenably regenerationist reading of the play is that of Manoa and the Chorus — whose obituary consolidation and "peace and consolation" are constructed upo n unsatisfactory evidence 37—Philemon's concludin g provision "for the comely furniture of the burial," and his thanksgiving for the "everlasting consolation" with which he and hi s friends depar t (Salve, 191), seem similarly suspect. Both closet dramas involve epistemological categories—the search for "ocular proof" and "auricular assurance" 38—much debate d i n Renaissance law, theater, and theology; but neithe r proves that a play (even one "never intended" for "the stage") is the thing for catching consciences or certifying godliness . Neither offer s any revelation unsusceptible to the skepticism Manoa terms "fear." The preceding juxtapositions hav e shown onl y that Milton' s character s operate withi n literar y conventions inherite d from the Protestant ars moriendi, conventions thus far unnoticed in criticism of the play. We must still ask, however, what these conventions might have meant t o th e seventeenth-centur y author o f Samson Agonistes, and


why Milton migh t foste r doub t i n hi s audienc e whereas Becon clearly expects unironic communicatio n betwee n author, speaker (Philemo n i s both hi s pseudonym an d chief raisonneur), and reader . "SOME GREA T ACT" : READIN G SAMSON SKEPTICALL Y If Samson's epithet suggests "dying man," it also suggests "actor";39 and indeed it was the conceptio n o f the dyin g man a s actor tha t both pervade d th e Renais sance art of dying and exposed it to antitheatrical criticism. As Richard Macksey has observed, th e ars moriendi problematizes the authenticity o f dying by codifying i t as an iterable art tha t blur s the historicit y o f a dying man's last actions and utterances by conferring upon them a transhistorical and "transtextual" status.40 Eve n th e famou s lines ascribed t o Juliu s Caesar b y Shakespeare, though they idealize an unrehearsed death, fall within the tradition of the Stoic contemplatio mortis—thereby preparing the Renaissance audience for his imminent assassination:41 Cowards die many times before their deaths ; The valiant never taste of death but once . To Caesar's shar p distinctio n betwee n a cowardl y anticipation o f deat h an d a valiant, definitive encounter wit h it, however, the Renaissance responded wit h a self-conscious confusion of life and death, which made explicit the latent tension (between agenc y and subjectedness , disingenuousness and authenticity ) i n th e phrase "art o f dying. " We see this confusio n i n th e Samson-lik e "living death " and "moving grave" of John Donne's final portrait, commissioned by a living poet proleptically wrappe d i n hi s windin g sheet , "graving al l his life. " We hear thi s confusion mos t clearl y in Henry Vaughan's apparent rejoinde r to Caesar, which defined holy dying as rehearsed, even pre-hearsed : But the good ma n lies Entombed man y days before he dies.42 Donne's self-presentation, of course, had precedents not only in the death-in-life trope of Renaissance anamorphic painting, but also in late medieval tomb sculpture, which frequentl y juxtaposed living and dea d figures, producing the visual effect o f a moving grave;43 similarly, Vaughan's devotionalism echoes familiar memento mori and contemptus mundi themes. But a distinctive aspect of the Renaissance art o f dying was its conflation with th e obligation s o f the living, 44 a conflation suggeste d b y Adam's growin g recognitio n o f hi s falle n conditio n a s "a long day's dying" (PL , 10.964), and b y the De Doctrina Christiana's delineatio n of the several degrees of dying that precede physical death. 45 One consequence of the increasingly indiscrete relation between the ars moriendi and the ars vivendi was that dying, like so much else in early modern life, became

Samson's Death by Theater an d Milton's Art o f Dying 15 3

a dramatically scripte d affair—predicate d upon earlie r textual performances. It was upon the idea of a transhistorical and intertextual "register, with commentary, of divers e deaths" tha t Montaign e edifie d "the hous e o f death" ("th e continua l work of our life"). 46 This domicile, the last object of Renaissance self-fashioning, was thus als o a fabri c o f constan t imitatio n an d referentiality— a theate r i n which th e line s o f earlie r author s coul d b e roughl y appropriated , repeatedl y practiced and delivered. Indeed, one reply to the question lef t forcefull y unanswere d by skeptical readings of Samson Agonistes—How does Samson get from his initial decision not t o accompany the Philistine officer t o his sudden and apparently unmotivated resolution to follow him to the temple?47—is that Milton's hero is prompted by such an anthologized script. As I have argued elsewhere, the perplexing progression of Samson's utterances , from " I cannot come" to "I will not come " to "I with thi s messenger will go along" (SA, 1321,1332,1343,1384), in fact echoes the verbal gradations of Shakespeare's Caesar in his response to a remarkably similar dramatic situation.48 Such resemblances, however, can amplify skepticism: the attributio n of Samson's final decision to "some importan t cause, " for instance, appears even less determinate when compared with Caesar's simple explanation for his actions, "The caus e is in my will" (2.2.71); and while the regenerationist reader might ob serve in this contrast evidence of Samson's kenosis, it must be admitted tha t this process by definition (and particularly in Samson's case ) is difficult t o ascribe to a speech-act. Such subtle and relativel y minor lexica l correspondences ca n alert us to the evaluative difficulties pose d by the establishment of a kind of curriculum mortis i n th e Renaissance . We need no t appl y th e tota l skepticis m o f Patricia Parker—who find s Hamlet' s "There' s a divinit y tha t shape s ou r ends " speec h merely "a source of metaphors fo r dramati c structure , detached fro m belie f o r homiletic piety" 49—to acknowledg e th e elusiv e nature o f allusio n a t suc h mo ments. How does one assess a verbal performance in which the constitution an d revelation o f selfhood consist s o f convention, i n which claims of theological in sight ar e phrased i n the conned quotation s o f an actor preparing institutionall y for th e "great act" of death? Caesar, after all , can be played by anybody, as Polonius (who accounts himself "a good actor") suggests in his own prologue to death. For Ben Jonson—arguably the English playwright most sympathetic to antitheatrical skepticism—the respons e t o the potentia l hypokrisis o f the ar t o f dying, like his more general response to the pervasive histrionics of his culture, seems to have been satire. Volpone, for instance, can be read as a generic farce of the ars moriendi tradition, exposing in its vulpine title character and his central prop (a faux deathbed ) th e easil y abused nexu s between dyin g and acting . Much mor e specifically, Eastward Hoe's Quicksilve r serves as a foca l poin t fo r th e skeptica l reevaluation of two texts we have already associated with Samson Agonistes. But first this protean player—who delights in nothing more than "revel[ing] it in his prodigal similitude" 50—explicitly transform s the Samson story itself into a model


of theatrical dissembling by investing himself, in an elaborate costuming scene , with the role of a reprobate Machiavellian hero: I now am free ; an d no w will justify My trunks and punks: Avaunt dull flat-cap then , Via, th e curtain that shadowed Borgia; There lie thou hus k of my envassaled state. I Samson now, have burst the Philistines' bands, And in thy lap my lovely Dalila, I lie and snor e out m y enfranchised state. (Eastward Hoe, 2.2.32-38) Even for Quicksilver, this self-identification ma y seem bizarre. And yet his caricature of Samson as both riddling actor and uxorious sybarite merely burlesques the biographical ambiguity—th e motivationa l opacit y and dubiou s "marriage choices"—that puzzle s Milton's Danites as they attempt to believe that what Samson earlier "motioned" was "of God" (SA, 222). Quicksilver's parody sanctions a reading of the Samson story that Milton's character s are at pains to dismiss, the skeptical reading of Samson as an agonist (or actor) in a drama neither divine nor heroic.51 In his implausible fifth-act conversion , moreover, Quicksilver demon strates how easily regeneration ca n be conne d b y such an acto r if versed in th e appropriate script s and prepared to go through the right motions . As related by a single "eye-witness," Quicksilve r (no w resembling Samson in his imprisoned, barbered state) proves a gifted student of Protestant dying, practiced in the art o f mimetic conversion : I never heard his like! He has cut his hair too. H e is so well given, and ha s such good gifts! He can tell you, almost all the stories of the Book o f Martyrs, and spea k you all the Sick Man's Salve without book. (Eastward Hoe, 5.2.55-58) Though Quicksilve r (unlik e Volpone) i s not explicitl y reveale d a s an absolut e fraud a t the end of his play, and though it s collaborative authorship complicate s the interpretation o f Eastward Hoe, 52 a skeptical reading of this passage is certainly warranted b y Jonson's treatment—elsewher e in hi s drama—of th e feigne d re pentance of a theatrical pseudo-martyr. I n Epicoene, for example, Lady Haughty proposes remedyin g Morose's malady with the textbooks that reformed Trusty's parents, provoking a Jonsonian riposte from Truewit: HAUGHTY: An d on e o f 'hem, I know no t which , was cured with the Sick Man's Salve, and th e othe r with Greene' s Groats-worth o f Wit. TRUEWIT: A very cheap cure, madam. (Epicoene, 4.2.171-74 )


That th e deathbe d performanc e of one o f Jonson's dramaturgica l predecessor s should here be treated as interchangeable with the belittled Sick Man's Salve, that a character like Quicksilver can nimbly shift fro m playing a debauched Samso n to reciting the culturally dog-eared scripts of Becon and Foxe, suggests the skepticism with which such a legacy might be received. In Jonson's drama, the Renaissance house of death is shown to be a tiring house of "prodigal similitude"; what Freud described a s the huma n capacity to confron t dying with "th e pluralit y of lives which we need"53 is exposed a s role playing, the rote performance of precedent parts. After Jonson , one find s fe w critiques of the Renaissance' s theatricalization of dying that isolat e individual ars moriendi texts s o specifically (thoug h Acts and Monuments receive s skeptical glances from severa l sides, including Milton's). 54 But Jonson' s parodi c invocatio n o f th e method s an d authoritie s o f th e ar t o f dying adumbrates a strategy Milton would put t o polemic effec t late r in the seventeenth century. In what David Loewenstein has described as an "antitheatrical " response to Charles's self-fashioned martyrdo m i n Eikon Basilike,55 Milton's Eikonoklastes represents the king as a kind of Quicksilver—stage-managing the fifth act of his life with the same hypocrisy that characterize d his reign. While readers tend to agree on the general deconstructive tactic s of this response, however, the relatio n betwee n Eikonoklastes an d th e iconi c an d theatrica l tendencie s i n Milton's subsequent ar t ha s received less critical consensus. For Ernest Gilman, the tensio n tha t emerge d in th e 1640 s betwee n Milton' s iconoclasti c lef t han d and poetic right was fully resolved by the composition o f Samson Agonistes—"a 'blind' tragedy that culminate s in the destructio n of a theater." 56 For Richar d Helgerson, Milton's explosion o f Charles's auto-iconography cleared the way for the poet's surreptitious appropriation of the king's self-presentational method. 57 And yet the conceptio n o f Samson as a complete theatroclast—thoug h em ployed by antitheatrical writers such as William Prynne 58—does not respond to the theatricalit y of Milton's Samson , which Mary Ann Radzinowic z and Laura Lunger Knoppers have connected with the spectacular representation o f Foxean martyrology.59 While Helgerson's intriguing thesis accounts for this theatricality, moreover, it does not allo w for the possibilit y tha t i n Samson Agonistes Milto n continued th e skeptical program begun i n Eikonoklastes—that the play subjects to scrutiny (even as it dramatizes) the very process by which Charles fashioned himself into a martyr. The appeal of this possibility lies not onl y in the startling representational similarities between Charles's and Samson's agonies, but als o in the fac t tha t Milton' s pla y calls into doub t th e sam e theatrics of dying that hi s tract interrogate s systematically . Recognizing the ar s moriendi convention s i n "The King' s Book," and th e comple x natur e of Milton's respons e t o them , will help us understand the space between Chorus and author in Samson Agonistes as the skeptica l distance require d b y this earlier critical encounter wit h th e ar t of dying. Indeed , b y readin g Charles' s literar y an d iconi c representatio n o f hi s


agony as a "great show of piety" (3:536), Milton concede d the semiotic and spectacular ambiguit y tha t al l dramatization s o f deat h entail—includin g hi s ow n portrayal of Samson's "grea t act. " To read Eikon Basilike through Samson Agonistes is to realize that much of the play's rhetori c an d imager y were preempted b y "The Portraitur e o f His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings." 60 O f course many of the general resemblances between the king's embattled situatio n and that of the betrayed, imprisoned Samso n were analogie s conferre d by history. 61 Bu t th e unsettlin g corre spondence of the two texts can be ascribed no t onl y to Charles's exploitation of the Judges narrativ e for his own storytelling, but als o to Milton's apparent captivation—in hi s depictio n o f Samson—b y th e king' s language. Nowhere i s this captivation mor e apparent than those passages of Eikon Basilike in which Charles explicitly compares himsel f with the Old Testament hero . In th e elevent h chapter , fo r instance , th e kin g justifie s hi s rejectio n o f th e nineteen Parliamentary propositions o f 1642 by invoking the same "conscience" with which Milton's Samso n qualifies his response to the Philistine officer : They cannot as k more than I can give, may I but reserv e to myself the in communicable jewe l of my conscience and not be forced t o part with that whose loss nothing ca n repair or requite.... Ho w can they think I can consent to [th e propositions], who know they are such as are inconsistent with being either a king or a good Christian? My yielding so much as I have already makes some men confiden t I will deny nothing . The love I have of my people's peac e hath, indeed, great influence upo n me; but th e love of truth and inward peace hath more. Should I grant some things they require, I should no t s o much weake n my outward stat e of a king as wound tha t inward quiet of my conscience .. . But t o bin d mysel f to a general and implici t consen t t o whateve r the y shall desir e or propound .. . wer e such a latitude o f blind obedienc e .. . This wer e as if Samson should hav e consented no t onl y t o bind hi s own hands and cut off his hair but to put out his eyes, that the Philistines might with the more safet y mock and abus e him; which they chose rather to do than quit e to destroy him when h e was become s o tame an objec t an d fit occasion for their sport and scorn .. . But they would have me trust to their moderation an d abandon mine own discretion; that so I might verify what representations some have made o f me to the world that I am fitter to be their pupil than thei r prince (Eikon Basilike, 53-54, my emphases) Urged to comply with the Philistine proposition by both the threatening office r and his increasingly timorous "people," Milton's Samson similarly refuses to provide "sport wit h blin d activity " fo r those who hol d hi m "i n thei r civi l power " (1328,1367):


Myself? m y conscience and interna l peace. Can they think me so broken, so debased With corporal servitude, that my mind ever Will condescend to such absurd commands? Although their drudge, to be their fool and jester .. . But who constrains me to the temple of Dagon, Not dragging? the Philistian lords command , Commands ar e no constraints. If I obey them, I do it freely; venturing to displease God fo r the fea r o f man. (SA, 1334-38,1370-74) Like the Miltoni c Samson , of course, the Samsonia n Charle s i s in n o politica l position t o maintain thi s defian t posture . Indeed , Eikon Basilike—with its emblematic frontispiece alluding to Christ's agony and contemplatio mortis in Gethsemane—is compose d unde r th e sig n o f hi s imminen t death. 62 Bu t Charles' s strategy in the fac e of this "power resistless" is, like Samson's, to supplant a Dagonalian theater designed to validate his own subjection by rendering him a "scorn and gaze" ("that so I might verify what representations some have made of me") with a theatrical display that wil l confound his captors. 63 An d thus while John Cook, a lawyer for the prosecution, could triumphantly describe Charles's trial and execution as "the most Comprehensive, Impartial and Glorious piece of Justice that eve r was acted an d Execute d upon th e Theatr e of England"64 the king himself took the stage determined t o play another part: Here I am sure to be conqueror i f God will give me such a measure of constancy as to fea r hi m mor e than ma n an d t o love the inwar d peace of my conscience before any outward tranquility. (Eikon Basilike, 38) Like Samson, Charles recognizes the danger of "venturing to displease / God for the fear of man" (SA , 1373-74) durin g his fifth-act performance. For Charles, moreover, th e transformatio n o f Parliament' s carefull y stage-manage d demystification of kingship into the "tragic scaffold" of the Restoration cause involves playing a "royal actor" martyred by regicide65—a part, rehearsed by the conventions of the ars moriendi, that furthe r align s him wit h Milton's Samson . "Meditations upo n Death," the final chapter of the King's Book, claims as its titular occasion Parliament' s vote of nonaddress and Charles's subsequent "closer imprisonment" in Carisbrooke Castle. Like Milton's Samson , Charles represents himself as burdened by an enemy's yoke, bearing "the heavy load of other men's ambitions, fears, jealousies, and crue l passions"; he laments that hi s service has rendered him a moving grave, "only the husk and shell" of life. And like Samson, who describes his evident extinction a s a darkness "amid the blaze of noon, / Ir-


recoverably dark, total eclipse / Without al l hope of day!" (SA, 80-82), he anticipates death a s "an eclips e which oft happenet h a s well in clear as cloudy days" (Eikon Basilike, 172). Charles's second and final explicit self-identification wit h the biblical Samson in Eikon Basilike, moreover, stakes even more deeply such prior claims to Milton's linguistic and representational ground. Fashioning himself as a kind o f Charles Agonistes in the "Meditations upon Death," the king declares himself inspired by that heroic greatness of spirit which becomes a Christian in the patient an d generous sustaining those affliction s whic h as shadows necessarily attend us while we are in this body .. . whos e total absenc e i s best recompensed with the dew of heaven. The assault s o f afflictio n ma y be terribl e lik e Samson' s lion , but the y yield much sweetness to those that dare to encounter and overcome them. (Eikon Basilike, 173, my emphases) Applauding Samson's audaciou s repulse of Harapha, Milton's Chorus similarly proclaims their "afflicted" hero endued "With plain heroic magnitude of mind" (1279), findin g i n hi s "patience" evidence of "some sourc e of consolatio n fro m above; / Secret refreshings" that have restored his strength with "celestial vigour" (1280). Lik e Milton' s Samson , finally, Charles intimate s a privileged "converse with God" that directs him to comply with his captors in the service of an ulterior political and religious end. Preparing to depart for the scaffold "under God's sole custody and disposal," the king comforts his sympathizers by presaging a catastrophe fo r their enemies that will be both apocalyptic and architectural: The punishment o f the more insolent an d obstinate ma y be ... i n such a method o f divine justice as is not ordinary; the earth of the lowest and meanest people opening upon them and swallowing them up in a just disdain of their ill-gotten and worse-used authority, upon whose support and strength they chiefly depended for their building and establishing their designs against me, the church, and state. (Eikon Basilike, 177-78, my emphasis) Milton's Samson encourages his Chorus by hinting at "something extraordinary " to which his rousing motions dispos e his "thoughts"; he observes that God may "dispense with" him "in temples at idolatrous rites / For some important cause" ; and h e appropriates the Philistin e theater as the scene of his own "remarkable" "great act. " Charles encourages his Royalist readers by describing his execution as the work of God's "disposal," its meaning to be revealed in some future political cause; and he appropriates Parliament's ideological theater by pulling down

Samson's Death by Theater and Milton's An o f Dying 15 9

the pillars of the regicides' political support , subvertin g their perspectiva l management with his own spectacular performance. As we have seen, one important function o f the ars moriendi is to consolidat e the interpretive energies released by death, to inscrib e an individual death with unambiguous meaning. By defining his surviving audience (few, however fit) as Manoa and th e Chorus , Samso n enjoy s just such a consolidation by the en d of the play: his prescribed audience expectations—"of me expect to hear / Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy" (SA, 1423-4)—are answere d antiphonally in the final assessments of his "noble" death by Manoa ("no weakness, no contempt, / Dispraise , o r blame , nothin g bu t wel l an d fair " [1722—23] ) an d th e Choru s ("All is best" [1745]). To judge by the carefull y couched words of Andrew Marvell, Charles achieved a similar control over his audience's response, dying (like Samson) with a consummate theatrical gesture of rehearsed significance : He nothing common di d or mean Upon tha t memorabl e scene; But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try. 66 Milton, of course, strenuously objected to both the theatricality of the king's death and the political reaction it seemed calculated to elicit. And yet one may ask how the author of Samson Agonistes—a play published under the political triumph of Charles's ars moriendi—could escap e the skepticis m h e directed so forcefully a t the King's Book. Indeed, by writing a play so implicated in the language and conventions o f Eikon Basilike, Milton seem s t o hav e expose d Samson' s ow n "re markable" "great act" to the same questions with which he prosecuted Charles' s "memorable scene. " If Fish is right, then, i n identifyin g th e Choru s a s the firs t proponents o f th e regenerationis t readin g o f Samson Agonistes, we ca n fin d methodological precedent for his own skeptical reading in Milton's Eikonoklastes. As Fish finds Milton's play riddled with evidentiary gaps and spectacula r indeterminacy, so does Milton find Charles's "stage-work" (Eikonoklastes, 3:530) "doubtfull an d ambiguous " (3:598), full o f "equivocal interpretations" (3:495 ) that destabilize its meaning. As Fish asks us to recogniz e the impossibilit y of interpreting Samson's inward condition by the final outward gestures recounted b y the messenger ("wit h head a while inclined, / And eye s fast fixed he stood, as one wh o prayed" [1636-37]), so does Milton as k us to doubt the "Image and Memory" of Charles reproduced by William Marshall's frontispiece—a portrait that represents the king at prayer, with head incline d and eye s fast fixed on a heavenly crown. 67 For Milton, this portrait was just one of the many emblematic devices by which Charles transforme d "Tyranny into a n Art" (3:344) , an ar t o f self-presentatio n that resembles—i n it s scripte d performanc e o f mimeti c martyrdom—th e ar s moriendi. And a s we shall see, Milton's specifi c criticis m o f the "King's Picture "

160 Guilty

Creatures

merges—in his response to Charles's "Meditations upo n Death"—with a generic criticism of the art of dying, which is the King's Book. But first note how Milton's response to one other tactic of this art, Charles's self-portraiture as Samson, further anticipates the skeptical reading of Samson Agonistes. Throughout his reign, Charles enjoyed considerable analogical association with the biblical Samson as his courtiers, and in at least one instance Milton himself, developed flatterin g homologie s betwee n th e tw o leaders. 68 One migh t expec t the author o f Eikonoklastes to recant this earlier mythography, to rescue Samson from his sullying association with the king; yet while Milton's regular practice in this wor k i s to replac e Charles' s self-servin g references to biblica l heroes with types of hypocrisy,69 he leaves the Charles-Samson conceit intact. Indeed, Eikonoklastes' most extended reference to the Samson story elaborates the similarities between kin g and judge as an allegory of Charles's duplicity. Writing of the king's decision t o seek refuge with the Scottish troops in 1646, Milton describes him as a Samson-like riddler and dissembler : However i t was a hazardous and ras h journey taken, to resolv e riddles in mens Loyaltie, who had more reason to mistrust th e Riddle of such a disguised yeelding.... What providenc e deny'd to force, he thought it might grant to fraud, which he stiles Prudence: But Providence was not couzen'd with disguises, neither outward no r inward.... Had he known when the Game was lost, it might have sav'd much contest: but the way to give over fairely, was not to slip out of op'n Warr into a new disguise. He layes down his Armes, but not his Wiles; nor all his Armes, for in obstinac y he come s n o les s arm'd tha n ever , Cap a pe. And wha t were they but wiles ... t o persist the same man, and to fortify hi s mind befor e hand, still purposing to grant no more than what seem'd good to that violent an d lawles s Triumvirate within him , unde r th e falsifi' d name s of his Reason, Honour, an d Conscience , the ol d circulatin g dance of hi s shift s and evasions. The word s o f a King , a s the y ar e ful l o f power , i n th e autorit y an d strength o f Law, so like Sampson, without th e strengt h o f that Nazarite' s lock, they have no more power in them then the words of another man . (Eikonoklastes, 3:545-46 ) Milton's referenc e t o Samso n her e i s surprising—not leas t because i t appears unsolicited, if not gratuitous, in its polemic context (n o mention o f Samson appears in the section of Eikon Basilike to which this passage directly responds). In Milton's constitutionalist application, the shorn Samson seems to exemplify wily and fraudulen t stratagem rathe r tha n divinel y sanctioned guerrilla warfare—a perspective i n fac t share d b y Milton's Harapha, wh o declare s Samson "Due by the la w t o capita l punishment " (SA, 1225 ; see als o 1182—91) . For Milton , o f

Samsons Death by Theater and Milton's Art o f Dying 16 1

course, capital punishment wa s Charles's legal due; but th e inescapabl e irony is that i n presenting his case against this Samson-lik e king, Milton her e adopts a Philistine perspective.70 I t is also a skeptical perspective, easily transferred to his own representation o f Samson: by deconsecrating "the words of a King," Milton deconstructs th e triumvirate of "Reason, Honour, and Conscience" by which his own hero justifies hi s actions—the triumvirat e upo n whic h al l regenerationis t readings of Samson Agonistes depend. Like faith, doubt is a conviction based on the evidence of things not seen; and it i s this latte r verdic t tha t Milto n repeatedl y deliver s o n th e seemingl y piou s "words" of the king, such as when he judges Charles's Penitential Meditations a n exercise in insincerity and fabrication: It is not har d for any man, who hath a Bible in his hands, to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own, is a work of grace onely from above . (Eikonoklastes, 3:553 )

Samsons Chorus similarly observes the necessity of grace "from above " to render consonant th e man "within" and his book-gleaned language. But the crucial diff erence between Milton and this Chorus, in their analyses of two remarkably similar cases of conscience, is that Milton responds corrosively to the same evidentiary deficiencies upo n which the Danites construct thei r interpretive and integrative interpolations. Nowher e is this difference mor e apparent than in the last chapter of Eikonoklastes, where Milton declare s Charles's Samson-like "Meditations upon Death" a work of hypocritical theater, a formal linguistic performance reflecting the easily conned "cheap cure" of literary precedent rather than a genuine internal drama. Milton introduce s this chapter, a skeptical revision of the king's contemplatio mortis, by first acknowledging the hermeneutic privilege conventionally ascribed to th e topic . Echoin g claims we have already hear d fro m Montaigne , h e recognizes th e culturall y entrenched conceptio n o f dyin g a s an ar t someho w abov e criticism or contestatory interpretation: It might be well thought by him who reads no further than the Title of this last Essay, that it requir'd no answer. For all other human things are disputed, and wil l be variously thought o f to th e World s end. Bu t this busines s o f death is a plaine case, and admitts no controversie: I n that center all Opinions meet. (Eikonoklastes, 3:582)

But by exposing Charles's "business o f death" as so much stag e business, by exploding the "plaine case" of his dying as a piece of theatrical subterfuge , Milto n reveals the artificiality of the ars moriendi conventions employed by the king. His

162 Guilty

Creatures

criticism of Charles's self-fashioned death , then, also involves a more general critique o f the generic assumptions tha t rendere d suc h performances indisputable and uncontroversial (assumptions still operating in the more credulous regenerationist reading s of Samson Agonistes). Indeed i t i s for dyin g b y the book , fo r exploitin g the literar y and theatrica l conventions o f the ars moriendi in his own self-dramatized fifth act, that Milton condemns the king and the book that survive s him. Equating publicity with duplicity, he declares Charles's testimony perjured, suspects the evidence of his meditations as the exhibition of a false witness : Such Prayers as these may happly catch the People, as was intended: but how they please God, is to be much doubted, though pray'd in secret, much less writt'n to be divulg'd. (Eikonoklastes, 3:601 )

Equating Eikon Basilike wit h th e seduction s o f theater, 71 h e declare s Charles' s sympathetic readers at once a visually besotted mo b o f relic-seekers and a blind chorus of acquiescent interpreters: an inconstant , irrational , an d Image-dotin g rabble ; that lik e a credulou s and haples s herd, begott'n t o servility , and inchante d wit h thes e popula r institutes o f Tyranny, subscrib'd wit h a new device of the King s Picture at his praiers, hold out both thir eares with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatiz'd and board through in witness of thir own voluntary and beloved baseness. (Eikonoklastes, 3:601 )

Earlier in Eikonoklastes, Milton remarke d on the tendency of an autobiographica l art of dying like the king's to falsify evidence , to identify a revealingly amorphous representation with deceptively determinate, epitaphi c significance: Martyrs bear witness to the truth, not to themselves... He who writes himself Martyr b y his own inscription, is like an ill Painter, who, by writing on the shapeles s Picture which he hath drawn , is fain t o tell passengers what shape it is. (Eikonoklastes, 3:575 )

At the end of his work, Milton blames the perpetuation o f the king's forged perspective—the piou s guis e of a protean actor—o n a "credulous" audienc e tha t ignores the ambiguity of his artistic performance, complacently reproducing the self-portrait (an d self-inscribe d emblematic meaning) of a poseur. With Milton's iconoclastic critique of this ars moriendi in mind, it is tempting to treat his dramatization o f Samson's death a s a transposition o f certain discredited aspects of Charles's literar y dying; to correlate the Israelite judge's carefull y


calculated deat h b y theater wit h tha t o f the Englis h king; to rea d the Hebre w messenger an d remove d Choru s a s representatives o f the Royalis t propaganda machine that converted slim eyewitness accounts of Charles's execution into reliquarian hagiography . Indeed, this last temptation grow s even stronger when we realize how closely the emblematic conclusion of Samson Agonistes approximates the iconographi c frontispiece of the King' s Book. As the messenger' s description o f Samson's gestures in the temple resembles Marshall's post mortem portrayal o f Charles at prayer, for instance, so does th e Chorus's glos s of Samson's meditation s recall the interpretive apparatus included with the "Kings Picture": the Danites declare their hero's final act elucidated by spiritual insight ("Bu t he though blin d o f sight, / Despise d and though t extin guished quite, / With inwar d eyes illuminated / His fiery virtue roused .. . [SA, 1687-90]); the king's portrait depict s a beam of light (labelled Clarior e tenebris) descending fro m dar k clouds to the top o f Charles's meditativ e head , while another beam (labele d Coeli Specto) emanate s from hi s eyes to the heavenly crown he contemplates. The Danites proclaim the revival and reflourishing of Samson's "virtue give n for lost, / Depressed , and overthrown , as seemed" (SA , 1697-98); Marshall represents Charles as a palm tree (wit h the mott o Crescit sub pondere virtus), resilient despite pendent weights.72 As Manoa plans to reclaim Samson' s body in an ancestral monument (shade d with "branching palm" [SA , 1735]) that will be both th e objec t of future pilgrimag e and th e symbo l o f further contest , the Chorus—lik e Charles' s portraitist—seeks t o consolidat e th e meanin g of its hero's death in an "embossed" (SA, 1700), iconic testimonial. Like Eikon Basilike's superadded "new device" of pictorial annotation, then, Samson Agonistes' visually charged conclusion provides an interpretive coda that also prefaces the "calm of mind" of future regenerationist responses to the work. But to accept the Danites ' consolatory portrait of Samson as the "true experience" of his drama is to confus e the image with the man, a fallacy shattered in Eikonoklastes. By asking us to mistrust the king's final performance and the corroborative constructio n it received from hi s supportive readers , Milton als o seems to ask us to doubt Samson' s last act and it s choric exegesis. The problem with such an imputational and intercalar y reading, of course, is that it risks reducing Milton's play into either an exercise in perverse irony or a cynical act of artistic appropriation—in which ideology alone distinguishes between the representatio n o f Samson and th e misrepresentatio n o f Charles. By holding the author of Samson Agonistes accountable for his textual criticism of the King's Book, moreover, we perhaps dislocate the drama fro m it s historical context 73— ignoring the possibilit y that th e Restoratio n an d it s inaugural execution o f the regicides may have caused Milton to reevaluate the art of martyrdom he had earlier rejected. Perhaps in Samson Agonistes Milton tries to recover those representations an d hermeneutic conventions rejected in Eikonoklastesl


These ar e legitimate interpretiv e possibilitie s tha t canno t be dismissed ; th e Civil Wa r and it s aftermath presen t u s with man y example s of contested an d contaminated symbols—rejecte d and reclaime d as the occasion fit. Yet even the most persuasive reading of Samson as a figure of the martyred regicides concedes an almost metatheatrical skepticism that renders this interpretation problematic: Samson Agonistes does not so much make Samson a martyr as it shows how his fellow Israelites do so. The closure invoked by the Chorus is not closure for th e reader, who knows that Israe l does not "take hold" upon this occasion. .. Th e supreme iron y is that Samson' s ac t of iconoclasm makes him a kind of idol for his own people. 74 As witnessed by the Quaker Edward Burrough, the regal funeral tha t the Protectorate provided for Cromwell was the occasion of similar irony; from the detached position o f a critica l reader , Burrough's republicans—like Milton's Danites — appear to be of the king's party without knowin g it: What fo r him! Alas for him! Who was once a great Instrument in the hand of the Lord to break down many Idolatrous Images and grievous Idols .. . and have they now made an Image of him?75 We need not read Milton's Samson or Burrough's Cromwell as an explicit allegory of Charles, then, to recognize the problematic legacy Eikon Basilike left t o its critics: regardles s of the authenticity of an individual's spiritual life, the King's Book rendered irrecoverabl y ambiguous th e convention s b y which tha t lif e coul d b e witnessed in death. Indeed, though the skeptical response to Samson Agonistes is typically substantiated b y the indeterminac y of its hero's dying , it is finally the overdetermined natur e of this dramatic act—its inevitable evocation of the performance an d receptio n o f Charles's ars moriendi—that signal s Milton' s interpretive an d evaluativ e disengagemen t fro m th e play . We might i n fac t presen t this disengagement as a specifically postregicida l response, a further distancin g from th e her o whose militancy the First Defense blur s as "prompted by God o r by his own valor." 76 STANDING ALOOF : SAMSO N AN D TH E DANGERS O F CONSTRUCTIO N This removal, the distance o f a playwright refusing complicit y in his own representation, is my final concern. This chapter has purposed not to contribute another installment in the regenerationist-skeptical debate, but rather to demonstrate how the seeds for such a debate exist in both Milton's age and Milton's text, not to take one exclusive side in a critical dialogue, so much as to locate the dialogue in Milton's dram a o f history. In conclusion , however, we can recogniz e how standin g aloof fro m thi s dialogue might be the most responsibl e option Milton gives us.


Within the text at least, interpreting Samson proves a sirenic temptation: "Irresistible Samson" confounds not only the Philistines who attempt to bring him to "public proof " (1314) , bu t als o thos e readers—beginnin g with th e Danites — who fee l compelle d t o witnes s Samson's regeneratio n and martyrdo m b y analyzing his life and death. Samson's threatening reply to the enemy come to "survey" him, in fact, also serves as a warning to such readers: "The way to know were not t o see but taste " (1091). The two senses probably introduced b y "taste" here (tactile and gustative) recall the "mortal taste" represented in Paradise Lost;77 but for the spectator in or reader of Samson Agonistes, this "way to know" remains as inaccessible as the eyesigh t proves unrevealing. For as with the forbidde n fruit , knowing Samso n i s fatal : th e onl y character s who directl y "behold" Samson's single disclosive act in this play are struck forever dumb "with amaze" (1645); the judges who subject him to the only real trial theater can offer immediatel y taste death when he brings the house down. Those who survive to interpret, on the other hand, must accept the evidence of a spectator who "aloof obscurel y stood" outside the theater of proof (1611)—whos e central testimony on Samson's speech and act is based not o n experience, but on hearsay "from such as nearer stood" (1631). If standing aloof fro m th e interpretive seductions o f Samson Agonistes attenuates one's commentarial authority, however, it also delivers one from the collapses (architectural and hermeneutic ) tha t amaz e all those involve d less circumstantially in the pla y and wit h its text. In this sense the messenge r is consistent: his detached perspectiv e produces a relatively objective report modes t i n its claims and conclusions; and he remains silent as Manoa and the Chorus seize upon this representation with an interpretive zeal that implicates them more directly in the play's ambiguities. For the Danites, of course, this response is also consistent. Indeed, the Chorus—which neither resists Samson nor avoids Samsons interpretive pitfalls—says more than it means when it recalls the hero's exploits in Ascalon: But safest he who stoo d aloof, When insupportabl y his foot advance d In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools, Spurned them to death by troops. (SA, 135-38 ) "Irresistibly," the invariabl e editorial gloss of insupportably i n this passage, adequately conveys the Chorus's apparent meaning here; but when we acknowledge the collateral senses of this word in the Renaissance—such as "untenably" or "unaccountably"—the passag e comments ironically on it s speakers. 78 For the very account the Danites provide of Samson's biograph y involves them in the unac countable; their dogged attempt t o witness his life a s a consistently meaningfu l story implicates them in an implosive text. Of course the casuistical contortions required o f these interpreters by Milton's Samso n merely accentuate exegetical maneuvers long performed by biblical commentators; an d the Chorus's kommos

166 Guilty

Creatures

reiterates a reading as old as St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews (11:32) , which transforms the ambiguous Old Testament representation of Samson by including him in a heroic catalogue recognized by the Renaissance as "a little Book of Martyrs."79 But the instability of the Judges text, and thus the untenability of such readings, had wel l befor e Milto n move d exegete s to see k safet y b y standin g aloof. 80 As Joseph Wittreich has extensively shown, moreover, long and tumultuous period s of reassessing Samson i n the Renaissanc e had th e effec t o f challenging received allegories and typologies—further destabilizing the Judges story and question ing the reliability of its narrator.81 The demonstrated ambiguity of this story did not, of course, prevent its service to ever y conceivable ideolog y in the seventeent h century . On th e contrary , the exegetical indeterminacy ascribed to Samso n seem s to have corresponded wit h (if not encouraged ) his ideological appropriation, particularly in the contest for symbols tha t was prologue and epilogue to the Civi l War. The status of the biblical Samson i n the mid-seventeent h century , in fact , resembled that of Milton' s Samson a s increasingly polemical interpretation s wer e based on a decreasingly probative proof text. A play that elide s the Bible's annunciatory angels and authoritative narrators altogether, that leaves Samson alone to convince his fellow characters and readers that his dubious actions were "of God" (222), seems designed to invite the observer to make meaning. But such a play also draws all who so commit onto increasingly shaky interpretive ground, into a text that threatens to collapse and consume the participant with its own ambiguities. Indeed, such a play contains more perils than the precarious Judges drama Lancelot Andrewes warned his readers from engaging in as participatory spectators: "Wee were not best make sport with Sampson, lest he pull down the house about our eares , and so make us pay dearlie for our pastime."82 Th e criticism o f Samson Agonistes has tacitly agreed to th e applicability of such a warning to the play. Even the most fervidly regenerationist readers stand aloo f fro m th e interpretive misprision an d historical myopia of the Danites; 83 and the skeptic's instinct for distanc e from th e conclusions of Manoa an d th e Chorus, at the play's close, is that o f a survivor who has seen less withdrawn reader s "immixed, inevitably " with an insupportable interpretive framework: The Chorus had neve r previously vested its confidence in Samson's inter pretation o f events, and w e may fin d i t difficul t no w to vest much confi dence in its interpretation. Indeed , to the very end, Manoa and the Choru s are found contradicting Samson and, in the end, contradict Samson into a heroism he is perhaps not mean t to enjoy.84 This same instinct i s interestingly revealed in a critical desire for differentiation not only from the play's misreading characters, but also from its misreading critics. Johnson's claim that Samson Agonistes is a tragedy "which ignorance has admired,

Samson's Death by Theater an d Milton's Art o f Dying 16 7

and bigotry applauded," for instance, still resounds in Wittreich's dismissive conflation o f hi s predecessor s wit h th e untenabl e hermeneuti c practice d b y th e Danites: "Miltonists hav e approached Samson Agonistes in muc h th e sam e way that Pete r Marty r pursue d the Samso n stor y in the Boo k of Judges, and wit h many of the sam e results." 85 The iron y in all such instances o f diacritical assertion is less obvious than the dramatic irony literalized in the Philistines' death by theater, but wit h much th e same effect: th e Danites celebrate the destruction of Samson's captors, only to be portrayed themselves as a captive audience by readers who in turn cour t fallaciou s ruin by making a similar ido l of interpretation. I n a reminder of the hall of mirrors quality variously explored in Renaissance theater and painting, the drama of interpreting Samso n has thus ramified into the drama of interpreting Samson: like the spectator in the play, the reader of the play risks making a spectacle of himself when he privileges his own perspective and forgets that it too i s critically observed. Far from a n anachronistic product o f the play's criticism, moreover , thi s reflexiv e paradig m contrive d wha t we migh t cal l the historical iron y that Samson Agonistes offere d t o it s original audience—whic h would have seen its own gaz e problematized i n Gaza. Milton's method o f poetic education has often bee n described as the presentation o f interpretiv e choices—wit h th e mor e conventionall y allurin g optio n proving a temptation t o error. For readers conditioned by his epics, however, his drama seems to complicate this hermeneutics of discrimination: if Paradise Lost instructs us vicariously through Adam's angelic lessons in interpretation, if Paradise Regained reveals to us the heroically exemplary decisions of the second Adam, Samson Agonistes seems to confron t us with an "artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions,"86 whose dubious and censored actions provide no grounds for interpretiv e authenticity. Yet as a companion piece or cod a to Milton's brief epic,87 certain aspects of the play's hermeneutical challenges appear less idiosyncratic—at least in the context of that moment in his career when the poet chose to make both work s simultaneously public. If Paradise Regained tempts both its hero and its reader with plot, with a series of scenes designed to elicit an erroneous action (o r a misplace d expectatio n o f action), 88 migh t no t Samson Agonistes tempt with interpretation itself, with an almost irresistible opportunity to commit to a reading whose conventions the play itself renders insupportable? If Milton's "poem in IV books" exemplifies th e divinel y adiaphorous response of one who stands and waits for his tempter to collapse on his own hermeneutical hollowness, might not the play "added" to this poem test more directly the reader's ability to stand aloof from a drama that consumes itself ? Before these questions become statements, qualification is necessary: Samson Agonistes does not ask not to be interpreted today; 89 nor did Milton present in this play a meaninglessly relativistic text to his seventeenth-century audience. Rather, Samson Agonistes' invalidation of the interpretive conventions it dramatizes attains ironic significance a s a Restoration publication. For this self-consuming drama


recapitulates a drama of construction an d de(con)struction that an audience in 1671 woul d have recognized as recent history. Surviving in the iterable state feared by its hero—"reserv'd alive to be repeated" (645)—Samson Agonistes also presents that her o a s a victim o f the sam e presumptuous publishin g tha t i s his "crime " (201,490, 498). But the "artificial Adam" that constitutes the interpretively liable and interpretivel y resistant subjec t of Samson Agonistes finally resolves into th e object of Milton's ow n censorship and retraction. Hero and play resolve, that is, into a text accountable to its contexts and pretexts, a text that acknowledges the historical agency so strenuously displaced in Th e Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: But thi s I doubt no t t o affirm , tha t th e Presbyterians , who no w so much condemn deposing , were the men themselve s that depose d th e king , and cannot wit h al l their shiftin g an d relapsin g wash of f the guiltines s fro m their own hands.... So that from hence w e . .. show manifestly how much they have done toward th e killing him.90 By evoking so forcefully th e art of Charles's dying, the author of Samson Agonistes reveals his hand i n killing him—an ac t initially textual that was performed into haunting theater. Rather than deny the responsibility of this former interpretive production, Milto n in Samson Agonistes disables the means of its reproduction . DYING AN D KILLIN G We recall a stage picture: the younger Henry Percy, breathing his last at the feet of his vanquisher, striving to speak his ultima verba as "the earth y and cold hand of death / Lies on [his ] tongue" (1 Henry IV , 5.4.83-84). Much about Shakespeare's representation o f Hotspur's deat h migh t have terrified a Renaissance audience, but the chief cultural anxiety dramatized in this scene appears in the fact that he is killed into an ellipsis91—fashioned into an interpretive opportunity, perfecte d as the conventiona l gloss of his killer's tongue: HOTSPUR: No , Percy, thou art dust , And food for — PRINCE: Fo r worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart. Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk ! When tha t thi s body did contain a spirit, A kingdom fo r it was too smal l a bound; But now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough . (iHenry IV , 5.4.84-91 )


As we have seen, Renaissance literature devoted to "killing" men and women into interpretive property frequently assumes that the last act of death marks the transfer of titles whereby a subject becomes the object of another. For the Renaissance agonist, deat h constitute d a crisis o f agency, and i t make s some sense that thi s crisis should be explored especially on the stage, where selves are played by others. Lying o n th e stag e wit h Hotspur , however , a corpulen t an d counterfeitin g knight raises a parallel Renaissance anxiety: if Plotinus was right and death can be played as an actor plays his role, if the theater of death does not necessarily grant the spectato r th e interpretiv e property i t advertises, that spectato r mus t accep t the tota l lac k of ownership tha t i s skepticism. By presenting Samson' s deat h a s an interpretive opportunity, then, Milton would seem to tempt his audience with the expectation s o f th e killin g poem; bu t b y representing Samso n a s an irre ducible actor , h e woul d see m t o frustrat e thos e expectations . Adjuste d t o th e terms o f this study, such i s in fac t Henr y McDonald's clai m when he describes Samson a s "a work that inscribe s within i t a conventionalized interpretatio n o f its protagonis t an d hi s story , an d the n radicall y subvert s .. . tha t interpreta tion."92 In th e Renaissance , the lin e distinguishing "dying " fro m "bein g killed " could indeed blur and even vanish, but the distinction itself seems to have rested on the uncanny ability of the early modern dying to complete their own lines.93 When th e reductiv e an d appropriativ e strategie s o f killin g fail , th e word s an d body of the dying can evade interpretive capture and continue to produce meaning. Eikon Basilike records Charles' refusal to be killed, his intent to die. Why then should Milton' s pla y provide u s with th e morta l ambiguitie s of Falstaf f (who , even when he really dies, does so with a notorious textual crux)94 rather the polit ical malleability of Hotspur's corpse ? Why should Milto n leav e us with an acto r rather than a property? Much of the ambiguity of Milton's Samso n arises from th e poet's ongoin g responsibility to the king's death—a political "act" that Milton helped produce onl y to realize, like Shakespeare's Brutus, the impossibility of controlling its theater history. In this sense Samson Agonistes completes the metatheatrical trajectory whose origins have been trace d i n Julius Caesar. Whereas Shakespear e inaugurates his Globe by at once celebrating and censuring his audience's dangerously constitutive power, Milton's las t majo r poe m i s a dramatic palinod e t o th e destructiv e constructions that had troubled hi m eve n as he praised Lord General Fairfax in 1648: For what can war, but endles s war still breed, Till truth, and right from violenc e be freed, And public faith cleared from th e shameful brand Of public fraud. 95 To free it s readers from a n endless cycle of fraudulent iconic faith, Samson Agonistes confronts them with the most ambiguously portrayed figure in all of Milton's


poetry—a figure whose brief appearance in Paradise Lost signals the disappearance of "Just confidence, and nativ e righteousness" (PL, 9.1056); it tempts the m with the idolatry that rendered Cromwell, no less than Charles, an "Image"; and it invites them t o disembarras s themselve s o f the interpretiv e convention s tha t collapse upon the Chorus as they collapsed upon the Commonwealth. Chapter 3 considered Shakespeare's dramatic interactio n with what Julius Caesar's Cicero describes as "a strange-disposed time, " in which "men ma y construe things afte r thei r fashion , / Clea n fro m th e purpos e o f the thing s themselves" ; and I argued that i n th e theatricalize d death s o f this play, Shakespeare reflects upon the dramatist's and audience's ability to exploit representations in the theater and culture of 1599. For the Parliamentarians, the first decade of the Restoration was in many respects a similarly "strange-disposed time"—i n whic h providen tial interpretations once seemingly valid swerved from the ostensible purpose of history. When hermeneutic techniques conventionalized durin g the Interregnum were applied t o the evidenc e of current events , in fact , they were challenged by Cicero's skepticism . Lik e th e plagu e o f 1665 , for example , the conflagratio n of London i n 1666 offered Royalist s and Parliamentarians an opportunity t o repeat the interpretiv e contest waged on th e scaffol d i n 1649. But as one perspicuousl y aloof commentator o n the annus mirabilis remarked, this dialogic casuistry was an epistemological plague on both houses : "Though al l see the same desolation, yet, by looking o n i t wit h differen t opinion s an d interest , they mak e differen t constructions as if the objec t were so."96 Like the London fire, like the king's execution, the Samson story in Judges had before 167 1 presented "the sam e desolation" to audience s tha t gav e it "differen t constructions." Matthew Griffith wa s one of legions who read Samson's death as an ar s moriendi imitated an d perfecte d by Charles, "our Kingl y Proto-martyr. " Edward Sexby's Killing, No Murder rea d Samson's last act instead as an ars necandi, with the theatrical destruction o f the Philistines figuring a justified regicide that might make a Charles of Cromwell. For the New Model Army, Samson was glossed as a hero i n Th e Souldiers Pocket Bible. For Thoma s Fuller , futur e chaplai n t o Charles II, the "murther" committed by Samson serve d as a homiletic admoni tion: "let us read histories that we be not made an history."97 As a postfiguration of one o f the centra l interpretive site s of th e Civi l War, Samson Agonistes offer s its audience a lesson surprisingly similar to Fuller's , though wit h an importan t difference: Milto n want s his readers to recogniz e they have already been "made an history" so that they can effectively escap e history; he wants them to discern the temptatio n t o join the interpretatio n o f Samson as a temptation to rejoin a losing battle, a lost cause. That cause is not political; nor shoul d Milton's ambiguous play be understoo d as simply quietist. Rather, Milton in Samson Agonistes rehearses and finally rejects the poetics of killing that had wrought so much of England's recent political an d


literary history. When i n De Oratore Tertullian remarked that "an idolater is also a murderer," 98 th e ethica l an d representationa l consequence s o f such a n equa tion had still to be pondered by the poets of the earlier chapters of this study. By the tim e o f Samson Agonistes' publication , however , the danger s of presenting history with an idol of interpretation were all too apparent. By continuing to play the "great act" of death, Samson refuse s to let us kill him into hollow opportunity.

