Neo-Historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics

NEO-HISTORICISM: STUDIES IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, HISTORY AND POLITICS Robin Headlam Wells Glenn Burgess Rowland Wyme...

Author: Robin Headlam Wells | Glenn Burgess | Rowland Wymer

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NEO-HISTORICISM: STUDIES IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, HISTORY AND POLITICS

Robin Headlam Wells Glenn Burgess Rowland Wymer Editors D. S. BREWER

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Studies in Renaissance Literature Volume 5

NEO-HISTORICISM STUDIES IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, HISTORY AND POLITICS

The interdisciplinary studies of Neo-Historicism make a major contribution to the modern debate on historical method. Contributors approach English Renaissance culture from dierent gender perspectives and a variety of political standpoints, but all share a commitment to understanding the past in terms of its own beliefs and theories and (while acknowledging that many of the assumptions we bring to the study of history inevitably derive from our own culture) reject the current scholarly tendency to identify early modern thinkers as postmodernists avant la lettre. Topics include the speci®cally literary and the more widely historical, from Ben Jonson and the monarchy to the political culture of early modern England; all contribute in practical ways to a closer understanding of Renaissance culture. Robin Headlam Wells is Professor of English at the University of Surrey, Roehampton; Glenn Burgess is Professor of History at the University of Hull; Rowland Wymer is Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull.


Studies in Renaissance Literature ISSN 1465±6310

Founding editor John T. Shawcross General Editor Graham Parry Editorial board Helen E. Wilcox John N. King Graham Parry Volume 1: The Theology of John Donne Jerey Johnson Volume 2: Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan R. V. Young Volume 3: The Song of Songs in English Renaissance Literature Kisses of their Mouths Noam Flinker Volume 4: King James I and the Religious Culture of England James Doelman Studies in Renaissance Literature oers investigations of topics both spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and growing out of medieval concerns, up to the Restoration period. Particularly encouraged are new examinations of the interplay between the literature of the English Renaissance and its cultural history. Proposals or queries may be sent directly to the editors at the addresses given below; all submissions all receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Graham Parry, Department of English, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK Professor Helen E. Wilcox, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Broerstraat 5, POB 72,9700 AB, Groningen, The Netherlands Dr John N. King, Department of English, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA


NEO-HISTORICISM STUDIES IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, HISTORY AND POLITICS

Edited by Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer

D. S. BREWER


# Editors and Contributors 2000 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2000 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 0 85991 581 6

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604±4126, USA website: http://www.boydell.co.uk A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neo-historicism: studies in Renaissance literature, history, and politics/ edited by Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess, and Rowland Wymer. p. cm. ± (Studies in Renaissance literature; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0±85991±581±6 (hbk.: alk. paper) 1. English literature ± Early modern, 1500±1700 ± History and criticism. 2. Literature and history ± Great Britain ± History ± 16th century. 3. Literature and history ± Great Britain ± History ± 17th century. 4. Politics and literature ± Great Britain ± History ± 16th century. 5. Politics and literature ± Great Britain ± History ± 17th century. 6. Historicism in literature. 7. Renaissance ± England. I. Wells, Robin Headlam II. Burgess, Glenn, 1961± . III. Wymer, Rowland. IV. Studies in Renaissance literature (Woodbridge, Suolk, England); v. 5. PR428.H57 N46 2000 820.9'003±dc21 00±026138

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Joshua Associates Ltd, Oxford Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suolk

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CONTENTS Acknowledgments Notes on contributors Preface

vi viii xi

INTRODUCTION Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer

1

HISTORICISING THE RENAISSANCE 1 The `Historical Turn' and the Political Culture of Early Modern England: Towards a Postmodern History? Glenn Burgess 2 `New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed Stanley Stewart

29 48

THE POLITICS OF THEATRE 3 Ben Jonson and the Monarchy Blair Worden 4 Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing Andrew Gurr 5 Inwardness and Spectatorship in Early Modern England Katharine Eisaman Maus 6 Jacobean Pageant or Elizabethan Fin-de-SieÁcle? The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy Rowland Wymer

69 91 111 138

MAKING HISTORY 7 Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts Graham Parry 8 Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations R. Malcolm Smuts 9 The Politics of Aectivity in Early Modern England Steven N. Zwicker

v

153 179 199

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Contents SHAKESPEARE IN CONTEXT 10 Ìn thievish ways': Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Early Modern Culture Heather Dubrow 11 An Orpheus for a Hercules: Virtue Rede®ned in The Tempest Robin Headlam Wells Index

217 240 263

vi

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to editors and publishers for permission to reprint the following in a revised form: Heather Dubrow, ` `Ìn thievish ways'': Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Early Modern Culture', Journal of English and Germanic Philology xcvi (1997), pp. 514±44, copyright 1997 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press. Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (Chicago, 1995), pp. 1±34. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago. Rowland Wymer, `Jacobean Pageant or Elizabethan Fin de SieÁcle? The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy', Jacobean Drama as Social Criticism, ed. James Hogg (Lewiston, N.Y. and Salzburg, Austria, 1995), pp. 45±58, by kind permission of the Edwin Mellen press.

vii


CONTRIBUTORS Glenn Burgess is Professor of History at the University of Hull. He has also taught at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is the author of The Politics of the Ancient Constitution (1992) and Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (1996), and has edited The New British History: Founding a Modern State 1603±1715 (1999). He has just completed a book on British Political Thought 1500±1707: The Politics of the Post-Reformation in England and Scotland, and is now working on a biography of James VI and I. Heather Dubrow is John Bascom Professor and a senior member of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of four books of literary criticism, of which the most recent is Echoes of Desire: English Petrarchism and Its Counterdiscourses (1995). Her other publications include a co-edited collection of essays, a chapbook of poetry, a lengthy essay on twentieth-century Shakespeare criticism that appeared in the second edition of The Riverside Shakespeare, and numerous articles. Andrew Gurr is Professor of English at the University of Reading. He is a Director of the Globe project in London, chairing its Education Committee. He has edited several Renaissance plays, including Richard II and Henry V for the New Cambridge Shakespeare. His other publications include The Shakespearean Stage 1574±1642 (1970, now in its third edition, 1992); Writers in Exile (1981), Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (1987, now in its second edition), Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe (with John Orrell, 1989), and The Shakespearian Playing Companies (1996). Katharine Eisaman Maus is Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Her books include The Norton Shakespeare, edited with Stephen Greenblatt, Jean Howard, and Walter Cohen (1997) Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (1995), awarded the Roland Bainton Book Prize for an outstanding contribution to Renaissance studies, and has edited Four Revenge Tragedies of the English Renaissance (1995). She is currently working on the Oxford English Literary History 1603±1660. Graham Parry is Professor of English at the University of York. He has a strong interest in the court culture of the Stuarts, and in the inter-relationship of the arts in the seventeenth century. His books include The Golden Age Restor'd (1981), The Seventeenth Century (1989) in the Longman Literature in viii


Contributors English series, and The Trophies of Time (1995) on the Antiquarian Movement in England in the seventeenth century. He has recently written the life and edited the letters of John Talman, an antiquary and collector who ¯ourished in the early eighteenth century. R. Malcolm Smuts is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He has written Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England and numerous articles on early Stuart cultural and political history, and edited The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays on Politics and Political Culture. He is currently completing a book entitled Culture and Power in Early Stuart England, ca. 1585±1640. Stanley Stewart is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including The Enclosed Garden: The Tradition and the Image in Seventeenth-Century Poetry (1966), The Expanded Voice: The Art of Thomas Traherne (1970), George Herbert (1976), and `Renaissance Talk': Ordinary Language and the Mystique of Critical Problems (1997), and co-author of Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/ and Literature (1992) and Jonson's Spenser: Evidence and Historical Criticism (1995). A former Senior Fellow of the Guggenheim and Mellon foundations, Professor Stewart has also been honoured at the University of California, Riverside, by the Distinguished Teaching Award and as Faculty Research Lecturer. He is co-editor of The Ben Jonson Journal. Robin Headlam Wells is Professor of English at the University of Surrey Roehampton. His publications include Spenser's `Faerie Queene' and the Cult of Elizabeth (1983), Shakespeare, Politics and the State (1986), Elizabethan Mythologies (1994) and Shakespeare on Masculinity (2000). He is founding editor of the electronic journal Renaissance Forum. Blair Worden, who was a Tutorial Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, from 1974 to 1995, is now Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Sussex. His publications include The Rump Parliament 1648±1653 (1974), a series of essays on English republicanism, and a number of studies of the relationship between literature and politics in Renaissance England. His most recent book is The Sound of Virtue: Politics in Philip Sidney's Àrcadia' (1996). Rowland Wymer is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Hull. His publications include Suicide and Despair in the Jacobean Drama (1986), Webster and Ford (1995), and (co-edited with Holger Klein) Shakespeare and History (1996). In addition to his work on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, he has published articles on contemporary ®ction, science ®ction, and literary theory. He is currently writing a book on Derek Jarman. Steven N. Zwicker is Professor of English and Co-Director of Literature and History at Washington University, St Louis. He is the author of Dryden's Political Poetry (1972), Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry: the Arts of ix


Contributors Disguise (1984), and Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture 1649±1689 (1996) and co-editor with Kevin Sharpe of Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England (1987) and Re®guring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution (1998). He is editor of the Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650±1740 (1998).

x

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PREFACE Marc Bloch, co-founder of the Annales d'histoire eÂconomique et sociale, once wrote: `Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.' There is a widespread assumption among New Historicists and Cultural Materialists that older forms of historical thinking, at least in literature departments, were naive and unsophisticated, and that it took `the clarity of focus provided by the new critical paradigms of our own day', as one recent critic puts it, to make us aware of the problems involved in reconstructing the past. In our Introduction we trace the history of historicism in the ®rst half of the twentieth century. We show that historicist thinking, in literature as well as history departments, was a good deal more subtle than New Historicists and Cultural Materialists have been generally willing to acknowledge. While accepting some of the recent postmodern critique of traditional historical empiricism, we argue that there are rational criteria for adjudicating between rival historical narratives and interpretations. We also claim that, while literary scholars and historians may share a common methodology, there is a role for literary criticism which goes beyond historical reconstruction and which includes a continuing responsibility for making aesthetic, moral, and political judgments. Finally, we argue that, in the light of the current wealth of neoDarwinian studies of all political complexions, it is time to reconsider the anti-essentialism that has become a sine qua non of much New Historicist and Cultural Materialist scholarship. To signal our recognition of the importance both of the historicist tradition and of recent work in postmodern historiography, we have chosen the term `neo-historicism' for our title. Neo-historicism embraces the following principles: that there is an historical dimension to all valid acts of textual interpretation; that there is no unifying principle (such as the will of God or the laws of economic determinism) that will explain the course of history; that there will always be multiple histories of any age, re¯ecting the complexity of the past (though this does not mean that there are no rational grounds for preferring one narrative over another); that while the questions we ask about the past are inevitably driven by present needs and concerns, a sense of historical perspective is best achieved, not by recruiting past thinkers as precursive spokesmen and women of modern values, but by recognising the otherness of the past.

xi

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Preface Contributors to Neo-Historicism approach Renaissance culture from dierent gender perspectives and a variety of political standpoints, and individual scholars may not necessarily subscribe to all of these tenets. However, each chapter exempli®es some features of what might be regarded as good neohistoricist practice. ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS GLENN BURGESS ROWLAND WYMER

xii

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Introduction ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS GLENN BURGESS ROWLAND WYMER

I

N the ®nal two decades of the twentieth century the study of early modern English culture was revitalised in two ways: by new methodologies; and by the revision, employing a largely traditional methodology, of conventional thinking about Elizabethan and Stuart England. Broadly speaking ± we will consider some exceptions later ± it was literary critics who could claim credit for new theoretical approaches, while historians worked within a more conventional methodological framework to challenge a Whig view of the early modern period. There has been surprisingly little contact between the two disciplines.1 The beginning of a new century is an appropriate time to consider the future direction of historical scholarship, and at the same time to ask what historians and literary critics can learn from each other. But as any historicist would argue, in order to evaluate the present we need to understand the history of our own disciplines. `To judge rightly of the present,' wrote Samuel Johnson, `we must oppose it to the past.'2 We will 1

2

David Bevington's and Peter Holbrook's recent claim that the `New Historicist approach to Jacobean court politics needs to be seen as part of a larger revolution in historiography of the period' (Introduction to The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge, 1998), p. 7) is misleading. It is true that a number of revisionist historians have engaged critically with postmodern literary theories (see, for example, David Armitage, `Literature and Empire', The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Nicholas Canny, The Oxford History of the British Empire (1998± 1999), general ed. W. Roger Louis and (Oxford and New York, 1998), 5 vols, I.99±123; Glenn Burgess, `Revisionist History and Shakespeare's Political Context', Shakespeare and History, ed. Holger Klein and Rowland Wymer, Shakespeare Yearbook vi (1996), pp. 5±36; Kevin Sharpe, `The Politics of Literature in Renaissance England: Review Article', History lxxi (1986), pp. 235± 47; Malcolm Smuts, `Court-Centred Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians c.1590±1630', Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke and London, 1994), pp. 21±43). But New Historicists, Cultural Materialists, and materialist feminists have on the whole ignored early-modern revisionist and post-revisionist history. See also note 79 below. Rasselas, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. Gwin J. Kolb (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1958±1990), XVI.112.

1


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer begin this Introduction with a survey of historicism in literary and historical studies. I

It is a widely held view among early modern literary scholars that New Historicism and Cultural Materialism represent a signi®cant advance on earlier forms of historicism which were, it is claimed, naive and theoretically unsophisticated. `What now seems the central problem of historicist interpretation,' writes Hugh Grady in a recent book on Shakespeare,` ± how to deal adequately with the otherness of the past, given the unavoidability of perceiving it through our own epistemological ``lenses'' ± was barely recognized by the earlier historicists.'3 In view of the long history of debate among historians and literary critics on precisely this question, Grady's assertion is a a puzzling one. Historicism is a confusing term because it has been used by dierent writers to mean diametrically opposite views of history. For Leopold von Ranke (1795±1886) and his eighteenth-century predecessors such as Herder and Winkelmann, the historian should not allow his own assumptions, attitudes and beliefs to enter into his judgment of the past: every epoch, each cultural moment, is unique and must be interpreted in terms of its own values. By the middle of the nineteenth century the term Historismus had come to be used to describe this approach to history. When the historical profession formed itself towards the end of the century in Europe and America, it was von Ranke's combination of objectivist methods and a culturally relativist outlook, together with his emphasis on the critical study of primary sources, that were adopted as the founding principles of the discipline. However, in The Poverty of Historicism (published in 1957, but originating in the 1930s) Karl Popper used the term historicism in a sense that was the opposite of what had become its received meaning. As Popper used the term, historicism referred to any deterministic, theoretical and predictive historical science, such as Marxism or Christianity, dedicated to uncovering general laws of historical development (what would now be called `grand narratives') and extrapolating from them. Popper contrasted this speculative theory of history with what he called `historism'. By this he meant an approach that aimed to understand dierent doctrines and ideas by referring to `their connection with the predilections prevailing in a particular historical period'.4 Popper's historism was the English equivalent of the German Historismus. Since the 1950s the word historism has largely fallen out of use, and has been replaced with historicism.5 Thus for the Italian philosopher Benedetto 3 4

5

Shakespeare's Universal Wolf: Studies in Early Modern Rei®cation (Oxford, 1996), p. 5. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 2nd edn (London, 1960), p. 17; see also Paul Hamilton, Historicism (London and New York, 1996), p. 17. An exception is Perez Zagorin who, in a recent article, uses the term historicism in a

2


Introduction Croce, historicism (Popper's historism) involves a recognition of the fact that since such notions as natural law are the product of particular societies, any attempt to interpret the past in terms of what he called àbstract rationalism' is mere illusion: `®nal and ®xed systems of philosophy or whatever passes as such into common usage and belief, refer, so far as they are alive and true, to certain determined, contemporary and historically de®nite problems, and therefore have no value with reference to all the other problems of the past and the future'.6 Echoes of von Ranke's relativist legacy could be heard as recently as 1983 when Sir Georey Elton asserted `the right of every age to be studied for its own sake', and the historian's duty `not to confuse a right to arrive at conclusions about people and events with a right to deliver judgments based on some universal principle'.7 However, that is not to say that there was a consensus among historicists about Rankean principles. Quite the reverse. Though Croce endorsed the relativism that was the founding principle of nineteenth-century historicism, he rejected von Ranke's emphasis on scienti®c objectivity. Croce's insistence on the practical impossibility of safeguarding historical analysis from the contaminating in¯uence of the historian's own interests and prejudices is summed up in the famous claim that Àll history is contemporary history.'8 The reaction against von Ranke had begun in the late nineteenth century. Following Karl Lamprecht, the ®rst volume of whose Deutsche Geschichte appeared in 1891, historians of various persuasions attacked the Rankean emphasis on political and diplomatic history, narrative form, and research in ocial government archives. Most notable of these were Marxist historians and members of the French Annales school writing from the inter-war period onwards. In dierent ways, these groups tended to portray themselves as more scienti®c, objective and impartial than Rankean historians, and to be uncovering deeper, more fundamental truths about the past.9 But some aspects of the Rankean legacy remained largely untouched. Views about what constituted evidence and how it might be handled had widened; but historians remained on the whole ®rmly committed to the view that evidence, properly interrogated, could yield truths about the past. A more radical challenge to Rankean principles came from the `New Historians' of the 1920s and 1930s. Through their presidential addresses to

6 7

8 9

Popperian sense to defend a `global sense of the past' (`Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations', History and Theory xxix (1990), pp. 263±74). It should also be noted that `historism' was used to translate Meinecke's great book on the subject (Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook (London, 1972), from Die Entstehung des Historismus (Munich, 1959) ). History as the Story of Liberty, trans. Sylvia Spriggs (London, 1941), p. 66. G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, Vol IV: Papers and Reviews 1982±1990 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 272. History as the Story of Liberty, p. 19. Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scienti®c Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover N.H., 1997), Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 7.

3


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer the American Historical Association, Charles Beard and Carl Becker initiated a lengthy and complex debate on historical objectivity.10 Beard and Becker have been widely misrepresented. In The Problem of Historical Knowledge (1938) Maurice Mandelbaum accused the New Historians of a cognitive relativism so uncompromising as to deny any possibility of an accurate account of the past. `The values which are held to determine the historian's selection and sythesis of his materials are in turn held to be determined by the personality of the historian and by the age in which he lives,' wrote Mandelbaum. Àccording to this analysis, they are determined by the present or future, and the very idea that they can give an accurate objective account of the past is thereby rendered absurd.'11 It is ironic that Beard and Becker should have been attacked for claims they had never made, since they themselves were challenging an exaggerated version of von Ranke's empiricism. Indeed, Beard had actually exposed the futility of the very position that the New Historians were accused of promulgating. Ìf all historical conceptions are merely relative to passing events, to transitory phases of ideas and interests,' wrote Beard in 1934, `then the conception of relativity is itself relative. When absolutes in history are rejected the absolutism of relativity is also rejected.'12 The target of Beard's criticism was not objectivity as a mode of inquiry ± little he says would trouble a present-day defender of methodological objectivity ± but what might be called scientism, that is to say, the claim that historians using scienti®c methods can produce complete and de®nitive accounts of the past. The phrase that for historiographers epitomises von Ranke's scientism is `wie es eigentlich gewesen'. `The task of history,' said Ranke, is ònly to show what actually happened.'13 Beard reminded his readers that Ranke's empiricism had long since been discarded. He conceded that `historians recognise formally the obvious, long known informally, namely, that any written history inevitably re¯ects the thought of the author in his time and cultural setting'.14 But he argued that, while recognising that our reconstruction of the past can never achieve the status of scienti®c objectivity, we must not abandon scienti®c methods. As the only means we have of acquiring accurate knowledge of the past, scienti®c methods of inquiry are our most powerful weapons against mysti®cation and exploitation: `the inquiring spirit of science, using the scienti®c method, is the chief safeguard 10

11

12

13

14

Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The Òbjectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988), Chapter 9. The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism, revised edn (New York, 1967), p. 36. Charles A. Beard, `Written History as an Act of Faith', American Historical Review xxxix (1934), p. 225. Histories of the Latin and Germanic Nations from 1494±1514, trans. Fritz Stern, The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present, ed. Stern (New York, 1973), p. 57. `Written History as an Act of Faith', p. 221.

4


Introduction against the tyranny of authority, bureaucracy, and brute power'.15 The corollary of Beard's combination of cognitive scepticism and methodological rigour was the need for historians to interrogate and declare their own ideological positions. `The supreme issue before the historian now,' wrote Beard, is the determination of his attitude to the disclosures of contemporary thought. He may deliberately evade them for reasons pertaining to personal, economic, and intellectual comfort . . . Or he may proceed to examine his own frame of reference, clarify it, enlarge it by acquiring knowledge of greater areas of thought and events, and give it consistency of structure.16

Beard's sceptical rationalism has entered into the normal conversation of historians, and today's defenders of the truth claims of history are likely to ®nd themselves as close to him as they are to his critics. The point is an important one, for, just as traditional literary historicists have been uniformly characterised by their opponents as naive empiricists con®dent in their ability to reconstruct an unbiased picture of the past, so traditional historians have been portrayed as blind to the limits of empiricist historicism. But, as Lawrence Stone has remarked, `we did not at all resemble the positivist troglodytes that we are often accused of being'; one of the things that historians have long known, and which Beard spelled out, was `that historical truth was unattainable, and that any conclusions are provisional and hypothetical'.17 The vitality of a quali®ed historicism has remained strong. In a recent analysis of Sir Georey Elton's discussions of historical method, Quentin Skinner took care to distance himself from empiricist attitudes.18 Yet his own work in intellectual history is an exempli®cation of historicist principles. Indeed his famous 1969 article on the subject can be read as a plea for the proper application of historicist principles to the understanding of ideas in time. Skinner charged many of those who wrote about the history of ideas with failing to be truly historical, either because they judged past thinkers by modern standards, or because they studied them in relation to transhistorical abstractions like capitalism or liberalism.19 Skinner's argument that understanding the meaning of an idea meant reconstructing the intentions of its author within a speci®c historical context closely parallelled E. D. Hirsch's major contribution to literary hermeneutics, Validity in Interpretation, published two years previously. Hirsch's impact on the 15 16 17 18

19

Ibid., p. 227. Ibid., p. 228. `History and Postmodernism', Past and Present cxxxi (1992), pp. 190, 189. `Sir Georey Elton and the Practice of History', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society vii (1997), pp. 301±16. `Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas', History and Theory viii (1969), pp. 3± 53.

5


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer practice of literary criticism has been considerably less than Skinner's on the writing of intellectual history, something which points to signi®cant dierences between the two disciplines. `Meaning' (whether conceived historically or not) is always likely to be a more problematic concept when considerations of aesthetic form are involved. Since the 1930s historicist principles have been the subject of continuous debate. As historians became increasingly aware of the problems of bias, selectivity and incompleteness, con®dent empiricism gave way to a quali®ed relativism that recognised the otherness of the past, while at the same time retaining a belief in the viability of objective methods of inquiry. It is important to be clear about this point, because it is commonly alleged by postmodern historiographers that traditional historians believe in objective reconstruction as a realisable goal. Very few modern historians have supposed that certain and complete knowledge of the past is attainable; what they have supposed is that accounts reached as a result of an attempt at the impartial weighing of evidence, and a willingness to be proved wrong by that evidence, are likely to be better than those produced in some other way. As long ago as 1925 J. M. Thompson put the matter in a way that betrays his distance from the late twentieth century, but captures a principle to which many of today's professional historians would be happy to subscribe: `Historical truth, if that means a complete account of an event as it really occurred, is hardly ever attainable. But historical truthfulness is much more important, and is within reach of us all.'20 It is also the case that the possibility of truth should not be confused with the possibility of certainty, something which is rarely achievable in the human sciences. As E. D. Hirsch puts it: `We can have the truth without being certain that we have it, and, in the absence of certainty, we can nevertheless have knowledge ± knowledge of the probable.'21 II

As might be expected, the terms of the New Historians' debate on the limits of historical objectivity were echoed by literary critics in the ®rst half of the twentieth century. In 1942 ReneÂ Wellek and Austin Warren explained that, with historicist principles well established in literature departments, scholars like Hardin Craig, E. E. Stoll, and Rosemond Tuve were arguing that we must ènter into the mind and attitude of past periods and accept their standards, 20

21

J. M. Thompson, Lectures on Foreign History 1494±1789 (Oxford, 1925), p. 2. This was essentially the position taken by Mr Justice Gray when rejecting David Irving's claim that he had been libelled by Deborah Lipstadt in her 1994 book Denying the Holocaust. The judge argued that ìt is no part of my function to attempt to make ®ndings as to what actually happened during the Nazi regime' but that, nevertheless, Irving's treatment of the available historical evidence `fell far short of the standard to be expected of a conscientious historian' (The Guardian, 12 April 2000, p. 6). Validity in Interpretation (New Haven and London, 1967), p. 173.

6


Introduction deliberately excluding the intrusions of our own conceptions'.22 However, Wellek and Warren also made it clear that the ®rst three decades of the century were a period of active debate: nineteenth-century empiricism had been questioned by Ernst Troeltsch and others from the earliest years of the twentieth century. Following New Historians like Beard and Becker, Wellek and Warren asserted that, although the past must be judged in terms of its own values and principles, it is impossible in practice to exclude the critic's own attitudes and assumptions: It is simply not possible to stop being men of the twentieth century while we engage in a judgment of the past: we cannot forget the associations of our own language, the newly acquired attitudes, the impact and import of the last centuries . . . There will always be a decisive dierence between an act of imaginative reconstruction and actual participation in a past point of view . . . If we should really be able to reconstruct the meaning which Hamlet held for its contemporary audience, we would merely impoverish it. We should suppress the legitimate meanings which later generations found in Hamlet. We would bar the possibility of a new interpretation.23

In saying that the escape from our own prejudices was undesirable as well as impossible, Wellek and Warren were aligning themselves with a continental hermeneutic tradition, most famously represented by Heidegger and Gadamer, which has proved more attractive to literary critics than Hirsch's rigorously intentionalist approach to interpretation. Gadamer thought that a text could only speak to us from its historical otherness if we encountered it with `prejudice'; historical dierence can only become apparent in relation to something else, something which we ourselves initially bring to the text: The historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something ± whereby what we encounter says something to us.24

Like Wellek and Warren, Gadamer saw meaning as perpetually made new in the encounter between text and reader rather than as an historically ®xed event or object which can be recovered by the appropriate methods. Wellek and Warren's concern to distance themselves from the literary empiricists who were still working in the Rankean tradition was shared by a number of English critics. For them it was E. M. W. Tillyard who represented the dangers of uncritical assumptions about our ability to reconstruct the past. Tillyard's in¯uential Shakespeare's History Plays was published in 1944. 22 23 24

Theory of Literature (New York, 1942), p. 32. Ibid., p. 34. Hans-Georg Gadamer, `The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem', Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley, 1976), p. 9.

7


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer With his claim that Elizabethan political thought was `so simple that there is not much to do beyond stating the obvious and trying to make it emphatic', and his belief that Shakespeare's history plays were doctrinally èntirely orthodox',25 Tillyard was exceptional even in the 1940s: no modern historical scholar had previously oered quite such a schematic view of Shakespeare. Four years earlier, in The State in Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays, James Phillips had made it clear that the later sixteenth century was a period of vigorous intellectual and political debate in England: Ìn learned treatises and popular pamphlets alike a variety of theories and attitudes were developed concerning such individual political problems as the authority of the king, the function of the law, the duties of subjects and the right of rebellion.'26 That intellectual complexity had now been reduced to a set of axiomatic principles in which every educated Elizabethan was supposed to have believed. Not surprisingly, Tillyard's contemporaries objected to the new simpli®ed version of Elizabethan intellectual life. Reviewing Shakespeare's History Plays in 1945, Georey Tillotson wrote: Ì do not think Dr Tillyard's Elizabethans are human enough. He has become interested in certain notions of theirs, and he tends to think of them as repositories of those notions.'27 In 1950 Hiram Haydn argued that if there was a ruling principle in Elizabethan writing it was not hierarchical order but paradox: ìnconsistency runs through all their work'.28 In the following year a lecturer in Tillyard's own college challenged the notion of an intellectually orthodox Shakespeare acting as spokesman for the Elizabethan establishment. `To me,' wrote A. P. Rossiter in a lecture entitled Àmbivalence: The Dialectic of the Histories', the pattern of these plays ìs obscure, ironic, and ± as far as Shakespeare shows us the scheme of things ± seemingly endless.'29 Two years later Helen Gardner also lectured on the issues raised by Tillyard's brand of empiricist scholarship, warning that `the `Èlizabethan World Picture'' tidily presented to us as a system of thought cannot tell us how much of that picture had truth and meaning for any Elizabethan'.30 Gardner's 1953 lecture was titled `The Historical Approach'. In it she challenged the empiricist claim to objective knowledge of the past: since `the historical imagination . . . is itself historically conditioned',31 any attempt to de®ne the past will inevitably re¯ect the historian's own prejudices and 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (London, 1944), pp. 64, 261. The State in Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays (New York, 1940), p. 20. Review of Tillyard's Shakespeare's History Plays, English v (1944±5), p. 160. The Counter-Renaissance (New York, 1950), p. 7. Angel with Horns: Fifteen Lectures on Shakespeare, ed. Graham Storey (1961); repr. with an introduction by Peter Holland (London and New York, 1989), p. 43. Àmbivalence' was delivered at the Shakespeare Summer School, Stratford-upon-Avon in 1951 and ®rst published in Talking of Shakespeare, ed. John Garrett (London, 1954). Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism (Oxford, 1959), p. 34. The Business of Criticism, p. 32.

8


Introduction preconceptions. Ìn the last hundred years the conception of ``the Elizabethans'' has been as unstable as the conception of Hamlet', she wrote, To Froude and Kingsley they were God-fearing, Protestant, and patriotic. In the nineties they were Italianate and much less manly and God-fearing. In the twenties they were subtle, sensual, and sceptical. Recently they have become pious again, but in a dierent way, obsessed with the idea of hierarchy, the Great Chain of Being and Natural Law.32

She went on to argue that although notions of period are too unstable and too conjectural to provide us with an objective ®eld of reference, this does not mean that we should abandon the quest for historical understanding. The important thing is to avoid letting our sense of history `harden into a ®xed background': `We are rightly sceptical when we read statements about modern man and the modern mind and dismiss both as ®gments of journalism. We ought to be at least as sceptical about statements about ``the Elizabethan mind''.'33 If, Gardner argued in another lecture, we simply impose our own critical paradigms on the past we are in danger of èmptying it of its own historical reality';34 historical scholars have a responsibility to safeguard their own age against the chronological `provincialism'35 that inevitably results from recruiting past writers as spokesmen and women for their own beliefs and theories. By the 1950s literary critics on both sides of the Atlantic were familiar with the debate on relativism that had begun with the New Historians two decades earlier. While there were certainly exceptions, there was widespread scepticism regarding a literary-historical empiricism, exempli®ed in its most exaggerated form by Tillyard, that seemed old-fashioned even by Troeltsch's standards.36 After the Second World War a long line of critics including Rossiter, Rabkin, Elton, McElroy, Jones and Grudin37 replaced Tillyard's uni®ed Èlizabethan World Picture' with a more complex view of the relationship between the writer and his world. `The kind of vision I have tried to point at,' wrote Rabkin in Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (1967) ìs what puts Shakespeare's plays out of the reach of the 32 33 34 35 36

37

Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 34. `The Historical Sense', The Business of Criticism, p. 135. Ibid., p. 156. For discussion of Tillyard's in¯uence see Robin Headlam Wells, `The Fortunes of Tillyard: Twentieth-Century Critical Debate on Shakespeare's History Plays', English Studies lxvi (1985), pp. 391±403. A. P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns; Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (1967; repr. Chicago and London, 1984); W. R. Elton, `Shakespeare and the Thought of his Age' (1971), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 17±34; Bernard McElroy, Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies (Princeton, 1973); Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1977); Robert Grudin, Mighty Opposites: Shakespeare and Renaissance Contrariety (Berkeley, 1979).

9


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer narrow moralist, the special pleader for a particular ideology, the intellectual historian looking for a Shakespearean version of a Renaissance orthodoxy.'38 The post-war view of what it meant to be a literary historicist is summed up in Peter Milward's introduction to his Shakespeare's Religious Background (1973). The following is a summary of his argument: critics sometimes deal with great works of literature without reference to the historical circumstances in which they were written; to some extent this approach is justi®able; after all, the value of great works seems undiminished by time and may even gain something from the varied interpretations of successive ages; but while masterpieces may be `monuments more lasting than bronze', they are also àbstracts and brief chronicles of the time'; present critical fashions need to be complemented by historical knowledge and an understanding of the possible meanings the text may have had for its contemporary readers; though we can never achieve complete objectivity ± the choices and selections we make are bound to be aected by modern assumptions and preferences ± nevertheless, as historicists we must strive for as much objectivity as we are humanly capable of if we are to rise above the mere voicing of personal prejudice.39 Milward himself, as a Catholic priest and Jesuit, approached the historical problem of Shakespeare's religious background with a very obvious `personal prejudice', one which led him to address the relevant texts in a particular way. However, his conclusions about Shakespeare's Catholic background and sympathies remain subject to normal evidential criteria and have, in fact, recently gained considerable support from critics who are not themselves Catholics. Given the familiarity among earlier twentieth-century literary critics with the terms of the debate on historicism, and the very clear sense they had of the limitations of Rankean empiricism, it is puzzling to ®nd it so widely asserted over the past two decades that traditional literary-historical scholars were scarcely aware of the problems involved in recovering the past. Indeed it is even claimed that traditional literary criticism was not interested in sociohistorical considerations tout court. In the Introduction to Renaissance SelfFashioning Stephen Greenblatt set up an opposition between his own form of politicised historicism (based on Geertz's version of the constructionism that dominated social studies for much of the twentieth century), and a caricature of traditional criticism. Greenblatt claims that the latter involves either à conception of art as addressed to a timeless, cultureless, universal human essence' or else a conception of it as à self-regarding, autonomous, closed system'. In both forms of traditional criticism àrt is opposed to social life'.40 It might be supposed that unfounded generalisations of this kind would have had little impact in the academy. In practice the opposite has happened. 38 39 40

Shakespeare and the Common Understanding, p. 12. Shakespeare's Religious Background (Bloomington and London, 1973), pp. 7±8. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London, 1980), p. 4.

10


Introduction Greenblatt is probably the most in¯uential critic currently working in the ®eld of early modern literature. His characterisation of traditional criticism as sealed o in its own world of timeless verities and indierent to social reality has been echoed by materialist critics on both sides of the Atlantic. `The New Historicists combat empty formalism by pulling historical considerations to the center stage of literary analysis', writes H. Aram Veeser.41 `The traditional literary critic . . . imaginarily occupies a transcendent, virtual point outside of history', claims Scott Wilson.42 Inevitably these misrepresentations ®nd their way into student primers. In a recent textbook entitled Beginning Theory students are taught that, before the advent of `Theory', `liberal humanist' criticism eschewed contextual considerations of any kind, and focused instead on literature's `timeless signi®cance'.43 Even those materialists who do acknowledge the existence of an historicist tradition in twentieth-century criticism seem to be unaware that since the Second World War criticism had moved on from naive empiricism, or that what was being produced in literature departments in the 1920s and 1930s was not as simplistic as modern caricatures of this work suggest.44 Graham Holderness claims that, Where the old historicism relied on a basically empiricist form of historical research, con®dent in its capacity to excavate and de®ne the events of the past, New Historicism drew on post-structuralist theory, and accepted `history' only as a contemporary activity of narrating or representing the past.45

Jerey Cox and Larry Reynolds similarly argue that New Historicism `rejects the idea of ``History'' as a directly accessible, unitary past, and substitutes for it the conception of ``histories'', an ongoing series of human constructions'.46 Hugh Grady asserts that traditional historians of Renaissance culture posit a `single-minded authoritarian culture' in which cultural documents have `stable, armative, and unitary meanings'. But now, he argues, thanks to the `clarity of focus provided by the new critical paradigms of our own day' we have left behind such notions as `the transcendent author . . . and transparent, single-levelled meaning'.47 But perhaps most remarkable of all 41 42 43

44

45 46

47

H. Aram Veeser, ed., The New Historicism (New York and London, 1989), p. xi. Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1995), p. 5. Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Manchester, 1995), p. 17. Lilian Winstanley might be said to typify pre-Second World War literary historicism. In the Introduction to `Hamlet' and the Scottish Succession (Cambridge, 1921) she wrote: `We (cannot) judge Shakespeare completely by the eect produced on our own minds; . . . the psychology of the sixteenth century is bound to dier from that of the nineteenth century, and it is important to show in what its dierences consist' (pp. 2, 31). Shakespeare Recycled: The Making of Historical Drama (Hemel Hempstead, 1992), p. 32. Jerey N. Cox and Larry J. Reynolds, eds, New Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing History (Princeton, N.J., 1993), p. 1. Shakespeare's Universal Wolf, pp. 7±8.

11


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer is John Drakakis' claim in 1996 that the ideological bias of Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture had been revealed òver the past decade'.48 Taken together, these remarks represent a striking phenomenon: the history of twentieth-century historicism has in eect been rewritten so that credit for the revision of Rankean empiricism is now accorded not to the historians and critics of the 1930s and 1940s, but to `the new critical paradigms of our own day'. In a widely cited article on New Historicism Jean Howard writes: it seems to me that the historically-minded critic must increasingly be willing to acknowledge the non-objectivity of his or her own stance . . . [and to] acknowledge as well that any move into history is an . . . attempt to reach from the present moment into the past.49

Ivo Kamps writes with a similar sense of missionary urgency in Materialist Shakespeare: `The critic's task, as it is currently de®ned, is . . . a dicult and paradoxical one: to study a distant past that is shrouded in/by the present.'50 Hugh Grady agrees, arguing that, àt the present juncture' in Renaissance studies, we must `de®ne an adequate dialectic' between past and present.51 The same arguments are rehearsed by Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin in Post-Colonial Shakespeares: `we read the past to understand our own lives, and equally, our own commitments direct us to the ``truth'' about the past'.52 The puzzling thing about all these statements is not their content ± they contain little that would surprise a traditional literary historicist like Gardner or Wellek ± but their evangelical tone. In calling for a recognition of the fact that the empiricist's belief in objectivity is an unattainable ideal, that our view of the past is unavoidably coloured by the present, and that in writing history we are in eect commenting on our own world, Howard, Kamps, Grady, Loomba, and Orkin seem to be unaware of the fact that all these things have been said many times before, or indeed that they have been said by the very traditionalists against whom these critics are in reaction. 48

49

50 51 52

John Drakakis, Àfterword', Alternative Shakespeares 2, ed. Terence Hawkes (London and New York, 1996), p. 240 (our italics). In Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists (Ithaca and London, 1993), p. 5, Graham Bradshaw took Hugh Grady to task for excluding one of the central strands in modern criticism from his historical study of Shakespeare in the twentieth-century (The Modernist Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1991) ). Grady had claimed that it was only over the previous twenty years that Tillyard had been dethroned. Drakakis then halved that twenty years, thus eectively bringing the Great Deposition forward to the mid1980s. Jean Howard, `The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies', English Literary Renaissance xvi (1986), p. 43. Ivo Kamps, ed., Materialist Shakespeare: A History (London and New York, 1995), p. 3. Shakespeare's Universal Wolf, p. 7. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, eds, Post-Colonial Shakespeares, New Accents (London and New York, 1998), p. 6.

12


Introduction III

Irrespective of its claims to novelty, one thing New Historicism should certainly be credited with is fostering a renewed interest in history among literary critics. On both sides of the Atlantic the new work has taken both a moderate and a radical form. In its moderate form New Historicism shares many of the methodological assumptions of traditional historicism: a sense of the otherness of the past; a sceptical attitude towards generalisations about period mentalities; a recognition of the fact that our own attitudes, assumptions and opinions inevitably colour not just our judgment of the past, but our selection of the writers and the facts on which those judgments are based; an endorsement, despite the inadmissibility of empiricist claims to complete or entirely objective knowledge of earlier historical periods, of the value of disinterested pursuit of historical truth; a belief in the importance of historical knowledge as a means of providing a perspective on the present; a sense of the irreducibly complex nature of great art. The fact that these are all commonplaces of traditional literary historicism does not vitiate the work of the many distinguished scholars on both sides of the Atlantic who have either been responsible for, or who have responded to, the renewed interest in English departments in early modern history. What distinguishes moderate New Historicism from older historicist criticism is its insistence on the political nature of literature. An interest in the literary treatment of political issues is nothing new. But by asking new questions about the past New Historicism has opened up new ®elds of enquiry, showing that politics is not just a matter of palace coups or Privy Council arguments over foreign policy. The way we discuss gender for example ± an issue of passionate interest to many early modern writers ± is also inescapably political.53 John Brannigan is probably right when he says that New Historicism is above all à mode of critical interpretation which privileges power relations as the most important context for texts of all kinds'.54 This emphasis on power relations derives, of course, from the work of Michel Foucault, the tutelary spirit of New Historicism in its most radical form. In replacing the grand narratives of Marxism and other versions of `Progress' with discontinuous microhistories, Foucault seemed to oer a more thoroughly historicist approach to past ideas and events, free from the impulse to see them only as stages in the emergence of the present. Yet in denying any meaningful connection between past and present, whether in the 53

54

Two pioneering works in this ®eld are Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature, and the Nature of Womankind, 1540±1620 (Brighton, 1984) and Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca and London, 1990). New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (Houndmills, 1998), p. 6.

13


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer form of a common human nature or something like Gadamer's `tradition', and in asserting that what appear to be crucial distinctions are simply the product of dierent discursive rules, Foucault did as much to threaten historical methodology as he did to found a new historical practice. Perhaps for this reason, his direct in¯uence has been mainly on literary critics rather than historians, though aspects of his cognitive relativism were taken up in Hayden White's structuralist philosophy of history, and elaborated by others into a fully ¯edged postmodern historiography. In his seminal Metahistory (1973) Hayden White set out to explore the rhetorical nature of historical writing. Acknowledging his debts to Goldmann, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, White argued that the traditional way of distinguishing between ®ction and history was a false one since it obscured the extent to which invention plays a part in the writing of history. The problem of the ®ctional representation of reality cannot be con®ned to the worlds of literary theory and art-historical theory, said White; it is also a central concern of the historiographer. Where the art historian asks what part historical detail played in realistic art, White proposed that we should ask what part art plays in `realistic' history. `Literature' and `history' ± White uses inverted commas to indicate the problematic nature of these categories ± are in important respects one and the same thing.55 White returned to the question of the rhetorical character of historical narrative two years later in an essay called `The Historical Text as Literary Artefact'. Ìn general,' he wrote, `there has been a manifest reluctance to consider historical narratives as what they most manifestly are: verbal ®ctions, the contents of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences.'56 Behind White's collapsing of the categories of ®ction and history into one another are two major sources of inspiration: Foucault's Nietzschean view of history, and a theory of text developed by Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva and Sollers writing in the journal Tel quel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In an article ®rst published in 1973 White suggested that, insofar as Foucault rejected all the conventional categories of historical description and explanation, he could best be described as an ànti-historian'. `Foucault,' he said, `writes ``history'' in order to destroy it.' Unlike the traditional historian, who sought to understand the past and to make it intelligible to his readers, partly by revealing the sequence of cause and eect in the unfolding of events, and partly by appealing to those constant elements in human nature that survive from one age to another, Foucault wanted to disrupt our false sense of coherence and defamiliarise the past. Because there is in reality no continuity in history, and no universal humanitas, the past can 55

56

Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London, 1973), pp. 6±7; 2±3 n. 4. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1985), p. 82. `The Historical Text as Literary Artefact' was ®rst published in Clio xiv (1975).

14


Introduction have no more meaning for us than a theatre of the absurd. Foucault, he says, `sought to show how we are isolated within our peculiar modalities of experience, so much so that we could not hope to ®nd analogues and models for the solution of the problems facing us, and thereby to enlighten us to the peculiar elements in our present situation'. Insofar as he tried to show how all systems of thought are `little more than terminological formalizations of poetic closures with the world of words, rather than with the ``things'' they purport to represent and explain', Foucault had more in common with the poet than the traditional historian.57 Foucault's Nietzschean contempt for what he regarded as historians' false claims to objectivity and neutrality and his anarchic relativism had a number of connections with the textual theory of the Tel quel group. Barthes' concept of the polysemous text with its free play of signi®ers not only authorised an in®nite number of readings; it also abolished what was claimed to be an arti®cial distinction between discursive types and genres. Traditionally assigned to one discipline or another, each with its own object of reference, dierent forms of writing were now to be seen simply as undierentiated text. Subject matter, or èxteriority', had become irrelevant; genre had been `subverted'; the possibilities for generating meaning had become limitless. As Barthes admitted, textual theory was frankly iconoclastic. It is a practice, he proclaimed, `which is strongly transgressive in relation to the main categories which found our current sociality: perception, intellection, the sign, grammar, and even science'.58 Foucault did not share Barthes' poststructuralist belief in the possibility of a free play of meaning, arguing instead that the kind of meanings which any text could yield up were determined by how it was categorised within the discursive rules to which it was historically subject. However, his insistence on the arbitrariness of these discursive rules achieved a similarly transgressive eect. White's argument for the collapsing of the dierence between literature and history is put in less sensationally apocalyptic terms than those Foucault had deployed in his celebration of Nietzsche's `genealogy',59 or that Barthes had used to announce his `transgressive' theory of textuality. But the historiography he developed in Metahistory would not have disappointed either of them: the professed objectivity of the traditional historian is an illusion; so too is the historian's sense of order and continuity; since there is 57

58

59

Hayden White, `Foucault Decoded: Notes from Underground', Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 239, 234, 257, 259. `Foucault Decoded' was ®rst published in History and Theory xii (1973). Roland Barthes, `Theory of the Text', trans. Ian McLeod, in Untying the Text: A PostStructuralist Reader, ed. Robert Young (London and New York, 1973), pp. 37, 43, 44. Foucault's most important exposition of Nietzsche's view of history is `Nietzsche, Genealogy, History', Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. and trans. Donald F. Bouchard (Oxford, 1977), pp. 139±64. `Nietzsche, Genealogy, History' was ®rst published in Hommage aÁ Jean Hyppolite (Paris, 1971).