6

Guilt and the Constitution of Authorship i n Henry V and th e Antitheatrical Elegies ofW. S. and Milton Death in Shakespeare's time, far more than in our own , was generally understood a s an intended action . Stephen Greenblatt, "The Eatin g of the Soul " To draw toward an end with you. Hamlet

THE SUBJECT OF DEATH has always elicited last words belied by their own imperfection, and this conclusion can be no different. Perhaps Lycidas's "Yet once more" reveals a consummation devoutly to be wished, a desire to speak last not onl y in a mourning volum e but als o in a traditional genre—to punctuate a recurrent literary occasion with a definitive epistemic break, a "one last time." But while such periods may be as psychologically necessary for the Renaissance artist as they are for the modern critic, death the leveler continues to frustrate diacritical desire with threatening similarity and synchrony . Even a s I wrote in chapte r 5 that Samson Agonistes must be read within th e context of the Protestant ar s moriendi of the Renaissance, for example, I was confronted i n Newsweek magazin e by th e timelessnes s of some o f m y claims. I n a cover article titled "The Art of Dying Well," Kenneth L. Woodward and John McCormick described th e recen t deat h of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin—reminding me that the interpretiv e strategie s of Milton's Danite s are hardly peculiar to the seventeenth century: In dying, Cardinal Bernardin gave new and authentic definition to a phrase he feare d ha d los t it s meaning, Deat h wit h Dignity . . . "His wa y of deat h confirms tha t thi s ma n di d no t hav e two faces , on e private , one public, " says Rabbi Herman Schaalman , an old friend. "He was inside with his outside, outside with his inside, which is rare." For Bernardin, more than words, there were deeds. 1 172

Guilt and th e Constitution of Authorship 17 3

One would not need to look far in this article for signs of our historical moment : the wonderful ecumenis m that permit s a rabbi to testify fo r his "old friend " the cardinal, for instance; or the troubling but familiar notice that the cardinal endured allegations of sexual impropriety durin g his lifetime—charges later dismissed as the fals e "recovered memory" of an AIDS victim. But beneath suc h details lies a performance very like Samson Agonistes and Eikon Basilike. Newsweek take s one step farther th e self-fashioned hol y death a s collaborative medi a event, printing a portrait o f the moder n da y Moriens on it s cover, publishing an excerpt fro m the cardinal' s "forthcoming " (posthumousl y published ) memoi r amon g eye witness account s o f hi s dying . Th e rabbi' s assertio n tha t th e cardinal' s deat h "confirms" he was not a hypocrite must b e read as a response t o lingerin g ru mors abou t sexua l misconduct, rumor s simila r to the biographical ambiguitie s Manoa and the Chorus seek to quiet in their reading of Samson's death . The twentieth-century authors of this "Art of Dying Well" encourage no skepticism toward their hero's final act, his "authentic definition " of a dignified exit ; and I intend n o disrespect or imputation b y mentioning Cardinal Bernardin in this context. As heirs to the antitheatrical prejudice, 2 however, the modern media would see m t o presen t a vexed venu e t o di e i n an d by . Like th e Renaissanc e stage—a medium or go-between where private lives were rendered public property—the news commodifies authenticit y and inwardnes s by putting People i n our hands, an Inside Edition on our television screens. Like the Renaissance stage, the news troubles the witness to the exten t that th e witness acknowledges it as real—an acknowledgment limited by the fact that theatrical and journalistic media tend to reduce (even as they insist upon) th e personhood o f those they represent. The culpable mediacy we have seen in Skelton, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Dekker and Ford appears today in some of our more prurient talk shows, and in those who consume such sensationalism sheepishly . But those who choos e t o perform for the more respectable journalists face an audience less guilty than skeptical, not so much recoiling from a n invaded privacy as frustrated b y an impenetrable theatricality.3 Like the reporters who attempt to convince us that Samson's "way of death confirms that this man did not have two faces, one private, one public ..." ("H e was inside with his outside, outside with his inside"), today's choric anchormen and wome n striv e fo r th e illusio n o f a n unmediate d reality— a perspicuou s analysis of "that within" unbeguile d b y "actions tha t a man migh t play. " If the stage traffics i n quotation an d manage d perspective, however—i n production s designed for reproduction—the new s similarly processes all speech into sound bites, all events into iterable images; it advertises the truth, but i t can provide only a show. The caption unde r Newsweek's pose d cove r photograph o f the cardina l promises "Exclusiv e Excerpts from Hi s Final Testament," but ou r witnessin g of this testimon y i s just a s epistemologicall y fraugh t a s the martyrolog y Milto n would have us doubt wisely. That we can know the death of Samson or Cardinal Bernardin only through a representation that at once anticipates and fails to satisfy


the spectator doe s not necessaril y invalidate the genuine holiness of that death. But any interpretation mediate d by glossed (an d glossy) art, reliant upon talking heads, is liable to the suspicio n Samson Agonistes requires of its reader. What does it mean to write for an audience one does not trust, to write for a world one holds in contempt? By focusing on the literary representations of a violence that itself reflects upo n th e violence of representation, I have shown tha t Renaissance poets frequently confront a n early form o f media ethics: ours is not the firs t er a in which agent s of the medi a ca n kill or be blamed wit h killing. If the culpabl e mediacy of Skelton, Spenser, and Shakespeare—lik e the "Wicked" indiscretion o f Donne—occasions somethin g like the voyeuristic guilt we experience i n a supermarket checkout line , Milton's inscrutable spectacle puts us in touch with an ambivalence that is just as familiar to modern life . The movement from Shakespeare' s stage to Milton's take s us from th e anxiety of complicity—o f having shown and possessed too much—to epistemological frustration, the disappointment o f not beholdin g enough . The differenc e her e reache s far beyond the revealin g fact tha t Cinn a die s as a property o f Shakespeare's theater an d it s audience, while Samson deconstructs the theater o f death i n an antispectacular finale: it extend s t o Cicero' s skeptica l observation , whic h i n Shakespeare' s play speaks to an interpretive license shared by dramatist an d spectator, but in Milton's constitutes an attractive error to be avoided with care. If Cinna dies as an emblem of the misconstructio n enacte d i n and invite d by Julius Caesar, Samson (whos e death ma y well seem "the bes t o f all possible things, the thin g everyon e i n th e play most desires") dies as an interpretive temptation that Samson Agonistes reveals as fallacious, unavailing. By representing the Danites' salivating deathwatch, Milton reminds us of the appropriative desire we bring to the drama; by representing this deathwatch critically, he has us question the desire his play stirs but never satiates. Media ethics must always negotiate between appetite and decorum ; the New York Times's famou s advertisement , "All the New s That's Fit to Print, " promises both a satisfying "all " and a discreet "fit. " Lik e members of the moder n media , the early modern poet s considered in this study had to decide what to show and what not to show; what reverence to accord their subjects, and what interpretiv e freedom to allow their audiences; what balance to strike between the pleasing and the useful, the vendible and the salutary, the exploitative and the respectful. Perhaps the compariso n seem s unjustifiably assimilative , less apposite tha n tha t betwee n Renaissance poetry and some of our industries more explicitly concerned with entertainment. I suggest the analogy in this conclusion, however, because it enables us to appreciate a historical phenomenon ofte n obscured by anti-intentionalist an d anti-authorial responses to Renaissance poetry; and because it helps us recover the strange sense of divided loyalty that sometimes marks the Renaissance poet's relation to his subject and his audience. When the antitheatricalist writer I. G. observed the guilt with which we encounter historical subjects' victimization by drama, he described a responsibility consciously shared by many Renaissance poets and their


customers. This responsibility remains conceptually available today in those areas of modern life (suc h as the law or the media) where the violability of the subjec t is at least occasionally taken seriously. But until we recognize this violability in Jane Scrope or Serena or Cinna or Elizabeth Sawyer, we will undervalue the self conscious violence with which Skelton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dekker, and For d appropriate these subjects as objets d'art. And until we recognize the ambivalence with which Renaissance poets often regarded their audiences, we will fail to comprehend th e conditiona l natur e o f thi s violence . Eve n th e mos t prurien t gossip columnist ca n do no harm until he exposes someone to untrustworthy readers. Similarly, the poets considered in this study inflict n o injury without imaginin g a predator y an d misconstructiv e reception fo r their representation . When thi s condition i s met, however, when the artist conceives himself as a medium between an imperiled privacy and an untrustworthy public, any injury performed by his art is necessarily premeditated and complicit with the onlookers he has assumed. The preceding chapters have focused upon Renaissance poems that admit their own consequence, emphasizing both th e self-consciousness with which subjects are "killed" in thes e poems, and th e theatricalit y that makes the deat h o f such subjects something of a media event. Certainly this focus could be broadened to include other areas of Renaissance publi c rhetoric. Sawyer's diabolic oath in The Witch of Edmonton—"If thou to death or shame pursue 'em, / Sanctibicetur nomen tuum"—suggests a cultural connectio n betwee n shamin g and killin g throug h which both were conceived as a speech-act; and I have suggested the problematic nature of any encomium fo r poets who imagin e their audienc e as defamatory and opportunistic . Jan e Scrope' s "death" differ s fro m Cinna's , but onl y by th e tropological degre e crossed by Spenser's panegyrical cannibals. Ostensibly Skelton come s to praise Jane, not t o bury her; but Phyllyp Sparowe conclude s with a muffled lamen t for the killin g it has performed, with a n anxious and defensiv e acknowledgment of the misconstructive theate r it has invoked. In Julius Caesar, the poe t become s les s indefensibl y defensiv e than absurdl y defenseles s in th e playwright's arena: Cinna is dragged offstage a s a victim of the dramati c collaboration tha t continues to make Shakespeare a professional hit man . The three readings that follow reconsider the singularity of Shakespeare in the larger argumen t o f this book. Does Shakespeare's inauguration o f the Glob e in the year s 1599-1600 coexten d wit h a n especiall y self-conscious exploration o f representational violence and th e killing power of public theater? Can this self consciousness properl y be called guilt, or doe s Shakespeare' s acceptance of th e antitheatrical position instea d mark his complicity as knowingly opportunistic? In my reading of Henry V (close companion o f Julius Caesar in the ne w Globe), I argue that at this transitional moment in his dramatic career Shakespeare reveals himself as at once deeply fascinated by the terms of theatrical guilt, and conceptu ally troubled by his profession's etiolation o f the subject position tha t guilt constitutes. In its repeated meditations upon culpability, Henry V is a remarkably guilty


play. But in its insistence upon th e incommensurability of guilt and the solitary author, Henry V dwells upon the limits of individual responsibility entailed by public theater. In an echo of chapter 3,I strongly resist the invitation to read this limitation o f guilt a s the kin d o f strategic denial offere d b y Gary Taylor in hi s reading of Julius Caesar. Instead, I treat it as Shakespeare's more anxious recognition that th e playwright's author-function involves a significant los s of self — a loss of that sel f understood throug h private responsibility. Such a n argumen t ma y help u s make some importan t distinction s betwee n Shakespeare's self-consciousness in Julius Caesar and Skelton' s in Phyllyp Sparowe (where the solitar y author feel s compelle d t o answe r a censuring public o f his own creation) , or Milton' s i n Samson Agonistes (wher e the autho r respond s t o and claim s responsibility for his earlier political representations). Shakespeare's public theater, at least that which we have considered in this study, voices no self defense of the author because it presents no authorial self to defend. But this claim needs to be qualified with some of the important counter-examples appearing in Shakespeare's dram a befor e Henry V . More important , thi s clai m need s t o b e held up to a possible moment when, late in his life and far from the stage, Shakespeare reconstitute s that sel f lost i n theater by elegizing a friend. Shakespeare' s self-constitution involve s both penitenc e an d antitheatricalism—qualitie s also evident in the Milton elegy with which this study concludes. But before we see how the poetic sel f can be recovered in guilt, we need to consider the loss of that self through a cipher-like incapacity to experience guilt. SHAKESPEARE'S GUIL T TRI P I N HENRY V "To know the author, " cries a father ove r his mysteriously murdered son in The Spanish Tragedy, "were some ease of grief."4 Hieronimo's plain t might speak today for a scholarship often elude d by the de-centered authors of early modern plays, collaborative texts that began as productions i n the theater, where their writers were not known , and many of them first appeared in print without ascription of authorship (or anonymity); they are thus 'pre-anonymous'—that i s 'anonymous' onl y in a sense that existed before the word itself emerged with the author to describe their condition. 5 To understand authoria l identificatio n as a form o f interpretiv e satisfactio n or "ease," as Jeffrey Maste n observes, is to conceive an existence through the perception of a lack: "the author's emergenc e is marked by the notice of its absence." 6 By equating "author" with "murderer," however, Hieronimo does more than indicate a nascent desire for authorship an d a n attendant frustration with anonymity. He also assumes a relation between authorship and punishable culpability, as the line completing his couplet make s clear: "For in revenge my heart would find relief." In one of the more influential accounts of the emergence of modern


authorship, Michel Foucault asserts much the same relation, claiming that "Texts, books, and discourses really began to have authors (other than mythical, 'sacralized' and 'sacralizing' figures) to the extent that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the extent that discourses could be transgressive."7 But like many other early modern plays, The Spanish Tragedy persistentl y refuses to provide th e authentic author it s forensic emphasis would seem to invoke, instead presentin g "a dramatic text which is, in real terms, unauthored."8 Hieronimo's wis h "to know the author" assumes a determinate identit y that the play does not really provide. Rather than present this unsatisfied desire as the birth pangs of authorship, I wish to consider i t as a symptom o f a more pervasive concern in English Renaissance culture—a symptom rendered more palpable on a stage where authorship is not uninvented or unimagined, but the increasingly untenable answer to an increasingly self-conscious question. The cultural whole o f which thi s stage is a part was distinguished b y a crisis of blurred agency and mobile responsibility. Politically, the reason of state question had raise d but no t settle d th e issu e of whether an d to what extent a prince was subject to private morality; and this debate had taken place in a broader conver sation abou t th e distributio n o f power an d accountabilit y between princ e an d people.9 Theologically, questions of conformity an d individual spiritual liability had been occasioned b y Henry VIII's national excommunicatio n and the bewildering reversals in official religio n that followed hard upon his reign; the Refor mation itsel f had force d it s participants radically to reconceive the nature of guilt and th e method s o f repentance. 10 An d economically , an emergen t market ha d begun to reconfigure material exchange, often complicatin g the terms of production and consumptio n wit h a proliferation of middlemen; correspondingly , the force of legal contract increasingly supplanted the bond of honor and the unwritten obligation. These culturally central developments appea r only in the margins of my reading, but the relatively marginal institution of theater was especially well situated to engage them. And some plays were better situated than others for such reflection i n that theater. In Henry V , these politically, theologically, and econom ically valenced crises of responsibility converge at a point in Shakespeare's career where reflection upon the m coextends with dramatic reflexivity. Self-consciously aware of its hero's tenuous ethical and legal position, of the difficulties facin g the onstage penitent, o f the middleme n obscurin g authors an d authority , Henry V presents authorship itsel f as a synecdoche of the accountable agency that Renaissance England complicated fro m severa l sides. Structurally, the stage on which Henry V is played foregrounds the interroga tion of responsibility. If in the world offstag e th e question s "Who i s speaking?" and "Wh o i s acting?" often resolv e issues of agency and responsibilit y withou t much ado , the theater's distinctio n betwee n autho r an d actor automaticall y requires complex answers to these questions. In the courtroom, th e perpetrator of a crime might i n some cases be determined by assigning actions t o a n Individ -


ual;11 but o n the stage agency and acto r are never entirely interchangeable, and attempts to locate responsibility are always on one level undercut by the mobilities of assigned performance. When Shakespeare's Angelo brings the courtroo m into the theater, then, the ascription of guilt refracts as actor splits into legal and theatrical senses: Condemn th e fault , and no t th e actor of it? Why, every fault's condemn' d er e it be done . Mine were the very cipher of a functio n To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, And let go by the actor. (Measure fo r Measure, 2.2.38-42) 12 The proleptic pardon crave d by the Choru s in Henry V would als o seem to lay any responsibility for "faults" at the fee t o f "the flat unraised spirits" whose imperfect action s render the imperia l stage an "unworthy scaffold" : O pardon: since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million. And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work . (Henry V , Prologue, 15-18) In what Robert Weimann has described a s a contest fo r theatrical authority, the Chorus makes the player s partly liable for their representation s b y making the playhouse a space of mediation and judgment.13 To do so is of course not particularl y surprising in Renaissance drama, where labor i s understood a s divided among the company—where theatrical property and responsibilit y ar e distribute d i n term s tha t ofte n elid e authorship . Thu s Shakespeare's solicitou s epilogue s ofte n sugges t the condensatio n o f characte r into actor: with a trade unionist's solidarity , Puck pleads for charity toward th e offenses o f himself and his fellow (suddenly corporeal) shadows; and with a similar professional identity Pandarus, Shakespeare's anti-Puck, converts "the poo r agent" of drama into a collective "endeavour" and "performance." 14 In Henry V , however, such distributive maneuvers are especially interesting for two reasons. First, whe n compare d wit h Angelo' s simpl e mode l o f a prescribe d textua l "fault" and its responsible "actor," determining the actors' responsibility in Henry V present s a pressing an d immediat e interpretiv e puzzle . Thi s puzzl e appears "prologue-like" i n the Chorus, whose pronouns indicat e his fellowship in a cry of players ("let us" ) while also sequestering him a s a go-between and prompte r of reception , th e representers ' lega l representation ("Admi t m e Chorus") . Thi s shift betwee n third an d first person, between acto r and actors' agent, strikes an important keynot e for the play. In the prologue this Chorus famously advertises the "cipher o f a function" these players will serve in their stagin g of a "great ac-


count," invoking for the first of several times the spectators ' collaborativ e energies; and ye t it is upon ou r "imaginar y forces " that thes e ciphers first beg permission t o "work." The Chorus's exhortations t o participate actively, to "make " and "piece out " an d "work," are balanced by calls "gently to hear " with a more passive "humbl e patience. " Th e audienc e i s tol d "'ti s you r thought s tha t no w must deck our kings"; but i t is also instructed to fill these thoughts with images cued b y the script : "Think, whe n w e talk o f horses, that yo u se e them." By addressing its audience as "gentles all," the Choru s indeed fashions (or recognizes) a socia l clas s largely excluded b y th e wor d "work." 15 Ou r participation i n thi s drama would see m to emphasiz e the conceptua l difficulties o f Eucharistic celebration—in whic h th e performativ e ("Do this" ) conflate s wit h the mnemoni c ("in remembranc e of me"), in which the participant is also the recipient of a performance ("whic h i s given for you") that limits his role. The resultant metadra matic blurrin g of agency and responsibilit y corresponds wit h an d indee d em bodies a recurrent concern in Henry V' s violent acting of history.16 Second, this play' s meditation upo n mediatio n introduce s th e author ofte n elided in Renaissanc e dramatizations o f responsibility. Cutting something of "a crooked figure" himself, "our bendin g author" assumes a position of dramaturgic liability that goes beyond even Prospero's epilogue—with its indirect admission o f "crimes" and it s suddenly solitary and diminishe d "strength." 17 Perhap s only th e epilogu e o f 2 Henry IV —in whic h a speake r desirin g " a goo d con science" can offer simpl y a speech "of mine own making"—prepares us for such a figure. What is the tetralogy's concluding sonnet but a formal example of subjective condensation, a n indication o f the singl e voice that ha s been performe d and appropriate d by so man y others ? And yet the third-perso n "author " of Henry V , like the play's Chorus, becomes elusive when blame is at issue. If in th e epilogue a "rough and all-unable pen" briefly intercedes to lift th e charge of representational "Mangling" from th e actors' heads, the couplet invokes the history of "our stage " as authority for this history play. Like the adumbrated succession of Henry VI, Henry V would seem to be a sequel "whose stat e so many had th e managing" tha t responsibilit y recede s int o indeterminat e plurality . Revealed only t o b e retracte d an d redistributed , th e conception s o f acto r an d autho r glimpsed i n this play inform and reflec t upo n it s modes o f characterization; by understanding these modes metadramatically, we may in turn glimpse a Renaissance conception o f the subject at once enabled an d delimite d b y its theatrical ization. "O GUIL T INDEED " The play's treatment of responsibility has been noticed by several critics. In a sophisticated response to Henry V s rhetoric of violence, Joel Altaian isolates a topical "shame attendant upon performing war and enjoying the performance." Ob-

18o Guilty Creatures

serving the complex emotional transaction s between Shakespeare's martial play and an audience comprising largely nonparticipants in England's Irish wars, Altman explore s the ways in which Henry V "evokes communal ritual and sacrifice , excites violence an d it s release, honors th e sham e consequen t upo n suc h con summation, an d supplie s th e forma l rhythm s tha t accommodat e reconcilia tion."18 Such a reading responds convincingly to the play's daring humiliation of its stay-at-hom e participant s an d patron s (i f no t type s o f Canterbury' s "laz y yawning drone" [1.2.204] > then at least fingere d b y Macmorris's complaint, "it i s no tim e t o discours e .. .'ti s sham e to stan d still , it is shame, by my hand; an d there i s throats t o b e cut , and work s to b e done , and ther e is h nothing done " [3.2.109-12]). An audienc e s o indicte d wit h th e antitheatricalis t argument for drama's militar y inutility can, by "participating" in the pla y and wit h its hero, partake of a socially and psychologically redemptive communion. But while I am in some agreement with Altman's argument tha t kin g and poem enac t a sacramental reconciliation between heroic past and theatrica l present, limiting con sideration to the theatergoer's "shame" and the play's palliative ritual overlooks aspects of that ritual that themselves provoke the theatrical equivalent of a crisis of conscience . For reasons my own reading must justify, "guilt" serves as an important sup plemental ter m i n th e analysi s o f responsibilit y i n thi s play . If Henr y indee d serves an expiatory function, guilt (rather than shame) would seem to be the object implied by such a function; in the case of Henry an d hi s play, however, the transferability of guilt seems also to offe r les s a cathartic communion than communicable irresolution . When contraste d with the culture of shame, 'guilt' usually indicates an internalization an d individuation o f the public sphere; and this anthropological distinction may be relevant to Henry V' s fascinating exploration of the conflict between public and private consciousness.19 I n my reading, however, guilt originates in a legal category: unlike shame, guilt refers to a specifiable crime (gylt), and to an actual responsibility—subject to trial and punishment — for tha t crime . Literary analysis of a work such as Henry V certainly requires a flexible and figurative conception o f culpability,20 but a dynamic idea of theatrical guilt—of criminal actions requiring responses if not responsibility—illuminates a self-reflexive an d self-critica l play. No discussio n o f guilt can avoi d th e psychological, bu t m y primaril y lega l conceptio n put s th e emphasi s o n con sciousness an d action—a n emphasi s tha t call s fo r analytica l focu s upo n metadrama.21 As a formal syste m that include s but canno t b e exhausted by the level o f psychology, guilt provide s u s with a means o f assessing authorial self hood a s constituted b y expression; and I will suggest that the self-consciousness revealed and enable d by metadrama provides acces s to this guilt in Henry V . "Conscience," in Judith Butler's recent meditation o n Althusser's ghost, "doth make subject s of us all." 22 What Butle r calls "the movemen t o f conscience, " "a turning back on oneself" 23 that constitutes identity , provides a useful model not


only for subject formation in general, but als o for authorial self-conception . Insofar a s guilt designate s objec t relations , focusin g question s o f Who ha s don e What to Whom, it offers an index into the speech-acts by which authors under stand themselves . Whil e th e obviou s generi c venu e fo r suc h exploratio n ha s been lyric, 24 analysis o f conscienc e an d guil t i n Renaissanc e public dram a ca n engage th e effort s o f earl y modern playwright s to understan d thei r ow n rela tively unstable authoria l functions . I n th e complexitie s o f such analysi s lies its value: because we cannot identify in Shakespeare's drama a monovocal authoria l meditation o n th e discursivel y "sinful" (Sonne t 103) , we must instea d conside r how such guilt is conceived and distributed i n the playtext.25 My analytica l emphasi s o n guil t intersect s obliquel y wit h Foucault' s clai m that subjectio n t o punishmen t marke d a ne w conceptio n o f authorshi p tha t went beyon d "mythical , 'sacralized ' an d 'sacralizing ' figures." The intersectio n appears i n th e evidenc e 2 Henry I V provide s tha t Shakespear e is aware of th e possibility of authorial guilt and liability, evidence that concurs with the fact tha t this play' s publicatio n ha s been sai d to mak e him fo r the first time a dramatic author.26 Bu t if adaptable t o the Renaissanc e playwright, Foucault's conceptio n of authorship fail s to accoun t fo r many of the fact s o f the Renaissanc e stage— the od d distribution s o f culpabilit y experience d b y a n author , fo r instance , whose transgressiv e representatives (i n the cas e of Richard II ) migh t bea r a responsibility that he apparently did not. By attending to guilt in Henry V , we find Foucault's idea of the author turning in the mind of a playwright who nevertheless cannot—o r wil l not—make i t correspon d t o th e functio n h e serves . This conscious incongruity does not fit the epistemic pattern Foucault has left us ; for it is not the work of a protoauthor, but instea d the meditation o f a sometime author who has professionally outmoded himself . With a self-consciousness that reveals the limitations of Foucault's model, Henry V meditates an authorial guilt at once conceptually available and practically impossible . I therefore wish to avoid subscribing to the standard Foucaultia n account of an all or nothing authoria l selfhood passivel y determined by the presence or absence of individualized responsibility. In my reading, Henry V dramatizes a hollowing out o f the author functio n i n an increasingly corporate theater ; but th e crucial complicating element lies in the self-consciousness of this dramatization . This self-consciousnes s presumes a n authoria l self , eve n if that sel f canno t b e constituted o n stage and page; and th e very status of that incapacity , that "can not," i s one o f consciou s expressio n rathe r tha n inescapabl e condition . Shakespeare's experience of his own incorporation i n this play originates in a conception of the self not simpl y erased or made incoherent by its distribution—a sel f understanding it s plac e o n a n historicall y situate d stage . Suc h understandin g does no t offe r a n autonomou s vantag e on literar y history, but th e capacit y t o imagine an individua l responsibility an d selfhoo d n o longe r appropriat e t o o r possible on his stage indicates an awareness (liberating as well as complicating)


of the synapse between selfhood and artistic production. 27 Coextensiv e with its practical impossibility , the conceptual availabilit y of authorial selfhood enable s Shakespeare bot h t o identif y th e historica l developmen t o f his theate r an d t o participate in it. We might locate this conceptual availability in the formal function Duke Theseus ascribes to the epilogue: No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse . Never excuse; for when th e player s are all dead there nee d non e t o be blamed. Marry, if he that wri t i t had playe d Pyramu s an d hange d himsel f in Thisbe's garte r it would hav e been a fine tragedy; and s o it is , truly, and ver y notably dis charged. But come, your bergamask. Let your epilogue alone. (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5.1.340-45) Appearing ironically just one scen e before th e pleas of Robin Goodfellow's epilogue, Theseus's charitable release from dramati c responsibility records fissures that have opened wide by Henry V . "For when the players are all dead there need none t o b e blamed" : Wh y doe s thi s restricte d accountabilit y spil l ove r fro m character to actor? 28 Why does the duke's syntax allow a darker double meanin g (not only "when al l the players are dead no one deserves blame," but als o "when the player s are al l dead n o on e i s lacking for blame")? And why does the duk e himself seem unsatisfied with restricting responsibility to the players, in the next sentence fantasizin g about the author's suicida l self-censorship? The duke's no tion of poetic justice includes not onl y the actor tha t concern s Angelo but als o the individua l responsibl e fo r tha t actor' s word s an d actions . O f cours e th e comic form o f A Midsummer Night's Dream largely conceals such tensions; th e concluding admission of the play's need for excuse appears resolutely playful. By contrast Henry V ends with an epilogue that dwells upon the players' guilty survival o f thei r roles—an d upo n th e autho r responsibl e fo r roughl y confinin g mighty me n i n littl e room . Th e rud e mechanicals ' materializatio n a s Shakespeare's compan y i n th e late r pla y has adde d bot h pressur e and poin t t o th e questions raise d by the duke' s license . In their amplifie d insistence, these questions in Henry V reveal Shakespeare's shifting conception of his author function. Henry V reveals a fascinating moment o f incapacitation i n the acknowledg ment o f authorial guilt. Whereas earlier plays such as 2 Henry I V an d late r plays such as The Tempest present almost irresistible figures of such acknowledgment , Henry V —considered b y man y th e Globe' s inaugura l play—present s a figure who renders conspicuous the lack of authorial owning up. Though we should resist the desire to induce from thi s aspect of Henry's characte r a simple and tidily correspondent narrativ e o f hi s author' s career , the king' s dram a o f disowne d guilt speaks importantly fo r the drama of a poet writing for "this wooden O " in 1599. That poet's drama involves the recognition that h e is, in a sense, no longer a poet—no longer an author conventionall y responsible for his words, because


in the enactment of public theater these words are no longer his. But neither d o these words absolve , instead predicatin g themselves on the subjec t Henry V refuses t o provide. The guilt self-consciously meditated in the play, then, interrogates the subject and objec t of poetic self-consciousness. "CAPITAL DEMANDS " That the king functions as something less than Altman's "sacramental Harr y as savior"29 appears in his refusal of Williams's direc t and indirec t requests that he serve in that role. Responsibility for those who "die in many irreconciled iniqui ties" is exactly what Harry abjures (4.1.143-4). Responding to Henry's charg e of "abuse" fo r a quarrel mediate d b y disguise and proxy , Williams offer s counter prosecution: Your Majesty came not like yourself. You appear'd to me but as a common man; witnes s th e night , you r garments , you r lowliness ; an d wha t you r Highness suffer'd unde r that shape, I beseech you take it for your own faul t and not mine . (4.8.50-4) If, as Altman suggests, Henry's "suffer[ing]" under the guis e of condescension is supposed to remind u s of the Passion, it does so as a suspiciously studied pose. 30 No fault is possessed in this scene, as no sin is expiated in the earlier condemnation o f Cambridge, Grey, and Scrope—whos e plot a n un-atonin g Henry liken s to "anothe r fal l o f man " (2.2.139) . The kin g instea d feebl y attempt s t o bu y off Williams's resentmen t with what might (a s stage property) very well be the same "few ligh t crowns" taken from th e doomed traitors whose "faults ar e open" but not redeeme d in 2.2. Iconographically, at least, the "visual palimpsest o f Gethsemane"31 the play seems to offe r als o bears traces of counterfeit and alchemy: the "gilt" dubiousl y ascribe d a s the traitors ' motive 32 remain s curren t i n Henry' s postwar consolidation o f power. As in this emergent empire, so on the stag e is gold an equal opportunity signifier.33 Th e sam e meta l tha t represent s "golde n earnest " o f th e king' s deat h (2.2.169) appears in his "intertissued robe of gold" (4.1.262), in his "heart of gold" (4.1.44), and perhap s i n Bardolph's pilfered "pax" (o r "pyx"? 3.6.40)—that fatal emblem o f the play' s ambiguou s sacrific e o r portabl e sacrament. 34 Suc h ambi guity and portabilit y defin e th e stage property an d characteriz e more generally the circulating capital of theater. When al l crowns are by these terms "counter feit" (1 Henry IV , 5.1.35) , however, theatrical capita l come s at th e cos t o f thos e signs by which selfhood is performed: the "title runnin g 'for e th e King, " for in stance, becomes "farced" (4.1.263) when we "force a play" (2.Chorus.32); the malleable king figures himself as susceptible to being "coined .. . int o gold" (2.2.95). Henry V' s punning equivocation o f "guilt" and "gilt" (2.Chorus.26), then, repro-


duces a traditional antitheatrica l charg e leveled at the ambiguou s representa tions an d mysteriou s econom y o f th e stage . Producin g nothin g substantiall y real, how can the theater ear n rea l money without transgression? How too can that strange category stage property be reconciled with Renaissance conceptions of private ownership and th e lega l responsibility attending that ownership ? By inheritance and his own precedent, Harry enters the last play of the tetralogy utterly converted t o suc h problematic theatrica l capital, so that hi s claim o f "uncoined constancy " (5.2.149 ) i n th e wooin g o f Kat e resounds with what ha s in stead been the recurren t question o f his currency. This conversion commence d with what the prince announced as "my reformation," a complex process involving both th e resumptio n o f a depose d selfhoo d ("whe n h e pleas e again to b e himself" [1 Henry IV , 1.2.200] ) an d a n interpose d performativ e "foil" that will render tha t sel f "like bright metal " whose "glitt'ring o'e r m y fault / Shal l show more goodly" (212-3) . Henry V evokes Reformation controversy and commutes this controversy to its own plot and king, thereby confronting the audience with metatheatrical versions of theological questions. With its syncretic presentation of a medieval theology in which "miracles are ceased" (1.1.68) and its opening discussion of the "stripfping]" of church lands (1.1.11—2i), 35 the play resumes an earlier interest hardly effaced b y writing Sir John Falstaff ove r the Lollar d Oldcastle i n 1 Henry IV . I f we read th e discussion of the Sequestration Bill in the first scene as an allusion to the Reformation, then th e bishops' strategy of legitimizing and financing Henry's war appears an effort t o export this radical social change. Coextensively, the bishops identify Henry's own conversion as a microcosmic Reformation: Yea, at that very moment Consideration like an angel came And whipped th'offending Adam out o f him, Leaving his body as a paradise T'envelop and contain celestia l spirits. Never was such a sudden schola r made; Never came reformation in a flood With such a heady currance scouring faults. (1.1.28-35) Such an identificatio n merge s neatl y wit h the king' s own self-presentationa l strategy, designed to sugges t an interio r grac e and electio n that redeem s a former paucity of demonstrable works. Politically, this reformation seeks to replace his father's "soil of achievement" with a crown that "falls upon [Harry ] in a more fairer sort" (2 Henry IV, 4.5.189, 200). If these are the coordinate s o f Hal's refor mation int o Kin g Henry , however , the y intersec t wit h a continue d nee d fo r works that motivate s th e dynasti c actio n o f Henry V . As I discuss later, this ir -


resolution reveal s the conceptual difficult y encountere d by a culture whose traditional mean s of representing and atonin g guilt had been taken away with th e Reformation; an d i t is an irresolution Henry V explores not onl y through char acter, but also through questions of authorship. This difficulty appears most obviously in Henry , however, whose reformatio n threaten s t o dissolv e as the ide a of the subject that i s its premise disintegrates. To the bishops, the success of Harry's reformation is a mystery (though not a miracle), since they have never noted i n him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity. (Henry V , 1.1.33, 57-9) In th e previou s tw o plays , however, we hav e see n th e semioti c difficult y wit h which Ha l struggle s to "b e mor e myself" (1 Henry IV , 3.2.92-93) , a s if the self consciousness of his advertised reformation has contaminated with theatricalit y both sel f an d it s contextua l presentation . Hal' s promis e t o b e "more" himself suggests tha t tha t sel f i s quantifiable capital, responsiv e t o th e economie s o f a stage that will ask more of him i n the course of the tetralogy. And this self cannot be adjusted without exchanges that remind us of these economies. A "precedent" appears i n th e prince' s abus e of Franci s (1 Henry IV , 2.4.31) , the drawe r who anticipate s Hotspur , Hal' s "factor " (1 Henry IV , 3.2.147) . Humorous an d heroic princ e both requir e a distributed agency , a co-cast, t o mak e themselves up. By the tim e hi s father's death i s imminent, thi s contextuall y manufactured self has made the credibl e expression of inwardness impossible fo r Hal: PRINCE: Wha t wouldst tho u think of me if I should weep? POINS: I would think thee a most princely hypocrite. PRINCE: I t would be every man's thought, and thou art a blessed fellow to think a s every man thinks . Never a man's though t in the worl d keeps the road-way better tha n thine : ever y man woul d thin k m e an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to think so? POINS: Why , because you have been so lewd and so much engraff d to Falstaff . (2 Henry IV , 2.2.51-63 ) Sarcasm aside, the dialogue records an early but lastin g consequence of Henry's reformation: the self is the sum of the parts it has played, authenticity engrafted to th e hypokrisis o f its construction, th e body cut fro m other s onl y by the un sustainable violence of vivisection. Shortly after this exchange, the prince may finally convinc e hi s dyin g fathe r tha t hi s abscondin g wit h th e crow n wa s onl y pious practice, but a less placable skepticism has been roused i n the theatergoe r


Poins briefly represents. We have seen the prince in such grainy close-up that i n the nex t pla y the Chorus' s attempt s t o "digest / Th ' abuse o f distance" (2.Cho rus.3i-32) remin d u s al l the mor e tha t this self-crowne d king can exis t for us only as an actor. And i t i s precisely a s a ma n o f th e theater—" a gentlema n o f a company " (4.1.39) whos e double d socia l positio n Shakespear e migh t wel l appreciate 36— that Henr y confront s the self' s incapacitatio n b y the stage' s "capital demand. " That deman d i s fo r violen t action s performe d fo r publi c consumptio n an d through public participation; an d that incapacity concerns the individual experience of guilt and responsibility—an experienc e demanded by the dramatic action but professionall y impossible fo r the king, his actor, his playwright. The trajectory of Henry's "politics o f non-responsibility" 37 follow s th e coor dinates of his self-reformation. From his first killing (Hotspur, whose death th e prince allow s Falstaf f t o ow n i n " a lie" Hal "gild[s]" t o d o hi s frien d "grace " (1 Henry IV , 5.4.157-58) , Henry' s agenc y becomes correspondingl y elusiv e on a n increasingly publi c stage . I n Henry V , th e burde n o f an y "guiltless drops " of blood she d in France is placed on the "conscience" of the bishops who—in th e king's language—"incite us " to action, "impawn ou r person," "awake our sleep ing sword o f war" (1.2.25, 31, 20, 21, 22).38 Canterbury's response , "The si n upo n my head , drea d sovereign! " (1.2.97) , soo n become s the desire d antipho n to Henry's foreign policy. "On your head," threatens Exeter as he puts the ball in the French court, will rest the widows' tears, the orphans' cries , The dead men' s blood, the privy maidens' groans , For husbands, fathers , and betrothed lovers , That shall be swallowed in this controversy. (2.4.105-8) Henry himsel f wil l achiev e Harfleu r bloodlessl y b y representin g a n amplified version of such a scene, performed by a soldier "with conscienc e wide as hell," to citizens whose self-defense would exculpate the king: "What is't to me, when you yourselves ar e caus e ...? " (3.3.43) . Henry' s strateg y i n thi s scen e involve s th e threat of an agency for which he will not be responsible ("While s yet my soldiers are in my command" [3.3.24]) , and a logic whereby the resistan t French would be "guilty in defense, [and] thus destroyed" (3.3.43).39 The sabe r rattlin g i n conditiona l futurit y outsid e Harfleu r ("Th e gate s o f mercy shall be al l shut up " [3.3.10] ) i s that edg e on whic h Cambridge , Scroop , and Gre y have already been made to fall : The mercy that was quick in us but late , By your own counsel is suppress'd an d kill'd . (2.2.79-80)


Ideally this sword lies in the hands of its victims—or operates through an agency so diffuse, a causality so mysterious, that it decides Nym's subjunctive teleology: I canno t tell ; things mus t b e a s they may . Men ma y sleep, and the y may have their throats about them at that time, and some say knives have edges. It must be as it may; though patienc e be a tir'd mare , yet she will plod— there must be conclusions—well, I cannot tell. (2.1.20-25) Thus this history pla y present s no scene s o f man-to-man morta l combat, and when deat h i s attributable t o a hand othe r tha n Henry' s "Go d o f battles" an d deity of treason's discovery , we are met with narrative blurring. Shortly after Henry' s command tha t "every soldier kill his prisoners" (4.6.37), for instance , Gower retells the episod e by trying to cas t the Frenc h as the final cause of their own destruction, Henry merely as an efficien t caus e of justice: 'Tis certai n there' s no t a boy lef t alive , and th e cowardl y rascals that ra n from th e battle ha' done this slaughter. Besides, they have burn'd an d carried away all that was in the King's tent; wherefore the King, most worthily, hath caus'd every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat . (4.7.5-10)40 When Fluellen's figuring compares Henry with the amicidal Alexander, reminding us of the hostess's charg e that "the Kin g has kill'd [Falstaff's ] heart" (2.1.88), Gower similarly opens a space where responsibility can evaporate: "Our Kin g is not lik e him i n that; he never kill'd an y of his friends" (47.4o-41).41 The space between affairs o f the heart and a violence for which only he can be responsibl e becomes perilousl y close again in Henry's tete-a-tet e with Katherine , where his "capital demand" coerces merc y wit h a threat o f cruelty (5.2.96, 202, 203). But even here authorial agency is distributed to representatives who have "free power " to alter the text of settlement, to Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms bes t Shall see advantageable for our dignity , Any thing in or out of our demands .. . (5.2.86, 87-89) And thoug h Katherin e is never offered assuranc e that sh e shall no t di e fo r his love, Henry's invitation to "let thin e eye be thy cook" (5.2.148-49), like his dialogic venture in French, seems calculated as a prenuptial agreement for collaboration. B y enjoinin g Burgund y t o "teac h you r cousi n t o consen t winking " (5.2.281-82), Henry echoes the Chorus' s repeate d cal l for our connivance . As a final "capital demand, " Kate' s valu e t o Henry—lik e ou r valu e t o th e play —


would seem to lie largely in the establishmen t o f a credibility that als o involves complicity. In the absence of an authentes (an author, a murderer), Kate cannot be won without winking.42 Psychologically, thi s syndrom e o f displacemen t make s sens e i n a characte r whose father has counseled his own scapegoating as a means to his son's legitimacy: God knows, my son, By what by-paths and indirec t crook'd ways I met this crown.... To thee it shall descend with better quiet , Better opinion, better confirmation, For all the soil of the achievement goes With me into the earth.... All these bold fear s Thou seest with peril I have answered; For all my reign hath been but a s a scene Acting that argument. And now my death Changes the mood, for what in me was purchas'd Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort . (2 Henry I V, 4.5.183-85,187-90,195-200 ) In his second and final soliloquy as king, Henry's thus becomes the difficult tas k of presenting himself as elect through generationa l purgation: Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upo n the faul t My father mad e in compassing the crown! I Richard's body have interred new, And on it have bestowed more contrite tears, Than fro m i t issued force d drop s of blood. (Henry V , 4.1.292—97)43 But the terms of the king's subcontracted contrition—the wor k of one thousand "hands" hired "to pardo n blood " shed by another (4.1.299 , 3O0) 44—urge u s to read psychodrama as metadrama. For his contrition, nullified by past succession and presen t success , echoes a prologue that i n turn present s the play as an im perfect past : More will I do; Though al l that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all , Imploring pardon . (4.1.302-5)