15


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer no trans-historical humanitas, the past can have little relevance for the present; the distinction between literature and history is blurred since both are essentially to do with representation. White distinguishes history as story or narrative from chronicle and from the historical record. His key point was to assert that the narratives of history are not simply found in the record. `[T]here are no grounds to be found in the historical record itself for preferring one way of construing its meaning over another.'60 The choices that historians make in selecting and ordering their materials are determined not by the nature of the record itself, but by the historian's own ideological, moral or aesthetic preferences. There is thus àn irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality'.61 White acknowledges that there was an historical reality that existed independently of the narratives that historians now construct about it,62 though the textualist view of history that now forms the core of postmodern historiography is sometimes less careful than he is. In this view of history, evidence is no longer privileged; its textuality merges with that of historical narratives, with the result that all historical writing is characterised primarily by its intertextuality. The distinction between primary and secondary sources is undermined. Keith Jenkins writes: `we can never really know the past . . . there are no `deeper' sources (no subtext) to draw upon to get things right: all is on the surface'. Traditionally, historians have always sought the truth about the past. But `freed from the desire for certainty', writes Jenkins, we can be `released from the idea that history rests on the study of primary / documentary sources (and that doing history is studying these alone and that from these originals we can adjudicate later historians' disagreements)'.63 Hayden White's ideas have made an overwhelming impression on those historiographers searching for a `new' rhetorical philosophy of history to replace that of the Anglo-American analytical tradition. Much of the best work in this vein reads as if it were a commentary on White's work. White himself goes too far when he claims that it is `the dominant opinion among professional historians themselves nowadays . . . [that] narrative representations are to be accorded the status of literary, by which is meant ``novelistic'' or ``®ctional'' accounts of the matters of which they treat';64 but there is no doubt that, thanks to White himself, it is the dominant view among one grouping of historiographers. The scholars who hold these views advance them with considerable sophistication, and many of the jibes and lazy responses that they have 60

61 62

63 64

The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore and London, 1987), p. 75, see also Metahistory, pp. 6±7. Metahistory, p. 21. `Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth', Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the `Final Solution', ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 37±53. Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History (London and New York, 1991), pp. 47±8. `Historical Pluralism', Critical Inquiry xii (1986), p. 486.

16


Introduction attracted are unwarranted. White himself is careful to note that the `®ctionality' (or constructedness) of history `does not mean that a narrative (or story) account of any given phenomenon has no truth-value',65 though he has not made it very clear what truth-value it has (or how we can tell that it has it). More helpfully, F. R. Ankersmit, while following White in claiming that à historical interpretation projects a structure onto the past and does not discover it as if this structure existed in the past itself ', nonetheless makes a very sharp distinction between historical research (which issues in statements) and historical writing (which issues in narratives). He argues that to treat writing (narratives) as justi®able by evidence in the way that statements of fact are is to do no more than confuse these categories. But he is also of the view that `the autonomy of narrative language with regard to the past itself does not in the least imply that narrative interpretations should be arbitrary'. `There is no room,' Ankersmit tells us, `for historical skepticism'; and there are criteria for judging between narratives. The best is the one `with the largest scope . . . the most ``risky'' or the most ``courageous'' '.66 For Ankersmit, narratives do not represent, correspond to, or even refer to the past; and it would be absurd to suppose that they could be veri®ed or falsi®ed as if they did. But that need not leave us unable to discriminate between them. He argues that narratives can only be judged in relation to one another, so that `[h]istorical insight . . . is only born in the space between narrative interpretations and cannot be identi®ed with any speci®c (set of) interpretations'.67 Many practising historians will probably ®nd in this account of their activity much that feels right. It is important, though, to be clear about what is involved in claims for the `®ctionality' of historical writing. Historians, not surprisingly, are unwilling to countenance the complete collapse of the categories of `®ction' and `history' into one another.68 But it is also arguable that White's work has been widely misunderstood by `traditional' historians,69 and that the claim for the `®ctionality' of historical writing has been a dramatic way of asserting, not the ®ctionality of historical facts, but the ®ctionality of the connections between, and the meaning of, those facts. It is the `story' element of the narrative that is ®ctional, not the events of which it is composed. Historians do not make up facts. This, however, appears to make problematic the willingness of White, Ankersmit and others at times to discount almost entirely the element of reference in historical accounts.70 65 66 67 68

69

70

Ibid., p. 487. History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 36, 34, 38, 43, 41. Ibid., p. 41. See the argument addressed to White in Perez Zagorin, `History, the Referent, and Narrative: Re¯ections on Postmodernism Now', History and Theory xxxviii (1999), pp. 1±24. The case is made in Ankersmit, `Hayden White's Appeal to the Historians', History and Theory xxxvii (1998), pp. 182±93. See also Albert Cook, `Reference and Rhetoric in Historiography', Bucknell Review xxxi (1988), pp. 159±82.

17


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer Though it may be true to say that reference to facts or evidence does not go far in enabling us to choose between narratives of equal factual impeccability, it does not follow that we are unable to make any judgments about factual accuracy in narratives or interpretations. There seems no good reason to follow White and Ankersmit to the extent of asserting that the acceptability of narratives has nothing to do with their degree of factuality. In an essay entitled `The Historical Text as Literary Artefact' White explains how, in giving form to his narrative, the historian works much as a poet or dramatist would do, casting his story in the form of, say, a romance, a tragedy or a satire. As the reader comes to perceive the form in which the narrative is cast, so `he experiences the eect of having the events of the story explained to him; he has grasped the point of it'. But as Lamarque and Olsen argue, events as such do not ®gure in a story; only descriptions of events can do that: As long as one talks about ®ction, this confusion between the object sense and the description sense of the word does not matter: the events are invented, imagined, constructed, and they come into existence (or such existence as they have) through the construction of the verbal expressions that make up the story in which they occur . . . When one uses the word `history', on the other hand, a confusion between the two senses of this word is fatal; such a confusion would mean that one talked about history in the object sense as if that could be constructed too. In other words, the confusion would legitimize a conclusion that in constructing an account of the past one was also constructing the past. But this is exactly where the analogy between the concept of ®ction and the concept of history breaks down . . . If past events were constructed, they would no longer be the past but simply ®ctional events.71

The important core of White and Ankersmit's position is well revealed in Robert Berkhofer's recension of their ideas. Berkhofer does not make Ankersmit's sharp distinction between research and writing. Instead he argues that all historical narratives are constituted by a mixture of reference (to facts, events or evidence; ultimately to the past) and representation (by which he means the ®ctionality of narrative). But the former becomes less and less signi®cant in his account, and the chief lesson drawn is summarised in his phrase `the insuciency of facts'.72 By this he refers primarily to the looseness of the ®t between `the facts' and historical narratives or interpretations. Berkhofer does not deny that facts exist, that historians refer to them, or even that they might constrain interpretation. But he does argue that what constraints they impose are loose and weak. For him, as for White and Ankersmit, history bears no meaning on its face, and what meaning there is in historical narratives is the invention of the historian. It is possible for two 71

72

Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford, 1994), p. 309. Robert Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge Mass., 1995), p. 53.

18


Introduction interpretations of the same thing to be incompatible yet each factually impeccable. That implies, as Ankersmit points out, that we need more than the canons of evidence and referentiality to help us judge between historical interpretations. The value of this approach is that it forces us to recognise that the criteria for judging historical narratives and interpretations are not just those of factual accuracy. Indeed, that may not even be the chief criterion, for comprehensiveness, scope, elegance, simplicity and other qualities are all relevant. J. L. Gorman has demonstrated that there are rational criteria for distinguishing between rival accounts that are equally factually accurate. His conclusion is that history as a discipline is objective, not in the sense that it uncovers de®nitive truths, but in the sense that all historical accounts are rationally criticisable.73 Others too have suggested criteria for distinguishing between narratives, while warning against the assumption underpinning White's work that narratives must contain an inherently ®ctional element.74 This last argument leads to a second line of response to White and his followers, namely the assertion by David Carr that there is a continuity between narratives and the real world, that lived human experience is already narrativised, and therefore not misrepresented when recounted as a narrative.75 Carr's view may be right, though it is made problematic (as Carr himself recognises to a degree) by the fact that historical knowledge is always knowledge from the outside, and historians' understandings never simply replicate the understandings of those who live through events.76 But more than that, the advantage of the ®rst line of response ± the attempt to ®nd rational but non-empirical criteria for distinguishing between equally factual narratives or interpretations ± is that it confronts directly one of the chief underpinnings of postmodernism as a whole, what Peter Munz calls `closed-circle thinking'. This is the view ± Munz traces it from Nietzsche via the late Wittgenstein ± that all discourse is meaningful only within particular communities, and that the discursive rules accepted within these communities are incommensurable. There is no standpoint from which all of these discourses can be assessed and compared. This view, Munz argues, is wrong: Obviously, there is something wrong in the rejection of all and every metadiscourse. If one holds that all knowledge is somebody's discourse and that this fact makes all knowledge discourse sensitive and that no reference is intended, one may well come to the conclusion that there cannot be 73

74 75

76

Òbjectivity and Truth in History', History and Theory: Contemporary Readings, ed. Brian Fay, Philip Pomper and Richard T. Vann (Oxford, 1998), Chapter 17, esp. pp. 338±9. NoeÈll Carrol, Ìnterpretation, History and Narrative', in Fay et al., eds, Chapter 2, esp. pp. 51±2. David Carr, `Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity', in Fay et al., eds, Chapter 7; see also William Dray, On History and Philosophers of History (Leiden, 1989), Chapters 6 and 7. Cf. Ankersmit, `Hayden White's Appeal to the Historians', pp. 63±4.

19


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer metanarratives of which all these discourses are parts. But the ineluctable fact is that while one may have doubts about the viability of metatheories, one cannot have doubts about the metasubstance. We all live in one and the same world; and its separate parts must be consistent with one another and cannot be irreducibly disjointed; or, if they are now disjointed, there must be a reason why they have become so. There may be a vast variety of disconnected parts and they may all be dierent from one another; but the variety cannot be in®nite. For this reason there must be metatheories. The ones we have so far may all be wrong and the true ones may never be found. But the assertion that there can be none and that any metatheory is eo ipso mistaken, must be rejected.77

Applying this to historical narrative returns us to the position sketched out earlier, and indeed takes us to a position not too far from Ankersmit's: that there are rational criteria for choosing between historical narratives, and that each narrative or interpretation can be understood, or its `scope' assessed, in relation to others. From the clash between rival narratives historical insight arises. Thus, we can accept that there is a (greater or lesser) looseness of ®t between `fact' and interpretations without committing ourselves to the view that interpretations are arbitrary or irrational. We can bene®t from the postmodern (or, at least, post-White) analysis of the problematic relationship between the past, the evidence or traces of that past, and the stories told about it, without the need to abandon rationality or objectivity. We can accept much, though not all, of the critique of traditional historical empiricism without supposing that historical interpretations cannot be rationally criticised. In many respects, this position will give us a better understanding of how historians actually work. Factual accuracy ± and research ± remain important; but, assuming accuracy, the real criteria by which we judge interpretations are not empirical or referential. But it would be a mistake to suppose that they must therefore be arbitrary or non-rational (valuedriven). Ideological or moral imperatives are not the only alternatives to empirical validation; though it remains true that we need, from historians not philosophers, a much richer account than we have of the criteria by which they judge between interpretations. IV

Both the historian and the literary critic are concerned with the understanding and interpretation of texts, and their methods will undoubtedly resemble each other far more than they resemble the procedures followed in the natural sciences. When Schleiermacher and Dilthey laid the basis for a general hermeneutic theory appropriate to all the human sciences, they recognised that there is an inescapably historical dimension to all valid acts of interpretation. But the degree to which literature remains a special case 77

Peter Munz, `What's Postmodern, Anyway?', Philosophy and Literature xvi (1992), p. 349.

20


Introduction within the general theory continues to be problematic. Historians and literary critics have much to learn from each others' disciplines, provided, that is, that they recognise that there are important dierences between those disciplines. History can help the literary critic to reconstruct the alien world of assumptions, attitudes and values that circumscribe the range of meanings available to the original readers of a work of literature. It can also help to show that political con¯ict can seldom be reduced to the sort of Manichaean struggle between ruler and subject ± `the monarch versus the rest',78 as one critic puts it ± posited by those who believe that intellectual life can be divided into `true and false discourses'.79 Literary criticism, for its part, can oer more rhetorically alert and nuanced ways of reading the documents, including literary texts, that form the historian's primary source material. Insofar as it gives us access to the ìnner lives' of ®ctional characters, literature is uniquely capable of showing us, however imperfectly, some of the ways in which people may have thought and felt about matters of perennial human interest such as love, sex, religion or politics in periods and cultures remote from our own.80 However, if, instead of listening to the voices from the past, we insist on being ventriloquists, always putting our own values, beliefs and theories into the mouths of past writers, we risk relegating ourselves to that intellectual provincialism that Helen Gardner warned against many years ago. Characteristic of literature also is its ability to give imaginative embodiment to the ethical conundrums that seem to be an inescapable feature of civilised life. Though it might be argued that a sense of human values as inherently con¯ictual is one of the characteristics of great literature of any period, Elizabethan and Stuart drama is exceptional in its dialectical treatment of ethical and political problems. As scholars like Emrys Jones and Joel Altman have shown, early modern writers were trained in an educational system that 78

79

80

Alan Sin®eld, `Macbeth: History, Ideology, and Intellectuals', Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading (Oxford, 1992), p. 98. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (1984; repr. Brighton, 1986), p. 229. While the revisionist history has itself been challenged, even its opponents agree that there was no simple split between government and a putative òpposition' in this period (see Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds, Introduction to Con¯ict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603±1642 (London and New York, 1989), pp. 1±46). It was not until the 1620s that anything like a serious parliamentary opposition began to emerge, and even then there was no opposition `party' in the modern sense of an alternative power base. Though individual members of parliament frequently united to oppose measures that they disapproved of, there was no concerted attempt to unseat the government. In this period, king, parliament and the legal profession all subscribed to a common constitutional theory. Alan Smith describes that theory as à balanced constitution which was founded on certain inalienable rights possessed by both Crown and subjects and safeguarded by the common law' (`Constitutional Ideas and Parliamentary Developments in England 1603±1625', The Reign of James VI and I, ed. Alan G. R. Smith (London, 1973), p. 164). There is a particularly good discussion of this point in Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (London, 1996), p. 480.

21


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer was fundamentally antipathetic to the notion of a single unchallenged way of looking at things.81 Theirs was a pluralist conception of art. But though both historians and literary critics want to reconstruct the past in order to understand it, their ®nal aims are dierent. For the majority of modern historians, the most enduring feature of the historicist legacy is the continuing belief in the importance of accuracy and impartiality. While acknowledging that their own prejudices will inevitably aect their choice of subject matter and the way they construct their narratives, mainstream historians believe that their primary aim should be to cultivate the detachment that is necessary to establish the facts without which no interpretation, whether `committed' or supposedly neutral, can have any credibility. Herbert Butter®eld outlined a position that, while problematic in many particulars, may still be said to capture the attitude of many professional historians: the technical historian . . . may be a Catholic or a Protestant but is willing to jettison for the time being his private views and personal valuations. He performs an act of self-emptying in order to seek the kind of truths which do not go further than the tangible evidence warrants, the kind of truths which the evidence forces us to believe whether we like them or not.82

Where many historians would claim that they are not in the business of passing judgment on the past, it could be argued that judgment is the very essence of literary criticism. A literary critic is, by de®nition krites, a judge, and the àct of self-emptying' to which Butter®eld refers has frequently been seen as undesirable as well as impossible. Literature is functionally de®nable as writing which gives a pleasure which is independent of any truth claim or use value,83 and it has always been the business of critics to say what kind of pleasure a literary text gives them and how it does so. Their aesthetic judgments have sometimes claimed to be free, in principle, of ethical and political considerations, but have rarely been so in practice. But if that much is clear, it is less clear to what extent history should inform the critic's judgments, and whether it makes sense to appeal to trans-historical aesthetic and moral criteria. A version of this problem ± the relationship between the history of political thought and political theory ± has been discussed by the two scholars to whom the subdiscipline of history of political thought owes most. John Pocock and Quentin Skinner have identical (historicist) views of what history is, but appear to dier about the character of its relationship to those disciplines in which value judgments are required. Pocock marks the disciplinary boundary sharply, seeming to be happy to say that political theorists or political philosophers can do whatever they wish with or to the 81

82 83

Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1977); Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley, 1978). Herbert Butter®eld, History and Human Relations (London, 1951), p. 101. See John M. Ellis, The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis (Berkeley, 1974).

22


Introduction text of, say, Hobbes' Leviathan, provided that they do not maintain that what they are doing is history. Skinner, in contrast, insists that, unless political theorists ®rst understand Hobbes historically, they cannot claim to be using or judging his ideas at all. They are merely using his name and work as a peg on which to hang their own ideas. Pocock's view would appear to separate historical interpretation and judgment (or, for that matter, exploitation and use), while Skinner seems to suggest that historical understanding is a necessary precondition for judgment. Only after you have done your history can you know what it is you are judging.84 Skinner's position echoes E. D. Hirsch's famous distinction between `meaning' and `signi®cance'. Unless there is a stable historical meaning, Hirsch argues, there is nothing selfidentical to which dierent critics can give a dierent signi®cance.85 The dierence between Skinner and Pocock, however small it turns out to be in practice, is theoretically crucial and serves to bring into focus the question of the relationship between historicist history and the making of value judgments, a question that has been complicated by recent postmodern historiography. In challenging the canons of historicist practice, some postmodernists have declared a concern to restore the ethical dimensions of history. But it is signi®cant that in doing so they not only blur a distinction that both Skinner and Pocock (as historicists) maintain in their dierent ways, but also appear to reinstate the past as something knowable. Alun Munslow writes: I do believe that history is about ethics and taking up moral positions. Because I have a moral understanding that certain things are right and others wrong, an important feature of my post-empiricist history is that I do not expect my evidence to point me in the direction of objectivised knowledge ± the answer. Answers come from moral reasoning as much as empirical realities. . . . [Y]ou can use moral argument and non-empiricist positions just as well to know something about the past.86 84

85

86

Skinner has explicitly developed his view in relationship to literature. See in particular `Hermeneutics and the Role of History', New Literary History vii (1975), pp. 209±32. For Pocock's views see his exchange with John Gunnell: `Political Theory, History and Myth: A Salute to John Gunnell', Annals of Scholarship i (1980), pp. 3±25; and Pocock, Ìntentions, Traditions and Methods: Some Sounds on a Fog-Horn', Annals of Scholarship i (1980), pp. 57±62. Hirsch writes: `Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the signs represent. Signi®cance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed anything imaginable . . . Signi®cance always implies a relationship, and one unchanging pole of that relationship is what the text means' (Validity in Interpretation, p. 8). Hirsch later revised and complicated his position in `Meaning and Signi®cance Reinterpreted', Critical Inquiry xi (1984), pp. 202±25. `The Postmodern in History: A Response to Professor O'Brien', Institute of Historical Research Reviews in History: Continuous Discourse: History and its Postmodern Critics, http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/alun.html, 8.4.99.

23


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer Literary historicists have always argued that historical knowledge must inform our interpretation of the moral and aesthetic values embedded in works of literature, political treatises, and other documents from the past. The dicult question is whether there is any possibility of appealing to transhistorical principles in our evaluation of those documents. To say that a text `has value' is, of course, to say that it has value for somebody. As Terry Eagleton writes, There is no such thing as a literary work or tradition which is valuable in itself, regardless of what anyone might have said or come to say about it. `Value' is a transitive term: it means whatever is valued by certain people in speci®c situations, according to particular criteria and the light of given purposes.87

Once criteria are agreed, the process of establishing whether particular texts possess value in relation to those criteria can be as rigorous and òbjective' as any form of humanistic scholarship. But are there any privileged criteria which can claim more than a local and historical validity? The history of literary criticism is a record of many attempts, going back to Plato and Aristotle, to propose such criteria. But none has proved logically compelling enough to command general assent for more than a short period of time.88 It is true that to understand a text as literature, as a work of art, inevitably entails certain kinds of value judgments which can then be rationally defended, but it is not so clear that the decision to understand a text in this way is ®rmly grounded in the intrinsic properties of the text itself. As E. D. Hirsch argues, Because an aesthetic approach inheres in the very concept of literature, it appears to be indeed intrinsic. The diculty is that the concept of literature is not itself a privileged category for the works it embraces. Since literary works were not always conceived under a predominantly aesthetic mode, we cannot assume that a stress on aesthetic categories corresponds to the essential nature of individual literary works. Other categories, including instrumental, ethical, and religious ones, may be more correspondent to their individual emphases and intentions . . . The most one can say for aesthetic criticism is that it is intrinsic to the concept of literature, which is not itself an intrinsic concept.89

However, against the failure of theory to establish permanent evaluative criteria we can point to the surprising stability of the literary canon. Writers who have been read with interest long after their death prove remarkably dicult to dislodge from their eminence, as Leavis found with Milton, Shelley, and Dickens. A criticism that has frequently been levelled at New 87 88

89

Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1983), p. 11. The principal criteria which have been proposed at various times in the history of criticism are discussed interestingly by E. D. Hirsch in The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago and London, 1976), Chapter 7, `Privileged Criteria in Evaluation', pp. 110±23. The Aims of Interpretation, pp. 134±5.

24


Introduction Historicism is that, in contradiction of some of its own principles, it has remained mesmerised by Shakespeare to the exclusion of `lesser' writers. The simple fact is that some texts seem to be more interesting than others to subsequent readers, and theory is unable to give a logically unassailable reason why this should necessarily continue to be the case. The most straightforward argument would be that such texts give expressive and signi®cant form to actions, feelings, and ideas which remain interesting to us by virtue of our common human nature. But so powerful is the current of anti-essentialist rhetoric in literary and cultural studies that many liberal intellectuals now ®nd it embarrassing to admit to a belief in something called human nature; to do so, would be to confess to the crassest kind of intellectual naiveteÂ. There is no need for this embarrassment, and critics who have not succumbed entirely to constructionist arguments about human identity can turn for support to one of the most powerful explanatory models in the history of scienti®c thought ± Darwinism.90 Evolutionary theory might seem at ®rst to support the anti-essentialist case, since it views all living things, including human beings, as being caught up in a perpetual process of transformation. But this is a process taking place over millions of years. In the very small period of human history during which literature has been written, evolutionary psychologists would argue that there have been no important changes to our essential nature. As Steven Pinker points out, In all cultures, people tell stories and recite poetry. They joke, laugh, and tease. They sing and dance. They decorate surfaces. They perform rituals. They wonder about the causes of fortune and misfortune, and hold beliefs about the supernatural that contradict everything else they know about the world. They concoct theories of the universe and their place within it. As if that weren't enough of a puzzle, the more biologically frivolous and vain the activity, the more people exalt it. Art, literature, music, wit, religion, and philosophy are thought to be not just pleasurable but noble. They are the mind's best work, what makes life worth living.91

Biologists from Darwin and Wallace to Dawkins and Gould have always disagreed over details of the evolutionary process;92 but with only fundamentalist creationists and postmodern anti-humanists rejecting modern Darwinism, natural selection is now accepted in the scienti®c community as the only known way of accounting for what looks like complex `design' in living 90

91

92

Helena Cronin describes Darwinism as àmongst the most comprehensively successful achievements of the human intellect' (The Ant and the Peacock: Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today (Cambridge, 1991), p. 431). How the Mind Works, p. 521. On universals see also Ernest Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 83±100; Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (Philadelphia, 1991); Pinker, The Language Instinct (Harmondsworth, 1994), pp. 413±15. Cronin, The Ant and the Peacock, passim.

25


Headlam Wells, Burgess, Wymer organisms. As John Barrow puts it, `wherever we ®nd interwoven complexities, we ®nd the hand of time, slowly fashioning adaptations'.93 If our bodies are the product of millions of years of selection, so too are our brains: they bear `the stamp of 400 million years of trial and error, traceable by fossils and molecular homology in nearly unbroken sequence from ®sh to amphibian to reptile to primitive mammal to our immediate primate forerunners'.94 For neo-Darwinians like Pinker, from the political left and right, the problem confronting the modern student of human nature is not whether human universals exist ± they patently do ± but how and why they evolved into their present form. Art is a universal human practice and the literary works of art that remain interesting to us are likely to be those which put into play problems and con¯icts of value which can be called universal to the extent that we, as human beings, are still involved with versions of them. The formally complex and dialectical representation of these con¯icts ± the way they are put into play ± is crucial to the continuing capacity of these texts to draw us into dialogue with them. As John Ellis points out in his recent Literature Lost, far from purveying eternal verities, great writers are much more likely to present dilemmas and challenges than dogmas: `The body of enduring literary and philosophical books of the Western tradition is not a collection of ideas demanding to be believed but a remarkable set of fascinating struggles with problems and issues.'95 Shakespeare is paradigmatic here since the governing principle of his dramaturgy is not à stable, armative, and unitary' world view, but a pattern of irresolvable con¯ict. Àlways the dramatic structure sets up the opposed elements as equally valid, equally desirable, and equally destructive, so that the choice that the play forces the reader to make becomes impossible.'96 It is this ¯uid, dialectical representation of competing values which makes the plays endlessly re-readable and allows them to appear to address us so directly. Ùnderstanding begins,' Gadamer writes, `when something addresses us.'97 If the meaning of a text is no longer thought of as an object which can be `found', like a plum in a pudding, but is more properly conceived of as the outcome of a process, a process of dialogue between text and reader, then there are two quite distinct ways in which literary critics can go about their business. They can respond to the text as if it were addressing them directly, as if its representations of human actions and feelings were designed to provoke a response from them, to engage them in dialogue. 93 94 95

96 97

John D. Barrow, The Artful Universe (Oxford, 1995), p. 82. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge (London, 1998), p. 116. John M. Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 4±5. Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding, p. 12. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, revised edn (London, 1989), p. 299.

26


Introduction Alternatively, they can play the role of eavesdropper and recorder, overhearing the `dialogue' between the text and its original readers and patiently reconstructing a vanished `meaning-event'. The second of these approaches is probably closer to what most modern historians think of themselves as doing, and seems to oer a greater likelihood than the ®rst of yielding something that could be called knowledge. In recent Renaissance literary studies we can ®nd both an historicist approach that is quite close to the sort of interdisciplinary history that an increasing number of historians are doing, and a more `presentist' approach characterised by an interest in discovering intellectual anities between early modern thinking and postmodern theory. Examples of the former are scholars like Martin Butler or David Norbrook, whose work would be dicult to distinguish methodologically from that of historians like David Armitage or Blair Worden who write extensively about literary texts. An example of the latter is Hugh Grady, who writes of Shakespeare: `these texts . . . recapitulate avant la lettre many of the concerns of a group of late nineteenth- and twentiethcentury theories grappling with much the same problematics'.98 An extreme form of the presentist approach to early modern literature is Terence Hawkes' claim that `Like it or not, all we can ever do is use Shakespeare as a powerful element in speci®c ideological strategies.'99 This must mean that for Hawkes there can be no genuine historical knowledge of Shakespeare's plays available to us. The diculty for literary critics is how to move beyond historical reconstruction without falling into such extreme cognitive relativism. While a historicist approach involving the recovery of original meaningevents would seem to be the precondition for understanding and judging texts from the past, this does not in itself satisfy the expectation that literary critics should also be evaluating the texts with which they deal. In allowing a text to address us directly, to bring its structure of con¯icting values up against our own prejudices, we put those prejudices at risk and participate in a potentially endless revision of everything that we value most deeply. We encounter the text `with prejudice'. But the encounter is potentially liberating: the judgments we eventually make may not necessarily accord with the prejudices we started with. The value of this process of dialogue is dependent on a willingness to make judgments, and thereby to bring our values into play and put them at risk. For a literary critic, to seek to avoid judgments is to abdicate critical responsibility. History, therefore, may seem only a starting point for criticism. But if literary critics can combine judgment with historical interpretation, then perhaps there is room for historians to reconsider the place of value judgments in historical writing.100 Shakespeare's Universal Wolf, p. 34. Meaning by Shakespeare (London and New York, 1992), p. 3. 100 Cf. David Harlan, The Degradation of American History (Chicago, 1997); and Keith Jenkins, Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (London, 1999). 98 99

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d:/3wells/burgess.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:6 ± disk/mp

HISTORICISING THE RENAISSANCE



The `Historical Turn' and the Political Culture of Early Modern England: Towards a Postmodern History? GLENN BURGESS

I

I

N one in¯uential formulation, postmodernism has been de®ned às incredulity toward meta-narratives'. These words of Jean-FrancËois Lyotard have had considerable impact on those historians seeking to construct a postmodern history.1 The word ìncredulity' may be wisely chosen in preference to àbandonment', but the words remain the expression of a forlorn hope. `Postmodernism' itself is a word embodying a meta-narrative; and it can be argued that all history is reliant, if not exactly on meta-narratives, then on a `great story', or on `meta-historical frameworks'.2 This is so because of the problematic nature of historical evidence. No historical account can validate itself by direct appeal to the past. At best attempts can be made to show compatibility with the evidence or surviving traces of the past. But, more than that, this evidence needs to be mobilised, and converted into facts. Historians use facts to provide the evidence needed to answer a question. Usually, those facts correspond unproblematically to a real state of aairs, an event; but they are bundled together into patterns, and those patterns are subject to constant revision. This contributes to what Berkhofer calls `the insuciency of facts', by which he means the looseness of ®t pertaining between fact and interpretation. Historical works contain many (unproblematic) factual statements; but their overall interpretation is at best only loosely dependent on these facts. Historians are quite ready to argue that factual error does not always invalidate 1

2

The quotation is from Keith Jenkins, ed., The Postmodern History Reader (London, 1997), p. 36. For its impact see Keith Jenkins, Re-Thinking History (London, 1991), pp. 59±60; also Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London, 1997), pp. 14±15. Robert Berkhofer explores a broadly similar set of ideas, but sharply dierentiates himself from Lyotard in Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge Mass., 1995), pp. 39, and n. 52 (p. 300); 40 n. 54 (pp. 300±1), 44, 224±5. Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story, Chapter 2; Paul Christianson, `Patterns of Historical Interpretation', Objectivity, Method, and Point of View: Essays in the Philosophy of History, ed. W. J. van der Dussen and Lionel Rubino (Leiden, 1991), pp. 47±71.

31


Glenn Burgess an interpretation. Interpretations do not simply ¯ow from facts at all, and for two reasons. There is a circular process by which facts are constructed in the light of historical frameworks. They gain signi®cance and meaning, and are explained, only when used for a purpose. At the highest level, all interpretation of the past will be in part shaped by meta-narratives, by an historian's understanding of the largest historical processes. And secondly the truthfulness of historical writing is not closely related to its factuality, but to the way in which it structures and presents a narrative or analysis. None of this should be taken to suggest (as even Berkhofer tacitly implies) that truthfulness is only a `truth-eect', or that there are not rational principles upon which even the rhetorical and poetic acts of historical interpretation can be judged better or worse for their likelihood of explaining the past; but my point here is to suggest that `postmodern' analyses of history (largely ¯owing from the seminal work of Hayden White) do successfully challenge many of the ways in which working historians think about their discipline. More importantly, a second point: we can concur with Berkhofer's analysis that between the levels of the meta-narrative, the middle-range narrative or analysis, and very particular histories there are reciprocal relationships. He is perhaps too inclined to suggest that the `great story' remains master of all the historian's domain. I would suggest that the great story is itself susceptible to revision as a result of the particular histories it generates. While a hypothetical lone historian might become trapped into a vicious circle, generating only the evidence dictated by his meta-narrative, and therefore unable to challenge it, historians as a group are not. They are able to argue about how they plot and present history, how they construct facts, and which stories their facts might properly ®gure in. Even though it makes sense to say that much historical interpretation is a poetic ®ction, it remains the case that rhetorical analysis actually has the eect of converting rhetoric into content, and thus making it something about which historians can debate. Berkhofer's own rhetorical analysis of two historical works actually proves this by converting even formal, rhetorical subtexts into argumentative propositions.3 He disproves his own claim that expression and content can be separated; and it is because they can't that historical `styles' are not, as many have argued since White, arbitrary or incommensurable. That said, we are still left with an understanding of history that seems to rely upon the interaction of all levels from the meta-narrative to the most particular, and which understands the mobilisation and explanation of `facts' as occurring within frameworks (which usually resemble meta-narratives). The argument owes something to Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigms, but it does not follow Kuhn into the assertion that paradigms are incommensurable.4 If this 3 4

Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story, pp. 80±88. For a critique of Kuhn and `closed-circle thinking' see Peter Munz, Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge (London, 1985).

32


The Political Culture of Early Modern England is so, then there are considerable dangers involved in suggesting that our knowledge of the past might free itself from reliance on meta-narratives. From this perspective we are able to make sense of some central developments in the recent scholarship (beyond the `historical turn') in early modern literature, and that in early modern revisionist or post-revisionist history (on the whole not beyond the linguistic or any other turn). Not all early modern literary scholarship can be considered to involve incredulity towards meta-narratives. Some of it (Cultural Materialism) supports a Marxist meta-narrative of sorts; others, most notably Annabel Patterson in Early Modern Liberalism (Cambridge, 1997), pursue a larger story of a dierent sort. Not even those who might see themselves as postmodernist would necessarily share Lyotard's belief. But, nonetheless, if incredulity towards meta-narratives is expected, it has in fact been almost entirely absent. Even those critics who begin with the anecdote soon slip into using words whose historical application derives from meta-narrative. Often they are used, in seeming innocence, as adjectives: bourgeois (the rise of the bourgeoisie, or of capitalism); absolutist (the clash between absolutism and constitutionalism, or the rise of liberalism), and so on. The words themselves take us to the meta-narratives, even when these are not explicitly endorsed, and it is arguable that the historical vocabulary of many critics is insuciently examined for this tendency. The chief consequence of ìncredulity towards meta-narratives' would often appear to be an incredulity towards all metanarratives except the one that you presuppose yourself. Very often, the only history in recent literary criticism is a privileged meta-narrative. Revisionist and post-revisionist historical scholarship shows an opposite problem. It, too, has rejected meta-narratives, especially that meta-narrative known as `the Whig interpretation of history'. The chief tactic has been to expose the Whig view to the destructively and corrosively powerful test of anachronism.5 The characteristic operating terrain of the anti-Whig is not, in spite of what you will often hear said, the micro-study, but the middle-range narrative or analysis (each given an exemplar by Conrad Russell in The Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford, 1991) and The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990) ). This is precisely the terrain that New Historicism has tended to vacate. The consequence has been that the ànecdote' has been understood only in the context of an unconsidered meta-narrative, which (in the absence of the middle-range) cannot be interrogated. Revisionist history has interrogated meta-narratives with a vengeance, but ± and here's the catch ± it has done so with a set of hyper-traditional methodological assumptions. These have vitiated its success. They have done so because they have prevented revisionist history from developing its own meta-narrative in place of the Whig interpretation. Its strict understanding of what counts as anachronism 5

See Glenn Burgess, Òn Revisionism: an Analysis of Early Stuart Historiography in the 1970s and 1980s', Historical Journal xxxiii (1990), pp. 609±27.

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Glenn Burgess makes the construction of any large-scale narrative almost impossible. Revisionist history (excepting perhaps the work of J. C. D. Clark6) does not, therefore, provide any sense of where early modern England belongs in a longer temporal sequence. Post-revisionist history is little better. It has recognised some of the failings of revisionism, but its own prescriptions are problematic. In one formulation, stress is laid on the role of microhistories in avoiding meta-narrative, but that seems a path likely to lead us to the problems of historicist literary criticism.7 The meta-narrative gets smuggled back in without close inspection. And, indeed, many of the proposed postrevisionist syntheses look suspiciously like pre-revisionist meta-narratives. Important in thinking our way out of these problems will be rethinking that much-used but under-analysed concept of anachronism. A critical historiography ± for historians and critics ± needs to do three things. It needs to understand how meta-narratives guide the constitution of facts; it needs to understand how facts constituted under other frameworks can challenge meta-narratives; and it needs to generate some defensible account of the reliability of the ways in which narratives are constructed by historians. These tasks cannot be performed here; but I do wish to explore some of the relevant problems as they surround one of the most dicult tasks faced by an historian or critic. This is the construction of a context that is intended as a summary of the entire `climate of opinion', òrthodoxy' or `world-view' of a period. Judgments by historians and critics about what is `normal' or `typical' in a period, about what is òrthodox' and what `subversive', abound; but they are usually poorly grounded. One theme of historical debate in the wake of revisionism, for example, has been the assessment of whether early Stuart political culture was characterised by `consensus' or `con¯ict'. But the criteria upon which a decision could be based have never been articulated. What degree of con¯ict is `normal' and what àbnormal'; what is healthy and what pathological? Decisions on these questions about context will shape the way in which one reads texts (and action) in the period; but the decision itself will partly rest on subjective judgment as to how many exceptions suce to qualify a generalisation. In some literary criticism, too, history has been structured as a con¯ict between absolutist ideology and the means for its subversion; yet, by and large, the orthodoxy and coherence of àbsolutism' have been taken for granted. These questions take us to the heart of the historical enterprise. Historians, especially when their focus is on the synchronic rather than the diachronic, 6

7

Clark's own moderate engagement with postmodernism can be witnessed in J. C. D. Clark, `The Strange Death of British History? Re¯ections on Anglo-American Scholarship', Historical Journal xl (1997), pp. 787±809. Peter Lake, `Retrospective: Wentworth's Political World in Revisionist and Post-Revisionist Perspective', The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Straord 1621±1641, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge, 1996), Chapter 11.

34


The Political Culture of Early Modern England contextualise. But how do they construct contexts?8 One recent account gives some useful advice, but it remains necessarily vague: The basic principles of context-building do not seen terribly dicult: (1) Avoid a priori assumptions; (2) eschew single view-point and uniformitarianism; (3) stick to a speci®c site and a narrow time range; (4) expect to have to take change into account if covering more than a very few years; (5) cite primary documents as your evidence and explain principles of selection or exclusion; (6) always remember that any context is a constructed hypothesis; that it is subject to validation; and that both contexts and conclusions drawn in the light of them must remain provisional.9

Contexts are vitally necessary because it is they that make possible the judgment of anachronism. A context suciently complex and particular can serve to reveal both the excessive simplicities of the meta-narratives above it, and to make more dicult the anachronistic understanding of the particulars below it. The revisionist history of early modern England may best be de®ned as the attempt to purge historical accounts of anachronism. Unfortunately, anachronism is a much under-explored concept, though crucial to understanding the nature of the historical discipline. The best recent account spells out some of the problems: Anachronism, however, does not lie in ex post facto knowledge about the past which provides some of the conditions for being able to write historically. It lies in depictions which are structured by that knowledge. And that in turn is historically fatal, principally in so far as they [historical accounts] purport to be descriptions, accounts of rather than accountings for. Even so, it may seem that anachronism is pervasively awkward. The line between avoidable anachronism and the inescapable presuppositions seemingly entailed in our saying anything about the past is not self-evident. Wherever the line is drawn at any one time, the force of all the above forms of anachronism is usually to diminish the serviceability of a given past. While the determination to avoid them helps create a professional austerity in historical writing, some historians may well ®nd such thoroughness intolerable.10

Not only historians, we might add. As Condren himself points out, anachronistic history has remained important to political theorists, because it enables them to engage more directly with thinkers from the past by making them seem more familiar to us than they really are.11 A similar explanation may account for the anachronistic history used and valued by many literary 8

9

10

11

For some provocative distinctions between normal historical contextualisation and postmodern or textualist approaches see Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story, pp. 19±24. Robert D. Hume, Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archaeo-Historicism (Oxford, 1999), p. 71. Conal Condren, `Political Theory and the Problem of Anachronism', Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity, ed. Andrew Vincent (Cambridge, 1997), Chapter 2, pp. 56±7 Ibid., pp. 58±60.

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Glenn Burgess scholars. It is scarcely surprising that, in the name of such direct encounter with the past, some scholars are willing to defend anachronism. Jonathan ReÂe, for example, denounces what he calls `the historicist fallacy' for the way in which it makes all of the past too familiar. (This is, in many ways, an odd understanding of historicism, and runs counter to what many of us would mean in using the term.) But he hits some real targets, especially in his claim that a historicist account rests on circularity, because it `describes the norms which are supposed to have guided the typical cultural producers of the nation and epoch ± but the nation and the epoch and the typicality are all de®ned by the stylistic vocabulary, in a cosy circle of self-con®rming mutuality'. He particularly objects to the contextualist method as it impinges on ourselves: `we treat our own values . . . as if they were not our own responsibility at all, but that of the period in which we live'.12 One might agree with him that it would be a good thing to build à nonhistoricist approach to history . . . respect[ing] the historicity of things, the fact that they take place without bene®t of an enveloping historical plot' ± though recognising that it could be a description of the history written by some English revisionist historians as much as it is a description of ReÂe's exemplar, Foucault. But when ReÂe continues ìn praise of anachronism' we need to pause. He wants to know whether ideas are right or wrong, and he (correctly) tells us that historicism and its avoidance of anachronism cannot tell us the answer. `Machiavelli may of course have thought that negative liberty was logically linked to positive obligation; but it is always possible that he was wrong.' Judge freely of the past, he counsels, `there is no good reason why the thought of one period should not be judged by the standards of another; indeed we would be fools if we did not make use of the best concepts and criteria we can ®nd, regardless of the period they come from'.13 ReÂe's argument exempli®es precisely the attractions of anachronism that Condren identi®es. But there is, surely, a problem. Without some historical reconstruction, including the provision of a context that helps us to understand, how can we know what it is that Machiavelli thought at all? The diculty with the idea of the open encounter with the past is that the past does not exist until reconstructed. If you do not reconstruct it nonanachronistically, you construct only a version of your self, your prejudices, a version of the present. Your enriching encounter with the alien past becomes a cosy self-con®rming ®reside chat with yourself. To encounter the other, you must ®rst grasp the nature of its otherness. And, for historians and for the past, the only way of doing that is to attempt descriptions and accounts that avoid anachronism. Nonetheless, ReÂe has identi®ed one of the major diculties in the enterprise, a problem of circularity arising from what Robert Hume has 12 13

Jonathan ReÂe, `The Vanity of Historicism', New Literary History xxii (1991), pp. 972±3. Ibid., pp. 976, 978±9.

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The Political Culture of Early Modern England called `the constructedness of contexts'.14 It is much the same problem that Berkhofer identi®es with the relationship between ordinary historical narratives or interpretations and `great stories' (as one commentator has noted, the term is used by Berkhofer to mean little more than a sort of context).15 Texts and contexts are, in some senses at least, constructed by scholars, and it is therefore dicult to be sure that the explanatory concept used to help in understanding a text is anything but arbitrary. It is also dicult to be sure that one has avoided ReÂe's problem of circularity. Can you be sure that, when you read James VI and I in the context of an ideology of absolutism, you have not constructed the context with James in mind from the start? Hume's careful methodological advice and practical guidance take care of some of this, but however careful our use of evidence, however diligent our search for more if it, there is a constructedness to what historians do, and there is no perfect guarantee of success. But, of course, no historian needs to be told that. There is however a much under-explored dimension to this whole subject. Too much of what is written about history ± especially by postmodern theorists ± is focused on the individual historian and not enough on the nature of historians' interactions with one another.16 Any context, interpretative framework, or narrative can be compared with others. To the extent that it is true that these entities are not validated by their factual reference, we need to understand the criteria by which we can make these comparisons. This is not the place to provide a discussion that needs a book to itself. Possible criteria might include scope, comprehensiveness, a capacity to explain complexity, elegance, simplicity, and so on. But even more than this, the matter of evidence and testability need not be forgotten either. Scholars working within dierent `frameworks', answering dierent questions, loyal to dierent meta-narratives, will discover dierent aspects of texts and events in the past. It is by comparing the capacity of dierent interpretations to absorb, explain or negate the ®ndings of scholars holding dierent views that we can judge between them, and assess their capacities to explain the evidence. Circularity is a problem when there is one interpretation, but when there are many there is an ability to discover the anomalies in all of them, and to strive for something better. And, at least some of the time, the anomalies in our own interpretations, to which we may initially be blind, are so compellingly evident when they are shown to us, that we are willing to join in this search for something better.

14 15

16

Hume, Reconstructing Contexts, p. 137. Thomas L. Haskell, `Farewell to Fallibilism: Robert Berkhofer's Beyond the Great Story and the Allure of the Postmodern', History and Theory xxxvii (1998), pp. 347±69. An important exception is Ankersmit. See, for example, F. R. Ankersmit, History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley, 1994), p. 41; and, also, by implication, Ankersmit, Òn Historiographical Progress', Storia della Storiogra®a xxii (1992), pp. 103±7.