But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar'd On this unworthy scaffold t o bring fort h So great an object... . O, pardon! .. . Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand part s divide one man. (1.Prologue.8-11, 15, 23-24) In a private moment Henr y may conclude that hi s epilogue-like strategy of repenting "afte r all " "is nothin g worth, " bu t h e doe s no t see m t o spea k fo r th e economy of public drama. A chantry for a stage! And collaborative hands to distribute responsibilit y from a few actors and th e "one man " who has prescribed their actions! If Henry IV's "crooked ways" hang darkly over both his son and his "bending author, " Henry V seems also to presen t a means fo r spreading about "the soil of achievement." In our work, it would seem, lies the playwright's grace; "after all, " it affords hi m an opportunity t o succeed himself and the past. "OUR OUTWAR D CONSCIENCES " And what's past, it might seem, is prologue, for a much more explicit authoria l hoc est corpus meum has already issued from thi s stage: Be it known t o you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the en d o f a displeasing play , t o pra y your patienc e fo r i t an d t o promis e yo u a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this, which i f like an ill venture it come un luckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promis'd you I would be, and her e I commit m y body t o your mercies . Bate me some , and I will pay you some, and (a s most debtor s do) promise you infinitely . (2 Henry IV , Epilogue , 7-16 ) Here, however, we must pause to recognize the different model s of dramatic production that distinguish 2 Henry IV's epilogue from Henry V' s prologue. The former addresses the audience as speculative investors, promising a mercantile product (or a sacrificial, bankrupt body) in return for the credit of silent partners; the latter requires the stockholder to play an active part in generating interest on his own dividends. Like the commitment t o "continue the story with Sir John in it" (2 Henry IV , epilogue , 27-28), authoria l debt seem s to hav e evaporated i n th e "great account" of Henry V . The former play concludes with a promise o f futur e profit, the latter with reference to payments already received in the first tetralogy. In an astoundin g sleight o f hand, 2 Henry IV' s epilogue' s promise o f "a better" play in the futur e i s succeeded by Henry V' s epilogue locating redemptive value ("for thei r sake") in what the stage has already shown. Where 2 Henry IV presents


a solitary "body" as vulnerably responsible to the play's customers, Henry V converts our dissatisfaction into participation, our investment into production, ou r violence int o th e responsibility o f ownership. If 2 Henry I V conclude s with a n image of the playwright as belated Orpheus, a lyric voice surrounded b y the encroaching pressures o f public drama,45 Henry V opens with an invitation to join playwright and actor in the maenadic division o f self. New art responds to a new market while shaping a new politics: the individual "venture" of 2 Henry IV has become collective in Henry V , its author "impawn [ed]" to a project we have "free power" to "augment, o r alter" as we share in its acquisition of empire. An especially significant contrast to this collaborative "free power" has appeared in the vague prediction o f a dramatically imposed deat h fo r Falstaff with which 2 Henry I V concludes : —unless already a be killed with your hard opinions . For Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man . (2 Henry IV , Epilogue, 26-27) Both lines of this disclaimer—the first acknowledging the killing power of a theatergoer's interpretation , th e secon d penitentl y closin g off a possibility for tha t interpretation—work t o inverted effec t i n Henry V' s prologue. In this prologue, the distinction between actor and historical personage (these "flat unraised spirits" are not th e men who affrighte d "th e ai r at Agincourt") is first admitted as a failure i n need of pardon. Eagerl y enlisting the spectators' "imaginary forces" to "deck ou r kings " (Henry V.Prologue.28) , however, the prologue' s concer n with pardon evaporate s a s we assume responsibility fo r what we see and make . But if Henry V redefines the economy of its predecessor, and if this new economy frees player and dramatist fro m responsibility much as it frees the king, it also renders the individual experience of guilt unavailable to its participants. Henry's "five hundre d poor, " who lik e s o man y groundling s i n th e ne w Glob e "thei r wither'd hand s hold up / Toward heaven," suggest a mediation a t once desirable and unsatisfying—desirabl e becaus e i t i s throug h suc h charitabl e "work " (3.Chorus.25) tha t performance s are eked out a s imaginative success, unsatisfy ing because it can leave the self a cipher of a function. Henry's attempt to absolve himself by works—impossible bot h because he disclaims th e faul t a s another's act, and because his penitence is also performed by others—represents the imaginative problem of reforming guilt, a problem crystallize d on a public stage where actions canno t constitut e th e sel f and where a thousand part s cannot represen t one man. 46 Theatrica l incorporatio n require s authorial dissolution , an d i n th e negotiation o f this corporate drama Shakespeare seems keenly aware that private responsibility for one's words and actions has become as structurally impossible as privat e ownership . Freedo m fro m culpabilit y require s a relinquishmen t o f theatrical existence (ago ergo sum), its epitaph a co-owned sonne t i n which th e third-person sel f appears discursively "unable." We find the fullest exploration of


this incapacity in a dialogue between "a gentleman of a company" and a man th e Folio calls "Will."47 "Man," Ulysses has claimed in chapter 3, "how dearl y ever parted" "feels no t what he owes but b y reflection" (Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.96,99). Before the battle of Agincourt, Henry has similarly realized the constitutive forc e o f the theater' s epistemology—through whic h th e enem y becomes "ou r outwar d consciences " (4.1.8), the mirror necessary to fee l what we "owe." If we are briefly surprised by the king's subsequent announcement—"I and my bosom must debate a while, / And then I would no other company" (4.1.31-32)—the serie s of intrusions in the next scen e postpones that sequestratio n fo r which the pla y has done so little to prepare us. The debate with Williams, however, does enable Henry to "speak my conscience o f the King " (4.1.118-19) i n a n exteriorize d agon mos t reader s find unsatisfying, logicall y evasive, and analogicall y spurious. 48 What ha s not bee n sufficiently considered , however, is the reflexiv e functio n of this scene in a play that has complicated the authorial owning of actions. We are not surprise d to find Harry le Roy displacing accountability from the king's "cause" (4.1.127) onto the "guilt" of the soldiers who perform it; intentionality bleeds from autho r t o the errant actor who 'executes himself a s Bardolph and the traitors have done: The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father o f his son, nor th e master o f his servant; for they purpose not thei r death when they propose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers . Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and contriv'd murther... some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gor'd the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. (4.1.155-66) Henry's fashioning of war as God's vengeful "beadle" (4.1.169) similarly reminds us of his strategy for deifying agency: "O God, thy arm was here; / And not to us, but to thy arm alone, / Ascribe we all!" (4.8.106-8). Bu t the mirror Williams holds up to Henry elicits a disavowal of authorship tha t does more than render problematic the king's logic; it also challenges with consequence the logic of a play in which knives have many edges but fe w responsible hands: WILL: Bu t if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs, and arms , and heads , chopp'd of f in a battle, shall join together at the latte r day and cr y all, "We died a t suc h a place." ... I am afear d ther e ar e few die well that di e in battle; for how can they charitably dispose o f any thing, when blood i s their argument?... K. HEN: So , if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfull y miscarry upo n th e sea , the imputatio n o f hi s wickedness , by your rule ,


should be imposed upon his father tha t sent him; or if a servant, under his master's comman d transportin g a su m o f money , be assail' d b y robber s and di e i n man y irreconcil' d iniquities , you ma y cal l the busines s o f th e master the author of the servant's damnation . But this is not so. (4.1.134-38,141-43,147-55) In Williams's eschatological vision, history speaks, its violated objects of representation returning as thousand-parted me n in search of the author Henry V refuses to provide. In this metatheatrical debate, Will's challenge to the conscience of "a gentleman o f a company" concludes with the latter' s substitutio n o f "business " for "author." That this conclusion i s unresolved appears a few scenes later, where Williams refuses th e gilt of Henry's hush money. The dramatic terms of this ongoing debate , i n fact , woul d characteriz e well into the seventeent h centur y the theorization o f politica l contract s an d covenants . I n Leviathan, fo r instance , Hobbes considers the complication of responsibility by political contracts through the problem o f adjudicating between the accountabilit y of authors and actors. 49 The business of distributing agency may require "every subject's duty" (4.1.176— 77) toward the enterprise of theater; but it s consequences for the authorial self — the "Will" of the Sonnets—appear in Henry's dejected soliloquy on "Ceremony," where envy of "private men " and thei r "profitable labor" mourns the absence of the public man's "soul of adoration" (4.1.237 , 277, 245). The mourning of a former self, and a meditation upo n guil t unresolve d because of the passing of that self , are the authoria l concerns that find mediation i n Henry V —even as that medi ation distribute s autho r an d hi s actors across England' s empire. Responsibility and th e possibility o f guilt, I have argued, represent for Shakespeare an impor tant an d disappearin g conception o f artistic creation, ownership , and existenc e in this play; and ascribin g the terms o f Henry V' s fascination with distributable guilt to specific historical events outside the theater risks under-appreciating the specifically theatrical nature of this fascination. That th e Englan d imagined for this play's reception expects the return from Ireland of "the general of our gracious Empress" (5.Chorus.3o), however, points to an important correspondence between metatheater and history. For like this Caesarean general, the author of Henry Vhas the mobilizing power to call citizens from "the peaceful city" into the action of war: For who i s he, whose chin is but enrich' d With on e appearing hair, that will not follo w These cull'd and choice-drawn cavalier s to France? (3.Chorus.22-24) And lik e this general , our autho r imagine s himself an d hi s company a s in th e service of an empire for the expansion of which every participant is responsible. That Essex's commissioned cause , "England's Vietnam," 50 also sheds blood tha t

Guilt and th e Constitution o f Authorship 19 3

cries for pardon find s consciousnes s i n Henry V . But for the problem o f pardon this suddenly immobilizing play finds no self-satisfyin g solution , for it finally can present no self to satisfy. Instead the playwright offers u s a character whose ethical evaluation is rendered both important an d impossible by the fusion of authorship and history . Tha t character , Shakespeare' s Henry , articulate s th e unanswere d questions confrontin g his author, Henry's Shakespeare , as he engages a histor y tremblingly literary. 2 Henry I V concludes with the promise of Falstaff's futur e stag e life and possibl e death. Th e qualification s that follo w provid e a fascinating exampl e o f the cate gorically different ye t imaginatively associated levels of violence we have considered in this study : —unless already a be killed with your hard opinions. For Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not th e man . (2 Henry IV , epilogue , 26-27 ) This concluding "For" seems to strain between ethics and logic. In what appears at first a conventionally solicitou s defense of a character from fata l reception, we read an interjecte d defense o f the play from litigabl e topicality and defamation : Any resemblance betwee n th e characte r depicte d her e an d a real person i s entirely coincidental . Bu t of cours e thi s "For" turn s o n a very strong conceptua l link betwee n th e spectators ' censurin g gaze , capabl e o f interpretivel y killin g characters with "hard opinions," and the theater's representationa l power to harm real people, eve n (o r perhap s especially) those alread y dead. I n thi s disclaimer , we detect th e liability for defamation—for injurious words directed at real persons—meditated a t onl y a sligh t remov e i n Skelton' s prais e o f Jane , Spenser's treatment of Serena, the dramatists' representation of Sawyer. The disclaimer itself makes two interesting and now familiarly problematic claims—tha t Oldcastle' s manner o f dyin g lacke d soteriologica l ambiguity , an d tha t "this " (character , actor) "is not the man" (that martyr just confirmed as such from th e stage). Can such testimony b e trusted? The simple answe r is no; the theater's epistemolog y always invite s skepticism , an d declarin g a martyr fro m th e stag e does nothin g but dra w scrutiny to the theatricality of dying. But we can now propose a more complex form o f this negative answer, one directed not onl y at the phrase, "Old castle died a martyr," but als o a t the denial, "this is not th e man. " This denial is complicated, i f not subverted , by the epilogue' s investmen t o f "this" with Old castle's mortalit y and vulnerabilit y t o criticism ; the sam e "hard opinions " tha t threaten t o kil l Falstaf f rende r hi m Oldcastle . Havin g acknowledge d th e audi ence's power t o kill the fictional Falstaff into a real and therefor e legally fraught identity, the epilogue's declaration "this is not the man" cannot constitut e a performative speech-act or promise. The phrase merely registers a plea to those who see the play as they dislike it to content themselve s with an identity other than the


one that has presented itself to them. To state defensively in epilogue that Falstaf f is not Oldcastle is to admit that he has been and—despite all efforts at postscriptive containment—that h e may be. On the stage, such exculpatory gestures hang upon their untruths. All actors are in a sense labeled "this is not th e man." But this label depends i n part upo n the contradictor y claim of Renaissance dramatic representation: "this ;s (if only for a short while ) the man. " As we have seen, nondramatic literar y forms enjo y no absolutely innocuous an d convincin g generic perch from whic h to deny that the representational "this" is "the man" or "the woman." Skelton's uncomfortable and fascinatin g discovery is that hi s Jan e Scrope canno t b e disassociate d fro m the rea l person with that name . I f Spenser's Seren a is on on e level not Throck morton, then on another importan t level she is. But in the elegies to which I now turn the stage appears as especially antagonistic to a desired poetic defensibility. To distinguish "the man " fro m a "this" vulnerable t o representatio n an d inter pretation i s the wis h of both these antitheatrical elegies . By shunning the stag e and seekin g an epideicti c worl d elsewhere , both author s see k to preserv e their poetic subjects from th e public crime admitted i n 2 Henry IV's denial vain. In so doing, these poets attempt to preserve for themselves the idea of the responsible , individual author—independen t o f the contingencie s of theater—that w e have seen elegized in Henry V . "A Funera l Elegy e I n memor y o f th e lat e vertuou s Maiste r WILLIA M PEETER" (1612)—ascribed to on e "W. S." in it s two survivin g manuscripts 51— continues to raise attributional controversy; but the poem winds its way into the Shakespearean cano n o n th e strengt h o f detailed an d persuasiv e bibliographic research.52 My purpose in including A Funeral Elegy here, however, is not to engage the questio n o f its authorship ( I tacitly and rathe r imperturbably treat W. S. as William Shakespeare), but to consider how the poem's explicit antitheatricalis m might relat e to m y earlier analysis of the killin g dramatized i n Julius Caesar. If read a s Shakespearean, A Funeral Elegy offer s importan t evidenc e by which t o reevaluate th e dramatist' s attitude—lat e i n hi s career—towar d th e theate r o f fatal misconstruction brazenl y inaugurated in 1599. But I think that i n this later poem th e elegist' s conception o f the theate r confirms , rather tha n qualifies , th e claims for Shakespeare's dramatic reflections i n chapter 3. The second elegy, Milton's The Passion (1630?), affords similar opportunities for retrospective analysis. Printed twice, in Milton's 1645 and 167 3 volumes of Poems, The Passion bears a more complex chronological relation to Samson Agonistes than does A Funeral Elegy t o Shakespeare' s earlier drama . Bu t i n hi s self-conscious and finally self-critical attemp t t o elegiz e Christ i n a theatricalized representa tion of His death, Milton tempt s himself with a spectacular appropriatio n o f the divine. The antitheatrical conscienc e with which The Passion seems to censor itself can offe r a n importan t coordinat e t o Milton' s 167 1 volume—in whic h Paradise Regained avoid s th e representatio n o f Christ' s deat h altogether , an d i n whic h


Samson Agonistes challenge s the spectator' s expectations fo r a dramatic dying . My readings o f both poem s ar e heavily indebted to , at times reiterativ e of , the two scholars I frequently cite, Richard Abrams and R . Paul Yoder. My purpose is to connect many of their observations with the larger claims of this study. Like W. S.'s elegy, Milton's present s the epistemolog y of the theater as a commemorative mod e a t once attractive and ethicall y problematic. A Funeral Elegy suggests that public display can victimize the dead man by exposing him to a misconstructive an d predator y spectatorship ver y like that figure d i n Julius Caesar; The Passion metadramatically reveals in its aborted encomium the arrogan t error of portraying Christ's action s in a "mask" of one's own imagining. Both of these elegies have invited the charge of artistic shortfall. Even the strongest proponen t of Shakespeare's authorship of A Funeral Elegy admit s i t is not "a n aesthetically satisfying poem," 53 an d this disappointment continue s to provide opponents of a Shakespearean attribution with stout ammunition. Th e Passion has been called Milton's "on e obviou s failure, " somethin g o f a surpris e fro m a poe t wh o wa s "deeply interested in the structure and symbolism of funeral elegies, and had been practising since adolescence on ever y fresh corps e in sight , from th e universit y beadle to the fai r infan t dying of a cough."54 Even more surprising, coming fro m Milton, is the fac t tha t this elegy advertises itsel f a s a failure an d a fragment— appearing in print twice in his lifetime with the author's own apology as a thirdperson endnote: "This subject th e author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left i t unfinished',' 55 I n th e short readings that follow, neither poem is meant to satisfy by the theatrical conventions it invokes. As we have seen in our analysi s of Samson Agonistes, a dramatization of death that criticizes and finally subverts theatrical expectations can produce critical dissatisfaction (witness Johnson's complaint abou t the play's wanting middle). A Funeral Elegy wil l no t see m Shakespearea n unti l w e acknowledg e Shakespeare's ambivalence—in his drama—toward hi s workplace, until we allow that the antitheatrical resolution of his elegy rejects the same killing power exercised in Julius Caesar. The Passion will not appea r the crucial poem it is in Milton's development until we recognize that in it the poet rejects an art he had been practicing since adolescence—the habit of making a spectacle of other people's deaths. If neither elegy satisfies, the explanation is that the theatrical conventions of the genre can satisfy neithe r author . W. S.' s "TEX T O F MALICE" A Funeral Elegy mourn s a murder victim . On 2 5 January 1612, the relativel y obscure life of William Pete r was cut short by sword-play.56 Perhaps the murderer, Edward Dre w o f Killerton , too k som e relis h i n literalizin g a hometow n pun . Judging from th e elegy's dedication to Peter's brother John , however, W. S. takes no such pleasure in the unwonted genr e thrust upon hi m by William's death :


Exercise i n thi s kind I will little affect, an d a m les s addicted to , but ther e must be miracle in that labor which, to witness m y remembrance to this departed gentleman, I would not willingl y undergo. In the poe m tha t follows , the comparativ e implicatio n o f "less addicted to " becomes increasingly clear. W. S.'s true addiction, as the following occupatio suggests, is to a more explicitly dramatic "kind": But that I not inten d i n full discours e To progress out hi s life, I could display A good man in each part exac t and forc e The common voice to warrant what I say. (lines 79-82) Richard Abrams' s attentio n to th e playhous e languag e i n thes e lines i s illuminating: "Whe n 'part ' is read a s 'role,' the whol e passage reads a s the boas t o f a professional poet vaunting his ability to enforce vocal approbation in the public theater."57 O f course the lin e between conventiona l funera l oratio n an d publi c theater coul d b e a s blurry in Renaissanc e England as it was in Antony's Rome . But A Funeral Elegy resist s such spectacula r betrayal—though genericall y congenial to th e autho r an d conventionall y expecte d by the audienc e he imagines for hi s poem—because W. S. conceives both theatrical "display" and it s ratifyin g "common voice " as accomplices to the murder he mourns . In a momen t w e conside r wh y th e autho r o f A Funeral Elegy should , a s Abrams claims, "connect imaginatio n with the violence that ended Peter's life." 58 But first note, as does Abrams, how this connection results in an almost Jonsonian antagonism between the potential hypocrisy and abuse of theater and an elegiac plain styl e similar to the rhetori c praised i n Peter—who i s said to have spoken "in tongu e mos t plain " as one who "never wa s addicted t o the vain / O f boast , such a s th e commo n breat h affords " (line s 325-28) . I n contras t t o th e "gla d sleights," "fond conceit," "disguise" and "affect [ation]" with which "loose mimics " utter "A n empty sound o f overweening passion" (line s 73, 275-77), W. S. offer s Peter an epitaph o f startlingly "pure simplicity" (lin e 350): But since the su m o f all that ca n be said Can be but sai d that 'He was good'... In life thou liv'dst, in death thou died's t belov'd . (lines 531-32, 578) In contrast to hypocritical playwrights whose "plotting" concern s "which way to be great" through "popular applaus e and power' s commission" (line s 447, 450), W. S. defiantly declares himself unmotivated b y professional interest:


Not hir'd, as heaven can witness in my soul, By vain conceit to please such one s as know it, Not servil e to be lik'd, fre e fro m control , Which, pain t o many men, I do not ow e it. (lines 229-32 ) The elegist's antitheatricalism an d antiprofessionalis m does not com e naturally (we are reminded of his dramatic addiction through imaginative lapses to the same "frailer stage " and roug h magi c that th e poe m attempt s t o abjur e [lin e 127, see also lines 102,115-16]). Rather , W. S.'s attempts to purif y his verse of the theatri cal economy reflec t a desire to imitat e his untheatrical subject , who "never was addicted to" a life of show and boast. At its most rigorous, this mimesis produce s a language that i s unspectacular t o sa y the least—suc h a s when Pete r is praised for a mind of "precious white" and a life of "purity adorn'd / With real merit" (lines 59, 359-6o). The aesthetic and ethic ("Not servil e to be lik'd") of this encomiu m would see m diametricall y oppose d t o th e professiona l modus operand i o f th e author of As You Like It, and critic s such as MacDonald Jackson persuasively distinguish between the playwright, whose metaphorical language "constantly stim ulates ... imagination, " and W. S., who "does not really think in images." 59 We have seen i n chapte r 2 the contaminatio n o f encomiu m b y theater tha t sometimes problematizes th e Renaissanc e poetry of praise; and A Funeral Elegy may point to a neoclassical solution for an age increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of "actions tha t a man migh t play" in "the trappings an d the suits of woe."60 But in the Renaissance texts we have considered, theatricalism figures not only a challenge to sincerity , but als o an ac t of violent publicity . Lik e the mal e speake r of Phyllyp Sparowe, Spenser' s cannibals ma y represen t a poetry o f praise that ha s become hypocritically self-interested; bu t the criticism self-reflexively invited in such cases—as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 103, where he considers the "sinful[ness]" of "mar[ring] the subject"—is less concerned with fictionalized representations per se than with their real victims. W. S.'s turn from the theatrical reveals an effor t to protect Willia m Pete r fro m th e imaginativ e collaboration an d co-ownershi p that render s the subject a public corpse. In chapte r 3 we have seen Shakespeare accept the dramatist' s complicity i n a process by which historical subjects are marred, even killed, by their exposure to the violent misconstructions o f a public spectatorship. In contrast to the vulnerable and repentant speaker of his sonnets, and to Jonson's injured resentment toward the public's misjudgment, Shakespeare the professional playwright conspires with a world tha t prey s upon spectacle : his drama defines hi m no t a s a victim but as an agent of victimization. Such is not th e case, however, for W. S., who—like th e speaker o f Sonne t 112—bear s upo n hi s bro w th e stam p o f som e undisclose d "vulgar scandal" inflicted by "others' voices":


And as much glory is it to be good For private persons, in their private home, As those descended from illustriou s bloo d In public view of greatness, whence they come. Though I, rewarded with some sadder taste Of knowing shame, by feeling it have prov'd My country's thankless misconstruction cas t Upon my name and credit, both unlov'd By some whose fortunes, sunk into the wane Of plenty and desert, have strove to win Justice by wrong, and sifte d t o emban e My reputation with a witless sin. (lines 135-44)61 It would seem that the speaker of A Funeral Elegy is able to sympathize ("by feeling it") with the fat e of those subjected to the "public view" on Shakespeare's stage. A victim of his "country's thankles s misconstruction," W. S. might for once identif y with Cinna the poet, and with other "private persons" dragged blinking from their "private home[s]" into the glare of the Globe. By rejecting the misconstruction by which "the world [is ] accurs'd" ("It picks out matte r to inform the worst" [lines 255-56]), W. S. rejects the mode by which men ar e apprehended in Julius Caesar: The willful blindness that hoodwinks the eyes Of men enwrappe d i n an earthy veil Makes them most ignorantl y exercise And yield to humor when it doth assail, Whereby the candle and the body's light Darkens the inward eyesight of the mind , Presuming still it sees, even in the nigh t Of that sam e ignorance which makes them blind . Hence conster they with corrupt commentaries , Proceeding from a nature as corrupt, The text of malice, which so often varie s As 'tis by seeming reason underpropp'd. O, whither tends the lamentable spit e Of this world's teenful apprehension , Which understands all things amiss, whose light Shines not amids t the dark of their dissension? (lines 257-72) Shakespeare's Globe requires such "imaginary forces," inviting its spectators to see presumptuously: "men ma y construe things after their fashion, / Clean from th e purpose of the things themselves." W. S.'s elegy prevents such "teenful apprehen -


sion" by refusing t o offe r it s subject as an appropriabl e spectacle—by exposing the "willful blindness" and "corrupt commentaries" on which a history play such as Julius Caesar depends for its hoodwinking entertainment. Rather than presenting William Peter as the plaything of interpretation—the "accents yet unknown" of predicted bu t unpredictabl e "ages hence"—W. S. attempts t o sequeste r hi m from th e "loose opinions" and "hidden forgeries " of "defamation's spirit" (lines 405, 417, 416). A Funeral Elegy's studie d linguistic innocence—the "honest care / Of harmles s conversation " (line s 17-18)—can see m vapid : "Fo r h e wa s trul y good" (line 17). But such is the rhetorical logic of a poem that defines itself as an alternative to the image-trafficking o f a nocent stage. The distinction between playwright and elegist is not always so tidy, however. W. S. would avoi d producing a "text o f malice" by refraining from th e tempta tion to represen t his subject in a "lofty scene" of indeterminat e reception . But even a t it s mos t antitheatrical , A Funeral Elegy sometime s implicate s itsel f i n misreading by presenting us with a text that can be construed eithe r as harmless eulogy or as hostile innuendo. In a passage seemingly in keeping with the poem' s strategy of protecting its subject's image by refusing t o present it , for instance, W. S. allows us to doubt William Peter's indifference t o vanity: He was a kind, true, perfect gentleman— Not in the outside of disgraceful folly, Courting opinion wit h unfit disguise, Affecting fashions , nor addicte d wholly To unbeseeming blushless vanities, But suiting so his habit and desire As that his Virtue was his best Attire, (lines 90-96) If no t "addicte d wholly" as Donald Foste r has asked , how addicte d was he? We can rea d similar ambivalence i n the elegist' s assertion tha t i n lif e Pete r enjoyed "short-liv'd deserts " (line 12); that he "Rule[d] the little ordered commonwealt h / Of his own self" (lines 294-95); that he was a "fast friend , soon lost" (line 575). Was Peter, then, a close frien d wh o die d to o soon , o r a fast-living friend wit h merits tha t wer e themselves too short-lived ? Was his commonwealth littl e an d ordered, or little-ordered? 62 To ask such questions is to join the misinterpretiv e "world" that, according to W. S., "picks out matte r to infor m the worst." But is W. S., in presenting his ambiguous text to an audience so conceived, entirely free from malice aforethought? A Funeral Elegy struggles self-consciously to define a representational mode that is appropriate but not appropriative; and the antitheatrical elegist does manage to protect William Peter from becoming a stage property. In the end, though, the elegy's antispectacular decorum affords only a limited innocence: doubting his audience, W. S. is forced to doubt (and to let us doubt) his own text.

2oo Guilty

Creatures

Each chapter o f this stud y has considered a Renaissance poetics tha t place s the literary subject under construction "with corrupt commentaries." Skelton's "elegy" subjects Jan e t o a salacious interpretation h e canno t tenabl y deny as imputed ; Spenser's cannibals mortify Serena in a thinly veiled inquest into Elizabeth Throckmorton's widel y circulate d shame . Shakespeare' s plebeian s kil l a poe t wit h th e same opportunism wit h which the playwright renders his sources into fashion able spectacle. Dekker et al. stage-manage Mother Sawyer's conviction and death by convincing us of her guilt; Milton's art of dying submits Samson to a reading whose convention s hav e been soile d by history. In differen t ways , each of these killing poems implies a readership (o r a spectatorship) pron e to predatory mistaking; each registers the author's responsibilit y by the extent to which he cooperates with th e corrup t commentarie s generated by his text. In it s self-reflexiv e ambiguities, A Funeral Elegy reveal s the ethical tension Renaissanc e poets coul d experience as they represented a subject conceived a s vulnerable before an audience conceived as exploitative, threateningly public. In its antitheatrical strategy, this poem direct s us toward one method o f resolving such tension. The Renaissanc e stage—adumbrated i n Skelton' s misreadin g an d heretica l world, implied i n Spenser's representation o f poetic abuse and indiscretion—has become, by the early seventeenth century, a place from which those familiar with its sacrificial audiences might wish to protect sacred poetic subjects. Of course censorship laws against libel, like those against the dramatization of many religious topics, both reflec t and enhance a cultural awareness of the stage's power to injure in this period: by the time of the Globe's construction, explicit dramatic representations of one's contemporarie s are almost a s unproducible a s Passion plays. W. S.'s antitheatrical turn als o makes sense in the contex t o f the post-Reformation skepticism towar d a theatrically fashioned good deat h tha t w e have considered in chapter 5. And there is perhaps a natural generic antagonism (a s well as an un comfortable imbrication) between elegy, purportedly concerned with preserving the integrit y of its subject, and a drama that profits b y commodifying its parts. In rejecting the theater, however, W. S. does not simpl y conform to cultural and generic decorum; he rejects his accustomed audience , and the temptation t o offe r William Peter to that audience on the theater's terms. The authorial struggle in A Funeral Elegy is therefore one between the professional and the personal, between the expectation s of a public spectatorship an d obligation s to a private friend. If W. S. intermittently invite s us maliciously t o glos s this text's ambiguities, then, he does so as a dramatic recidivist. And if he fails entirely to please us with a text that resist s imaginative appropriation, h e may succeed in the manne r of one of his contemporaries . In Christes Bloodie Sweat (1613)— a poem that , accordin g to som e scholars , borrows from A Funeral Elegy 63—the dramatist Joh n Ford tellingly instructs his reader not t o expec t a spectacle. Christ, he claims, "di'd indee d no t a s an actor


dies / . .. / In shew to please the audience." Like A Funeral Elegy, Christes Bloodie Sweat is not altogethe r steadfast in it s antitheatrical resolution ("Th e Crosse " is described a s the "stage" on whic h Chris t "plaid th e part") . Bu t like W. S., Ford seems thoroughly skeptical of the "pleas [ure]" derived from suc h tragic "shew": like Hamlet criticizing th e histrionic Player, he dismisses visually induced tears as "the idl e habit o f inforced sorrow."64 I f W. S. refuses t o "force / The commo n voice to warrant what I say," Ford similarly disdains elegiac coercion. Both playwrights self-consciously serve and preserve the subjects of their elegies by resisting the power the stag e provides—the powe r to move men with a dramatically presented death , to define the dead's ontology by the theater's epistemology. Elegizing Christ is a task far different fro m elegizin g a relative unknown, and ye t in the poe m tha t follow s the temptatio n o f theatrical imagination confront s the elegist of Christ much as it confronts W. S. "THE INFECTIO N O F [MILTON'S ] SORROWS " Like those who ask us to include A Funeral Elegy in the Shakespearean canon despite its aesthetic shortcomings (Foste r wittily concludes, "Let us as a stranger give it welcome"),65 The Passions most appreciative reader implores us to "return thi s neglected poem to the Miltonic fold." 66 R. Paul Yoder's nearly solitary campaign is not attributional, of course. Instead he attempts to alert Miltonists t o the possibility that Th e Passion has the sam e coherence and subtlet y of purpose share d by Milton's less "neglected" works, arguing that we must accordingly "recognize the 'problems' o f the poem a s the subject of the poem." 67 This metapoetic tack, an echo of Pollock's reading of the First Anniversarie mentioned i n chapter 2, is a corrective to the critical tradition of dismissing The Passion by taking at face value its appended evaluative note, a tradition illustrated by the judgment of Cleanth Brooks and John Edward Hardy: "Milton's own feeling of dissatisfaction should be a guide in our estimation of'The Passion.'"68 Th e subject of The Passion—Milton's only published fragment—indeed shifts fro m Christ' s to the author's agony. Interrupting what Yoder aptly describes as "a dream of infectious potency that testifies both to the poet's ego and to that ego's impotence," 59 Milto n edits himself with a critical comment that effectively defines himself against an earlier self. From a different poe t a bit of juvenilia published as a fragment, and with its own palinode, might not repa y analysis as a significant index into the career that followed it. But nowhere else does Milton announce himself as "nothing satisfied" with an earlier poetic performance; and the fact that he publishes this imperfect poem a t the midpoint of his career, and again the year before his death, suggests that its failure serve s as an important coordinat e to his poetic trajectory. The failure—to put it both mildly and generically—is a dramatic one. "Drama" in this context invokes not the Renaissance public stage, but its adaptation i n the

2O2 Guilty

Creatures

visualizing strategies Louis Martz has identified in seventeenth-century medita tive poetry. 70 Georg e Herbert , Richar d Crashaw , Henr y Vaughan—al l wrot e poems on the Passion. Yoder notes that, despite Herbert's announcemen t in "The Reprisall" that "there i s no dealing with thy mighty passion,"71 severa l poems in The Temple (1633)—suc h a s "The Agonie, " "Sepulchre," an d "Th e Sacrifice" — deal with Christ's deat h dramatically , as a series of "scenes." Late r in the centur y Vaughan would in fact call his dramatic representation o f Christ's death by Milton's title . Milton's divin e elegy , like its Catholic an d Anglican contemporaries , constructs itself as a theater of the mind. In Milton's case , however, this theater also deconstructs itself as a form o f erroneous and predator y imagination . Remaining in print no t onl y as a criticism o f the idolatrou s tendencies o f seventeenthcentury meditative poetry, but als o as a form o f self-criticism and self-censorship, The Passion resonate s throughout a poetic caree r in whic h deat h constitute s a representational problem—in whic h the dramatization o f dying coextends with an unsettling skepticism . Everywhere the poe m greet s us with the convention s o f Renaissance funeral elegy. The poet set s his "harp to note s o f saddest woe " (lin e 9), finding "softer strings... more apt for mournful things" (lines 27-28); he invokes night as "best patroness o f grief" (line 29), claiming that hi s elegiac verse deserves more tha n the customary shar e of pathetic fallacy and printshop edging : And work my flattered fancy to belief , That heave n and earth are coloured wit h m y woe; My sorrows are too dar k for day to know : The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters where my tears have washed a wannish white. (lines 31-35)72 While announcing itself as an elegy, however, The Passion aspires to drama: Christ is characterized a s an acto r an d "ou r Mos t perfect hero" (line 13); the occultatio dei is described a s "a mask" and "a disguise" (line 19); the poet limits his "roving verse" to "These lates t scenes" of the Crucifixio n (lin e 22). Perhaps John G. Demaray correctl y argue s that Th e Passion wa s originall y conceived a s a n actua l masque—a prelude to Comus (first performed in 1634, and printed with The Passion in the 164 5 volume).73 If Th e Passion was first composed a s a generic experiment, however , i t wa s publishe d a s a generi c failure—a self-conscious failure that migh t eve n interrogate the succes s of Comus (whose eponymous villain, as argued i n chapte r 2 , also pervert s th e theatricalize d poetr y o f prais e i n whic h Milton i s himself implicated). The speake r o f Th e Passion would represen t th e unrepresented , refusin g th e subject matter o f Marco Vida's Christiad:


These latest scenes confine m y roving verse, To this horizon is my Phoebus bound , His godlike acts; and his temptations fierce, And former sufferings otherwher e are found; Loud o'er th e rest Cremona's trum p doth sound . (lines 22-26 ) As Yoder notes, the iron y of this claim goe s beyond the obviou s fact tha t i n th e 1630 meditation s o n th e Crucifixio n "otherwhere ar e found" (Vida' s six-book poem itsel f recounts the Passion); the irony extends to the fac t tha t i n rejectin g Vida's emphasi s o n Christ' s "temptation s fierce " an d "forme r sufferings, " Th e Passion rejects the imaginativ e strategies by which Milto n choose s to represen t Christ's heroism elsewhere in his poetry.74 Published both before and after Paradise Regained, Th e Passion reveals a poet makin g a wrong artisti c choice—a n erro r requiring abusive and finally untenable imagination . The poem's last stanzas record the speaker's desperate search for a satisfactory image on which to rest his "flattered fancy." After noisil y attempting t o recreate Ezekiel's "holy vision" of God's chariot ("Se e see the chariot, and thos e rushing wheels, / That whirled the prophet u p at Chebar flood" [lines 36-37]), the speaker turns, as it were, to view the body : Mine eye hath foun d that sa d sepulchral rock That was the caske t of heaven's richest store, And here though grie f my feeble hands uplock , Yet on th e softened quarry would I score My plaining verse as lively as before; For sure so well instructed ar e my tears, That they would fitly fall in ordered characters . (lines 43-49) The lithoidal and cynegetic senses of "quarry," like the inscriptive and acquisitiv e senses of "score," admit an ambiguity between elegist and predator, between elegized and victim, upon which the poem finally collapses. Searching for an appropriate image with which to elegize Christ, the speaker relies upon his formal poetic instruction to succeed ("a s lively as before") the Nativity Ode. But the nex t an d final stanza implodes upon its own vanity, revealing the hollow masque of a poem that has displaced the object of praise with imaginative opportunism : Or should I thence hurried o n viewless wing, Take up a weeping on the mountain wild , The gentle neighbourhood o f grove and sprin g Would soon unbosom al l their echoes mild,

2O4 Guilty

Creatures

And I (fo r grief is easily beguiled) Might think the infection of my sorrows loud, Had got a race of mourners o n some pregnant cloud . (lines 50-56) In Lycidas Milton briefl y allows "our frai l thoughts" to "dally with false surmise " before unbeguiling grief with hard won truth.75 The Passions, subjunctive fiction s interpose not " a little ease," but th e infecte d frui t o f elegiac parthenogenesis. Can Christ be elegized? The question invites complex and various theological answers, but als o a relatively simple observation: as the symbolic capital of Christian consolation, what Milton calls the "substitute" who died "in our stead," Christ enables but canno t receive elegiac recompense.76 Yoder notes that elsewhere Milton recognize s "th e subject " o f Th e Passion will always be "above" the elegist' s symbolic appropriation. I n De Doctrina Christiana, for instance, Milton equates consolation wit h "the effec t an d desig n of the whole ministr y o f mediation" — "the satisfaction of divine justice on behalf of all men, and the conformation of the faithful t o th e imag e of Christ." When Chris t become s no t th e mediativ e agent but th e passiv e object of elegy, however, the mourne r i s left a s a lever without a fulcrum: "It cannot be explained how any one can be a mediator to himself on his own behalf." 77 It is as a lever without a fulcrum—his dissatisfied imagination racing toward the increasingly insubstantial and infertile—that the elegist presents himself in The Passion. Perhaps we can follow Milton the more mature critic in attributing the failure of this poet to youth ("abov e the years he had, when he wrote it"); but it seems reasonable to assume that the older poet never revises his younger sel f becaus e h e realize s tha t th e significanc e of thi s failur e i s wort h recording. Yoder observe s tha t i n Th e Reason o f Church-Government, after all , Milton claim s that ag e is irrelevant; only a n author' s cooperatio n wit h divin e grace determines the merits of his work: And if any man inclin e to thinke I undertake a taske too difficul t fo r my yeares, I trust through the supreme inlightening assistance farre otherwise; for m y yeares, be they few or many, what imports it? 78 The self-critical author of The Passion never submits such a defense because the poem i s radically indefensible; written no t wit h a "supreme inlightenin g assistance" but wit h a breathtakingly uninspired willfulness , i t presents itself no t a s intrinsically meritorious , bu t a s intractably meretricious . Th e Passion remain s "unfinished" a s a monument to generic misconception, and to the poet Milton refused t o become. As such, this eleg y gives a new inflection to Burckhardt' s "killing poem." We have seen other poets declare their works imperfect, of course. But Shakespeare's "accents ye t unknown " vivif y th e literar y work b y givin g it eterna l lif e i n th e


"mouths of men"; and i n the case of Julius Caesar, this life results from the appro priation of death as a theatrically iterable scene. The critical note Milton attaches to The Passion, however, has the effect o f killing the poem itself—not by complete censorship, but by declaring the text (as most of the elegy's criticism attests) a dead end. This is not to suggest that Milton kills his poem as an alternative to killing its subject. Nevertheless, The Passion does seem to censor itself for attempting to present Christ's death as a "lofty scene," subject to the construction an d miscon struction o f a dubious imagination. And while the idea of a divine killing poem may exaggerate, Yoder notes that Milton' s elegy does explor e the single method by which devotional poetry may be said to annihilate the divine : "the displacement i n hi s poetry o f the objec t of praise b y the ac t o f praising." 79 B y the las t stanzas, weeping "well instructed .. . tears " and indulgin g "the infection " of his "sorrows," the elegist has forgotten what he writes to remember. "Nothing satisfied with wha t wa s begun," he mus t condem n hi s effor t a t elegia c self-satisfaction. But he must also publish it , lest he forget again .


Notes

Selected Journal Abbreviations AN&O American Notes an d Queries CI Critical Inquiry EC Essays i n Criticism ELN English Language Notes ELR English Literary Renaissance HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly JEGP Journal o f English and Germanic Philology JHI Journal o f th e History o f Ideas MLN Modern Language Notes MLQ Modern Language Quarterly MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology N&Q Notes an d Queries PQ Philological Quarterly RES Review o f English Studies RP Renaissance Papers RQ Renaissance Quarterly SEL Studies i n English Literature, 1500-190 0 ShS Shakespeare Studies SP Studie s i n Philology SQ Shakespeare Quarterly STC Short-title Catalogue TLS Time s Literary Supplement TRSL Transactions of th e Royal Society o f Literature TSLL Texa s Studies i n Literature an d Language UTQ University of Toronto Quarterly UTSE University o f Texas Studies i n English Introduction 1. Si r Phili p Sidney , Defence o f Poesie, in Pros e Works, ed. Alber t Feuillera t (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1963), 89. 207

2o8 Note s t o Pages 3—6 2. Sidney , Defence ofPoesie, 93 . 3. Sigur d Burckhardt , Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton : Princeto n Universit y Press, 1968), 15. 4. Th e Romanti c perio d offer s a great dea l o f explicit material fo r my interest i n artist s who conceiv e their craf t a s a potentially murderous an d guilt y one. For an interestin g stud y of this material and som e of its contemporary permutations, se e Joel Black, The Aesthetics of Murder (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Universit y Press, 1991). 5. Sidney' s defens e of poetry ca n be called Aristotelian, but wit h importan t distinctions . Sidney's "ethic an d politic consideration" signifie s essential aspects of "man's self," while Aristotle's politike, th e en d o f ethics , subordinate s tha t sel f to th e polity . Se e the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), I:2: "For though admittedly the good is the sam e for a city as for an individual, stil l the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complet e goo d t o acquir e an d preserve . For while it is satisfactory to acquir e and preserve the good eve n for an individual, it is finer and more divine to acquire and preserve it for a people." Sidney's move fro m Aristotle' s polis t o the individua l record s an interestin g move from Platoni c concerns to those wrough t by Renaissance humanism (an d by modern libera l democracy, as suggested in note 6). 6. Durin g time s o f war, hot an d cold , the United State s has seen remarkabl e restrictions , official an d unofficial , o n fre e speech ; but i n such cases the potentia l victim purportedl y defended has been national securit y or "The American Way of Life." As a category "hate-speech " is different, i n tha t it s restriction i s meant t o protec t distinc t socia l groups within th e polis . The premise of hate-speech is that language can harm the individuals or groups who comprise its referent; by contrast "un-American " speec h fall s mor e neatl y in the Platoni c categories of the dangerousl y seductiv e an d th e politicall y harmful . Of cours e th e conceptua l novelt y of hate-speech is limited; it has been theoretically preceded, for instance, by slander, defamation, and accusation s of witchcraft. 7. Th e Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, ed. Don M . Wolfe et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-82), 2:492. For the best recent assessmen t of Milton's concern, in Areopagitica, with the potential violence of language in an age of "paper bullets," see David Norbrook , Writing th e English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics 1627-1660 (Cambridge : Cambridg e University Press, 1999), 120 [where Norbrook quote s Milton' s fea r tha t uncontrolle d book s might "sprin g u p arme d men" ] -130. Se e also William Kolbrener , Milton's Warring Angels: A Study o f Critical Engagements (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997), ch. 1. 8. I n Th e Violence o f Language (London : Routledge , 1990), Jean-Jacques Lecercle has ar gued tha t "th e dominant tren d i n th e Anglo-Saxo n world , wit h th e notabl e exceptio n o f Wittgenstein, i s a logicist one" (267). Lecercle illustrates by showin g the importan t wor k of H. P. Grice and Jurge n Habermas t o be engaged i n a positivist projec t to purif y languag e for cooperative scienc e and dialogic process. 9. Miche l Foucault , "What I s an Author? " trans. Josu e Harari, Th e Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Ne w York: Pantheon, 1984) , 108. 10. Stephe n Greenblatt , Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More t o Shakespeare (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1980), 9. 11. Kenneth Burke, "The Imagery of Killing," The Hudson Review, 1:2 (Summer 1948), 16062 (Burke's emphases). My concern wit h "transformation" i n this book focuses on the issue of what Miche l Foucault calls "author-functions"—an author' s ide a of the place of himself an d his ar t i n culture . Th e question o f "author-functions" i s particularly pressing in th e Renaissance, a period Laurenc e Manley has described a s riven by acute "normative crisis. " See Foucault, "Wha t I s a n Author? " 141-60 ; an d Laurenc e Manley , Convention, 1500-1750 (Cambridge: Harvar d Universit y Press, 1980), 137. 12. Jame s Hillman, Suicide and th e Soul (Ne w York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 21.

Notes t o Pages 6-8 20 9 13. Fo r good introductions t o the anthropologica l analysis of death, see Mortality and Im mortality: Th e Anthropology an d Archaeology o f Life, ed . S . C. Humphrey s an d Hele n King (New York: Academic, 1981); Richard Huntington an d Pete r Metcalf , Celebrations o f Death: The Anthropology o f Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Robert Hertz, Death an d th e Right Hand, trans. Rodne y an d Claudi a Needham (Glencoe , III.: Free Press, 1960); and Philipp e Aries ' classic study, Th e Hour of Ou r Death, trans. Hele n Weaver (New York: Vintage Press, 1981). 14. Jonatha n Culler might describ e the killing poem when he concedes that not al l literature substantiates the death of the author, that some literary works perform violence through "a series of radical and inaugural acts: acts of imposition whic h create meaning" (The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981], 39). 15. I n several instances Greenblatt comes very close to ascribing guilt to an artist for abusive representation . I acknowledg e thi s mos t extensivel y i n chapte r 4—wher e I conside r Greenblatt's essa y "Shakespeare Bewitched" (in Ne w Historical Literary Study: Essays o n Reproducing Texts, Representing History, ed. Jeffre y N . Co x an d Larr y J. Reynolds [Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1993], 17-42), which suggests that the playwright might have considered witchmongering an opportunistic and potentiall y harmful enterpris e with rea l victims. Greenblatt suggests that in Macbeth, however, Shakespeare criticizes such opportunism . In hi s recen t essa y "The Eatin g of th e Soul, " moreover, Greenblat t ha s identifie d i n Shake spearean drama a "poetics of answerability" in which all death (even a seemingly natural one ) is accompanied b y a need to assign blame; he argues that in Shakespearean drama character s always appear to die as the result of conscious agency (whether their own, a killer's, or that of some superhuman force ) and finds ethnographic analogies to this poetics in non-Western cultures (Representations 4 8 [1994], 97-116). My own emphasis on a poetics that reflects upon its own responsibility in different form s of "killing" attempts to extend what I take to be a development i n Greenblatt's analysi s of the consequences of self-fashioning. 16. I n Journeymen in Murder: Th e Assassin in English Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1991), 17-20, Martin Wiggins traces the lega l history o f Benefi t o f Clerg y in Renaissance England. His observation that—despite law s that sometimes punished hire d assassins more than their employers—"there wa s ... a moral hierarchy of guilt which ran counter to the legal hierarchy of responsibility" (15) has some relevance to my study. Only in rare cases (such as representations wit h libelous or treasonous reference) could a poet be held legally responsible fo r the fat e o f his subjects in the Renaissance ; nevertheless the relation between an author an d hi s literar y subject s (and, i f a playwright, his actors ) coul d occasio n extralegal guilt. 17. Greenblatt , Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 13 . 18. Greenblatt , Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 252 . 19. Davi d Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics 1627-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1999), 10. I follo w Norbrook i n employing speechact theory to counter som e of the passive constructions o f new historicism. 20. Fo r an excellent discussion of the continued relevanc e of speech-act theory and its deconstructionist critique, see Sandrey Petrey, Speech Acts and Literary Theory (Ne w York: Routledge, 1990). 21. Her e I a m ver y indebted t o Fran k Whigham's introductio n t o Seizures o f th e Will i n Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1-21, whic h also cites Bourdieu and Giddens to emphasize the author's interest in cognitive faculties in the explication of social life . 22. Anthon y Giddens, Th e Constitution of Society: Outline of th e Theory o f Structuration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xvi. See also Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory o f Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge University Press, 1977).