37


Glenn Burgess II

Much of the recent historical criticism of late-Elizabethan and Jacobean literature is written on the basis of what is, at heart, a very simple understanding of its historical context. It supposes the emergence of an absolutist state, with an absolutist ideology to legitimise itself; and the balancing emergence of ideologies that subvert or challenge, usually covertly, this orthodox ideology. All sorts of variations can be wrought upon this theme ± it might be dehumanised aÁ la Foucault, or thoroughly rehumanised by Annabel Patterson ± but there is recognisably a common historical framework in the writings of many literary scholars.17 On the whole, I don't believe that much of this constructed context, rooted in the pre-revisionist understandings of Whig and Marxist historians, is defensible. One way of attacking it might be to challenge directly the way evidence has been used in its construction. But here I wish to explore another way, one that exempli®es the conclusions of the ®rst section of this chapter. It is possible to ask of this context how adequately it is used to understand the texts that are read against it. I am not trying to demonstrate the superiority of my way of doing things, but to reveal an anomaly that my perspective enables me to see in the interpretations of others. There could be dierent ways of responding to my remarks, ranging from the denial (with reference to the evidence constituted by the text) that the anomalies exist at all, through modi®cations of the interpretative framework, to an eort to ®nd another framework (not necessarily mine) that explains the anomalies. It is from such procedures that the progress of historical understanding occurs. The text that I want brie¯y to look at is Ben Jonson's play Sejanus, His Fall, and to reveal my suspicions of the meta-narrative framework within which that play has frequently been read.18

1 The hermeneutics of censorship

Annabel Patterson's account of Sejanus is a component in her construction of a hermeneutics of censorship. Jonson's play resulted in his being called before the Privy Council, though we know almost nothing about the episode other than the fact that it occurred, and that it had no serious consequences for Jonson (or his play, which was probably performed at court in late 1603 or early 1604, and published in 1605). From consideration of these events, Patterson 17

18

Cf. my earlier account of some of this in Glenn Burgess, `Revisionist History and Shakespeare's Political Context', Shakespeare and History, ed. Holger Klein and Rowland Wymer (Lewiston, 1996), pp. 5±36. For the framework that I have in mind see especially Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, 2nd edn (New York, 1989); and Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Stanford, Calif., 1989). Both discuss Sejanus. More generally see Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sin®eld, eds, Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1994).

38


The Political Culture of Early Modern England derives a number of principles for the interpretation of work written under threat of censorship. One of these is the claim that `[d]isclaimers of topical intention are not to be trusted, and are more likely to be entry codes to precisely the kind of reading they protest against'.19 This seems sensible enough, but there are complexities in the situation of which we ought to be aware. At one point Patterson, referring to the words of Cremutius Cordus in the play comments that `[t]he play speaks . . . to a climate of excessive, even perverse, interpretive ability by the government, and its agents', and she goes on to suggest that it can indeed be seen to address the futile eorts of the state to suppress the truth.20 The diculty here is that the best reading of the evidence would suggest that Sejanus aroused the suspicion of the Earl of Northampton, but not of the king or the court at large. In many respects it was a play appropriate to the Jacobean accession, and did not stand in the way of Jonson's advancement at court.21 Subtly, and not without considerable awareness of the problems in doing so,22 Patterson has located the work in a context of constitutional con¯ict, between the state (and its ideologies) and its opponents. It is not apparent that this is the sort of topicality that Jonson's political meditation had. As both Evans and Worden recognise, it recommends an ethical approach to politics, not one in which constitutional forms ®gure signi®cantly; and, far from possessing a topicality that made it an object of suspicion to some monolithic `state', its ethical politics closely mirror those of James VI and I's own Basilikon Doron.23 If this is so, then we are better o interpreting early modern English culture not as ideologically and institutionally polarised, but as more complexly pluralistic. Jonson's exposure of tyranny and its ways in the reign of Tiberius could become the ideology of òpposition'; but it was as much the ideology of the king himself. We will not do justice to the subtlety of these ideas by reading them in a context of `the state versus the rest'.

2. Public and private

Sejanus is replete with language that explores the interconnections of the public and private realms, and it is in this that the key to much of its political re¯ection lies. This theme leads us to its exploration of the Tacitean and neoStoic political culture associated in part with the Essex circle in the 1590s.24 19

20 21

22 23 24

Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Reading and Writing in Early Modern England (Madison, Wis., 1984), p. 65. Ibid., pp. 60±1. See Robert C. Evans, `Sejanus: Ethics and Politics in the Early Reign of James', Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics and the Jonsonian Canon, ed. Julie Sanders, Kate Chedgzoy and Susan Wiseman (Basingstoke, 1998), Chapter 4; and Blair Worden's contribution to the present volume. Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, pp. 65±6. See especially Evans, `Sejanus: Ethics and Politics', pp. 82±4. See especially Mervyn James, Àt the Crossroads of the Political Culture: The Essex Revolt, 1601', Society Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), Chapter 9.

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Glenn Burgess Neo-Stoic ideals, like Tacitism, were propagated across Europe by the writings of Justus Lipsius; and it has recently been shown that there are close parallels between Jonson's ethical politics and Lipsius' Politica.25 I don't at all wish to deny those, but a rather more complex relationship between the two is apparent from a consideration of the themes of another of Lipsius' works, and their reworking in Sejanus. The Germanicans, opponents of Sejanus and (more obliquely) of his master Tiberius, were not proponents of resistance to established authority. We might con®rm this with the words of Sabinus at his trial: 'Twere better stay In lasting darkness, and despair of day. No ill should force the subject undertake Against the sovereign, more than hell should make The gods do wrong. A good man should, and must Sit rather down with loss, than rise unjust. Though, when the Romans ®rst did yield themselves To one man's power, they did not mean their lives, Their fortunes, and their liberties should be His absolute spoil, as purchased by the sword. (IV.161±70, pp. 174±5).26

The analysis matches exactly James VI's exegesis of 1 Samuel 8 in his True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), in which James pointed out that, though the people of Israel, in asking God for a king, had not sought to be ruled by a tyrant, they nonetheless had no remedy should they end up oppressed by their kings ± no remedy except in God himself. Lepidus transmuted Sabinus' non-resistance into explicitly neo-Stoic terms. Arruntius had referred to the àrts' of a `good patriot'. Arts Arruntius? None, but the plain and passive fortitude, To suer, and be silent; never stretch These arms against the torrent; live at home, With my own thoughts, and innocence about me, Not tempting the wolves' jaws: these are my arts. (IV. 293±8, p. 179)

Justus Lipsius himself scarcely put it better. Neo-Stoic passivity could be erected upon a sharp distinction between public and private. Lipsius' own Two Bookes of Constancie, which had been translated into English in 1594, does not go quite this far, but it does argue that the `publike euills are not so grieuous as they seeme to bee' and suggests ways of minimising them. It advised not quite total passivity, but rather a biding of one's time. 25 26

Evans, `Sejanus: Ethics and Politics', pp. 86±8. References are to the text in Ben Jonson, Five Plays, ed. G. A. Wilkes (Oxford, 1988).

40


The Political Culture of Early Modern England But if thou see by certain and infallible tokens that the fatall alteration of the State is come, with mee this saying shall preuaile, Not to ®ght against God. And in such a case I would alleadge the example of Solon: for when Pisistratus had brought the citie of Athens vnder his obedience, Solon seeing that all his labour for defence of the common libertie was in vaine, came and laide downe his sword and Target before the Senate doores, crying out, O my countrie, I haue by word and deede defended thee whiles I could. And so going home he was quiet afterwards. So do thou: yeeld to God, and give place to the time. And if thou be a good citizen or common-wealths-man preserue thy selfe to a better and happier end. The liberty which now is lost, may be recouered again hereafter; and thy decayed country may ¯ourish in another age: why doest thou loose al courage & fal into dispair?27

In the play, too, the `private' provided a space in which the wise man could cultivate virtue in tranquillity ± a `going home' to be `quiet'. Now, it is notable that Arruntius' reply to Lepidus constitutes no straightforward endorsement of neo-Stoicism but a critique of neo-Stoic politics. It was a critique that relied upon exploding whatever comfort might be drawn from a distinction between the private and the public sphere. I would begin to study 'em, if I thought They would secure me. May I pray to Jove, In secret, and be safe? Aye, or aloud? With open wishes? So I do not mention Tiberius or Sejanus? Yes, I must, If I speak out. 'Tis hard, that. May I think, And not be racked? What danger is't to dream? Talk in one's sleep? Or cough? Who knows the law? May I shake my head, without a comment? Say It rain, or it holds up, and not be thrown Upon the Gemonies? These now are things, Whereon men's fortune, yea their fate depends. Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear. No place, no day, no hour, we see, is free ± Not our religious, and most sacred times ± From some one kind of cruelty: all matter, Nay all occasion pleaseth. Madmen's rage, The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing, Jesters' simplicity, all, all is good That can be catched at. Nor is now the event Of any person, or for any crime, To be expected; for, 'tis always one: Death, with some little dierence of place, Or time ± (IV.299±322, pp. 179±80) 27

Justus Lipsius, Two Bookes of Constancie, ed. Rudolf Kirk (New Brunswick, N.J., 1939), pp. 178, 127.

41


Glenn Burgess In the face of tyranny, there was no private space of refuge. Tyrants made public acts that were in themselves private, and thus broke down the distinction. On this analysis, neo-Stoic politics must be either too optimistic (because holding out the hope of a tranquil withdrawal from the public world that can never be achieved), or too passive (in assuming that there is a satisfactory practical alternative to political engagement). But which is it? Neither seems likely for Jonson, the ®rst because it seems to abandon too much, the latter because it cuts across his own likely commitment to nonresistance. The play leaves us here with an ethical dilemma not with a doctrine or a neat answer. But it is possible to go further. The language of public and private was crucial to the portrayal of Tiberius himself in two ways. His dependence on that vice so central to the Tacitean critique of corrupted royal courts, dissimulation, led him to speak in public the `commonwealth' language of civic humanism, while rejecting it in private. He exempli®es a feature of Jonson's dramatic approach to ethical politics identi®ed by Blair Worden: virtuous language is put in the mouths of vicious characters.28 The vicious Tiberius is (in public) the most consistent and thorough spokesman in the play for the òld' commonwealth or civic-humanist values of service to the public good. His conception of the royal oce is one that asserts continuity of values between republic and empire, for the emperor owed his oce to the choice of the citizens and existed to serve them. Tiberius claimed to be himself a good citizen. Of course, from the beginning we are alerted to the dissimulation that made this possible. `Rarely dissembled', comments Cordus on one speech; even better was Arruntius' delicious `Prince-like, to the life' (I.395, p. 122). The emperor condemned himself. But there is another relevance to the public / private language of the play. The chief way in which Sejanus is able to manipulate Tiberius is by providing him with private pleasure. Tiberius' return from his private pleasure to his public oce precipitates the fall of Sejanus, as the Emperor acts for once his proper role, and performs actions that match his words. It is in this context that we again ®nd Arruntius a critic rather than a participant in the values of the Germanican circle. Lepidus, for example, accepts a version of the doctrine that the king can do no wrong ± however evil he may be, he must be beyond direct reproach. Arruntius had been speculating on the degree to which Tiberius was aware of the dangerous monster he had created in Sejanus. Lepidus, worried by his drift, interjects with `the thought he is our prince'. To this Arruntius replies in a bitter speech attacking Tiberius: `He is our monster: forfeited to vice / So far, as no racked virtue can redeem him. / His loathed person fouler than all crimes: / An emperor only in his lusts. Retired, / From all regard of his own fame, or Rome's' (IV.373±7, p. 182). Again, he openly 28

Blair Worden, `Politics in Catiline: Jonson and His Sources', Re-Presenting Ben Jonson: Text, History, Performance, ed. Martin Butler (Basingstoke, 1999), Chapter 8, e.g. at p. 159.

42


The Political Culture of Early Modern England breaks down distinction between private and public, and in doing so re¯ects the way in which Tiberius' actions have done the same: Tiberius is at his most depraved in private. Indeed, it is part of the strategy and ambition of Sejanus to con®ne Tiberius to the private sphere by delighting and seducing him with its pleasures, in a corrupt and ghastly inversion of the ideal of Stoic withdrawal. More than that, though, Arruntius is unequivocal in his condemnation of the emperor, and will have no truck with the conventional languages of loyalty and respect for the princely oce. What is endorsed in this play is a language of service to the commonwealth, a language of civic humanism or public service. The play makes dramatic material of the inability of any of its characters to ful®l the requirements of that language. All understand it, but the Germanicans despair of its applicability, Tiberius hypocritically speaks it while preferring his private vices; Sejanus serves his own self, and Arruntius can do no more than expose the folly of others. The best hope ± feeble though it is ± held out by the play is the hope of history teaching by examples. Whatever the corruption of the present, its story recounted in the future will warn others against corruption. Again it is Arruntius, commenting on the condemnation of Cordus' work, who makes the point: `ridiculous / Appears the Senate's brainless diligence, / Who think they can, with present power, extinguish / The memory of all succeeding times!' (III.471±4, p. 161). The play cannot be read as either an absolutist ideology or its opposite. There is no reason why Jonson's exposure of the moral corruption and linguistic exhaustion of politics under tyranny should be `subversive' in the eyes of absolutists or anyone else. Most historians would now distinguish between absolute monarchy and tyranny in moral terms: absolute monarchs respect the moral demands of nature, whereas tyrants do not. There was no ideological position in the early Stuart period that had any vested interest in defending tyrants. Jonson's politics are an exploration of corruption, of those who betray the public good for the private, but that is not a `party' position. The political culture, the context, that makes sense of this play is not one in which the `rise of absolutism' ®gures; and in ®tting Jonson's politics into such a context, we mistakenly convert its ethical concerns into constitutional ones.

3 Providence and fate

There is another dimension of the play that has been much discussed, and which helps us to understand its character. It has been suggested by Dollimore that the play's Tacitean political `realism' sits uneasily and contradictorily within its providentialist frame ± until, that is, Jonson loses his nerve in the last act.29 This seems too simple a reading. The two perspectives are not in contradiction. Much suspicion has attached to Jonson's declaration in the 29

Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, pp. 134±8.

43


Glenn Burgess 1605 Àrgument' that prefaced the play that it was, conventionally enough, àdvanced as a mark of terror to all traitors and treasons; to show how just the heavens are in pouring and thundering down a weighty vengeance on their unnatural intents'. We should certainly be wary of assuming that this trite lesson exhausts the meaning of the play; but there is nonetheless little reason to suppose that its Tacitean realism in any way subverted the providential argument. It is one point of Sejanus to reveal the delusions of those who think that realpolitik can be the key to worldly success. Sejanus may believe that he is the master of his own fate; but, of course, the play eventually tells us otherwise. It is not just that Jonson had no alternative but to return to a conventional providentialism. Rather, the play portrays the victory of providence, acting mysteriously through unworthy second causes (notably the slighted Macro, who is the visible agent of Sejanus' undoing, and Tiberius himself). The moral disjunction was expressed in the comment of Lepidus, re¯ecting the way in which the crowd had fallen upon Sejanus after his fall: `They follow fortune, and hate men condemned, / Guilty, or not' (V.788±90, p. 115). Fortune, good or ill, was no moral guide. Jonson seems to have been making two points in the play. First providence worked to bring vengeance, but it was an essentially mysterious process. No amount of realpolitik could undermine its role, because providence naturally operated through some unlikely agents. At this level the play certainly supported Jonson's trite moral. This was not, though, the most interesting or dramatically important aspect of the subject. A second point is more interesting. Through the play, Jonson even-handedly exposes the folly of all who confuse providence and morality by invoking fortune in their own defence. Human beings are responsible for their own choices; they can blame neither God nor fate. They cannot escape responsibility by invoking non-human forces. Success does not justify Sejanus, though he thinks it does; but equally the bloodiness of his demise does not altogether undermine its justice. As Arruntius has made clear, the fatalism of the neo-Stoic Germanicans is not acceptable, is fatally ¯awed, even though it is impossible to say quite how fate should be mastered. One passage seems to help by bringing together both of the themes that I have touched upon ± the nature and implications of the play's providentialism, and the direction of its political orientation ± and it appears to make things even more puzzling. The words are those of Lepidus: Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom: we have placed thee so high, By fond belief in thy felicity. (V.723±5, p. 213)

One critic has commented: `This stoical scorn is curiously consistent with certain attitudes of Jonson's Sejanus and equally inconsistent with the 44


The Political Culture of Early Modern England commonplaces of Arruntius and his companions.'30 Does this mean that fortune or providence do not rule men's aairs unless men allow them to, which is what this critic's comment seems to imply? I think not. The lines immediately preceding were a warning to those whom fortune favours not to forget that it is `When she doth ¯atter, that she comes to prey'. The passage then suggests the importance of the Stoic virtues of fortitude and constancy, which take away the power of fortune to aect a wise man's felicity. There is no covert incitement to a life of civic virtue that some have discerned here. And for that reason, Boughner, with whom I began this point, is wrong: it is not Sejanus, who believes that he can make his own fate, but his opponents (excluding Arruntius) who are the exponents of a view that required submission to fate. Sejanus committed one fault, in believing that he could master his fate and beat providence; the Germanicans committed the converse fault, in believing that some form of fortitude could take the sting out of fate. Fate might not be controlled, but its consequences could be numbed. The Germanicans and Sejanus are thus equally guilty of moral confusion, of a refusal to take responsibility for the public and their own participation in its well-being. We ought to link this passage with the ®nal exchange in the play: Lepidus. How fortune plies her sports, when she begins To practise 'em! Pursues, continues, adds! Confounds, with varying her impassioned moods! Arruntius. Dost thou hope, Fortune, to redeem thy crimes? To make amends, for thy ill-placed favours, With these strange punishments? Forbear, you things, That stand upon the pinnacles of state, To boast your slippery height; when you do fall, You pash yourselves in pieces, ne'er to rise: And he that lends you pity is not wise. Terentius. Let this example move the insolent man, Not to grow proud, and careless of the gods: It is an odious wisdom, to blaspheme, Much more to slighten, or deny their powers. For, whom the morning saw so great, and high, Thus low, and little, `fore the even doth lie. (V.881±93, p. 218)

This neatly encapsulates a variety of responses to fortune: Lepidus, too respectful of fortune; Arruntius, ready to charge it with crimes and unwilling to identify it with morality; and Terentius, who had been a supporter of Sejanus, most openly drawing the moral commonplace that the play ± according to its own Argument (a passage cut from the 1616 folio) ± was written to inculcate. Judged by its close, Sejanus explores the diversity of human responses to fortune, good and ill. It suggests that presuming upon 30

D. C. Boughner, `Junvenal, Horace, and Sejanus', Modern Language Notes lxxv (1960), p. 547.

45


Glenn Burgess good fortune is dangerous, generating the seeds of disaster. But, through Arruntius, it also suggests that what we might call the `conventional' Germanican view is as dangerous as that of Sejanus. While the latter might become careless as a result of too much good fortune, the former have become politically impotent, and are as little service to the public good. Fatalism is their sin. They have supposed, like Lipsius, that they can wait for the wheel of fate to produce circumstances more propitious for public liberty. Arruntius might have no answers; but he poses a question ± what do you do now? And he makes it clear that the neo-Stoic response to a world viewed in Tacitean terms is not a valid response. It was Arruntius, early in the play, who gave the most overtly political expression to the Germanicans' love of the liberty that had ¯ourished in Rome's past: where now is Cato, Òr where the constant Brutus that . . . did strike so brave a blow into the monster's heart' (I.89±95, p. 112)? The virtue of man has declined: `we are base, / Poor and degenerate from the exalted strain / Of our great fathers' (I.87±9, p. 112). III

Sejanus has no simple political message. It explores an ethical politics of commitment to the public good, and the corruption of a world in which no one practises such a politics. It endorses no ìdeology', but it explores the diculties of human response in a world that is not fully within human control. Ambitious realpolitik and Stoic withdrawal are two sides of the same thing. We are left with questions and not answers. What sort of political culture, what context, makes sense of this play. What sort of world does it inhabit? Its complexities both of topicality and of content seem to me to raise serious questions about any view that would emphasise a world of absolutism, of constitutional con¯ict, or of polarisation. Jonson's play seems belittled by such a context, and in its turn invites us to reconsider how we should construct contexts. Robert Evans has summarised many of the contextual questions that have been asked of the play,31 and it is striking how many of them seem irrelevant to its core concerns. It may be that the reason for this is simply that the questions make the mistake of treating a play as if it were primarily intended to advance a political doctrine, and are blind to the possibility that doctrinal ambiguity might make better theatre. But another possibility is that Sejanus has been treated like much late-Elizabethan and Jacobean political writing, as if it ®ts into a context primarily structured by the opposition between absolutist and constitutionalist politics.32 It is perhaps indicative of the diculty in doing this that it has not been altogether obvious which side of the divide it should be placed on. 31 32

Evans, `Sejanus: Ethics and Politics', pp. 73±4. See Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven, 1996).

46


The Political Culture of Early Modern England Reading Sejanus from a position of incredulity to the meta-narrative constituted by the `liberal' and constitutionalist struggle against absolutism, as I have implicitly done, generates an awareness of anomalies in the metanarrative itself. The chief one that is apparent here involves the subject of tyranny. The play can only be enlisted into a pro- or anti-absolutist camp if its analysis of tyranny can be translated into an analysis of (absolute) monarchy. But this seems inherently illicit. The exploration of the dangers of tyranny, in Sejanus and more generally, is often made to serve as a party identi®er, but there was no party in favour of tyranny. The complexities of the situation are exposed in both the similarities between Jonson's views and those of James VI and I, and in the fact that the play, notwithstanding Northampton's eorts, seems to have had approval at court. It explores the corruptions that follow from tyranny and from political fatalism ± and it has a context in the neoStoicism of the 1590s ± but it does this within a complex ambiguity that resists ideological labelling. Only if we too narrowly and rigidly de®ne an òrthodoxy' could Sejanus be said either to endorse or to challenge it. Other aspects of the play, notably its exploration of both classical humanist and Lipsian political languages are also instructive, for Sejanus should make us wary of any temptation to arrange these languages into camps, pro- and antiabsolutist. The political culture of early modern England was complex and pluralistic. It was often open-ended, as well, and capable of exploring the ethical dilemmas of political life without falling into sharply de®ned ideological polarities. In writing this chapter from a `revisionist' perspective, it seems to me that I am much closer to the postmodernist suspicion of meta-narratives than many recent critics. It is from this suspicion ± this anti-Whiggery ± that I might reach my understanding of Jonson's play. The concept of àbsolutism', as it is used by many scholars, seems to me a product of the period after the 1640s. To use such a construct in contextualisation is to invite anachronistic judgment. Any claim that Jonson in this play supported or challenged àbsolutism' would be equally anachronistic on this view. If the conclusions that I reach about the play can be defended in relation to its text ± and that is for others to judge ± this should, in turn, encourage some incredulity in others to the anachronistic meta-narratives they assume. And then the conversation can continue.

47

d:/3wells/stewart.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:9 ± disk/mp

`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed STANLEY STEWART

I

I

N remarks trumpeted as `Last Words on George Herbert', William Empson declares, Ì hope it is now clear that I claim to have a great deal of knowledge about Herbert.'1 Perhaps these apocalyptic `last words' are not so remarkable, coming from a critic whom the New Historicist hails as `Modernism's Einstein among literary critics'.2 But as they ring with the clarion tones of logical empiricism, they do not sort well with New Historicist antagonism to traditional norms of òbjectivity' and `reason'. If `seventh-type Empsonian ambiguity is the literary-critical equivalent of quantum mechanics' (Bate, Genius, p. 315), why shouldn't Empson have the `last words on George Herbert'? Indeed, the hint of ®nality in these `last words' makes one thing `clear'. In the end, l'enfant terrible of New Criticism holds fast to the `quantum-mechanics' predilection of his critical method for psychoanalytic hypotheses: Ì claim to know . . . what was going on in Herbert's mind when he wrote [the poem in question], without his knowledge and against his intention . . .' I will be examining assumptions indicated here only by ellipses, but ®rst I want to call attention to the way in which Empson's seventh type of ambiguity poses the question of historical interpretation at stake in his famous exchange with Rosemond Tuve. For the methodological issue dividing historical from impressionist criticism (whether the latter is known as New Criticism, formalism, close reading, reader response, thick description, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, or deconstruction) has not gone away. Far from it. New Historicist adulation of Empson establishes him as one of that sodality's enabling ®gures. Hence, their rapt inattention to the dangers of hyperbole in characterising their progenitor: Empson is 1

2

William Empson, `Last Words on George Herbert: The Curse of Adam and the Crown of Thorns', Times Literary Supplement (31 December 1993), p. 12; hereafter `Last words' in text. I regularise i/j, u/v, expand contractions, eliminate meaningless italics, capitals and small capitals. Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (New York, 1998), p. 316.

48


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed their `critical guide',3 `most original',4 `brilliant',5 `typically brilliant',6 `most brilliant'.7 His literary writings are the critical equivalent of Heisenberg and Einstein combined. Despite the claim that political correctness in the humanities has undermined Western institutions, the pernicious eects of partisan posturing in literary criticism have been mostly harmless. But when New Historicists say that Èmpson is a better guide to historical criticism than Tuve' (Strier, Resistant Structures, p. 21), the meaning of such terms as `history,' `criticism' and `guidance' needs clari®cation. Ì,' says Empson, `claim to know not only the traditional background of Herbert's poem . . . but also what was going on in Herbert's mind while he wrote it, without his knowledge and against his intention' (`Last Words', p. 12). Like Freud, Empson ranks high in the New Historicism's pantheon of `writers who can help articulate those strategies' of `paradox or contradiction'8 that underlie literary interest. Hence, his `brilliant', ìngenious reading' of Herbert's `The Sacri®ce'9 makes Empson à better guide to historical criticism than Tuve', because he supplants tradition's èither / or' with a Heisenberg-principle of `both / and'. At least that is New Historicism's brief for Empson's victory over Tuve. And yet, with a con®dence as magisterial as Empson's, Tuve insists that literary critics cannot know such things as what went on in Herbert's mind while he wrote `The Sacri®ce'. Ìf she says that I cannot know such things,' Empson writes, Ì answer that that is what critics do, and that she too ought to have ``la clef de cette parade sauvage'' ' (`Last Words', p. 12). And so it goes to the present day. It is no coincidence that the Empson±Tuve debate concerns the very type of ambiguity that the Empson enthusiast compares with Einstein's theory of relativity. Speci®cally, the argument concerns Empson's reading of these lines from `The Sacri®ce':

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Stanford, 1992), p. 152. Christopher Norris, `The Importance of Empson (II): The Criticism', Essays in Criticism xxxv (1985), p. 42. See, for instance, David Norbrook, `The Monarchy of Wit and the Republic of Letters: Donne's Politics', Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory and Seventeenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katharine Eisaman Maus (Chicago, 1990), pp. 3±36, esp. p. 14; and Goldberg, p. 169. Richard Strier, Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (Berkeley, 1995), p. 19. Paul Alpers, Èmpson on Pastoral', New Literary History x (1978), p. 101. Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katherine Eisaman Maus, Ìntroduction', Soliciting Interpretation, p. xi; they `®nd most consistently helpful those writers who can help articulate those strategies [of paradox or contradiction, of management and containment]: Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Freud, Derrida, Lacan, Irigaray'. Michael C. Schoenfeldt, Prayer and Praise: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship (Chicago, 1991), pp. 286, n. 52, 294, n. 56, respectively.

49


Stanley Stewart O all ye who passe by, behold and see; Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree; The tree of life to all, but onely me: Was ever grief [like mine?] 10

Empson asserts: A He [Christ] climbs the tree to repay what was stolen, as if he was putting the apple back; but the phrase in itself implies rather that he was doing the stealing, that so far from sinless he is Prometheus and the criminal.11

Referring to Proposition A, Tuve registers this still controversial rejoinder:12 B It [the stanza in question] could not have implied this to Herbert (insofar as there is certainty in mortal aairs).13

Clearly, Empson's talk about `knowledge' and Tuve's reference to `certainty' indicate at least one shared assumption: `to know' something or `to be certain' about it alike suggest resolution of doubt in the matter. As one critic puts it, Empson's alleged `both / and' relativism notwithstanding, both Tuve and Empson `moved to attack the other on principle' (Strier, Resistant Strucures, p. 17). In the context of the mutually exclusive claims of Propositions A and B, statements of belief and doubt concern methodology, but also dierent notions of the normative impact of metaphor in criticism, the ®gure of depth, for instance. Let me explain. Psychoanalytic critics think of unconscious, repressed feelings and attitudes, which lie deeply hidden, as the wellspring of the creative process. In contrast, historical critics are sceptical of the ®gure of depth required by this notion of unconscious literary expression. Thus, Tuve agrees with Empson, that `the poet concerned should be the centre of the inquiry' (Tuve, A Reading, p. 19), but her conception of the critical enterprise diers so from his that it seems as if the two are reading dierent poems. For her, in order to place `The Sacri®ce' àt the centre of the inquiry', it will not help to inquire into motives of which Herbert was unaware. Rather, the focus should be on liturgical, theological and literary contexts that were part of Herbert's daily life as an Anglican priest. These include: the Improperia or Reproaches of Good Friday (p. 24), `many moving and beautiful Middle English poems' (p. 26) on the Passion, Christian iconography, Books of Hours, stained glass windows, the Golden 10

11 12

13

The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford, 1953), p. 33; all citations from Herbert in my text will be from this edition, hereafter Herbert in text. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York, 1931), p. 294. For a recent account of the currency of the debate between Empson and Tuve, as well as an indication of the importance of that debate to political partisanship today, see Strier, Resistant Structures, pp. 13±26. Rosemond Tuve, A Reading of George Herbert (London, 1952), p. 31.

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`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed Legend, Meditations on the Passion of pseudo-Augustine (p. 31), the Biblia Pauperum, the Sarum Missal (p. 43), the Cursur Mundi (p. 45), the Cathemerinon of Prudentius, sermons in Latin and English, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Psalter. For Empson and his New Historicist scions, knowledge is not derived from such archival research, which they dismiss as òld' or àntiquarian' or `traditional' or `conservative or `positivist'. Name-calling aside, if the aim of the critical enterprise is to learn `what was going on in Herbert's mind while he wrote [`The Sacri®ce'], without his knowledge and against his intention', then Tuve's archival method does fall short. Empson thinks it is better to perceive the mental process of creation in Herbert's mind as he composed poetry, so he invites Tuve to follow suit: `that is what critics do'. How Tuve would learn this skill, or know when she had acquired it, Empson doesn't say. Suppose, however, that we ®nd a way to convince ourselves that we know what was going on in Herbert's head while he wrote `The Sacri®ce', without his knowledge, and against his intention. We do this, say, by developing an interdisciplinary programme between the Department of Literature and the School of Pharmacology. Then, in de®ance of the mandarins of historical criticism, we explain the con®dence we have in our literary judgment as a bene®t of the medication employed in the experiment. Of course, we would still need to demonstrate that the audience shares our credulity. But say we inject them with the same substance that induced our access to Herbert's mental process. Can we expect agreement with our perception? It turns out that the chemicals produce side eects, namely, a range of proclamations running, with intermediate cases, from Proposition A to B. Would it be right to launch another study of how the chemicals used in the experiment interact with critics of dierent ages, body weights, genders, races, and dietary predilections? Or would we suspect that we were asking the wrong question, and looking for answers in the wrong place? If by accident we get o the elevator on the wrong ¯oor of the library, we reorient ourselves. Pharmacology is a worthy ®eld of study, but if we are trying to resolve the documentary dispute between Tuve and Empson, we look for the most relevant material, not because we think our cataloguing system expresses an immutable natural order. Sometimes we pull the wrong books from the shelves, but this doesn't mean that we resort to random selection as our method of information retrieval. As Wittgenstein observes, `when we have put two books together in their right order we have not thereby put them in their ®nal places'.14 If we are curious about Herbert's `Sacri®ce,' and wish to pursue archival research into the language of that poem in the context of Herbert's time and vocation, does it make sense to ask directions to that section in the library housing the works of Sigmund Freud? 14

Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford, 1958), p. 45.

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Stanley Stewart II

Critical methods do not occur in an epistemological or ethical vacuum. When Empson talks about what was going on in Herbert's mind as he wrote poetry, he tells us more about his readings in Freud and Frazer than in Renaissance authors. It is from modern authors that he heard of meanings that were not a matter of linguistic expression in a particular historical context, but of unconscious urges and resentments lurking beneath the surface of language. His dierence with Tuve begins and ends in the seriousness with which he takes their thinking: The double meanings that struck me as really peculiar, worth putting into my seventh type of ambiguity (where `the total eect is to show a fundamental division in the author's mind'), are the ones where Christ can appear to be rejoicing in the extremity of the torments that his enemies are incurring; and they seem to me to crop up too often and too ingeniously to be regarded as mere failures in writing, not intended by any part of the author's mind. That is what I meant by what Rosemond Tuve ®nds a merely `fake' picture (p. 71) of the beautiful dry purity of George Herbert as like a cricket in the sunshine, whose habits are more savage than they seem; I think that the intelligence he was applying to the construction of these conceits was driving him near a criticism of the whole topic. (Empson, `Last Words', p. 12)

Persuaded by a belief in unconscious motives, Empson thinks that Herbert cannot celebrate the liturgy for Good Friday as a solemn enactment of the mystery at the heart of his holy oce as a priest, because, without knowing it, he inclined toward à criticism of the whole topic'. At bottom, Herbert's doubt concerning so cruel a deity looks much like Empson's. To borrow Wittgenstein's ®gure, a picture drawn from psychoanalysis of à fundamental division in the author's mind' holds him captive (Empson, Seven Types, p. 12). Since the motif of Christ's `rejoicing in the extremity of the torments that his enemies are incurring' occurs too frequently to be `not intended by any part of the author's mind', it must be that Herbert's unconscious mind drove `him near a criticism of the whole topic' of Christianity. Tuve and historical critics look at Herbert's The Temple and hear the voice of òne of [the Church of England's] devoutest members'.15 Empson and the New Historicists consider talk like this evidence of a critical outlook mired in seventeenth-century hagiography. The problem is that, while demystifying one category, Empson rei®es another. Why would anyone think that Herbert, devotional poet and Anglican priest, was in some `part of [his] mind' engaged in à strategy of management and containment' (Harvey and Maus, Soliciting Interpretation, p. xi) of the `paradoxes' of Christian doctrine? Empson and 15

George Ryley, Mr. Herbert's Temple and Church Militant Explained and Improved (Bodleian MS Rawl. D.199), ed. Maureen Boyd and Cedric C. Brown (New York, 1987), p. 670.

52


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed New Historicists resort to personal confession for an apologetics of subjectivism (aka `reader response,' etc.): Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a Christian, because the belief in a Supreme God who takes pleasure in giving torture seems to me ineradicable from the religion, and I ®nd diculty in imagining the minds of good men who accept it. (Empson, `Last Words', p. 12)

In this confessional mode, Empson's declaration of unbelief emerges as the product of Christianity's pernicious attachment to a sadistic deity. Since Christianity is the agent of Empson's unbelief, we know how he `knows' the cause of his unbelief with the same surety that he `knows' Herbert's repressed resistance to the established faith. This judgment depends on conviction that either `good men' share Empson's anti-Christian sentiments, or they have been hoodwinked into accepting the cruelty of a `Supreme Being' ìneradicable from the religion'. If, ìn some part of [his] mind', Herbert was a Christian, he must have believed in a `Supreme God who takes pleasure in giving torture'. But, happily, beneath this surface signi®cance, Herbert was, if only unconsciously, a proper heretic, serving the Church of England, which, Empson oddly declares, `greatly to its honor . . . determined to hold Christianity at bay',16 especially in its `neolithic craving for human sacri®ce' (p. 379). (Unfortunately for Empson, by the same logic, we could say that beneath the veneer of anti-Christian polemic in his `last words' lies a profound, but unconscious, armation of the Apostles' Creed.) We see, then, a similarity in method here between Empson's debunking of Herbert's purported beliefs and the New Historicist critique of `The Parson's Charity' as an expression of sadistic authoritarianism. They have been reading Michel Foucault instead of Thomas aÁ Kempis. With a candour atypical of Foucaultians, Empson recognises and responds to Tuve's suspicion that his hostility to Herbert's beliefs and practices vitiates his literary understanding: C But I do not think that this [anti-Christian sentiment] distracts from my judgment when I feel that Herbert was far more conscious of the monstrosity than a composer of medieval liturgy, and that that is why their styles make such a puzzlingly dierent impression while apparently using the same themes and techniques. (Empson, `Last Words', p. 12)

Not only does the issue between Empson and Tuve devolve into contested understandings of Christian practices no less than of Christian iconography, but Proposition C depends wholly on Empson's belief that his unbelief in no way aects his descriptive or evaluative competence in the contested case. But 16

William Empson, `Donne The Space Man', The Kenyon Review xix (1957), p. 378.

53


Stanley Stewart this is precisely the matter at issue in deciding between Propositions A and B. Coleridge held that, to understand Herbert, one must be `Christian, and both a zealous and an orthodox, both a devout and a devotional, Christian'.17 Since Coleridge was neither of these, he was confessing that other critics were better prepared than he to understand Herbert's work. In eect, Coleridge's remark is a proleptic version of that school of New Historicism called ìdentity politics', which holds that `being' and `knowing' are pretty much the same thing. Hence, membership in a certain group is a necessary condition of understanding literary works by or about members of that group. Empson and latter-day proponents of the `hermeneutics of suspicion' proceed on a Romantic reversal of this Coleridgean assumption: to understand Herbert one must be, not only not a Christian, but certainly and devoutly so.18 In much the same way, New Historicists claim to hold themselves aloof `from the belief structures of the writers they discuss' (Harvey and Maus, Soliciting Interpretation, p. xi), preferring to demystify rather than celebrate the values of the text in question, in the case in point, Herbert's `The Sacri®ce'. We need not, of course, hold practitioners of the hermeneutics of suspicion immune from the hermeneutics of suspicion. In making this modestly polemical point, I mean to address the phase of New Historicism that Harold Bloom calls `cheerleading'.19 The terms we attach to critics with whom we disagree are integral to our system of valuation. New Historicist adulation of Empson expresses pride in their cultural lineage. For if Empson is à better guide to historical criticism than Tuve' (Strier, Resistant Structures, p. 25), then they are justi®ed in their aim to acquaint themselves with what goes on in poets' minds, without their knowledge and against their intention. And since New Historicists think it not absurd to talk about `the political unconscious', their project of social criticism is justi®ed, too. Even if Empson's impressionist method (`the double meanings that struck me as') were a reliable index of historical usage, New Historicist fascination with that method would still be hard to explain. Given the fact that Empsonian Richard Strier takes Wittgenstein's imperative, `Don't think, but look', for his motto, this judgment merits particular attention. For Strier is not alone. Jonathan Bate also links Freudian Empson with Wittgenstein, and so does Christopher Norris (the latter with Empson's apparent approval).20 Moreover, Strier adds Sir James Frazer to the heady cultural brew, which is even more strange. It is surprising that anyone ®nds 17

18

19 20

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, `Notes on the Temple and Synagogue', The Works of George Herbert in Prose and Verse (London, 1853), II.379. Empson believes, for instance, in the `basic evil of the system of Christianity' (Milton's God, revised edn (London, 1965), p. 258). Harold Bloom, The Western Canon (New York, 1994), p. 35. Christopher Norris, William Empson and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism, with a Postscript by William Empson (London, 1978), passim.

54


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed Wittgenstein's thought congenial to Freud and Frazer, or to Freudians and Frazerians, like Empson. `Don't think, but look?' Where would Wittgenstein ± or anyone ± look for hidden evidence of incest and blasphemy in Herbert's `The Sacri®ce'? Is there a relevant Renaissance tradition that, in all her archival eorts, Rosemond Tuve overlooked? Empson and his admirers insist that `Rosemond Tuve . . . arrive[s] with a great fanfare of trumpets at the surface meaning of the poem, the part that was meant to be quite obvious at the time, and then promulgate[s] a new law that anybody who thinks there is a secondary meaning must be grossly ignorant of this surface meaning' (`Last Words', p. 11). If her list of largely religious readings amounts to no more than a gloss on that obvious, surface meaning, where in the library would we look for hidden, beneath-thesurface, signi®cance? New Historicists turn to `Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Freud, Derrida, Lacan, Irigaray' (Harvey and Maus, Soliciting Interpretation, p. xi), to which list we may safely add Empson, since long before New Historicists were àrticulat[ing] those strategies' learned from Freud and Freudians, Empson had already articulated them, dismissing Tuve's monastic erudition in much the same way as they brush Burckhardt and Tillyard aside: Ì do not call this ``knowledge'' at all, and it is clearly not a help to criticism' (`Last Words', p. 11). New Historicists think of forays into psychoanalysis, whether by Freud, Empson, or Lacan, as valiant thrusts to rid criticism of retrograde antiquarian interest, which distracts critics from more important moral and political issues. Even so, as their list of preferred readings indicates, neither Empson nor the New Empsonians want to wrest criticism from its moorings in the archives. Rather, they do contextualise Herbert in a world of books, just not those books that Tuve and literary historians think relevant. Empson situates Herbert's poetry in the ìnsights' of Sigmund Freud and Sir James Frazer, with `The Sacri®ce' providing the key example of his `seventh type of ambiguity' (Seven Types, p. 244). There, in the context of cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis, he ®nds that blending of opposites in the explanatory mode of `Freudian terminology' (p. 245). The question now is: Why would anyone think acquaintance with the writings of Freud and Frazer explanatory of Herbert (whose name, so far as I know, is never once mentioned in the extensive canon of either author)? Empson himself expressed misgivings in the matter, but he never recanted: Interested in Freud and Frazer, in traces of the primitive and all that, I jumped at an idea that the one who has to climb for the apple seems to be a child, presumably the son of the house, and the son stealing from his father's orchard is a symbol of incest; the Christ as scapegoat (or Prometheus) is thus unconsciously related to the most primeval of sins which Freud had made the foundation of human society. There were other pretty little fancies as that

55


Stanley Stewart he is `putting the apple back' or `climbing upwards like Jack on the Beanstalk and taking his people with him back to Heaven'. Miss Tuve ®nds this sort of stu completely irrelevant to the poem. I too feel that it is rather bad writing, or rather out of place, or something.21

I quote this ersatz recantation at length to show that, although Empson seems on the verge of conceding Tuve's major thesis (that Freudian practice produces anachronistic statements about Herbert's `meditation upon the liturgy, developing the events of Passion Week according to the intricate methods of the seventeenth century'),22 in fact, Empson admits only that their debate raised ìmportant questions for critical theory'. The original piece was badly written or òut of place, or something'. `But,' he persists, Ì am still not sure that what I said is wrong.' Anticipating New Historicists' practice of talking about themselves, Empson trivialises the charge of anachronism with a bit of personal reminiscence. Being young and all, he had not yet learned to write, òr something'. So rather than renounce his `Freudian-Frazerian framework', he takes refuge in vague self-deprecation,23 ironising the charge that his argument is replete with ùnhistorical fancies', and slipping the issue of `knowledge' entirely. Freudian speculation about Herbert and `primal incest' is not irrelevant or misleading or false, but merely à bit of a bore' (Argufying, p. 254). Since this concession doesn't concede much, it is no surprise that an Empson admirer would soon praise him for his `FreudianFrazerian framework', because it is less `boring' and `more adventurous' than Tuve's historical approach (Strier, Resistant Structures, p. 21). III

We need to lay the ghost of the odd connection New Historicists make between Wittgenstein and Freud and Frazer, this with no apparent awareness that Wittgenstein had much to say about both critics. Of the former, G. E. Moore recalls: `he [Wittgenstein] said that Freud's book . . . was a very good book for looking for philosophical mistakes, and that the same was true of his writings in general'.24 Here, we should bear in mind that Proposition C 21

22

23

24

William Empson, Argufying: Essays on Literature and Culture, ed. John Haenden (London, 1987), p. 253. Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century, rev. edn (New Haven, 1962), p. 92; I am aware that in his discussion of `The Sacri®ce', Martz is not entirely in agreement with Tuve, but the characterisation ®ts here. For corroboration of the view that Empson never abandoned his Freudian-Frazerian perspective, see Christopher Norris, Ìntroduction: Empson as literary theorist', William Empson: The Critical Achievement, ed. Christopher Norris and Nigel Mapp (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pp. 104±5. G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (London, 1959), p. 316; for an extensive survey of Wittgenstein's remarks on Freud, see Jacques Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth of the Unconscious, trans. Carol Cosman (Princeton, 1995).