210 Notes to Pages 8-11 23. Giddens , Th e Constitution of Society, xxii-xxiii. 24. Miche l Foucault , ed., I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered M y Mother, M y Sister, and My Brother...: A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Frank Jellinek (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 205-6. 25. Lawrenc e Buell, introducing "Specia l Topic : Ethics an d Literar y Study," PMLA 114: 1 (January 1999), 12.I follow as well Buell's corollary: "More central to ethically valenced theory and criticis m tha n th e issu e of authoria l agency , however, i s that o f readerl y responsibility, which indeed i s often linked .. . t o recuperation o f authoredness" (12). 26. Areopagitica, i n Th e Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, ed . Wolfe e t al , 2:257 . Here Milton cites with approval a Parliamentary order passed on 29 January, 1642 (previous to th e prelicensing legislation t o which Areopagitica responds) . 27. Harr y Berger, Jr., Making Trifles o f Terrors: Redistributing Complicities i n Shakespeare, ed. Pete r Erickso n (Stanford : Stanford University Press , 1997) , xiii-xiv. Berger' s account o f guilt an d th e avoidanc e "reflex" attempts t o depar t fro m Stanle y Cavell's model i n Must We Mean What We Say? Modern Philosophical Essays in Morality, Religion, Music, and Criticism (New York : Scribner, 1969), 277-78. Cavell's model is itself a bit blurry, however. In Disowning Knowledge i n Si x Plays o f Shakespeare (Cambridge : Cambridg e Universit y Press , 1987) , h e seems to claim that guilt involves the avoidanc e of discovery: "Guilt is different: ther e the re flex i s to avoi d discovery " (49) . But hi s accompanyin g definitio n of "shame" a s a desir e t o "cover up " yourself would seem to sugges t a contrast wit h guilt—whic h according to Cavell can sometimes forc e one to confess and discove r one's self. 28. Berger , Making Trifles o f Terrors, xxi. 29. Berger , Making Trifles o f Terrors, xxi. 30. Pete r Erickson, Making Trifles o f Terrors, Editor's Introduction, xxxv. 31. Hamlet, 3.1.566-71 (this and al l references to Shakespeare's works appear in Th e Riverside Shakespeare, gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans [Boston: Houghton Mifflin , 1974]) . 32. Cavell , Disowning Knowledge, 100. 33. Cavell , Disowning Knowledge, 103. 34. I n Disowning Knowledge, 98 , Cavell compares suc h litera l responses to theatrical violence as drinking from a finger bowl. 35. Hamlet, 2.2.551-60. 36. Ludwi g Wittgenstein, "Suppos e W e Ask th e Question, " Nachlass, manuscrip t note book, ree l 13 , 42-43 (cite d i n Pete r Hughes , "Performin g Theory : Wittgenstei n an d th e Trouble wit h Shakespeare, " Comparative Criticism 14 [1992], 71-86). Wittgenstein's subjec t here differ s fro m Hamlet' s in his "I have heard tha t guilty creatures sitting at a play" speech. In Hamlet's courtroom drama , the murdered continue to speak—or at least murder speaks in a way that makes the response of the murderer compulsory; it is now the murderer who is not, cannot be, pretending when confronted with referential fiction. In Wittgenstein's account , the alternative answers to the question o f whether or not people are murdered in tragedies—No, "they only pretend" ; Yes, they "really die"—revea l a n underlyin g question abou t acknowl edged agenc y in scripted deaths : if the dyin g person i s only pretending, he or sh e is still acknowledged to control self-representation; the category of the "real" death seems by contrast to recognize the irresistibility of plots and texts controlled b y others ("at the end of the play"). 37. Joe l Altman has argued that moment s suc h as the Player' s apparent loss of rhetorica l control, which Hamlet criticizes in this exchange, adapt Quintilian's comparison o f the orator to an actor who has "frequently been s o much moved while speaking, that I have not merel y been wrough t upo n to tears, but hav e turned pal e and show n al l the symptom s o f genuine grief" (The Orator, 6.2.35-36, m y trans.). In Altman's argument, Quintilian's mode l applies to Hamlet himself, and to many of Shakespeare's major characters ("'I a m not what I am': Shakespeare's Scripted Subject," presented a t the Shakespeare Association of America, Washington,

Notes to Pages 12-15 21 1 D.C., March 1997) . For a related discussion , se e Terence Cave, The Cornucopia Text (Oxford : Oxford Universit y Press, 1978), 127 and ch . 4. 38. Wit h th e exceptio n o f hi s lette r t o Horatio , an d wit h th e possibl e exceptio n o f hi s poetry to Ophelia (whic h may have been written before the dramatic action), all of Hamlet's act of writing—his interpolation s i n the play-within, his revision o f Claudius's lette r to England—predict killing. 39. Plotinus , Ennead 3.2.15, in Th e Enneads, trans. Stephe n MacKenna , 3rd ed . (London : Faber & Faber 1956), 173. 40. Si r Walter Ralegh, "On th e Lif e o f Man," lines 9-10 (The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes M. C. Latham [Cambridge , Mass: Harvard Universit y Press, 1951]). 41. Fro m an anonymous eleg y appearing in E. Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors and Other Persons Associated with th e Public Representation o f Plays i n England before 1642 (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), 74. 42. Sidney' s conceit in Astrophil and Stella and Milton' s i n Areopagitica exemplif y a familiar phenomenon i n the Renaissance—recentl y described b y Leah S. Marcus as an attempt t o humanize the relatively alien idea of print (i n her lecture "Shakespeare's Computer," delivere d at Vanderbilt University 22 April, 1999). 43. Th e Spanish Tragedy, 2.4.101 . Hieronimo's respons e amplifie s the emphasis : "To know the author were some ease of grief. . ." (2.4.102). For an interesting examination o f The Spanish Tragedy's "insisten t derogation , o r abdication , o f th e author-functio n i n favo r o f wha t might be called a 'character-function,'" see Emma Smith, "Author v. Character i n Early Modern Dramati c Authorship : The Exampl e of Thoma s Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy" Renaissance Drama 75 (1994), 129-42,133. 44. Elain e Scarry, "Donne: 'But yet the body is his booke,'" in Literature and the Body: Essays on Populations and Persons, ed. Elaine Scarry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 70-105. 45. Fo r a brilliant study of the implications of the Renaissanc e assumption tha t represen tations were vulnerabl e t o incivility , see Debora Shuger , "Civilit y an d Censorshi p i n Earl y Modern England, " in Censorship an d Silencing: Practices of Cultural Regulation ed. Robert Pos t (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1998 , 89-110). In Th e Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation i n th e English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 198-201, Robert N. Watson considers how, for Donne, names can represent and reconstitute a n entire personal identity. For an account of the posthumous punishment o f Oliver Cromwell' s corpse , and o f such Renaissanc e practices a s burying suicide s with stakes through their hearts to keep their spirits from wandering, see Clare Gittings, Death, Burial, and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Crom Helm , 1984), 71-73. 46. Th e standar d accoun t o f the closin g o f th e chantrie s appear s i n A . Krieder, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution, Harvard Historical Studie s 97 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). I discuss some of the consequence s of this event in chapter 2. 47. Th e culture o f Protestant England—fro m the Prayer s for the Dea d i n numerou s re vised Book s of Common Praye r to th e postmorte m abuse o f Cromwell' s body—produce d countless contradiction s t o this declared doctrina l position . 48. I refer here to the 1604 Star Chamber case of Lewis Puckering, to which Debora Shuger kindly drew my attention. Shuge r has also pointe d ou t t o m e that, beginning in 1606 , libels against the dead could be prosecuted a s scandalum magnatum. 49. Si r Edward Coke, Reports 3:126v. See Robert Post, "The Social Foundations o f Defamation Law : Reputation an d th e Constitution, " California La w Review 74 (1986), 699-707. 50. I n Th e Art o f Death: Visual Culture in th e English Death Ritual c.1500-c.1800 (London: Reaktion Books 1991), 55, Nigel Llewellyn observes that the "socia l body" of the decease d can survive biologica l deat h b y retaining it s offices , property , and socia l status ; by borrowing

212 Notes t o Pages 16—18 Llewellyn's phrase, I mean to suggest the distinction, in literature, of a symbolic "body" from the material body it represents. 51. I n Making Trifles o f Terrors, xxi-xxii, Berger writes of Shakespeare's translation o f self reflexivity fro m th e Sonnet s t o th e stage : "In switchin g fro m th e literar y t o th e theatrica l medium h e encountere d a new constraint : character s ca n onl y be represente d i n an d per formed by their own speech. If the functions or powers of description, representation, and interpretation ar e to survive the passage from literar y narrative to theater, they must be trans ferred t o and wholly vested in dramatic speakers. The author of Shakespeare's plays seems to have me t th e challeng e b y transforming into theatrica l practice the epideicti c art o f repre senting self-representation developed in the sonnets; that is, he transferred from lyri c monologue to interlocutor y dram a a n ar t o f representin g speaker s who see m aware that i n thei r words and actions they represent themselves to others, speakers who try to control the effect s of their self-representation an d who thus use their language the way actors do in an effor t t o impose o n thei r auditor s a particular interpretation o f the person s they pretend to be . This hypothesis abou t Shakespeare' s art presupposes a more general principle of reflexivity, which is that on e can't represen t onesel f to other s withou t representin g onesel f to onesel f ... . T o recognize this is also to recogniz e that i n dramatizin g the activit y of self-interpretation th e plays at the same time dramatize an activity of self-evaluation...." Thi s passage informs many of the assumptions of my own investigation, but I depart from Berge r in leaving room for the author's self-representation and self-evaluation in theater. On Shakespeare's stage the powers of description, representation, an d interpretation ar e not "transferred to and wholly vested in dramatic speakers"; their mediation suggests space for the playwright's ow n "activity of self evaluation." 1. Courting Heresy and Taking the Subject 1. Richar d Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy o f Capital (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1991), 104-5. 2. A . R. Heiserman, Skelton and Satire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 11; Ian Gordon, John Skelton, Poet Laureate (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1943), 69. 3. C . S . Lewis , English Literature i n th e Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1954) , 138 . Stanley Fish, John Skelton's Poetry (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 117-25. Gordon, John Skelton: Poet Laureate, 132-33. F. L. Brownlow, "The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe an d th e Liturgy, " ELR 9:1 (Winter 1979), 5-20. Arthu r F. Kinney, John Skelton, Priest as Poet (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 98-116. Alexander Pope, "Imitations o f Horace, " i n Th e Works o f Alexander Pope, ed . Joh n Butt , 2nd ed . (London : Twickenham, 1953), 196-97. E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (Ne w York: AMS Press, 1 1 95 ), 139. H.L.R. Edwards, Skelton : Th e Life an d Times of a n Early Tudor Poet (London : Ox ford Universit y Press , 1949) , no . Ilon a M . McGuiness , "Joh n Skelton' s Phyllyp Sparowe a s Satire: A Revaluation," Sixteenth-Century Journal 22 : 2 (Summer 1991), 215-31. 4. Kinney , John Skelton, Priest as Poet, 116. The datin g of Phyllyp Sparowe i s uncertain. It may have been begun in 1505, with the "Addicyon" added certainly no later than 1516 (and perhaps as early as 1508). The Garlande of Laurell was published i n 1523, but Skelto n began to assemble it as early as 1495. 5. Se e E. O. James , Christian Myth an d Ritual (Cleveland : Ohio Stat e Universit y Press, 1963), 203-6; Brownlow, "The Bok e of Phyllyp Sparowe an d th e Liturgy, " 8-10; an d Kinney, John Skelton, Priest as Poet, 105-12. The parallels between Phyllyp Sparowe an d the liturg y can be summarize d thus : lines 1-386 follo w the Officium Defunctorum; line s 387-512, the Missa pro Defunctis; line s 513-70, the Absolutio super Tumulum; lines 571-602, the Officium Defunc-

Notes t o Pages 19-21 21 3 torum again; and line s 845-1260, the Onto Commendationis Animae (se e I. A. Gordon, "Skelton's Philip Sparrow an d th e Roma n Service Book," MLR 29 [1934], 389-96). 6. Politian , "Elegia, sive Epicidion. In Albierae Albitiae immaturum exitu m . . . " line s 267 68, 273-74, 281-86, in An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry, ed. and trans . Fre d J. Nichols (New Haven: Yal e Universit y Press , 1979) , 267-69. I hav e slightl y modifie d th e punctuatio n o f Nichols's text and translation , following the exampl e of Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph, Commemoration an d Conflict from Jonson t o Wordsworth (Ithaca : Cornel l Universit y Press, 1991), 90 n.13. 7. O . B. Hardison, Jr., The Enduring Monument: A Study o f the Idea o f Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory an d Practice (Chape l Hill: Universit y of Nort h Carolin a Press , 1962), 113-21 and passim. Of course neither for m was entirely unfamiliar to the medieva l period. I briefl y consider the medieval "elegy" later in this chapter. On medieval epitaphs—which usually were engraved o n tombs , not compose d on pages—se e Scodel , Th e English Poetic Epitaph, 51 , 56 , 83-84,116-17,166-67. 8. Shakespeare' s Sonnet 81. 9. Th e Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "elegy," cites Alexander Barcla y in 151 4 as th e firs t usage. Bu t John Scattergood—i n a n observatio n tha t woul d pleas e the poe t laureate—ha s pointed ou t Skelton' s prior referenc e ("Skelton an d th e Elegy, " Proceedings o f th e Royal Irish Academy 8 4 [1984] , 336). 10. Georg e Puttenham, Th e Arte o f English Poesie, ed. Glady s Doidge Willcock an d Alic e Walker (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1936), 56. 11. "Epitaphe" appears in John Skelton, The Complete English Poems, ed. John Scattergood (New Haven: Yale Universit y Press, 1983). Unless otherwise noted , all references to Skelton' s poetry appear in this edition; the translations fro m Skelton' s Latin I quote are Scattergood's . Though "Epitaphe " consist s of two poems , o f 87 and 3 8 lines, respectively , each contains the iacet hic formula and encapsulated epigrams of the literary epitaph (se e John Clarke's epitaph, lines 60-64, and Adam Uddersale's, lines 25-28; for a longer discussion o f this work, see Kinney, John Skelton, Priest as Poet, 95-98). Skelton's Lati n poems revea l a great dea l of ex perimentation with the epigram, the epitaph, and elegiac meter. "Epigramma a d tanti principis maiestatem in sua puerice" (published b y F. M. Salter [Speculum 9 (1934) , 36-37]) consists of twenty lines o f elegiacs. Eulogium pro suorum temporum conditione (The Complete Poems of John Skelton, Laureate, ed. Philip Henderson [London : Dent, 1964], 435-36) consists of thirtysix lines of elegiacs , followed by four line s o f elegiac s that constitut e a n epitaph . "Elegia i n serenissimae princeps et domine, domine Margarete" (ibid. , 437-38) consists of twenty lines of elegiacs, followed by two lines of elegiacs and a couplet, again evoking the epitaph . "I n Bedel quondam Belial incarnatum, devotum epitaphium" (ibid., 433) consists of fourteen lines of elegiacs, followed by four truncated rhymin g lines, then two elegiacs and two rhyming couplets. For further descriptions o f Skelton's Latin works, see Scattergood's Appendix to his edition, 521; and Davi d Carlson, "The Latin Writings of John Skelton," Studies in Philology 88:4 (Fall 1991). 12. Puttenham , Th e Arte of English Poesie, 49. On the Renaissanc e confusion between "love elegies" and "mourning elegies," see Alastair Fowler, Kinds o f Literature: An Introduction to the Theory o f Genres and Modes (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1982), 136-37. On the various names for funerary laments in the Renaissance, see Hardison, Th e Enduring Monument, 113. 13. In Amores 3.9.3 Ovid speaks of the "flebilis Elegia," or mournfu l meter. This is the dis tich of Catullus's funera l elegie s (Poems 65-68 in Th e Poems of Catullus, ed. and trans . Gu y Lee [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991]). But Theocritus an d Martial include hendecasyllables and iambics among their elegies. 14. Bot h classical and Renaissance poets and critics maintained that this meter originate d in funerary laments but serve d just as appropriately in poems reflecting seriously on love. See Georg Luck, The Latin Love Elegy, 2nd ed . (London: Methuen, 1969), 25-26. Joannes Secun-

214 Notes to Pages 21-25 dus seconde d Ovid' s associatio n of this mete r wit h lamen t i n th e Renaissanc e (Elegy 3.7 , in Clifford Endres , ed., Joannes Secundus: The Latin Love Elegy in the Renaissance [Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1981], 189-95). Skelton's use s of the Lati n elegiac are listed in note 11, to this chapter. Another importan t poem in this context is his "Upon th e Dolorus Dethe and Muche Lamentable Chaunce of the Mooste Honorabl e Erl e of Northumberlande." Thoug h muc h o f this poem coul d be characterized a s a medieval lament, it begins and ends with approximations o f classical elegiacs; and it includes moments (suc h as the poet's invocatio n t o Cli o t o ai d him "In elect uteraunce to make memoryall" [lin e 11]) that this chapter will present as initiatory of the Renaissance elegy. 15. Juliu s Caesar Scaliger , Poetices Libri Septem, Facs. ed. August Buck (Lyons: StuttgartBad Cannstatt, 1964), 52.D.1 (see also 169.C.2 and 169.D.2) . 16. O n the conventionality o f Jane's lament and the medieval birdmass, see especially Kinney, John Skelton, Poet as Priest, 103-6. I disagree with Kinney's assertion that "nothing in Part I is extraneous; everything is subordinated t o the devotional min d an d mood that the Offic e itself establishes"; and I part from hi m in reading lines 826-44 as Jane's "elegy" (103): Jane herself says this elegy will follow "by and by. " Part I does follow the genera l pattern o f the Offic e of the Dead, but Jane's relation to the liturgy is improvisatory to say the least. In fact, her con cession to it s ritualized consolatio n call s into questio n it s sufficiency—at leas t at the literary level on which she herself dwells in her quest for an epitaph . 17. Se e H. J. Chaytor, From Script t o Print (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945), 74. 18. Halpern , "John Skelton and the Poetics of Primitive Accumulation," in Literary Theory/ Renaissance Texts, ed. Patricia Parker and Davi d Quint (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Universit y Press, 1986), 242-43. 19. Fish , John Skelton's Poetry, 114. 20. A s Scattergood argues ("Skelton and the Elegy," 336). When I scanned these "lines" myself, I found tha t Skelton—i f h e di d i n fac t inten d fo r u s to conver t hi s Skeltonics into dis tichs—failed t o produce th e quantities o f the elegiac couplet. I t is possible tha t i n lines 822 25, Jane intends to introduce her epitaph wit h an elegy, though "by and by" suggests the othe r order. 21. Joshu a Scodel, Th e English Literary Epitaph, especiall y 27-49. A less plausible reading is that Skelto n intends to precede his classical epitaph, i n which Jane is petrified, with her in effective an d vernacular elegy (the first part of the poem) . 22. Shepheardes Calender, "June" (73-80 ) i n Spenser, Poetical Works, ed . J . C. Smith an d E. de Selincourt (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1975), 442. 23. Fo r just a few illustrations o f E.K.'s replacement o f pastoral names with canonical au thority, see the glosses, in the "June" eclogue, for "Tityrus" and "Menalcas" : Tityrus) "That by Tityrus is meant Chaucer, hath been already sufficiently sayde, and by thys more playne appeareth, tha t he sayth, he tolde mery e tales. Such as be hys Canterburie tales . Whom h e calleth the God o f Poetes fo r his excellencie, so as Tullie calleth Lentulus, Deum vitae suae is the Go d o f hys lyfe." Menalcas) "The nam e of a shephearde in Virgile; but here is meant a person un knowne and secrete, agaynst whome he often bitterly invayeth. " 24. Consider , fo r instance , th e fina l vers e paragrap h o f Lycidas, whic h begin s with th e alienation o f speaker and poet: "Thus san g the uncouth swai n to the oaks and rills ..." (186) . Quoted fro m John Milton, Th e Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Joh n Care y (Londo n an d Ne w York: Longman, 1971). 25. Th e Testament of Cresseid, i n Selected Poems o f Robert Henryson, ed. W.R.J . Barron (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1981).

Notes to Pages 26-31 21 5 26. Th e House o f Fame, in Th e Complete Poetry an d Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. , ed . John H. Fisher (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1989). 27. Se e Scattergood, Th e English Literary Epitaph, 34 4 and 89n . O n th e Renaissanc e distinction between the "female" work of needle and thread and the "male" occupation of poetry, see An n Rosalin d Jones , "Surprising Fame : Renaissanc e Gende r Ideologie s an d Women' s Lyric" (in Th e Poetics o f Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller [Ne w York: Columbia Universit y Press, 1986] ,79). 28. Ovi d present s Eurydice' s "twin" death i n Metamorphoses 10.69 : "stupuit gemina nece coniugis Orpheus'' Arthu r Golding translates this as the "double dying of his wyfe set Orphye in a stounde" (The. xv. Bookes o f P. Ouidius Naso; entytuled Metamorphosis, translated oute of Latin into English meeter, by Arthur Golding Gentleman [London, 1567] , 123 r. I owe my recognition o f the Ovidian resonance in Philip's words to a wonderful article by Lynn Enterline, in which Eurydice' s double dyin g under Orpheus' s gaz e applie s to Hermione' s positio n a t th e end o f Th e Winter's Tale ('"You speak a language that I understand not' : Th e Rhetoric of Animation i n Th e Winter's Tale" S Q 48:1 [Spring 1997], 17-44 [22]) . 29. Pamel a Royston Macfie, writing on a strikingly similar passage in Chapman's Hero and Leander (6.22), has noted that "the verb 'to prick' suggests a plotted concordance between the dialectical relationship tha t governs sexuality and that which controls language and imagina tive release " ("'Th e voic e fro m beyon d th e grave' : Absence , Otherness , an d Invocatio n i n Chapman's Hero and Leander" Renaissance Papers [1994 ] 52). On th e Renaissanc e distinction between the "female" work of needle and thread an d the "male" occupation o f poetry, see Ann Rosalind Jones, "Surprising Fame: Renaissance Gender Ideologies and Women's Lyric," in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller, 79. 30. Scattergood, "Skelton an d th e Elegy, " 344. Indeed, Skelton's aforementione d reference to the seminal "aureat droppes" of Tagus appears proleptic when read beside the "little drops" invoked by Colin in Spenser's elegy for Chaucer (The Shepheardes Calender, "June" [line 93]). For a psychosexual analysis of such imagery , as well as an attempt t o locate this notion of a poetic fons e t origo i n th e elegist' s conceptio n o f literar y succession, se e Sacks, Th e English Elegy: Studies in th e Genre from Spenser t o Yeats, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universit y Press, 1985), 3-25 . 31. This catalogue, it should be noted, certainly seems innocent enough . Skelto n says that Jane Scrope, with her gray eyes and bent brows, seems to represent Lucrece—or else Polyxena, or else Calliope, or else Penelope (no t an unusual sort of list on the fac e of it). 32. Alexande r Dyce describes line s 1116-17 as possibl y defectiv e in Th e Poetical Works o f John Skelton, 2 vols. (1843; rpt. 1965), 2:147. 33. Joh n Scattergood, Phyllyp Sparowe, lines 1116-7n (in John Skelton, The Complete English Poems). 34. Fo r a concise study of the convention s o f blazonic idealization (suc h as the "myddel l small" an d "syde s long " describe d i n thi s passag e [line s 1128-9]), se e D. S. Brewer, MLR 5 0 (1955). 257-69. 35. Feminis t scholarship on Th e Rape o f Lucrece has demonstrated tha t the narrator holds Collatine's words responsible for the violence done her; see, for instance, Nancy Vickers, '"The blazon of sweet beauty's best': Shakespeare's Lucrece" in Shakespeare an d th e Question of Theory, ed. Patricia Parker and Geoffre y Hartma n (Ne w York: Methuen, 1985), 95-115. For a study on epideixis in Petrarchanism that focuse s specificall y upon it s consequences for women, see Joel Fineman, "Shakespeare's Will: The Temporality of Rape," in Fineman, The Subjectivity Ef fect i n Western Literary Tradition: Essays Toward th e Release of Shakespeare's Will (Cambridge : MIT Press , 1991), 165-221. M y own suggestio n o f a gendered relatio n i n such harmful praise is, in the first two chapters of this study, less explicit and determine d tha n Fineman's; for as I demonstrate i n subsequent chapters, we should understan d a continuum between the ethical

216 Notes t o Pages 31 -38 tension of a potentially harmful Petrarcha n poetics and anxieties marking an y representation (whether of a man o r a woman) subjected to an untrustworthy audience . 36. Na n C. Carpenter calls this lament "an early example of stream-of-consciousness technique" which defers our critica l faculties (in John Skelton [New York: Twayne, 1967], 60). On Jane's innocent grief from a psychoanalytical perspective, see Warren W. Wooden, "Childhoo d and Death : A Reading o f Joh n Skelton' s Phyllip Sparow" (Journal o f Psychology 7: 4 [Sprin g 1980],403-14). 37. Susa n Schibanoff, "Taking Jane's Cue: Phyllyp Sparowe a s a Primer fo r Women Readers," PMLA 101:5 (October 1986) , 839-40. 38. Fo r these references, see Kinney, John Skelton, Priest as Poet, 101. 39. Th e Vulgate Psalm 118. 3 to which thes e lines refer read s domine. The earlie r editorial effort t o treat Skelton's modification as a misprint ha s been corrected by Scattergood (see his note to Phyllyp Sparowe, line 996). 40. Kinney , John Skelton, Priest as Poet, 108-14. On th e languag e of fin amor in religiou s lyrics addressed t o th e Virgin , see Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in th e Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); and Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval Religious Lyric (London: Routledge, 1972), 56,138. Brownlow has observed that Skelton's substitution o f domina fo r domine ha d preceden t i n St . Bonaventura's Psalter o f th e Virgin ("Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe an d th e Liturgy, " 10). 41. Se e Poems 2 and 4 for Catullus's admiratio n o f and eleg y for the girl' s sparrow. Poe m 5 begins: Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus / rumoresque senum seueriorum / omnes unius aestimemus assis," an d conclude s " 'conturbabimus ill a [basia] n e sciamus / aut n e quis malus inuidere possit / cum tantum sciat esse basiorum (lines 11-13, quoted fro m Th e Poems of Catullus, ed. and trans . Guy Lee [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991]). On th e enclose d world Catullus creates in thi s poe m an d elsewhere , see H. D. Rankin, "Catullus an d th e Privac y of Love," Wiener Studien, n.s. 9 (1975) , 67-74. In "Viuamus, me a Lesbia i n th e Englis h Renaissance" (ELR 9:2 [Spring 1979], 199-24), Gordon Brade n extensively traces the rhetorica l ap propriations and adaptations of Carminum 5 by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poets. 42. Be n Jonson, Poetaster, "An Apologetical Dialogue " (i n Be n Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford , Percy Simpson, an d Evely n Simpson, (Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1925-52) vol . 4:213-15. The preceding quotation s fro m Spense r appear in Amoretti, 1.14, 86.1; and Epithalamion 24.7. 43. Alexande r Barclay, The Ship o f Fools, ed. T . H. Jamieso n (Edinburgh : William Patter son, 1874), 2:331. For a survey of contemporary assessments of Skelton as a poet, see John Skelton: The Critical Heritage, ed. Anthony S. G. Edwards (London: Routledge, 1981), 43-53. Skelton's reputatio n wa s celebrated b y humanists suc h a s Caxton an d Erasmus , though Willia m Lily condemned hi m a s "neither learned , nor a poet." 44. T . S. Eliot's description o f Catullus's distinctive tone, in "Andrew Marvell," Selected Essays (Ne w York: Harcourt Brace , 1950), 253. 45. James Russell Lowell, PMLA 5 (1890), 15. 46. O n the tempting fallacy of classifying Phyllyp Sparowe "medieval" or "Renaissance," see Fish, John Skelton's Poetry, 26-35. 47. O n the history of Petrarchism in the English sixteenth-century lyric, see William Kerrigan and Gordo n Braden, The Idea o f the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 157-90. 48. Edmun d Waller , "Story o f Phoebu s an d Daphne , Applied, " i n Poems, ed. G . Thor n Drury (London: Bullen, 1901), 1:52. 49. Fo r Stella's shame, see the "Eight h Song" in Astrophil and Stella; for Astrophil's com plaint agains t "honor's cruel might," see Sonnet 91 and the "rigorous exile " of Sonnet 104 . 50. B y "minor es t infamia vero" Skelto n ma y mea n simpl y tha t Jane' s overscrupulou s shame misses the truth of his intentions. But for the shamed, infamy is its own truth; and Skel-

Notes t o Pages 38-43 21 7 ton's invocation o f a public, objective notion of truth coul d hardl y be expected t o persuade at the psychologica l level. Following "Est sew," however, the phras e ma y have a darker implica tion: "It' s to o lat e (I'v e already written th e poe m anyway); her sham e i s less important tha n my idea of the truth." 51. Thi s question appear s in Latin (Si veritatem dico, quare non creditis michi?) a s the fina l line of the poem . 52. Fish , John Skelton's Poetry, 13-26. 53. Lewis , English Literature in th e Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, 135. 54. Si r Philip Sidney , "Defence of Poesie," Prose Works, ed . Albert Feuillera t (Cambridge : Cambridge Universit y Press, 1963), 89. Albert S. Cook ha s suggested that Sidney's "Bubonax " blends the names of Bupalus and Hipponax. In the Natural History 36.5.11, Pliny tells of a Hipponax who was publicly humiliated by his caricature in a statue carved by Bupalus and Athenis. Hipponax too k reveng e by writing poems that drov e the two sculptors t o suicide (Cook , ed.,The Defense o f Poesy [London : 1890], 133). To this I would ad d tha t "Bubonax" als o evokes phonetically the Bubonic plague, which Renaissance poets did not hesitate to invoke in curses of their enemies . 55. Geoffre y Chaucer , Th e Canterbury Tales ("Genera l Prologue, " line 798 , "Retraction," line 1086), in Th e Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. John H. Fisher (New York: Holt, Rinehar t and Winston, 1989) . 56. Shakespeare , Th e History of Troilus an d Cressida, 5.10.36,38-39, 55. 57. Gre g Walker, John Skelton an d th e Politics of th e 1520 s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 119-23. Much o f my brief discussion o f Skelton's methods of textual circulation i s indebted t o Walker's also brief but trenchan t argumen t i n these pages. 58. Collyn Clout, lines 1237-39. 59. Wh y Come Ye Nat t o Courte? lines 1215,684,824,826,831; Epilogue, line 33. Walker notes Skelton's opportunity t o circulate his texts with a wide humanist audience , and his chance to display them a t St. Paul's. Perhaps Skelton even "tried t o perform his works from th e pulpit o r in the manner o f the balladeer, in order to gai n them a wider hearing?" (John Skelton and the Politics of th e 1520s, 121). 60. Hi s very metaphor fo r court i s the mouth . See Speke, Parott (Lenvoy Royall, line 372): Vix tua percipient, qu i tua teque legent (a line in ironic agreement with Martin Luther's famous dictum, Qu i no n intelliget res non potest est verbis elicere). 61. I n th e Garlande of Laurell, lines 1261-1375 correspond wit h line s 1268-1382 i n Phyllyp Sparowe. 62. Garlande of Laurell, lines 1254-60. 63. Garlande of Laurell, lines 1533,1551-52,1576-78 . 64. Garlande of Laurell, lines 1558-59; Howe the Douty Duke o f Albany, lines 510-11. 65. Hamlet, 3.3.53-54, 97-98. 66. Chapte r 2 , narrowe d i n scop e t o sugges t th e trajector y o f thi s study , migh t hav e included a host o f poems i n which the Petrarcha n mistres s become s a host. I have in min d here particularly Barnab e Barnes's scene o f ritualisti c rap e i n Parthenophil and Parthenope, sestine 5. But th e ide a o f vindictive, injurin g representation i s developed i n othe r direction s by Michael Drayton, Abraham Cowley, and countless other s i n the more baroque Petrarcha n tradition (se e Kerriga n an d Braden , Th e Idea o f th e Renaissance, 173-82; an d Loui s B . Salomon, Th e Devil Take Her! A Study o f th e Rebellious Lover i n English Poetry [Ne w York: A. S. Barnes, 1961]). 67. Wh y Come Ye Nat t o Courte? lines 1044- 45 . 68. Fish , John Skelton's Poetry, 5. A Replycacion Agaynest Certayne Yong Scoler s Abjured o f Late, Etc., appeared i n 1528, a year before Skelton' s death . 69. Thes e unnumbered line s appear i n the prose argumen t o f the Replycacion.

218 Notes t o Pages 43— 50 70. Se e J. Gairdner, Lollardy an d th e Reformation (London : Macmillan, 1908), 1:393. 71. Se e William Nelson , John Skelton, Laureate (New York: Columbia University Studies in English an d Comparativ e Literature , 1939) , 216 . Nelso n compare s th e Replycacion wit h Thomas More's Dialogue concerning Heresies (probabl y written in the same year, and perhap s under th e same royal patronage). The first part o f More's Dialogue focuses on Bilney's case. 72. See , for instance, lines 280-91, where he claims the accused have mocked the hyperdulia (th e veneration of the Virgin Mary) and dulia (the veneration of the othe r saints) . These accusations are briefly mentioned elsewher e in the poem. 73. Thoma s More , Th e Confutation o f Tyndale's Answer, ed. L . Schuster , R . Marius , J. Lusardi, and R . J. Schoeck, in Th e Complete Works o f St. Thomas More (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 8:178. Stephen Greenblat t als o quotes thi s passage and give s an excellen t account of this aspect of More's late career in Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More t o Shakespeare (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1980), 11-73. 74. More , The Confutation, 176 . More's response is to Tyndale's charge that "Mr More hath so long used his figures of poetry that (I suppose) when he erreth most, he now by the reaso n of long custom believeth himself that he saith most true" (An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Di alogue, in The Works o f the English Reformers: William Tyndale an d John Frith, ed. Thomas Russell [London : Ebenezer Palmer, 1831], 2:15). 75. Line s 6-8 o f this coda read: "Hinc omne est rarum carum: reor ergo poetas /Ante alias omnes divine flamine flatos. I Sic Plato divinat, divinat sicque Socrates" 76. Wend y Wall , "Disclosure s i n Print : Th e 'Violen t Enlargement ' o f th e Renaissanc e Voyeuristic Text," SEL 29 (1989), 35-59. 77. Samue l Rowlands, STC 21409 (quoted b y Wall, 49). 78. Fro m the introduction t o Gorboduc, quoted fro m Clar a Gebert, An Anthology of Elizabeth Dedications and Prefaces (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 34 (quoted by Wall, "Disclosures," 41-42). 79. Gebert , An Anthology of Elizabeth Dedications and Prefaces, 34 . 80. Gebert , An Anthology of Elizabeth Dedications and Prefaces, 35 . 81. Toward the end of her essay (52-56), Wall considers a parallel trope, in which voyeuristic authors configured themselves as Actaeon. 2. Spenser and the Poetics of Indiscretion 1. Notin g the "stress upon [Donne's ] own invention" in the First Anniversarie, Dennis Kay observes that "Elizabeth Drury... is the occasion, rather than the subject" of the poem (Melodious Tears: Th e English Funeral Elegy from Spenser t o Milton [Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1990], 104). "By occasion," appearing in the extended title s of both Anniversaries (as well as in many other Renaissance elegies, such as Lycidas), rathe r boldly admits the pretext of such performances: th e "occasion " of a n individual' s deat h ca n provid e Renaissanc e poet s a n excus e fo r speaking their own minds, as if the eternal silence of one subject enables the articulation of their own subjectivity. In Donne's case, as Barbara Kiefer Lewalski has argued, this process coextends with th e elegia c subject's transformation int o a text (Donne's Anniversaries an d th e Poetry of Praise: The Creation of a Symbolic Mode [Princeton : Princeton Universit y Press, 1973], 174-265). 2. I n Th e Arte of English Poetry, George Puttenham distinguishe s betwee n "anniversary " and funera l elegy ; Scaliger makes suc h a distinction i n th e Poetices. See O. B. Hardison, Jr. , The Enduring Monument (Chape l Hill : Universit y o f Nort h Carolin a Press , 1962), 163; Kay, Melodious Tears, 105; and Alastai r Fowler, Kinds o f Literature: An Introduction to the Theory o f Genres and Modes (Cambridge : Harvard Universit y Press, 1982), 136. For two forma l studie s that consider Donne's evocation an d violation of elegiac conventions i n The Anniversaries, see Rosalie Colie , '"All i n Peeces' : Problems o f Interpretatio n i n Donne' s Anniversary Poems "

Notes t o Pages 50-53 21 9 (in Just S o Much Honor: Essays Commemorating th e 400t h Anniversary of th e Birth o f John Donne, ed. P. A. Fiore [Universit y Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972], 189-218); and W. M. Lebans, "Donne's Anniversaries and th e Tradition of Funeral Elegy," ELH 39 (1972), 545-59. 3. Joh n Donne, An Anatomy o f th e World, lin e 338. This an d (unles s otherwise noted) al l subsequent references to Donne's poetry appear in The Complete English Poems of John Donne, ed. C. A. Patrides (London : Everyman's Library, 1985). Subsequent reference s to the Anatomy appear parenthetically. 4. I n "The Cultura l Function o f Renaissance Elegy," Matthew Greenfiel d ha s recently argued that Donne's 'Anniversarie' poems "are the site of a painful negotiation betwee n two accounts of the work of elegy, two definitions [public and private] of human identity" (ELR 28: 1 [Winter 1998], 75-94 [94]) . 5. Pete r M. Sacks, The English Elegy: Studies in th e Genre from Spenser t o Yeats (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Universit y Press, 1985), 72. 6. "Indiscreet " and "indiscrete" of course take a common Lati n root (indiscretus: unsepa rated, undiscerned, undistinguished) into differen t direction s in modern usage . Even today, however, "indiscreet" can mean both "indistinct" and "imprudent": a failure of categorization or discriminatio n merge s with a failur e o f judgment typicall y associated wit h a speech-act that betrays confidence or propriety. In the less stable orthography of the Renaissance, moreover, the nexus between "indiscreet" an d "indiscrete" becomes eve n firmer. In lines 325-38 of the Anatomy, for instance, Donne considers a "Deformitee" of "indiscreteness" ("i f everything / Be not don e fitly'and in proportion") whil e at the same time considerin g th e violence of indiscretion, o f a linguistic performanc e intended no t "to satisfi e wise , and goo d looker s on. " Both senses can be heard i n Donne's poem , where to be indiscreet is to fai l to maintain cru cial boundarie s (suc h as the distinctio n betwee n th e poeti c sel f an d th e monstrou s worl d around it). 7. Jame s Nohrnberg, The Analogy of "The Faerie Queene" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 694. 8. Denni s Kay, Melodious Tears, 2. 9. Th e Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor o f London, from A.D. 3550 t o A.D. 1563 , ed. J . G. Nichols , Camde n Society , OS, 4 2 (1848) , 193. Quoted b y Kay , Melodious Tears, 1. 10. Kay , Melodious Tears, 1-2, 5 . Kay cites as evidence for the commo n practic e of funera l sermons Machyn's entries on pp. 201 and 211. 11. For a brief account of revisions in the Book of Common Praye r see Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London : Groom Helm, 1984), 40-42. 12. I n Melodious Tears, 3, Kay refers t o Richar d Braithwait's emphasis o n funerea l 'decen cie' in Remains after death: including divers memorable observances (1618), and i n A happy husband. To which is adjoyned th e Good Wife, b y R. Braithwait (1618), D1r. See also Stannard, Th e Puritan Way of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 97-122; an d Lawrenc e Stone, The Crisis of th e Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1965), 379, 572. 13. Joh n Weever, Ancient funerall monuments (London , 1631), 25. 14. W . K . Jordan, Edward VI : Th e Threshold o f Power (Cambridge : Harvar d Universit y Press, 1970), 181. In Melodious Tears, 3, Kay quotes Hug h Latimer: "When one dieth , we must have bells ringing, singing, and muc h ado: but t o what purpose? Those that die in the favou r of God are well: those that die out of the favour of God, this can do them no good," from Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. G. E. Corrie, Parker Society (London, 1844), 305. 15. Renaissanc e Protestant cultur e can be surprisingly contradictory o n this point. Even in the numerous revised Books of Common Prayer, for instance, we find continued devotions t o the rememberance of the dead that seem to indicate spiritual advocacy .

220 Notes t o Pages 53—55 16. Jonson' s conversations wit h William Drummond o f Hawthornden ove r both Anniversaries are recorde d i n Timber (Ben Jonson, ed. C . H. Herfor d and Evely n Simpson [Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1925], 3:133). For an interestin g effort t o answe r Jonson's attack by referring to "acceptable" poetic convention, see Lebans, "Donne's Anniversaries and the Tradition of Funeral Elegy," 557. 17. The first quotation appear s in an apologetical letter to Anne Goodyer, the secon d i n a letter to Georg e Garrard (Letters t o Several Persons of Honour [London , 1651], 74-75, 238-39. See also Donne' s unfinishe d verse epistle t o Lady Bedford, apparently writte n in response t o his patroness's displeasur e with th e Anniversaries, which admit s th e apparen t blasphem y of the poems (i n John Donne: The Satires, Epigrams an d Verse Letters, ed. Wesley Milgate [Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1967], 104). In a letter he sent to Sir Robert Carr along with "An Hymn to th e Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton," Donn e provide s wha t might be considered a n epigram for th e Anniversaries: "I did best when I had leas t truth for my subject." 18. Se e Samuel Johnson, Th e Lives of th e English Poets, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1905), 1:163-65; John Crowe Ransom, "A Poem Nearly Anonymous," in Milton's Lycidas: Th e Tradition an d th e Poem, ed. C. A. Patrides (Ne w York: Holt, Rhinehart , and Winston , 1961), 71; G. Wilson Knight, The Burning Oracle (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 70. The problem of what we might call Lycidas's disintegrit y is presented by Stanley Fish as evidenced by the poem's critical history; see his "Lycidas: A Poem Finally Anonymous," Glyph 8 (1981), 1-3 . 19. Zaili g Pollock, '"The Object , an d th e Wit' : Th e Smel l o f Donne' s First Anniversary" ELR 13: 3 (Autumn 1983), 305. Several excellent studie s have attempted t o rende r th e Anniversaries less problematic by reconstructing the rule s of decorum governin g the poems . See, for instance, Lewalski, Donne's "Anniversaries" an d th e Poetry o f Praise; Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation(New Haven : Yale University Press , 1954), ch. 6; Hardison, Th e Enduring Monument, ch. 7; and John Donne: The Epithalamions, Anniversaries and Epicedes, ed . Milgate (Oxford: Clarendo n Press , 1978), xxxv. Still, Pollock convincingly argue s (quoting Colie, '"All i n Peeces': Problems of Interpretation in Donne's Anniversary Poems," 192) that "readings which begin by appealing to convention, whether of funeral elegy , or meditative poem, or the quaestio and responsio o f medieval debate, or epideixis, or Sophia , 'do no t mes h with one anothe r in mutually valuable contributions t o interpretation.' N o one doubts that Donn e is using various conventions , bu t whethe r h e is doing s o as a means o f providing a familiar perspectiv e on Elizabeth Drury's death i s highly questionable" (306). 20. Pollock , "'The Object , and th e Wit,'" 302, 307. 21. I n "Donne' s Timeles s Anniversaries" (UTQ 3 9 [1970] , 131) , Carol M . Sicherma n de scribes lines 63-76 of the Anatomy a s a "desperate fiction"; Pollock describes the poem's "typ ical" rhetorical strategies as "chilling in their obtrusive ingenuity" ("'The Object, and the Wit': The Smel l of Donne's First Anniversarie" 307). 22. Se e Rober t Ellrodt , L'inspiration personelle e t I'esprit d u temps chez le s poetes metaphysiques anglais (Paris, 1960), part 1, 1:453. Pollock, '"The Object , and the Wit,'" 310. This shift is most obviou s i n the Anatomy, lines 63-76, 435-42. 23. Se e Charles M. Coffin , John Donne and th e New Philosophy (London : Oxford University Press, 1937), 266. 24. Fran k Manley , Introduction, Donne's Anniversaries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkin s Uni versity Press, 1963), 148-49. See also Pollock,'"The Object and the Wit,'" 313-15. In A Funerall Elegie, Donne make s even more clear the relatio n betwee n scienc e and imagination : "Bu t as when Heav' n looke s o n u s with ne w eyes, / Thos e ne w starres ev'r y Artist exercise , / Wha t place they should assigne to them they doubt, / Argue, and agree not, till those starres go out" (lines 67-70). 25. Donn e claims in lines 435-43 that he has not tim e for proper proportion . 26. Lewalski , Donne's "Anniversaries" an d th e Poetry o f Praise, 263.