56


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed propounds the serious claim that, unlike Herbert, Empson knows what he thinks. In at least three ways, this is odd. First, the assertion blurs the boundary between Empson's consciously stated unbelief and his murky unconscious, which, if we believe Freud, could easily mix unfashionable Christian repression with more trendy materialist resentment. Second, Empson claims that his sincere armation in no way vitiates his judgment concerning beliefs of which Herbert was unaware. Third, Empson holds that, despite his vocation as an Anglican priest, Herbert unconsciously disdained Christianity as a moral `monstrosity'. If we hold coherence as a value, and if the sentiments that Herbert thought he had and publicly expressed are less weighty than beliefs of which he was unaware, then how can we be sure that Empson's unbelief, provides à more reliable guide to historical criticism than Tuve'? To answer that Herbert, con¯icted as he was, drew back from the unspeakable horror of Christ's Passion, begs the question. For that moral `monstrosity' ± the horror of the punishment and the jubilation the multitude takes in it ± is just the way Herbert's literary predecessors characterised Christ's Passion: as a mystery. Psychoanalytic critics believe the medieval composer lacks the emotional purchase to register even repressed rebellion, the capacity for which arose only slowly through succeeding generations. But even if we forego the demand for archival evidence of this hidden incapacity, couldn't we say that the medieval composer merely disguises his repression more eectively? In Guillaume de Machaut, for instance, we perceive neither rebellion nor repression, because these two elements comprise one and only one expression, leaving us no contrast by which to measure the sincerity of either. Can't a poet or a composer be endowed with sucient skill to feign repressed thought? Following Freud, Cultural Materialists take questions like this as evidence of critical resistance. Wittgenstein comments on Freud's technique of special pleading: He [Freud] speaks of overcoming resistance. One ìnstance' is deluded by another ìnstance'. (In the sense in which we speak of à court of higher instance' with authority to overrule the judgment of the lower court. RR.) The analyst is supposed to be stronger, able to combat and overcome the delusion of the instance. But there is no way of showing that the whole result of analysis may not be `delusion'.25

When we disagree with Freudians, we exhibit `resistance', which is symptomatic of pathology. No wonder Empson thinks of àll the Freudian stu ' as `fun' (Argufying, p. 282). But to think this line of thought Wittgensteinian, much less Einsteinian, risks giving misnomers a bad name. Apropos of Empson's perception of incest in `The Sacri®ce', Wittgenstein ®nds it odd 25

Ludwig Wittgenstein, `Conversations on Freud', Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Compiled from notes taken by Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and James Taylor, ed. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley, n.d.), p. 44; hereafter `Freud' in text.

57


Stanley Stewart that `Freud very commonly gives what we might call a sexual interpretation.' But it is interesting that among all the reports of dreams which he gives, there is not a single example of a straightforward sexual dream. `Yet,' he adds, `these are common as rain' (`Freud', p. 47). How does ordinary language analysis handle this anomaly? By suggesting that, if we take Freud's locution seriously, we are tempted to think that, by `sexual', he means `sexual'. Homonyms sometimes mislead. But when ordinary language analysis does its therapeutic work, the occult usage is rendered harmless: `By `àbacadabra'' I mean toothache.'26 Obviously, not in the usual sense. Nevertheless, Empson's àdventurous' followers adventurously follow him precisely because his àdventurous' method and their approval of it assert their twentieth-century refusal to let the text `dissolve into its ordinary, component parts'. Empson does refuse ± and doctrinaire Freudians with him ± to let `the particular . . . dissolve into its component parts'. But, Wittgenstein wonders, why would anyone want an àdventurous' mythology to do that? Suppose people used always to point to objects in the following way: they describe a circle as it were round the object with their ®nger in the air; in that case a philosopher could be imagined who said: Àll things are circular, for the table looks like this, the stove like this, the lamp like this', etc., drawing a circle round the thing each time.

Such a strategy daringly resists the nasty dissolution of particular tables and particular stoves and particular lamps into their `component [and variegated] parts'. But, Wittgenstein suggests, this is no intellectual triumph: We now have a theory, a `dynamic theory' (Freud speaks of his `dynamic' theory of dreams) of the proposition; of language, but it does not present itself to us as a theory. For it is the characteristic thing about such a theory that it looks at a special clearly intuitive case and says: `That shews how things are in every case; this case is the exemplar of all cases.' ± Òf course! It has to be like that' we say, and are satis®ed. We have arrived at a form of expression that strikes us as obvious. But it is as if we had now seen something lying beneath the surface.27

New Historicists consider Empson's ìnsight' into Herbert's poem àdventurous', and it is an instance of Freud's `theory' of what lies beneath the surface of language. But to call such ìnsights' àdventurous' or `dynamic' is only to insist that they are ìnsights', and not mere projections of a lively but thoroughly modern imagination. Empson insists that Tuve attends only to the surface of language, ignoring 26

27

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. and ed. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1958), § 665; hereafter PI in text. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Berkeley, 1970), § 443, 444. Parentheses indicate Wittgenstein's marginal note.

58


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed its depths. For him, beneath the variable surfaces of dierent expressions a subterranean narrative resides, and it is always the same. Here, it is as if the notion of language as spatial displacement were more than a ®gurative expression, and the historicist's scepticism only an expression of `resistance'. But what is wrong with resistance to the notion that language presents intractable problems, when in fact we solve so many problems with language every day? We cannot acquiesce to any link between Wittgenstein and this aspect of the New Historicist critique. `The problems,' Wittgenstein writes, àrising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their signi®cance is as great as the importance of our language' (PI §111). If this remark sounds familiar and even credible, we should bear in mind that Wittgenstein's interlocutor is speaking here. Empsonians would let the matter end there, in portentous vacuity. But Wittgenstein gently responds: ` ± Let us ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is what the depth of philosophy is.)' I am not saying that Wittgenstein found Freud's ideas useless, but that he saw them as opportunities for therapeutic investigation: `To learn from Freud you have to be critical; and psychoanalysis generally prevents this' (`Freud', p. 41). Take Freud's notion that dreaming or jokes or trivial events in everyday life express a readable pattern, exposed through the subject's free association. Of course, the system works: `You could start with any of the objects on this table ± which certainly are not put there through your dream activity ± and you could ®nd that they all could be connected in a pattern like that; and the pattern would be logical in the same way' (`Freud', p. 51). Freud insists that dreams and stories shared an underlying, master motif: `top hats are regularly phallic symbols, wooden things like tables are women, etc'. (`Freud', p. 43). What does Wittgenstein think of Freud's master lexicon approach? That `his historical explanation of these symbols is absurd' (pp. 43± 4). Moreover, the problem is not trivial, but endemic to psychoanalytic methodology: Freud's theory of dreams. He wants to say that whatever happens in a dream will be found to be connected with some wish which analysis can bring to light. But this procedure of free association and so on is queer, because Freud never shows how we know where to stop ± where is the right solution. Sometimes he says that the right solution, or the right analysis, is the one which satis®es the patient. Sometimes he says that the doctor knows what the right solution or analysis of the dream is whereas the patient doesn't: the doctor can say that the patient is wrong. (`Freud', p. 42)

The basis of the problem is that deciding the matter `does not seem to be a matter of evidence', so that, although Freud `claim[s] to be scienti®c . . . what he gives is speculation . . .' (p. 44). 59


Stanley Stewart Returning to Empson's impressionist method, then, what will serve as a criterion for assent or dissent from the proposition that a critic `know[s] what went on in [the subject's] mind' when the subject does not? Wittgenstein's approach is less ambitious: `Thoughts and feelings are private' means roughly the same as `There is pretending', or Òne can hide one's thoughts and feelings; can even lie and dissimulate.'28 In contrast, Empson insists that Herbert could `pretend' to himself, to his unsophisticated Renaissance readers, and to us, but not to Empson. But why can't we say that Herbert was only pretending to lie to himself? Wittgenstein probes: What am I believing in when I believe that men have souls? What am I believing in, when I believe that this substance contains two carbon rings? In both cases there is a picture in the foreground, but the sense lies far in the background; that is, the application of the picture is not easy to survey. (PI, § 422)

With respect to our inquiry, it is èasy' to miss the signi®cance of occasional expressions. Wittgenstein asks: Ìs meaning then really only the use of a word? Isn't it the way this use meshes with our life?'29 The question is not whether Herbert wrote a Caroline version of Good Friday Reproaches or expressed revulsion toward the `monstrosity' of Christian ideology or n other possible resentments, but how we empirically determine such matters. This doesn't mean that the question is easy, only that it is answerable to evidence of possible and probable expressions in the lexicon and grammar of a particular time and place. How did such expressions in fact `mesh with the life' of a Caroline priest trained at Cambridge, serving the parish at Bemerton, with correspondents at Little Gidding? Empson claims to know that, in his heart of hearts, Herbert meant his liturgical utterances as an expression of revulsion against the central beliefs and practices of his holy oce, and that claim implies apprehension of an unadulterated, unconscious thought, hidden in the adulterated, repressed expression of Herbert's poem. Apparently, what went on in Herbert's mind as he wrote `The Sacri®ce' can exist apart from its expression in the poem as Herbert and his audience understood it. Take that unadulterated signi®cance away, and what is left? Only the adulterated, ordinary, surface expression that Tuve or anyone steeped in Medieval and Renaissance literature and art can describe. It should be clear, now, why it is hard to imagine Wittgenstein sympathising with Empson's upbeat view of the critic as clinician of religious delusion, in the manner of either Freud or Frazer. Wittgenstein had a low opinion of Freud's intellect, but he held Frazer in even lower esteem, and this for the same reason that Tuve disapproved of Empson ± because of his ethnocentric 28

29

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Chicago, 1980), § 570. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, ed. Rush Rhees, trans. Anthony Kenny (Berkeley, 1978), § 29.

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`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed interpretation of a dierent culture. Wittgenstein thought Frazer failed to look beyond his modern predilections in his eort to come to terms with the practices that were the object of his study. Frazer was a prisoner of postEnlightenment con®dence in science as `rule-setter' of all `knowledge' games. He mistook the `magic' of his subjects as `false physics',30 believing that their practices were a savage version of science. Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer is two-pronged. First, Frazer thinks the `savages' ' rain dance is naive, in that no religious ceremony could possibly aect meteorological phenomena. Second, a dance or a prayer cannot be logical mistakes, because they are not logical propositions. Frazer is like the critic who disdains Herbert's `Prayer (I)' as aesthetically ¯awed simply because, besides being a sonnet with observable phonetic and semantic features, it is also reverential in tone. There is a linguistic solecism in the assertion that, in his unconscious, Herbert had misgivings about his beliefs, drawing back in horror from the observances of Holy Week, where the words of Christ and the prayers of the people have this dark, sadistic signi®cance. Wittgenstein's assertion seems to me right, but it is also subtle: Ì can doubt my senses, but not my beliefs.' Accordingly, I infer that we respect more than grammatical propriety when we trust Herbert and Empson in their expressions of belief and unbelief. IV

Over a century ago, a nearly anonymous editor of George Herbert presented engravings based on originals of DuÈrer, Marcantonio, Holbein, and the `Harmonies' of Little Gidding as interpretive devices. Although R. S.31 doesn't use the term `relevance', he appears to have something like that notion in mind when he argues that àlmost all' of the illustrations in his edition of The Temple (1894) are `taken from engravings produced in the century before George Herbert's time, that is to say, from designs which he had seen, or might have seen'.32 For instance, one of the panels illustrating Herbert's `Sacri®ce' is drawn on a tableau from the North windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. The windows in the West Chapel, on the other hand, were, like Empson's Freudian ®gure of the son stealing from his father's orchard, designed in the Victorian period. R. S. assumes, then, that historical possibility is a predicate of interpretative relevance. In this sense, the current 30

31 32

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, ed. Rush Rhees, trans. A. C. Miles (Doncaster, 1979), p. 7; for a more extensive discussion of this point, see my `Renaissance' Talk: Ordinary Language and the Mystique of Critical Problems (Pittsburgh, 1997), Chapter 5. Hutchinson identi®es these initials as R. Seeley, publisher of the volume (Herbert, p. lxvi). R[obert] S[eeley], `Note on the Illustrations', The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by George Herbert, With Engravings after Albert DuÈrer, Marcantonio, Holbein and other Artists (London, 1894), p. ix; Hutchinson identi®es the initials as those of R. Seeley, publisher of the volume (Herbert, lxvi). Sir J. R. Seeley (1834±1895), son of Robert Seeley, the publisher, wrote on Milton, and did publish an essay on `Milton' (DNB).

61


Stanley Stewart preoccupation of critics with the dyads of ìnterest' and `disinterest', `subjectivity' and òbjectivity', have no standing in the argument. When R. S. imports panels from various sources to interpret `The Sacri®ce', he is saying that they are part of Herbert's culture, and so possibly relevant to interpretation of his work. He reproduces visual designs that Herbert had probably seen or could have seen. He seems to assume, with Tuve, that we are not born with the skill of interpreting Renaissance poetry. Hence, the relevance of the illustrations of `The Sacri®ce' with panels drawn from `The Little' and `The Great Passion' of DuÈrer and the depiction of Judas betraying Christ from a window in the North wall of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. As curious students of Renaissance culture, of course, we `look'. But not at something we can't see. Here, in the crux of matter, we ®nd Empson's most telling charge against Tuve: [Tuve] still says `the phrase about climbing the tree (ascending the Cross) is the veriest commonplace' (p. 31), and `Herbert uses the time-honoured `climb', for the ascent of the Cross' (p. 91), and still she oers among all her wealth of illustration not a single example of this; unless one could count a footnote reference to a verse of the Song of Solomon about Ì will go up to the palm-tree', which she does not show to have been traditionally misinterpreted as climbing it. (`Last Words', p. 11)

`Hoist on [her] own petard', says Empson, Tuve accuses him of anachronistic Freudian fancies, while turning up `not a single example' of her `veriest commonplace' of Christ's ascent of the Cross as a `climb'. The implication is that, in her indefatigable canvass of Medieval and Renaissance archives, Tuve hadn't found one. Since if she couldn't ®nd one, nobody could, Empson cheerfully infers that her `veriest commonplace' isn't a commonplace, and her erudition isn't `knowledge' at all. Although this remark seems to be an attack on Tuve, it is actually Empson's most ambiguous response to historical criticism, with its entrenched hostility to psychoanalytic impressionism. While Empson suggests that archival research, even in its most ambitious, Tuvean mode, falls short of establishing `knowledge', at the same time, he concedes that examples of `the veriest commonplace' must bear as heavily as does their absence on any decision between Propositions A and B. In eect, Empson gives ground to historical critics, who turn to Renaissance archives, to books that Herbert read or could have read, to curricula of schools and universities that he and his contemporaries attended, to cultural artifacts, literary and pictorial, relevant to the subject matter, to rhetorical devices of Herbert's poem. Even Tuve's reference to a verse of the Song of Solomon about Ì will go up to the palm-tree', which Empson ridicules, points toward centuries of literary and iconographic representations of the Canticles, where we do ®nd Christ, with arms outstretched, in a tree (though, admittedly, not a palm-tree). The relevant text in the Authorised Version 62


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed reads: Às the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste' (Canticles 2:3). Typically, St John of the Cross explains: And thus He [Christ] speaks with her and tells her how by means of the Tree of the Cross she was betrothed to Him; how He gave her herein the favour of His mercy, being pleased to die for her and making her beauteous after this manner. For He restored and redeemed her by the same means whereby human nature had been ruined, namely, by means of the Tree of Paradise, in our ®rst mother, who was Eve. Thus the Spouse says: Beneath the apple-tree . . . meaning by the apple-tree the Tree of the Cross whereon the Son of God redeemed human nature, and in consequence was betrothed to it, and consequently to every soul, giving to each soul in token thereof grace and pledges through the merits of His Passion.33

Renaissance poets, including Herbert's contemporary William Loe, identify the same tree with the Bridegroom of the Canticles: Ò thou my deare, that one I love / Thou art the tree of life; / Thy shade let sheeld me from all harms / And I will be thy wife.'34 Later in the seventeenth century, John Mason exhibits an apposite understanding of the same text: My Jesus is an Apple-Tree, And others Barren Wood. He is a shadow from the Heat Of Conscience, Wrath and Hell . . . I sate Rejoicing in Times past Under his cooling Shade His fruit was sweet nto my Tast, O what a Feast I made!35

These verse paraphrases of scripture might not be great poetry, but they do show how a contemporary audience understood Herbert's more sophisticated expression of the same ®gure. Examples like these form an elaborate allegorical narrative, which links the Many with the One: the Tree in the Garden of Eden, the apple tree of the Canticles, the sycamore tree that Zacheus climbed, and the Cross. Hence, the commonplace understanding of Christ as the speaker, railing at the unfaithful: `Nailed i was to e tre.'36 And 33

34

35

36

St John of the Cross, Complete Works, ed. and trans. E. Allison Peers (Westminster, Md., 1953), II.137. William Loe, Songs of Sion (Hamburg, 1620), p. 87; see also The Workes of Thomas Adams (London, 1630), p. 273. [John Mason], Spiritual Songs, or, Songs of Praise To Almighty God . . . Together with The Song of Songs Which is Solomons, 5th edn. (London, 1696), p. 69. Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, ed. Carleton Brown (Oxford, 1957), p. 88; hereafter, Lyrics XIV, in text.

63


Stanley Stewart thus, in `Thou Sinful Man that by Me Goes', Christ upbraids the passer by from the è rude'.37 In this context, the ®gure of Christ's ascent as a `climb' goes to the very heart of Passion Week: Christ's submission to the Father's will. It may strike Empson as savagery, but to Herbert and his audience, it is important that Christ was not dragged kicking and screaming to his execution. As John Donne insists, He `chose that way for our redemption, to sacri®ce His life and profuse His blood'.38 Christ willed his own death, `giving up His soul before He was constrained to do it' (p. 173). Again, `Christ was the cause of His own death.' The agony in the garden, celebrated in lyrics throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ended in Christ's subjection to His Father's will: Ì let me nailen to e tre'; Ì let'; Ì gaf ' (Lyrics XIV, p. 2). Speaking in the ®rst person singular, Christ names himself as the primary cause of this momentous event, and makes himself the subject of the action: Abyde, gud men, and hald yhour pays And here what god him-selven says, Hyngand on e rode. Man and woman at bi me gase, Luke up to me and stynt i pase, For e I sched my blode. (Lyrics XIV, p. 59)

The ®gure of Christ's ascent as a `climb', then, is only one way of expressing Christ's volition. In Deaths Duell, Donne explains the same distinction: `There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous then the death of Christ .'39 In a sermon preached at a christening, he insists that his volition was an Àct of his liberality, Giving' (Sermons, V, 121). It is important to see that Christ `climbed' of his own free will, that nothing was taken from Christ, the innocent victim, for no man had power over him. In A Cruci®xe, Christopher Lever writes that `Christ spread . . . his sacred bodie on the Tree.'40 Christ oered up his soul willingly (ìt was his own act') in the supreme act of charity: [T]he unexpressible and unconceivable love of Christ is in this, that there was in him a willingnesse, a propensnesse, a forwardnesse to give himselfe to make this great peace and reconciliation, between God and Man; It was he himselfe that gave himselfe; Nothing enclined him, nothing wrong upon him, but his own goodnesse. (p. 122) 37

38 39

40

Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, ed. Carleton Brown (Oxford, 1962), p. 151; hereafter, Lyrics XV, in text. John Donne, Biathanatos, ed. Michael Rudick and M. Pabst Battin (New York, 1982), p. 70. John Donne, The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (Berkeley, 1953±62), X.244; hereafter Sermons in text. In his Passion sermon, À Cruci®xe', Thomas Adams writes, `The losse of his life was necessary, yet it was also voluntary' (Workes, p. 820). Christopher Lever, A Cruci®xe: or, a Meditation upon Repentance, and, The holie Passion (London, 1607), sig. D2v.

64


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed In no way are Donne and Herbert closer than in their conception of the Sacri®ce. Empson's assertion is at odds with the archival evidence. Christ doesn't climb the Tree because he is too small to reach the apple, which he, Prometheus-like, is both stealing and putting back. Empson is wrong, too, in suggesting that examples of that metaphoric expression are hard or even impossible to ®nd. In Alabaster's Ùpon the Cruci®x', we read: Behold a cluster to itself a vine, Behold a vine extended in one cluster, Whose grapes do swell with grace and heavenly lustre, Climbing upon a Cross with lovely twine.41

Decidedly no `criminal' stealing from his father's orchard, Christ is the Tree, and the fruit of that Tree. In Herbert's time, the connection with the Canticles would not be hard to grasp. If his audience missed it in William Alabaster, they would surely remember it from Quarles' immensely popular Emblemes. Alabaster is describing the Passion in terms quite familiar in Renaissance literary and iconographic treatment of the subject. Figuratively and theologically, Alabaster's sonnet is not close to Herbert's Àgonie'. It is in the Garden of Gethsemene that Christ freely armed the necessity of his Sacri®ce: Who knows not Love, let him assay And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike Did set again abroach; then let him say If ever he did taste the like. Love is that liquour sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine. (Herbert, p. 37)

I have said that examples of this tradition are not hard to ®nd. If we turn only one page of Alabaster's sonnets, we read: Now that the midday heat doth scorch my shame With lightning of fond lust, I will retire Under this vine whose arms with wandering spire Do climb upon the Cross. (Alabaster, p. 18)

Of course, to understand the relevance of this `climb upon the Cross', it helps to know that, for Alabaster, Christ is `the true vine' of St John's Gospel (15:1), identi®ed by Christian poets and divines with the cluster of grapes brought back from Canaan to Moses. Thus, in a panel illustrating the text from Matthew, `The booke of the generation of Jesus Christ' in the `Harmonies' of Little Gidding, we see Christ cruci®ed in a tree called `The Genealogy of Christ'.42 Christ is also the fruit of the vine, which, springing from the bowels of 41

42

William Alabaster, The Sonnets of William Alabaster, ed. G. M. Story and Helen Gardner (London, 1959), p. 17; hereafter cited in text. The Actions and Doctrine and other Passages Touching Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Little Gidding, 1635), panels 15±16; British Library shelfmark C.23.e.4.

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Stanley Stewart Jesse, hangs from the Tree of the Cross. Christ trod the winepress alone, distillling the liquor from that Tree into the Sacrament of the Eucharist: `Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree / The tree of life to all, but only me.' The irony here is in Herbert's forceful association of opposites, necessity (`must') and volition (`climb'). The speaker, in the mode of Jeremiah's Lamentations, succinctly reminds àll those who pass by' that redemption from Adam's transgression came through the Passion of the Second Adam, whose willing submission answers the progenitor's disobedience. The ®gure of Christ's `climb' rests, ®nally, on an understanding of the sacramental sine qua non of Herbert's priestly oce, the Eucharist: Be blicht, mankind, and gif god Laude and glore, That hes i lyne relaxit of e Lymbe Quhilk . . . into presoun sumtyme dirk and dym. Honour with houres and with antane & hyme The saikles lorde, at slane was for i slycht, The pasche lambe, at on e croce did clym, Quhois blith uprissing glaides every wycht.43

Here the connection between the Paschal Lamb, the wine of the Sacrament, and Christ's ascent of the Cross as a `climb' are ®gurative expressions of a common understanding, or, in Wittgenstein's terminology, a `form of life'. Because of this `climb', `mankind' can be `blythe'. Because of it, `mankind's' `slycht' was paid by `the saikles lorde'. In this blending of biblical and apocryphal contexts, Herbert's `Sacri®ce' makes subtle but not hidden sense, and that sense incorporates the poems that immediately follow in the temporal sequence of The Temple. In their blend of Old and New Testament verse paraphrase, `the King of grief ' makes his `wo, mans weale'. Here the penitent's `Thanksgiving'makes poignant sense: `My God, my God, why dost thou part from me? / Was such a grief, as cannot be.' In the two poems that follow, `The Thanksgiving' and `The Reprisall' (in the Williams MS called `The Second Thanksgiving'), the speaker schemes to repay Christ, not for stealing ®re from the gods, but for the supreme act of charity. In imagined recompense, he will fast, be celibate, dedicate his life and the lives of his children, give his money to good causes, build hospitals, turn from worldly friends, turn from the world itself. Finally, surrendering even his poetic talent, he will submerge human invention in Holy Writ: If thou shalt give me wit, it shall appeare, If thou hast giv'n it me, 'tis here. Nay, I will reade thy booke, and never move Till I have found therein thy love, 43

Lyrics XV, p. 178; see also John Davies, The Holy Roode ( [C.57 or 26] ), sig. F2.

66


`New' Guides to the Historically Perplexed Thy art of love, which I'le turn back on thee: O my deare Saviour, Victorie! Then for thy passion ± I will do for that ± Alas, my God, I know not what. (Herbert, p. 36)

As in `Jordan (II)', so here, on Good Friday, `thousands of notions' run through the poet's brain to no avail. Ìnvention', the original title of `Jordan (II)', soon reaches human limits. There is no way to `Copie [Christ's] fair, though bloudie hand' (p. 35). Now, we have reason to suppose that Herbert's readers share this picture of this tableau, and so of `The Sacri®ce'. One of Herbert's most ardent imitators begins his Gallery to The Temple with a poem closely modeled on `The Sacri®ce': Thou, (who dids't laws dispense in Sinai Hill) In thine owne person dids't the same ful®ll; Yea dids't to humane lawes submitt thy will: Was ever love [like thine?]44

Here, Ralph Knevet's shift from `grief ' to `love' suggests a virtual equation of the two, an identity perpetuated in Middle English lyrics: `For love ou hynge on roode tre' (Lyrics XIV, p. 111). In eect, Knevet reads Herbert reading the rich tradition of biblical verse paraphrases on Lamentations (1:12): Ìt is nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.'45 Along with texts from Daniel, Micah, Matthew and Luke, this complaint became part of the Improperia and Adoratio of the liturgy for Good Friday according to Sarum use, as it did of the language of Holy Week in the Book of Common Prayer.46 Although the Psalms and the Canticles were the most celebrated subjects of verse paraphrase of scripture in the Renaissance, other books of the Bible were also part of the divine poet's arsenal against Italy's secular onslaught. In 1566, long before Donne paraphrased the `Lamentations of Jeremy', Thomas Drant wrote `The Wailynges of Hieremie' to accompany his verse translation of the Satyres of Horace, as à holye kynde of sadness, an exact myrrour of a contrite soule, the heavy procedynges of just God, against his unjust creatures'.47 The comparison was all to the advantage of Holy Writ. Horace only laughed at sin; Jeremiah wept. The Sarum Missal has echoes in Herbert's `Sacri®ce', but decades of verse paraphrase on biblical texts also rehearse the striking 44

45 46

47

Ralph Knevet, The Shorter Poems of Ralph Knevet, ed. Amy M. Charles (Columbus, 1966), p. 284; hereafter in text. See, for instance, Ò vos omnes qui transitis per viam' (Lyrics XIV, p. 90). See, for instance, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, ed. Rev. John Henry Blunt (London, 1866). Thomas Drant, A Medicinable Morall, that is, the two Bookes of Horace his Satyres (1566), sig. J8v.

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Stanley Stewart contrasts of Passion Week between man's iniquity and God's love: `The Lorde is juste, disloyall I' (Sig. K2v). In the same way, George Sandys' `Paraphrase upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah' echoes the reproachful tones of the Ò vos omnes': Consider Lord; O looke on the forlorne! Who am to all the World a generall Scorne. You Passengers, though this concerne not you, Here ®xe your steps, and my strange Suerings view. Was ever Sorrow like my Sorrow knowne! Which God hath on me in his fury throwne!48

Traditionally linked to Jeremiah's Lamentations 1:12, which Lancelot Andrewes refers to as `Christ's complaint',49 the act of self-immolation on Calvary satis®es the Law's demand for Justice, while initiating a new dispensation of Grace: the New Jerusalem. This expression of charity ± the àrt of love' itself ± renders the most eloquent of poets mute, unable, with Sidney, to look within his heart and write. In the end, not even the most gifted lyric poet of his generation could ®nd a way to end `The Thanksgiving'. For the human poet, with Sidney's sonnet in mind, imagines an ending as the plenary imitation of Christ. So in a conscious, literary choice, Herbert leaves the task ± but for the moment only ± un®nished.

48

49

George Sandys, A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems (London, 1648), sig. Y4v; see also John Lydgate, Minor Poems, ed. Otto Glouning (London, 1900), p. 22, and William Austin's `Meditation for Good-Friday', Devotionis Augustinae Flamma (London, 1635), sig. L3v. Lancelot Andrewes, Òf the Passion', Sermons (London, 1629), p. 350.

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d:/3wells/worden.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:10 ± disk/mp

THE POLITICS OF THEATRE



Ben Jonson and the Monarchy BLAIR WORDEN

I

B

EN Jonson lived under three monarchs, Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I, and sought the patronage of each of them. With Charles, who came to the throne in the autumn of Jonson's life, too late to be a formative in¯uence on his writing, we are here only peripherally concerned. Jonson's relations with Elizabeth and James were formative. Elizabeth spurned him. James, save at the beginning and perhaps at the end of his reign, gave him almost uninterrupted favour. The queen's death in 1603 lifted a burden of bitterness and despair from Jonson. It gave him new hope, both for the condition of the monarchy and for his own fortunes. The hope was not unquali®ed. It was tempered by circumspection, unease, insecurity. Those attributes would never vanish. Even so the new reign modi®ed his discontent. It also redirected it, so that the crown ceased to be its target. The change was not sudden. If there is a dividing line in 1603 there is also a later one, in the autumn of 1605, the time both of the publication of his play Sejanus his Fall and of the Gunpowder Plot. Until then his political concerns were essentially the same as in the twilight of the Elizabethan regime. Those concerns are hard to square with some recent assessments of his politics. There is, as Tom Cain has remarked, `something approaching a consensus that Jonson's work celebrates an absolutist political ideology'. That description, Cain sees, will not ®t the Elizabethan Jonson.1 The late Elizabethan regime, like the Jacobean one after it, sought to establish the principle that monarchical sovereignty is absolute rather than mixed.2 The attempt provoked unease in Jonson's circle. In the years around 1600 his friends John Donne and Richard Martin voiced fears lest the monarch's power might be or become ùnlimited'.3 1

2

3

Tom Cain, ` ``Satires, That Girde and Fart at the Time'': Poetaster and the Essex Rebellion', in Julie Sanders et al., eds, Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics and the Jonsonian Canon (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 48. John Guy, `The 1590s: the Second Reign of Elizabeth I?', in Guy, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1995), p. 12; and the works there cited. Cain, ` ``Satires . . .'' ', p. 58 (quoting Donne); Richard Martin, A Speech Delivered to the King's Most Excellent Majesty (London, 1603), sigs B1±1u.

71


Blair Worden The complaint of the Earl of Essex, the patron of many of Jonson's associates, against Elizabeth ± `Cannot princes err?' ± re¯ects the same unease. The warning in Jonson's play Cynthia's Revels (1600) against the predilection of courtiers for the maxim àll power is just' (V.iv.630) re¯ects it too. Jonson's interest in such matters was not that of a constitutional theorist. He did not think in the conceptual or legal terms that informed Elizabethan and early Stuart disputes about absolutism (a doctrine which he never `celebrated'). He held conventional beliefs about kingship which would endure through his life. He thought that monarchs govern better by love than by fear, better through the `consent' of their subjects than by `force', better when they think of themselves as the servants of their people than as its masters.4 No less conventionally, he also thought ± under Elizabeth no less than under James ± that virtuous subjects will reverence their prince and eschew rebellion.5 He was concerned not about the constitutional rights of kings and subjects but about their ethical duties.6 The claim that (in his parodic formulation of it) àll power is just' is likely to have troubled him less as a premise of absolutism than because he knew what ethical damage the taste of power could do to kings. What mattered most to him about kings, as to most poets who wrote about politics in early modern England, was their capacity for virtue. If kings were virtuous their subjects would be virtuous too. With Montaigne, Jonson believed that virtue could be more eectively promoted by royal example than by laws.7 À virtuous court,' explains Cynthia's Revels, à world to virtue draws' (V.xi.173). To Jonson, the sickness of late Elizabethan England lay in the vices of its court. Courtly wickedness, that recurrent preoccupation of Renaissance literature, was never of more pressing concern to writers, never a profounder source of disenchantment and fury, than in Jonson's time. The ¯attery, falsity, servility, venality, treachery, brutality of courtly conduct are the connecting theme of his drama from 1599 to 1605. Sejanus, published at the end of that period, was preceded by the three `comical satires' of 1599 to 1601, Everyman Out Of His Humour, Cynthia's Revels, and Poetaster. The ®rst of them was set partly, the second wholly, in and around Elizabeth's court. The third was set in Augustan Rome. But that was a pasteboard Rome, diering only in super®cial 4

5

6

7

The King's Entertainment ll. 187±208, 273±83; A Panegyre ll. 75.; The Entertainment at Highgate ll. 274±5; Discoveries ll. 1158. I cite Jonson's works from C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson, eds, Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925±52); but the student of Jonson will want to consult excellent editions of two plays of his which ®gure prominently in this essay: Philip Ayres, ed., Sejanus his Fall (Manchester, 1990); Tom Cain, ed., Poetaster (Manchester, 1995). Ian Donaldson's edition of the Poems (Oxford, 1975) is indispensable. Blair Worden, `Ben Jonson among the Historians', in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds, Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 81±3. Cf. the perceptive remarks of Robert C. Evans, `Sejanus: Ethics and Politics in the Early Reign of James', in Sanders, Refashioning Ben Jonson, pp. 71±9. John Florio, trans., The Essays . . . of . . . Montaigne (1603, repr. Menston, 1969), pp. 145±6; Jonson: A Panegyre ll. 125±7; The Haddington Masque ll. 216±17; Epigram 35.

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy appearance from the setting of the other two plays. The action of Poetaster takes place, as Jonson insistently tells us, in a court.8 It is a court more Tudor than Roman. In Sejanus, Jonson supplies a more authentically Roman atmosphere and texture and narrative. Yet even now his preoccupations are as much English as Roman, as much contemporary as historical. His principal source for Sejanus was Tacitus, in whose account of imperial tyranny Jonson, with so many of his contemporaries, saw a pressing parallel to the condition of Renaissance monarchies in his own time. Jonson heightens the parallel by anglicising his source, by investing Tiberius' court with features of England's.9 The play's opening speeches, written in a satirical spirit that follows on from the `comical satires', establish courtly evils as a central theme. The ®rst two acts are set in the court, as (apparently) is the second half of the third. The early Jonson set out to reform those evils through the inspiration and authority of imaginative literature. That task, however unrealistic it may seem to our time, answered to a principal purpose of poetry in Jonson's. His decision to bring the English court on stage nonetheless presented him with a basic problem of literary and political strategy. In Cynthia's Revels (as in his poems) he deployed the instruments of reform that were generally favoured by writers of the Renaissance, praise and idealisation. He presented the queen, in a dei®ed form, as the queen ought to be. He showed her banishing the follies of her court and making it a model for the reform of the realm. Unfortunately for his ethical purpose, his play, a bid as much for royal favour as for royal reform, is disarmed by its author's obsequiousness. Elsewhere Jonson emphasised the distinction between praise, which properly advances a reforming intention, and ¯attery, which blunts and contradicts it. Yet in Cynthia's Revels the boundary is crossed. The trangression creates a diculty not only for Jonson but for his audience. The more indulgently Cynthia is praised, the harder it becomes to understand how so ineably wise a princess can have allowed the vices of her court to arise in the ®rst place. Jonson's answer, that she did not `know' about them, only compounds the problem. Among his contemporaries there was a chorus of agreement, in which his close friend Richard Martin joined, that Elizabeth was disastrously unable or unwilling to `see' the condition to which her realm had been reduced.10 Within the adulatory framework of Cynthia's Revels Jonson cannot communicate the gravity of that defect. The failings of which the queen is unaware, he is obliged to indicate, exist only on the periphery of her court, among its hangers-on. The vanities and falsities which the play portrays ± and which elsewhere in his writing are alarming symptoms of national degeneracy ± seem more childish than sinister. Near the end of the play Jonson changes 8 9 10

Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 85 and n. 111. Ibid., p. 85. Martin, Speech, sigs B1±1u; Bodleian Library, Smith MS 17, p. 43; John Gouws, ed., The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (Oxford, 1986), p. 94.

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Blair Worden tack. We now learn that the queen does after all `know' what her egregious courtiers have been up to, and has been awaiting an opportunity to èect the reformation she intends' through the literary power of Crites, Jonson's surrogate in the play.11 Yet if the queen already knows, what has Jonson to tell her? While the play arms the poet's potential as reformer of the court, it denies him the role, which Jonson craved, of educator of the prince. In Jonson's next play, Poetaster, the poet Horace, who has replaced Crites as his surrogate, becomes the partner rather than the subordinate of his prince. Where Elizabeth ignored Crites' obsequious advice, Augustus welcomes Horace's `free and wholesome sharpness' (V.i.94). Liberated from the Elizabethan setting of the previous play, Jonson's political commentary acquires much more edge. Yet his problem of strategy, instead of vanishing, takes a dierent form. He includes a debate of the problem in the scene of Poetaster (III.v) which reproduces from a satire of Horace a dialogue between Horace and Trebatius. Two literary forms, as Jonson there indicates, are open to the writer who aspires to reform court and realm: satire and panegyric. In Cynthia's Revels he had unhappily attempted to combine the two. Thenceforth he treated them as alternatives. Satire was the route of John Donne, whose Satire V, like Cynthia's Revels, indicated that the queen did not `know' of the evils around her. Cynthia's Revels alludes to Donne's previous satire, the fourth,12 a biting indictment of those evils, much more biting than Jonson's play. Satire, if kept separate from panegyric, can confront abuses boldly and directly. But it has disadvantages. It may incur oence; it may, as the ban on and burning of satirical works in 1599 showed, provoke retribution; and as a means of in¯uencing the conduct of monarchy it is at best indirect. Panegyric is the direct route to royal attention, if only royalty will listen to it. Unfortunately Elizabeth would not listen to Jonson. In Poetaster he opted for satire. Now he combined it not with panegyric but with a sort of anti-panegyric, for in the play Augustus is in some respects an antiElizabeth, displaying the virtues she lacks. Cynthia displays them too, but whereas the earlier play has to conceal the gap between ideal and reality the later one exposes it. In Sejanus satire is the partner not of panegyric or of anti-panegyric but of tragedy. Jonson decided to turn to tragedy in 1601, after the failure of Poetaster, though he may have attempted other tragic subjects before settling on Sejanus, which seems likeliest to have been ®rst performed in the winter of 1603±4.13 The play as then produced does not survive. Jonson wrote it in collaboration with another writer whose identity we do not know, and whose contribution was omitted from the version published in 1605. The text we 11

12 13

Cynthia's Revels II.iv.102±11, V.v.34±46. See too Janet Clare, `Jonson's ``Comical Satires'' and the Art of Courtly Compliment', in Sanders, Refashioning Ben Jonson, pp. 41±2. Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London, 1983), p. 103. See below, n. 34.

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy have is thus the product of a long process of germination and composition and revision which lasted from 1601 to 1605, a process intersected by the queen's death and James' accession in March 1603. To the change wrought in Jonson's mind by Elizabeth's demise we shall come. Yet James' accession, though it caused Jonson to address England's problems through new methods and in a new spirit, did not initially alter his perception of the problems themselves. In the published text of Sejanus the objects of his despair and anger in Poetaster are present still. One principal target of both plays is the suppression of free expression. The indignity visited in Poetaster on Horace, who is charged with having penned à dangerous, seditious libel' (V.iii.46±7), recalls Jonson's experience in 1597, when he was imprisoned for writing `very seditious and slanderous matter' in The Isle of Dogs.14 Jonson had taken the play over from his friend Thomas Nashe,15 who would be the principal victim of that ocial campaign of bookbanning and book-burning of 1599 to which the opening scene of Poetaster ingeniously and de®antly alludes. In Sejanus, in the long scene placed by Jonson at the centre of the play, `the rage of burning' (III.478) is visited on the historical writing of Cremutius Cordus. The treatment of Cordus, as related by Tacitus, horri®ed readers of the Renaissance, who saw in it, as Tacitus had done, a telling moment in the advance of imperial tyranny. Montaigne was gravely struck by the episode. So were three men revered by Jonson: Tacitus' editor Justus Lipsius and the historians Henry Savile (the translator of Tacitus) and William Camden.16 A second preoccupation both of Poetaster and of Sejanus is the imperial spy system. Sejanus relates the entrapment of the virtuous Sabinus by Sejanus' favourite Latiaris, who lures Sabinus into speaking words that can be construed as treasonable (another episode that repelled Lipsius).17 Like the charge of libel against Horace in Poetaster, Sabinus' experience has its parallel in Jonson's own. Ìn the time of his close imprisonment under Queen Elizabeth', Jonson would tell Drummond, his judges placed `two damned villains to catch advantage of him'. Fortunately he was àdvertised' of the ruse by his keeper.18 Sabinus is less fortunate. Jonson's ordeal surfaces again in his poem Ìnviting a Friend to Supper' (Epigram 101), where, breaking the rule of anonymity that normally shields the targets of his writing, he names two 14 15

16

17 18

Albert Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England 1603±1642 (Charlottesville, Va., 1989), pp. 34±5. For Jonson and Nashe see Katherine Duncan-Jones, `Jonson's Epitaph on Nashe', Times Literary Supplement, 7 July 1995. Florio, Montaigne, p. 232; Justus Lipsius, ed., Cornelii Taciti Opera Quae Exstant (Antwerp, 1589), p. 72 and index (`Cremutius'); Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics (Princeton, 1991), p. 149; p. 45 of Henry Savile's translation (®rst published in 1591) of Tacitus' Histories, attached to Richard Greneway, trans., The Annals of Cornelius Tacitus (London, 1604); Worden, `Ben Jonson', pp. 78±9. Sejanus IV.115.; Lipsius, Cornelii Taciti Opera, p. 81. Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, I.139.

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Blair Worden prominent ®gures among the spies and agents-provocateurs whom prisoners under Elizabeth ± especially Catholic ones, whose numbers Jonson himself joined ± learned to dread. Rejoicing in the absence of those ®gures from the supper-table, the poem voices the principle, which Cicero and Tacitus had laid down and which was widely stated in Jonson's age,19 that tyranny destroys friendship and openness of heart, qualities dear to Jonson. The same conviction surfaces in Sejanus. As so often, Jonson's thinking can be glimpsed in his embellishments of the historical sources to which he professes such ®delity. Three times he parts from his sources to tell us that Sejanus plants spies at his enemies' dinner-tables.20 The play shows sacred bonds of trust ± friendship, marriage, medical con®dentiality ± collapsing before Tiberian practices of reason of state. It was in prison that Jonson, in 1597 or 1598, was converted to Catholicism. The anger and bitterness of the Catholic community under persecution and torture is an animating force in his early writing (as it is in the writing of his fellow-Catholic Donne, even after Donne's own conversion to Protestantism21). One Catholic with whom Jonson was associated, perhaps as a teacher, was the young Irish peer James FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, who had been imprisoned in the Tower since adolescence as the son of the attainted `rebel earl' Gerald Fitzgerald, and to whom Jonson addressed a monitory poem in or around 1600 (Underwood, 25). In the second half of that year Desmond was the object of ruthless intrigue by the queen's leading minister Robert Cecil, who wanted him to aid the English cause in Ireland by publicly disowning the Catholic faith.22 The poem portrays Desmond, in Tacitean language, as the victim of `terrors', of `the jealous errors / Of politic pretext, that wries a state'. Until the execution of the Earl of Essex, Cecil's rival, after his rising in 1601, Catholics looked to the earl to win toleration for them.23 As has been argued 19

20

21 22

23

J. H. M. Salmon, `Cicero and Tacitus in Sixteenth-Century France', American Historical Review lxxxv (1990), p. 325; Ronald Mellor, Tacitus (London, 1993), p. 52; Lacey Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England (Princeton, N.J., 1986), p. 43; G. K. Hunter, John Lyly (London, 1962), pp. 146±7. Sejanus II.444±5, III.272±3, IV.131±2. (Perhaps Jonson took the thought from Tacitus, Annals VI.vii.) Jonson's adaptation of his sources in Ìnviting a Friend to Supper' is equally revealing, for espionage is not present in the poems of Horace and Martial which are his models. John Carey, John Donne (London, 1981), pp. 35±6. Thomas Staord, Pacata Hibernia, ed. Standish O'Grady (London, 1896), I.126±41; J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen, eds, Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts . . . at Lambeth 1589±1900 (London, 1869), pp. 407±8, 460±1. Susan Brigden, to whom I am very grateful for advice on Desmond, has pointed out to me that in March 1600 `teachers of languages, writing and other qualities' were reported to have visited him in the Tower (Historical Manuscript Commission Report, Hat®eld X.81). J. C. A. Rathmell has suggested that Jonson taught William Sidney (`Jonson, Lord Lisle and Penshurst', English Literary Renaissance i (1971), p. 251). Later he was `governor' of Raleigh's son Wat. Cain, Poetaster, pp. 43±6; Mervyn James, Society, Politics and Culture (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 435±6.

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy elsewhere, Essex's fall is an imaginative presence both in Poetaster and in Sejanus.24 Camden tells us that the sentence of death upon Essex, procured by the `subtle practices' of the ènvious adversaries' who won the queen's approval for it, was widely thought to be undeserved and unnecessary.25 Essex's execution seems the likeliest cause of Jonson's preoccupation, in the years which followed it, with the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of princes, with their readiness to `kill' for political ends.26 Sejanus explains how wicked men contrive `to put a prince in blood', to `thrust' him ìnto tyranny', to `make him cruel' (II.383±91). Most of the contemporaries of Jonson who were troubled by abuses of regal power explained them in terms which absolved the royal person from blame, or at least from direct blame. Presupposing the prince to be virtuous, they attributed misgovernment solely to the sway of evil counsellors. Jonson does not follow that course. In Sejanus an evil counsellor misleads, not a virtuous monarch, but an evil one. Sejanus and Tiberius alike pursue tyrannical and murderous courses. But if Jonson was not interested in evil counsel as an excuse for princely failings, no one did more than he to shape early seventeenth-century images of evil counsellors. It was to Jonson's portrait of Sejanus that writers critical of royal favourites turned. Here, as commonly happened in early modern England, a literary development was closely related to a political one. Previous representations of the sway of favouritism had depicted groups of favourites, or else power-struggles between successive favourites. Only with Jonson's play does the single favourite, whose monopoly of power extinguishes all opposition, become a literary type.27 Jonson's account of Sejanus' monopoly re¯ected a political preoccupation of the period following Essex's fall. Sometime between the earl's execution and the queen's death, a writer of private advice to a leading politician (perhaps Lord Mountjoy, a former accomplice of Essex) compared the queen both to Tiberius and to Claudius. Her aim, the writer remarked, had been to gain àbsolute' control of her government by `feeding the factious aections of persons of high quality'. With Essex's demise, the writer added, that policy had back®red. The balance of factions maintained by the queen had been broken. Instead Cecil and his allies had secured a monopoly of power. Elizabeth, the creator of faction, had thus become its prisoner. She was left to rule only ìn show', to `reign as the moon in borrowed majesty'.28 That is 24

25 26 27

28

Cain, ` ``Satires . . .'' '; Worden, `Ben Jonson', pp. 77±8. I hope to return to the subject elsewhere. Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 84. A Panegyre ll. 98±100; Sejanus I.418±21, II.175±87, 383±91, III.302±8, 656±8. Blair Worden, `Favourites on the English Stage', in J. H. Elliott and L. Brockliss, eds, The World of the Favourite (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 169±70. Bodleian Library, Smith MS. 17, pp. 37±49. Natalie Mears (`Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian Perspective of the Court', in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, pp. 46±64) properly warns us against crediting too readily the perception of Cecil's conduct prevalent among his enemies; but it is the perception that matters here.

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Blair Worden the fate, in Jonson's play, of Tiberius, who under Sejanus' thrall retains only `the name' of emperor, having `foregone / The dignity and power' (I.244±6). Jonson would return to the theme in Discoveries. The `fortune' of evil princes, he there warns, ìs often-times to draw a Sejanus, to be near about them; who will at last aect to get above them' (ll. 1224±6). II

When Sejanus was published the queen whom it attacked was safely dead. Now there was a new ruler, to whom Jonson had turned in the renewed hope both of patronage and of reform. Sejanus, at least in the printed form in which we have it, was well suited to those aims. James' accession was marked by the republication of his book Basilikon Doron, which in that new edition made a striking impact on English readers.29 It contained statements about the duties of a virtuous prince which, as Robert C. Evans has observed, are echoed (intentionally or not) in Jonson's play.30 The new edition of James' work was peppered, as its predecessor had not been, with self-consciously learned references to Tacitus and other classical authors, a device paralleled by Jonson's self-consciously learned annotations to his play.31 Sejanus was appropriate to James' accession not only in its form but in its content. James, though valuing Cecil and retaining him as principal minister, was anxious to break the monopoly of power and patronage which Elizabeth was deemed to have yielded to him.32 Sejanus conforms to what Rebecca Bushnell calls à commonplace of the literary criticism of the Renaissance', `that by oering a prince the mirror of tyranny, tragedy persuades him to rule well'.33 Literary scholars suggest that Sejanus was ®rst performed at court, probably between December 1603 and February 1604. The hypothesis is plausible, though unhappily it cannot be proved.34 Whether it is correct or not, the play is close, in spirit, in substance, 29

30 31

32

33 34

Jenny Wormald, `James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies: the Scottish Context and the English Translation', in Linda Levy Peck, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 51±2. Evans, `Sejanus', pp. 83±4. M. F. Tenney, `Tacitus in the Politics of Early Stuart England', Classical Journal xxxvii (1941), p. 156; K. C. Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago, 1976), pp. 157±9; Mellor, Tacitus, p. 149. Neil Cuddy, `The Revival of the Entourage: the Bedchamber of James I, 1603±1625', in David Starkey, ed., The English Court (London, 1987), pp. 174±7, 196±203; S. J. Houston, James I (1973; repr. London, 1995), p. 44. R. W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants (Ithaca, 1990), p. 1. We have two pieces of information about the ®rst performance or performances of Sejanus. (i) The Jonson folio (1616) tells us that the play was ®rst performed in 1603. E. K. Chambers (who is followed by Philip Ayres, Sejanus, p. 16) assumed (a) that that statement is correct (which seems overwhelmingly likely but, given the gap of thirteen years or so between the performance and the folio, not certain) and (b) that the date given is old style, i.e. that the performance took place between March 1603 and March 1604. That again is likely. Yet, since

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy and in language, to two pageants written by Jonson for the court in March 1604: the ®rst the Entertainment on the king's passage to his coronation on the 15th, the second the Panegyre on his entry to his ®rst parliament four days later. The recurrence of lines from those works in Sejanus reminds us how interchangeable, in Jonson's mind, were the Roman past and the English present.35 The pertinence of Sejanus to early Jacobean politics is evident from the record of the event for which Jonson's Panegyre was written, the opening of the parliament of 1604. In 1601 Jonson had addressed, in Poetaster, issues of reform which, at or about the same time, Richard Martin and other associates of Jonson were articulating in parliament.36 The message of his Panegyre of 1604 bore close resemblances to advice given to the new king by Martin, who would be a leading speaker in the parliament of that year.37 On the parliament's ®rst day of business, three days after the Panegyre, king and Commons were instructed in a Tacitean parallel. The speaker, Sir Edward Phelips, addressing the king on the House's behalf, informed him of England's occasion for delight in his accession. For `virtue is now no treason, nor no man wisheth for the reign of Augustus, nor speaketh of the ®rst times of Tiberius'.38 The `®rst times' are the good years, as Tacitus represents them, of Tiberius' reign, before Sejanus' rise.39 Only after that rise did men yearn for

35 36

37 38 39

Jonson sometimes dated in new style (W. Greg, `The Riddle of Jonson's Chronology', The Library vi (1925±6), pp. 340±7; Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, III.607), it is conceivable that the play was performed before Elizabeth's death in March 1603. (ii) A commendatory poem printed in the quarto (1605) tells us that the play was performed at the Globe. On the ground that the public theatres were closed from March 1603 to April 1604, Chambers suggests that the performance at the Globe must have been preceded by an earlier, non-public one, which `may have been at court'. From what can be learned of the staging of plays at the early Jacobean court, Chambers concludes that such a performance would probably have occurred in the autumn of 1603 or, more probably, between 30 December 1603 and 19 February 1604. Here too Ayres follows Chambers. It would suit the argument of this chapter if a court performance, especially one between those dates, could be established. We should note, however, (i) that the closure of the public theatres after Elizabeth's death was not complete: Shakespeare's company, which produced the play at the Globe, seems to have performed in London around the beginning of May 1603 (Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theatre (Ithaca, 1991), p. 102); (ii) that if there was a non-public performance it could have been held, not at court, but at the Inns of Court or in a private house or even on tour (see Barroll, Politics, pp. 106±11); in which case the winter of 1603±4 would be by no means the only realistic possibility. There is another consideration. If there was a performance at court, it seems surprising that the published version contains references (in the commendatory poem mentioned above, and in Jonson's dedication) only to the Globe production, which failed humiliatingly. Evans, `Sejanus'; Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 84. Cain, Poetaster, p. 46; T. E. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (Leicester, 1981±95), III.340, 375±6, 427, 453±5. Martin, Speech; Cain, Poetaster, p. 47. Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 69. Tacitus, Annals IV.vi.

79


Blair Worden the return of Augustan rule. The coded identi®cation between the Elizabethan and the Tiberian regime is unmistakable. Jonson's play, too, looks backward to the happier time before Sejanus' ascendancy. In the play, it is true, it is to the virtues of Prince Germanicus, rather than to the government of Augustus or the early Tiberius, that the party of principle looks back (I.113.). The eect of the rise of Sejanus is nonetheless the same in Jonson's mind as in Phelips'. In the play as in the speech, `virtue' is made `treason'. Jonson's Entertainment for James in 1604 does equate him with Augustus (ll. 728±63). What the poet there hopes from the king is the wisdom and virtue ± as well as the patronage ± of the Augustus of Poetaster. Perhaps the achievement for which Augustus' reign was most commonly praised in the Renaissance was its termination of strife. That feat had its pertinence to James' accession, for the new reign ended a long period both of war abroad and of the threat of it at home. Jonson's Entertainment commends James for ending `war and tumult'. Yet Augustus, for Jonson as for Phelips, also has another virtue. He is praiseworthy for the contrast not only with what went before him but with what came afterwards: not only with the republic but with Tiberian tyranny. Six years after Phelips' speech another MP, Sir Francis Bacon, likewise addressing James on the Commons' behalf, would essay a similar Roman parallel, based, as Phelips' had been, on Tacitus. Bacon compared the king to the emperors Nerva and Trajan. For Bacon, as for Tacitus, the benevolence of those princes stood in contrast to the evil of their tyrannical predecessor, Domitian.40 Jonson himself, in turning the king's attention from a benign present to a malign past, had behind him the example of Sir Thomas More, whose encouragement, in 1509, of reforming aspiration in the new king, Henry VIII, had mingled with disparagement of the tyranny of his father.41 In instructing James in March 1604 Jonson drew on More's text.42 James himself seems to have been ready enough to tolerate imputations of tyranny against his own predecessor, particularly when they highlighted his own contrasting virtues. Elizabeth, after all, had sanctioned the execution of his mother, after manoeuvres at court similar to those which subsequently persuaded her to condone the death of Essex. But what would James' own rule be like? Would he, like the Augustus idealised by Jonson and by Phelips, be virtuous? In March 1604 no one could tell. Though Jonson's pageants of that month rejoice in the new order, his enthusiasm is guarded. In addressing the king he eschews satire, the genre which, when he addressed Elizabeth in Cynthia's Revels, proved at once a tactless and an impotent method of advising royalty. In March 1604 he con®nes himself to panegyric, the genre with which, 40

41

42

James Spedding et al., eds, The Works of Francis Bacon (1857±74), III.303±4, XI.203; cf. Jonson's Epigram 35, which contrasts James with Domitian. David Rundle, À New Golden Age? More, Skelton and the Accession Verses of 1509', Renaissance Studies ix (1995), pp. 58±76. Robert C. Evans, Habits of Mind: Evidence and Eects of Ben Jonson's Reading (Lewisburg, 1995), Chapters 5, 6.

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy in Cynthia's Revels, satire was combined. Yet Jonson the panegyrist of 1604 is a dierent ®gure from the obsequious dramatist of 1600. In the ®rst of the two pageants of March, admittedly, Jonson asks no awkward questions about the new king. James is hailed as the restorer of liberty and justice after the Elizabethan tyranny. Jonson recalls the `stain' of `the former age' (l. 610), its bloodthirsty perversion of legal processes, its murderous espionage system, its oppression, servitude, venality, its corrupt factionalism, evils which Jonson counts on James to banish. It is in the second pageant, the Panegyre, that James' own credentials are examined. Jonson's friend William Camden remarked dryly on the `great pomp' of James' entry into the capital in March 1604.43 In the Panegyre, Themis, Jonson's new surrogate, tells the king to ignore the `pomp' of his civic welcome, to resist `pride / In these vain stirs'.44 Drawing him aside from the adulatory crowd, Themis lectures James on the virtues of true kingship and on the vices of tyranny. One of Themis' lessons is that a prince who adopts evil courses loses his moral freedom, for wickedness, once entered into, becomes a continuous political necessity (ll. 115±27). Jonson would repeat the point in the passage of Discoveries which describes the fate of tyrants who succumb to a Sejanus (ll. 1182±233).45 James, it is no surprise to ®nd, concurs with Themis' advice. Just as, near the end of Cynthia's Revels, the queen `knows' what needs amending in her court, so in the Panegyre James `knows' the rules of moral government (ll. 113, 121, 128). But where Cynthia's knowledge owed nothing to Jonson, James' knowledge prevails only after the prompting, even the grilling, of the poet. When James is told by Themis of the wickedness of earlier princes, the monarch's readiness to discountenance their deeds is less than wholehearted. It seems to be merely a check on less reassuring proclivities: on James' sense of his own rights and on his fellow-feeling towards the race of kings. Nor did he seem their vices so to love, As once defend, what Themis did reprove. For though by right, and bene®t of times, He owned their crowns, he would not so their crimes. (ll. 109±12)46

III

Jonson's experience of the early Jacobean regime was as troubled as his memory of the Elizabethan one. Acccording to Drummond, Jonson told him that his `mortal enemy' the Earl of Northampton, pursuing a private 43 44 45 46

Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 73. A Panegyre ll. 73±7. The same lesson is urged on James in Martin, Speech, sigs B1±1u. It will be seen that my assessment of the tenor of Themis' advice diers from that in Martin Butler's ®ne essay ` ``Servant but not Slave'': Ben Jonson at the Jacobean Court', Proceedings of the British Academy xc (1996), pp. 73±4.

81


Blair Worden grievance against the playwright, had him brought before the Privy Council `for his Sejanus'.47 In the mid-winter of 1603±4 Jonson was apparently `thrust out', for misbehaviour, of a performance of a court masque, an occurrence for which his companion on that occasion consoled him with the thought that `God threatens kings'.48 In the summer of 1605 Jonson was in prison again, having provoked `the anger of the king' by his involvement in the writing of Eastward Ho, a play which mimicked James' Scottish manners and favourites (though Jonson is not thought to have composed the oending passages). Jonson's Catholicism continued to colour his political fortunes. In October 1605, four weeks before the Gunpowder Plot, he dined with a group of Catholics in London, among them Robert Catesby, the chief contriver of the Plot.49 His movements in that autumn bring to mind the murky, terrorised underworld of anti-Catholic espionage which Charles Nicoll has vividly recreated in his study of the death of Marlowe.50 Under Elizabeth, Jonson had detested the espionage system, which Robert Cecil had controlled. Cecil controlled it still. Yet now Jonson became, under Cecil's direction, a part of that system, spying, as other Catholics of the period found themselves doing, on other Catholics.51 Jonson eagerly distanced himself from the Gunpowder Plot, which must have gravely oended his instinct for political obedience and loyalty.52 Everything in his outlook will have warmed to the king's own policy towards Catholicism, a faith which James was willing to tolerate provided its adherents would pledge loyalty to crown and state. Yet the problems raised for Jonson by his religion did not go away. In January 1606 he was brought before the London consistory court for recusancy. Did doubts about his allegiance persist?53 Was he a target of those within the regime who took advantage of the Plot to damage the king's policy of conciliating loyal Catholics? The long process of Jonson's reconversion to Protestantism, which culminated in his 47

48 49

50 51

52 53

Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, I.141. As Evans shrewdly observes (`Sejanus', p. 75), there is no reason to think that the king shared Northampton's displeasure. Ayres (Sejanus, p. 16) assumes that Northampton's accusation was prompted by the performance, rather than the published version, of the play, but the alternative seems no less likely. (Northampton joined the Privy Council on James' accession.) Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, I.52 (cf. ibid. I.193±4). For Jonson and the Catholics in the autumn of 1605 see B. N. De Luna, Jonson's Romish Plot (Oxford, 1967), Chapter 4. Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (London, 1992). For that practice see ibid. and J. Bruce, ed., Correspondence of King James VI (London, 1861), p. 74. Ayres, Sejanus, p. 71. Drummond recorded Jonson's recollection that Northampton had had him charged with `popery and treason' (Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, I.141). Drummond's wording leaves it unclear whether the accusation was related to the content of Sejanus. If it was, and if the charge was levelled at the published rather than the staged version of the play (see above, n. 47), then Northampton's move is presumably part of the story of Jonson's relations with Catholicism in the winter of 1605±6.

82


Ben Jonson and the Monarchy return to the communion table in 1610, took place against the background of the government's rede®nition of recusancy to include non-communion and of a succession of measures to enforce ecclesiastical conformity on Catholics.54 It is in religion that the strains imposed by Jonson's decision to accommodate himself to the Jacobean regime seem most apparent. Accommodate himself he nonetheless does. The Gunpowder Plot is a decisive moment in that development. After it there are no more prison-sentences, no more clashes with the law, no more displays of contumacy, no more politically risky plays.55 He becomes (in the main) a respectable ®gure. He becomes respected too. From the winter of 1604±5 he slowly establishes himself as the principal writer of court masques, indeed as James' favoured poet and playwright. Accepted at last by the court, he at last wins acceptance from the public also. The early months of 1606 bring him, in Volpone, his ®rst smash-hit. Thereafter his complaints about the public's contempt for poets become fainter and less frequent. His respect for his audiences grows with their respect for him. Human beings are now to be forgiven for their natural appetites. Pleasure ± provided it acknowledges its subordinate rank ± can be reconciled to virtue. Jonson's sense of acceptance was not complete. Spasms of insecurity and anger persisted. He could still represent himself (in Epigram 65) as a victim of `the court's ill will', `suspected still'. The failure of Catiline in 1611 temporarily reawakened his contempt for the undiscriminating playgoer. His accommodation to the new regime was incomplete too. Indeed his posture, even at the height of his political fortunes, can be surprisingly antipolitical. Here his stance in the high Jacobean age is continuous with that in Sejanus. It is a country-party stance, which separates virtue from power.56 In Sejanus, opponents of the favourite's regime who in Tacitus' account were implicated in politics are presented as virtuously uncontaminated by them. The most striking adjustment aects the position and character of Marcus Lepidus, who in Tacitus `stood uniformly high in in¯uence and favour' with Tiberius.57 In Jonson's play Lepidus belongs not to the court but to the party of opposition. He lives àt home', in Stoical retreat (IV.293±8). Jonson's Jacobean poetry adjusts in a similar fashion the conduct of the politicians whom he seems happiest in praising. It describes them less as they are than as they wish to see themselves or to be seen. In real life the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Henry Neville and Sir Robert Sidney were eager, sometimes desperate contenders for oce. In Jonson's poems they rise above its 54

55 56

57

Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 84±9; M. C. Questier, `Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance', Historical Journal xl (1997), pp. 311±29. See David Riggs, Ben Jonson (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 134, 141. Here I dier from Riggs (ibid., p. 134), who maintains that `the Jacobean Jonson consistently equate[s] virtue and power'. Annals IV.xx (the Loeb translation).

83


Blair Worden inducements. Sidney liked to think of himself as at least semi-detached from the court. Yet when he read Tacitus it was to learn how to prosper amid court intrigue and to supply the advice that would earn him notice as a counsellor.58 Neville, who in Jonson's verse holds out against the charms of worldly advancement, fought a ®erce and protracted campaign, which he lost, for the Secretaryship of State after Cecil's death. Yet Neville had a dierent sense of himself, which Jonson's poem to him honours. Amid his diculties in Jacobean politics Neville declared his aversion to courtly employment, sighed for `my husbandry in the country, which puts me in mind of that beatitude which Horace so much commends', and professed a desire to spend more time with his family.59 Sir Robert Wroth, another would-be political leader, is commended by Jonson for remaining ± like Jonson's Lepidus ± àt home'. The detachment which Jonson praises or encourages in those men is accompanied by passivity, even resignation. The subjects of his country-party poetry are victims, not reformers, of the evils of their age. Jonson himself clung to his own sense of independence. He would, he declared, stand on his inner strengths, àt home'.60 In his plain clothes and unaected demeanour he contrives, at least in his perception and representation of himself, to distance himself from the arti®cialities and servilities of the court he pro®tably serves. That posture, too, is allied to resignation. In the comical satires, and in the Panegyre of 1604, surrogate Jonsons strive, from high moral vantage-points, to correct courtly and ethical abuses. After 1604 there are no more surrogates, no more high moral vantage-points. Jonson, hitherto the aspiring reformer, even the scourge, of the monarchy, is now content, he tells us, to be its servant and subject, ready, `without inquiry', to leave the government's decisions to those who know best.61 In his masques, of course, Jonson does remain the adviser of a prince and is ostensibly the reformer of the court. Yet the truths told in his masques during his period of royal favour are much less searching and less uncomfortable than those communicated in the Panegyre, even than those implicit in Cynthia's Revels. A monitory note does enter Jonson's message to Prince Henry in the Barriers of 1610, but the advice given to the royal heir seems just the counsel the father would have wanted the son to hear. In the pageants of 1604 the king is told of the good work he will or should do. Thereafter Jonson tells him of the good work he has done. What did Jonson make of James' rule? He evidently had a personal liking for him, as marked, perhaps, as his personal dislike of Elizabeth. To Drummond, Jonson recalled a poem of John Donne in 1601, in which the 58

59

60 61

See his annotations on the copy of Lipsius' edition of Tacitus of 1585 in the British Library, shelfmark C.142 e. 13. Sir Ralph Winwood, Memorials of Aairs of State, ed. E. Sawyer (London, 1725), II.17, 77±8. Cf. ibid. III.403, 407, 462±3; Worden, `Ben Jonson', pp. 77±8. The Forest 4, l. 68. Underwood 47, l. 43.

84


Ben Jonson and the Monarchy soul of a Protestant heretic is condemned to a ®nal resting-place in Elizabeth's body. That body was the subject, in Jonson's conversation with Drummond, of ungallant remarks by Jonson himself. He told his host of the queen's promiscuous and thwarted sexual appetites, of her painted and vermilioned face, of the way her courtiers, when playing dice with her, would load them `to make her win and esteem herself fortunate'. After James' death, by contrast, Jonson wrote aectionately of òur blessed James', of the `memory' and `glories' of his reign.62 No doubt personal aection owed something to gratitude for favour and patronage. Yet Jonson would have had other grounds too for approving of James. He would have warmed to the king's learning and respect for learning, not merely because the poet would have recognised a kindred spirit but because of Jonson's belief that a king's `best counsellors' are `books'.63 (Elizabeth's learning, which she did not parade as James did his, had evidently meant nothing to Jonson, even though she privately translated Roman authors, Horace and Sallust, whom Jonson also translated.) On grounds of policy, too, Jonson had much to welcome in the new era. James has had such historiographical bad luck, and Elizabeth such historiographical good luck, that it may be hard for us to grasp that his reign could seem an improvement on hers. Writers who lost out, in terms of patronage or policy, from James' accession, or who were thwarted in the power-struggles of the reign, skilfully denigrated his rule and praised Elizabeth's. Later the civil wars and Interregnum damned the Stuart house in the eyes of the more forward Roundheads, who controlled the press from 1649. Yet in the king's own time there were perspectives from which his policies, especially in their resistance to ideological rigidity, could seem both sensible and shrewd. Those virtues would not have been lost on Jonson, who could be as alert to the prudential as to the ethical qualities of good rule. In Discoveries a passage commending James' government prompts Jonson to re¯ect that `Wise, is rather the attribute of a prince, than learned or good' (ll. 999±1004). Most of the policies of the learned James would have seemed to Jonson both wise and good. In the sphere of religion Jonson's own views corresponded to the king's with respect not only to the toleration of Catholicism but to the virtues of Protestant high churchmanship and to the vices of extreme Puritanism. The king's decision to conclude peace with Spain in 1604, and his subsequent resistance to demands for a militant Protestant foreign policy, would have been equally congenial to Jonson, as would James' readiness to restore a number of Essex's followers, a group to which Jonson remained close, to favour or security. James, as Jonson told him, `came to save what discord would destroy'.64 As 62 63 64

Ungathered Verse 43; Discoveries, ll. 999±1002; Butler, ` ``Servant but not Slave'' ', p. 91. Discoveries ll. 2338±9. A Panegyre l. 138.

85


Blair Worden the Elizabethan anxieties about civil war and the succession receded, so did the Tacitean mood of the queen's last years, the preoccupation with espionage and political terror. `We have now no cause,' a poem of Jonson informed the king early in the reign, `left us of fear' (Epigram 34). Jonson, who had had so much to say about Elizabeth's bloodstained cruelty, explained that James `hates all chase of malice, and of blood'.65 One bloody deed the rule of James did supply, the sacri®ce of Raleigh's ìnnocent blood'66 in 1618. Yet where Jonson had used his imaginative resources to complain of Essex's execution, he held his peace ± indeed made himself scarce ± at the time of Raleigh's.67 He held his peace on another front too. When, in 1609±10, James attempted to curb parliamentary claims to freedom of speech, he provoked remonstrations akin to those voiced against the same royal tactic under Elizabeth.68 Jonson's writings echoed the earlier protests but not the later ones. In the Panegyre of 1604 Jonson charged not only Elizabeth, but a host of past English monarchs, with bloody tyranny. Yet in Prince Henry's Barriers in 1610 we learn that England has been almost uniformly blessed with prudent and virtuous rulers. If Jonson's anxieties about tyranny have passed, so has his preoccupation, intense in the years following Essex's death, with the manufacture of treason-charges against virtuous subjects. In Volpone, the comedy which follows the tragedy of Sejanus, the charge of treason, so sinister in the Roman play, becomes a joke. Its victim is Sir Politic Would-Be, whose imagination has invented a Tacitean world of espionage and reason of state. In Sejanus the same evils were all too real. When Jonson returns to the theme of treason in Catiline (1611), the treatment of the subject in Sejanus undergoes a dierent kind of reversal. Treason, far from being manufactured, is now a deadly danger to the commonwealth, as deadly as it had been to England at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, a peril to which the play pointedly alludes. Yet if Jonson's favourable disposition towards James' policies, even towards his character, is intelligible, he could hardly conceal from himself the ethical insuciency of the king's court. Indeed the court remained a frequent subject of Jonson's satire and complaint. It is the focus of his criticism that has changed. The reigning monarch is no longer held responsible for the court's failings. In Cynthia's Revels the monarch's responsibility was made plain: Princes, that would their people should do well, Must at themselves begin, as at the head (V.xi.169±70) 65 66 67

68

Time Vindicated l. 529. Historical Manuscript Commission Report, Hat®eld XXI.282. Jennifer Brady, `Jonson's ``To King James'': Plain Speaking in the Epigrammes and the Conversations', Studies in Philology lxxxii (1985), pp. 380±97, at p. 382. Historical Manuscript Commission Report, Hat®eld XXI.266; Leah Marcus, The Politics of Mirth (Chicago, 1986), pp. 29, 48; and compare N. E. McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), I.301, with the words of Roger Morice quoted in Worden, `Ben Jonson', p. 86.

86


Ben Jonson and the Monarchy For John Donne too, or for Jonson's close friend John Selden, the ethical failings of monarchy were ®rst and foremost the prince's failings.69 Yet when public problems arose under the early Stuarts ± the `panic fear' generated by the false report of James' death in 1607, the discontent provoked by the parliamentary turmoil of the late 1620s ± Jonson's poetry assigned blame not to the monarch but to the subject.70 Jonson never mentions James in the same breath as the court's wickedness, by which the king seems untouched. Courtly evils, no longer symptoms of princely misrule, are now the practice of men who `would sell the prince and state'.71 In The Golden Age Restored, as Martin Butler has remarked, the court's abuses, far from being James' fault, are ®gured as rebels against him.72 In Jonson's writing James pro®ts from a double standard. For if the king escapes blame for the failings of his entourage he gains the credit for its merits. When Jonson praises James' counsellors ± Cecil, Suolk, Ellesmere ± their virtues illustrate the king's wisdom in choosing them.73 Yet when Jonson's verse praises Cecil's father, Lord Burghley, the queen's choice as her Lord Treasurer and principal adviser, he avoids mentioning her.74 Jonson could sustain the premises of his Jacobean political commentary only at a level of generality. When called upon to engage with particularities of policy he ran into diculties, as Butler has shown in a series of incisive studies of the masques. The problems became hardest when Jonson praised attempts that were made, well into the reign, to reform the court. How could he congratulate the king on those initiatives without exposing the monarch's responsibility for the abuses which the reforms were intended to end? The same diculty arises in Jonson's poem to Sir Thomas Overbury (Epigram 113), which explains `what ignorance, what pride is ¯ed' from the court as a result of Overbury's rise in it. In Cynthia's Revels, `pride and ignorance' were `two essential parts of the courtier' (II.ii.77±8), which it was the queen's job to banish. Yet the poem to Overbury leaves us to infer that, before Overbury's rise, James did nothing to dispel them. In Cynthia's Revels, Jonson's advocacy of courtly virtue, delivered from outside the regime, was impotent. It looks no less so when delivered from inside the Jacobean regime. In the performance of Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) a cruel irony exposed the weakness of his position. Earlier he had derided the favour extended by Elizabeth to Sir Christopher Hatton, whose favour he explained not by any capacity for 69

70 71 72

73 74

Cain, ` ``Satires . . .'' ', p. 58 (quoting Donne); John Selden, Titles of Honour (London, 1614), sig. C1. Epigram 29; Underwood 62, 64. Underwood 61 (cf. Underwood 47 ll. 37±53). Martin Butler, `Ben Jonson and the Limits of Courtly Panegyric', in Sharpe and Lake, Culture and Politics, pp. 106±7. See too W. David Kay, Ben Jonson (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 120±1, 135, 143, 152; Riggs, Ben Jonson, pp. 254, 266. Epigrams 63, 67; Underwood 31; cf. The Gypsies Metamorphosed ll. 334±9. Underwood 30, esp. ll. 13±14.

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Blair Worden virtue, the proper ground for courtly advancement, but by his skill in the ethically vacuous art of dancing. When Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, which advocated courtly reform, irritated James, the evening had to be rescued, and the king's humour restored, by a fetching display on the dance-¯oor by the Duke of Buckingham.75 How then does the Jacobean Jonson explain the court's ethical de®ciencies? If there is a single cause it lies not in the crown but in the nobility, among whom Jonson's virtuous country party is a beleaguered minority. Nobles recklessly pursue power and pro®t, are obsessed with false values of honour and display, are indierent to their public duties. Flattery, which in Sejanus is `midwife unto princes' rage', is now directed at the nobility.76 Social evils spread out, not from courtly failings, but from noble ones. It is not that Jonson has lost his satirical sharpness. He remains England's Juvenal, moving between laughter and anger, alternately mocking and scourging the excesses of conspicuous display and the values that inspire them. But that criticism is now social rather than political. Juvenal made little if any connection between the social system of imperial Rome and its political system. Like the Jacobean Jonson he was interested in the corrupting properties less of politics than of money.77 In Sejanus, power is won through politics: in Volpone, which follows Sejanus, it is exerted by gold. The court, the magnet of human folly in Jonson's writings until 1605,78 thereafter yields that role to settings that attract the follies of society at large: Volpone's house, Lovewit's house, Bartholomew Fair. The Elizabethan and early Jacobean Jonson, of course, had social as well as political targets, but they were subordinate to his protests against princely and courtly misrule. When, as occasionally happens, the Tacitean language of the early Jonson revives in his later writing ± most notably in Àn epistle to a friend, to persuade him to the wars' (Underwood 15), which furiously assails the `swarm' of `¯atterers', `spies', ìnformers', `whisperers that let blood' (ll. 161±70) ± its target is the conduct not of the court but of society. In the same lines the destruction of `friendship' is explained not, as in the earlier writing, as a consequence of political tyranny but as a symptom of social degeneration. Another contrast will con®rm the shift. The opening of Sejanus addresses the question, which so exercised writers in Renaissance England,79 how it is that 75

76

77

78

79

Cynthia's Revels IV.v.78±81; The Entertainment at Althorp, ll. 260.; Butler, `Ben Jonson and the Limits of Courtly Panegyric', pp. 109±12; Clare, `Jonson's ``Comical Satires'' ', pp. 39±40. Sejanus I. 421; Underwood 15 l. 147; Discoveries ll. 1586±1601. (Sejanus is ¯attered as a `lord', but his lordship is one of political power, not social position.) Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, trans. and ed. Peter Green (1967; repr. Harmondsworth, 1987), pp. 23, 29±31. See the characterisation of Fastidius Briske in Every Man Out Of His Humour; Cynthia's Revels passim; Poestaster IV.i.1±2, ii.1., viii.1. Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Politics in Philip Sidney's Arcadia (New Haven and London, 1996), Chapter 19.

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Ben Jonson and the Monarchy societies come to surrender their virtue. The answer is that Rome's leaders have `betrayed' Rome's political liberties and brought `servitude' on themselves (I.52±63). Yet for the later Jonson the question is why nations have surrendered themselves, not to political power, but to `riches'.80 Certainly there are times ± for example in the poem to Wroth, or in The Staple of News (IV.iv.140.) ± when Jonson does return to the depiction of courtly evils. Yet now he represents them as merely one manifestation of the larger social malaise. The courtier's faults are aligned with those of the landlord, the herald, the lawyer, the merchant, the soldier, the doctor, even the poet. The transition makes for contrasts between Jonson's ®rst Roman tragedy, Sejanus, and his second, Catiline. In Sejanus, it is true, the nobility's surrender of political liberty is ¯eetingly explained by social failings: by (in language we often meet again in Jonson's judgments of the English nobility) noble `riots' and `pride' (I.57). Yet that theme is not developed. Sejanus is about the appetite for power, not about what Jonson would later call `the fury of men's gullets, and their groins'.81 One source of Jonson's characterisation of Sejanus is Juvenal's Satire X. Yet where Juvenal tells us of the favourite's insatiable pursuit of wealth and honours, in Jonson's play Sejanus is interested in those rewards solely as a means to political supremacy. In Tacitus, Sejanus is `®red to action by feminine passion' to woo Livia.82 In Jonson's play his seduction of Livia is merely a political tactic: `Venus', he con®des, `hath the smallest share in it' (I.374). Livia herself has the same priorities. The decoration of her face by her physician Eudemus anticipates many a shaft of Jonson's satire: in no scene of the play is his Rome so transparently English. Yet Livia, unlike the English hussies mocked in Jonson's poetry, is scarcely interested in her appearance save as it will win political in¯uence. In Jonson's Catiline there is a boudoir scene to parallel the painting of Livia. The painted Fulvia, no less than Livia, wants political power. But there is a dierence. Fulvia's ambition is identi®ed, as Livia's is not, with social and sexual vanity. That contrast illustrates a broader one between the two plays. In the ®rst of them, Jonson chose to base a narrative on Tacitus. In the second he chose to base one on Sallust. In Tacitus social corruption is a background cause of political evil: Sallust sets it in the foreground. In Sejanus, the party of virtue longs for a good emperor, who will disperse the evils created by a bad one (I.117., 400±09): in Catiline, where there is no court or monarchy, Jonson portrays social evils for which no prince is responsible. In adjusting Tacitus, Jonson points to the corruption of the English court: in adjusting Sallust he points to the corruption of the English nobility. For in Catiline no less than in Sejanus, we are as much in Renaissance England as in ancient Rome. The lines with which Jonson rebukes the Roman nobility of the play, 80 81 82

Discoveries ll. 1367±72. The Staple of News III.iv.46; Discoveries ll. 1394±5. Tacitus, Annals IV.xxxix.

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Blair Worden condemns its snobbery, its irresponsibility, its desertion of ancient virtue and frugality, have close parallels in the poems which castigate the nobility of Jacobean England.83 From some perspectives, Jonson's retreat from the strenuous political agenda of his earlier career will seem a process of self-betrayal, a sell-out. From others it will seem one of literary emancipation. It is after all in Volpone, which brings the period of Jonson's anti-courtly drama to an end and shifts his attention from political to social targets, that his theatrical genius takes wing. Most of Jonson's more enduring poetry, too, was written (as far as we can date it) after that transition. Whether we regret or approve the change which this chapter has traced, we are left to re¯ect on the literary impact, in an age of personal monarchy, of the personality of monarchs. If either Elizabeth or James had been a dierent kind of person, or had had a dierent attitude to Jonson, how dierent his literary career might have been.

83

Blair Worden, `Politics in Catiline: Jonson and his Sources', in Martin Butler, ed., RePresenting Ben Jonson (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 155±7.

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d:/3wells/gurr.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:7 ± disk/mp

Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing ANDREW GURR

A

CTING at the new Globe in broad daylight shows what an anachronism the modern tradition of stage realism is on such a stage. The inherent and manifest arti®ce of playing in such a venue makes attempts at realistic and psychologically plausible acting ineective, and certainly misconceived. The original staging at the Globe was more openly unrealistic than modern conditioning can admit. Shakespearean expectations in staging and viewing plays diered from ours more widely and deeply than we now recognise. One of the ®tter words for the early concept of acting might be anti-realism. It is evidenced in all the Shakespearean plays wherever you look for it. We talk now about the danger on stage of breaking the illusion. Setting up any kind of illusion was a concept the Elizabethans were extremely wary of. Anti-realism in Shakespeare's time was not just a matter of the acting traditions inherent in such standard features as soliloquies, where someone talks out loud to himself so that the visibly present audience can hear his thoughts. That was an obvious enough anti-realist convention. Writers who set down stage directions such as `Blanch speaketh this secretly at one end of the stage' (Fair Em, 235), or the direction for Kate in her ®rst scene in the alternative version of The Taming of the Shrew, `She turnes aside and speakes' (The Taming of A Shrew, 274), were using a tradition generated by a period concerned to make its illusions self-evidently illusory. Dialogue set in verse was another. These anti-realist traditions were employed quite deliberately and knowingly. They had pervasive eects in all areas of playwriting. Their origins were a part of what might be identi®ed as a persistent fear of playing. Fear of `play', the opposite to work, was not the only consequence of Weber's Protestant work-ethic that developed with the Reformation. The hatred of plays and playgoing that boiled out of the English churches from the 1570s onwards was far more positive and much more considered than we usually think it now. It was certainly more than a knee-jerk reaction by Puritans to the idea of ordinary people enjoying themselves. Behind the churchmen's diatribes sat a real fear of illusion, and a revulsion against the deliberate dishonesty it was based on. When we use the term that Stephen Poliako gave to his play, `breaking the illusion', we give voice to the high value now credited to the higher arts of illusion. Such a valuation angered and 91


Andrew Gurr terri®ed many Elizabethans. William Perkins, the sharpest of all the reasoners in the late Elizabethan church, put the case against all forms of deception succinctly and comprehensively. Àn illusion,' he declared, ìs the work of Satan, whereby he deludeth or deceiveth man. And it is two-fold: either of the outward senses, or of the minde.'1 The sermon in which he made this point was aimed at witchcraft, the most overtly Satanic of the various professions that used the arts of illusion. He did not bother to make stage-playing one of his examples of Satanic deception, but plenty of other pulpit-thumpers did. Play-acting was comprehended along with witchcraft as deliberately deceptive illusions which were the Devil's work.2 Perkins actually used the standard term of praise for good acting as lifelike when he spoke of the Devil impersonating Samuel to deceive Saul. He `did it so lively and cunningly, as well in forme of bodie, as in attire and voice, that Saul thought verily it was the prophet'.3 For the Tudors the lies of illusionism were visible on stage just in the actors' clothing. Dress bespoke the person, and therefore stood out as the most accessible form of deception. The Tudor sumptuary laws grew out of the view that clothes ought to depict the wearer's social status, if not character. Care that outward appearance should accurately re¯ect the inner person became a weapon in the case that playing was a devilish deception. There were nearly as many attacks on stage-players for their misuse of attire as for their bawdry. Sir John Harington was alert enough to the danger to oer an ironic defence of `dissimulation' through dress in his defensive Treatise on Play composed in 1597, in the decade when professional acting got its ®rst ocial recognition as a recreation for Londoners. To Harington `Play' entailed all forms of recreation, from dice-playing to theatre, and he took care to include a comprehensive summary of the range of the games of outward deceit that Tudor `players' used in everyday life: Wee goe brave in apparell that wee may be taken for better men then wee bee; we use much bumbastings and quiltings to seeme better formed, better showlderd, smaller wasted, and fuller thyght, then wee are; wee barbe and 1

2

3

A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (Cambridge, 1608), quoted by Tetzeli von Rosador, `The Sacralizing Sign: Religion and Magic in Bale, Greene, and the Early Shakespeare', Yearbook of English Studies xxiii (1993), p. 32. Stephen Greenblatt's essay `Shakespeare and the Exorcists', in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. Patricia Parker and G. Hartman (London, 1985), pp. 163±87, takes a rather more metaphysical view of the relations between witchcraft and theatre. A succinct account of the connections that were recognised across dierent countries and dierent religions between witchcraft, conjuring tricks, and devilry is in Henk Gras, Studies in Elizabethan Audience Response to the Theatre, Part 1: How Easy is a Bush Suppos'd a Bear? Actor and Character in the Elizabethan Viewer's Mind. Part 2: As I Am a Man. Aspects of the Presentation and Audience Perception of the Elizabethan Female Page (New York, 1993), I.189± 96. William Perkins, The Works of that famous and worthie minister of Christ, in the universitie of Cambridge, M. W. Perkins (Cambridge, 1603), p. 120.

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing shave ofte, to seeme yownger than wee are; we use perfumes both inward and outward to seeme sweeter then wee be; corkt shooes to seeme taller then wee bee; wee use cowrtuows salutations to seem kinder then wee be; lowly obaysances to seeme humbler then we bee; and somtyme grave and godly communication to seem wyser or devowter then wee bee.4

To which, being the exhibitionistic charmer he was, he added that the gain from such deceits was that the users might with luck actually turn into what they pretended to be: `Labour to bee as you would bee thought', he concluded, an immaculately puritan-like precept which neatly defused the charge that any such pretence was inherently devilish. But he was rare for his time in taking such a generous attitude to pretence and illusion. Shakespeare was by no means the only playwright to admit the close analogy between the deceptions of playing and, if not witchcraft, then de®nitely its equally criminal companion, counterfeiting, the coinage of false icons. The tricky Warwick in 3 Henry VI speaks derisively of `tragedy . . . played in jest by counterfeiting actors'.5 John Cocke, an Inns of Court student writing a `Character' of a `Common Player' in 1615, called him à daily Counterfeit'.6 Marlowe, who defended the counterfeiting of coins in his Àtheist' lecture, and was caught doing it in the Netherlands in 1592,7 was much less defensive about such deceptions than most of his contemporaries, but his older Canterbury neighbour, Stephen Gosson, laid great stress on their immorality in his most trenchant diatribe, Playes Confuted in Five Actions. In Stage Playes for a boy to put one the attyre, the gesture, the passions of a woman; for a meane person to take upon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit porte, and traine, is by outwarde signes to shewe them selves otherwise then they are, and so within the compasse of a lye.8

To pretend to be someone else was to deny one's own God-given identity. Any form of disguise for role-playing, whether by witchcraft, to get money from the performance of plays, or for such openly deceitful pro®ts as conycatching or coining fake money, was ungodly behaviour. For Elizabethans, playgoers or not, the hazards of deception were a constant concern. Their fascination with trickery of any kind is evident in the popularity of the cony-catching tracts from the later Tudor period, and in only slightly dierent ways in Jacobean pamphlets like John Gee's diatribe of 4

5

6 7

8

See Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington (Philadelphia, 1930), pp. 41±2. II.iii.27±8. Quotations from Shakespeare are from The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1986). In J. Stephens, Satyrical Essayes (London, 1615), p. 292. See R. B. Wernham, `Christopher Marlowe at Flushing in 1592', English Literary Renaissance vi (1976), pp. 344±5. Playes Confuted in Five Actions (London, 1582), sig., E5r; reprinted in Markets of Bawdrie, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Salzburg, 1974), p. 177.

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Andrew Gurr 1624, New Shreds of the Old Snare, including the apparitions of two new female ghosts. Gee wrote two pamphlets which drew heavily on the old attacks on playing from the 1570s, but he deployed them for a rather dierent purpose. The title of his ®rst pamphlet explains his objective: The Foot out of the Snare: with a detection of sundry late practices . . . of the Priests and Jesuites of England. The snare was the Catholic entrapment of gullible young ladies by the use of magic and illusion. Gee recounts the devices he claimed were used for the snares in gleeful and improbable detail. They were chie¯y hallucinatory shows, involving dressing women as ghosts who spoke to their victims about hell®re. Gee himself, writing only a few years after the notorious pamphlets about cross-dressing, Hic Mulier and Haec Vir, was a regular playgoer, and made no attempt to suggest that plays could be as dangerous as were the Jesuits with their seductive tricks. His pamphlets rode on the swell of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic feeling that generated A Game at Chesse, rather than on any more plainly Christian concern. To some degree he re¯ects a gradual easing of the concerns about the dangers of playgoing and witchcraft that had begun to develop by the end of James' reign, and as part of it some relaxation of anti-realism in the theatre. He was redirecting to a more speci®cally religious end the same general fear of the dangers of setting up deceitful illusions. Professional players were condemned for staging illusions because they pretended to be people other than themselves, which was a basic dishonesty. They hid the true villainy or virtue of their characters behind the roles they played for money. They broke the laws of social rank by dressing in the robes of kings and gentry, when their own social rank was vastly inferior. They showed boys dressed as women. Deception in any form was a lie, and therefore playing was an exemplar of deceit. Èvery man', said Gosson, `must show him selfe outwardly to be such as in deed he is.'9 Dress was the mark of status, and every time a player wore velvet the deception was manifest. Sumptuary laws made velvet a mark of the gentry, and no player could be a gentleman. Worst of all wearing a crown on stage was manifestly to burlesque greatness. Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses upheld the sumptuary laws, complaining of common citizens that ìt is not at any hand lawful that they should wear silks, velvets, satens, damasks, gould, silver, and what they list', with the sad result that ìt is verie hard to knowe who is noble, who is worshipfull, who is a gentleman, who is not' (sigs. C7v, C2v). Players sinned in the same way. For a player to wear pretentious clothing was to partake in the satanic exercise of illusion. There are ample signs that the players knew the dangers inherent in these practices, particularly in the earlier plays of the 1590s. It is also possible to identify some of the steps they took to acknowledge what they were doing, whether they did so defensively or aggressively. Through the ®rst two-thirds 9

Ibid., p. 177.