Notes t o Pages 56-59 22 1 27. Life an d Letters of John Donne, ed. Edmund Gosse (London, 1899), 1:184. C. S. Lewis has described th e Anatomy a s "insanity" (cited by W. Milgate, in Th e Epithalamions, Anniversaries and Epicedes, xxxiii) . This and th e followin g citation appea r in Pollock, "The Objec t an d th e Wit," 306, 305. 28. Gabrie l Harvey's observations o n Cambridg e and England' s academic cultur e (1580) appear in Th e Poetical Works o f Edmund Spenser, ed. J. C. Smith and E . de Selincourt (London , 1912), 621. Cf. Spenser's parodi c bu t double-edge d portraya l of the abusiv e Pries t i n Mother Hubberds Tale: "For rea d he could not evidence , nor will , / . .. N e yet of Latine, ne of Greeke, that breed e / Doubt s mongs t Divines , and differenc e o f texts, / Fro m whence arise diversitie of sects, / And hatefull heresies , of God abhor'd" (lines 382, 386-89). 29. Wend y Wall , "Disclosures i n Print : Th e 'Violen t Enlargement ' o f th e Renaissanc e Voyeuristic Text," SEL 29 (1989), 35-59. Devon Hodges has related the English Renaissance fascination wit h rhetorical "anatomy" to the new science of dissecting cadavers (Renaissance Fictions of Anatomy [Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1985]). 30. Lewalsk i observe s tha t th e proces s o f abridgemen t i s fundamenta l t o Protestan t hermeneutics and devotional poetry, and that Donne's Anniversaries, by rendering thei r subject a symbolic text, also subject that subjec t to abridgemen t (Donne's 'Anniversaries' an d th e Poetry o f Praise, 75-79,174-215). We remember tha t the concei t signalin g the hastene d con clusion of the Anatomy is essentially one of abridgement an d disproportion: "Bu t as in cutting up a man that's dead, / The body will not las t out t o have read / On ever y part, and therefore men direc t / Their speech to parts, that are of most effect ; / So the worlds carcass e would no t last, if I / Were punctuall in this Anatomy. /.. . Here therefore be the end" (lines 435-40,443). In the words of Henry V' s Chorus, "Brook abridgement. " 31. Fo r a development o f th e metapho r o f Milton' s contemporarie s a s "the son s o f Or pheus" or, in Pope's words, "the mo b o f gentlemen who wrote with ease," see Richard Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton, an d th e Literary System (Berkeley: University o f Californi a Press , 1983) , 185-282 , especiall y 197-201 . Fo r a brie f bu t suggestiv e discussion o f the comple x figur e o f Orpheus an d it s symbolic appropriatio n b y Spenser, see Donald Cheney , Spenser's Image o f Nature: Wild Ma n an d Shepherd i n "The Faerie Queene" (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1966), 57-60. It should b e noted tha t neither o f these critics suggests the ambivalenc e of the figure as I do in this chapter . 32. O n the "pathologies" of Donne's linguistic violence, see Stanley Fish's interesting essay, "Masculine Persuasiv e Force: Donne an d Verba l Power," in Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory an d Seventeenth-Century English Poetry, ed . Elizabet h D . Harve y an d Katharin e Eisaman Maus (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1990), 223-52. Fo r an articl e that suggests Donne's self-criticis m in the act of poetic culpability, see Judith Herz, '"An Excellent Exercise of Wit That Speaks So Well of 111': Donne and th e Poetic s of Concealment," in The Eagle and th e Dove: Reassessing John Donne, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larr y Pebworth (Co lumbia, MO.: University of Missouri Press, 1986), especially 5. 33. Edmun d Spenser , Th e Faerie Queene, 6.8.39. Thi s an d al l subsequen t reference s t o Spenser's epic appear in Thomas P. Roche's edition (Ne w York: Penguin Books, 1987). I quote subsequent references to this poem parentheticall y by book, canto, an d stanza numbers . 34. Nohrnberg , Th e Analogy of "Faerie Queene," 712—13. 35. Kennet h Borris, "'Diuelish Ceremonies': Allegorical Satire of Protestant Extremis m in The Faerie QueeneVl, viii, 31-51," Spenser Studies 8 (1987), 175-209. 36. Followin g Borris I simplify ecclesiastica l labels for pragmatic reasons, using "Puritan " to encompas s mor e extrem e Separatists suc h as the Brownist s and Barrowists—who m Hor ton Davie s has called "impatient Puritans" (From Cranmer to Hooker, 1534 -1603, vol. 1 of Worship an d Theology i n England [Princeton : Princeton Universit y Press, 1970], 44). I use "Anglicanism" t o describ e th e mor e conservativ e positio n fro m whic h th e "Puritans " wer e ofte n

222 Notes to Pages 59 - 61 collectively attacked in the late 1590s; and I agree with Borris that Spenser's posture, at least in the 1596 addition to Th e Faerie Queene, can accurately be described as theologically conservative. Spenser' s Protestan t affiliation s ar e extensivel y studie d i n Anthe a Hume , Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 37. Se e Conversations with Drummond, i n Be n Jonson, ed. C . H. Herfor d an d Perc y and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-52), 1:137. It hardly needs saying that Jonson's interpretation ma y have been less concerned with Spenser's intentions than with his own theological leanings . T o b e fai r t o Borris , h e conclude s fro m Jonson' s commen t onl y "tha t Spenser's Legen d of Courtesy wa s open t o a t leas t semi-religious interpretatio n i n hi s ow n day" ("Diuelish Ceremonies, " 197). But Borris's excellent argument , it seems to me , is weakened by an unnecessary connection betwee n the apparent critiqu e o f Puritanism enacted by the Blatant Beast and the cannibal episode : the savages, after all , seem to us e an "altar" without Purita n antiritualism. No r does Borri s take into account the anti-Catholicis m of book 5, published contemporaneousl y with book 6 : idolatry and sacrificia l liturgie s are clearly criticized in Gerioneo's chapel, as they are in the cannibal scene. 38. Borris , "Diuelish Ceremonies," 199. 39. Pierr e Lefranc ha s claimed that "'The Lie ' est un poem e puritain" (Sir Walter Ralegh, Ecrivain [Quebec: les Presses del 1'Universite laval, 1968], 86-87). In Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man an d His Roles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 171-76, Stephen Greenblatt respond s to Lefranc' s argument , and to severa l contemporary readings of the poe m as nihilistic or atheistical , by contextualizing "The Lie " both within Ralegh' s canon an d within the tradition o f late-sixteenth-century satire . Greenblatt's attribution o f the poem i s not en tirely conclusive, though it reflects the consensus of most editors and critics today, as does his dating of the poem (b y contemporary notices) to the mid to late 1590s. As Greenblatt demonstrates, though Ralegh despised the Puritan as a "contentious and ignorant person clothing his fancie wit h th e Spirit o f God, and hi s imaginatio n wit h the gif t o f Revelation" (History o f th e World, 2.5.1), he shared with the Puritan a corrosive disillusionment and "desire to expose the self-delusion an d pretension s o f the great " (Sir Walter Ralegh, 174). For the resemblance s between late-sixteenth-century Purita n satir e and medieva l pessimism, se e Hiram Haydn , The Counter-Renaissance (Ne w York: Scribner , 1950). Fo r th e fashio n o f satir e i n late-sixteenth century England, and th e rhetorica l similarities that ofte n mad e widel y disparate doctrina l positions difficult t o distinguish in such satire, see Alvin B. Kernan, The Cankered Muse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). 40. Si r Walter Ralegh, "the Lie, " line 74 (in Th e Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes M. C. Latham [Cambridge , MA : Harvar d Universit y Press , 1951]) . Subsequen t reference s t o thi s poem appear in Latham's edition an d are cited parenthetically by line number. The OED lists Spenser a s the firs t use r o f "blatant," a word apparentl y derived fro m th e Lati n blaterare o r blatire, "to babble" or "chatter idly." "Blabbing" can only be traced with certaintly to ME roots, though like the verb "to babble," it seems to have echoic origins. An etymological link between Spenser's Blatant Beast and Ralegh' s "blabber," then, cannot be claimed; but a nexus of sense can be claimed, since blatancy and blabbing both involve the divulgence of secrets, and "bab bling" and "blabbing" can be used synonymously. 41. "Th e answre to the Lye, " line 5. This anonymous poe m appears in Latham, The Poems of Si r Walter Ralegh, 137. For a reply defending "The Lie," see "Erroris Responsio" which appears on pages 137-38 of Latham's edition. 42. A more extended discussion of state censorship in late-sixteenth-century England appears in chapte r 3. In th e summe r o f 1599, responding to th e increasingl y heated exchanges that followed th e Marprelate controversy, church and stat e official s proscribe d al l satire. The books o f Thomas Nashe, formerly a hired pen o f the Anglicans, were banned by the bishop s in 1599 ; Thomas Middleton' s Microcynicon wa s publicly burned thi s same year (se e A Tran-

Notes t o Pages 61-67 22 3 script o f the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, ed. Edward Arber [London, 1876], 3:316). Judging from Spenser' s earlier participation i n the suppression o f the Iris h poets, i t is possible h e would hav e felt som e sympath y with th e state' s attempt s t o effec t literar y order , though it seems less likely that the kind of satire being written in the late sixteenth centur y by Marston, Hall, Donne, and Jonson would have seemed dangerously seditious an d censurabl e to him . Th e tension betwee n satir e an d obsequiousnes s t o th e jurisdiction o f the stat e doe s not see m entirely resolved in the sixt h book of The Faerie Queene. 43. Greenblatt , Sir Walter Ralegh, 174. 44. Franci s Bacon, "Of Simulation an d Dissimulation, " Th e Essays, ed. John Pitcher (Ne w York: Penguin Books, 1987), 77; George Puttenham, TheArte o f English Poesie (1589 Facsimile), ed. Baxter Hathaway (Kent, Ohio: Ken t State University Press, 1970), 46. 45. I n The Faerie Queene, 6.1.7-8, the Blatant Beast is derived from Cerberu s and Chimera . In 6.6.9 he is begotten b y Typhaon and Echidna . 46. Th e historica l pessimis m o f th e las t tw o book s o f Th e Faerie Queene contrast s markedly with the optimism o f the earlier books. See, for example, 1.7.1 and 2.8.1-2. 47. Spenser , Dedicatory Letter to Ralegh , Colin Clouts Come Home Again. This letter was probably written on e year after th e Lette r to Raleg h prefacing the 159 0 Faerie Queene. 48. Fo r an extensive discussion o f this development i n book 6—on e tha t reache s conclusions quite differen t fro m m y own—see Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates, 82-96. 49. Se e The Faerie Queene's dedicator y sonnet t o Burghley , as well as 4.Proem.1. Se e also the earlier Hymne o f Heavenly Love, 11.8-12; and Hymne o f Heavenly Beautie, 11.288 - 94. Of the former passag e Helgerson writes , "Nowhere else does Spenser sound quit e so much like a repentant prodigal " (Self-Crowned Laureates, 85), a referenc e to hi s genera l argumen t i n Th e Elizabethan Prodigals (Berekeley : University of Californi a Press, 1976). My argument i n thi s chapter seek s t o qualif y Helgerson' s clai m tha t i n Th e Faerie Queene Spenser successfully moved hi s poetry "beyond repentance. " 50. O n Spenser' s general attitude toward satir e (an attitude complicated, but not rejected, in Colin Clouts Come HomeAgaine), se e Thomas R . Edwards, Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 58; and Helgerson , SelfCrowned Laureates, 85n.37. 51. Borri s points out that "garnering flowers for a garland was a standard metaphor fo r literary composition, and it was applied to sermons" ("Diuelis h Ceremonies," 182). This is a brilliant observatio n and , like most of his argument, wel l supported; but we cannot ignor e the self-reflexive aspec t of the cannibal priest's crown of laurels—a much more conventional figuration o f poetic activitie s in Renaissance literature. For the classical background of the con ception o f poesies a s poesis, see Thomas G . Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 269. 52. Annabe l Patterson, Censorship an d Interpretation (Madison: Universit y of Wisconsi n Press, 1984), especially 24-43, 49-58. 53. Cheney , Spenser's Image o f Nature, 106. 54. Matte o Mari a Boiardo , Orlando Innamorato, 2.18.39-40 ; cite d b y Cheney , Spenser's Image, 105. See C. S. Lewis, "Spenser's Irish Experiences and Th e Faerie Queene" Review of English Studies 7 (1931), 84. 55. I n the seventeenth century , Velazquez presents perhaps the most apposite examples in such works a s Las Meninas and th e roya l portrait (self-portrait? ) famously frontispieced an d discussed by Michel Foucault in his book Les mots et les chases (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 56. Elizabet h Fowler makes this point i n an essay that brilliantly considers the breakdow n of Spenser's ethica l project a s a result of tensions arising largely from the Iris h campaign. See Fowler, "The Failure of Moral Philosophy in the Work of Edmund Spenser," Representations 51 (1995), 47-87.

224 Notes t o Pages 67-69 57. "Crime " is itself a resonant wor d i n Spenser' s conceptio n o f eroti c poetry a s appro priative. In Acrasia's Bower, the male singer's ode on the carpe diem motif is disturbed by the "crime" that suc h transactions entai l (2.12.75). 58. Theres a M . Krier , Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser, Classical Imitation, an d th e Decorums of Vision (Ithaca , NY: Cornell University Press , 1990), 11. Thi s excellent stud y discusses motifs of privacy and penetration i n The Faerie Queene by adducing scenes of violated secrets in Virgilian and Ovidian sources . 59. Richar d Rambuss , Spenser's Secret Career (Cambridge : Cambridge Universit y Press, !993), 91. Kent Va n den Ber g has muc h mor e extensivel y considered Mercury' s disquietin g function i n th e poe m a s a figur e o f th e artist ; se e hi s "Th e Counterfei t i n Personation : Spenser's Prosopopoia" i n Th e Author i n His Work: Essays o n a Problem in Criticism, ed. Louis Martz and Aubrey Williams (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). In Hidden Designs: The Critical Profession an d Renaissance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1986) , 55-56, Jonatha n Crewe has suggested that the Fox and the Ape are not presented without sympath y i n Mother Hubberds Tale, but instea d tha t their poetic rapaciousness is a response to a disfunctional literary and poltical system. 60. Rambuss , Spenser's Secret Career, 120-21. Thomas H. Cain has also noted the surprising omission o f royal encomium i n book 6 (Praise i n "The Faerie Queene" [Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1978], 155). 61. In the "Aprill" eclogue, Elizabeth occupies th e central, sovereign position of the fourth Grace here assigned to Colin's lady. 62. Truanc y from epi c is not onl y Colin's concer n in 6.10. The narrator himself asks at the beginning of this canto, "Who no w does follow the foule Blatant Beast.. .?" For mirrored con cerns i n Spenser' s lyric , see Amoretti, Sonnet s 3 3 and 80 . All references to Spenser' s poetry, other than those to Th e Faerie Queene, appear in Th e Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Ed mund Spenser, ed . William A. Oram, Einar Bjorvand, Ronald Bond, Thomas H. Cain, Alexander Dunlop , an d Richar d Schell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 63. Fo r a reading of Colin's "countrey lasse " as the Rosalin d of Th e Shepheardes Calender, see Rambuss, Spenser's Secret Career, 122-23. 64. A s a "go-between" negotiating the demands o f the court an d the allures of the coun tryside, Calidor e woul d see m t o hav e mor e autobiographica l resonanc e fo r Spenser , in th e mid-1590s, than more fully sequestered characters such as Meliboee, Tristram, and the Salvage Man. Calidore has for some time been read as a representative of such figures as Sidney and Essex (se e Th e Works o f Edmund Spenser, a Variorum Edition, ed. Edwi n A. Greenlaw et al . [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932-49], 9:349-64) . 65. Harr y Berger, Jr., "The Prospect of Imagination: Spenser and the Limits of Poetry," SEL 1 (1961), 94. 66. Fo r a skeptical readin g o f Calidore' s behavio r i n 6.3 , see Richard Neuse, "Book 6 as Conclusion t o Th e Faerie Queene" ELH 35 (1968), 329-53. For suspicion towar d th e motive s and apologie s o f thi s intrusion , an d towar d Calidore' s spyin g o n Mt . Acidale, see Cheney, Spenser's Image of Nature, 196-200; Berger, "A Secret Discipline: The Faerie Queene, Book 6," in Form and Convention in the Poetry o f Edmund Spenser, ed . William Nelson (New York: Columbia Universit y Press, 1961), 35-75; and Doroth y Gulp, "Courtesy and Fortune' s Chanc e in Book 6 of Th e Faerie Queene" MP 6 8 (1971), 254-59. 67. I n Gazing on Secret Sights, 222-40, Krier argues strongly agains t the thorough skepti cism that Calidor e receives from mos t reader s today, contrasting hi s intrusions with the "in vidious eye" that characterizes other violations of privacy in book 6. Her analysis does not take into account 6.10.11.lin e 7 , however, in which Calidore i s said to gaze on the dancers with suc h pleasure "That euen he him self e his eyes enuyde"—a lin e Rambuss aptly describes as a "solipsistic figure for a scene of spying on th e fantasy of someone else" (Spenser's Secret Career, 122).

Notes t o Pages 69—74 22 5 68. Krie r argue s that Calidor e learn s especiall y fro m Colin' s explicatio n o f th e Grace s (6.10.21-27), and through a resolution o f the "male wish for access to self-contained feminine life" (Gazing on Secret Sights, 233, 239-40). Humphrey Tonkin similarl y argues that Calidor e undergoes an education in true courtesy on Mt. Acidale (Spenser's Courteous Pastoral [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], 111-55). 69. I quote here from Wyatt's "They fle from me," line 5 (Poem 37 in Th e Collected Poems of Si r Thomas Wyatt, ed . Kenneth Muir and Patrici a Thomson [Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 1969]). 70. Rambuss , Spenser's Secret Career, 116-17. For a similar observation se e Kenneth Gross, Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconodasm, and Magic (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1985), 231. 71. Cheney , Spenser's Image o f Nature, 194. 72. A passage that Borri s persuasively compares wit h th e Puritans ' relianc e upo n self justificatory providence ("Diuelis h Ceremonies " 179). 73. Cheney , Spenser's Image o f Nature, 107 . Se e Joh n Upto n i n Th e Works o f Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenla w et al. , 8 vols. (Baltimore : John s Hopkin s University Press, 1932-57) , 6:235. 74. Compar e Th e Faerie Queene 6.8.42: "Her tende r sides , he r belli e whit e an d clere , / Which lik e an Altar did i t selfe vprere, / To offer sacrific e diuine thereon." Spenser' s allusions to the Song of Songs in his presentation o f Serena were first noted by Israel Baroway, "The Im agery of Spenser and th e Song of Songs," JEGP 3 3 (1934), 35-6. Se e also Carl Robinson Sonn , "Spenser's Imagery, " ELH 2 6 (1959) , 156-70; Cheney, Spenser's Image of Nature, 108-16; an d Nohrnberg, Th e Analogy of "The Faerie Queene" 714-15. 75. Spenser' s descriptio n o f his "thoughts" as "guests" offers a host o f etymologica l delicatessens: guest can mean no t onl y "stranger" but also , through hostis, "enemy." Hamlet's re mark on hi s father' s apparition , "let u s as a stranger give it welcome," hints at the ambiguit y of Spenser's guest-thoughts in this context. On Spenser's avoidance of explicit reference to the fruit o f the Fal l in Amoretti 77, see Cheney, Spenser's Image o f Nature, 115. 76. Helgerson , Self-Crowned Laureates, 55-100. 77. Fo r a discussion o f the vocational threats posed to Spense r by Acrasia and th e Bower of Bliss , threat s "contained" by thei r destruction , se e Stephen Greenblatt , Renaissance SelfFashioning from More t o Shakespeare (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1980), 157-92. 78. Th e Works o f Michael Drayton, ed. J.W. Hebel et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1931-41), 2:334. For an other interestin g poem, by Drayton, on the potential violence of a theater that admit s the "profane vulgar," see "The Sacrifice to Apollo." Perhaps referring to Ben Jonson's club room in the Devil Tavern, this poem articulate s some of the concerns with the public theater's au dience that I ascribe to Jonson in chapter 3. 79. Fo r Harvey's argument that comedy, in particular, "hath been the usual practice of the most exquisit e an d od d wit s i n al l nations, an d speciall y i n Italy , ... t o sho w an d advanc e themselves," see Variorum, 10:471-72. Spenser's most concis e comments on the contemporar y degeneration of comedy an d traged y appear i n Th e Teares o f th e Muses, lines 115-234, where like Drayton he laments the admission of the profane vulgar. 80. Hymne o f Heavenly Love, 11.11. 81. A s suggested in chapter 3, such a reading presents itself especially in Arthur Golding's handling of the Orpheu s myth. See Shakespeare's Ovid: Golding's Translation o f the "Metamorphoses," ed. W.H.D. Rouse (London: Centaur Press , 1961), 11.17-19. In the Ars Poetica, Horace presents Orpheus as a figure of harmony and civilizatio n (caedibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus [line 392]). See also Natalis Comes, Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, ed. Vincenzo Romano (Bari : G. Laterza, 1951), 1:244-247. 82. Donal d Bouchard , Milton: A Structural Reading (Montreal: Queen' s Universit y Press, 1974), 24-

226 Notes

t o Pages 74—78

83. Joh n Milton, A Masque Presented a t Ludlow Castle, line 549. This and subsequen t ref erences t o Milton' s poetr y appea r i n John Milton: Th e Complete Poems, ed. John Carey an d Alastair Fowler (London : Longman, 1968). On th e image of interior virtu e as it is developed in Milton' s Masque, see Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and Theater in th e English Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 198-209. 84. I n Inwardness and Theater, 199, Maus suggestivel y compare s the Lady' s rhetoric wit h Milton's i n Prolusiones VI . Th e Lady' s Orphi c threa t ma y als o b e compare d wit h Kin g Richard's similar pronouncement i n Shakespeare's Richard II, 3.2.3-26. James Holly Hanford considers th e connectio n betwee n th e Lad y in Comu s an d Milton' s Cambridg e sobrique t i n John Milton, Englishman (New York: Crown, 1949), 63-64. 85. Th e title-pag e mott o o f th e 163 7 edition o f Comus —"Eheu quid volui misero mihi! floribus austrum I Perditus" (fro m Virgil' s Eclogue 2)—has often been rea d a s Milton's regre t for publishing th e piece. 86. Fo r a fascinating interpretation o f Spenser's figuration s o f Orpheus as representations of threats (specifically female threats) t o his vocational cursus, see Joseph Lowenstein, "Echo's Ring: Orpheu s an d Spenser' s Career, " EL R 16: 2 (1986) , 287-302. Se e als o Thoma s Cain , "Spenser an d th e Renaissanc e Orpheus," University o f Toronto Quarterly 41 (1971), 24-47. For a different perspective—ultimately neare r to my own view that Spenser becomes critical of his self-identification wit h Orpheus—see Harry Berger, "Orpheus, Pan, and the Poetics of Misogyny: Spenser's Critique o f Pastoral Love and Art," ELH 50 (1983), 27-60. 87. Se e The Teares o f th e Muses, lines 14-15, where Spenser substitutes the Palic i (twins of Jupiter an d th e nymp h Thalia ) fo r Orpheus . Fo r Spenser' s genealogica l claim s to Orpheu s elsewhere, see Cain, "Spenser an d the Renaissance Orpheus," 28-29. 88. I n Th e Teares of the Muses, Clio (Muse of History) speaks first, followed by Melpomen e (Muse of Tragedy), Thalia (Muse of Comedy), Euterpe (Muse of Pastoral), Terpsichore (Muse of Dance) , Erato (Mus e of Lyri c Poetry , specifically Lov e Poetry), Calliope (Mus e of Epic), Urania (Mus e of Astronomy an d Religiou s Poetry), and ninth , Polyhymnia (Mus e of Rhetoric). I f we assume that this order implies a hierarchy, ther e is some precedent for beginning with Clio; and other mino r conventiona l position s can be observed, such as the "higher" status o f Urani a an d Polyhymnia . Bu t th e lo w placement o f tragedy here i s certainly unusual, perhaps indicatin g a n antitheatrica l prejudice . Fo r a discussion o f generic hierarchies in th e Renaissance, see Alastair Fowler , Kinds o f Literature: An Introduction t o the Theory o f Genres and Modes (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1982), 213-54. 89. Phili p Sidney , Defence o f Poesie, in Th e Prose Works o f Si r Philip Sidney, ed . Alber t Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1963), 3:37. 90. "An d Eulogies turne into Elegies" : in this context th e sense of generic transformation here i s relatively straightforward—eulogia, or th e fin e languag e of praise, yields to th e lan guage of loss. Yet when we compare this referenc e to blazonic praise with th e cannibals' parody of it, "Eulogies" become s mor e ambivalent . Eulogia can refer no t onl y to the Eucharistic Host bu t als o to bread—blessed bu t no t consecrated—tha t i s given t o noncommunicants a t Mass. The proces s elegized in Th e Teares o f th e Muses, and dramatize d i n Th e Faerie Queens 6.8.31-46, is one in which the poetic hos t i s prophaned i n the mouths o f the unholy. 91. Borri s notes th e latter etymology , but no t th e connection wit h traducemen t ("Diuel ish Ceremonies," 183). 92. Compar e Culex, lines 268-96. In Georgics 4.485-91, Virgil tells the story with pity, noting tha t Orpheus' s "frenzy " i s "meet fo r pardon" : "iamqu e pede m referen s casu s evasera t omnis, / redditaqu e Eurydic e superas veniebat a d auras, / pone sequen s (namqu e hanc ded erat Proserpin a legem) , / cu m subit a incautu m dementi a cepi t amantem , / ignoscend a quidem, sciren t si ignoscere Manes : / restitit , Eurydicenqu e sua m ia m luce sub ipsa / immemo r heu!" Spense r comes closer to this Virgilian sympath y in Virgils Gnat, 473-80, with lines 475 -

Notes t o Pages 78-83 22 7 76 almos t directl y translatin g Georgics 4.48 9 (evidence , perhaps , tha t th e pseudo-Virgilia n Culex was not hi s only source). 93. I n van der Noot's work, this twelve-line poem appear s among Spenser' s first publications as Epigram 6. Later expanded int o a sonnet i n Th e Visions o f Petrarch, this poem trans lates Rime 323, lines 61-72. 94. See , for example , Cheney, Spenser's Image of Nature, 201. 95. Se e Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) , ed. D. C. Allen (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1933), 283. William Jaggard printed the two sonnets (13 8 and 144 ) in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) . On th e "ownership " of Shakespeare' s poems , se e Arthur F . Marroti, "Shakespeare's Sonnet s a s Literary Property," in Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory an d Seventeenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Elizabet h D . Harvey an d Katharin e Eisaman Mau s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1990), 143-73. 96. Rambuss , Spenser's Secret Career, 94. 97. Willia m Ponsonby, "The Printe r to the Gentle Reader," quoted from The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, ed . Smith an d D e Selincourt, 470. 98. Se e Rambuss, Spenser's Secret Career, 84-94; Ronal d Bond' s introductio n t o Complaints in Th e Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems, 217; and Joh n D. Bernard, Ceremonies of Innocence: Pastoralism in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Cambridge : Cambridge Universit y Press, 1989), 107. 99. Thoma s Middleton , Th e Black Book (1604) , in Th e Works o f Thomas Middleton, ed . A. H. Bullen (London: John C. Nimmo, 1886), 8:31. 100. Debor a Shuger presented thi s reading of Calidore in a fascinating paper she delivered in a panel, "The Poetics of Guilt," I organized for the 1999 Renaissance Society of America conference (March , Los Angeles). 101. Helgerson , Self-Crowned Laureates, 100. In context, th e mai n point her e seems to b e Spenser's self-differentiatio n fro m th e repentant "prodigals" who pursued a n admittedly purposeless poetry, full o f "solace," but devoi d o f "sentence." 102. Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, for instance , ha d jus t been printe d (agai n by Pon sonby) th e precedin g year. The Shepheardes Calender had bee n printe d in London i n severa l editions b y 1596. 103. "Serena " is the nam e by which Raleg h addresses Elizabet h Throckmorton i n "To his Love when hee had obtained Her, " and in the Taverham and Folger manuscripts of "Nature that washt her hands in milke." See The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham, 118-19. Walter Oakenshott writes of a copy of The Faerie Queene that belonged to Ralegh's son Carew and in which a han d h e identifie s as Elizabeth Throckmorton' s identifie s Ralegh with Timia s and Seren a with herself ("Carew Ralegh's Copy of Spenser," The Library 5th Series 26 [1971], 1-21). To read Serena as Elizabeth Throckmorton i n book 6 , however, requires some flexibility; for earlier in Spenser's epic Amoret seems to figure Ralegh's lady. Still the most extensive study of the com plex relation between Spense r and Raleg h as it is meditated i n Th e Faerie Queene, Katherine Keller's "Spenser an d Ralegh " (ELH i [1934] , 37-60) illuminate s Timias-Amoret-Belphoeb e episodes in books 3 and 4 as spin-control on Ralegh's secret marriage. See also Patrick Cheney, "The Laureate Choir: The Dove as a Vocational Sign in Spenser's Allegory of Ralegh and Elizabeth," HLQ 53: 4 (Autumn 1990) , 257-80; and Willia m A . Oram, "Spenser's Raleghs, " SP 87:3 (Summer 1990), 341-62. I a m particularly indebted t o Gram's articl e in this chapter . 104. Th e gory details of this drama ar e supplied by A. L. Rouse, Sir Walter Ralegh: His Family an d Private Life (Ne w York: Harper an d Brothers , 1962), 158-69. 105. Th e Shepheardes Calender, Januarye (i n Th e Yale Edition of th e Shorter Poems, 34). 106. Carme l Gaffrey , "Coli n Clout s Com e Hom e Againe " (Diss . Edinburgh University , 1982), first connected Brego g with Ralegh , Mulla with Throckmorton , an d Old Mole with the queen (Throckmorton' s age d guardian). See also Oram, "Spenser's Raleghs, " 360-62.

228 Notes to Pages 84-88 107. Donal d Chene y has observed the tension betwee n private love and a more public literary rol e i n Spenser' s late r poetr y ("Spenser' s Fourtiet h Birthda y an d Relate d Fictions, " Spenser Studies 4 [1983] , 6-9) . 108. Se e Oram, "Spenser's Raleghs," 356-58; an d his "Elizabethan Fact and Spenseria n Fiction," Spenser Studies 4 (1983), 39-45. See also Michael O'Connell, Mirror and Veil: The Historical Dimension of Spenser's Faerie Queene (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 118. 109. Ralegh , "Sir Walter Ralegh to the Qveen" ("Our Passion s are most lik e to Floods and streames"), lines 23-26 (i n Th e Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham). no. Fo r Ralegh's disclaiming of Elizabeth Throckmorton, an d his protestations of love for Elizabeth I, see Ocean t o Cynthia, lines 336-43; and hi s lette r to Ceci l of 10 March 1592 (considered b y Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, 75-78). See also Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, Ecrivain, 135-40; and Donal d Davie , "A Reading of Th e Ocean's Love to Cynthia," i n Elizabethan Poetry, Stratford-upon-Avon Studie s 2 (New York: St. Martin's, 1960), 71-89. 111. Shakespeare , Hamlet, 5.2.8. Earlier in the play, Hamlet (lik e Horatio) ha s made an ab solute virtue of discretion; see, for example, 3.2.15-6. 112. Harr y Berger, Jr., Making Trifles o f Terrors: Redistributing Complicities i n Shakespeare, ed. Peter Erickson (Stanford: Stanfor d University Press, 1997), 123. In this passage and throughout this collection o f essays, Berger remains more interested in the complicities of the observer than i n those of the author. I try to show that thes e complicities are often th e same. 113. Sigur d Burckhardt , Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton: Princeto n Universit y Press, 1968), 269. 3. The Properties of Shakespeare's Globe 1. Stephe n Gosson , Playes Confuted i n Five Actions (London: 1582), C8v. 2. Al l references to Gosson's works in this chapter appear in Arthur Kinney's edition (Markets ofBawdrie: Th e Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson [Austria : Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 1974]). I have modernized the spelling but retaine d the punctuation of this edition, and I cite subsequent reference s to it parenthetically in my text, using Professor Kinney's page numbers; unless otherwise noted, al l references to Gosso n appea r i n Playes Confuted i n Five Actions. 3. Samue l Daniel, "A Funerall Poeme Upon th e Deat h o f the Lat e Noble Earle of Devon shire" (The Complete Works i n Verse an d Prose, ed. Alexande r Grosar t [London , 1885-86], 1:173). Grosart prints these lines, which appear only in manuscript, i n a footnote to his edition of the poem . 4. Daniell , "Funerall Poeme," 353-62. 5. Thoma s Heywood , A n Apology fo r Actors, ed. Arthu r Freema n (Ne w York: Garland , 1973), B4r. 6. Phili p Sidney , An Apology for Poetry, in Prose Works, ed . Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 12 (my italics). 7. A n Apology for Poetry, p. 24. 8. Se e Playes Confuted i n Five Actions, 161. 9. Fo r a clear analysis of the pro- and antitheatricalis t debat e on drama's motivational ef fect o n th e audience , see Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness an d Theater i n the English Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 74-75. 10. Gosso n specificall y objected to the recen t arrival of the public stage, noting tha t even "modest" and "good" plays are "not fit for every man's diet: neither ough t they commonly t o be shown" (The Schoole o f Abuse, 97). 11. A formulation of Michel Foucault's containment model appearing most influentially in Stephen Greenblatt' s Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renais-

Notes t o Pages 88-92 22 9 same England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). See especially the chapte r "In visible Bullets," 21-65. 12. Fo r an excellen t discussio n o f the state' s attempt s t o contro l topica l reference s on th e Renaissance stage, see Paul Yachnin, "The Powerless Theater," English Literary Renaissance, 21:1 (Winter 1991) , 49-74. 13. Som e editions have Proteus rather than Procrustes here (see Playes Confuted i n Five Actions, ed. Arthur Freeman [NewYork : Garland, 1972], D5r). Gosson's classical allusions are notoriously bizarre , and i t seems likel y that i n this passag e he may have substituted, a t the expense of his metaphor, a commonplace antitheatrica l figure (Proteus) that makes little sens e in a context callin g for Procrustes . 14. Th e Life o f Henry th e Fifth, Prologue , 12 , 19-20. All reference s to Shakespeare' s dra matic an d non-dramati c poetr y i n this chapte r appea r in Th e Riverside Shakespeare, gen . ed. G. Blakemore Evan s (Boston: Houghton Miffli n Company , 1974) . When i t i s possible, I cit e subsequent reference s to this edition parenthetically. 15. Fo r an insightful analysis of the ambiguous status of prophecies and omens in this play, see Avraham Oz, "Julius Caesar an d th e Propheti c Mind, " Assaph: Studies in th e Theatre, 1: 1 (Section C, 1984), 28-39. 16. A n Apology for Poetry, 45. 17. Marjori e Garber , '"What' s Pas t I s Prologue' : Temporalit y an d Prophec y i n Shake speare's Histor y Plays," in Renaissance Genres, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalsk i (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 301-31. See also Sharon L . Jansen Jaech, "Political Prophec y an d Macbeth's 'Sweet Bodements,'" Shakespeare Quarterly, 34 (1983), especially p. 291; Keith Thomas, Religion and th e Decline of Magic (London : Macmillan, 1971), 392-423; and W . Russell Mayes, Historian o f th e Future: Edmund Spenser an d Elizabethan Prophecy (diss , University o f Virginia, 1996). In "'Aztec ' Augurie s and Memorie s o f th e Conques t o f Mexico " (Renaissance Studies, 6: 3-4 [1992] , 287-305), Felip e Fernandez-Armesto consider s ho w the Spanis h imperialists exploited an d fictionalized historical omens (including , perhaps, several gleaned from Plutarch) in their self-mythologized conquest of the Americas. 18. Richar d Hosley , ed. , Shakespeare's Holinshed (Ne w York: Capricor n Books , 1968), 48 (Chronicles, 1587 ed., 180). 19. Franci s Bacon, "Of Prophecies, " i n Essays, ed. Edwin A. Abbott, (London : Longmans, Green, 1881), 2:20-21. 20. Followin g Garber, "What's Past Is Prologue," 311n.15,1 borrow thi s term fro m Hayden White's Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universit y Press, 1973), 6-7 . 21. Henry V, 2. Chorus. 31-32. 22. A n Apology for Poetry, 68. Plutarch himself refused th e title of "historian," choosing in stead to relate and evaluate the "lives" and "minds" of his subjects (se e Lives, 5:164-65). North also freely employed culturally determined evaluative license; for a comparison of his Plutarch with the original, emphasizing North's recalibration o f the heroic ideal by which the subject s of the Lives were measured, se e Reuben Brower, Hero an d Saint: Shakespeare an d th e GraecoRoman Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 205-17. 23. Plutarch' s Liues of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. Sir Thomas Nort h (London , 1579), intro. George Wyndham, 6 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1967), 6: 69-70, 201. 24. Gar y Taylor, "Bardicide," in Shakespeare an d Cultural Traditions: Th e Selected Proceedings of th e International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Tokyo, 1991, ed. Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanle y Wells (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 343. Regardless of our respons e to such claims, we must dismis s as specious Taylor' s assertio n that the scene also presents "a theatrically impossible dismemberment " (p . 334). The stage directions indicat e Cinn a i s to b e dragge d offstage fo r hi s fate . Moreover , fals e limb s fo r suc h

230 Notes t o Pages 92-94 scenes appear i n th e fe w extant list s of Elizabethan stag e properties, an d th e illusio n o f on stage dismemberment seem s not t o have been impossible i n such plays as Doctor Faustus and Titus Andronicus (see Philip Henslowe' s inventor y o f March, 1598, in C . Walter Hodges, Th e Globe Restored [Ne w York: Coward , McGann , 1953] , 71-72. O n pp . 73-74 , Hodge s demon strates Elizabethan "stage machinery to produce the illusio n of a beheading") . 25. Taylor , "Bardicide," 338. 26. Taylor , "Bardicide," 341. 27. Th e plebeians in Julius Caesar compare unfavorabl y with both thos e of his other Ro man plays, and the lower ranks presented in his English histories. See Brents Stirling, The Populace in Shakespeare (Ne w York: Columbia Universit y Press, 1949). 28. Se e North's Plutarch, 6:15. In Th e Life o f Brutus, no mentio n i s made o f Brutus's oration; in Th e Life o f Caesar, no mentio n i s made of Antony's. 29. Suc h i s a t leas t th e ostensibl e authoria l stanc e i n Venus an d Adonis, the epigra m o f which exhorts, "Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo I Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua" (from Ovid' s Amores, 1.15.35-36). Th e subsequen t dedicator y epistl e to Henr y Wriothesley also distinguishe s betwee n th e unimportan t censur e o f "the world " and th e all-importan t pleasure of Shakespeare's patron . 30. Arthu r F. Marotti remains one o f the more vocal proponents o f this view. See his "Patronage, Poetry, and Print, " Yearbook o f English Studies, 21 (1991), 1-26; an d hi s "Shakespeare's Sonnets a s Literar y Property," i n Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory an d SeventeenthCentury English Poetry, ed. Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katharin e Eisaman Maus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 143-73. 31. Franci s Meres, Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) , ed. D. C. Allen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1933), 283. William Jaggard printed th e tw o sonnet s (13 8 and 144 ) in Th e Passionate Pilgrim (1599). 32. I n "The Politics ofAstrophel an d Stella," Ann Rosalin d Jones and Pete r Stallybrass reveal that th e distinctio n betwee n literar y courtship an d publi c courtiershi p was often blurred i n late-sixteenth-century England's "publicly intimate" poetry (Studies in English Literature, 24:1 [Winter 1984], 53-68). Fo r further demonstration s o f the difficult y o f maintaining privacy in the Elizabetha n an d Jacobea n patronage systems , se e Annabel M. Patterson, Censorship an d Interpretation: Th e Conditions of Writing an d Reading in Early Modern England (Madison : University o f Wisconsin Press , 1984); and Davi d Norbrook , Poetry an d Politics in th e English Renaissance (London: Routledge and Kega n Paul, 1984), especially 109-56,195-234. 33. Taylo r observes this fact onl y to conflat e what I am suggesting are the increasingl y divergent role s of the patronage poet an d th e "theatre-poet" in late-sixteenth-century England ("Bardicide," 345n.8). 34. A s Katharine Eisaman Maus has demonstrated, Jame s I continued t o blur the lines between poetr y an d politic s i n hi s pose a s poet-prince, an d i n hi s appropriation o f theater — particularly the masque—a s a n institutio n o f self-display (Ben Jonson an d th e Roman Frame of Mind [Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1984], 40,102-10). See also Stephen Orgel, The Illusion o f Power (Berkeley : University o f Californi a Press, 1975) , and hi s Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge: Harvard Universit y Press, 1964). 35. Quote d in J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584 -1601 (London : Cape, 1965), 2:119. King James would echo his predecessor i n Basilicon Doron: "A King is as one set on a skaffold, whos e smalles t action s an d gesture s a l the peopl e gazingl y doe behold" (The Basilicon Doron of James VI , ed. James Craigie [Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons , 1944], p. 162). For excellent discussions of the ambiguity of both royal pronouncements, see Steven Mullaney, The Place of th e Stage: License, Play, an d Power i n Renaissance England (Chicago : University of Chicag o Press, 1988), 88-115; an d Stephe n Orgel, "Making Greatnes s Familiar," Genre, 15 (1982), 47.

Notes t o Pages 94-97 23 1 36. Th e queen' s comments wer e recorded b y William Lambarde . See the Arden edition of Shakespeare's King Richard II , ed . Pete r Ur e (Cambridge : Harvar d Universit y Press , 1956), Ivii-lxii. 37. Th e Power o f Forms i n th e English Renaissance, ed. Stephen Greenblat t (Norman , OK: Pilgrim Books, 1982), 3. The queen's claim that Richard II was played outside the Glob e prior to or during the Essex rebellion has not been substantiated and may have been intended as the metaphor Greenblatt develops. 38. Thi s self-identificatio n differs fro m tha t intende d b y th e d e casibus didacticis m o f a wor k suc h a s Th e Mirror for Magistrates. Essex' s theatrica l propaganda, a t leas t a s i t wa s conceived by Elizabeth, sought t o chang e others' perceptio n o f her ; i t was a mirror fo r th e world. In the didactic tradition, artist s sought to amend o r validate the sovereign's own self perception and behavior. This is not t o say, of course, that artist s operating within this tradition coul d no t inten d politica l consequence s beyond thos e desire d by the sovereign ; or tha t they could not rende r the sovereign's image ambiguous and subject to subversive interpretation. But in objecting to Essex's Richard II, Elizabeth objects to his treasonous interpretatio n itself, not to an artist's Aesopian representation: she objects to an act of audience response that violates her own theatricalized conception of history and her place in it. 39. I n one of the best of many recent readings of Hans Holbein's Th e Ambassadors, Charles Harrison describe s its anamorphic effec t a s an intrusion o f historicity upon essentiality , "the carefully achieved illusion of its instantaneity, its 'presentness,' damage d beyond repair by the representation of its contingency" ("On the Surfac e of Painting," Critical Inquiry, 15:2 [Winter 1989], 324). If Shakespeare, like Isabel in Richard I I (2.2) , indeed conceded suc h anamorphosis as unavoidable in theater, an interesting contrast—one I attempt to develop i n a differen t context late r in this chapter—appears in Ben Jonson's sonnet "In Authorem" whic h attempts to center the reader's shifting perspective upon an immutable and conclusive "line." 40. Betwee n 1597 and 1599 , the Chamberlain' s Me n probabl y performe d at th e Curtai n while the Theatr e a t Shoreditc h was being razed an d it s timber use d t o buil d th e Glob e at Bankside. See Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300-1660, 2 vols. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1972). 41. Se e Gary Taylor, "Canon an d Chronology, " i n William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1987), 121; and Julius Caesar, in Th e New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Marvin Spevack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1-5 . 42. From th e postmorte m inventor y o f Si r Thoma s Bren d (1 6 May 1599) . Cite d b y S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1977), 209. 43. Thi s Privy Council order (enacte d 22 June 1600) further specifie d tha t there would be only one playhouse allowed "in Surrey in that place which is commonlie calle d the Banckside or ther e aboutes" an d record s that th e Chamberlain's Me n had chose n th e Glob e to be that one (se e E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923], 2:416). The "inhibition" mentioned b y Rosencrantz, in Shakespeare's most extended discussion of the Renaissance stage , is often glosse d a s a n allusio n t o thi s orde r (se e Hamlet, 2.2.33n, in Th e Riverside Shakespeare) . 44. Thi s and th e precedin g quotation o f Allen appear in C.W. Wallace, The First London Theatre: Materials for a History Nebraska University Sudies, Number 8, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1913), 278-79. Allen's case did no t g o to court until 1600, so we have no way of assessing the direc t influence o f his charges upon Julius Caesar. 45. Hamlet, 2.2.401. 46. Andre w Gurr, Playgoing i n Shakespeare's London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 93.

232 Notes t o Pages 97-98 47. Everyman Out o f His Humour, 4.3.68 . This and al l subsequent reference s to Be n Jonson's dram a are taken fro m Be n Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evely n Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1925-52). 48. Poetaster, 1.3.7. 49. Se e Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind, 91,106. In Poetaster, poetry and statecraft indeed merge, as Augustus proclaims: "CAESAR and VIRGI L / Shall differ bu t i n sound" (5.2.2-3). 50. Poetaster, "The Thir d Sounding," 6,9. Like the other playwrights involved in the War of the Theaters, Jonson imagine s an audience that includes antagonistic playwrights and actor s bent upon adulteratin g his text (se e "The Thir d Sounding, " 18-20, and Envy' s speech, "Afte r the Second Sounding"). One effect o f the theatrical war, then, is to literalize the subjective and deliberately misconstruing audience—the audience-turned-actors—which I argue is a source of concern i n Julius Caesar. 51. Joh n Michael Archer has convincingly shown that "the paranoid construction o f Jonsonian authorship, " whic h "sough t t o contro l audience s an d reader s a s well a s performers through the authorit y of the text," was a product o f his fear o f intelligencers among his own actors and audienc e (Sovereignty an d Intelligence: Spying an d Court Culture in the English Renaissance [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993], 94 -120). See also Stanley Fish, "AuthorsReaders: Jonson's Community o f the Same," Representations, 7 (1984), 26-58. 52. Thoma s Dekker , Satiro-Mastix, ed. Josiah H. Pennima n (Boston : D . C. Heath, 1962) , "To the World," 15-17. 53. Maus , Ben Jonson and Th e Roman Frame of Mind, 92. 54. Jonson , "To the No Less Noble, by Virtue than Blood : Esme, Lord Aubigny," 7-10 . 55. Indeed , Sejanus provide s man y targets for Taylor's program o f exposure. The indict ment of Cremutius Cordus in act 3, for instance, presents an untenable claim for the disinterestedness o f historiography , a disingenuous denia l o f contemporar y relevance , i n a histor y play judged treasonously implicated b y the Priv y Council in 1603. For Jonson's ambiguous employment o f the humanist sense of historical distance from an cient cultures, see Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 264-93. For the contemporary politica l resonance of Jonson's Roman tragedies, see especially Annabel Patterson, "Roman-cast Similitude : Ben Jonson and the Englis h Use of Roman His tory," in Rome in the Renaissance: The City an d th e Myth, ed . P.A. Ramsey (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissanc e Texts, 1982), 381-94. 56. Fo r Jonson' s full y articulate d desir e fo r a "blind audience, " see the Prologu e t o Th e Staple o f News. For a discussion of the antagonism between spectacle and word that developed with some continuit y throughou t Jonson' s career , see D. J. Gordon, "Poet and Architect: Th e Intellectual Setting of the Quarre l Between Ben Jonson an d Inig o Jones," in Th e Renaissance Imagination, ed. Stephen Orge l (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 77-101. 57. Be n Jonson, "Epistle to Pembroke. " 58. Joh n Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman, 1968), 7:26-28,31-32. 59. Jus t as the play' s genre i s an earl y topic of debate, so it s earliest stage history i s contested b y the 160 9 preface, whic h advertise s Troilus an d Cressida a s "a new play, neuer stal' d with th e stage , neuer clapper-claw d wit h the palme s of the vulger" ; the Stationers ' Register, which records its existence in February 1603; and th e quarto title-pag e (first state) , which ad vertises the play "As it was acted by the King s Maiesties seruants at the Globe. " 60. Th e prologue appear s only in F1 . Pandarus's epilogu e appear s i n Q , but ther e i s evidence i n F1 suggesting that h e originall y made hi s final exit i n 5.3 , and tha t hi s re-entr y to speak the epilogue was a later addition. Otherwise, but for a few superficial variations between Q and F1 , the followin g claims I make for Troilus and Cressida ar e unaffected b y textual problems. On the question of making such textual claims for this play, see Philip Williams, "Shake-

Notes to Pages 99-102 23 3 speare's Troilus and Cressida: Th e Relationshi p of Quarto an d Folio, " Studies in Bibliography, 3 (1950-51), 131-43; and E.A.J . Honingman, Th e Stability of Shakespeare's Text (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1965). 61. See , fo r example , Th e Schoole o f Abuse, 92-93, an d Playes Confuted i n Five Actions, 194-95. 62. A Refutation o f the Apology for Actors..., by I.G. (1605). Quoted i n Herschel Baker, The Race o f Time: Three Lectures o n Renaissance Historiography (Toronto : University o f Toront o Press, 1967), 80. 63. Jame s L . Calderwood, Shakespearean Metadrama (Minneapolis : Universit y o f Min nesota Press , 1971) , 136. Se e als o hi s "Appallin g Property i n Othello" University o f Toronto Quarterly, 57:3 (Spring 1988), 353-75 (357) . 64. Willia m Caxton's Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, the first product of England's first press, was just one of Shakespeare's available sources. Others include translations of Homer by George Chapman and Arthur Hall, Ovid's Metamorphoses, John Lydgate's Troy Book, Geoffrey Chaucer' s Troilus and Criseyde, Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and several recorded Elizabethan plays (now lost) concerning the story. A possible influence lies in Euripides' multiple dramatic revaluations of the Troy legend—especially Orestes which, like Shakespeare's play, mixes genres to provide a stubbornly relativistic comment upon the realism beneath epic. The diverse literary heritage of Shakespeare's Troilus material is further traced in Geoffre y Bullough , Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London : Routledge and Kega n Paul, 1966), 6:83-111. 65. I n a n importan t essa y on th e play , Carol Coo k consider s thes e sam e issues , thoug h from a Lacania n perspective; see "Unbodied Figure s of Desire, " Theatre Journal, 38 (March 1986), 34-52 (especially 44-46). 66. I f the self-conscious meditation upo n the kind of theatrical violence I discuss here indeed has a trajectory in the seventeenth century, it is tempting to find its zenith in 1650, when Andrew Marvell revisited the metaphor o f the clapper-claw in a poetic respons e to regicide: That thence the royal actor bor n The tragic scaffold migh t adorn : While roun d th e armed band s Did clap their bloody hands . (An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland [53-56] ) 67. Se e especially Paul Cantor, Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 108-10. 68. Thi s epistemolog y i s developed mor e full y i n th e exchange—par t o f which w e have considered—between Achille s and Ulysse s in Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.95-111. 69. A similar clai m migh t b e mad e fo r th e earlie r Titus Andronicus (1593-94) , i n whic h rape and dismembermen t rende r Lavinia' s body an annotate d text , a silent emble m submit ted to others' reconstructive reading . See Douglas E. Green, "Interpreting 'her martyr'd signs' : Gender and Traged y in Titus Andronicus" Shakespeare Quarterly, 40 (1989), 317-26. 70. Antony an d Cleopatra, 5.2.49-62, 208-21 . 71. Coriolanus, 3.3.134; 5.3.36; 4.7.42; 5.6.120; 5.2.65-66. Earlier Coriolanus seems to recog nize that i t is death that submits one to other-fashioning, life that grants the temporary privilege of maintaining one's self-conception : While I remain above the ground yo u shall Hear from m e still, and neve r of me aught But what is like me formerly. (4.1-51-53)

234 Note s to Pages 102-106 72. Davi d Kaul a has found a pattern o f eucharistic allusions in the ritua l attending Cae sar's murder i n "'Let Us Be Sacrifices': Religious Motifs in Julius Caesar" Shakespeare Studies, 14 (1981), 197-214. 73. Se e especially Mar k Rose , "Conjuring Caesar : Ceremony , History , an d Authorit y i n 1599," in True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual i n Shakespeare an d His Age, ed. Linda Woodbridge and Edwar d Berry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 264. 74. Sigur d Burckhardt , Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton : Princeton Universit y Press, 1968), 3-21 . 75. Se e Richard Macksey , "Last Words: Th e Artes Moriendi an d a Transtextua l Genre, " Genre, 16 (Winter 1983) , 508. It i s true tha t Plutarch , though writin g in Gree k throughout , makes a point of saying that Caesar spoke in Latin to Casca; and we cannot expect that Shakespeare would have been aware of Suetonius and Dio's earlier accounts, which had Caesar saying "Kai su , teknon?" as Brutus stabbed him. But my point here is that "Tu quoque, mifili" an d "Et tu, Brute" are later reports, the second a theatrical invention apparentl y already becoming a convention b y the time of Shakespeare's play (in Every Man Ou t o f His Humour, 5.6.79, Jonson would parody it as a cliche). 76. See , for example, Julius Caesar, ed. A. R. Humphreys (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 80-81. 77. Miche l Foucault, Discipline an d Punish: The Birth of th e Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York : Vintage Books, 1979), 46. 78. A much more extensive and persuasive account of Shakespeare's operation withi n the patronage system has recentl y appeared i n Alvin Kernan's Shakespeare, Th e King's Playwright in th e Stuart Court, 1603-1613 (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). It may be il l advised and unfai r fo r me to quarrel with Kernan's weighty argument in this essay: he considers later drama, written for a different court , performed by a different company , and his emphasis differs greatly from mine. But while Kernan certainly demonstrates aspect s of the patronage system in Shakespeare's Stuart drama, his seems to me an overstated case, one that ignores some of the performative issues considered here. 79. Samue l Johnson, Johnson o n Shakespeare, i n Th e Yale Edition of th e Works o f Samuel Johnson, ed. Arthur Sherbo (Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 7:51-52. Alexander Pope also speaks of Shakespeare's original manuscripts being "cut" and "divided" into the "Piecemeal Parts" of the "Prompter's Book" ("Preface to 'The Works of Shakespear'," in Eighteenth-Century Essays o n Shakespeare, ed. D. Nichol Smit h [Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1963], 54). For a more recen t descriptio n o f the Renaissanc e theater's treatmen t o f dramatic manu scripts, see H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1603-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), especially p. 61. 80. Se e Twelfth Night, 4.2.89. Like Shylock, Malvolio leave s his play less assimilated tha n "propertied" by the comedy's reestablished social order. Both characters are exemplary objects of other-fashioning: Shylock is forced to resign his religious and ethnic identity by converting to Christianity ; Malvolio i s forced to participate in a satire of his Puritanism. Suc h coercion certainly appear s elsewhere in Shakespeare' s comedies an d romances ; but th e appropriatio n of individuals as stage spectacle—as James Calderwood ha s argued—is essentially a tragic device, a problematic etho s comedy and romance must finally transcend or absorb. See his "Appalling Property in Othello" 353-75. 81. Fo r a n excellen t histor y o f th e politica l interpretation s o f Julius Caesar onstage , see John Ripley , "Julius Caesar" on Stage in England and America, 1599-1973 (Cambridge : Cam bridge University Press, 1980). One nee d onl y consider th e differen t assessment s of Caesar's deat h i n Plutarch , Appian, Dante, Michelangelo, Fulbecke, Sidney, and Milto n for a sense of its interpretive possibilities. Significantly, Shakespear e himself seems to meditat e on th e reiterabilit y and malleabilit y of this scene again in Hamlet, 3.2.103-4, where we learn that Caesar's part has been played by (of

Notes to Pages 106-110 23 5 all people) Polonius . That th e word s an d action s o f a historical figur e ca n b e foo d fo r eve n Polonius's mannere d histrionic s an d dubiou s interpretation s seem s a n awarenes s alread y present in Julius Caesar. 82. Sonne t 81, line 10. 83. Coriolanus, 4.7.49-50. 84. Taylor , "Bardicide," 334-38. 85. Jame s Calderwood come s ver y close to ascribin g suc h a reading to Shakespear e elsewhere, arguing that in Titus Andronicus Shakespeare explores a tension between lyric and dramatic genre s suggeste d in th e elevent h boo k o f Golding' s Ovid , line s 17-1 9 (Shakespearean Metadrama, 28-30) . In the Renaissance , of course, the Orpheu s myt h wa s overdetermined, and frequentl y interpreted with much mor e sophistication tha t the simple treatment o f Orpheus as archetypal poet. I n Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished (Oxford , 1632) , 387, fo r instance , Georg e Sandy s would later allegorize the deat h o f Orpheus a s the beginning of an age of civil discord. Such a political an d historicize d interpretation , i n fact , i s suggested by the curs e Antony prophesies lighting "upon the limb s of men" (se e Julius Caesar, 3.1.261-75) . 86. Kennet h R.R . Gros Louis , "The Triump h an d Deat h o f Orpheu s i n th e Englis h Renaissance," Studies in English Literature, 9:1 (Winter 1969) , 63-80. Elizabeth Sewel l has claime d tha t Shakespear e "trusts poetry , if Orpheus i s undivided, i f poetry an d dream s an d shadow s an d th e theate r ar e taken a s a means towar d learnin g an d even toward science" (The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History [Ne w Haven: Yale University Press, 1960], 110). 87. Tamburlaine the Great, Parti (Prologue , 1-8), i n Th e Complete Works o f Christopher Marlowe, ed. Roma Gill (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1987). 88. Technically , and wit h a verb tha t recall s Jane Scrape's needlecraf t an d Philip' s com plaint in chapter 1, Antony "pricks" these names by punching holes in the paper on which they already appear. 89. I n his reading of Richard II as a dramatization of "the interpretive efforts of the listener," Keir Elam considers Si r Pierce of Exton's constructio n o f Bolingbroke's ambiguous utterance (5.4.1-2, 7-9) a s the nexus between a n undetermined illocutionar y speech-ac t an d perlocu tionary action (The Semiotics of Theatre an d Drama [London : Methuen, 1980], 164-65). 90. Playin g on th e doubl e meaning s an d homophoni c alternative s o f "cobbler" (11, 19), "soles" (14), "out" (16) , "awl" (21), and "withal" (23). 91. Fo r discussions of this first scene and it s contemporary religious and political import, see Richard Wilson, "Is thi s a holiday?': Shakespeare's Roman Holiday," ELH, 54 (1987), 31-44; and Mark Rose, "Conjuring Caesar: Ceremony, History, and Authority in 1599," 256-69. 92. Th e plebeians' transformatio n fro m passiv e spectators to furiou s actor s inevitably recalls Ovid' s accoun t o f the deat h o f Orpheus. Murellu s calls the m "blocks, " "stones," "wors e than senseles s things" for their unreflective devotion t o Caesar (1.1.34). In Ovid's account, Orpheus draws the trees, beasts, and stones t o follo w him, but thes e same stones become invol untarily "reddened wit h the blood of the singer" only when the Maenads hurl them at the poet (Ovid's Metamorphoses, trans . Rolf e Humphrie s [Bloomington : Indian a Universit y Press , 1955], 259). Antony seem s to contras t th e plebeian s t o suc h passivity , however, when h e de clares in his funeral oration , "You are not wood , you are not stones " (3.2.142). It would seem here tha t th e semi-autonomou s plebeian s resembl e th e bloodthirst y Maenad s themselve s rather than their inanimat e instruments . Shakespeare's Ovidian allusions in Julius Caesar, however, provide little symmetry. The ominous "bird of night" that sits "Even at noon-day upo n the market-place / Howling and shrieking" (1.3.26-28), for instance, may recall Ovid's description o f the Maenad's attack on Orpheus : "they came thronging / Like birds who see an owl, wandering in daylight" (p. 260). Thus the owl

236 Note s to Pages 111-114 in 1.3 ma y figure Caesar, soon t o be set upon by the conspirator s (a s Maenads/birds of prey). But if the conspirators ar e likened to the Maenads here, then reading the plebeians as "stones" turned against the conspirators by Antony's oration, or as Maenads themselves in the dismemberment of Cinna the poet, seems dubious. However, both Caesar and Cinna die like Orpheus, "who stretche d ou t / Hi s hands i n supplication, an d whos e voice / For the first time, move d no one" (p. 260). I would argue that Shakespeare's allusions to the death of Orpheus are in fact overdetermined i n Julius Caesar, and tha t thi s reflect s th e play's bifurcation of the tragic victim (Orpheus ) into Caesa r and Brutus . This bifurcation pivots on the deat h o f Cinna. Thus Antony, the conspirators, and the plebeians are described wit h reference to the Maenads. 93. Henry V , prologue, 24-25. See also act 3. Chorus. 34-35: "Still be kind / And ek e ou t our performance with your mind." 94. I n Macbeth, to cit e a n extrem e Renaissanc e instance o f thi s conceptua l distinction , Macduff's Caesarea n birth elide s even the conventiona l agenc y of the mothe r (becaus e he is "untimely ripped " from he r womb and fro m th e natural birth process , h e is considered "no t of woman born") . 95. Se e Michael Dobson, "Accent s Yet Unknown: Canonisatio n an d th e Claimin g of Julius Caesar" i n Th e Appropriation o f Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of th e Works an d the Myth, ed. Jean I. Marsden (Ne w York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 11-28.1 am indebted to Dob son's suggestive essay, which I discovered late in the composition o f this chapter, in much of this paragraph. H e trace s th e simultaneou s canonizatio n an d ideologica l appropriatio n o f Julius Caesar by Royalists (including Jacobites) and by Whigs of various degrees of libertarian leaning. 96. Printe d in [Pierre Bayleetal.], A General Dictionary. . . (London, 1734-41), 9:189. This and the following passage from Theobald are quoted by Dobson, "Accents Yet Unknown," 23-24. 97. London Daily Post and Advertiser, 12 April 1739. 98. I n Shakespearean Constitutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 70, Jonathan Bate has claimed that "Shakespeare's 'classic' status is a function of both his infinite appropri ability . . . and his occasional intractability. " In the case of Julius Caesar, the important secon d half o f Bate's formulation stil l obtains , o f course; but a s the willfu l misconstruction s i n th e play (and the egregious misconstrue!'ons of the play—in the eighteenth centur y and today) demonstrate, littl e is intractable i f one i s willing to commi t violence : "Exeunt the plebeians, dragging off Cinna" 4. The Witch of Edmonton and the Guilt of Possession 1. I suggest that Thomas Heywood's and Richard Brome's The Late Lancashire Witches may have influenced the tria l on whic h it was based because the pla y was actually performed before th e verdict o f this trial was delivered. Any argument directe d towar d thi s drama's influ ence on th e judicial process is complicated, however , both by a lack of critical consensu s on the play' s attitud e towar d witchcraft , an d b y th e ultimat e pardo n tha t th e "Lancashir e witches" received from Charle s I. For accounts of the Lancashir e trials of 1634, see George Lymman Kittredge, Witchcraft i n Old an d Ne w England (Cambridge : Cambridg e Universit y Press , 1929) , 270-71 ; Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft i n England (Washington , D.C.: American Historical Association, 1911), 146-60; and A . M. Clark, Thomas Heywood (Ne w York: Russell & Russell, 1967), 122-26. I n Etta Soiref Onat's summary (The Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition [New York: Garland, 1980], 47-48): Although the jury was convinced of the guilt of seventeen o f the accused, the judges had doubts about the matter and reported the case to the King and the Privy Council. The London authoritie s then brought i n seven of the convicted—among the m

Notes t o Pages 114—115 23 7 Margaret Johnson , France s Dicconson , an d Mar y Spenser , wh o appea r i n ou r play—to be questioned b y Dr. Bridgeman, Bishop of Chester. . . Afte r a n examination for witchmarks by a committee headed by the King's physician, Harvey, which produced negativ e results, Charles I granted pardon s t o al l those surviving ; there had been no executions, but thre e or four ha d died in prison. Finally the young instigator of the scare confessed that his story had been a fabrication, so that he would not b e punished by his father fo r some disobedience . 2. Suc h causality is of course difficul t t o prov e in an y analysis of "media ethics " (witness even the much debated cause of Princess Diana's recent death). If The Late Lancashire Witches influenced th e jury that moved to keep the "real" Lanchasire witches in prison, however, then we have an actual case in which Renaissance drama wa s directly involved i n killing its object of representation—since "three o r four" of the supposed witche s died in prison. In Big-Time Shakespeare (London : Routledge, 1996), 192, Michael Bristol cites an example of racist murder possibly indebted t o Othello's discourse o f sexual bewitchment. 3. Stephe n Gosson , Plays Confuted i n Five Actions (quoted by Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England [Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1988], 116). In Shakespearean Negotiations, 94-128, Greenblatt considers Hars nett's skepticism, his banishment of exorcism to theater, and Shakespeare's exploitation o f the resources of exorcism . I n a separate essay , Greenblatt trace s the developmen t o f skepticis m toward witchcraf t through Sco t ("Shakespeare Bewitched," in New Historical Literary Study: Essays o n Reproducing Texts, Representing History, ed . Jeffre y N . Co x an d Larr y J. Reynolds [Princeton: Princeton Universit y Press, 1993], 17-42). 4. Onat , The Witch of Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 51-52 (quotin g A. W. Ward, Cambridge History o f English Literature [New York: Macmillan, 1910], 7:118-19) 5. I n Saint Joan (1924 ; rpt, Ne w York: Random House , 1956) , 24, George Bernard Shaw offers one of the mor e famou s defenses of Shakespeare' s representation of Joan by claiming that Shakespeare , after attemptin g t o fashio n her a s "a beautiful and romanti c figure," "was told by his scandalized company that English patriotism would never stand a sympathetic representation o f a French conquerer." E. M. W. Tillyard, acknowledging the "queer reluctanc e to allow Shakespeare to have written ill," and designatin g "the way he treats Joan of Arc" as "the chief reason why people have been hostile to Shakespeare's authorship [o f 1 Henry VI]," find s such hostilit y analogou s to "arguing that Shakespear e could no t hav e written King John be cause he does no t mentio n Magna Carta" (Shakespeare's History Plays [London : Chatto an d Windus, 19481,162). Recently Kathryn Schwarz has taken this critique furthe r i n a brilliant reading of the ideological disintegration that has Joan at its epicenter: The gesture that defines Joan la Pucelle as 'not Shakespeare's ' is not merel y a defense of chivalry or good historicism bu t a symptomatic reproduction o f the play's own logic, logic that identifies the familiar through the power of the contrary example: if idealize d Englishnes s i s constructe d agains t France' s Joan , the n th e idealize d Shakespeare, in controversies ove r the authorship of this play, has been constructe d against a Joan who belongs to someone else entirely. By this logic, to allow Joan into the canon is to endanger th e most importan t bon d of all—that which links Shakespeare to his readers and thus to the "Shakespearean." In metatextual negotiations , as with those that take place onstage, the terms in which Joan is defined suggest the fragility o f privileged systems of connectio n ("Fearful Simile : Stealing the Breech in Shakespeare's Chronicle Plays" Shakespeare Quarterly 49:2 [summer 1998], 152).

238 Notes t o Pages 115—117 For discussions of 1 Henry Viand som e of the problems and motivations of assigning authorship, see Leah Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 51-105; and Gar y Taylor, "Shakespeare and Others : The Authorship of Henry th e Sixth, Part I" Medieval an d Renaissance Drama in England, 7 (1995), 145-205. 6. I n th e Arden Macbeth (Ne w York: Random House , 1962), 4.1.43n, Kenneth Muir com plains of this passage: "It i s to be hoped tha t thi s song was altered fo r Macbeth, as some lines are relevant only to the plot of Middleton's play . But the 1673 edition o f Macbeth print s them without alteration. No exit is marked for Hecate and the spurious witches; but the sooner they depart th e better." I n "Shakespeare Bewitched" (41n42), however, Greenblatt persuasivel y argues that thi s moment seem s "a deliberate quotation, a marking o f the demoni c a s theatrical"—and, I would add , a marking of the theatrical as appropriative. 7. Jane t Adelman , "'Born o f a Woman': Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth" in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance (English Institute Essays), ed. Marjorie Garber (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 103. 8. Greenblatt , "Shakespeare Bewitched," 20-21. 9. Greenblatt , "Shakespeare Bewitched," 31. 10. Greenblatt , "Shakespeare Bewitched," 21,31. 11. Greenblatt, "Shakespeare Bewitched, " 20. In a not e t o thi s essay , Greenblatt suggest s more subtl y that "the most powerful theatrical acknowledgment of the weakness and vulnerability o f witche s i s in Dekker' s Witch o f Edmonton, a pla y that nonetheles s stage s withou t protest th e witch' s execution " (38n15) . I t i s interesting t o not e tha t th e ethica l distinction s made between Shakespeare's and Dekker' s play in this essay seem to have collapsed in Greenblatt's subsequen t Genera l Introductio n t o th e Norto n Shakespeare , wher e h e writes, "It is sobering t o reflec t tha t play s like Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606) , Thomas Middleton's Witch (before 1616), and Thoma s Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley's Witch of Edmonton (1621 ) seem to be less the allie s of skepticism tha n th e exploiter s o f fear" (Norton Shakespeare, gen . ed. Stephen Greenblatt [Ne w York: W. W. Norton, 1997], 29). 12. Th e play was written by Dekker, Ford, Rowley, and perhaps one or more others—since the 1658 title page follows this trio with an "&c" (Joh n Webster has also been proposed, thoug h without consensus). Dekker is usually assigned to the witch plot, Rowley to the comic clown scenes, and For d to the romanti c plot—thoug h mor e recen t scholarship has preferred blurring these generic lines. See Gerald Bentley, The Jacobean an d Caroline Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1941-68), 3:269-73; and Onat , Th e Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 98-154. 13. Greenblatt , "Shakespeare Bewitched," 22, 36. By the en d o f this essay, Shakespeare occupies "the positio n neithe r o f the witchmonger no r the skeptic" but instea d "the positio n of the witch" (36). In what ma y be an unintentionally mystifying transformation , the potentia l "evil" o f Greenblatt' s opportunisti c an d persecutoria l playwright ha s been displace d b y th e persecuted an d harmles s enchante r whos e illusion s hav e no identifiabl e consequences . Th e preceding logic of this essay , though, has identifie d in Macbeth current s o f both skepticism and witchmongering , tw o position s take n i n th e lega l an d theologica l discours e o f the Renaissance; to then identif y Shakespear e with the subjec t of this discourse i s to move from a n analysis of the social function of his art to a figurative description o f the technique o f that art. Greenblatt's earlie r questions abou t Macbeth bein g "evil," however, are not entirel y siphone d off i n this essay—though i t is interesting to note here that the contras t with The Witch o f Edmonton serves to identify a more culpable black magic against which Shakespeare's play looks more benign. But I think tha t fo r Greenblatt suc h questions linger as the honest respons e of a reader for whom the ethical problems of Shakespeare's dramatic opportunism remai n suspect and unresolved . My effort i n this chapter is to locate such responses within dramatic texts . 14. I borrow her e from Harr y Berger, Jr., Making Trifles o f Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in Shakespeare, ed . Peter Erickson (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1997). As I sug-

Notes t o Pages 118—120 23 9 gest in my introduction, m y difference wit h Berge r lies in my assumption tha t dramatic "ac knowledgment" an d "complicity" include s not onl y the audience but als o the playwright. 15. I n Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives o n th e English Criminal Trial Jury 12001800 (Chicago : University of Chicag o Press , 1985), Thomas Andre w Green distinguishes be tween the Renaissanc e legal systems of France, Italy, and Germany , where judges decided th e question o f guil t o r innocence , an d tha t o f England—wher e th e judge s were restricte d t o "finding law" (determining the relevant precedents an d statutes), while the jury "found fact " (delivered a verdict on the individual case). See also Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and Theater i n the English Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 106-7. 16. I n Inwardness an d Theater i n th e English Renaissance, 106, Maus notes that i n the res t of Europe the execution was typically presented as public spectacle, while the judicial deliberations leadin g u p t o i t were kept secret ; by contrast Englan d publicized the trial s of capital cases but typicall y kept executions "relatively unspectacular affairs. " 17. Eve n today the labe l "convicted" designate s a real change in the lega l status of the formerly "accused"— a chang e wrough t b y th e consensu s o f jurie s an d judges . A s Mothe r Sawyer's firs t soliloquy in Th e Witch of Edmonton reveals, legal "conviction" ca n als o involv e convincing the accused that she is what her accusers say she is; in this speech, the causal rela tion between epistemolog y and ontolog y is represented in a scene of method acting by a person who i s a spectator of herself. 18. Joh n Gaule, Select cases o f conscience touching witches and witchcraft (London , 1646), 194 (this and the followin g passage from John Cotta are quoted i n Maus, Inwardness an d Theater in th e English Renaissance, 112,114) . 19. Joh n Cotta , Th e triall of witch-craft, shewing the true methode of their discovery (Lon don, 1616), 18. Cotta's call for a "curious view" recalls for me the alternativ e skeptical warning of Horatio, who warns Hamlet against considering "too curiously " the avenue by which a king might be digested by a beggar. 20. Henr y Goodcole, Th e Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer a Witch, Late of Edmonton, Her Conviction and Condemnation and Death (in Onat, The Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 381-400 [381,399]) . This and futur e references to Goodcole's Th e Wonderful Discoverie appear i n Onat's edition and are henceforth cited parenthetically by page number. 21. I n Goodcole's account , th e words I place in parentheses are actually a marginal gloss. Here as throughout hi s account, Goodcole attempt s t o preempt frequentl y voiced skepticis m toward witchcraft and possession. For the skeptical position specificall y addressed here—that possession i s simpl y psychologica l delusion—se e Greenblatt , Shakespearean Negotiations, 100-106; and Sydne y Anglo, "Melancholia and Witchcraft: The Debate Between Wier, Bodin, and Scot, " in Folie et deraison a la Renaissance (Brussels: University of Brussels, 1976), 209-28. The possibility that witchcraft might be produced by self-delusion, or by the "phantasms an d illusions o f demons," appear s a s early as Reginone of Prum's tenth-centur y D e Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis. 22. Se e the meeting of Solon and Thespis in Plutarch's Lives, ed. A. H. Clough, 5 vols. (New York: Bigelow, Brown and Company , 1911), 1:209. 23. Th e wor d authentic derives fro m th e Gree k word authentes, which ca n mea n "mur derer" or "one who does something himself" (I further discuss this word in my introduction). In "Hamlet: Equity, Intention, Performance, " Luke Wilson ha s brilliantly discusse d the com plex ways in which Shakespeare's play achieves performative authenticity by appealing to early modern conceptions o f intention a s understood i n classical and Renaissanc e theories of legal interpretation; his analysis includes a discussion o f Th e Mousetrap, t o whic h I am indebte d (Studies i n th e Literary Imagination, 24:2 [Fall 1991], 91-113 [98]). 24. Th e play's 1658 title page is reproduced in Onat is critical edition, 171. According to this title page, the play was "never printed unti l now," a claim that if true speaks for a cultural need

240 Notes

t o Pages 120-121

for th e theatrical representation of witches that survived the official closin g of the theaters; indeed this play may have been printed to satisfy tha t need. 25. Th e dat e of this revival is debated. Bentley (The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1:251-52) assigns it to 1635 or 1636, but Ona t (The Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 162,281) argues for a date as early as 1634. The prologue refer s to th e anonymou s play The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1603?), ascribed to Dekker, Drayton, and Heywood (and sometimes Shakespeare). 26. I t is surprising that this reflexive referenc e t o the Cockpi t theate r in Drury-lane goes unremarked by Onat an d other commentators. After th e 4 March, 1617, sacking of the Cock pit by London apprentice s celebratin g Shrove Tuesday, the theater reopened a s the Phoenix . But the 165 8 title page describes this 1621 play as acted "often a t the Cock-pit, " and th e nam e Cock-pit clearly continued, after 1617 , to refer to the theater renamed the Phoenix. In an indirect but powerfu l way, however, The Witch of Edmonton's referenc e to "the Cock-pit" may refe r us to the potentiall y destructive socia l energies—those of cockfighting, if not thos e that destroyed the Cock-pit—that mus t "beat out" the witch if the theater (and the community represented b y the morris) i s to survive. 27. Thi s detail also appears on the 165 8 title page: "Acted by the Prince s Servants, often a t the Cock-Pit i n Drury-Lane, once at Court, with Singular Applause." 28. A s James VI of Scotland , the kin g had becom e involve d i n th e grea t prosecution o f 1590-1597. For a long time scholars have believed him responsibl e fo r fanning the flame s o f witch belief in England (in 1604 Parliament passed a statute against witchcraft eve n more severe than that of 1563), but Kittredge "has ... effectivel y shown that James was not responsible for th e passage of the Act, and that the witch-mania did not mount in intensity when the author of the Daemonologie cam e to the throne of England" (Onat, Th e Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 7). In fac t ther e were more execution s for witchcraft i n the las t twenty-two years of Elizabeth's reign than during the twenty-two years of James's reign. The Daemonologie, moreover, is far from a simple defense of persecution; it devotes much of its space to skeptical attacks on "impostures, " an d t o exposure s of farcical lega l proceedings. As with Good cole's account of Elizabet h Sawyer's trial, however (an d a s with Th e Witch o f Edmonton fo r that matter) , the incorporation o f skepticism can strengthen the legitimacy of "valid" witchcraft trials . For analyses of potentially subversive energies given "license" in the Book o f Sports, see Davi d Underdown , Revel, Riot, an d Rebellion: Popular Politics an d Culture i n England, 1603-1660 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1985), 63-68; and Marcus , The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, an d th e Defense o f Ol d Holiday Pastimes (Chicago : Universit y o f Chicago Press , 1986), 7-8, 22 ; Marcus's study also addresses James's attempt t o moderat e th e prosecution o f witches (90-92, 280). 29. Phili p Stubbes, Anatomie o f Abuses (1583), ed. Furnivall, 1:147. 30. I n th e margi n o f Th e Wonderful Discoverie, 396, Goodcole return s to thi s complain t when he asks Sawyer if the devil has visited her in prison: "I asked this question because it was rumoured tha t th e Devi l cam e t o he r sinc e he r conviction , an d shamelessl y printe d an d openly sung in a ballad, to which many gave too much credit." Goodcole's concern to disprove the rumo r tha t Sawye r was possessed "since he r conviction " seem s designe d furthe r t o au thenticate her testimony against herself. 31. Goodcole's dismissal of the ballad s circulating after Sawyer' s execution actually aligns him wit h skeptic s suc h a s Harsnett—who i n respons e t o a fraudulent exorcis m complain s that ballads serv e to popularize and furthe r mystif y th e fiction by spreading i t to the credulous masse s (se e Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 102). The skepticis m allowe d an d even encouraged in Goodcole's homiletic account is genuinely surprising, but each concession serves to mas k and strengthe n hi s underlying polemical position ; consider , for example, his first admission: "The publication o f this subject whereof now I write, hath been importunit y [sic] extorte d from me, who would hav e been content t o hav e concealed it , knowing th e di -

Notes t o Pages 122-126 24 1 versity of opinions concernin g things o f this nature, and tha t no t amongs t th e ignorant, but among som e of the learned . Fo r my part I meddle her e with nothin g but matte r o f fact... " (Wonderful Discoverie, 381). 32. Agai n I am indebte d i n a rather obliqu e wa y to Wilson' s observatio n o f the concor dance betwee n la w and dramati c scrip t (a s initial intentions) , equit y an d performanc e (as anticipated "supplemental " intentions) , i n "Hamlet: Equity, Intention, Performance " (especially 91-99). 33. Hamlet, 2.2.603-4. In Goodcole' s narrativ e the Justice , Arthur Robinson, is carefull y distinguished fro m th e mor e "sligh t an d ridiculous " aspect s o f Sawyer' s examination . Throughout th e tria l h e is the on e pushing fo r more "empirical evidence " (see , for example, The Wonderful Discoverie, 386-87), and i t is fair to say Goodcole identifie s with him a s a voice of reason and judgment. 34. Anthon y B. Dawson, "Witchcraft/Bigamy: Cultural Conflict in Th e Witch o f Edmonton" in Renaissance Drama 20, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989), 84-85. Dawson is right to point out that madness and witchcraft were rarely directly associated in th e Renaissanc e (see Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft i n Tudor an d Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study [London : Routledge, 1970], 183). However, Mother Sawyer' s "madness" (4.1.153) is a source of interest in Th e Witch o f Edmonton. The play similarly conflates demoni c possession and witchcraft, topics with a complex relation in the period (se e Keith Thomas, Religion and th e Decline of Magic [London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson , 1971] , 470-85). 35. Whe n Sawye r informs Ratcliff sh e is a lawyer, Ratcliff begs , "Let me scratc h thy Face" (4.1.181). This antilegal satire also reflects a witch belief held well into the nineteenth century : a victim o f witchcraft was thought t o be able to fre e hersel f fro m a curse by drawing blood from th e witch "above the breath. " 36. Anne' s madness an d it s apparent causa l indeterminacy have aroused critica l interest. David Atkinson observes that "the play does not make it entirely clear whether or not the witch really is responsible for the death of Anne Ratcliff," suggesting that "the episod e was probably imperfectly assimilate d from th e source " ("Mora l Knowledge and th e Doubl e Actio n i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton" SE L 25:8 (Spring 1985), 431. Michael Hattaway writes: "The tex t makes it legitimate to conjecture that [Anne's ] madness arose independently o f the devil's action," the "motives for action aris[ing] out of social transactions" that leave the "chains of causation .. . incomplete" ("Wome n and Witchcraft: The Case of The Witch of Edmonton" Trivium 20 [May 1985], 53). I think that this debate can be accommodated b y my argument that the question of causality and responsibilit y i s a product o f the playwrights ' revision o f their lega l source—a revision tha t makes the play itself a responsible party to Anne Ratcliffe's manne r of dying. 37. Berger , Making Trifles o f Terrors, 103. 38. Onat , Th e Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 158. Onat note s tha t th e title s o f Goodcole's tw o survivin g pamphlet s "sugges t tha t the y wer e calculate d t o appea l t o th e readers' sensations"; an d that "it is not unlikel y that he, like the Prince's men , desired to cap italize on the events [of Sawyer's execution] by publishing a pamphlet for which there was an ample reading public." 39. Reginal d Trevor Davies has claimed that the play's late publication dat e reflects its advocacy o f witchmongering policies hel d i n chec k (throug h print-censorship ) by the Stuarts but supporte d mor e firml y b y th e Protectorat e (Four Centuries of Witch-Beliefs s[London : Methuen, 1947], 112-17). Onat (The Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 157-58) points ou t the obvious flaws in this argument, but it is worth noting that the play-text did have relevance and commercia l valu e in the Protectorat e period—despit e an y skepticism an d anti-Purita n satire we detect in it. The play's appearance as a text may respond simpl y to the unavailability of public theater in this period, but th e ways in which that text is interpreted (fo r publication advertisement) are nonetheless significant.

242 Note s to Pages 126-128 40. O n th e pla y a s homileti c drama , se e Henr y Adams , English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy 1575-164 2 (Ne w York: Columbia Universit y Press, 1943), 141; Andrew Clark, Domestic Drama: A Survey of the Origins, Antecedents and Nature of the Domestic Play in England, 1500 1640 (Salzburg: University of Salzburg, 1975), 1:209-10; and Vivian a Comensoli, "Witchcraf t and Domesti c Traged y in Th e Witch of Edmonton," in Th e Politics of Gender i n Early Modern Europe, ed. Jean R. Brink, Allison P . Coudert, an d Maryann e C . Horowitz, (Kirksville , MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1989), 43-60. The tragicomic note is struck at the play's conclusion b y Old Cartwright's attempt t o balance Frank's execution with the promise o f marriage: "So let's every man hom e to Edmonton with heavy hearts, yet as merry as we can, though not a s we would" (5.3.167-69); and by Winnifred's Epilogue , whic h acknowledge s he r wido w statu s bu t look s forwar d with "modes t hopes" to a figurativ e secon d marriag e tha t wil l b e affirme d b y th e "nobl e tongues " o f a "gentle" audience (Epilogue, 5-6) . 41. Samue l Harsnett, A Discovery o f the Fraudulent Practices of J. Darrel. . . concerning the pretended possession an d dispossession o f W . Somers, etc. (1599), 14 2 (quoted i n Greenblatt , Shakespearean Negotiations, 186ng. For Harsnett's comments o n witchcraft and it s relation to exorcism, se e A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London : lame s Roberts , 1603), 135-36. In any discussion o f Harsnett's skepticism and it s relation to a play such as The Witch of Edmonton, it is important t o realize that Harsnett rarely if ever expresses sympathy with the "victims" of theatrical fraud . I n "Shakespeare and Harsnett : 'Pregnant to Goo d Pity'? " (SEL 38:2 [1998] , 251-64) , Am y Wol f argue s tha t sympath y wit h th e "victims " o f exorcis m i s a Shakespearean contributio n t o Harsnett' s skepticis m (whic h tend s t o trea t th e exorcise d as conspirators). This distribution applie s equally well to an y sympathy with Sawyer we find in The Witch o f Edmonton: though it may come from Scot , it does not com e from Harsnett . 42. Se e Harsnett, A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, 150; and A Discovery o f th e Fraudulent Practices of J. Darrel, 142. 43. Joh n Fletcher, "To the Reader, " The Faithful Shepherdess (i n Th e Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976], 3:497). Cyrus Hoy argues of Fletcherian tragicomedy that its weakness "lies in the formal arbitrariness of the definition" (The Hyacinth Room: An Investigation of th e Nature o f Comedy, Tragedy, an d Tragicomedy [Ne w York: Knopf, 1964], 210). But Alastair Fowler notes that Fletcher "certainly knew that Shakespeare's plays and his own explored more subtly and pervasively mixed actions containing apparent o r virtual deaths, of a sort hardl y covered by the popula r definitio n he offers" (Kinds o f Literature: An Introduction to the Theory o f Genres and Modes [Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press, 1982], 188 [see also 26,31,185-87, 244]) . For an exampl e of a quasiFletcherian witchcraft tragicomedy, see Thomas Middleton's Th e Witch. For a discussion o f Harsnett's ide a o f tragicomedy an d it s relevance fo r the Renaissance stage, see Herbert Berry, "Italian Definition s of Tragedy and Comed y Arrive in England," SEL 14 (1974), 179-87. 44. Befor e th e prologu e o f Th e Witch o f Edmonton, "The whol e Argument" of the pla y is presented i n "this Dystich" : Forc'd Marriage, Murder; Murder, Blood requires: Reproach, Revenge; Revenge, Hells help desires. Much of the play's criticism respond s to the tenuous connections between bigamy and witch plots. Dawson' s article , "Witchcraft/Bigamy: Cultura l Conflic t i n Th e Witch o f Edmonton" goes the farthes t toward explorin g the "semantic assymetries " in this distich, the connectiv e gaps and leaps in the play's structure—and the complex social negotiations they perform. 45. Thi s pamphlet survives in the Britis h Museum. I quote its title from Onat , Th e Witch of Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 158.

Notes t o Pages 128—131 24 3 46. Stag e directions from Th e Tempest (afte r 5.1.171) , and Th e Winter's Tale (afte r 5.3.20) . Paulina's advic e t o Leontes—tha t h e "awake " hi s "faith " an d "resolve " "Fo r mor e amaze ment"—requires that she deny occult powers (5.3.86-91, 94-95). 47. Th e Winter's Tale, 5.3.94-95. 48. Dawso n notes that "none of the othe r witc h plays of the period displa y the witc h in the proces s of turning to witchcraft" ("Witchcraft/Bigamy: Cultural Conflic t in Th e Witch of Edmonton," 80) . 49. Dawson , "Witchcraft / Bigamy," 81. 50. Sawyer' s "possession" b y her rol e i n thi s pla y can be distinguishe d fro m th e "otherfashioning" investigate d in Julius Caesar: in th e cas e of Sawyer, possession require s the sub ject's partial acceptance of her representation, while in the case of Cinna the poet, no cooper ation i s necessary from th e victi m o f theatrical appropriation . "Other-fashioning " works t o convince spectators of the malleability of a silenced subject; "possession" at least partly works to convince the subject as a spectator of itself. In Sawyer's case, "credit" is seductive because it offers he r the transgressive and vengeful powe r of cursing her enemies "to death or shame." 51. Dawson , "Witchcraft / Bigamy," 94. 52. Th e illustration on the title page of the 1658 edition of the play suggests that Young Banks's comic subplot balanced any tragedy produced by the witchplot: in the lower left-hand corner of the illustration, Banks stands waist-deep in a pond (a victim of the Familiar's fairly benign fool ing), exclaiming, "Help help I am Drownd"—a quotatio n of 3.1.90. In the upper left appears the black Dog, speaking his first line to Sawyer in the play ("Ho haue I found thee Cursing"). In the upper right corner, Mother Sawyer repeats the oath the Familiar teaches her. This illustratio n suggests a reading that th e tex t largel y supports: that th e Bank s subplot i s much les s consequential than that of the main plot. The seriousness of this main plot would have rested, for a Renaissance audience, in the power with which oaths and curses were invested in the period. 53. Dawso n reache s hi s insigh t b y applyin g Alan Macfarlane' s observatio n tha t mos t witchcraft accuser s in the early modern period had acted against the unwritten rules of charity by refusing th e accuse d a gift o r donatio n (Witchcraft i n Tudor an d Stuart England: A Regional an d Comparative Study, 150-55,195-97). Citing othe r historica l sources , Viviana Comensoli makes a similar point i n an article published the same year as Dawson's ("Witchcraf t and Domesti c Tragedy in Th e Witch o f Edmonton" [above, n. 40]). 54. Dawson , "Witchcraft / Bigamy," 83. 55. Dawson , "Witchcraft / Bigamy," 91. Even in th e secon d quotation , Dawso n seem s un certain about intentionality ; th e sentence reads, "The text' s suppor t fo r the morris (like that of the society it represents) can in fact b e read as a gesture aimed at assuaging social guilt" (my emphasis). 56. Lea h S. Marcus, "Politics and Pastoral : Writing the Court on the Countryside," in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Pete r Lake (London: Macmillan, 1994), 159. Marcus supports her argument, which does not explicitl y address Dawson, by observing tha t th e pla y represents mora l turpitud e i n James' s bucolic countryside ; an d b y showing that the ambiguous morris does not apparentl y reintegrate the community accord ing to the Jacobea n program announced i n the Book o f Sports. 57. K . M. Briggs has suggested a possible sourc e for Frank Thorney's murde r o f Susan in a balla d publishe d betwee n 164 0 and 165 5 (see Pale Hecate's Team [London : Routledge an d Kegan Paul, 1962], 96. This attribution, if correct, further reflect s the playwrights' contamination of their "legal" source with the "lewd Balladmongers " Goodcole condemns. 58. Algerno n Charles Swinburne, The Complete Works, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thoma s J. Wise (London: [W. Heinemann,]1926), 12:395. 59. A s Dawson has shown, the very tenuity of the play's connection between witchcraft and bigamy provides the necessary space for a social criticism to which Swinburne here seems deaf.

244 Note s to Pages 132—140 60. Scot , Discoverie of Witchcraft, 197,507,3,172, 9 (quote d in Greenblatt, "Shakespeare Bewitched," 24-25). While I am indebted t o Greenblatt in this part of my paragraph, I disagree with his assertion tha t Scot' s wordplay "ironically re-enchan t [s] what he most wishes to disenchant." I would agree , however, to suc h a reading of a dramatic work like The Witch of Edmonton, which marks witchcraft off as metaphor onl y to literalize it. 61. Willia m Rankins, A Mirrour of Monsters, ed. Arthur Freeman (New York: Garland, 1973), E.i. Like Stubbes, Rankins may be investing the theater with a literally demonic power here; writing just a few years after th e publication o f Scot's Discoverie, however, Rankins seems to be appropriating the figurative disenchantment o f skepticism fo r his own antitheatricalist argument. 62. Diabolica l power s o f divinatio n wer e conventionall y ascribe d t o witche s capabl e of such perspicuous charges , but I think it is more interesting to read Clarington's response as an anxious an d gendered reactio n t o Sawyer's threatening category of "Men-witches. " 63. O n th e cultura l conception o f the familia r i n Renaissance England, see Barbara Rosen, ed., Witchcraft i n England, 1558-1618 (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press , 1991), 17-18; and Thomas , Religion and the Decline of Magic, 530-31. Onat devotes some time to the questio n of whether Dog was represented on two or four legs, and remind s u s that Th e Witch o f Edmonton's audience "did no t think of the devil-dog onstage as either a real dog or as a real devil" (The Witch o f Edmonton: A Critical Edition, 308). The play clearly has some fun with the implausibility of an actor playing a dog; in 4.1, for instance, Young Banks questions his father's identification o f Dog's barking a s "the voic e of a dog": "Th e voic e of a Dog? if that voice were a Dog's, what voic e had m y Mother?" (247-48) . Youn g Banks then proceed s t o imitat e Dog's barking , claiming to have produced th e barking his father heard. For accounts of twentieth-century pro ductions o f the play that describe the portrayal of Dog, see Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays, ed. Peter Corbin an d Dougla s Sedge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 27-28. 64. Christophe r Marlowe , Th e Tragical History o f th e Life an d Death o f Doctor Faustus, 1.1.81 (ed. Irving Ribner [Ne w York: Odyssey Press, 1966]). 65. Dawso n describe s Sawyer as innocent o n the "natural" level , but guilt y on the "super natural" leve l ("Witchcraft/Bigamy, " 83). For a discussion o f natural an d supernatura l cate gories of action, see Peter Stallybrass, "Macbeth an d Witchcraft," in Focus on Macbeth, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Routledge, 1982), 206. 66. Se e Twelfth Night, 5.1.378. 67. I n Goodcole's narrative , the prayer is "Sanctibicetur nomen tuum," and Sawyer goes on to declar e hersel f ignoran t o f an y mor e Lati n (Wonderful Discoverie, 395). In th e play , th e quarto's various spellings of the prayer also suggest an imperfect grasp of Latin, though in one instance the playwright's intriguingl y show Sawyer parrying wit h Dog in passable Latin, and declaring, "I'm a n expert Scholar ; / Speak Latine, or I know not wel l what Language, / As well as the best of'em" (2.1.177-79). 68. Ther e i s nothing inherentl y problemati c o r noteworthy , that is , in Samson' s offstag e death. Her e Milto n ha d th e preceden t no t onl y o f Gree k traged y and o f Renaissanc e neo Senecan closet drama , but als o (as Gordon Brade n has pointed ou t t o me) of the contempo rary French stage. From Prometheus Bound to Garnier's La reine d'Escosse, Milton ha d several models fo r his close t drama' s offstag e catastrophe . An d o f course an onstag e death , suc h a s Hamlet's, hardl y resolves interpretive question s fo r those who survive as spectators. 5. Samson's Death by Theater an d Milton's Art o f Dying 1. Th e Sermons of John Donne, ed. G. R. Potter and Evely n Simpson (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1953-62) . 2. Willia m Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.4.11-12 (in Th e Riverside Shakespeare, gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans [Boston: Houghton Mifflin , 1974]); and ThePoetical Works o f Robert Browning, ed. Ian Jack and Margare t Smith (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1983-88).