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing of Richard III, Richard con®des in his audience not just that he is an actor but how he will use his roles to deceive the world's characters on the stage. Telling the audience about his planned deceits, Richard oers himself in the familiar image of the actor entertaining an audience by openly playing his devilish part. As he explicitly says, he will `seem a saint, when most I play the devil'.10 He is a player both in the character of Richard and as a devilish trickster. His Ì' declares that, for the knowing and the naive alike, both playgoers who have suspended their disbelief consciously and those who are sunk in the stage illusion, he is the actor playing Richard who is playing a devil playing a saint. The design of the early stages gave him help in this. To con®de in the audience he sets himself at the edge of the stage, next to the throng in the yard, on what was known classically as the platea or street area. There he could speak his soliloquies and his asides directly to the audience. He positions himself close to them, allying himself with them against the other players on stage, his victims. That intimate proximity, along with the success of his devilry, seduces the audience into a more or less involuntary alliance with him. They see his tricks, feeling superior as they stand literally behind him, knowingly watching him deceive everyone from the innocent Lady Anne and his brother Clarence to the would-be devilish actor Buckingham. Since he identi®es his tricks to them as acting he never deceives the real audience. They even ®nd themselves on his side when he seduces Lady Anne. Indeed, the outrageous erontery of her seduction might be seen as a teasing version of what Richard had already done to his theatre audience. In the second half of the play, however, once he has made himself king, he has to assume the authority position at the locus, in the centre of the stage next to the frons. This transforms his relations with the audience. Many modern actors, including Ian Richardson and Edward Woodward, have said how Richard's behaviour changes once he takes the crown.11 Now he is on the throne he has to play a kingly part, and necessarily takes up a position more remote from his former intimates in the yard. He now occupies the place where before his victims stood. The audience's sympathy for the man who has con®ded in them and made them his allies while making fools of the other characters then ebbs away. He is changed from attacker to defender, becoming a beleaguered victim making the mistakes which he prompted in others during his earlier manifestation. Iago works similarly in a later play, putting the audience on his devilish side while he gulls Othello, who is later to ask if he has Satan's cloven hoof. The close relations that everyone knew existed between acting and evil operated in all the plays of this period in complex and pervasive ways that we 10 11

I.iii.338. See for instance Edward Woodward: `The play for me is very much split into two phases. When Richard realises that the crown is within his grasp, he changes very rapidly and dramatically.' Shakespeare in Perspective II, ed. Roger Sales (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 110.

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Andrew Gurr ignore at our peril. The association of playing and deception with evil is basic to Elizabethan thinking. We can see it in Hamlet, where the hero's initial revulsion against his society changes into a game of acting that sucks him into performing the same evils as his enemy. Elizabethans were conditioned to be sensitive to the complexities entailed in the exercise of minding true things by what their mockeries be. They well knew that the actor had what Robert Weimann has chosen to call `bifold authority', the double power of the player and of his role.12 They rarely lost sight of that duality, as we so willingly do now. Fear of playing was not really an innovation in Shakespeare's time, although the religious schisms of Protestant England gave it fresh intensity. The concept of `playing' as metatheatre, a form of pantomime, had a long life before the 1590s, when we might see realism beginning to enter the concept of theatre seriously for the ®rst time. A fourteenth-century manuscript gives four de®nitions for `ludo', I play, the Latin term which remained the basis for the language of play-acting until the sixteenth century. All four de®nitions have some relation to theatre. They are Principio id est narrare; secundo id est decipere; tertio sit voluntatem propriam habere seu operare in opere; quarto sit adorare ydola.13

The ®rst is about story-telling, the second about deception or symbolism, the third means playing or toying with something, while the fourth identi®es idolatry. None of these four head-meanings deals directly with play-acting, but they were all invoked in one form or another by the critics of playing in the sixteenth century. In a more theatrical context, Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece opens with one character telling another that he thought from his dress he must be a player, and is told that the current misuse of clothing makes it impossible to distinguish a player from a real person.14 Robes and furred gowns hide all, as Lear was to say much later. That is a concept familiar in any age. What made it so potent in Shakespeare's age was the freshly explicit association with satanic malevolence given it in the pulpits. A complication to this fear of playing is the dierence beween the views of 12

13

14

Robert Weimann, `Bifold Authority in Shakespeare's Theatre', Shakespeare Quarterly xxxix (1988), pp. 401±17. The phrase is from Troilus and Cressida, V.ii.144±5, where Troilus rails against Cressida's in®delity: `Bifold authority, where reason can revolt / Without perdition'. A rewarding study of the varying degrees of credulity over illusion, in such matters as the Martin Guerre case and the wolf boy, as well as Bishop Corbett's joking verse about the innkeeper whose memory of the play made him think of Richard III as Richard Burbage, is in Henk Gras' comprehensive survey, Studies in Elizabethan Audience Response to the Theatre, Part 1, pp. 211±48. Stephen James Killings published this discovery from a manuscript in the Bibliotheka Uniwersytecka, Poland (IQ 158), on the REED Internet Bulletin Board on 21 January 1997. Fulgens and Lucrece 43±56, in The Plays of Henry Medwall, ed. Alan H. Nelson (Cambridge, 1980).

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing one level of society and another amongst the early audiences. Jonson, the most socially sensitive and most learned of the time's writers for the stage, was overtly suspicious about the business of deception for reasons that were not speci®cally religious. As Jonas Barish says of his writings, `Wherever you look . . . within the plays or outside them, in structure or in moralising comment, we ®nd a distrust of theatricality, particularly as it manifests itself in acting, miming, or changing, and a corresponding bias in favour of the ``real'' ± the undisguised, unacted, and unchanging.'15 Jonson preferred plain truth to the alchemistry of art, and yet he was torn by the subversive possibilities that lay in the comedy of metatheatricality. Hence he both condemned false playwriting poets in Poetaster and insisted on playgoers as judges of what they saw. Barish adds, ìt is precisely the uneasy synthesis between a formal antitheatricalism, which condemns the arts of show and illusion on the one hand, and a subversive hankering after them on the other, that lends to Jonson's comic masterpieces much of their unique high tension and precarious equilibrium'.16 Other writers showed similarly ambivalent sensitivities. The aristocratic Sidney showed the stretch of social dierence by his mockery of the players' attempts at realism with monsters made of brown paper. Some writers of plays deplored the conspiracy between players and their audiences when they combined to prefer the illusions of spectacle over the poets' eloquent words.17 The learned always condemned the ignorant for their willingness to suspend their disbelief in ®ctions. That can be seen in Sidney's day when the professional adult companies ®rst started to entertain the court with stronger stu than the low realism of companies of boys pretending to be men, oering school plays and shows of youthful eloquence. But fear of illusion ran through all social levels. The never-changing preference of the authorities in the towns and regions outside London for music and acrobatics rather than plays manifests the same suspicion of the dangers of realism. Isolating the more fundamental reasons why so many people feared and anathematised playing so strongly at this time is not easy. Some of it certainly relates to the development of distinctly English versions of Protestant theology. In the pulpits, theatres and their practices were often associated with popery and the idolatry that later evoked the doctrine of iconoclasm. Some critics explicitly related the falsity of clothing and players' rituals to Catholic practices. John Rainolds saw a feature of these popish practices in the Passion plays, which he called `profane and wicked toyes'.18 But for all the evident favour which plays found among Catholics as against the surge of Protestant disapproval, the suspicion of illusion cannot be so easily divided across the religious schism. Catholics may have valued the symbolic truths 15 16 17 18

Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 151±2. Ibid., p. 154. See Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 86±98. John Rainolds, Th'Overthrow of Stage Playes (London, 1599), sig. X3.

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Andrew Gurr inherent in their icons more than the Church of England could, but on both sides of the divide there was equal fear of the dangers of deceit and illusion. Most of the fears about the power of illusion found their natural target in the theatre.19 The anxieties that recent critics have identi®ed in the plays and games when boys cross-dressed as women, and the citations of the religious perils of transvestism condemned in Deuteronomy 22:5, may have been overstated or at least misconceived in recent years.20 If the theatre was expected to be anti-realist and metatheatrical, there was no danger in the illusion of boys playing women, any more than there was in boys playing men in school plays. The basic implication behind the attitude that so many upper-class Tudor commentators took to men play-acting as compared with boys is that adults imitating adults were too close to reality for comfort. Boys mimicking adults, on the other hand, could not easily be confused with their models. This may have had something to do with that other and more general preference of the time, to have boys playing women's parts in the adult companies. The patriarchal view of women could not admit that real women might counterfeit real behaviour, whether virtuous or vicious. Suspicion of deceit was general, and it went far beyond that one feature of the early staging. The now-famous debate between Gager and Rainolds in 1592 about acting, in which the great Italian Protestant exile Alberico Gentili intervened, did concern itself with the prohibition in Deuteronomy over men or boys wearing women's clothes. Because it was an academic debate, on an issue where the question of students performing plays had always been a fraught question, it can be read as a well-publicised contention whose importance as a statement of beliefs at the time might easily be overstated. It was really not much more than another consequence of the general fear and distrust of illusion. Rainolds claimed that boys dressing as women on stage provoked lust in men, a claim that it might be thought could apply equally well to women on stage: à womans garment beeing put on a man doeth vehemently touch and move him with the remembrance & imagination of a woman; and the imagination of a thing desirable doth stir up the desire'.21 This condemns any kind of depiction of women on stage, so it is understandable that those who favoured plays found against Rainolds. Gager's counter-argument in this regard amounted to little more than that the Holy Bible did allow cross-dressing. 19

20

21

Stephen Orgel writes succinctly about the widespread anxiety marked by concern over crossing genders, in Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 28±30. Orgel, however adroitly, takes a fairly extreme position over the ànxieties' directed at the homoeroticism of boys crossdressing. Peter Hyland, on the other hand, sees crossdressing as a familiar convention, as it was in Japanese Kabuki theatre. See Hyland, ` `À Kind of Woman'': The Elizabethan Boy-Actor and the Kabuki Onnagata', Theatre Research International xii (1987), pp. 1±8. Th'Overthrow of Stage-Playes (London, 1599), p. 97.

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing Gentili, intervening over which kind of law was being invoked, moral or ceremonial, found in his favour. The question never loomed very large in London, and certainly not among the regular playgoers there. At no time was it more than an academic debate, since the discussion was con®ned only to plays staged by students at universities.22 It takes its own slant on the general concern over realism in play-acting. Staging plays at universities had its defenders even among those who condemned public playing in London. The chief grounds for the defence were that it helped students to improve their oratorical skills as students of rhetoric. Oratory claimed to be superior to acting, since orators built up the real emotion their words expressed inside themselves, while actors did not. They were not, therefore, imposing any illusion on their audiences. By contrast, tragedy was a game, the deceitful sport of academic pastimes. All that players could oer were the trappings and the suits of woe. That within was dierent from what was on show. Such ambiguous disclaimers were of a piece with Heywood's disavowal about boys playing women, when, in his Apology for Acting (1612) he asserted con®dently that audiences had no diculty identifying the boys who played women (sig. C3v). The deceit was openly metatheatrical, and so could not be subjected to the charge either of satanism or lechery. A more distinct resemblance to the debate over the role of playing in universities appears in some of the earlier plays which insisted that depicting history on stage had a special value. Sidney's preference for poetry over history was converted by some of the earlier writers for the stage into the claim that whereas tragic poets were liars, history was the truth. The opening scene of the Queen's Men's The True Tragedie of Richard the Third, printed in 1594, has Truth confront and displace Poetrie. Truth asks `What makes thou upon a stage?', to which Poetrie replies fairly enough, `Shadowes', the standard image of the player as a dark and two-dimensional version of reality. Truth answers `Then will I adde bodies to the shadowes', promising to replace poetry's ®ctions with history's reality. When Poetry mocks such pretension, asking `will Truth be a Player?', Truth's response is `No, but Tragedia-like for to present / A Tragedie in England done but late'. The play makes the claim to oer `Truthes pageant', a version of Shakespeare's story of twisted King Richard. Such a claim, made by the Queen's own Men, that they oered something more substantial than the ®ctions of player-shadows, suggests a more weighty concern than the old discomfort over Plato's charge that all poets are liars. It does admit that their history plays are propaganda, perhaps, but counters it with the self-justifying assertion that their story has the strength of truth. And truth denies illusion. There is a similar armation in the sub-title of Henry VIII, Àll is True', with its 22

See Paul Whit®eld White, `Theater and Religious Culture', in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York, 1997), esp. pp. 138±42.

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Andrew Gurr apparent (and unjusti®able) claim for history's ability to avoid the falsities of the stage's ®ctions.23 Such early concern to deny illusion might almost have ranked the Queen's Men with Shakespeare's rude mechanicals, concerned as they are for the realism of their presentation. The mechanicals' prologue in Act 5 of A Midsummer Night's Dream has to tell the ladies that we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.24

The exact character of the illusionism game that the Chamberlain's Men were able to stage at their theatre by 1596 with this play needs this context of the dierent levels of concern about illusionism. Undoubtedly, the fear of illusion receded as playgoing became a more established and respected social exercise under King James. Tracing that history, though, is work for another study than this.25 What would be more immediately useful is to track a few instances where fears of illusionism might have manifested themselves in the plays, which our own acceptance of realism has obscured. Many of the metatheatrical games in the plays of Shakespeare and Jonson are familar enough, from Jonson's stage keeper setting out his contract with the audience in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair to Polonius claiming to have played Caesar when he was killed by Brutus/Hamlet, anticipating what happens to him as Polonius in the very next scene of the play. Beaumont went even further with such reminders than his master Jonson. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), the most extreme of all the mockers of realism, outdid its metatheatrical peers by oering from the ®rst lines not just a play within a play but a play within a play within a third play. It used Rafe the apprentice to burlesque the mechanics of stage representation by, in the third of the interlocked plays, sending him to fantasy `desarts' where errant knights' steeds are elephants, and apprentice Rafe rejects the idea of love at ®rst sight with remote princesses in high towers in favour of his London lass. Each of the three plays uses a more subversive level of anti-realism than its predecessors. Tricks with metatheatricality were an essential outcome of the 23

24 25

This view is largely based on the analysis of the Queen's Men's plays by Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth McLean, The Queen's Men and their Plays (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 166±7. A Midsummer Night's Dream III.i.16±20. A major extension to this study of the fear of illusion would be what changes took place as stage-playing became a more secure feature of London's everyday life. We might probe the development of the term `personation' at the turn of the century, for instance, as a mark of the gradual acceptance of the idea that one man could respectably pretend to be another. Stephen Greenblatt quotes its summation as the art of impersonation in Leviathan, when Hobbes cites the Latin `Persona' as meaning `the disguise, or outward appearance of a man, counterfeited on the stage'. Patricia Parker and David Quint, ed., Literary Theory / Renaissance Texts (Baltimore, 1986), p. 221.

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing discomfort writers and their audiences shared, as staging techniques grew more sophisticated, over the dangers that lay in the deceptions of realism. As a last stir of the evidence before looking at what the need to proclaim illusion as a game might have done to the early performances, the role of the boy companies oers some insights. The reasons why the more educated in Shakespeare's time chose to favour boy companies over adult players are of course complex and inaccessible. Playgoers were more overt in expressing their concerns over the spectacle than in acknowledging why they tended to choose one type of performer over the other. The more openly-voiced prejudices were hostile to any sort of playing. Most of the others were too inconsistent and too variable to convince the modern reader. An intriguing variety of alternative motives, some distinctly hair-raising, have been adduced as the real explanation. Digging into the more covert reasons for the Tudors to think of boy players as more respectable than adult players turns up a lot that could rather loosely be called dirt. Some of it, though, might help to scour and clarify the standard assumptions about the early attitudes to playing. The social range of boy acting was quite wide, and the practical range, in the dierent uses and venues, even wider. Schoolmasters staged plays to teach their pupils how to speak in public. Choirmasters used their songsters to entertain their patrons and the court. In the later sixteenth century some of them oered their productions to a wider market, and at the end of the century two companies of boys, both set up for plainly commercial pro®t, became a major feature of London playing for seven or eight years. This kind of playing, socially more respectable in its origins than the companies of travelling adult players, contrasted with the boys employed by the adult companies to play women's and juvenile parts. Glynne Wickham has suggested that boy players were caught between two concepts, the emblematic and the imagistic, between the old practice of parody, descending from the medieval boy bishop tradition, and a new one of pseudo-realistic and even naturalistic presentation, culminating in the boys who played women in adult companies.26 The companies of boys stand at the emblematic end, the boys playing women in the adult companies at the naturalistic. This may be too streamlined a view. How much of their earlier emblematic role survived through the apparent triumph of a more realistic mode with the rise of the adult companies is a large question where simple polarising can mislead. The educational cachet that derived from the use of playing in schools to train children in public speaking was one which the professional adult players could never claim. By contrast with such a manifestly respectable motive for playing, the adults could claim only a commercial motive. But inside this dierent motivation there may have been a further division between Catholics and anti-Catholics. The few famous schoolteachers who upheld 26

Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 (London, 1959±), II.10.

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Andrew Gurr playing in the 1570s and 1580s when the adult companies began to displace the boy companies at court included the acknowledged master of the art of school-playing, Richard Mulcaster, and also the de®antly recusant Almoner of St Paul's choir school, Sebastian Westcott. Westcott's Catholicism has been linked with the favouring of plays by other Catholics in the argument that public playing served as a substitute for the loss of Catholic church ceremony and its communal rituals. That does not apply very closely, however, to the division between boy and adult players, nor to the opinion of the many who approved the performance of school plays while deploring public playing. All we can say with con®dence is that the motives were complex, often muddled, and wholly prejudiced. One of the major motives generating the longrunning preference for boy company plays, I would argue, was their physique, not as sex objects but because their imitation of adult behaviour was manifestly only an imitation. Elizabethan credulity, a willingness to engage with the ®ction as fact, as realism, is not an easy concept to pin down in the ¯ow of historical events. Through the 1590s and early in the new century there is evidence that love of the illusive art of spectacle prevailed alongside what has been called the `theatre of estrangement'27 which the revived boy companies learned to promote in the early seventeenth century. Played by adult companies Faustus was exciting to the more ignorant in its audiences chie¯y because it put on show the terrifyingly real prospect of being dragged down to hell. The famous anecdote about a group of actors ®nding too many devils on stage and spending the night in prayer, and Middleton's glancing reference to how an audience took fright during a performance when the theatre's timbers let out a cracking noise,28 indicate the tension that such subjects could generate in their audiences. A noise from the timbers of the courtroom at the trial of Ann Turner, whom Frances Howard had consulted as a witch, gave even the educated audience there a similar fright.29 Edward Alleyn showed the same edginess by wearing a cross round his neck while playing Faustus.30 An insurance policy so displayed in public admitted the fear that playing could become serious, and that God might punish the deceptions of the stage. By 1616 Jonson could mock such simple-minded fears of Satan's arrival onstage 27 28

29

30

Neil Carson, `John Webster: the Apprentice Years', Elizabethan Theatre vi (1978), pp. 76±87. T. M., The Black Book (1604): `Hee had a head of hayre like one of my Divells in Dr. Faustus when the old Theater crackt and frighted the audience', in A. H. Bullen, ed., The Works of Thomas Middleton (London, 1875), VIII.13. See David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard: Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James (Basingstoke, 1993), p. 148. Samuel Rowlands, The Knave of Clubs (1609), p. 29. William Prynne noted gleefully in Histriomastix, 1633, fol. 556 `the visible apparition of the Devill on the Stage at the Belsavage Playhouse, in Queen Elizabeth's dayes (to the great amazement both of the actors and spectators) while they were there prophanely playing the History of Faustus (the truth of which I have heard from many now alive who well remember it) there being some distracted with that fearful sight.'

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing with The Devil is an Ass, but however hidden or derided it was in the later years, the fear remained a constant pressure on writers, players and audiences. It put a heavy emphasis on the need for overt metatheatricality in performance. It certainly made the `theatre of estrangement' that the boy company at Blackfriars launched through the years 1600 to 1608 an activity that was reassuring as well as entertainingly satirical for its audiences of gallants and students. Much of the drama of this period can be seen as ¯uctuating nervously between the extremes of realism and estrangement. Like the alienation of audience from the emotions of the actors in Brecht's Verfremdungseekt, the obviousness of the pretence could save the participants from the fear of being really deceived. That fear was part of the motivation behind making Richard III so blatantly persuasive in his overt àcting' of his deceits, behind Hamlet's moral anger at all the `seeming', the spying and lying at Denmark's court, and even behind the widely reiterated preference for the playing of boy companies over adults.31 As Stephen Orgel notes, Moll Frith became notorious for her appearance on stage in the form of a transvestite, not because she deceived the spectators.32 So what were the positive eects of this fear of illusion on early playing? The list of eects has of course to start with the absence of scenery and the mobility of playing on bare stages. But the `bare stage' was far from being the only aid to anti-realist staging. The transparency of disguise in the plays was almost always a given, privileging the audience over the characters on stage. It might range from the uncrowned and therefore unkingly King Henry V wrapped in Erpingham's cloak or the boy-player's triple covering of Rosalind / Ganymede / Rosalind, down to Bottom in his ass's head. Its transparency was always recognisable to the audience, with only the other characters left in ignorance. Such a privileging helped to reduce the seriousness of the counterfeit. That Richard could seduce and successfully propose marriage to the distraught Anne over her murdered husband's body was an extreme that the early playgoers felt reassured they themselves could resist. Along with non-realist staging, another consequence of anti-realist concern might be found in the use of verse. Rhyming verse, the `jigging veins of rhyming moither-wits', as Marlowe dismissively put it, shifted in the plays of the 1580s into blank verse, more naturalistic yet still controlled by rhythm. Verse in any form, though, is an anti-realistic form of human expression. When Laurence Olivier started his career as a ®lm director with his Henry V in 1944, he found the verse a major impediment to cinematic realism. Spoken soliloquies and asides are of a piece with the overt pretence that speaking in 31

32

Orgel, Impersonations, p. 41, notes that the attacks on crossdressing were the eect, not the cause, of the Puritan charge against players as users of crossdressing. Ibid., p. 107.

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Andrew Gurr verse entails. Prologues and choruses that compare the staging of the story, and commentating characters like Richard III, Iago and Edmund who keep the audience informed of their acts of deception, are all elements in the apparatus of non-realistic staging. Remembering the predominance of verse ± elevated and unnatural speech ± we might ask why the plays written for the boy companies consistently used prose. One of the less plausible conjectures about that is that it acknowledged the fact that boys could not deliver Marlowe's mighty line as eloquently as men could. Since the more than ostensible object of every boy's schooling was studying to the point where they learned to deliver `speeches well pronouste, with action lively framed', as the teacher, choirmaster and playwright Richard Edwardes put it,33 that seems unlikely. It would be more rewarding to reverse the argument, taking prose to be the normal form of human speech, available to the boy players because they ran no risk of being taken seriously, while the adult players used verse precisely to dierentiate their speech from the ordinary. Boys playing adults speaking prose had a physical reason for not generating the illusion of reality as adults would. Adults speaking prose, unless they were relegated to the lower and comic status of citizens and rustics, ran too much risk of seeming realistic to be used on the public stages. Characters like Iago speak prose chie¯y when they are pursuing their devilish villainies. The implications of early acting being positively anti-realistic reach a long way into our assumptions about early staging. As an exemplar of what a renewed consciousness about metatheatrical staging might oer, consider the problem of getting corpses ostage at the end of a play. Michael Neill has argued that funeral processions were employed as stage spectacles, in particular as a way of ending tragedies, chie¯y because they allowed the bodies to be taken o without making any overt breach in the ®nale's illusionism.34 Unfortunately, this was by no means the invariable practice. Most of the plays did provide means for bodies to be removed if they died on stage in the middle of the play, but too many of them for our modern comfort end with a sprawl of untransported bodies. In Hamlet, for instance, Fortinbras singles out Hamlet alone for the funeral procession, leaving Claudius lying there by his throne, still wearing his regal crown, Gertrude the Queen, and bleeding Laertes, all of them in full view with no means of quietly or, better, invisibly vanishing. For most tragedies some means was usually found to remove the principal bodies at the end. Taking only a few examples from Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus Lucius gives instructions for the removal of all the bodies, each in 33

34

Damon and Pithias (London, 1565), Prologue, 23. His object, based on the Horace taught in schools, was ìn all such kinde of exercise decorum to observe'. Michael Neill, ` `Èxeunt with a Dead March'': Funeral Pageantry on the Shakespearean Stage', in David M. Bergeron, ed., Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater (Athens, Ga., 1985).

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing a distinct way. Coriolanus is given a soldier's funeral procession (V.vi.148±9: `Take him up. / Help three o'th' chiefest soldiers; I'll be one.') Julius Caesar, to which we shall return shortly, closes with a similar military procession, when Octavius says (V.v.77±8) `Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie, / Most like a soldier, ordered honourably.' Macbeth's last scene, V.xi, poses only the question of taking away the hero's easily-portable head, if we assume that in the earlier scene Macbeth drags the body of Young Siward o after killing him in his last act of child-slaughter (V.vii.14). In some of the other plays, however, lesser beings appear to have been left on the stage. In Othello, the two principals lie on the bed, the bed's curtains are closed (V.ii.375: `Let it be hid'), and the whole apparatus was pushed o through the central opening. But that left Emilia's corpse. We might assume that she was carried o as part of the evidence against her husband, when Lodovico instructs Cassio to escort Iago to prison. Otherwise, the question how they removed the extra bodies recurs here. Clearing them away is a careful provision in other tragedies. In Antony and Cleopatra, faced with the heroine's magni®cent corpse sitting there in her regal ®nery, Caesar orders (V.ii.346±7) `Take up her bed, / And bear her women from the monument'. That would have removed the stage property and the other corpses in a similar fashion to Othello's. King Lear has a relatively orthodox closure of a like kind. Certainly it is hard to see it damaging emotional realism with the problem of ridding the stage of its clutter of bodies in the ®nale. There are, none the less, several bodies to be removed. At V.iii.228 the Folio Albany orders the gentleman to `produce the (their, Q) bodies' of Lear's two elder daughters. They are laid out on stage when Lear enters with the dead Cordelia. So Lear and all three of his daughters lie dead and visible as the signal mark of the ®rst family's disintegration. Edmund has died ostage, which helps to strengthen the family grouping here. Then, nine lines from the end Albany says `Bear them from hence'. He does not specify whether the two elder daughters were to be included in this withdrawal, but it would have made a tidier closure, and the parade of the dead would re-unite the family that was divided in the ®rst scene. This closure, like the others, is in stark contrast to the disjuncture that happens at the end of Hamlet. Hamlet's closure raises all sorts of questions, not least because of a small change between the Second Quarto and Folio versions which may re¯ect the dierence between the author's ®rst idea about it, represented in Q2, and the staged version that the Folio text records. Horatio ®rst says `give order that these bodies / High on a stage be placed to the view' (V.ii.321±2), a not inappropriate phrase and location after such a metatheatrical drama. But Fortinbras supersedes this order with a further one, singling out Hamlet and awarding him a military funeral: `Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage' (340). The arrival of Fortinbras, still in the general's armour of his previous appearance in IV.iv, gives him a military aspect that was meant, amongst 105


Andrew Gurr other things, to remind us of all the other plays which ended with their dead military heroes carried o by four captains. That Fortinbras himself appears dressed as a general makes sense of his order that the funeral procession for Hamlet should be a soldierly one. It explains why, however uncomprehending he is of what has gone on, he gives the order that Hamlet should be borne `like a soldier' to the `stage' for his funeral. None the less, it is an odd pronouncement for Fortinbras to make, even with such an outsider's ignorance. Giving this order he makes a major and unjusti®ed deduction. Horatio, the insider, has proposed that all of `these bodies' should be placed high on a stage `to the view'. The Second Quarto text rearms this by making Fortinbras then say `Take up the bodies' (345). But the Folio, the text supposed to be derived from a playhouse manuscript, makes that a singular: `Take up the body'. Without having heard any details about how Claudius the Danish king, Gertrude his queen, Hamlet and Laertes were killed, in this version Fortinbras declares that only Hamlet should be honoured with a military ceremony. He knows nothing about the `wounded name' which worried Hamlet and made him insist that Horatio must tell the world. The patronising declaration that Hamlet was likely to have proved most royal `had he been put on' is a soldier's tribute to someone whom Fortinbras sees as having great promise but no achievement. How little this outsider knows of what has just happened on the stage. Yet he, rightly we might think, picks out Hamlet alone from the four corpses on stage for this honour, and not the dead king of Denmark. What are the consequences of Fortinbras giving the order to award only Hamlet a dead soldier's rites? He is wearing exactly the same accoutrements as the ghost on its ®rst appearance, in armour, beavered, with a marshal's truncheon. The ghost would have been pleased to see his son honoured in such a way. But when the original Hamlet was carried o by four soldiers, we must ask what the rest of the cast did with the corpses of Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes. There were only two choices: either stage hands mutely carried them o, without ceremony, or the three dead characters stood up to take their ®nal bow once the military procession was ostage. All editors and commentators assume that the players invariably took the ®rst of these choices. I wonder whether the higher levels of metatheatrical expectation that I have tried to show existed in the early theatres might not have allowed them to take the second. There is a little evidence for this, some of which takes us back to Julius Caesar. Contemporary comments do not tell us much, apart from references to `plaudities', to say what normally happened at the end of a play. Was it standard practice for the cast to take a bow? Curtain-calls only came in with proscenium-arch stages and their front curtains, but it is at least possible that the whole company customarily returned to the stage to close the performance. Applause was certainly solicited, as various epilogues indicate. Puck ends A Midsummer Night's Dream asking the audience to `Give me your 106


Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing hands', the King at the end of All's Well that Ends Well invites `gentle hands' in return for òur hearts', and Prospero asks for `the help of your good hands' in his epilogue to The Tempest. Henry VIII's Epilogue speaks of the ladies bidding their menfolk to clap. These, however, are all single ®gures, alone on stage. Moreover, while applause in the form of the `shouts and claps' that greeted Henry V's return to England after Agincourt (Henry V, V. Chorus.11), was in the form we still use, it was keyed dierently from the practice in modern theatres. Michael Drayton wrote of sitting at a play he had written and hearing the `Showts and Claps at ev'ry little pawse, / When the proud Round on ev'ry side hath rung'.35 Applause was not held back till the end, although the audience's way of congratulating the players was certainly to clap. No play-endings suggest that any other players joined the ®nal speaker on stage, and something more than the recurrent clapping should have marked the acknowledgement that the day's performance had concluded. Marston con®rmed that applause was given to speci®c lines in his 1598 satire The Scourge of Villainy, when he noted the enthusiasm that law students showed at the plays the Chamberlain's were then staging at the Curtain. His Luscus, who speaks `Naught but pure Juliat and Romio', recites the verse from his copy of the playbook, and `speakes in print, at least what ere he sayes / Is warranted by Curtaine plaudeties.'36 The question such observations about recurrent applause raises is whether any more special or heightened form of ceremonial was the norm at the conclusion of the performance. Audiences used to shouting and clapping throughout the play had none of the silent attentiveness which goes with a truly realistic performance. Their sense of an ending needed some other feature than a bit more applause to acknowledge that the two hours trac had come to a ®nal halt. Nothing in any of the plays or commentaries suggests that a ®nal bow by the whole company, an early version of the curtain-call, was ever practised. But some form that modulated between the emotions of the ®nale, whether comic or tragic, and the return to the reality of the theatre there certainly was. It destroyed what vestiges of illusion the ending might have drawn the audience into, and helped to give explicit emphasis to the metatheatrical game that audience and players had shared. A majority of all the plays, especially the histories and tragedies, ended with a formal procession leaving the stage. Love comedies closed with an exit in pairs hand in hand through the central opening, symbolic of achieved harmony. Very few surviving play-texts oer any suggestion that the performance did not reach its ®nal close with these massed exits. But there are enough special cases to suggest that the players did not stop with the last of the in-character speeches. Epilogues were a fashion that came and went. At the end of 2 Henry IV, for instance, the original Epilogue's speech ®nished with a dance and, on his knees, a claim that he would pray for the Queen. This 35 36

Idea, Sonnet 47, Works, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford, 1931±41), II.334. The Scourge of Villainy (London, 1598), sig. G7v.

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Andrew Gurr derisive claim, with its elaborate acknowledgement of Falsta 's popularity, may have been a mocking reminder of the traditional way the old plays featuring Vice ®gures like Falsta ended, with a dance and a prayer for the monarch. There is a little evidence for the idea that it was customary to close every play with a public prayer for the monarch, but if so, it was a custom that largely died out by the 1590s. Chambers37 noted the 2 Henry IV Epilogue along with three other endings from plays dated before 1593, including the verses that conclude A Knack to Know a Knave: And Honestie will pray upon his knee, God cut then [sic] o that wrong the Prince of Commnnaltie. And may her dayes of bless never have end, Upon whose lyfe so many lyves depend.

He added to these instances the end of the epilogue to a 1619 text, Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools, where the speaker says Ìt resteth that we render you very humble and hearty thanks, and that all our hearts pray for the king and his family's enduring happiness, and our country's perpetual welfare. Si placet, plaudite'. This was the conclusion to a set of published dialogues, not a play, most likely written for an Inns of Court staging. It was most likely a hangover from the earlier tradition that the public stages had abandoned by the mid-1590s. This old tradition may have been replaced or usurped by a more durable one, following the play with a song-and-dance afterpiece, a jig. Such a standalone bonne-bouche would certainly have been an explicit indication that the afternoon's entertainment was ®nally over. Unlike the solemn prayer, it would have ended the play in a festive spirit. No jigs that can clearly be identi®ed as play-endings have survived, although two rhyming texts, one by Will Kemp of Leicester's and the Chamberlain's Men and one by George Attewell of the Queen's and the Admiral's, may be scripts for such performances.38 Feste's song at the end of Twelfth Night may originally have been a specially-written form of jig, akin to the dance with which the Epilogue's speaker concluded 2 Henry IV. The `bergomask' which Theseus demands at the end of the mechanicals' play in A Midsummer Night's Dream was meant to function as a signal for the closure of the revels. An outside witness to the custom of ending performances with a jig is Thomas Platter's report that when he went to the Globe on 21 September 1599 and saw Julius Caesar: àt the end of the play they danced together admirably and exceedingly gracefully, according to their custom, two in each group dressed in men's and two in women's apparel.'39 If the dance was a jig, as most commentators take it to 37 38 39

E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), III.550 n.3. See Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (Chicago, 1928), 21 and 22, pp. 444±64. Ernest Schanzer, `Thomas Platter's Observations on the Elizabethan Stage', Notes and Queries cci (1956), pp. 465±7.

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Metatheatre and the Fear of Playing be, it must have imposed on the audience a strong disjunction, a major shift of mood from the solemnity of the funeral march that carried Brutus ostage, and Antony's ®nal praise for him. Jigs, usually bawdy knockabout pieces sung to rhymed ballad metres, were eventually abolished at the Globe, but we cannot tell precisely when. It was possibly at about the time when Julius Caesar and Hamlet were ®rst staged, since Will Kemp, the company's most eminent jig-maker, left them late in 1599 to dance his way from London to Norwich.40 The company certainly gave up jigs after 1609, once they had the Blackfriars consort of musicians instead to entertain the audience. The musicians, a famous group, played during the preliminaries and the interacts to their plays, and could easily have sent customers away with more music. Hamlet's contempt for Polonius with his taste for jigs and bawdry may have echoed sentiments already being expressed by members of the company. The move to Blackfriars with its superior forms of entertainment and more gentri®ed tastes must have been in their minds since 1596. But jigs there were on the Globe's stage. One ended the story of the death of the noblest Roman, Brutus. The real doubt is about what might have happened between the closing funeral procession and the arrival of the jigging songsters. Did the company ®rst reassemble to take the plaudities, and did the remaining corpses then stand up to join in? Did none of them troop back on stage to take their bows, and if so, whatever did the corpses left on stage do? I wish we knew. A metatheatrical and anti-realist frame of mind might lead us to expect a lower level of emotional realism at the end of a tragedy, perhaps even a reversal or peripeteia of the collective sympathy. Whatever we think might have happened to the last corpses, there is something very attractive in the idea of a jig concluding Hamlet, as it seems to have concluded the original performances of Julius Caesar, but with a distinctly better relevance to the play. In Hamlet a jig following the play would have made a nice comment on the persistence in the audience of the Polonian taste that Hamlet had derided. Such a closing irony would have put a ®nal gloss on the play's insistence that the whole performance was anti-realist, metatheatre, a play within a play. It became visibly only a `play' when the dead got up and slowly walked away. Reverting to the dead Polonius' taste then became a logical sequel. Snug the joiner and Bottom did voice their concern about how the realism of the mechanicals' lion or the death of Pyramus might frighten the Athenian ladies. That splendid parody of their fears about the dangers that lay in excessive realism was set in a play whose metatheatricality emphasized how fully its audience was consciously indulging in its own dangerous dreamworld of illusionism. It seems that in 1596 fear of playing was intimidating enough and pervasive enough to early modern audiences to make a whole play out of it. The mechanicals, in expressing the need to reassure their courtly audience 40

See Gurr, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford, 1996), p. 291.

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Andrew Gurr that Ì, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver' (III.i.18±19), acknowledged the dangerous illusions of stage realism far beyond their own basic level. However rudimentary and banal their idea of staging was, their concern over excessive realism was no less real than their lord's, and in a rather dierent context ours. We need to heighten our consciousness about the places where the early players' sharp use of metatheatricality impacted on their performances, and how deeply they might have aected the original staging practices and therefore our reading of the plays.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship in Early Modern England KATHARINE EISAMAN MAUS

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspirations of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play, But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (Hamlet I.ii.77±86)

I

N his reply to his mother, his ®rst extended utterance in the play, Hamlet distinguishes between the elaborate external rituals of mourning and an inner, invisible anguish. His black attire, his sigh, his tear fail to denote him truly not because they are false ± Hamlet's sorrow for his father is sincere ± but because they might be false, because some other person might conceivably employ them deceitfully. Even reliable indicators or symptoms of his distress become suspect, simply because they are de®ned as indicators and symptoms. It is hard to imagine what could possibly count as `true denotation' for Hamlet. The mere, inevitable existence of a hiatus between signs ± `trappings and suits' ± and what they signify ± `that within' ± seems to empty signs of their consequence. Substitutes for something imagined to be more real, more true, and more primary, the `trappings and suits of woe' derive their power from that reality, but ought never to be confused with it. Hamlet's conviction that truth is unspeakable implicitly devalues any attempts to express or communicate it. The exemplary instance of this devaluation is the theatre: `for they are actions that a man might play'. The frank fakeries of the playhouse, its disguisings and impersonations, stand for the opacities that seem to characterise all relations of human beings to one another. The issues Hamlet touches upon in his speech to his mother pervade the drama of the English Renaissance, which is very often preoccupied with the 111


Katharine Eisaman Maus aictions and satisfactions that attend upon the gap between an unexpressed interior and a theatricalised exterior: with the epistemological anxieties it generates, the social practices that are devised to manage it, and the sociopolitical purposes it serves. To some, focusing on conceptions of inwardness in early modern England may seem regressive or misconceived. Many sophisticated critics in the past decade have seemed extremely chary of Hamlet's contrast between an ìnner' self of superior authenticity, and a public self, `trappings and suits' of derivative or secondary status. A few critics claim that the psychological category of the inward or private hardly existed at all in Renaissance England. Francis Barker, for instance, argues that Hamlet's sense of inwardness is ànachronistic', a premature manifestation of what he calls `bourgeois subjectivity'. Only in the later seventeenth century, according to Barker, does bourgeois subjectivity come into its own, `redolent with the metaphysics of interiority'.1 Catherine Belsey likewise complains about those who approach Renaissance plays in search of the ìmaginary interiority' of the characters, an interiority that in her view is the imposition of the modern reader rather than a feature of the Renaissance text.2 Another group of critics, including Jonathan Goldberg, Patricia Fumerton, Kay Stockholder, Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, acknowledge that the rhetoric of inwardness is highly developed in the English Renaissance, but maintain that these terms inevitably refer to outward, public, and political factors. Goldberg argues that `the individual derived a sense of self largely from external matrices'; Jones and Stallybrass that `the supposedly ``private'' sphere . . . can be imagined only through its similarities and dissimilarities to the public world'. Stockholder claims that in the English Renaissance òne's place in the world was identical to one's self-de®nition, and to ``know onself '' was . . . to know the duties entailed by one's membership in an order on the hierarchical ladder'. Fumerton maintains that `the private could be sensed only through the public', and that `the ``self '' was void'.3 Later in this chapter I shall return to these critiques and the assumptions that lie behind them, and specify my own rather complex relationship to New Historicist and Cultural Materialist attempts to `write the history of the subject'. For the moment I want merely to insist that when one looks at a wide 1 2

3

Francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body (New York, 1984), pp. 31, 58. Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Dierence in Renaissance Drama (New York, 1985), p. 48. Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Baltimore and London, 1983), p. 86; Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, `The Politics of Astrophil and Stella', Studies in English Literature xxiv (1984), p. 54; Kay Stockholder, ` ``Yet Can He Write'': Reading the Silences in The Spanish Tragedy', American Imago xlvii (1990), pp. 93±124; Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament (Chicago, 1991), pp. 109, 130. Fumerton's position has, however, recently become more tentative than her earlier con®dent dismissal of the private sphere (cf. ` ``Secret'' Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets', Representations xv (1986), p. 90).