Notes t o Pages 140-141 24 5 3. Joh n Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 1579. This and al l subsequent references to Milton' s poetry appear i n Milton: The Complete Poems, ed. John Care y and Alastair Fowler (London : Longman, 1968); subsequent reference s to this edition appear parenthetically in my text with the conventiona l abbreviations: SA for Samson Agonistes, PL for Paradise Lost, and P R for Paradise Regained. 4. Stanle y Fish, "Spectacle and Evidenc e in Samson Agonistes" Critical Inquiry 15:3 (Spring 1989), 556-86. 5. Fo r an extensiv e survey of the various regenerationist, typological, and skeptica l positions (and bibliographies) against or within which "anyone who would join—or rejoin—this critical debate at this juncture should declar e his or her assumption s a t the outset, " see Barbara Kiefer Lewalski , "Milton's Samson and th e 'New Acquist of True [Political] Experience,'" Milton Studies 24 (Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 233-52 (especially 233 34 and nn . 1-4) . Thoug h Lewalski' s essay demonstrates th e vitality "this critical debate" still enjoys, anyone familiar with the last two decades' scholarship on Samson Agonistes will recognize her fulfillmen t o f at least two o f the generi c expectations o f the contemporar y Samson Article: the rehearsa l of the regenerationis t and skeptica l debate itself , and th e introductory mention of the central site of this debate—Samuel Johnson's observation that Milton's play "must b e allowed to want a middle." This expectation, at least, I have met. A fine example o f the regenerationis t position appear s in Albert C. Labriola's essay, "Divine Urgency as a Motive for Conduc t i n Samson Agonistes" (Philological Quarterly, 50 [1971] 99-107). Labriola's argument anticipates the skeptical reading of the play by confronting the problem that Samson seems just as convinced that the "intimate impulse " that occasioned hi s first marriage "was of God" as he is of the authenticity of the "rousing motions" in the temple. Labriola also anticipates my application of the ars moriendi to this play when he compares th e first stage of death delineate d in De Doctrina Christiana with Samson' s "slavish subjection to sin and the devil, which constitutes ... th e death of the will" (104); indeed, Labriola stops just short of applying the art o f dying conventions to this play when he analyzes Samson's stages of temptation an d inspiratio n (especiall y 105-7). Other critic s who have considered th e role of visitants in th e pla y through th e "good temptation " define d in De Doctrina include Ann Gossman, "Milton's Samso n as the Tragic Hero Purified by Trial," JEGP 6 1 (1962), 535-36; John Steadman, '"Faithful Champion': The Theological Basis of Milton's Hero of Faith," Anglia 77 (i959). especially 25-26; William O . Harris, "Despair an d 'Patience as the Truest Fortitude' in Samson Agonistes" ELH 30 (1963), especially 120; and Pau l R. Baumgartner, "Milton an d Pa tience," SP 60 (1963) , 208-14. Without mentionin g th e ar t o f dyin g explicitly , these studie s have illuminated for me its presence in Milton's play. The skeptica l revisio n o f th e pla y appear s i n Stanle y Fish , "Questio n an d Answe r i n Samson Agonistes" Critical Quarterly 1 1 (Autumn 1969) , 237-64 ; mos t provocativel y i n Joseph A. Wittreich, Interpreting "Samso n Agonistes" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); and perhap s most influentiall y in Fish' s "sequel," "Spectacle and Evidenc e in Samson Agonistes." 6. Th e generic label ars moriendi originates with the anonymous fifteenth-centur y Tractatus artis bene moriendi (sometimes appearing as Speculum, arri s bene moriendi). The phras e ars moriendi can be traced as far back as the moral essays of Cicero and Seneca , however, and my focus on Protestant adaptation s of the art of dying in this chapter should not leave the extent o f the traditio n unnoted . Fo r what remains the mos t exhaustiv e bibliographic study of the tradition , includin g it s classica l an d mediva l predecessors , se e Siste r Mar y Catherin e O'Connor, The Art o f Dying Well: Th e Development of th e Ars Moriendi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942). For a more analytical survey of the chief examples of the genre in Renaissance England, see Nancy Lee Beaty, The Craft o f Dying: A Study i n th e Literary Tradition of th e Ars Moriendi in England (Ne w Haven: Yale Universit y Press, 1970). The Reformation' s important intellectual and literary influences upon the genre are examined by Beaty, 108-270,

246 Note s t o Pages 142-143 and by David W. Atkinson, "The English ars moriendi: Its Protestant Transformation," Renaissance and Reformation, Renaissance et Reforme, Ne w Series 6:1 (Februaruy, 1982), 1-10 . 7. Samue l Johnson, Rambler 139 (Tuesday 16, July 1751) , in Th e Complete Prose Works o f Samuel Johnson, ed. W . J. Bate and Albrech t B . Strauss (Ne w Haven: Yale Universit y Press, 1969), 4:376. 8. Thu s Milton enigmatically and perhaps wryly concludes his cryptic discussion of Aristotelian structure in "Of That Sort of Dramatic Poem Which I s Called Tragedy": "It suffices if the whole drama be found not produced beyond the fifth act." He says nothing of beginnings and middle s i n this "epistle," and hi s definition of mimesis as "passions wel l imitated" might similarly be read as an adaptation of Aristotelian expectations for a poem devoted t o the representation an d analysi s of dying. 9. Th e Visitatio infirmorum constitute d th e liturgical foundation of the ar s moriendi. See O'Connor, The Art o f Dying Well, 24,172-73; an d Beaty , The Craft o f Dying, 2-3, 237 - 40, 246. 10. Th e relation between the ar s moriendi and thi s morality play is explored by Donald F. Duclow, "Everyman an d the Ars Moriendi: Fifteenth-Centur y Ceremonies of Dying," FifteenthCentury Studies 6 (1983), 93-113. 11. Fish, "Spectacle and Evidenc e in Samson Agonistes" 556. 12. Cherre l Guilfoyle has noted that by the mid seventeenth century, "to agonise" could mean "to die" in England ("'If Shape it Might Be Call'd That Shape Had None': Aspects of Death in Milton," Milton Studies 13 [Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979], 49 and n.52) . Moriens become s th e generi c name o f the subjec t of the ar t o f dying i n the anonymou s fifteenth-century Ar s Moriendi, Editio Princeps (th e mos t accessibl e cop y of whic h appear s today i n th e Holbei n Society' s facsimil e of th e Britis h Museum' s manuscrip t [ed . W. H . Rylands, London: Wyma n and Sons , 1881]) . In 149 0 William Caxto n publishe d a translate d and abridge d pros e versio n o f thi s work , th e "Ar t & Craft e t o Know e Well t o Dye " (see O'Connor, The Art o f Dying Well, 1-10). 13. I n Ryland' s editio n o f th e Ar s Moriendi, for instance , th e nint h foli o pag e (labele d "Temptacio dyabol i de auaricia") present s three demons surroundin g th e bed and temptin g Moriens with wine, horses, his wife, and other emblems of domestic ease. 14. Atkinson, "Th e Englis h ar s moriendi, " 2-6 . Th e Protestan t art s o f dyin g o f the six teenth an d seventeent h centurie s questioned th e efficac y o f deathbed repentanc e an d th e viaticum, predictably emphasized faith rathe r than works, and sought t o replace the hora mortis as a key to salvation with a narratable lif e as an index into election. 15. Davi d E. Stannard's phras e in Th e Puritan Wa y o f Death (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1977), 73. 16. Th e Sicke Mannes Salve appear s i n Becon' s Workes (STC 1710) , vol. 2 , fols . ccxvii vcclxxxiii.v All references to th e Salve in thi s paper are taken from Prayers an d Other Pieces of Thomas Becon, S.T.P., ed. Rev. John Ayre (Cambridge : Parker Society , 1844), 87-191 and ar e cited parenthetically by the page numbers of this edition, abbreviated as Salve. For the immense and endurin g popularity of this work in Protestant England , see Beaty, The Craft o f Dying, no. A t least eleven editions were printed between it s first appearance an d the en d o f the century , and a t leas t seve n mor e wer e printed i n the firs t hal f of the seven teenth century . Becon' s wa s als o th e mos t imitate d ar t o f dyin g i n th e Renaissance , with countless subsequent title s (such as William Perkins's A Salve for a Sicke Man) attesting to its influence. 17. As elsewhere i n Becon' s work, Philemo n serve s a s th e author' s principa l raisonneur (Becon used the nam e as a pseudonym). Beaty (The Craft o f Dying, 113-14) traces the biblical referents o f this and the res t of Becon's dramatis personae; and sh e is certainly right in claiming that these names are "appropriate les s for their historical references than because they all suggest types of godliness," as she is right in describing the comforter s as "almost completely

Notes t o Pages 144-150 24 7 undifferentiated" (indeed, like a Chorus). Eusebius, however, would become a historically significant nam e for Foxe: the extende d 157 0 edition of Acts and Monuments include s the perio d of Roman persecutions described graphically by Eusebius of Caesarea. 18. Th e blurrin g of death i n lif e i s a central image in Paradise Lost (see, e.g., PL, 10.1028). In th e contex t o f my argument tha t Samso n i s portrayed as a type of Moriens, however, we might look farther back for analogues. In his initial encounter with Satan, for instance, Dante hovers between lif e an d death a s Virgil arms him wit h fortitud e (Inferno, 34.20-27) . 19. Se e Samson Agonistes, 176-77. In Th e Sick Man's Salve, Epaphroditus complains o f hi s failing tongue, senses, and memory (94). 20. Se e Stannard, Th e Puritan Wa y o f Death, 72-134; and Arthu r Barker, Milton an d th e Puritan Dilemma (Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 1942), 169 and passim. 21. Camill e Wells Slights, Th e Casuistical Tradition i n Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, an d Milton (Princeton : Princeto n Universit y Press , 1981) , 292 . Slights discusses tw o casuistica l works at length in her discussio n o f Samson Agonistes: William Perkins's A Case of Conscience and Jerem y Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium. Perkins , as we have seen, authored A Salve for a Sick Man (1595 ) in obviou s imitation o f Becon; Taylor's Holy Dying (1651) i s generally considered the pinnacl e of the ar s moriendi tradition (se e Beaty, The Craft o f Dying, 197-270). References to Holy Dying in this chapter appear in Jerem y Taylor, The Rule and Exercises o f Holy Dying, 2nd edition (London : Printed fo r R. Royston, 1652). 22. Slights , The Casuistical Tradition, 262. 23. Slights , The Casuistical Tradition, 294. 24. Fish , "Spectacle and Evidence in Samson Agonistes" 571. In this formulation, of course, Fish's skepticism and any argument that would refute it fall outside the realm of dramatic criticism: his elusive "confidence" requires eithe r a literal theophany o r fait h i n things no t see n (both difficul t effect s i n the theater , even closet drama) . A fairer paraphras e of Fish's general argument in this essay, however, might be that there is no way to be confident that Samson' s reported motion s signif y wha t h e perceive s a s a communication betwee n himsel f an d Go d (though Milton' s Argument make s i t clea r tha t Samso n understand s his summon s to th e temple, at least, as "from God"). 25. Thoug h Slight s seems to suggest one possibility i n her compariso n o f Milton's "ode " (SA, 667-709) wit h an ode i n Antigone (The Casuistical Tradition, 272-74). For an analysi s of classical and Hebre w models of consolation i n Samson Agonistes, see Lynn Veach Sadler, Consolation in Samson Agonistes: Regeneration and Typology (Salzburg : Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 1979), 8-43 . 26. Fo r the syncretic effects o f humanism and the classical way of death upon the Renaissance ars moriendi, see Beaty, The Craft o f Dying, 54-107. 27. G . W. Pigman III , Grief an d English Renaissance Elegy (Cambridge : Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1985). 28. Jerem y Taylor, Holy Dying, 81,106. 29. Thoug h Epaphroditu s reveals that his motions ar e contemporaneous wit h Philemon' s "godly communication," the relatio n i s not necessaril y causal; it seems instead a s though th e dying man ha s been participating in two conversations a t the sam e time. For a discussion of the retrospective search for causes and temporal origins occasioned by Samson's motions, see Fish, "Question an d Answer in 'Samson Agonistes,'" 255-27. 30. A word specifically associated with the Calvinist ars moriendi in such works as Edmund Bunny's Resolution (1584), an appropriatio n o f Rober t Parson's Jesui t Christian Exercise (se e Beaty, The Craft o f Dying, 158-9). Hamlefs "nativ e hue o f resolution" is just one o f many in stances in Renaissance drama where the word is associated with the "action" of dying (3.1.84,88). 31. Georg e Herbert , "Afflictio n (I), " 55-56 , i n Th e Works o f George Herbert, ed. F . E . Hutchinson (Oxford: Oxfor d University Press, 1941).

248 Notes

t o Pages 150—153

32. Fo r the mos t complete discussio n o f this passage and its possible authorial intentions , see Stephen B . Dobranski, "Samso n an d th e Omissa, " SEL 36:1 (Winter 1996), 149-69. 33. Willia m Haller , Foxe's Book of Martyrs an d th e Elect Nation (London : Trinit y Press, 1963), 142. In Historicizing Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry i n Restoration England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994, 42-66), Laura Lunger Knoppers compares Samson' s sufferin g and death with the execution of the regicides in 1660, claiming that for Milton their death represented a contemporary martyrdom . 34. Th e nature of Samson's death, an apparently suicidal act of vengeance in the Judges account, was a traditional exegetical question. I n Biathanatos, John Donne apologized Samson's death as "intended .. . accidentally " (Ernest W. Sullivan II, ed. [London: Associated University Presses, 1984] ,141). 35. Fo r the centralit y of reported gesture s in Foxe's treatment o f the Maria n martyrs, see John R . Knott, Discourses o f Martyrdom i n English Literature, 1563-1694 (Cambridge : Cam bridge University Press , 1993), 9. 36. Joh n Da y entered Th e Sycke Mans Salve for publication i n th e Stationers ' Registe r in 1558, thoug h the earliest extant copy of the book is dated 1561 . Foxe's reference to Becon's persecution appear s in Actes and Monumentes, ed. S. R. Cattley (London , 1837), 6:610. For further discussion o f the connectio n betwee n Fox e and Becon , see John R. Knott, Discourses o f Martyrdom, 112-13,116-17. 37. Fish , "Spectacle and Evidenc e in Samson Agonistes" 586. 38. Thes e phrases appear in Othello, 3.3.360 and King Lear, 1.2.92, respectively. 39. Th e verb agein (the etymon of agonist, "actor") furthe r suggests agonistikos, "contender in athleti c games." See also the definitio n of actor in Edward Phillips , The New World o f English Words (London , 1658). 40. Richar d Macksey, "Last Words: The Artes Moriendi and a Transtextual Genre," Genre 16 (Winter 1983) , 493-516. 41. Fo r an excellent discussion of the relation between the contemplatio mortis and the ars moriendi tradition i n Renaissance dramatic conventions, see Michael Flachmann , "Fitted fo r Death: Measure for Measure an d th e Contemplatio Mortis" ELR 22:2 (Spring 1992), 222-41. 42. Henr y Vaughan, "Rules and Lessons, " 125-6, in Henry Vaughan: Th e Complete Poems, ed. Alan Rudrum (New Haven and London : Yale University Press, 1976), 196. 43. Se e Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London : Cromm Helm , 1984) ; Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt t o Bernini (New York: AMS Press, 1964); T.S.R. Boase, Death in the Middle Ages: Mortality, Judgment, an d Remembrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 102,106, 109; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after th e Black Death (Princeton: Princeto n University Press, 1951), 74-75; and Henriett e s'Jacob , Idealism and Realism: A Study o f Sepulchral Symbolism (Leiden: 1954), 46-47. 44. Fo r the Renaissanc e conflation of ars moriendi and ar s vivendi, see Beaty, The Craft o f Dying, 101-4, 204-20. 45. Se e De Doctrina Christiana (in Th e Cambridge Milton, 15:203-20); an d Cherrel l Guilfoyle, '"If Shap e It Might Be Call'd That Shape Had None': Aspects of Death in Milton," 35-40. 46. Essais, I:2o. For an analysis of Montaigne's "evolutionary" attitud e toward death, arguing for its increasing equation wit h the wor k o f life, se e Donald M . Frame, Montaigne's Discovery o f Man (Ne w York: Columbia Universit y Press, 1955), 30-48. 47. Se e Fish, "Question an d Answe r i n 'Samson Agonistes,' " 252-55 ; an d "Spectacl e an d Evidence in Samson Agonistes" 574-79. 48. I have further traced the verbal and situational similaritie s between Caesar's intervie w with Decius Brutus and Samson's exchange with the Philistine officer i n "Shakespeare's Rome

Notes t o Pages 153—155 24 9 in Milton's Gaza? Echos and Presence s in Samson Agonistes"ELN 34: 4 (June 1997), 1-10. Cae sar i s hardly a n arbitrar y figur e t o conside r regardin g representation s o f eithe r Charle s o r Cromwell, or the ambiguity such representations ofte n recorde d and caused . In An Homtian Ode Caesar functions with famous overdetermination, figuring both king and protector; similarly, Charles's collectio n o f Mantegna' s sequenced paintings, Th e Triumphs of Julius Caesar, subsequently appeared in Cromwell's Hampton Court. 49. Patrici a Parker , Shakespeare from th e Margins: Language, Culture, Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 82. 50. Be n Jonson, Eastward Hoe, 2.2.7. All references to Jonson' s dram a i n thi s chapter ap pear in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evely n Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1925-52). I modernize the spellin g and hereafte r cite references parentheti cally (by act, scene, and line number). 51. Fo r a stud y that locate s Milton' s pla y within mid-seventeenth-centur y controversie s over providence (and the heightened skepticism directed toward providential historiography), see Robert Wilcher, "Samson Agonistes and th e Proble m o f History," Renaissance and Modern Studies 26 (1982), 108-33. 52. Th e Oxford editors (9:645 ) assign the preceding passages to Jonson, though authoria l attribution fo r Eastward Hoe (which Jonson wrote with Marston and Chapman ) must always be followed by a question mark . 53. Sigmun d Freud, "Thoughts fo r the Times on War and Death, " The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works o f Sigmund Freud, tr . Jame s Strache y (London : Hogart h Press, 1957), 15:291. 54. Milto n an d Jerem y Collier rea d passages of Acts and Monuments skeptically . Collier's objections, in Th e Ecclesiastical History o f Great Britain (1702), are discussed by George Townsend i n Th e Acts and Monuments o f John Foxe (Ne w York: AMS Press, 1965), I:179-87. John R. Knott has demonstrated Milton's iconoclastic skepticis m toward Foxe's individual "portraits," particularly those of the early martyrs, in Discourses of Martyrdom i n English Literature, 15631694,154-57In OfPrelatical Episcopacy, Milto n object s to the Foxea n method of misleading credulous readers with dramatized "fragments of old Martyrologies, an d legends " (this and al l later references to Milton's prose appear in Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, ed. Don M . Wolfe, et al., 8 vols. [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-82]; subsequent reference s to this editio n are cited parenthetically by volume and page number). 55. Davi d Loewenstein, Milton and th e Drama of History (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990), 58. 56. Ernes t B. Gilman, Iconodasm and Poetry i n th e English Reformation (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986), 2. Milton wrote no poetry in the decade following the publication of Eikonoklastes, and Thoma s Corn s has argue d tha t eve n his prose following this work eschews complex image patterns (i n Th e Development of Milton's Prose Style [Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1982], 43-65, 83-103). 57. Richar d Helgerson, "Milton Reads the King's Book: Print, Performance, and the Making of a Bourgeois Idol," Criticism 29:1 (1987), 1-25. Helgerson' s central argument is that Milton's deconstruction o f the royal "idol" enabled his construction o f an authorial "image"—the distinction between idol and image being dubious. Unfortunately, Helgerson doe s not reall y consider Samson Agonistes i n thi s argument , suggesting instead (i n juxtapositions simila r to m y own) that in the explicitly autobiographical portions of Paradise Lost (such as the proems to Books 1, 3,7, and 9) the rhetoric of the King's Book and the imagery of Marshall's frontispiece subtly appear (se e pp. 18-19). While I do not accep t Helgerson's portrait of a Milton complacentl y appropriating the king's iconography, the method of analysis in this essay has greatly illuminated for m e the possible relations between Eikon Basilike, Eikonoklastes, and Milton's poetry. Partic-

250 Notes

t o Pages 155-160

ularly insightful is Helgerson's observation , o n p. 14, "In the process of assuming the polemica l stance required by his encounter with the king, Milton had to divide himself fro m himself. " 58. Se e William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragaedie (London , 1633), fols. 562 v, 558.v 59. Mar y Ann Radzinowicz , "The Distinctiv e Tragedy of Samson Agonistes" Milton Studies 17 (1983), 267-69; Laura Lunger Knoppers, HistoricizingMilton, 42-66,142-63. Charles Carlton has argued that Charles read Foxe during his final imprisonment (Charles I [London : Routledge, 1983], 347). 60. Th e subtitle apparently added b y John Gauden. On the question of the collaborativ e authorship o f Eikon Basilike, see Francis Madan, "A New Bibliography of Eikon Basilike," Ox ford Bibliographical Society 3 (1950), 126-63. 61. Th e Samso n story of Judges 13-1 6 afforde d Charle s obvious biblical coordinates for his own martyrdom: the Parliamentarians could be figured as Philistines, Parliament itself as the Philistine temple, the vacillating Royalists as Israelites ("my friends an d lovin g subjects being helpless spectators") , an d th e apocalypti c "confusions " predicte d afte r hi s death a s Samson's ruinous an d vengefu l las t ac t o f theatrica l display (Eikon Basilike, 173,175,178). Yet some o f Charles's less obvious—indeed perhaps unintentional—evocations of the Samson story seem to furnis h Milto n wit h image s fo r hi s dramati c elaboration . A n exampl e is Eikon Basilike's twenty-first chapter , "Upon Hi s Majesty's Letters Taken and Divulged, " which complains o f the treacherous publication of his domestic epistles—entrusted t o a secretary—in terms similar to Samson's charge that Dalila has published hi s "secrets" (SA, 879-81,946-48); in Judges, Dalila's betraya l o f Samso n i s confined t o th e divulgenc e o f his Nazarit e "secret," bu t bot h Eikon Basilike an d Samson Agonistes expand thi s image of betrayed exposure t o represen t a protagonist "sun g an d proverbe d fo r a fool," victimized b y the textua l glozing s of politica l enemies. 62. Thi s portrai t i s reproduced i n th e Yal e edition o f Milton's prose, 3:150. Several critics have note d th e iron y i n th e fac t tha t thi s frontispiec e wa s designed b y th e sam e engraver , William Marshall , who portraye d Milto n o n th e fron t o f his 164 5 volume of poetry. See , for instance, Helgerson, "Milton Read s the King' s Book," 15. 63. O n on e level , a t least , Charles' s strateg y wa s successful : th e carefull y orchestrate d drama of his execution, which Cromwell staged as a public confirmation of his rule, produced a mo b tha t ha d t o b e disperse d b y Parliamen t troop s whe n th e commoner s unexpectedl y sympathized with the king. Like Milton's Chorus, this mob was seeking relics. For contempo rary accounts o f th e executio n an d th e earl y reception o f the King' s Book, see Christopher Wordsworth, "Who Wrote Eiko n Basilike?" Considered an d Answered (London , 1824). 64. Joh n Cook, King Charls, His Case, or An Appeal t o all Rational Men (London , 1649), 5. 65. Thes e phrases appea r i n Andrew Marvell's An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, 53-54. 66. A n Horatian Ode, 57-60. 67. Thi s portrait, which represent s Charles's gazin g upon a crown (inscribe d with Gloria and superscribed with Beatam et A Eternam) that is visible through an upper right-hand window, exteriorizes his meditation b y depicting two beam s of light tha t connec t hi m wit h th e heavens: fro m th e uppe r left , a beam inscribe d wit h Clarior e tenebris descend s fro m dar k clouds to the top o f Charles's head; from hi s eyes, a beam inscribe d wit h Coeli Specto reache s to the crown . 68. Se e the extende d concei t i n Th e Reason of Church-Government, 1:858-59. 69. Th e mos t obviou s exampl e o f thi s substitutio n appear s i n Milton' s respons e t o th e king's penitentia l meditation s (Chapte r 25) . Here Milto n answer s Charles' s reference s to David's Psalms with biblical examples of feigned repentance, suc h as Cain's, Esau's, Balaam's, Saul's, Ahab's, and Jehoram's (3:553-54) .

Notes to Pages 161-166 25 1 70. A s Milton's Dalila notes, perspective and political allianc e determine whether an act is treasonous o r heroic: Charles' "betrayal" by the Scot s (wh o handed hi m over to Parliament ) parallels Samson's betrayal by the men of Judah (who handed hi m over to the Philistines); yet the former act is celebrated b y Milton, the latter emulated by Dalila. 71. Elsewher e in Eikonoklastes Milton specifically represents Charles as Circe (see 3:488,582). 72. A s the Chorus' much debated Phoenix simile has Samson attaining a fame that is both glorious and eternal (surviving that of "a secular bird" by "ages of lives" [1706]), moreover, th e frontispiece represent s Charle s lookin g a t a heavenl y crow n labele d Gloria an d Beatam e t AEternam. 73. I t will be obvious tha t I treat Samson as a Restoration play—downplaying th e signifi cance o f its (possibl y much earlier ) dat e o f composition—under th e sensibl e if unsophisti cated bibliographic assumption tha t the date of publication (durin g the author's lifetime) determines a work' s primar y historica l meaning . Muc h o f m y argumen t depend s upo n th e possibility that significant portions o f Samson might actuall y respond t o Eikon Basilike (and to the earlier response o f Eikonoklastes); but this argument can accommodate th e claim (made most persuasivel y by John Shawcross) that Samson was composed i n the earl y 1650s (see The Complete English Poetry of John Milton, ed. John T . Shawcross [Ne w York: Doubleday, 1963] ; and Shawcross , "Th e Genre s o f Paradise Regain'd an d Samson Agonistes," Milton Studies 17 [1983]: 225-48). The skeptical revisions and multiple perspectives born of Milton's encounte r with the King' s Book, then, coul d well have begun shortl y afte r 1649 ; in 1671, though, Milto n chose—for what may have been historical reasons—to pu t an end to further revision by publishing his text as it sttod an d stands . While this flexible argument would need to be qualified if new evidence emerged to establish an even earlier date of composition fo r Samson, however, I still believe that the most compellin g case for an author's intended meaning—in a work published with his or her consent—must priv ilege date of publication over date of composition. Certainly intentions can change during composition, but durin g this process revision is itself an intent; a work like Samson might have had many different meanings for Milton before and during the Civil War, but the meaning he gave to it (and to us) was decided in part by that moment a t which he decided to place it in history. 74. Laur a Lunger Knoppers, Historidzing Milton, 63 . Knoppers also refer s t o Northro p Frye's recognition that the biblical Samson story and its aftermath would have offered Milto n a dubious analog y on whic h to pin his Restoration hopes (in Spiritus Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, an d Society [Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1976], 222). 75. Edwar d Burrough, A Testimony against a great Idolatry Committed and a True Mourning of th e Lords Servant Upon th e Many Considerations o f his heart upon the 23 day of th e ninth month (London , 1658), 2 (quoted b y Knoppers, Historidzing Milton, 65). 76. First Defense, 4.402 . 77. Paradise Lost, 1.2. Taste and touch were often used interchangeably in the Renaissance , their meanings meeting in the former's etymon (taxare). Milton's interesting conflation of the two words i n his epic, however, probably relate s to his synesthetic interpretation o f the Pro hibition i n Genesis 2.17. For Milton's "almos t indifferent " use of touching an d tastin g in thi s sense, see Fowler, ed., Paradise Lost, 9.651n. 78. Se e Carey, ed., Samson Agonistes, 136n; and Merri t Y. Hughes, ed. , John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (New York: Odyssey Press, 1957), Samson Agonistes, 136n. The Ox ford English Dictionary seems to concur with these glosses, citing Samson's "insupportably" as the first adverbial for m of the word meaning "in an insupportable degree o r manner; insuf ferably; irresistibly. " Yet there i s some latitud e eve n i n thi s definition ; and th e OE D further records th e introduction , i n 1649 , of insupportable i n th e sens e o f "untenable" o r "unjustifi able" (see OED, s.v. insupportable, 1b). 79. Se e Wittreich, Interpreting "Samson Agonistes" 220.

252 Notes

t o Pages 166-167

80. Th e Judges' narrator assert s that Samson' s marriag e was "from the Lord " (14.4), and that "the Spirit of the Lord rushed on him" as an incitement to his revenge in Ascalon (14.19). For some of the rabbinic commentary tha t dwells on such passages without self-satisfying so lution, see Avrohom Fishelis and Shmue l Fishelis, The Book o f Judges: A Ne w English Translation o f th e Text, Rashi, and a Commentary Digest, ed . A . J. Rosenberg (Ne w York: Octago n Books, 1987), 109-35. For the ambiguity of the text itself, see Robert Alter, Th e Art o f Biblical Narrative (New York: AMS Press, 1981), 61-62,101-5,117. McDonald notes that in this episode , as in several others, Milton exacerbate s narrative silences and ambiguitie s already present in Judges—perhaps amplifying them through rabbinic uncertainty over the Halachic legitimacy of Samson' s action s (" A Long Day's Dying : Tragi c Ambiguity in Samson Agonistes" Milton Studies 27 [1991], 268-70). For a compelling regenerationis t argumen t fo r a distinction between th e "evil," "intimat e impulse" that ha s move d Samso n towar d hi s first marriage (SA , 223) and th e genuinel y renewing "rousing motions " in the temple, however, see Labriola, "Divine Urgenc y as a Motive for Conduc t i n Samson Agonistes," 99-107. Labriola argues that the earlie r "impulse" i s fro m God but no t o f God—a legitimat e temptatio n o f the kin d Milto n explore s i n De Doctrina Christiana. By this argument, the fac t that the characters i n the play seem to credit the "intimate impulse" is not cause to be skeptical toward the later and genuin e "rousing motions" ; it is instead dramatic irony . 81. Wittreich, Interpreting "Samson Agonistes" especially 53-115,174-238. 82. Lancelo t Andrewes, Th e Wonderfutt Combate (for Gods Glorie and Mans Salvation) betweene Christ and Satan (London: Printed by John Charlwood, 1592) , 69. 83. Consider , for example, Northrop Frye's observation tha t "in the Book of Judges, the account o f Samson i s immediately followed by another stor y about th e Danite s in which, afte r appearing in a most contemptibl e ligh t as idolaters, thieves, and murderers, they vanish fro m history" (Spiritus Mundi: Essays o n Literature, Myth, an d Society, 222). 84. Wittreich , Interpreting "Samson Agonistes," 120-21 . Raymon d Waddingto n remain s one of the more influential regenerationis t readers of the play (following such important critics as Una Ellis-Fermor); for his own observation of "the modulations of difference" that com plicate the typologies on which such readings are based, see "Milton amon g the Carolines," in The Age of Milton: Backgrounds t o Seventeenth-Century Literature, ed. C. A. Patrides and Ray mond B . Waddington (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1980), 352. 85. Wittreich , Interpreting "Samson Agonistes," intro , x . Dr . Johnson' s critiqu e appear s in Th e Poetical Works o f John Milton, ed . Henr y John Todd (London : Printe d fo r J . Johnson, 1801), 4:347. 86. I n Areopagitica (2:527) , Milton personifie s the inauthenti c selfhoo d constituted b y a thoroughly theatrica l tex t a s "a mere artificial Adam, suc h an Adam a s he is in the motions." By applyin g thes e word s t o Milton' s Samson , I d o no t impl y tha t hi s characte r lack s "fre e choice"; t o d o s o would involv e question s othe r tha n thos e I am asking . Certainl y analysis such a s I attempt here , focusing on intertextualit y an d transferabl e conventions o f language and image , tends t o hollow out—o r a t least ignore—a literar y character's "self." Indeed on e line of my argument holds that Milton's Samson doe s not own his own language; that severa l aspects of his "self" have already been played by an other. But the reference to "artificial Adam" does not ai m a t a radically robotic Samson , nor d o I deny the possibilit y tha t at some level Milton grants Samson all the free choice that a dramatic character in a familiar story can enjoy (in the Argument, for instance, Milton speak s of Samson being "persuaded inwardly" tha t th e call to the temple was "from God") ; rather , I suggest here that a t another level of representation Milton intend s fo r Samson's role-playin g (or referentiality) to be discernible. Perhaps the most apposit e compariso n i s to th e "genuine" Adam whos e origina l an d altogethe r unam biguous regeneration appear s in the divinely guided art of dying that is the conclusion of Par-

Notes to Pages 167-169 25 3 adise Lost. In "Milton's Laza r House," (ELN forthcomin g March, 2001), I have argued that Paradise Lost employs, the convention s o f the ar s moriendi, and specificall y Taylor's Holy Dying, to much different effec t fro m their use in Samson Agonistes. If Samson illustrates th e etiolatio n of thes e conventions, Paradise Lost records their etiology ; Samson invites skepticis m towar d the art o f dying, whereas Paradise Lost represents its ideal form. In Areopagitica, the "artificial Adam" appear s a s a disingenuous produc t o f censorship; an d i f such a n Adam function s in this chapter as an analogy to Samson, I mean the analogy to suggest the extent to which Samson i s himself a product o f Milton's self-censorship— a self-censorship appearing in Samson Agonistes' dialogue with Eikdn Basilike and Eikonoklastes. 87. Th e titl e pag e o f Milton' s 167 1 publication reads , "Paradise Regain'd, a poe m i n I V books, to which i s added Samson Agonistes" The intertextual communicatio n betwee n thes e two "companion pieces " has been discussed by Balachandra Rajan, '"To Whic h is Added Samson Agonistes—,'" in Th e Prison and th e Pinnacle, ed. Balachandra Raja n (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1973), 82-110; and Joh n T. Shawcross, "The Genre s of Paradise Regain'd an d Samson Agonistes: The Wisdom o f Their Joint Publication," Milton Studies 17 (1983), 225-48. John Guillory has briefly suggested that Samson instea d stands as a destructive "coda" to "the completed edifice of [Milton's] oeuvre" in "The father' s house : Samson Agonistes in its historical moment" (Re-membering Milton: Essays on the texts and traditions, ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson [Ne w York: Methuen, 1988], 171). 88. Her e I summarize Fish's argument in "Things and Actions Indifferent: The Temptation of Plot i n Paradise Regained," Milton Studies 17 (1983), 163-85. 89. Jonatha n Culler has famously proclaimed the supremacy of theory over interpretatio n in our ow n critical moment: "On e thin g we do no t nee d i s more interpretation s o f literary works" (in Th e Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, and Deconstruction [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981], 6). 90. Tenure o f Kings an d Magistrates, in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Ne w Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1957), 766, 768. 91. Elizabet h Southwell's accoun t o f Queen Elizabeth' s death suggest s the symptoms , an d the validity, of this concern: afraid t o take her sickbed—a s if doing s o would cros s the onto logical boundary between political player and political property—the quee n struggled fiercel y to control the fate of her remains and the interpretation o f her death. Upon her quietus, however, she was subjected t o a n unauthorize d autopsy—an d t o it s literary equivalent, as commentators (includin g Southwell) conteste d th e officia l versio n o f her godl y end. See Catherine Loomis , "Elizabeth Southwell' s Manuscrip t Accoun t o f th e Deat h o f Quee n Elizabet h [with text],"ELR 26:3 (Autumn 1996), 482-509 . 92. McDonald , "A Long Day's Dying," 282. 93. Th e Renaissance rarely imagined death without a n agent other than the dying. In conventional personification s of Death (wit h scythe or dart), for instance, the dying man was still figuratively "killed"—still subjec t t o a narrative no t o f hi s ow n determination . Thu s "self killing" (Donne's translatio n o f suicide in Biathanatos) affords on e the opportunity t o finish the stor y o f one's life ; suc h radica l autonomy merges , however, with th e socia l and psycho logical strategies of the preparatio mortis (which could entail the preparation fo r imposed o r natural death). Indeed Charles's political strategy in Eikdn Basilike could be understood a s an effort "t o die" rather than "be killed. " Though mos t o f th e analysi s i n thi s chapte r ha s concerne d th e way s in whic h Samso n should b e understood a s preparing for death, the actua l terms o f his death—in Samson and in other Renaissanc e texts such as Biathanatos—hover between suicide and accident (no t un like Hamlet' s death) . Thi s liminalit y nicel y reflect s both th e conflictin g representations o f Charles's killing/deat h an d Milton' s ow n response t o the execution o f a king who refused t o be killed.

254 Notes to Pages 169—173 94. Se e Henry V, 2.3.11,16. Hostess Quickly's clai m for Falstaff's las t words, that "'a babbl' d of green fields," is an emendation o f F1's "a Table." Since Theobald, editor s have justified thi s emendation b y noting tha t Quickly' s religiou s education i s defective (at 2.3.9 , she seems t o confuse Arthu r wit h Abraham) . Thus sh e ma y be describin g th e "gree n pastures " Falstaf f would have mentioned i f reciting the twenty-third Psalm in preparation for death (Psalm 23:5 also gives thanks for a spiritual banquet table) . But one would not be surprised to find the appetitive knight thinking abou t a more secular table in his last moments, and th e passage has not seeme d reflectiv e o f a regenerate death to some readers . For the argument that Falstaff' s death represents a "satiric martyrdom" (an d thus a satire of Oldcastle), see Alice-Lyle Scoufos, Shakespeare's Typological Satire: A Study of th e Falstaff-Oldcastle Problem (Athens: Ohio Uni versity Press, 1979), chapter 10 . For a reading that finds Falstaff's deat h a parody of the art o f dying tradition, se e Katherine Koller, "Falstaff and the Art of Dying," MIN 6 0 (1945), 383-86. An effor t t o rehabilitate Falstaff's wa y of dying appears in Christopher Baker, "The Christia n Context o f Falstaff's 'Fine r End,'" Explorations i n Renaissance Culture 12 (1986), 68-86 95. "O n th e Lor d General Fairfax at the Sieg e of Colchester," 10-13. 96. From an anonymous letter in London Burning (1667), in James P. Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum; or, An Ancient History an d Modern Description o f London (London : J. Nichols an d Son, 1807), 4:80. See Knoppers' extended account o f Samson Agonistes' relation to the event s of 1665 and 1666 , in HistoricizingMilton, 142-63. 97. Matthe w Griffith , Th e King's Life-Guard: A n Anniversary Sermon (London : William Godbid, 1665) , Epistle Dedicatory , 1, 14; Edward Sexby , Killing, N o Murder (London : n.p. , 1659), 9-10; Th e Souldiers Pocket Bible (London: Printed by G.B. and R.W., 1643), 2- 4 ; Thomas Fuller, "Strange Justice: Judges 19.30" (1655-56), in Th e Collected Sermons of Thomas Fuller, ed. John Eglington Bailey and Willia m E . A. Axon (London: Gresham Press, 1891), 2:527, 537. 98. Quintu s Septimiu s Florens Tertullianus, De Oratore, trans. Rober t Hinklema n (Ne w York: Odyssey, 1975), 32. 6. Guilt and the Constitution of Authorship in Henry V and the Antitheatrical Elegies of W. S. and Milton 1. Kennet h L. Woodward and Joh n McCormick, "The Art of Dying Well," Newsweek (No vember 25,1996) , 66, 63. This article is immediately followed with a n excerpt from Cardina l Bernardin's posthumousl y publishe d memoir , Th e Gift o f Peace (Chicago : Loyol a Press , 1996). O n pag e 66 , Woodward an d McCormic k briefl y mentio n Steve n Cook' s allegation s that the Cardina l ha d sexuall y abused him : "Cook later recanted; his 'recovered memory ' of abuse turne d ou t t o b e false . And i n 1994 , when Coo k wa s dying o f AIDS, Bernardin sai d mass for him an d annointed hi m i n a tearful reconciliation . Mor e than that, he restored hi s accuser's dignity. " 2. I her e refe r t o th e centra l argumen t o f Jona s A. Barish, Th e Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Anyone familiar with this important stud y will recognize its pervasive influence on m y own conception o f the guil t and censur e occasioned by the Renaissance killing poem. 3. A recent survey conducted b y the Rope r Center reveal s that ove r the las t twenty years public faith in the media has dissolved strikingly. Paradoxically, moreover, real concern for reporters' violations of privacy and decency concurs with concern that reporters are not uncovering enough. Of those polle d i n the nationa l survey , 82% "think reporter s ar e insensitive t o people's pai n whe n coverin g disasters and accidents" ; 60 % "think reporter s too ofte n quot e sources whose names are not give n in news stories" (quoted fro m a survey of 1500 individuals from around th e Unite d States , conducted i n January 1997 by the Rope r Center in Storrs, CT; commisioned b y Newseum, the survey results are available at http://www.newseum.org).

Notes t o Pages 176-179 25 5 4. Thoma s Kyd (?), The Spanish Tragedy, 2.4.102 . The connection between authorship an d murderous crime is a major interest of the play (see, for instance, 1.1.87,2.4.101,4.4.146,4.5.48) . 5. Jeffre y Masten, "Beaumont and/o r Fletcher: Collaboration an d the Interpretation o f Renaissance Drama," in Th e Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation i n Law and Literature, ed. Martha Woodmansee an d Pete r Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 363. 6. Masten , "Beaumont and/or Fletcher," 361. 7. Miche l Foucault , "What I s An Author? " in Foucault Reader, ed . Pau l Rabino w (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 108. 8. Emm a Smith , "Autho r v. Character i n Earl y Modern Dramati c Authorship : The Ex ample o f Thomas Ky d and Th e Spanish Tragedy',' 132 . (cited i n th e introduction , not e 43) . Smith demonstrate s ho w this play insistently derogates or abdicate s th e autho r functio n in favor o f a character function, in fact establishin g Hieronimo a s the play' s author until 1612— when Kyd's name was first associated with The Spanish Tragedy (131) . Several characters within the pla y assume th e titl e "author," including Hieronimo , Lorenzo , Andrea's Ghost , an d Revenge. Jonson's expansions of the pla y after Kyd' s death exten d th e proces s of authorial displacement and substitutio n alread y meditated i n its text. Smith also cites Masten (133 ) in he r argument for a different category of anonymity in the Renaissance—one defined by the sup planting of author by character. In this chapter, I am more interested in the authorial tensions between playwright, actor, and spectator . 9. Thi s debate wa s stimulated (bu t not begun ) m y Machiavelli. Quentin Skinne r offer s the best history of the reason of state issue; see especially "The Context of Hobbes" Theory of Political Obligation," i n Vere Chappell (ed . and intro.) , Thomas Hobbes (Ne w York: Garland, 1992), 233-66 . Se e als o J . G . A . Pocock , Th e Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought an d th e Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Universit y Press, 1975), especially ch. 10. 10. I n this chapter I join a current emphasis on Protestantism's complication o f expiation , but I do no t mea n t o forge t tha t expiatio n wa s far from theoreticall y trouble-free for many early modern Roman Catholics. As a post-Reformation play that locates many of the concep tual difficulties wit h culpability and expiation in recognizably Catholic forms, Henry V would seem i n fac t t o presen t u s with a kind o f ecumenical or catholic skepticism; but thi s skepticism is itself the product o f a history that includes the Reformation. 11. The suborned criminal, such as an assassin, more nearly approximates the qualified responsibility of a stage actor fo r his actions. A skeptic might not e that by having the bishop s justify hi s war an d indee d phras e his undertakin g as an imperative , Shakespeare's Henry V seeks a role similar to the assassin. 13. Rober t Weimann, "Bifold Authority in Shakespeare's Theatre," SQ 39 (1988), 401-17. 14. Troilus and Cressida, 5.10.36, 38-9 . 15. I quote her e from Henry V' s Prologue , lines 23, 25, 34, 33, 8, 28, 26. Warren D . Smith ("The Henry V Choruses in the Firs t Folio," JEGP 5 3 [1954], 38-57) and G . P. Jones ("Henry V : The Choru s an d th e Audience," Shakespeare Survey 31 [1978] 93-104), have taken literall y the Chorus's addres s to the audienc e as "gentles," arguin g that thi s indicate s a performance at Whitehall. These arguments have been refuted on persuasive historical grounds, however (by Robert Adger Law, "The Choruse s in Henry th e Fifth" Th e University o f Texas Studies in English 35 [1956], 11-21; and Gar y Taylor, Modernizing Shakespeare's Spelling, with Three Studies in the Text o f 'Henry V [Oxford : Clarendon, 1979], 78). The form of address i s much mor e in teresting i f contrary t o fact , a version o f King Henry's promise tha t an y loyal participant i n battle, "be he ne'er s o vile, / This day shall gentle his condition" (4.3.62-63) . Bu t if "gentles" were understood sociall y as nonlaborers in Renaissance London, in the theater as on the battlefield gentles were often more participatory and collaborative: my claim that this word indicates an exhorted passivity, then, must acknowledge the historical activity of gentle (especially

256 Notes t o Pages 179-180 aristocratic) audiences on and around the stage. A less complicated conceptual blurring of active and passiv e theatergoer appear s in the Chorus' s vacillation between addressin g spectators and addressing auditors. 16. I t might be objected that my emphasis upon the Chorus's emphatic apology—"O, par don!"—ignores the obvious conventions of humility and inexpressibility topoi that appear in each choral pronouncement. I do not mea n to ignore these conventions, nor t o distort thei r tone. But I argue in this chapter that the self-consciousness with which such conventions appear in Henry V is significant because it points to a more fundamental concern i n the play. In "Henry V : King, Chorus , an d Critics " (Shakespeare Quarterly 34: 1 [1983] , 27-43) Lawrence Danson describe s the tone of the play' s Chorus as witty and confident ; he then proceed s to counter skeptica l readings of the Choru s by arguing that i t operates as an accurat e guide to our interpretatio n of the play, soliciting our collaboratio n just as the king asks for the help of his fellow soldiers. I would agree that one's attitudes toward Henry help determine the degree of skepticism on e level s at the Chorus , but Danson' s interpretiv e paralle l between king an d Chorus als o serve s t o justif y m y lin k betwee n th e Chorus' s concer n wit h pardo n an d th e king's: one cannot be simply playfu l and the other serious; the relation is instead heuristic and implicated, raising questions meant to be asked. 17. Th e Tempest, Epilogue, 19.2. Prospero's claim, "what strength I have's mine own," recalls the Epilogu e to 2 Henry IV, where the speaker' s defense i s "of mine ow n making" (Epilogue, 4-5). 18. Joel B. Altman, '"Vile Participation: Th e Amplificatio n of Violence in th e Theate r o f Henry V, " SQ 42 (1991), 1-32 (17,3) . So sensitive is this essay to the play' s contours and histor ical context that brief summary leaves too much unsaid. In his analysis of England's ambivalence toward th e Iris h campaign , for instance , Altman complicates hi s larger argumen t fo r reconciliation; his reading of Henry's executio n of the Frenc h prisoners also destabilizes (before notin g the dramatic recuperation of ) Henry' s heroism . 19. Th e guilt/shame model has been criticized and revised by anthropologists, and I do not really find it a useful analytical dichotomy—despite the brilliance of Ruth Benedict's employ ment o f Nietzsche' s descriptio n o f i t i n Beyond Good an d Evil. For a n introduction , se e Friedrich Ohly , Th e Damned an d th e Elect: Guilt in Western Culture, trans. Lind a Archibald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Jean Delumeau's Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, Thirteenth-Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (Ne w York: St. Martin's, 1990). For psycholinguistic theories of guilt drawing from Freu d and Nor bert Elias , see Daniel Merkur, "The Discharg e o f Guilt : Psychoanalytic Theorie s o f Ritual, " Journal o f Ritual Studies, 5:2 (Summer 1991) , 15-32; an d Denis e Riley , "Is Ther e Linguistic Guilt?" Critical Quarterly 39:1 (Spring 1997), 75-109. By remanding guilt to its legal, externally constituted sense , I mean t o sugges t th e inextricability—i n th e Renaissance—o f guilt an d conscience as both inward and outward, subjective and objective experiences; on the issue of this inextricability in the seventeenth-century political imagination , see Anthony Low, "'Umpire Conscience': Freedom, Obedience, and the Cartesian Flight from Calvi n in Paradise Lost" Studies in Philology 96: 3 (Summer 1999), 348-365. 20. Th e word "culpability" reflects the meeting of law, religion, and culture—as well as the coextension o f crime/sin (culpa ) with blam e (culpare) . Of course, shame can also coexten d with crime: Canterbury's "lazy yawning drone" is, after all , subject to the executioner—a fat e not unknown t o Elizabethan draft dodgers . 21. Thu s W. L. Godshalk's interesting thesis in "Henry V's Politics of Non-Responsibility " (Cahiers Elisabethains 17 [1980], 11-20)—that Harry's displacement of responsibility neurot ically symptomizes guilt for inheriting a usurped crown—appears in my own argument as an emphasis on Harry's (an d Shakespeare's) conscious response to such transgression. Similarly, Alvin Kernan's important readin g of the tetralogy's "psychological terms " as "a passage from

Notes to Pages 180-183 25 7 a situation i n which man knows with certainty who he is to an existential condition i n which any identity is only a temporary role" ("The Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays," The Yale Review 59 [1969], 3) appears i n m y argument a s the specifi c object of Shakespeare's professional reflection. 22. Judit h Butler, The Psychic Life o f Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1997), 106-31. 23. Butler , The Psychic Life o f Power, 11. 24. Lyri c verse, and especially confessional poetry of the seventeenth century, has provided traditional site s fo r Renaissance inwardness. I n an illuminatin g recen t article , Camill e Wells Slights has located authoria l reflexivity in the "conscience" o f early modern lyri c poetry, arguing tha t "thes e lyric s represen t a n experienc e o f subjectivit y that wa s emergin g i n lat e sixteenth-century Englan d and that the concept o f the conscience is the key to understandin g it" ("Notaries, Sponges, and Looking-glasses: Conscience in Early Modern England," ELR 28:2 [Spring 1998], 231-46 [233]) . 25. Fo r this analysi s to revea l an author' s self-conception , i t mus t focu s upo n the prob lematic literary category of conscious guilt. Besides Berger, Stephen Greenblat t has venture d such analysis in his reading of Macbeth i n "Shakespeare Bewitched " (in New Historical Literary Study: Essays o n Reproducing Texts, Representing History, ed. Jeffre y N . Co x an d Larr y J. Reynolds [Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1993], 17-42). The more familiar approac h has been to consider Shakespeare's penitent attitude toward the stage and its dyer's hand as articulated i n th e Sonnets ; a n interestin g variatio n o n thi s approac h appear s i n Richar d Abrams's readin g o f "A Funeral Elegye In memor y o f th e lat e vertuou s Maiste r WILLIAM PEETER," which cast s what may be a late Shakespearean poem (1612 ) as a palinode on the vicious misrepresentation of the public stage ("W[illiam] S[hakespeare]'s Funeral Elegy and the Turn from th e Theatrical" [SEL 36:2 , Spring 1996], 435-60). 26. Fo r a relentless defens e o f thi s assertion, see Douglas A. Brooks, "Sir Joh n Oldcastl e and th e Constructio n o f Shakespeare' s Authorship," SE L 38:2 (Spring 1998), 333-61. Brooks notes (336) that previous to 2 Henry IV Shakespeare's author-function ha d been typographically restricted to terms such as those on the title page of the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost (1598): "Newly corrected an d augmente d / By W. Shakespere" Tw o years later, the titl e page of 2 Henry I V makes the claim (fo r th e first time): "Written By William Shakespeare." Brook s calls this "the first instance o f an unambiguously authorial attribution t o Shakespeare on the title page of any early modern play. " 27. I might contrast thi s argument with Kernan's trajectory for the Henriad—during th e course of which "necessity forces man out o f role into reality [and then] necessity forces ma n back out o f reality into role" ("The Henriad : Shakespeare's Major History Plays," 32). In Kernan's analysi s of character, unmediate d selfhoo d and rol e exist a s two position s o f a toggle switch; but i n my analysis of authorship, bot h position s (substantia l sel f and discontinuou s role) are available to the dual and diachronic visio n of the playwright. 28. On e simpl e answe r to this question ( a frequent caus e for stage d concer n in produc tion) i s that th e rud e mechanicals have consistently collapse d th e distinctio n betwee n role s and actor s in a n attemp t t o avoi d frightenin g the audience . Similarly , Theseus's jump fro m players to playwrigh t seems to assum e the blurred occupationa l line s illustrated in the me chanicals' collaborative troupe . 29. Altman , "'Vile Participation,' " 30 . In his reading of this passage on p. 31, Altman seems to bac k away from Christologica l suggestion s by acknowledging Henry' s refusa l t o ow n th e sins of others: "Like a hidden god, Harry has been mistaken and abused in the flesh; like a god, he does not acknowledg e that as his fault. Instead he pardons an d rewards , and Shakespeare siphons of f Williams's resentmen t ont o Fluellen. " I am uncertai n wha t theolog y i s implie d here; whether Old Testament or generic deity, however, this god-likeness fails to acknowledge

258 Notes

t o Pages 183-186

a faul t mos t reader s ascribe t o Harry , instead scapegoatin g i n a n arbitrar y way—expiating with a "gilt" that may remind u s of the traitors' putative motive in 2.2. 30. O f course the genuine and authentic Passion involved conceptually complex and much debated delegation s o f responsibility in the Renaissance—fro m Fathe r to Son , and fro m be lievers t o thei r redeemer . Gethseman e therefor e migh t b e understoo d t o offe r a n originar y scene in which responsibility and guilt become strangely mobile; and this mobility presented post-Reformation England with divisive doctrinal aftershocks . In Altman's essay, the Commu nion is presented as a sacrament of communal solidarity—but th e sacrament of atonement involves a mystery of delegated responsibility that appears much more problematic in Henry V . 31. Altman , "'Vile Participation,'" 2 5 and n . 62. 32. S o ascribed b y the Choru s (2.26 ) an d b y Henry himself a t 2.2.8 9 and 169 . Henry at tributes the revolt of Cambridge in particular to mercenary motives (motives the condemne d man qualifie s [155-57]) , perhaps in an effort t o delegitimize his claim to the throne by typing him a s a Judas. 33. An d i n the words of Lucrece, "O opportunity, thy guilt is great" (Rape o f Lucrece, 876). But fo r Canterbury' s hiv e (1.2.187-220) , n o sustaine d imag e of nonmartial labo r appear s in Henry V ; instead, all the mention o f stealing and looting reveals what I take to be an uncom fortable consciousness of the playhouse's poorly articulated economy. While this chapter concentrates primarily on the theater's institutiona l distribution of agency and responsibility, the market (lik e the stat e and th e church ) presents yet another such institution—an institutio n in which Henry V is obviously implicated. 34. I n Holinshed, it is a pyx ( a box containing the sacramental wafer). It would require another stud y to ponder th e possible significance fo r this ambiguity, which may relate to Henry V's early allusions to Reformation doctrine . Her e I will simply note Shakespeare's fascination with the ambiguity of symbol and Presence . 35. Th e bishops' discussion o f the bill that threatened t o convert churc h lands to private property appears i n Holinshed , bu t Shakespeare' s decisio n t o begi n his first scene with thi s issue is significant nonetheless . 36. Henr y identifie s himsel f as "a gentleman o f a company" in direct respons e to Pistol' s social probing—"art tho u base , common, an d popular? " (4.1.38)—a question pertinen t no t only to the prince of "open haunts and popularity," but als o to a playwright whose social status was under siege. On 2 0 October 1596 , John Shakespear e received a Grant o f Arms. In 160 2 Ralph Brooke, York Herald, readied charges against those who granted arm s to a group of "mean" individuals who included the (then deceased) father of William Shakespeare. Brooke sketched this coat of arm s i n a manuscrip t no w i n th e Folge r Librar y (MS . 423.1 , p . 28) , writing beneat h i t "Shakespear ye Player / by Garter [i.e . Dethick]." Shakespeare "Ye Player" signed himself "gentleman" until his death. In a scene with a biographical resonance strikingly similar to Henry V 4.1, Lancelot Gobbo plays at being Master (th e son of a gentleman) who in fac t ha s a social status independent of his father (The Merchant o f Venice, 2.2.40-56). Interestingly, Lancelot's pretensions to gentility directly follow a passage in which he has chosen to turn away from hi s conscience (2.2.1-25) . 37. Godshalk' s phras e in "Henry V's Politics o f Non-Responsibility," where several of th e examples offered i n this paragraph appear (se e especially pp. 11-14). 38. Jame s Calderwoo d come s nea r m y argumen t i n hi s readin g o f thi s scene : "Take n metadramatically, Canterbury's speech might be seen as an apologia for the playwright who, claiming a kind o f divine authority , nationalizes his literary themes, suppresses internal dissent, and tailors his characters and actions to a partisan pattern" (Metadrama i n Shakespeare's Henriad 143) . I agree less with Calderwood's large r argument (p . 149) that in Henry V Shakespeare writes a play that dutifully meets the expectations of his audience; my argument i s that

Notes to Pages 186-191 25 9 these expectations , a s they ar e recoverabl e in th e play , indicate a fascinating shiftin g o f re sponsibility that is the conscious strateg y of the playwright. 39. E . A. Raughut, in "'Guilty in Defence' : A Note on Henry V 3.3.123" (SQ 41 (1990), 55 57), adduces Alberic o Gentili's De lure Belli Libri Tres t o argu e that Henry' s position wa s established by military rules of conduct; interestingly, one of Gentili's illustrations of such a position wa s Alexander th e Grea t (se e D e lure [1612] , 2 vols., trans . Joh n C . Rolf e [Oxford : Clarendon, 1933], 2:214). In his Arden edition o f Henry V (London: Methuen, 1954), J. H.Walter also quotes Gentili (p. 66). Karl P. Wentersdorf, however, has pointed ou t tha t the refuge e Gentili's positio n wa s not necessaril y impartial or representativ e in England ("The Conspir acy o f Silenc e in Henry V " S Q 2 7 [1976] , 265n.2) . Se e also Godshalk, "Henry V' s Politics o f Non-Responsibility," 15. 40. Altaia n ("Vil e Participation," 27 ) and other s hav e noted tha t Gower' s version o f thi s episode i n Shakespear e substantially depart s fro m Holinshed , wher e Henry kills the French prisoners i n a less justifiable momen t o f rage—respondin g no t "worthily " t o a massacre of English servants , but i n frustration with Frenc h resistance . Gower's wording in Shakespeare may acknowledg e thi s slippage , however , sinc e "wherefore " doe s no t clearl y refe r t o th e slaughter; it may only refer to the vandalized luggage. 41. Presumably Gower's "friends" also exculpates Henry fro m an y deaths suffere d b y th e "dear friends " he has led into battle. 42. Originally , an authentes was one who does something himself , a category extended in usage to murderer . Henry's appeal that Kate mock "mercifully" (5.2.189-90)—which resem bles the Chorus' s call s for ou r gentl e receptio n o f dramatic implausibility—draw s attentio n to all that she must overlook: not only his rough approximation o f her language, but his physiognomic recor d o f hi s father' s "civi l wars " (5.2.211) , and hi s violatio n o f "nic e customs " (5.2.250) not unlike the neoclassical unities. 43. Compar e the prince's declaration t o his brothers i n 2 Henry IV : "And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you, / My father is gone wild into his grave; / For in his tomb lie my affec tions" (5.2.122-24) . 44. W e must no t underestimat e th e capacit y of Protestan t theatergoer s i n Renaissance England to appreciat e sympatheti c representations o f the Roma n Catholic doctrin e o f their ancestors; no r shoul d w e overestimate th e degre e of doctrinal orthodox y i n Protestan t Eng land. Still, Henry's method of penitence her e touches upon some of the most serious soterio logical "abuses" in Reformatio n controversy. For Shakespeare, frequent invoke r o f hi s audi ence's "indulgence," subcontracting salvation seems to present an analogue to the problemati c liabilities of the stage ; as Duke Theseus might counsel, the onl y escape would see m to be the replacement o f works with grace. 45. I have argued in chapter 3 that the Orphic imag e of the embattled poet surrounded by Furious persecutors offers a euhemeristic account of lyric's dispossession by drama. If 2 Henry IV present s the playwrigh t in a pose of potential Orphi c victimization , Henry V urges us to take "part" with him i n the Maenads' division o f others. 46. Sinc e each o f th e five hundred poo r presumabl y holds bot h hand s toware d heaven , this collective act of prayer for the individual king neatly corresponds with the prologue's di vision of one man into one thousand parts . 47. I n the 160 0 Quarto, Williams's character is identified merely as a soldier. On Si g i2v of the Folio, the character is called Williams; but on Sig i3 his name becomes 'Will.'; interestingly, this name change occurs immediately after the king's longest speech of royal apology (4.1.13972), though mos t editor s assign the uncharacteristicall y acquiescent speec h immediatel y following this passage (4.1.173-76) t o Bates. Williams's unabbreviated las t name, of course, also spells out Willia m S . I am nearl y tempted withou t occupatio t o rea d Michae l Williams's ful l name as a Shakespearean messenger.

260 Notes

t o Pages 191-192

48. A n important exceptio n is Lawrence Danson, who in "Henry V: King, Chorus, and Critics" (Shakespeare Quarterly 3 4 [1983], 27-43) claim s that th e Chorus' s apologie s fo r the stag e should i n general present an unproblematic guid e to a charitable reception o f Harry, and tha t Williams, not Henry, reasons spuriously: the spiritual sufferin g o f those killed in battle is a red herring that the king convincingly dismisses. But Williams's hint at the king's soteriological responsibility is more subtle than Henry and Danson acknowledge: Williams suggests that at the Last Judgmen t th e kin g will have a heavy reckoning when confronte d wit h maime d bodies , poorly lef t families , an d thos e wh o die d i n debt ; it i s Henry who infer s a clear charge of responsiblity for the damned from Williams's speech, and Henry who goes on to argue that spiritual responsibilit y i s a privat e affair . Th e jum p fro m materia l concern s (suffering , financia l debt) t o spiritual allows Henry to produce a convincing defense , but i t is important t o recognize that thi s jump-perhaps suggested by Williams's image of the dea d "swearing"—is really Henry's. It is also important to recognize that in certain early modern cases , such as formal execution, one could be held responsible for the spiritual well-being of those who do not die well. The uncomfortably comic scene of Barnardine's deferred execution in Measure for Measure, for instance, illustrates a genuine concern with killing those not properly "fitted" for death: "A creature unprepared, unmeet for death, / And to transport him in the mind he is / Were damnable" (Measure 4.3.59-61) . An d of course there's Hamlet's meditatio n ove r his kneeling stepfather. 49. I n Leviathan, Hobbes migh t be taking up the questions raised by this debate when he considers the distribution o f responsibility between "actor" and "author": "Of persons artifi cial, some hav e their words an d action s owned by those who m the y represent. And then th e person is the actor, and he that owneth hi s words and actions , is the AUTHOR: in which case the actor acteth by authority. For that which in speaking of goods and possessions, is called an owner, and in Latin dominus ... i s called author . And as the right o f possession i s called do minion; so the right of doing any action, is called AUTHORITY. So that by authority, is always understood a right o f doing an y act; and done b y authority, done b y commission o r licens e from hi m whos e righ t i t is.... When th e actor maket h a covenant b y authority, he bindet h thereby the author, no less than if he had made it himself; and no less subjecteth him to all the consequences o f the same... . No ma n i s obliged b y a covenant, whereo f h e i s not author . When th e actor doth an y thing against the law of nature by command o f the author, if he be obliged b y former covenan t t o obey him, not he , but th e autho r breaket h th e law of nature; for thoug h the action be against the law of nature; yet it is not his : but contrarily , to refuse t o do it, is against the law of nature, that forbiddet h breach of covenant. And he that maketh a covenant with the author, by mediation of the actor, not knowing what authority he hath, but only takes his word; in case such authority b e not mad e manifest unto him upo n demand , is no longer obliged: for the covenant mad e with the author, is not valid, without this counter assurance. But if he that s o covenanteth, kne w beforehand he was to expec t no othe r assur ance, than the actor's word; then i s the covenan t valid, because the acto r i n this case maketh himself the author. And therefore, as when the authority is evident, the covenant obligeth the author, not th e actor; so when the authority is feigned, it obligeth th e actor only; there being no author but himself" (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott [London : CollierMacMillan, 1962], 125-26. 50. R . B. Outhwaite, "Dearth, th e English Crown, and th e 'Crisis of the 1590s,'" in The European Crisis o f th e 1590s; Essays i n Comparative History, ed . Peter Clar k (London: Allen an d Unwin, 1985) , 32. I us e Outhwaite' s phras e consciou s o f it s anachronism ; readin g th e war s dramatized i n and surroundin g Henry V through mor e recen t conflict s ha s been a long and fascinating traditio n i n th e play' s criticism . Altman's readin g o f Henry V' s recuperation o f shame might in fact be read as a brilliant facet of a generation's complex response to the problem of draft-dodging; my own emphasis on guil t considers th e perspectiv e of the author s of

Notes t o Pages 194-199 26 1 such participation (o r nonparticipation). I f the play offers itsel f as a kind o f Eucharistic celebration, I have tried t o show how such an offering complicate s th e act of participation . 51. Th e quart o tex t o f A Funerall Elegye i n memory of th e late vertuous Maister WILLIAM PEETER, b y W.S. (London: G[eorge] Eld [for Thomas Thorp], 1612) seems to have had a small private printing. Bu t only two copies survive—one in the Bodleia n Library , the othe r i n th e Balliol College Library. My own references t o this poem are to Donald W. Foster's critical edition, which appears in "A Funeral Elegy: Wfilliam] S[hakespeare ] 's 'Best-Speaking Witnesses,' " PMLA 111: 5 (October 1996) , 1095-1104. I cit e these references parenthetically b y line number . 52. Th e mos t persuasiv e proponent s o f Shakespeare' s authorship o f A Funeral Elegy ar e Donald W . Foster and Richar d Abrams. Foster's Elegy b y W.S.: A Study i n Attribution (Cran bury: Associate d Universit y Presses , 1989 ) and , mor e recently , "A Funeral Elegy: W[illiam ] S[hakespeare]'s 'Best-Speaking Witnesses,'" have set forth the most compellin g and imposin g bibliographic evidenc e fo r thi s attribution. I n "W[illiam] S[hakespeare]' s Funeral Elegy an d the Tur n fro m th e Theatrical " (SEL 36:2 [Spring 1996], 435-60), Abrams argue s for Shake speare's authorship i n terms to which I am indebted . The ongoing debate for and agains t Shakespeare' s authorship ca n be traced i n the following: James Knowles, "WS MS," Times Literary Supplement (29 April 1988), 472+; E. A. J. Honigmann, Review of Foster, Elegy b y W.S., N Q 34:4 (December 1990) , 465-67; Richard Abrams, "Breaching the Canon : Elegy b y W.S.: The Stat e of the Argument," Shakespeare Notes 45:3 (Fall !995), 51-54 ; Richard Abrams, "In Defenc e of W.S.," Letter, Times Literary Supplement (9 February 1996), 25-26; Brian Vickers, "Whose Thumbprints? " Times Literary Supplement (8 March 1996), 16-18. See also: William H . Honan, "A Sleuth Gets His Suspect: Shakespeare," New York Times (1 4 January 1996), A1+; and Josep h Sobran, "The Proble m o f The Funeral Elegy" Online , World Wide Web, 11 July 1996, available at http://www.Shakespeare-oxford.com/sobran.htm . I offer a s evidence of A Funeral Elegy's emergin g Shakespearean canonicity the fac t tha t i t has appeared i n severa l of the mos t recen t mainstrea m edition s o f Shakespeare, such a s The Norton Shakespeare, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblat t (Ne w York: Norton, 1997) . 53. Foster , "A Funeral Elegy: W[illiam] S[hakespeare]'s 'Best-Speaking Witnesses," ' 1082. 54. Northro p Frye , Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology (Ne w York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 126,125. See also Cleanth Brook s and Joh n Edward Hardy, "The Passion, " in Poems of Mr. John Milton: The 1645 Edition with Essays in Analysis (Ne w York: Scribner, 1951), 109. 55. Thi s note appear s after lin e 56 (the final line) of Th e Passion. All references to Th e Passion appear in Milton: The Complete Poems, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (London an d New York: Longman, 1968). I cite subsequent reference s parenthetically, by line number. 56. Fo r an account of the murder an d subsequent trial, see William Martyn, "Desposicon s and examynacons of Wittnesses," Book 6oB, letter 145, Exeter City Archives, Devon Record Office, Folios 110-20. 57. Abrams , "W[illiam] S[hakespeare]' s 'Funeral Elegy ' and th e Tur n fro m th e Theatri cal," 441. 58. Abrams , "W[illiam] S[hakespeare]' s 'Funeral Elegy ' and th e Tur n fro m the Theatri cal," 439. 59. MacDonal d Jackson, Review of Foster, Elegy b y W.S., Shakespeare Studies 43 (1991), 259, quoted b y Abrams, 441. 60. Hamlet, 1.2.84, 86. 61. A Funeral Elegy provides little details about this defamation, though i t suggests Oxford as a site of intrigue and implie s se x as the topic o f gossip (see, e.g., lines 511-14). 62. I n an electronic mai l conversation, Donal d Foste r pointed ou t t o me a further ambi guity that verge s on bawd y innuendo. W . S. reports William Peter "was friendship' s rock : / A rock of friendship figured in his name . . . / . . . and h e discharg'd th e same / I n every act of

262 Notes to Pages 200-205 perfect amity " (320-24) . Elsewher e i n Shakespeare' s canon , "discharge " i s used t o connot e both farting and ejaculation, and "perfect" i n Shakespeare can mean not just "ideal," but "con summated." "Rock" (a s "distaff") was a familiar Elizabethan euphemis m fo r penis . 63. Se e Foster, Elegy b y W. S., 178-79; and hi s "A Funeral Elegy : W[illiam] S[hakespeare]'s 'Best-Speaking Witnesses,' " 1086-87 . Se e also Abrams , "W[illiam ] S[hakespeare]' s 'Funeral Elegy' and the Turn from the Theatrical," 458-5 9 nn. 8-11 . 64. Se e John Ford, Christes Bloodie Sweat, lines 889-94, in Th e Nondramatic Works o f John Ford, ed. L. E. Stock, et al. (Binghamton, N . Y.: Medieval and Renaissanc e Texts, 1974). 65. Foster , "A Funeral Elegy: Wfilliam] S[hakespeare]' s 'Best-Speaking Witnesses," 1092 . 66. R . Paul Yoder, "Milton's The Passion"Milton Studies 27 (1991), 19. 67. Yoder , "Milton's Th e Passion," 17 . Yoder notes two predecessor s wh o hav e anticipate d this reading: John A. Via, "Milton's 'The Passion' : A Successful Failure," MQ 5 (May 1971), 1-6 ; and Phili p J. Gallagher, "Milton's 'The Passion': Inspired Mediocrity, " MQ 11 (May 1977), 44-50. 68. Brook s and Hardy , Poems, 107. Yoder traces this uncritical evaluatio n back to the eighteenth century (Milton' s Th e Passion, 16-17). 69. Yoder , "Milton's The Passion" 3-4 . 70. Se e Louis Martz, The Poetry o f Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literatureof th e Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press , 1954), 167-68. 71. Georg e Herbert, "The Reprisall," line 2, in Th e Works o f George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford : Oxford Universit y Press, 1941), quoted b y Yoder, "Milton's The Passion" 12. 72. I n Joshua Sylvester's Lachrimae Lachrimarum (1612) , the titl e page is in fac t printe d al l black, with onl y the letters left white . The more usual custom wa s to edge elegies with a dark boarder. 73. Joh n G . Demaray, Milton an d th e Masque Tradition: Th e Early Poems, "Arcades," an d "Comus" (Cambridge : Harvar d Universit y Press, 1968), 41-42. 74. O n Milton's avoidance o f the Crucifixio n a s a poetic topic throughou t his career, see James Holly Hanford , John Milton, Poet and Humanist (Cleveland : Universit y of Ohio Press, 1966), 39. 75. Lycidas, line 153. 76. Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, ed. Don M . Wolfe, et al., 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-82), 6:444. This and the following two passages from Milton's prose are quoted by Yoder, "Milton's Th e Passion" 8. 77. Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, 6:443, 6:218. 78. Complete Prose Works o f John Milton, 1:749 ; quoted b y Yoder, who als o compares thi s passage with th e critic' s not e in Th e Passion ("Milton's The Passion" 15). 79. Stanle y Fish , Self-Consuming Artifacts: Th e Experience o f Seventeenth-Century Literature (Berkele y and Lo s Angeles: University o f Californi a Press , 1972) , 197; quoted b y Yoder, "Milton's The Passion" 3.

Index

Abrams, Richard, 195-196, 257 n.25 Adelman, Janet, 238 n.7 agency, 5,7, 8,13, 28,30,119,123,127,134, 152,168,169,177-178,179,185-186, 187,191,192, 209 n.15, 210 nn.25-26., 253 n.9 3 Alter, Robert, 252 n.8o Althusser, Louis, 180 Altman, Joel , 179-180,183, 210-211 n.37, 256 n.18, 257-258 n.29, 258 n.3o, 259 n.4O Andrewes, Lancelot, 166 Anglo, Sydney, 239 n.21 antitheatricalism, 15-16,36 , 45-46, 72, 73, 75, 86-88, 91, 95-97, 99,102,106-107, 109-110,115,132-133,137,155,173-174, 176,184,197, 200-201, 254 n.2 Archer, John Michael, 232 n.51 Aries, Philippe, 209 n.13 Aristotle, 208 n.5 ars moriendi (art o f dying), 140-155,157,159 , 161-162,164,170,172, 200 , 245-246 n.6 , 246 n.9, 24 6 n.12 Atkinson, David W., 143, 241 n.36, 246 n.6 Austin, J. L., 7 Bacon, Francis, 61, 91 Barclay, Alexander, 35-36, 38, 43-44, 46, 53, 213 n.9 Barish, Jona s A., 254 n.2 Barker, Arthur, 247 n.2o Bate, Jonathan, 236 n.98 Beatty, Nancy Lee, 245 n.6

Becon, Thomas, 143-152,155 , 24 6 n.16, 248 n.36 Benedict, Ruth, 256 n.19 benefit o f clergy, 7, 209 n.16 Bentley, Gerald, 238 n.12, 240 n.25 Berger, Harry, 9-10, 68 , 85,117,125, 210 n.27, 212 n.51, 226 n.86, 228 n.112, 238-239 n.14, 257 n.25 Black, Joel, 208 n.4 Borris, Kenneth, 59-64, 223 n.51, 225 n.72, 226 n.91 Bouchard, Donald, 74 Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 209 n.21 Braden, Gordon, 216 n.41, 216 n.47, 244 n.68 Briggs, K. M., 243 n.57 Bristol, Michael, 237 n.2 Brooks, Cleanth, 201, 261 n.54 Brooks, Douglas A., 257 n.26 Brower, Rueben, 22 9 n.22 Brownlow, F. L., 17 Buell, Lawrence, 8, 210 n.25 Bullough, Geoffrey, 23 3 n.64 Burbage, Richard, 12-13, 96 Burckhardt, Sigurd, 4,11,14, 85,103, 204 Burke, Kenneth, 6 Butler, Judith, 180, 257 n.22 Calderwood, James , 100, 233 n.63, 234 n.8o, 235 n.85, 258-259 n.3 8 Cantor, Paul, 233 n.67 casuistry, 32,140,146-152,161,165,17 0 Catullus, 21, 29,31,35-36, 21 3 n.i3, 216 n.41 263

264 Index Cave, Terence, 211 n.37 Cavell, Stanley, 9-10, 21 0 n.27 censorship, 5 , 6, 8-9,13, 47-48, 60-61, 65, 81, 87-88, 95, no, 167-168,194 , 200, 202, 205, 222 n.42, 229 n.12, 253 n.86 Charles I,115,155-164,168-170, 236 n.1, 249 n.48, 250 n.59, 250 n.61, 250 n.63, 250 n.69, 25 1 n.70, 25 3 n.93 Charles II , 170 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 22 , 24, 25, 26-27, 29 , 39-41 Cheney, Donald, 65 , 71, 221 n.31, 227-228 n.107 Cheney, Patrick, 227 n.103 Cockpit Theater , 240 n.26 Colie, Rosalie, 218-219 n.2 Comensoli, Viviana, 24 2 n.4o, 24 3 n.53 conscience and authorship , 181-18 5 as constitutive o f the subject, 9-12,145, 156,175,180-183, 257 n.24 see also guil t Cook, Carol, 233 n.65 Corns, Thomas, 24 9 n.56 Crashaw, Richard, 202 Crewe, Jonathan, 22 4 n.59 Cromwell, Oliver , 164,170, 211 n.47, 249 n.48 Culler, Jonathan, 20 9 n.14, 253 n.89 "culpable mediacy, " 118,173 Daniel, Samuel, 87 Danson, Lawrence , 256 n.16, 260 n.48 Davie, Donald, 22 8 n.110 Dawson, Anthony, 124-125,129-130, 241 n.34, 242 n.44, 243 n.48, 243 n.59, 244 n.65 Dekker, Thomas, 97-98,113,116,175 , 20 0 Demaray, John G., 202 Diggs, Dudly, 3,15, 42, 79 Dobranski, Stephen, 24 8 n.32 Dobson, Michael , 111-112, 236 n.95 Donne, John , 14,35, 50-58, 61, 64, 67, 83, 85, 86,139,152,174, 201, 248 n.34, 253 n.93 Drayton, Michael, 73 Edwards, H . L . R., 17 Eikon Basilike and Eikonoklastes, 142, 155-164,169,173, 25 0 n.61 Elam, Keir, 235 n.89

elegy and funera l poetics , 12-16,18-25, 28-29, 37, 42, 50-58, 69, 74, 75-79,148, 194-205, 213 n.11and 21 3 n.13, 262 n.72 Eliot, T. S., 216 n.44 Elizabeth I, 20, 94-95, 97,102, 231 n.38, 253 n.91 Enterline, Lynn, 215 n.28 epideictic rhetoric, 21, 25,35, 37, 45, 51, 53, 54, 57, 65, 68, 74, 77,175,194 Erickson, Peter, 9 Essex, earl of, 95, 97,192, 231 n.38 ethical criticism, 4, 5, 8-9,13, 56, 67, 84, 115-116,117,129 ,193, 210 n.25, 238 n.13 Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe, 229 n.17 Fineman, Joel, 215 n.35 Fish, Stanley, 17, 23,142,147,151,159,167, 205 , 220 n.18, 221 n.32, 232 n.51, 245 n.5, 247 n.24, 248 n.47, 253 n.88, 262 n.79 Fletcher, John, 127, 242 n.43 Ford, John, 200-201, 26 2 n.64 formalism, 6,10,17, 24, 41,72,115,131,150, 182 Forster, E. M., 17 Foster, Donald, 199, 201, 261n.51, 261-262 n.62 , 262 n.63 Foucault, Michel, 6, 8,104,177,181-182, 208 n.11, 228 n.11, 234 n.77 Fowler, Alastair, 213 n.12, 218 n.2, 226 n.88, 242 n.43 Fowler, Elizabeth, 223 n.56 Foxe, John, 143,150-151, 248 n.35, 249 n.54 Frame, Donald M. , 248 n.46 freedom o f speech and Firs t Amendment, 4-6, 20 8 n.6 Freud, Sigmund, 155, 249 n.53 Frye, Northrop, 25 1 n.74, 252 n.83 Garber, Marjorie, 91 Giddens, Anthony, 7-8, 20 9 n.21 Oilman, Ernest, 155, 249 n.56 Gittings, Clare, 248 n.43 Globe Theater, 15 , 88-100,109, 111,169,175, 182,190,198, 200 Gorboduc, 48-49, 73 Gordon, D. J., 232 n.56 Gordon, Ian , 17 Gosson, Stephen , 86-90, 91-92, 97,102,104, 115, 228 n.10, 229 n.13 Green, Douglas A., 233 n.69

Index 26 5 Green, Thomas Andrew , 239 n.15 Greenblatt, Stephen, 6-7 , 46 , 94,114-117, 122,132,172, 209 n.15, 222 n.39, 225 n.77, 228-229 n.11 , 231 n.37, 237 n.3, 238 n.6, 238 n.11, 238 n.13, 244 n.6o, 257 n.25 Greene, Thomas, 232 n.55 Greenfield, Matthew, 219 n.4 Grice, H. P., 208 n.8 Guillory, John, 253 n.87 guilt anthropological distinctio n wit h shame , 179-185, 210 n.27, 256 n.19 and audience , 7-11,12,13-14, 34,38, 57, 88,99 and authorship , 4-7,10,12,13-15 , 27, 32, 34, 38, 54, 57, 78, 88, 99,116-117,175-193, 257 n.25 and Reformation , 177,184-190 see also conscienc e Gurr, Andrew, 97 Habermas, Jurgen, 208 n.8 Haller, William, 150, 248 n.33 Halpern, Richard , 22 Hanford, James Holly, 226 n.84, 262 n.74 Hardison, O . B., 19, 213 n.7, 218 n.2 Hardy, John Edward, 201 Harrison, Charles , 23 1 n.39 Harsnett, Samuel , 114,126-128, 240 n.31 , 242 n.41 Harvey, Elizabeth, 221 n.32 Harvey, Gabriel, 56-57, 73, 221 n.28, 225 n.79 hate-speech, 208 n.6 Haydn, Hiram, 22 2 n.39 Helgerson, Richard, 72, 82,155, 221 n.31, 223 nn.48-49, 227 n.101, 249-250 n.57 Henry VI, 179 Henry VIII, 46,177 Henryson, Robert , 25,32 Herbert, George , 149-150, 202 heresy, 42-49, 51, 54-65 Heywood, Thomas , 87 , 236 n.1 Hillman, James, 6 Hobbes, Thomas , 192 , 260 n.49 Hodges, Devon, 22 1 n.29 Holinshed, Raphael , 91 Hoy, Cyrus, 242 n.43

intentionality, 6 , 8,18,28, 42,43, 47, 87, 93, 98,109,111,174, 23 9 n.23, 241 n.32, 243 n.55, 248 n.34, 251 n.73 interpellation, 11-12 , 24 intertextuality, 114-138,140-170 , 252 n.86 Jackson, MacDonald, 197 James I and VI, 120,130, 230 n.34, 240 n.28 Johnson, Samuel, 54,104-105,142,166-167, 245 n.5 Jones, Ann Rosalind , 215 n.27, 230 n.32 Jonson, Ben, 20,35, 41, 53,59, 97-98,104-105, 107,153-155.196-197- 225 n.78, 232 n.55 Kay, Dennis, 52 , 218 n.1 Kernan, Alvin, 222 n.39, 234 n.78, 256-257 n.21 , 257 n.27 Kerrigan, William, 216 n.47 Kezar, Dennis, 248-249 n.48 , 253 n.86 "killing poem, " 3-16, 28,39 , 42-43, 48, 112,138,169-170,190, 200, 204-205 , 209 n.14, 254 n.2 Kinney, Arthur, 17-18, 33, 214 n.16 Knoppers, Laura Lunger, 155,164, 248 n.33, 251 n.74, 254 n.9 6 Knott, John R., 248 n.36, 249 n.54 Kolbrener, William, 20 8 n.7 Krier, Theresa M., 67, 69, 84, 224 n.67, 225 n.68 Kyd, Thomas, an d Th e Spanish Tragedy, 13, 51,176-177, 211 n.43, 255 n.4 Labriola, Albert, 245 n.5, 252 n.8o law and theater , 15, 86-89, 97-99,102-104, 106-108,113,118-126,134-135,151, 177-178, 210 n.36 Lecercle, Jean-Jacques, 208 n.8 Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, 55,141, 218 n.1, 221 n.3o, 245 n.5 Lewis, C. S., 17, 36, 65, 221 n.27 Llewellyn, Nigel, 211-212 n.50 Loomis, Catherine , 25 3 n.91 Low, Anthony, 256 n.19 Lowell, James Russell, 36 Lowenstein, David, 155, 249 n.55 Lowenstein, Joseph, 226 n.86 Luis, Kenneth, 107 Lucrece (as figure of poetic victim), 29,31, 49,73 Luther, Martin, 44

266 Index Macfarlane, Alan, 241 n.34 Macfie, Pamela Royston, 215 n.29 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 255 n.9 Macksey, Richard, 152, 234 n.75 Manley, Frank, 55 Manley, Laurence, 208 n.11 Marcus, Leah S., 130, 211 n.42, 238 n.5, 240 n.28, 243 n.56 Marlowe, Christopher, 102,108-109,133-13 4 Marroti, Arthur, 227 n.95, 230 n.3o Marshall, William, 157,159-160,163 , 250 n.62, 250 n.67, 251 n.72 Martz, Louis, 202, 262 n.7o Marvell, Andrew, 159, 233 n.66, 249 n.48, 250 n.65 Masten, Jeffrey, 176 Maus, Katharine Eisaman, 98 , 221 n.32, 226 n.83, 226 n.84, 227 n.95, 228 n.9, 230 n.34, 232 n.49, 239 n.16 McDonald, Henry , 169, 252 n.8o McGuiness, Ilona, 17, 46 media ethics , 172-175, 23 7 n.2, 254-255 n.3 metapoetry an d metadrama, 9-10,12-13,54, 72, 88, 91, 99,103,107,109,116,119-120, 124,126,129,130,136,137,164,169, 179-180,184,188,192, 20 1 Metcalf, Peter, 209 n.13 Middleton, Thomas, 81,115 , 227 n.99 Milton, Joh n Aereopagitica, 4-5, 8-9,13,167, 20 8 n.7, 210 n.26, 211 n.42, 252-253 n.86 De Doctrina, 152, 204, 245 n.5, 248 n.45 Eikonoklastes, 155-174,17 3 First Defense, 16 4 "Lord Genera l Fairfax," 169 Lycidas, 98,172, 204, 214 n.24 Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 74-75, 202 Nativity Ode, 203 Paradise Lost, 98,144-145,152,165,167,170 , 247 n.18, 251 n.77 Paradise Regained, 167,194, 203 Passion, 194-195, 201-205 Prelatical Episcopy, 24 9 n.54 Reason of Church-Government, 204, 250 n.68 Samson Agonistes, 15,137-138,139-171, 172-174,194-195, 200, 246 n.8 Tenure o f Kings an d Magistrates, 168 Montaigne, Michel, 139,153,161, 248 n.46

More, Thomas , 46 Muir, Kenneth, 238 n.6 Mullaney, Steven, 230 n.35 Nohrnberg, James, 51, 59 Norbrook, David , 208 n.7, 209 n.19, 230 n.32 O'Connor, Siste r Mary Catherine, 24 5 n.6 Onat, Etta Soiref, 115,118, 236-237 n.2, 241 n.38, 241 n.39 Oram, William A., 227 n.103 Orgel, Stephen, 230 n.34 Orpheus (a s figure of poetic violence), 28, 49, 5l, 57, 72, 74-8l, 98,107,110-111,190,

226 n.86, 226 n.87, 235 n.85, 235-236 n.92 , 259 n.45 "other-fashioning," 87-91, 94,95,100,101, 103-104,106-107,111,129, 234 n.8o, 243 n.50 Ovid, 21, 97,107, 213 n.13, 215 n.28 Panofsky, Erwin, 248 n.43 Parker, Patricia, 153, 249 n.49 Patterson, Annabel , 65, 230 n.32, 232 n.55 Perkins, William, 146 Petrarch, 19, 21-22,35-37, 65, 78, 217 n.66 Petrey, Sandrey, 209 n.2o Pigman, G. W, 148 Plotinus, 12-13,169 Plutarch, 92,112,138, 229 n.22 Pocock, J. G. A., 255 n.9 Poliziano, Angelo, 18-20, 51 Pollock, Zailig, 54-55, 201, 220 n.19 Pope, Alexander, 17, 54, 221 n.31, 234 n.79 Post, Robert, 211 n.49 poststructuralism, 7 practice theory , 7-8 Prynne, William, 250 n.58 psychoanalysis, 6,115,180,188, 25 6 n.19 Puttenham, George , 20-21, 61, 218 n.2 Quintilian, 21 0 n.37

Radzinowicz, Mary Ann, 155, 250 n.59 Rajan, Balachandra, 253 n.87 Ralegh, Walter, 12, 60-61, 63, 66, 81-83, 84 Rambuss, Richard, 67-68, 70, 80, 224 n.63 Reformation, 14, 43-49, 52-60, 62-64, 82, 143-144,146,177,184-186,190, 200, 245 n.6, 255 n.10, 258 n.34, 259 n.44

Index 26 7 republicanism, 90,105,111,160,164,169-17 1 restoration, 25 1 n.73 Rose, Mark, 234 n.73, 235 n.91 Rosen, Barbara, 244 n.63 Rowland, Samuel, 48 Sacks, Peter, 51, 215 n.3 O Sandys, George, 235 n.85 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 21 Scarry, Elaine, 14 Scattergood, John , 28-29, 30, 213 n.9, 214 n.2o Schwarz, Kathryn, 237 n.5 Schibanoff, Susan , 32 Scodel, Joshua, 213 nn.6, 7 Scot, Reginald, 59,114,128,132-13 3 self-consciousness an d reflexivity , 4, 6-9,16, 18, 37, 53-54, 65 , 72, 91, 92, 95,104,112 , 117,124-127,129,136,137,167,177, 181-182, 212 n.51 Sexby, Edward, 170 Shakespeare, William Antony an d Cleopatra, 101-102 As You Like It, 197 Coriolanus, 102,106, 233 n.71 Funeral Elegy, 16,194-201 Hamlet, 10-15, 42, 47, 67, 85,94,101,103, 112,114,119,123,139,141,153,172,197, 201, 210 n.36, 211 n.38, 231 n.43, 234-235 n.81, 247 n.3o 1 Henry IV, 139-140,168-169,184-185,18 9 2 Henry IV, 179,182,184-186,189-190, 193-194,257 n.26, 259 n.43 Henry V , 16, 89, 91-92, 95,111,118,175-193, 254 n.94 1 Henry VI , 115 , 237-238 n. 5 Julius Caesar, 15, 72, 85, 86-113,138,152-3, 169-170,174-175,194-195,198-200, 205, 248-249 n.48 King Lear, 11, 248 n.3 8 Love's Labour's Lost, 257 n.26 Macbeth, 72,111,115,116-117,140, 20 9 n.15 , 236 n.94 Measure for Measure, 14,124,139,151,178, 260 n.48 Merchant o f Venice, 105,135, 258 n.36 Midsummer Night's Dream, 118,178,18 2 Othello, 10,151, 248 n.38 Rape o f Lucrece, 258 n.33 Richard II , 94-95, 97,109,181, 23 1 n.39

sonnets, 19-20,72,79-80, 93,105,106,181, 192,197, 204-20 5 Tempest, 168,179,182, 243 n.46, 256 n.17 Titus Andronicus, 233 n.69, 235 n.85 Troilus an d Cressida, 36, 40, 98-100, 178,191 Twelfth Night, 33,105,135, 234 n.8o Venus an d Adonis, 93, 230 n.29 Winter's Tale, 128, 242 n.46 Shaw, George Bernard, 237 n.5 Shawcross, John, 251 n.73, 253 n.87 Shuger, Debora, 21 1 n.45, 211 n.48, 227 n.100 Sidney, Sir Philip Astrophil an d Stella, 37, 82, 211 n.42, 216 n.49 Defence o f Poesie, 3-4,13-14,39, 61, 76, 87, 89-90, 92,208 n.5, 217 n.54 Skelton, John Agaynst th e Scottes, 38 Collyn Clout, 40 Garlande of Laurell, 17, 41-43 Phyllyp Sparowe, 15,17-49, 50-51, 53, 63, 71,112,175,193,197, 20 0 Replycacion, 43-49 , 62 Why Come Ye Nat t o Court? 40-4 1 Skinner, Quentin , 25 5 n.9 Slights, Camille Wells, 146-148, 247 n.21, 257 n.24 Smith, Emma, 177, 211 n.43, 255 n.8 "social body, " 15 speech-act theory, 7, 8,10,38, 53,109, 209 n.2o Spenser, Edmund , 15 , 50-86 Amoretti, 35, 68, 71,79-80 Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 83, 227 n.102 Epithalamion, 35, 68, 75-76, 79 Faerie Queene, 49,51,58-86,112,138,193,19 7 Mother Hubberds Tale, 67, 81, 83-84 Shepheardes Calender, 24-25,33, 82 , 214 n.23, 215 n.3o Teares of th e Muses, 73, 75-78, 225 n.79, 226 n.88 Virgil's Gnat, 78-79 Stallybrass, Peter, 230 n.32, 244 n.65 Stannard, David, 246 n.15, 247 n.20 Steadman, John , 245 n.5 Stirling, Brents, 230 n.27 Stubbes, Philip, 240 n.29 Swinburne, Algernon, 131-132,13 3

268 Index Taylor, Gary, 92-94, 98,104,107,112, 229-230 n.24 Taylor, Jeremy, 148, 238 n.5, 247 n.21, 253 n.86 Tertullian, 171 Theocritus, 21 Thomas, Keith, 229 n.17, 244 n.63 Tillyard, E. M. W., 237 n.5 Tragedy and appropriation, 103-106, 234-235 n.81 and authoria l responsibility, 4-7,13, 51, 90 and authorship, 10,12,1 4 and spectatoria l responsibility , 10, 88, 90 Tyndale, William, 46 Underdown, David, 240 n.28 Upton, John, 71 Van den Berg , Kent, 224 n.59 Vaughan, Henry, 152, 202 violence and representatio n defined agains t ethics of mimesis, 3-4,11, 12-13, 87,197 and early modern culture, 3-7,13,14, 40, 43, 54, 87,174 and historicism , 6, 8,12,117 and interpretation , 7,9,10,11,13, 72,174

and moder n culture , 5, 208 n.8 and Romanticism, 4,93,208 n.4 Waddington, Raymond, 252 n.84 Wall, Wendy, 48-9, 56 , 218 n.81 Walker, Greg, 40, 21 7 n.57, 217 n.59 Waller, Edmund, 37 Watson, Robert, 211 n.45 Weimann, Robert, 178, 255 n.13 Whigham, Frank, 209 n.21 White, Hayden, 229 n.2o Wiggins, Martin, 209 n.16 Wilson, Luke, 239 n.23, 241 n.32 Wilson, Richard, 235 n.91 Witch o f Edmonton, 15,113,114-138,175, 20 0 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 11-13, 208 n.8, 210 n.36 Wittreich, Joseph, 166-167, 245 n.5, 251 n.79, 252 n.85 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 35, 69 Yachnin, Paul, 229 n.12 Yoder, R. Paul, 195, 201-202, 203, 204, 205, 262 n.67, 262 n.68 Zwingli, Huldreich, 59

Guilty Creatures : Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

Guilty Creatures : Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Medical Ethics in the Renaissance

Reading Renaissance Ethics

Creatures of the Night, Creatures of Delight

Creatures of the Night, Creatures of Delight

Lost in the customhouse: authorship in the American renaissance

British Renaissance Poets (Critical Survey of Poetry)

Lost in the Customhouse: Authorship in the American Renaissance

The Creatures of Man

The Creatures Of Man

The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian American Poetry

The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian American Poetry

Creatures of the Abyss

Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship

Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship

Creatures

Creatures

Creatures

Creatures

Guilty

Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship

The Making of Restoration Poetry (Studies in Renaissance Literature)

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Authorship and Copyright

The Poetry of Physics and the Physics of Poetry

The Ethics of Authorship: Communication, Seduction, and Death in Hegel and Kierkegaard

Of-God-and-His-Creatures

The Way of the Guilty

the Guilty

Guilty Creatures : Renaissance Poetry and the Ethics of Authorship