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Inwardness and Spectatorship variety of printed materials produced in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, it becomes dicult to claim that Hamlet's boasts are ànachronistic'. In fact, he deals eloquently but almost truistically in matters that would have been commonplace for his original audience. His distinction between interior and exterior is a very familiar rhetorical tactic in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Philip Sidney invokes it in The Defence of Poetry, for instance, when he discusses the way Virgil presents Aeneas: `how in his inward self, and how in his outward government'.4 Likewise Richard Hooker, the great apologist for the Church of England, begins his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity by distinguishing between God's ìnternal operations' and His èxternal working'.5 In A Brief Discourse of a Disease called the Suocation of the Mother, the physician Edward Jorden dierentiates between ìnternal' and èxternal' causes of disease, and likewise between the eects of the illness upon ìnternal senses', by which he means imagination, reason, and memory, and its eects upon èxternal senses', by which he means hearing, sight, touch, and so forth.6 In his treatise on marriage, A Bride-Bush, William Whately separates the ways in which a wife ought to reverence her husband into two categories: ìnward in heart' and òutward in . . . speeches . . . gestures, countenances, and whole behaviour'.7 The Puritan ministers John Dod and Robert Cleaver divide the ways of violating the Ten Commandments into ìnward' and òutward' trangressions: groundless, unspoken misgivings about one's neighbour constitute ìnward' false witness, for instance, in contrast to the òutward' sin of perjury.8 The Protestant casuist William Perkins distinguishes between inward and outward sorrow, inward and outward uncleanness, inward and outward repentance, inward and outward worship, and so forth.9 The point of such distinctions is normally to privilege whatever is classi®ed as interior. For Hamlet, the internal experience of his own grief `passes show' in two senses. It is beyond what can be seen ± other people cannot perceive it. And it surpasses the visible ± its validity is unimpeachable. The exterior, by contrast, is partial, misleading, falsi®able, unsubstantial. Walter Ralegh opens his History of the World by asserting that ìt is not the visible fashion and shape 4

5

6

7 8

9

Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poetry, in The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, 1963), III.25. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. Georges Edelen, II.ii and II.iv in The Folger Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker (Cambridge, 1977). All subsequent references to Hooker will be to this edition. Edward Jorden, A Brief Discourse of a Disease called the Suocation of the Mother (London, 1603), sigs. F2v, E1r. William Whateley, A Bride-Bush, (London, 1623), sig. A4v. John Dod and Robert Cleaver, Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1604), p. 327 and passim. This work was reprinted at least nineteen times between 1603 and 1635. Perkins, The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, 1606). This was another extremely popular work, running to at least ten editions in the ®rst half of the sixteenth century.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus of plants and of reasonable creatures that makes the dierence of working in the one and of condition in the other, but the form internal'.10 The wise man, Ralegh implies, knows better than to trust what he sees. Instead he penetrates the veneer of appearances to grasp a hidden reality. Tudor and Stuart polemicists against the theatre, like Philip Stubbes, John Northbrooke, William Rankin, Stephen Gosson and William Prynne, acknowledge the separability of a privileged, `true' interior and a socially visible, falsi®able exterior even as they decry that separation, emphasising the obligation of àll men at all times . . . to seem that outwardly which they are inwardly'.11 Persons and things inwardly are, all these writers assume; persons and things outwardly only seem. The alienation or potential alienation of surface from depth, of appearance from truth, means that a person's thoughts and passions, imagined as properties of the hidden interior, are not immediately accessible to other people. Hamlet is not original in maintaining that the sight of his downcast visage is not the same as the sight of his grief. Èvery one may discover his fellow's natural inclinations', claims the English Jesuit Thomas Wright in The Passions of the Mind, `not by philosophical demonstration, but only by natural conjectures and probabilities': For that we cannot enter into a man's heart, and view the passions or inclinations which there reside and lie hidden; therefore, as philosophers by eects ®nd out causes, by proprieties essences, by rivers fountains, by boughs and ¯owers the core and roots; even so we must trace out passions and inclinations by some eects and external operations.12

In Basilikon Doron, James I recommends a careful orchestration of the virtuous king's visible gestures and action on the grounds that `they serve as trunch-men, to interpret the inward disposition of the mind, to the eyes of them that cannot see farther within him, and therefore must only judge of him by the outward appearance'.13 Social life demands the constant practice of induction, or what the physician John Cotta calls àrti®cial conjecture':14 reasoning from the super®cial to the deep, from the eect to the cause, from seeming to being. The inductive process is, however, always liable to error. At times we may, as Wright suggests, trace out the roots by the evidence of the boughs and ¯owers, but as William Vaughan reminds us, some thoughts and passions are `concealed in a man's heart, as like unto a tree, which in outward 10 11 12

13

14

Walter Ralegh, The History of the World (London, 1614), sig. A1v. William Prynne, Histrio-mastix: The Player's Scourge (London, 1633), sig. X4r. Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generall, ed. Thomas O. Sloan (Urbana, 1971), pp. 104±5. James I and VI, The Basilikon Doron of King James VI, ed. James Craigie (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1944), p. 15. John Cotta, The Triall of Witch-craft, Shewing the True and Right Methode of Their Detection (London, 1616), p. 4.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship appearance seemeth to be most beautiful, and is full of fair blossoms, but inwardly is rotten, worm-eaten, and withered'.15 George Hakewill spends two pages listing ways to describe hypocrites: wolves in sheep's clothing, richly decorated apothecary boxes with poisons inside, beautifully bound tragedies, snowy Mount Etnas with volcanic interiors, elaborate Egyptian temples, `which without shine with gold, and jet, and marble, but have within some secret aisle, a crocodile or serpent for the god, unto which they are dedicated'.16 Court ¯atterers arouse the fear and contempt of sixteenthand seventeenth-century political commentators because òutwardly they show themselves with the face of friendship, within they have more malice than the stings of scorpions'.17 Like Duncan, who laments in Macbeth that `there is no art / To tell the mind's construction in the face', Hamlet knows that the forms, moods, and shapes of grief can as well be a calculated pretence as the symptoms of a genuine inner state. Once the possibility of deception has been granted, the eect of truthfulness can be dicult to convey to a wary audience even when there is no intention to mislead. At his execution in 1609 George Sprot, one of the Earl of Gowrie's co-conspirators, professed his repentance to the spectators around the scaold, but evidently believed that they were unconvinced. So `he for the greater assurance of that his constant and true deposition, promised (by the assistance of God) to give them an open and evident token': Which he accomplished thereafter; for before his last breath, when he had hung a pretty space; he lifted up his hands a good height, and clapped them together aloud three several times, to the great wonder and admiration of all the beholders.18

Of course, even this astonishing demonstration has no logical force; perhaps Sprot kept something in reserve after all, and remained a performer to the last gasp. At another ®nal moment, immediately before he was publicly hanged, castrated, disembowelled, and quartered in 1581, the Jesuit Edmund Campion poignantly insisted upon his innocence of treason. `The outward protestations of this man,' fumed Anthony Munday, ùrged some there present to tears, not entering into conceit of his inward hypocrisy.'19 The possibility of some secret motive, some unexposed residue can never be wholly discounted, even when the gesture of self-revelation seems most generous and complete. 15 16 17 18

19

William Vaughan, The Golden-Grove, Moralized in Three Bookes (London, 1600), sig. L4r. George Hakewill, The Vanity of the Eye (Oxford, 1615), pp. 81±2. A Discourse Against Flattery (London, 1611), p. 8. State Trials II.720. The story is repeated in William Hart and George Abbott, The Examination, Arraignment, and Conviction of George Sprot, Notary of Ayremouth (London, 1609), p. 29. Anthony Munday, A Discoverie of Edmund Campion and his Confederates, their most Horrible and Traiterous Practices . . . (London, 1582), sig. G1v.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus Given the ubiquity of such conceptual categories in the English Renaissance, it is hardly surprising that the `problem of other minds' presents itself to thinkers and writers not so much as a question of whether those minds exist, as a question of how to know what they are thinking.20 The short treatise Sceptick, or, Speculations, attributed to Walter Ralegh, argues against the authority of sense-perceptions on the grounds that each individual, necessarily limited to the evidence of his own senses, cannot know whether the perceptions of others correlate with his own, nor to what extent anyone's perceptions give an accurate idea of òutward objects'. Dierent people manifestly vary in their tastes and interests, and the perceptions of beasts are likely to dier from human perceptions even more radically: If a man rub his eye, the ®gure of that which he beholdeth seemeth long, or narrow; is it not then likely, that those creatures which have a long and slanting pupil of the eye, as goats, foxes, cats etc., do convey the fashion of that which they behold under another form to the imagination, than those that have round pupils do.21

The progress of this argument is interesting. Ralegh destabilises convictions about direct access to things-in-themselves by insisting that the internal working of other minds, what he calls their ìnward discourse', is remote and inaccessible. I may tell what the outward object seemeth to me; but what it seemeth to other creatures, or whether it be indeed that which it seemeth to me, or any other of them, I know not.22

But this perspectivism seems to strengthen, not weaken, the impulse to investigate those minds. Ralegh's treatise is remarkable not for its solipsism but for its attempt to reconstruct the ìnward discourse' of the beast and the alien. Ralegh tries to duplicate in himself the dierent conditions of animal perception, rubbing his eye into the shape of a cat's eye in order to see as a cat sees. At the same time, the sceptical principles which generate this attempt doom his empathy to remain inevitably unsatisfying and incomplete. Ralegh's scepticism links the imperviousness of the perceived other, whose mysterious interior can never fully be displayed, with a troubling corollary suggestion about the limitations of the perceiving subject. Each consciousness 20

21 22

Though he concentrates on French rather than English texts, and on scepticism about the phenomenal world rather than about other minds, Richard Popkin, in his History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, rev. edn (New York, 1964), provides a helpful overview of the development of philosophical scepticism in the sixteenth century and its connection to doctrinal problems posed by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Sir Walter Raleigh's Sceptick, or, Speculations (London, 1651), p. 4. Ibid., p. 20.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship is constrained by its own particular limitations, by quirks of which it has no way of becoming aware, even while those peculiarities shelter it from the inquisitiveness of others. We are trapped, as it were, inside our own heads. In The Vanity of the Eye George Hakewill illustrates his discussion of this problem with a cautionary anecdote about à wise, and grave man': Travelling in a summer's morning through the meadows, he saw (as him seemed) one of his neighbours committing bestiality with a mare, but knowing the good honest reports of the man, and thereby misdoubting his own eyes, he gets him presently to his house; where he ®nds his good man, in his bed, fast asleep.23

The moral of the story, for Hakewill, is that our eyes are untrustworthy. For a thoroughgoing sceptic, of course, the sight of the man in bed, or the evidence of `good honest reports', would be no more conclusive than the spectacle in the meadows. But like Ralegh, Hakewill seems less interested in the abstract philosophical problem ± the possibility that all sense impressions might be deceptive ± than in the practical diculties attendant upon the undoubted fact that some sense impressions are deceptive. Interrogating our standards of reliability eventuates, in both writers, not in epistemological despair but in an attempt to articulate a remedy, even though the remedy itself seems unavoidably inadequate. The problems posed by the gap between internal truth and external manifestation are not the exclusive concern of sceptical philosophy. They emerge at least as vividly from a programme of faith as from a programme of doubt. Christianity suggests a variety of analogues to the dicult social tasks of intersubjective understanding. The hidden Christian God provides a prototype of the invisible object of knowledge comprehended but partially through visible works. Òur soundest knowledge,' Richard Hooker writes, ìs to know that we know him not as in deed he is, neither can know him.'24 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sermons, devotional literature, and religious propaganda rely heavily on àrguments by design', reasoning inferentially from God's works to His concealed essence, from everyday events to His mysterious providence. Biblical hermeneutics similarly conceive of the literal text as a husk or veil that simultaneously obscures and indicates the contours of the truth at the sacred core. It is dicult to know whether the interpretation of persons constitutes a particular application of a more general interpretative practice, or whether the comprehension of other kinds of phenomena ± sacred texts, religious mysteries, or wonders of nature ± is modelled upon the familiar tasks of social comprehension. Certainly the connection between the two kinds of tasks is made long before the sixteenth century, by Augustine in On the Faith in 23 24

George Hakewill, The Vanity of the Eye (Oxford, 1615), p. 60. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, I.ii.2.

117


Katharine Eisaman Maus Things Unseen. Why, he asks, should we ¯inch from acknowledging the veiled truths of Christianity, when our intercourse with even our most intimate acquaintances is premised upon invisibility? Tell me, I ask you, with what eyes do you see your friend's will toward you? For, no will can be seen with bodily eyes. Or, indeed, do you also see in your mind that which is taking place in the mind of another? . . . Perhaps you will say that you see the will of another through his deeds? Then you will see acts and hear words, but of your friend's will you will believe that which cannot be seen or heard. The will is not color or ®gure that may be impressed upon the eyes; nor is it a sound or formula that may strike upon the ears; nor, indeed, is it yours to be felt by the aection of your heart. It follows, therefore, that, although it is not seen or heard or grasped inwardly by you, it is believed. Otherwise your life would be left barren of any friendship, or love bestowed upon you would not be paid back by you in turn.25

The diculty, obviously, is in specifying criteria which would distinguish between faith and gullibility. On the one hand the interpreter must begin with what is literal and apparent: the purpose of exegesis, as Frank Kermode writes, ìs to penetrate the surface and reveal a secret sense; to show what is concealed in what is proclaimed'.26 At the same time, Christ's career as well as the content of much of his teaching dramatically point up the perils of using external manifestations as interpretive guides. Set against these epistemological qualms ± indeed, provoked by those qualms ± is the desire for a reliable means for achieving certainty. Even as Renaissance theism generates misgivings about human access to truth, it provides a context for thinking about what certainty would mean and to whom it could be ascribed. The Christian God exempli®es not only mysterious inwardness, but an eortless transcendence of the boundaries that frustrate human knowledge. When Father Wright declares that `hearts . . . be inscrutable, and only open unto God',27 he is typical in de®ning inscrutability as a relative and not an absolute phenomenon. On this issue he shares the convictions of the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe: For a man to pronounce assuredly upon the secret cogitation and intent of either man or woman, further than by utterance or by speech is to him signi®ed, passeth his capacity, and is to be left only to Him, who is `scrutans corda et renes Deus'.28

The Puritans John Dod and Robert Cleaver claim likewise that 25

26 27 28

Augustine, On Faith in Things Unseen, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari and Mary Francis McDonald, Writings of Saint Augustine (New York, 1947), II.452. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, 1979). Wright, Passions of the Minde, p. 27. Foxe, Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perilous Days . . . (New York, 1965), VIII.238.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship God . . . doth as well discern the most secret things of the soul, as any man doth the outward actions of the body . . . For men ®rst look to the outward behaviour, and hence descend to judge of the heart, but God ®rst approves the heart, and then the outward action.29

God's immediate, superhuman knowledge of the hidden interior of persons is one of the primary qualities for which he is admired and feared by many early modern Christians. Thus in A Treatise of Angels John Salkend rejects the notion that angels have access to human thoughts, because preserving that kind of knowledge to God alone constitutes for him one of the most powerful motives for the adoration of the divinity.30 In fact, for some writers the presence of an omniscient spectator seems so fundamental to the structure of human subjectivity that the fact of that subjectivity becomes part of the proof of God's existence. In the Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience, for instance, William Perkins writes: Let it be demanded of the atheist, whereof does conscience bear witness? he cannot deny, but of all his particular actions . . . Furthermore, to whom is it a witness? Neither to man, nor to angels: for it is impossible that any man or angel should either hear the voice of conscience, or receive the testimony thereof, or yet discern what is in the heart of man. Hereupon it follows, that there is a substance, most wise, most powerful, most holy, that sees and bears record, and that is God himself. 31

The startling logical leap in this passage does not seem to trouble Perkins, despite his normally rigorous argumentative style; such dubiously teleological reasoning was so widespread in the period that custom may have obscured its irregularity.32 Perkins conceives each individual as simultaneously the object of a double scrutiny: of a human vision that is fallible, partial, and super®cial, and of a divine vision that is infallible, complete, and penetrating. Without a continued tension between divine and human observation, human inwardness ± constituted as it is by a dierence between those scrutinies ± would 29

30 31

32

John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1630), pp. 29±30. The ®rst version of this text was published in 1603. John Salkend, A Treatise of Angels (London, 1613), pp. 165±7. William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, 1606), p. 211. Perkin's argument is conventional; cf., for instance, John Howesoun, A Short Exposition of the 20. and 21. Verses of the Third Chapter of the First Epistle of St. John (Edinburgh, 1600), sigs. B1r±v and B8v±C1r. Stephen Greenblatt has suggested that atheism `seems to have been almost unthinkable to the most daring philosophical minds of late sixteenth-century England' (Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, 1988), p. 22.) It is harder than Greenblatt acknowledges to assess the accuracy of this claim. Unlike heretics who could look forward to a transcendental reward for declaring their allegiances, atheists would hardly ®nd it expedient to broadcast their scandalous opinions. But if Greenblatt is right, perhaps the conceptual diculty of atheism for the period has something to do with the way the structure of internal experience is thought necessarily to imply observation by a divinity.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus seem for Perkins to collapse. In other words, the inwardness of persons is constituted by the disparity between what a limited, fallible human observer can see, and what is available to the hypostasised divine observer, ùnto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid'.33 This disparity is subject to ¯uctuation, and to intentional manipulation both by the viewer and the viewed. Renaissance religious culture thus nurtures habits of mind that encourage conceiving of human inwardness, like other truths, as simultaneously privileged and elusive, an absent presence ìnterpreted' to observers by ambiguous inklings and tokens. Hermeneutic diculties arise from the fact that while particular instances of human vision might prove untrustworthy, a visual model simultaneously structures the conception of what real understanding will involve. On the one hand, the theistic context in which the problem of human inwardness is posed in the ®rst place, provides at the same time a standard of what would constitute certainty. On the other hand, faith itself encourages a kind of mistrust: for what is most true about human beings in such a system is simultaneously least veri®able. II

Why should authors so various as the Puritan Perkins, the Anglican34 Foxe, the Jesuit Wright, and the heterodox Ralegh all yearn for techniques of penetration, excavation, exposure, while at the same time proclaiming their mistrust of those techniques? Perhaps the question itself seems odd. These writers may seem less to be re¯ecting the idiosyncrasies of their particular culture than to be illuminating or capitalising upon a universal insight into the irreducible mysteriousness of human beings to one another. The dierence between knowing oneself `from the inside' and knowing other people `from the outside' may seem so fundamental to social life that it cannot be the property of a particular historical moment. Experiences of having been deceived or misled, of having misinterpreted someone's motives or of having been misunderstood oneself, of having consciously withheld a truth out of charity, jealousy, politeness, or cunning: these may seem the inescapable conditions of any human intercourse. Indeed, distinctions between a socially visible exterior and an invisible personal interior, if not cultural universals, have at the very least a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. Ralegh's arguments in Sceptick, or, Speculations, for instance, are not novel ones; he is closely adapting material from the ®rst book of Outlines of Pyrrhonism, a late-classical work by Sextus 33 34

The Prayer Book of Queen Elizabeth, 1559 (London, 1914), p. 92. The term Ànglican' may seem anachronistic, since it only came into use in the nineteenth century; but I ®nd it a helpful way of distinguishing Church of England Protestants like Hooker and Foxe from non-separatists to the left of them, like Perkins or Cooper.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship Empiricus rediscovered by the West in the sixteenth century. Sextus, moreover, represents himself not as an original philosopher, but as the heir to a tradition of thinking about the relation between sense-perceptions and reality that reaches back to the pre-Socratics.35 Renaissance thinking on this issue is also in¯uenced by Aristotle and his scholastic followers, who distinguish between appearances and essences; Stoics and neo-Stoics who separate true inward goods from inessential externals; and Christian patristic writers who emphasise the importance of the inner over the outer man. Of course, the schemata of inwardness prevailing among these dierent traditions of thought are not simply interchangeable: they are designed to address disparate philosophical problems and are often lodged within incommensurable metaphysical systems. A scheme that contrasts an external phenomenal world with an inward non-material realm, for instance, diers in its implications and emphases from a scheme grounded upon an internal hydraulics of competing ¯uid `humours'. A number of important studies in the history of ideas have explored the exceedingly complicated tradition of psychological thinking inherited by Renaissance philosophy and medicine, a tradition that can be traced back to the Greeks and that undergoes innumerable readjustments, transformations, and syntheses in the hands of various gnostics, patristic writers, scholastics, neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, and Ramists.36 Surely it is important that several traditions furnish accounts of personal inwardness in an intellectually syncretic period like the Renaissance, which tends to respect those traditions even while shaking religious and philosophical ideas loose from their original moorings and recombining them in new arrangements. The lengthy, complex pedigree of general notions of personal inwardness helps sustain their ecumenical acceptability in an age that honours the authority of the past. Nonetheless, the shape of the ideas that concern me are not the property of a particular sect or school. Nor are they exclusively or primarily the concern of Renaissance intellectuals. The mere existence of various philosophical or religious traditions ± Stoic self-forti®cation, Augustinian introspective piety, sceptic solipsism ± does not produce of its own accord the Renaissance fascination with interior truths. The causal chain is more likely to work in the other direction: some social and political crises in early modern Europe make it worth rehabilitating authorities and schools of thought that address that emergency in especially pertinent ways. 35

36

For an account of the in¯uence of Sextus Empiricus in the sixteenth century, see C. B. Schmidtt, `The Rediscovery of Ancient Scepticism', The Skeptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 225±51. Some of the interactions of the Platonic, Stoic, and monastic traditions of self-knowledge are described by Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutmann, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst, 1988), pp. 9±49. In The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988) Peter Brown brilliantly discusses related issues in the late classical and early Christian period.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus It is not, then, that the Renaissance invents a possibility that had never been articulated before. Rather, in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England the sense of discrepancy between ìnward disposition' and òutward appearance' seems unusually urgent and consequential for a very large number of people, who occupy virtually every position on the ideological spectrum. For although the distinction between interior and exterior may seem tediously commonsensical, it never seems simply to `go without saying'. It must be endlessly reiterated in prefaces, satires, sermons, advice literature, medical treatises, coney-catching pamphlets, doctrinal debates, antitheatrical tracts, speeches from the gallows, published reports of foreign and domestic turmoil, essays on the passions and on the soul. What engenders this curious state of aairs, in which everyone seems to concur with everyone else, but still feels obliged to announce those unexceptionable convictions with the emphasis usually reserved for novel or tendentious claims? One way to answer such a question is to look at speci®c cases and particular texts, as I do in my book, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, exploring a variety of ways in which the dierence between socially observable externals and `that within' (whatever it might be) is established, elaborated upon, exploited, exaggerated, pointedly ignored, or violently erased in early modern England. At the same time, a more general explanation for what is clearly a sweeping phenomenon seems called for. Yet a general explanation is also more dicult, because mutually interacting social and ideological factors massively overdetermine the beliefs in question. Lacey Baldwin Smith ascribes what he calls the `paranoia' of Tudor courtiers to Renaissance child-rearing practices that encourage touchy defensiveness and mutual suspicion.37 Frank Whigham maintains that the rapid enlargement of the elite class in the later sixteenth century causes a crisis in aristocratic values, one consequence of which is an acute self-consciousness about the tactical deployment of socially visible behaviours, combined with an uneasy awareness of their arti®ciality.38 Devon Hodges relates the English Renaissance interest in rhetorical strategies of ànatomy' ± the peeling o of surfaces to reveal the layers beneath ± to a new medical emphasis upon the dissection of cadavers.39 Wendy Wall sees the persistent emphasis on a dynamics of concealment and disclosure in late sixteenth-century poetry as a way of coming to terms with the newly enlarged audience that print technology makes possible.40 But each of these suggestions, plausible enough in its own terms, fails to explain the very widespread circulation of what might be called the ìnwardness topos'. Smith and Whigham explain why aristocrats are 37 38

39 40

Lacey Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia (Princeton, 1986). Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley, 1984). Devon Hodges, Renaissance Fictions of Anatomy (Amherst, 1985). Wendy Wall, `Disclosures in Print: The ``Violent Enlargement'' of the Renaissance Voyeuristic Text', Studies in English Literature xxix (1989), pp. 35±59.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship chronically suspicious of one another, but not why the same scepticism should seem apt to commoners who had no court connections and whose childhood experiences would have been entirely dierent. Wall's discussion of the relationship between manuscript and print culture applies to nondramatic poetry but not to the theatre in which Hamlet lays claim to an interior that escapes theatrical representation. Hodge's analysis is likewise generically restricted to a particular kind of prose treatise. I am inclined to seek an explanation in the far-reaching political, religious, and economic realignments that constitute the English Reformation, because these realignments draw attention to certain relevant doctrinal and practical issues. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Catholics and Protestants, Anglicans and sectarians endlessly debate whether priests ought to wear vestments, whether communicants should kneel when they receive communion, whether infant baptism is acceptable, whether prescribed prayers have merit. To hostile commentators, religious practices they do not share seem super®cial, self-evidently fraudulent: thus Protestants typically describe themselves as cultivating internal truths while accusing Catholics of attending only to outward `shows'. Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Catholics themselves, however, hardly perceive their devotional lives as empty formalities. It is Cardinal William Allen and Father Robert Persons, SJ who maintain that in dicult moral dilemmas `whatever [one] does as the result of the internal prompting of the Holy Ghost, after having commended the matter to God and having considered his eternal salvation, is to be considered better and more acceptable to God than any other course of action'.41 Neither the rhetoric of inwardness, nor the antinomian implications of that rhetoric, were exclusively Protestant property. In fact, whatever their position on the role of ceremony in the church, religious controversialists never question the existence of a distinction between what Augustine calls homo interior and homo exterior.42 Rather 41

42

William Allen and Robert Persons, `Resolutiones quorundam cassum nationiis Anglicanae' (The resolution of certain cases of the English nation), Elizabethan Casuistry, trans. and ed. P. J. Holmes (Thetford, Norfolk, 1981), p. 67. This manuscript, probably used in the instruction of English missionary priests, was composed between 1581 and 1585; Holmes dates it 1582. Persons and Allen's position in this passage is derivable from Aquinas' insistence, in the Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 16±17, that even the erring conscience is morally binding upon its possessor. For an English version of this text see J. V. McGlynn, trans., Truth: Translated from the De®nitive Leonine Text (Chicago, 1953), vol. II. For a representative tract in which both Protestant and Catholic positions use Augustine's formulations to draw dierent conclusions, see e.g. A True Report of the Private Colloquy between M. Smith, alias Norrice, and M. Walker (London, 1624). The topic of this dialogue is the relationship between the òutward and extrinsical' and the ìnward or secret'. The debate recapitulates some very old divisions among the fathers of the Church. For instance, Jerome argues that the existence of an inward realm to which only God has immediate access justi®es religious dissimulation under certain circumstances; Augustine, whose account of that interior realm was at least as in¯uential, placed rigorous limitations upon the extent to which external manifestations were allowed to deviate from inner truth.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus Catholics, Anglicans, and sectarians contend over the signi®cance of a distinction all parties to the controversy are willing to grant. They argue not over how human beings are structured, but over how, given that structure, they ought to comport themselves. It is important to recognise in such altercations not merely the issues overtly under discussion, issues often of literally life-and-death importance to the disputants, but also the shared assumptions upon which even the bitterest of controversies may be predicated. Moreover, as a practical matter the awareness of a secret interior space of unexpressed thoughts and feelings does not require commitment to a particular theology. It is an almost inevitable result of religious oppression, so that the seventeenth-century Puritan Daniel Dyke lists `the public persecution of the church' as one of the usual ways by which a person may come to know his ìnward heart'.43 Between 1535, when Henry de®es the authority of Rome, and 1558, when Elizabeth ascends the throne, England changes religious course four times. The nationalised but doctrinally catholic Henrician church takes an aggressively protestant turn under Edward; but its leaders and many lesser adherents are exiled or crushed in Mary's return to militant Roman Catholicism, which is in turn displaced by Elizabeth's quali®ed return to the reformed church. Each major alteration, and some of the minor ones, involves the sometimes violent but never wholly successful suppression of what was heretofore the approved doctrine. John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, better known as the `Book of Martyrs', records the Protestant resistance to the reimposition of Catholicism under Mary. In the late sixteenth century Foxe's volumes are installed beside the Bible in English churches, keeping the memory of the Marian persecution alive in the minds of Protestants. At the same time, Catholics begin sending their own martyrs to the scaold, victims of the reassertion of a Protestant hegemony and the political hostilities between England and Catholic Spain. Meanwhile Puritans and radical sectarians seem increasingly aggressive and de®ant to the Anglican establishment, which reacts by implementing measures designed to punish severely their departures from the via media.44 43

44

Daniel Dyke, The Mystery of Self Deceiving (London, 1641), p. 316. In Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), Perez Zagorin describes how Jews in Spain, Protestants in Counter-Reformation Italy, sectarians and Catholics in England, and `libertine' crypto-atheists throughout Europe develop a similar range of options for dealing with inquisition and persecution, ranging from outright pretence through devious forms of avoidance to blatant de®ance of majority practices. The anthropologist E. P. Dozier shows how members of the Pueblo Indian tribe, under Spanish pressure to convert to Catholicism, employed false conformity, verbal equivocation, code languages, and secret rituals to preserve themselves and their religion: strategies identical, that is, to the tactics used by Europeans. (`Rio Grande Pueblos', pp. 94±186 in Perspectives in American Indian Culture Change, ed. Edward H. Spicer (Chicago, 1961) ). For an account of some of the relevant legislation see J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584±1601 (New York, 1958), especially pp. 280±97.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship As a result of this ocial ¯ip-¯opping, those who take matters of faith seriously ± whatever their confession ± are likely to ®nd themselves in an awkward or even dangerous position at some point in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Often, however, they have the option of virtual invisibility. They are not distinguished from their neighbours by language, skin colour, ethnic background, or habits of dress. Tudor and Jacobean religious dissidents face self-de®nitional challenges similar to what Eve Sedgewick describes as the challenges of modern homosexual identity45 ± the expediency, even at times the apparent necessity, of concealment; the physical perils and psychic relief attendant upon open declaration; the uncertainty about who and what might betray half-secret allegiances; the context-dependent ¯uidity of what `counts' as a heretical orientation. Throughout the sixteenth century the religious leaders of all confessions struggle with the question of whether conscientious dissidents ought to conceal their true allegiances from hostile authorities. Some argue that frankness about one's beliefs is morally obligatory. John Calvin acknowledges `how hard a thing it is to confess Christ in these days of trouble' but nonetheless insists upon an open announcement: Two men in one, God loveth not. If the inward man know the truth, why doth the outward man confess a falsehood? . . . If the tongue speak otherwise than the heart thinketh, both be abominable before God.46

The record of religious persecution in England and on the Continent is full of heretics who prefer death in torment to conforming outwardly to a doctrine at variance with their inner convictions. For these people, the relationship between what they believe and what they decide to make apparent is posed in life-shattering terms. Although it is impossible to estimate accurately the severity of the crises of conscience that accompanied ocial changes of faith, or the numbers who underwent such crises, those willing to suer the extreme penalties for their beliefs must have always been in a minority. In The Discovery of Witchcraft Reginald Scot, arguing that supposed witches often confess out of terror, compares their panic to that of the Protestants under Catholic oppression: He that . . . remembreth the persecutions in Queen Mary's time, shall ®nd, that many good men have fallen for fear of persecution, and returned unto the Lord again.47 45

46

47

Eve Sedgewick, The Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, 1990). Likewise pertinent are the binary conceptual oppositions Sedgewick discusses ± the simultaneous tension and collusion between cognition and paranoia, between secrecy and disclosure, between knowledge and ignorance. John Calvin, Whether Christian Faith May Be Kept Secret in the Heart, Without Confession to the World (London 1553), sigs. A2v±A3r; A4v±A5r. Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) II.xii (London, 1930), p. 21.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus Although the silence of fearful, sceptical, temporising, or merely apathetic individuals leaves no historical trace, religious upheavals aect those who do not resist as well as those who do. Attempts to enforce religious conformity can become lessons in the advisability of keeping one's opinions ± or the fact that one has no opinion ± to oneself. This experience, too, while less sensational than the experience of the declared heretic, calls attention at least as eectively to the strategic dierence between thought and utterance, secret conviction and external manifestation. It was not merely the pusillanimous or unprincipled who hid their beliefs. Members of a beleaguered religious minority had to consider whether a circumspection that preserved their numbers might be not only in their worldly interests, but best for the future of their faith as well. Thus Roman Catholic casuists declare dispensable the consecration of altars, auricular confession, even in some circumstances the mass itself. This leniency had its dangers: as Peter Holmes points out, the ritual dierences between Catholics and Protestants were probably more important to most lay believers than any doctrinal divergence.48 Without Latin prayers or sacraments performed by an anointed priest, how were Catholic laypersons to distinguish themselves from the Protestant majority? Without the discipline and supportive community of the coventicle, how were separatist Protestants to avoid the hypocrisy of which they accused Anglican accomodationalists? Still, since everybody acknowledged that religion was most importantly a matter of inward commitment, conscientious believers could argue that one might participate in rituals one did not credit, if they were insisted upon by the civil authorities. The drawing of a dierence between the ìnward disposition' and the visible but less-real òutward appearance' created such tempting opportunities for religious minorities that elaborate attempts to justify concealment to the tender of conscience proliferated in sixteenth-century Europe. Holinshed reports that when one Friar Forrest was apprehended in 1537 and accused of secretly rejecting Henry VIII's authority over the English church, he was asked why he had not demurred to take the Oath of Supremacy. `He answered that he took his oath with his outward man, but his inward man never consenteth thereto.'49 In the period before he ®nally admitted the recalcitrance of his ìnward man' to the authorities, Forrest had been practising èquivocation', a notorious Catholic technique of giving riddling, evasive, or even downright misleading answers to queries posed by investigating authorities. The theory of equivocation predated the Reformation: Thomas More, who 48

49

Peter Holmes makes this point in Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge, 1982), p. 125. Raphael Holinshed et al., Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587, reprinted London, 1808), III.803.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship later developed his own form of non-co-operation with the authorities, addresses the issue in A Dialogue Concerning Heresies. The interlocutor claims that no one need confess secret deeds in court, `because that of secret and unknown things no man can be his judge'. More replies that judges who ask random and frivolous questions need not be propitiated, but that when the judge's suspicions are based upon clear evidence, `there is he plainly bounden upon pain of eternal damnation without covering or cautel to shew and disclose the plain truth and to have more respect to his soul than to his shame'.50 Later Catholics, under severe pressure from Elizabeth's and then James' Protestant regimes, emphasised less the evidence possessed by the accusers than the legitimacy of their interest in knowing the answer. The Jesuits Persons and Allen go so far as to claim that no Protestants possess genuine authority to question Catholics, `because a heretic queen is not a legitimate queen'.51 In dierent ways, however, both More and later writers make allowance for a domain over which the judge's curiosity gives him no entitlement: a domain which is not only inaccessible to human vision as a practical matter, but which the individual has an authentic interest in protecting. This realm is de®ned as the inwardness of mind or conscience, which is subject to God alone. Like Hamlet, equivocation theorists insist not only upon the separation of the interior realm from the outer world, but upon its absolute priority. The English Jesuit Henry Garnet explains that `the essence or whole truth of every proposition is in the mind' before it is uttered or written; the means of expression are merely ìnstruments or signs to express that proposition which is in the mind'. Hence `the altering of the signs which do express our mind . . . alter not the verity of the proposition', and the employment of ambiguous or deceptive language `doth not make before God the proposition of any other condition than before'.52 Persons and Allen show how this distinction operates when they address the question of whether a captured Catholic may do his best to ¯ee after having promised heretic captors that he will co-operate with them. Whether or not the escape attempt is wrong, Persons and Allen declare, depends upon the state of mind in which the promise was made. If the Catholic made the promise wholeheartedly, then he ìntended to oblige himself ' and breaking his word would be mortal sin. But if he equivocated, àdding mentally' such phrases as ìf I cannot' or ìn your presence', then he promised `with the intention of deceiving and not of 50

51

52

The Complete Works of Thomas More, vol. VI part 1, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc'haudor, and Richard C. Marius (New Haven, 1981), p. 282. Allen and Persons, p. 65. Persons repeats the argument in A Treatise Tending to Mitigation, 1607. Henry Garnet, A Treatise of Equivocation, ed. David Jardine (London, 1851), pp. 9±12. For an illuminating discussion of the uses of equivocation by Catholics and other religious minorities, see Lowell Gallagher, Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance (Stanford, 1991), esp. 63±93.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus obliging himself ', and he may escape if he has the opportunity.53 What matters to the casuists in these cases is the quality of the intention, something visible to God alone. In comparison the external, social world in which promises are uttered is of slight importance, morally almost chimerical. The dierence between the casuists' position and the position of a modern speech-act theorist like J. L. Austin could not be more marked. For Austin, promises are by their nature social acts, and their form is tied up in the syntactical operations shared by all users of a language. People may, of course, break promises; but if they have uttered the appropriate words, they have made those promises nonetheless. The eect of Austin's speech-act theory, as he points out, is to render irrelevant a secret, ontologically prior realm of intention.54 The casuists, on the other hand, imagine utterances matching up, well or badly, with authoritative internal propositions; and so the promise is only binding upon its maker if it properly expresses what Garnet calls its preexistent mental èssence'. The casuists' position, curious as it may seem, follows reasonably enough from the hierarchised distinction between insides and outsides, and the founding of that distinction upon the notion of an omniscient divine supervisor, that we have seen elaborated in other Renaissance contexts. What was true for speech, according to the casuists, was true for all other forms of social self-representation. As the persecution of Catholics became more severe, Catholic clerics vigorously debated the ethics of `Nicodemism', or secret religious commitment, often shifting their position in response to the practical diculties of open resistance.55 The usual position of the casuist texts of the 1580s is that the open acknowledgement of one's belief is never positively sinful, but that fear of death or mistreatment is an adequate reason to conceal one's commitments, and that discretion may in many instances be the better part of valour. 53 54

55

Allen and Persons, `Resolutiones', pp. 125±26. Austin argues against the notion that the `seriousness' of promises `consists in their being uttered as (merely) the outward and visible sign, for convenience or other record or for information, of an inward and spiritual act'; his own theory èxclude(s) such ®ctitious inward acts' (How To Do Things With Words, 2nd edn., ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina SbisaÁ (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 9±10). Peter Holmes, in Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of Elizabethan Catholics, describes the battles among English Catholics over the proper course of action during the Elizabethan period; Perez Zagorin, in Ways of Lying, has a useful chapter on Catholic Nicodemism in late sixteenth-century England. The range of accommodations to enforced Anglicanism is clear in the memoirs of the English Jesuit John Gerard, who dierentiates between recusants, who refused to attend Anglican services and often paid punitive ®nes for doing so, and schismatics, who secretly aided priests and fellow-believers, but who attended established worship with their neighbours. Gerard vacillates between treating the recusants as `real' Catholics and the schismatics as merely potential members of the Roman Church, and considering both recusants and schismatics true Catholics (John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. Philip Caraman (New York, 1951)).

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Inwardness and Spectatorship On the other end of the religious spectrum the Family of Love, a radical Protestant sect, similarly distinguished sharply between the secrets of the heart and public behaviour. Familists taught that provided the heart was right, the true believer might engage in any religious practice prescribed by the authorities without compromising his or her standing with God.56 Familists could also make false statements to hostile inquisitors about their religious convictions without compromising their consciences. Provided they felt themselves physically threatened they were no more guilty of lying, asserted their founder Hendrik Niclas, than a woman coerced to perform sexual acts was guilty of unchastity. Catholic and radical Protestant responses to the problems of practising a minority faith dier in predictable ways. The Catholic mode makes a space for private conviction by insisting upon a traditional distinction between the domains of secular and ecclesiastical authority, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and reserving for God what is God's. There is nothing in the Catholic doctrine that identi®es religious conviction as necessarily private or interior. Rather, such conviction becomes private and interior in the inhospitable environment of a Protestant state, which forbids the public demonstration of rightful allegiances. When Catholics, as Persons writes, `live amid so many diculties and dangers and amid so much desolation and have hardly any human consolation', the demands of their faith must be reinterpreted to make allowances for their parlous circumstances. The radical Protestants instead typically contrast an unmediated relationship between God and man, a relationship celebrated for its intrinsic inwardness, with the empty corporeality of external secular aairs. In practice, however, various persecuted religious minorities tend to ®nd similar solutions to their similar dilemmas. From the Anglican point of view, papists and sectarians could seem to be allied with one another despite their contrary doctrinal premises; they were even accused of collaborating with the hope of toppling the English political and ecclesiastical system.57 To oppose this perceived threat, the Elizabethan regime in the later decades of the sixteenth century devised an unprecedented domestic espionage system under the auspices of Francis Walsingham, which in®ltrated heterodox and possibly subversive religious groups. It is dicult to know at this historical remove whether the aggressions of the state produced furtiveness in its enemies or supposed enemies as a defensive re¯ex, or whether the secretiveness of the heterodox necessitated the regime's attempt at surveillance. 56

57

For an excellent account of Familist practice and the exasperation it occasioned in orthodox Anglicans, see Janet E. Halley, `Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Religious Discourse: The Case of the English Family of Love', Representing the English Renaissance, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 303±25. For analogies between Catholics and Puritans in the Anglican mind, see e.g. the Works of Elizabeth I's Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, ed. J. Ayre (London, 1851±3), III.300±15.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus Whatever the original causal relationship, the eect was a spiraling paranoia on both sides accompanied by a sharply higher awareness of the practical advantages of secrecy. Signi®cantly, the ecclesiastical authorities found invisible religious minorities threatening not because they rejected the assumptions upon which dissidents based their arguments, but because, on the contrary, they wholeheartedly accepted them ± because a tranquil and orderly society seemed to depend not merely upon the òutward observance' and èxternal conformity' of its subjects, but upon their `heartfelt love' and `sincere conviction'. It was because hypocrisy was so easy that it was so dangerous. The rapid urbanisation of English literate culture must have powerfully exacerbated many of the tensions just described. Despite periodic ravages of the plague, a persistently high mortality rate, and a lower-than-average birthrate, sixteenth-century London burgeoned. The population grew from 70,000 to 200,000 people between 1550 and 1600, and doubled again in the next half-century. Most of the increase was attributable to migration from the provincial towns and villages; there was also a signi®cant in¯ux of religious refugees from the Continent.58 The centralisation of literary production was even more marked. Monastic libraries were dispersed, and old regional centres lost their prestige as the crown consolidated its power and its patronage networks, and as the increasing importance of foreign trade concentrated wealth in the capital city. Consequently producers and consumers of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literature were likely to have some experience of city life, even while retaining some memory ± perhaps their own, perhaps their parents' ± of an earlier rural order. Whereas the inhabitant of a small village perhaps was acquainted with the same limited group of neighbours from birth, the city-dweller had to interact with a dramatically larger number and variety of people. The changes were qualitative as well as quantitative. The new urbanite needed to learn to manage a wider spectrum of familiarities: from almost anonymous interactions with unknown persons, to casual attachments with acquaintances, to the intimate relationships among family members and close friends. If, as apparently often happened, a `vertical' change in class status accompanied `horizontal' or geographical displacement, the resulting disorientation must have been even more acute. Clues to such disorientation emerge in accounts of late sixteenth-century London life. In A Notable Discovery of Cosenage, Robert Greene describes how a couple of schemers will plot to relieve a dupe of his money by semi-legal means. Their preferred victims are provincials: à welchman . . . being a mere stranger in London, and not well acquainted with the English tongue', or à plain country fellow well and cleanly apparelled, either in a coat of homespun 58

These population estimates are Roger Finlay's in his sophisticated study Population and Metropolis: The Demography of London 1580±1650 (Cambridge, 1981).

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Inwardness and Spectatorship russet, or of freize'.59 One of the group strikes up a conversation with this innocent, who guilelessly reveals his name, his place of residence, his kinsmen, and the names of his neighbours. The interlocutor conveys this information to an accessory, who approaches him separately and accosts him by name. The poor countryman hearing himself named by a man he knows not, marvels, and answers that he knows him not, and craves pardon. Not me goodman Barton, have you forgot me? Why I am such a man's kinsman, your neighbour not far o: how doth this or that good gentleman my friend? Good Lord that I should be out of your remembrance, I have been at your house diverse times. (pp. 19±20)

Greene's cozeners self-consciously exploit rustic modes of identity formation based upon kinship relations, reputation among one's neighbours, and reciprocal acts of hospitality. They counterfeit social intimacy with one for whom that intimacy involves obligations; the `countryman' is led to feel that he must share a drink with a man whom he fails to recognise, but who knows his name and the names of his neighbours. The wiliness of the thieves is, Greene emphasises, a distinctively urban trait, a product of the distance between emerging and traditional ways of life. In what does this distance consist? Greene does not suggest that relationships in the city are consistently remote, or that each individual is isolated from all others. The coney-catching tracts testify to the ecient and pro®table collusion among close-knit companies of rogues, giving samples of the dialect they use among themselves, their cryptic methods of recognising one another, and so forth. The rustics are vulnerable, in fact, because they imagine that in London they are anonymous, unscrutinised, and thus free to indulge impulses of lust and greed they would prudently contain at home. In the trick called the `cross-bite', for instance, a prostitute lures a visiting bumpkin into her bed. Then a man with whom she is in collusion bursts into the room and claims to be her husband. He threatens legal reprisals, but is eventually molli®ed by an additional payment. The cross-bite ®rst extracts money from the dupe by allowing him to imagine himself as free of social controls, liberated into the pleasurable secrecy of the city. Then it suddenly reimposes those controls, and extracts money again. In another version of the trick, the whore's male accomplice pretends to be a summoner or parator ± a representative of the ecclesiastical courts ± whom the client bribes to overlook his oence and protect his good name. The criminals of Greene's coney-catching tracts circulate in a city not big enough to assure complete anonymity, but big enough to generate disproportions and unevenness in human beings' knowledge of one another. A person's reputation will naturally `carry' only so far, and beyond that circle he can 59

Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Cosenage (London, 1581), ed. G. B. Harrison (New York, 1966), pp. 31, 18.

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Katharine Eisaman Maus plausibly improvise an identity which is dicult to corroborate. In such an environment it is not surprising that self-display and self-withholding should become calculated tactics, or that the art of self-deployment, though it might seem more naturally at home in courtly circles, should penetrate far down the social scale. III

Earlier I mentioned that some New Historicist and Cultural Materialist critics of early modern English literature have tended to deny or downplay the signi®cance of a rhetoric of inwardness in early modern England, even though evidence abounds for its importance in the period. I believe that this denial arises from, or is symptomatic of, a false sense of what is necessitated by the premises of Cultural Materialist and New Historicist criticism. Despite dierences in the details of their approaches, such critics characteristically work from philosophical positions that reject as illusory the possibility of a subjectivity prior to or exempt from social determination. That is, they are making a claim not only about English Renaissance subjectivity, but about subjectivity tout court: a claim `that the self ', in Annabel Patterson's words, ìs always necessarily a product of its relations'.60 At the same time, they want to resist what they see as a specious attribution of modern bourgeois assumptions about `the self ' to a historically distant culture. Admitting the signi®cance of conceptions of psychological inwardness for the English Renaissance, they imagine, would be tantamount to embracing a naive essentialism about human nature. This consequence does not follow, however. Perhaps the historicist argument makes the philosophical argument seem more plausible; for if our intuitions about subjectivity are demonstrably absent in other cultures or periods, then those intuitions are unlikely to represent trans-historical constants, or to re¯ect stubborn facts about human nature. But the philosophical argument does not need to be made in historicist terms ± and in fact, in some of its most in¯uential formulations is not so made ± nor does the historicist project require this particular philosophical agenda.61 The dier60

61

Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, 1984), p. 139. Various forms of the philosophical argument are made in general terms by such writers as Freud, Marx, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Dewey and Wittgenstein; except in the case of Foucault, perhaps, their arguments do not stand or fall upon a particular reading of Renaissance culture. Anne Ferry makes a historicist argument without, apparently, sharing the philosophical agenda that motivates such critics as Barker or Belsey ± although she, too, regards Renaissance conceptions of interiority as relatively undeveloped: ònly some poets, and those almost exclusively in sonnets, seemed to have concerned themselves with what a modern writer would call the inner life' (The Ìnward' Language: Sonnets of Wyatt , Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne (Chicago, 1983), p. 14).

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Inwardness and Spectatorship ence is worth keeping in mind, because philosophical claims about the necessarily social constitution of any subjectivity, Renaissance or modern, sometimes seem to get confused with historicist claims about a speci®cally early modern form of subjectivity. Since, as we have seen, the idea of ìnward truth' in early modern England is intimately linked to transcendental religious claims, antagonism to those claims perhaps contributes to the recent tendency to underestimate the conceptual importance of personal inwardness in this period. I share the religious incredulity of many New Historicist and Cultural Materialist critics. I suspect, however, that if the religious categories in which the English Renaissance tried to comprehend itself often seem to us to involve glaring mysti®cations of social and political dynamics, so too our secularist interpretive axioms may blind us to their own explanatory limitations. Perhaps our suspicion of terms like privacy, inwardness, subjectivity, soul, and so forth ± our conviction that they beg to be debunked ± has less to do with their inherently unsatisfactory features, than with our sense of what counts as a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps it is not the people of early modern England but we, the postmodern academic heirs of Wittgenstein, Lacan, Marx, Austin and Foucault, who experience diculty thinking of individuals apart from external matrices, who imagine `the supposedly ``private'' sphere . . . only through its similarities and dissimilarities to the public world', and who are attracted to the notion that selves are void. If so, it is disingenuous to pretend that by discovering the externally constituted nature of Renaissance selves we have identi®ed one feature of a great gulf set between `them' and ùs'. So distinguishing between what I would call a `philosophical' argument and a `historical' one seems crucial. And this distinction is related to another: the dierence between the origins of an idea and its eects once it becomes culturally available. The New Historicist critique insists, correctly in my view, that the `self ' is not independent of or prior to its social context. Yet it often incorrectly assumes that once this dependence is pointed out, inwardness simply dissipates. It may well be true that Renaissance notions of subjectivity and interior truths turn out to be philosophically defective: they are rarely elaborately or rigorously argued for. But lack of rigour neither limits the extent of, nor determines the nature of, the power such notions can exert. Murkiness and illogicality may, in fact, enhance rather than limit their potency. Instead of dismantling Renaissance distinctions between inward and outward, public and private, then, or evaluating their theoretical acceptability, I think it is worth undertaking a much more pragmatic enterprise, attempting to analyse some of the ways the distinction matters. What is at issue ± ethically, politically, epistemologically, theologically ± when someone in early modern England appeals to a dierence between external show and form internal, or between outer and inner man? How are the boundaries drawn that separate what counts as ìnside' from what counts as òutside'? How does the existence of such categories help shape thought and behaviour? These investigations 133


Katharine Eisaman Maus need not comprise a rejection, but rather an attempt to re®ne and advance a historically self-conscious discussion of the early modern period. The range of materials I have brie¯y surveyed in this essay already begin to suggest the importance in English Renaissance culture of two fantasies: one, that selves are obscure, hidden, ineable; the other, that they are fully manifest or capable of being made fully manifest. These seem to be contradictory notions, but again and again they are voiced together, so that they seem less self-cancelling than symbiotically related or mutually constitutive. Thomas Wright insists that `we cannot enter into a man's heart' in The Passions of the Mind, a treatise devoted to the techiques of mind-reading. Ralegh argues for the incommensurability of animal with human perception, and then guesses at what cats and goats might see as they look out of their peculiar eyes. Hamlet claims that theatrical externals conceal an inaccessible inwardness, but stages a play to discover his uncle's secrets. James I writes that a king `can never without secrecy do great things' only a couple of pages before describing him às one set on a scaold, whose smallest actions and gestures all the people gazingly do behold'.62 Thus the public domain seems to derive its signi®cance from the possibility of privacy ± from what is witheld or excluded from it ± and vice versa. `Counsels if they be wrapped up in silence,' writes the essayist Robert Johnson, àre very fortunately powerful in civil actions, but divulgated lose their force.'63 Just so, the revelatory power of theatre is predicated upon disguising; just so, divine omniscience indicates, even as it repairs, the limitations of mortal vision. The elaboration in early modern England of this dialectic of vision and concealment is surely an important chapter in the history of subjectivity, whether we are inclined to see that history in terms of rupture or of continuities. At the same time I would emphasise that it is merely a chapter, not the whole story. For the ìdea of the subject' is, in fact, not an idea, nor is it simply commensurate with ìnwardness'. `Subjectivity' is often treated casually as a uni®ed or coherent concept when, in fact, it is a loose and varied collection of assumptions, intuitions, and practices that do not all logically entail one another and need not appear together at the same cultural moment. A well-developed rhetoric of inward truth, for instance, may exist in a society that never imagines that such inwardness might provide a basis for political rights. The intuition that sexual and family relations are `private' may, but need not, coincide with strong feelings about the ùnity of the subject', or with convictions about the freedom, self-determination, or uniqueness of individuals, or with the sense that the self constitutes a form of property. It seems to me a mistake to assume that all these matters can be discussed at once, that they are necessarily part of the same cluster of ideas. 62 63

James I and VI, Basilikon Doron (Edinburgh, 1595), pp. 119, 121. Robert Johnson, Essays (London, 1601), sigs. F8v±G1r.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship Indeed, various forms of `privacy', ìnwardness', and ìndividuality' are often associated, sometimes because they loosely imply one another, sometimes for purely contingent reasons. Yet their conceptual separability makes that association highly precarious, and they may diverge or come into con¯ict at critical junctures. For instance, both Kyd and Marlowe dramatise what might be called ìndividualism', but they dier drastically in what they consider an individual to be. Likewise, Jonson and Shakespeare both construe the sexual domain as a kind of metonymy of inward truth, but their notions of what that inwardness comprises are radically at variance. An anxiety about the epistemology of inwardness is not exclusively, or even primarily, a theatrical phenomenon, and my interest in the way that anxiety manifests itself in drama to some extent re¯ects merely my own expertise and interests. In addition, however, the issues I investigate have a particular pertinence to the drama of the English Renaissance. Theatre tends to be an art of collectives ± groups of actors playing before large and varied groups of auditors. It would not be surprising if the complexities of intersubjective comprehension should be closer to the surface here, presented more immediately by the conditions of the performance, than they are in literary forms designed to be composed and enjoyed in solitude, without any direct encounter between purveyor and consumer. Theatre involves, too, a deliberate, agreed-upon estrangement of ®ctional surface from `truth': the plebeian actor concealing his identity under the language and manner of a king, the pre-pubescent boy donning Cleopatra's sumptuous robes, friends from the repertory company butchering one another in a staged duel. The dramatic techniques favoured by English Renaissance dramatists further aggravate the relationship between spectacle and truth. Unlike the writer of romance or epic or lyric poem, a writer for the theatre must take into account the limits upon what can be presented in performance. Some dramatic traditions address this problem by narrowing the range of appropriate plots and subjects: Continental neo-classicists endorse the unities of time and place, for instance, on the grounds that following these rules increases plausibility. But few English Renaissance playwrights accept such restrictions. Ambitious and wide-ranging, they inevitably encounter a gap between their limited theatrical resources and the extravagant situations they dramatise. English Renaissance theatrical method is thus radically synecdochic, endlessly referring the spectators to events, objects, situations, landscapes that cannot be shown them. We are provided not with pitched battles between rival armies but with àlarums within' and short representative skirmishes; not with people on horseback but with descriptions of people on horseback; not with an actual sexual act but with the preliminaries or consequences of a sexual relationship.64 64

In `Falsta Uncolted', Shakespeare and the Revolution of the Times: Perspectives and Commentaries (Oxford, 1976), 121±30, Harry Levin shows how self-consciously Marlowe

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Katharine Eisaman Maus In other words, the English Renaissance stage seems deliberately to foster theatregoers' capacity to use partial and limited presentations as a basis for conjecture about what is undisplayed or undisplayable. Its spectacles are understood to depend upon and indicate the shapes of things unseen. Critics like Francis Barker and Catherine Belsey, who have claimed that the Renaissance lacked a conception of inwardness or privacy, have pointed to the dominance of the theatrical mode in this period to support their point, connecting it with a faith in the ultimate validity of what is displayed. I would argue just the opposite: that in a culture in which truth is imagined to be inward and invisible, and in which playwrights seem perversely to insist upon parading the shortcomings of their art, theatrical representation becomes subject to profound and fascinating crises of authenticity. The nature of my topic, because it requires collusion in the structures I am investigating, exacerbates the hermeneutically circular diculties inherent in any process of interpretation. Inwardness, inaccessibility, invisibility, all seem to lose their authenticity as soon as they are advertised to or noted by another. The student of inwardness ± playwright, inquisitor, or critic ± annihilates the material, like a physicist who explodes sub-atomic particles in order to reveal the structure they supposedly used to possess. Moreover, the kinds of literary and theatrical phenomena I discuss are often impossible to recover with certainty even when they are not in principle unknowable. Diculties of retrieval have often been noted by historians interested in the mute inglorious majority of human beings in the English Renaissance ± by scholars of women's history, for instance, or by those who attempt to investigate the vast, illiterate labouring classes.65 Similar gaps and silences trouble anyone who wants to explore the epistemological problems posed in an artform for which we have few detailed contemporary accounts. What was it like to sit in the Globe or the Swan, to witness an early performance of The Spanish Tragedy or Volpone? Theatre historians have helped establish some rough parameters for the experience, but most theatre history and virtually all criticism of Renaissance plays commits itself implicitly or explicitly to claims that necessarily exceed the archeological evidence: speculations about what kinds of people attended, how they were likely to respond, and what they were likely to notice; assumptions about the ways in which the play structured their experience, and about the ways in which they may have resisted the imposition of that structure. My own methods are unavoidably involved in the same combination of suspicion and inductive empathy I endeavour to

65

and Shakespeare play with the convention that horses never appear on stage. Tamburlaine harnesses men to his chariot. In Richard III, it is a foregone conclusion that no horse will materialise even when the hero is willing to trade his kingdom for one. See, for instance, Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 15±24; Lawrence Stone, Family, Sex, and Marriage in England: 1500±1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 10±14; Susan Amussen, `Two Elizabeths', plenary lecture at the conference Àttending to Women', University of Maryland, November 1990.

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Inwardness and Spectatorship discuss. Perhaps, in fact, my interest in the purportedly omniscient but in fact deeply compromised and entangled investigator, an authorial self-characterisation of endless appeal to Renaissance writers, fascinates me because of the self-re¯exive insights it oers into my own critical operations upon a necessarily evanescent subject.

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Jacobean Pageant or Elizabethan Fin-de-sieÁcle? The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy ROWLAND WYMER

F

OR a long time it has been something of a routine gesture to demand that English Renaissance tragedy be approached as a `historically speci®c' phenomenon rather than in relation to any more universal interest it might have for us. Jonathan Dollimore speaks for many critics of the last twenty years when he writes that, `the corrupt court is, of course, a recurrent setting for the drama; far from being (as is sometimes suggested) a transhistorical symbol of human depravity, this setting is an historically speci®c focus for a contemporary critique of power relations'.1 Leaving aside any consideration of how such a determinedly historical approach often fails to engage with the theatrical power of these plays, with their continuing capacity to excite and move modern audiences, I will be arguing that the Marxist and Foucauldian forms of historical criticism practised by many critics, together with a number of other factors (such as the misdating of particular plays and the distortions arising from conventional periodisation), have succeeded in muddling and misrepresenting the precise conditions which helped to shape early seventeenth-century tragedy. In so far as the attacks on court life in Jacobean tragedy emerge from a speci®c political context, that context is, subject to one or two important quali®cations, late Elizabethan rather than anything particularly to do with James. The teleological characteristics of Marxist thought mean that Marxist historians and critics, like their Whig predecessors, are always tempted to interpret early seventeenth-century history and literature in relation to future events, using the advantage of hindsight to detect pre-revolutionary tendencies in the earlier period. According to Margot Heinemann, `the greatest political drama [. . .] often seems strangely to pre®gure what was to become real material history a generation later',2 a view given concrete theatrical 1

2

Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton, 1984), p. 4. Margot Heinemann, `Political Drama', in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (Cambridge, 1990), p. 162.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy expression in Adrian Noble's 1983 RSC production of A New Way to Pay Old Debts which had the date 1642 written in dust on the stage ¯oor. From such a perspective, Jacobean tragedy is seen as vividly registering the growing disgust with the Stuart court which would eventually precipitate the English Civil War. Literary critics have generally been happy to follow Liberal and Marxist historians in accepting the picture of James and his court ®rst constructed in the Commonwealth period by writers like Anthony Weldon, Francis Osborne, and Arthur Wilson as part of a retrospective attempt to justify the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy.3 The obvious tendentiousness of many of these sources (Weldon, for instance, had a personal grievance to avenge, having been sacked from his court position in 1617 for writing a scurrilous description of Scotland and the Scots) was not seen as seriously compromising their evidential value, initially at any rate because of the absence of any more authoritative accounts to draw upon. White Kennett, Bishop of Peterborough from 1718 to 1728, drew attention to the shaky foundations of Jacobean historiography when he wrote that, `Qu. Elizabeth had a Camden, and King Charles I a Clarendon, but poor King James I has had I think none but paltry scribblers.'4 This state of aairs was remedied by S. R. Gardiner's massive History of England from the Accession of James to the Outbreak of the Civil War 1603±1642 (1883±4) which made extensive use of previously neglected archive material and became the starting point for twentiethcentury narratives of the Jacobean court. Gardiner's nonconformist Liberal hostility towards the early Stuarts showed some obvious continuities with the perspective of the Commonwealth writers and has been echoed in the many modern Marxist accounts of the pre-Civil War period. However, matters have been complicated, not to say transformed, in the last thirty years by the work of `revisionist' historians like Conrad Russell, Kevin Sharpe, David Starkey and Linda Levy Peck, who, as part of a major attempt to rethink early seventeenth-century history and the causes of the Civil War, have put forward a more positive and complex view of the Jacobean court, or rather courts (since Queen Anne and Prince Henry became relatively autonomous centres of patronage and in¯uence).5 Critics of Jacobean drama have made as yet 3

4 5

Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (1650), Francis Osborne, Traditional Memoirs on the Reign of King James (1658), and Arthur Wilson, The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of James the First (1653). The narratives of Weldon and Osborne were reprinted in The Secret History of the Court of King James the First, ed. Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1811). Quoted in Jenny Wormald, `James VI and I: Two Kings or One?', History lxviii (1983), p. 192. See Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments (London, 1971); Kevin Sharpe, ed., Faction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History (Oxford, 1978); David Starkey, ed., The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987); Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1991); Linda Levy Peck, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991). These revisionist perspectives are now incorporated in standard one-volume histories of the period such as Derek Hirst, Authority and Con¯ict: England 1603±1658 (1986; repr. with corrections, London, 1987). Re¯ections on

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Rowland Wymer relatively little use of this revisionist historiography, preferring to rely on older leftwing historians such as Christopher Hill and Lawrence Stone, thus leaving unresolved the ànomaly' of how an able and eective Scottish king apparently became such a disastrously incompetent ruler of England. It is not a necessary part of my argument to attempt a major rehabilitation of James. In considering the drama of the period, the question of his òbjective' merits is in any case less important than the question of how he and his court were perceived at the time. Moreover, àt the time' does not mean at any point in his reign but at the time the major political tragedies were written. The precise context for these plays is misrepresented by attempting to read back the crises and scandals of the second half of the reign into the early years of the seventeenth century. G. P. V. Akrigg, whose book Jacobean Pageant: Or, The Court of King James I is alluded to in the title of this chapter and who used to be frequently cited by literary critics looking for historical evidence of Jacobean court corruption, is very clear about the late date of really serious dissatisfaction with James: `James was a king who died six years too late. The verdict that posterity passed upon him would have been much more favourable had he been carried o during one of his gallstone attacks in 1619.'6 Akrigg goes on to quote Chamberlain, writing of James at the time of these threats to his health: Ì am glad to see the world so tenderly aected toward him, for I assure you all men apprehend what a losse we shold have yf God shold take him from us.'7 Since there is incontrovertible evidence of a Jacobean `honeymoon', of genuine popular relief at the peaceful accession of the new king combined with high expectations of his government following the diculties which beset the last years of Elizabeth's reign, the question naturally arises ± at what point did the honeymoon turn sour, at what point was there the kind of serious disaection with the Jacobean court which one might expect to be registered in the tragedies of the period? There can be no simple answer to this question but a number of possible milestones marking James' deepening unpopularity suggest themselves: the failure of the Great Contract with Parliament in 1610 which meant that the Crown was forced to rely increasingly on innovative and extra-parliamentary means of raising money; the close royal involvement in the sordid Essex divorce case of 1613 and the subsequent implication of James' favourite Robert Carr and his new wife, the former Countess of Essex, in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury; the fall of Lord Treasurer Suolk in 1618 on charges of embezzlement which, according to Derek Hirst, `brought the reputation of

6 7

revisionist Stuart historiography and indications of some of its limitations can be found in the introduction to Con¯ict in Early Stuart England, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London, 1989), and in the chapter by Simon Adams on early Stuart politics in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge, 1993). G. P. V. Akrigg, Jacobean Pageant: Or, The Court of King James I (London, 1962), p. 395. Ibid., p. 395.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy James' court to its lowest point';8 and ®nally the foreign policy crisis which began with the outbreak of the Thirty Years war in 1618 and lasted till the end of the reign, during which time James' paci®st strategies had succeeded in alienating many of his strongly Protestant subjects. A number of late Jacobean plays do indeed comment negatively on speci®c royal policies, particularly in relation to international aairs,9 but the really intense attacks on court life, the plays which suggest that there is an irremediable rottenness at the centre, nearly all belong to the early part of the reign, the period of James' greatest popularity. This awkward disjunction between texts and contexts is either passed over in silence (despite encouraging his readers to think ahead to 1642, Dollimore does not treat at length any play later than The White Devil (1612) ) or explained away by an assertion of increasingly vigilant censorship. The evidence for such a tightening of control over the drama is in fact far from clearcut and two major modern studies of dramatic censorship in the period come to opposite conclusions about this.10 It is possible, of course, to argue that Marxist approaches, despite the relentless assertions of historical speci®city, are not really concerned with this level of particularity. Marxist literary critics tend to be more interested in grand narratives like `the transition from feudalism to capitalism' or `the emergence of the modern subject' than in particular responses to a particular set of political circumstances. The grander the narrative, however, the less explanatory value it has in relation to a speci®c text or group of texts. Certainly one can agree that many of the expressions of disillusion with court life remain broadly similar whatever period one is talking about. When Wyatt writes of a great man, a man `moche knowen of other[s]', dying unknown to himself, `dazed with dreadfull face',11 we seem to catch the precise accent of Webster, but Wyatt was writing of the court of Henry VIII and was, in any case, adapting lines from Seneca written at the time of Nero. The Roman or sixteenth-century Italian settings of Jacobean court tragedies were perceived as relevant to the early seventeenth-century political context because, as Fulke Greville put it, `the vices of former ages being so like to those of this age as it will be easy to ®nd out some anity or resemblance between them'.12 8 9

10

11

12

Derek Hirst, Authority and Con¯ict, p. 122. See Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24 (Cambridge, 1986). Janet Clare's Àrt made tongue-tied by authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester, 1990) emphasises the repressive force of censorship more than Richard Dutton's Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Basingstoke, 1991), which argues for a more accommodating and pragmatic form of relationship between the players and the Master of the Revels. `Stond who so list upon the Slipper toppe', in Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Kenneth Muir and Patricia Thomson (Liverpool, 1969), p. 240. Fulke Greville, A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney (usually known as The Life of Sir Philip Sidney), in The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, ed. John Gouws (Oxford, 1986), p. 135.

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Rowland Wymer However, this kind of parallelism and ùniversalism' was frequently resorted to by writers to protect themselves from well-founded suspicions of highly speci®c intended applications. Samuel Daniel's defence of Philotas (®rst performed in 1604 but partly written four years earlier) is a particularly good example of this. Daniel's references to `the universall notions of the aairs of men, which in all ages beare the same resemblances'13 and `the universall notions of ambition and envie' which are `the perpetuall arguments of bookes and tragedies'14 were designed to cover up the fact that his play quite de®nitely alluded to the fall of Essex and was correctly decoded as doing so. The notion that seventeenth-century political tragedies represent a general comment on the abuses of power helps to explain their continued interest for modern audiences ignorant of their original context but does not account for the brevity (and earliness) of the period during which they ¯ourished (roughly 1599±1614). If Marxist concern with grand narratives and 1642 fails to be historically speci®c enough, a dierent form of distortion has been reintroduced by some of the leading New Historicists. Despite apparently rejecting conventional notions of causality and context,15 both Jonathan Goldberg and Leonard Tennenhouse have argued that the accession of James in 1603 created a crucial discursive break, opening up new possibilities of representation through a rupture with the past as immediate and implausible as Virginia Woolf 's famous ìn or about December 1910, human character changed'. As Tennenhouse puts it, à whole set of literary genres fell out of favour with the accession of James I, and new forms provided the appropriate means of situating oneself in proximity to political power'.16 From this perspective, Bussy D'Ambois (1604) comes to be seen as à mirror of Jacobean absolutism' whilst Sejanus (1603) has to be understood in relation to the Roman imperial style favoured by James.17 One eect of this New Historicism is to reproduce many of the de®ciencies of conventional patterns of periodisation. The need to set limits to the subject matter of books, articles, lecture courses, and conferences has always tended to give 1603 an importance it does not really merit in the history of English drama. David Bevington justi®ed the title and scope of Tudor Drama and Politics by arguing that `the year 1603 serves as a convenient stopping point, for an era was ending in drama as in politics', to which one might reply that a new era had already begun in drama and had 13 14 15

16 17

A letter of Daniel's to Robert Cecil, quoted in Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels, p. 165. A letter of Daniel's to the Earl of Devonshire, quoted in Dutton, p. 166. Typical remarks include `Causality is not the point' (Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Baltimore, 1983) p. 177), and Ì do not mean to situate Shakespeare's writing in what is usually termed a ``context'' ' (Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (New York and London, 1986), p. 123). Tennenhouse, Power on Display, p. 73. See Goldberg, James I, Chapters 3 and 4.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy several years still to run.18 Conversely, the book which is in some sense a sequel to Bevington's ± Albert Tricomi's Anticourt Drama in England 1603± 1642 ± is driven by its chosen limits to discuss plays like Sejanus, The Malcontent, and Mustapha entirely (and misleadingly) in relation to a Jacobean political context. Although plays were capable of responding very rapidly to topical events, the most appropriate interpretative context for forms of drama which aspire to be more than journalism is likely to be the recent past rather than the immediate present (and certainly not the unknown and unknowable future). And, crucially, it is likely to be the recent past as mediated by other plays. To insist on this formal dependency of plays on previous plays is to complicate, rather than eradicate, the notion of a relevant political context. Mikhail Bakhtin, for example, was able to retain a strong emphasis on literature as a social and historical phenomenon, whilst insisting on the primacy of the literary environment: Without understanding the place of the work in literature and its direct dependence on literature, it is impossible to understand its place in the ideological environment [. . .] Literary history is concerned with the concrete life of the work in the unity of the generating literary environment, the literary environment in the generating ideological environment, and the latter, ®nally, in the generating socioeconomic environment which permeates it [. . .] It cannot, and, of course, should not disturb the Marxist literary historian that the literary work is primarily and most directly determined by literature itself.19

Everyone closely concerned with theatrical history has always been perfectly well aware that what is called `Jacobean' tragedy was the product of a number of key developments in the late Elizabethan period. These include Shakespeare's move from history to tragedy in 1599; the reactivation of the children's companies in 1599±1600 and the birth of a special kind of satirical drama associated with them; and Jonson's exploitation of a Tacitean approach to history and politics in Sejanus (a play which may have been a failure with the Globe audience but which was highly in¯uential on other tragic dramatists, particularly Chapman and Webster). What I would like to stress is that these developments should not be seen simply as vagaries of theatrical fashion or products of personal whim. They have a very precise political context ± the deep disaection and sense of crisis which marked the last years of Elizabeth's reign, years when `by continuall labor, her benigne nature was changed & in parte depraved by yeares & ielosies & ill aected about her: which she could hardlie eschue, being in age as a recluse cloistered to heare onlie such tunes as her kepers sounded unto 18 19

David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics (Cambridge, 1968), p. 24. P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 27±8.

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Rowland Wymer her'.20 Many of the components of this crisis ± fears over the succession, warweariness, and the dangers posed by Essex ± are uniquely Elizabethan in that they had ceased to exist as problems by 1604. Shakespeare's move from history to tragedy, which continues to be described as òne of the unsolved and unsolvable questions about the trajectory of [his] career',21 was probably a prudent response to a political situation in which English history had become a very dangerous topic to meddle with. Shakespeare can hardly have been unaware of the fate of John Hayward, who was interrogated and imprisoned over his First Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV, which had been published in February 1599 and carried a dedication to the Earl of Essex. Hayward came close to being executed and remained a prisoner in the Tower until the accession of James. In this context, one could also point to the June 1599 order forbidding the printing of English histories without the consent of the Privy Council and the clear signs of censorship in the 1600 Quarto of 2 Henry IV. Similarly, the revival of the children's companies was not a purely theatrical event, devoid of political context. It involved the exploitation of a commercial opportunity inadvertently created by two government measures designed to contain threats to public order during these late Elizabethan crisis years ± the 1598 Privy Council restriction of adult playing to only two companies, and the 1599 Bishops' order banning printed satires. The joint eect of these measures would have guaranteed an audience for the new companies and their mainly satirical repertoire. Likewise, the vogue for Tacitean `politic history' was more than just intellectual fashion. It developed in the 1590s mainly among `members of circles soured by suspicion and defeat'22 who found in Tacitus a con®rmation of their own jaundiced view of the Elizabethan court. The two English translators of Tacitus, Henry Savile and Richard Greneway, were both Essex supporters, as were a number of other important enthusiasts for Tacitus like John Hayward, Francis Bacon and Fulke Greville. Greville, of course, had preceded Jonson in writing three political tragedies (in¯uenced by both Seneca and Tacitus) during the last years of Elizabeth's reign ± Mustapha (c.1594±6), Alaham (c.1599±1600), and Antony and Cleopatra (c.1600). The signi®cance of these plays as Elizabethan texts has tended to be obscured by the loss of Antony and Cleopatra (burnt by 20

21

22

Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, quoted in James I by His Contemporaries, ed. Robert Ashton (London, 1969), pp. 7±8. Some of the more critical ways of viewing Elizabeth ± before, during, and after her reign ± are discussed in Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, ed. Julia M. Walker (Durham, N.C. and London, 1998). The particular problems of Elizabeth's last years are helpfully summarised by John Guy in his introduction to The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. John Guy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1± 19. `Hamlet': Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Susanne L. Woord (Boston, Mass, 1994), p. 5. J. H. M. Salmon, `Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England', in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Peck, p. 170.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy Greville himself in the wake of the Essex revolt), the absence of the original Elizabethan version of Alaham (which survives only in a Jacobean revision), and the lack of a modern edition of the Elizabethan version of Mustapha, which is normally read only in its revised form as a Jacobean play.23 The fact that Greville, out of oce between 1604 and 1614, was moved to articulate his understandable disillusion with the Jacobean court in a number of revisions to both Mustapha and Alaham should not hide the fact that the picture he draws in both plays of arbitrary abuse of power, vicious factionalism, and murderous attempts to resolve the succession is essentially a response to Elizabethan politics at a time when the `fearefull waining state' of the monarch engendered exceptional uncertainties and hatreds. All the developments noted above were late Elizabethan as were, in all probability, the ®rst performances of a number of key plays often thought of as typically Jacobean, such as Sejanus and The Malcontent.24 The transition from the Èlizabethan' to the `Jacobean' Shakespeare was completed under Elizabeth, with the Essex crisis rather than a change of monarch probably being the pivotal political event. It is the transition from Henry V (1599), with its sense that heroic action may still be a valid possibility, a possibility epitomised in the Chorus' hopeful vision of Essex, `the general of our gracious empress', returning from Ireland `Bringing rebellion broached on his sword',25 to the utter disillusionment and cynicism of Troilus and Cressida (1602). In between have come the two great political tragedies dealing with a sick state and the possibilities of its amendment, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Troilus and Cressida, often thought of as expressing a distinctively Jacobean cynicism, seems particularly rooted in an Elizabethan context with its picture of an unending, futile war (England had now been at war with Spain for seventeen years) and its disenchantment with heroic ideals consequent upon the fall and disgrace of Essex (who had been hailed by Chapman in 1598 as the `most true Achilles').26 The new (and revived) forms of drama arising from responses to the Elizabethan ®n-de-sieÁcle were powerful enough to create their own artistic momentum, a momentum which lasted for several years into the new reign before petering out. Successful plays inspired a series of imitations in a 23

24

25

26

A detailed account of the complex textual history of Greville's plays is given in Ronald A. Rebholz, The Life of Fulke Greville (Oxford, 1971). The dating of Sejanus is discussed at the end of this chapter. G. K. Hunter, editor of the Revels Plays edn. of The Malcontent (London, 1975), argues his preference for a date prior to March 1603 for Marston's play (pp. xli±xlvi). E. A. J. Honigmann has made a strong case for an Elizabethan dating of Othello, based on a number of apparent echoes of the play in the bad Quarto of Hamlet (`The First Quarto of Hamlet and the Date of Othello', Review of English Studies n.s. xliv (1993), pp. 211±19). Henry V V. Chorus. 30±32, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, general ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore and London, 1969). Preface to his translation of Seven Books of the Iliads, in Chapman's Homer, ed. Allardyce Nicholl (Princeton, 1966), I.504.

145


Rowland Wymer process exemplifying that `relative autonomy' of art which is conceded by all sophisticated Marxist critics, beginning with Marx himself. This process tends to displace literary texts away from their relevant ideological environment as questions of genre and convention intervene. The importance of the late Elizabethan political context for seventeenth-century tragedy would have been easier to recognise, of course, if Elizabeth had carried on ruling for a few more years as, according to her doctors, she could have done if she had not lost her will to live.27 The accession of James did not, in my view, initially give any new and intensi®ed justi®cation for the ®ercely critical political tragedies of the early seventeenth century. Quite the reverse, in fact. Shakespeare's delight at the ordered and peaceful beginnings of the new reign is expressed memorably in the famous Sonnet 107: The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age.28

Shakespeare had particular reason to feel positive about the new king since one of James' ®rst acts was to free Southampton, his patron and perhaps his friend, from the Tower where he had been incarcerated since the Essex revolt. However, Shakespeare was far from alone both in feeling relieved that the transfer of power had been accomplished peacefully and in looking forward hopefully to the future. Burghley, Lord President of the North, wrote to his brother Robert Cecil that `the contentment of the people is unspeakable, seeing all things proceed so quietly, whereas they expected in the interim their houses should have been spoiled and sacked'29 and the diarist John Manningham greeted the new reign with, `God be thanked, our king hath his right . . . The people is full of expectacion, and great with hope of his worthines, of our nations future greatnes.'30 Again, therefore, the question arises ± when did a serious crisis of con®dence in the Jacobean court start to manifest itself? It is dicult to give any precise answer to this but it is certainly later than many literary critics appear to think. Albert Tricomi speaks of nostalgia for Elizabeth's reign beginning within a year.31 Margot Heinemann, writing of Sejanus, says con®dently that `Queen Elizabeth could not possibly have been identi®ed by the audience with the evil Tiberius ± indeed the nostalgic 27

28 29 30 31

Ìt seemes shee might have lived yf she would have used meanes; but shee would not be persuaded, and princes must not be forced. Hir physicians said shee had a body of a ®rme and perfect constitucion, likely to have lived many yeares' (The Diary of John Manningham, ed. Robert Parker Sorlien (Hanover, N.H., 1976), pp. 207±8). The Complete Works, p. 1471. Quoted in Akrigg, Jacobean Pageant, p. 16. The Diary of John Manningham, p. 209. Albert Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England 1603±1642 (Charlottesville, 1989), p. 6.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy harking-back to her reign as a golden age for the people was already beginning.'32 Sejanus was probably performed while Elizabeth was still on the throne but even if one were to accept that it was (just) a Jacobean play, Heinemann's remark still seems an egregious example of the way anti-Stuart traditions of historiography have relied on hindsight to misrepresent the situation at the beginning of James' reign. It would be more pertinent to note that Middleton, later to become the most implacable dramatic critic of the Jacobean court, was still able in The Phoenix (®rst performed in early 1604) to celebrate James as the ®gure who will learn `how to set in frame / A kingdom all in pieces'.33 A fairly plausible and balanced account of the initial enthusiasm for James and dissatisfaction with the ageing Elizabeth turning gradually to disillusionment with the former and nostalgic celebration of the latter is given by Bishop Godfrey Goodman, writing in the 1650s to counter the bias he perceived in the narratives of parliamentary supporters like Weldon, Osborne and Wilson: Here there was a general report throughout the whole kingdom what a good king he was, that he was the king of poor men, and would hear any man in a just cause: and truly his books which were then extant did argue great abilities in him. Then, for the queen, she was ever hard of access, and grew to be very covetous in her old days: so that whatsoever she undertook, she did it to the halves only, to save charge; that suits were very hardly gotten, and in eect more spent in expectation and attendance than the suit could any way countervail; that the court was very much neglected, and in eect the people were very generally weary of an old woman's government . . . But after a few years, when we had experience of the Scottish government, then in disparagement of the Scots, and in hate and detestation of them, the Queen did seem to revive; then was her memory much magni®ed, ± such ringing of bells, such public joy and sermons in commemoration of her, the picture of her tomb painted in many churches, and in eect more solemnity and joy in memory of her coronation than was for the coming in of King James.34

`But after a few years' is a phrase of Goodman's which I would wish to emphasise. It seems important to distinguish between minor topical grouses which quickly arose, such as complaints about the excessive number of new knighthoods conferred by James (237 in the ®rst six weeks of his reign), and radical dissatisfaction with the workings of the court. The MP Philip Gawdy was happy to relay a number of cynical jokes about the plethora of new knights but was still able to write later on, in relation to the 1604 Parliament, that, `The kinge spake most admirably wysly (as I never hearde him speak 32 33

34

Heinemann, `Political Drama', p. 192. Thomas Middleton, The Phoenix, ed. John Bradbury Brooks (New York, 1980), I.i.49±50. In the play the old duke has reigned for forty-®ve years, the same length of time as Elizabeth. Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James, quoted in James I by His Contemporaries, ed. Ashton, pp. 76±7.

147


Rowland Wymer otherwyse).'35 The question of dramatic genre has some relevance here since satirical comedies like Eastward Ho might be expected to make topical gibes about `thirty-pound knights' but tragedy was the form which traditionally probed the deeper sicknesses of the body politic. It was tragedy, according to Sidney, `that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue' and `that maketh kings fear to be tyrants'.36 A courtier's topical jeer at Bussy D'Ambois as `some Knight of the new edition'37 helps to con®rm a Jacobean date for Chapman's play but it is misleading to see its deeper engagement with the clash of heroic and `politic' values within a modern court as à remarkable commentary on the selfcontradictions of Stuart absolutism, and the strains within the ocial ideologies of James' court'.38 Chapman is surely, in both Bussy D'Ambois and the Byron plays which followed, painfully and ambivalently working through his responses to the Essex revolt, brooding upon all the implications it had for the end of any aristocratic and heroic autonomy in a modern, centralised state. The shift in the Byron plays towards an endorsement of the court rather than the charismatic, soldierly ®gure who disturbs its order hardly suggests that Chapman felt increasingly alienated from the political establishment during the ®rst few years of James' rule. Similarly, in so far as King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606) are distinctively Jacobean plays (as they obviously are in a number of ways), I don't see them as expressing the same kind of political disgust, the same sense of a rottenness at the heart of the court, that Hamlet does. The notion that by making the protagonist of Lear àn elderly monarch whose hobby was hunting' Shakespeare was presenting a critical portrait of James himself seems particularly wide of the mark.39 Rather than embarking on a disastrous division of the kingdom, James (only thirty-nine in 1605) was trying, in the face of parliamentary opposition, to bring about the Union of England and Scotland. The criticisms about the numbers and riotousness of the knights attending on Lear, criticisms which seem to echo developing complaints about the Jacobean court, come from Goneril and Regan and the play oers a powerful emotional defence of alleged royal excess in Lear's impassioned Ò reason not the need!' If Shakespeare and Chapman do start to comment critically on what is speci®cally the Jacobean political scene, then this begins only with Coriolanus (1608) and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1610±11) which both seem to register the increasingly ®erce constitutional struggles taking place between King and Parliament. Yet even here both dramatists may still be 35 36

37

38 39

Letter dated 11 July 1604, in Letters of Philip Gawdy, ed. I. H. Jeayes (London, 1906), p. 148. Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Georey Shepherd (1973; repr. Manchester, 1977), p. 117. George Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois, Revels Plays edn., ed. Nicholas Brooke (London, 1964), I.ii.111. J. R. Mulryne, Introduction to Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, p. 22. Annabel Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Oxford, 1989), p. 106.

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy more centrally concerned with working through the issue of aristocratic autonomy and state power posed by the Essex revolt which had traumatically brought down both their patrons. Essex, in fact, had been compared with Coriolanus in the ocial funeral sermon preached at Paul's Cross after his execution. The relatively late dates of Webster's two great tragedies (1612 and 1614) mean that he at least might be seen as commenting directly on Jacobean court corruption but these dates, and their apparent proximity to some of the court scandals about to erupt, are perhaps a little misleading. Webster was a brooding, painstaking, derivative writer whose work seems rooted in plays current just after the turn of the century, Hamlet, Othello, The Malcontent, Sejanus, Bussy D'Ambois ± none of them later than 1604. There is an apparent gap of seven years in his dramatic career from 1605 to 1612 during much of which time he may have been working on The White Devil (he speaks in his address `To the Reader' of his slowness in ®nishing the play). In contrast with Middleton, there is a shortage of topical allusion and immediate application in his attacks on court life (though the situation of the Duchess of Mal® echoes in some respects the plight of Arabella Stuart) and there is no evidence that his tragedies ever attracted the attentions of the censor. Those who claim that Webster was expressing a thoroughgoing and speci®c disgust with the Jacobean court need to remember that in between completing The White Devil and writing The Duchess of Mal® he dedicated A Monumental Column, his Elegy for Prince Henry, to Robert Carr, James' already notorious favourite. Webster may have been exceptionally cynical, of course, but it hardly looks like the action of a man wholly alienated from contemporary court activities. In this context it is also worth noting that Chapman remained loyal to Robert Carr even after his disgrace and imprisonment, refusing to see in him an emblem of all that was wrong with the Jacobean court. The main exception to what I have been saying, as I have already hinted, is Middleton. The Revenger's Tragedy, which I am happy to accept as his work, is heavily dependent on late Elizabethan plays like Hamlet and The Malcontent and was performed only a couple of years after Middleton's tribute to James in The Phoenix. But it does seem intended to have a speci®cally Jacobean application. Its attack on court life focuses less on ambition and factionalism and more on drunkenness, gluttony, and sexual license, forms of debauchery much more evident under James than in the politically corrupt but bettermannered late Elizabethan court.40 The clinching detail is that Vindice's dead mistress, whose skull functions as an image of purity, chastity, and truth in the world of the play, is named Gloriana. Here, as early as 1606, we seem to have a genuine case of `harking back to Elizabeth', seeing her as symbolic of a 40

The most graphic picture of drunken excesses in James' court is Sir John Harington's famous account of the visit of Christian IV of Denmark in 1606 (Nugae Antiquae (1779), ed. Henry Harington, facsimile repr. (Hildesheim, 1968), II.126±31).

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Rowland Wymer lost moral innocence. Many of Middleton's later plays, such as The Second Maiden's Tragedy, The Witch, The Changeling, and Women Beware Women contain small details which encourage the audience to relate the events of the plays directly to the contemporary court. In the last named work, for instance, Middleton alters his source to make the age of the corrupt duke ®fty-®ve (the same age as James in 1621, the likely date of the play's composition). By 1621, of course, dissatisfaction with James was widespread whereas The Revenger's Tragedy is unusually early in articulating a radical alienation from his court. However, its supposed typicality, the way it has come to stand for `Jacobean tragedy' in general,41 has helped to obscure this. It certainly represents one, broadly `Puritan', position which developed in opposition to the Stuarts; but why should its moralistic fury be considered any more typical of early seventeenth-century tragedy than Antony and Cleopatra's far more balanced and ambivalent treatment of sexual, alcoholic, and alimentary excesses in a royal court? I would like to conclude by returning brie¯y to Sejanus. Its dating on the borderline of the two reigns, the unrelieved grimness of its picture of court life (òne of the most devastating accounts the drama has given us of dictatorship in action'),42 and its pervasive in¯uence on later political tragedies all make it central to my argument. As mentioned earlier, it continues to be routinely discussed as a Jacobean play, largely because its date of ®rst performance is given as 1603 on the title page of the Folio edition. Yet the theatres were closed from 19 March 1603 (when Elizabeth's last sickness began) and remained closed because of the subsequent plague outbreak probably until 9 April 1604. Philip Ayres, the Revels editor, is able to get round this problem only by positing an unrecorded court performance in the winter of 1603, prior to the play's appearance at the Globe.43 Yet surely Jonson and his publishers would have been only too keen to allude to such a performance, especially in view of the play's failure in the public theatre. An Elizabethan date seems much more probable but, in any case, Jonson had been working on the play for up to two years previously and, like all of us, was reacting to the past not to the future. His picture of a remote, dissembling tyrant, an ambitious favourite, and a court ®lled with spies and sycophants and riven by violent factions, is a Tacitean response to the late Elizabethan court. There is no need to argue for a precise topical allegory (that Tiberius is Elizabeth or Sejanus is Essex) but Jonson's recourse to a certain style of Roman historiography nevertheless remains a pointed form of political comment.44 As 41

42 43 44

Àfter Shakespeare and Jonson, Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy (1606) is the drama most fully typical of the period' (L. G. Salingar, `The Elizabethan Literary Renaissance', in The Age of Shakespeare, ed. Boris Ford, rev. edn. (Harmondsworth, 1982) p. 101). Jonas Barish in his edition of Sejanus (New Haven, 1965), p. 19. Sejanus, Revels Plays edn., ed. Philip Ayres (Manchester, 1990), p. 9. Matthew H. Wikander is able to place Sejanus ®rmly within an Elizabethan political context whilst recognising the inadequacies of interpretations claiming to ®nd a consistent topical

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The Political Context of Early Seventeenth-Century Tragedy Lipsius wrote in the preface to his edition of Tacitus' Opera Omnia (1581): `Let everyone in him [Tacitus] consider the courts of princes, their private lives, counsels, commands, actions, and from the apparent similitude that is betwixt those times and ours let them expect the like events.'45 If Jonson's play represents a new form of theatrical discourse, opening up new possibilities for dramatic representations of court life, it is one that has nothing initially to do with James or Stuart absolutism but is something developed in response to the political conditions prevailing in the last years of Elizabeth's reign.

45

allegory. See ` ``Queasy to Be Touched'': The World of Ben Jonson's Sejanus', Journal of English and Germanic Philology lxxviii (1979), pp. 345±57. Quoted (in translation) in J. H. M. Salmon, `Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England', p. 187.

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d:/3wells/parry.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:8 ± disk/mp

MAKING HISTORY



Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts GRAHAM PARRY

A

MONG the ®gures that populated the historical consciousness of educated people in Stuart England, the Ancient Britons were a familiar presence. As stalwart primitives, they had an honoured role in the history of the nation for they were the ®rst recognisable ancestors who could be credibly imagined and represented in literature and art. Since they were the ®rst inhabitants of Britain ± and it was always assumed that they were a single homogeneous people who had been long established in the island ± they could be invoked to lend their authority to many modern causes, and this chapter attempts to review the ways in which writers of early Stuart times recruited the Ancient Britons to give colour and distinction to current aairs in the seventeenth century. It was William Camden who ®rst furnished an extended description of the island's ®rst inhabitants, based on historical evidence, in his Britannia of 1586. There he had drawn together all the surviving accounts of the British at the time of the Roman invasions to produce a highly detailed account of their appearance and manner of living. Inevitably he had drawn most fully from the ®rst-hand observations of Caesar and the reliable reports of Tacitus, whose father-in-law Cnaeus Julius Agricola had been Governor of Britain from 78±85 A. D. But he also extracted as many remarks about the Britons that he could track down from Roman and late Greek writers, with the result that he was able to oer a large picture of British religious beliefs, customs, language, social life, and forms of government. Since the comments made by classical writers about Britain were on the whole admiring, even laudatory, Camden's reader could feel a pleasurable satisfaction in these ancient appreciations of the native inhabitants of the land. A sturdy, warlike nation was displayed, barbarous in its dwellings and habits, but quick and spirited in action. Camden presented the native religion, under its Druid priests, as abhorrent in its practices but adventurous in its beliefs. The system of government, with petty kings and popular assemblies, was ¯exible though at times fractious. This historically secure picture was vastly dierent from the colourful fable of Britain's settlement by the Trojan prince Brutus in the diaspora after the fall of Troy. This fable had been confected by Georey of Monmouth in the twelfth 155


Graham Parry century and had achieved widespread currency during the Middle Ages. In Elizabethan times it was still the conventional foundation myth of the nation, and it had the attraction both of deriving Britain from a high Mediterranean culture and of explaining the name of the country in a plausible way: Britain from Brutayne or the land of Brutus. Here was no scenario of primitivism, but a con®dent display of splendid and enterprising ®gures from Troy. The History of the Kings of Britain as delivered by Georey ®lled in the clouded centuries before the Romans came with resounding names and remarkable deeds, producing a legendary age that was as stirring as it was undocumented. Brutus, Locrine, Corineus, Lear, Cymbeline, Lud: these were noble names. Arthur too was of this line. By Elizabethan times Georey's stories had been circulating for over four centuries, and so had acquired an antiquity of their own which strengthened their credibility. Holinshed and Stow both began their chronicles with the Trojans in Britain. The British History of Georey of Monmouth was well disposed towards monarchs: they were the central ®gures of the legends and it was their deeds and misadventures that were chie¯y recorded. Eectively, the history of kings, and occasionally queens, composed the early history of the nation. The Tudor dynasty had been conveniently grafted onto British History by numerous assertions by poets and panegyrists that Henry Tudor of Wales was the longprophesied successor to the line of British kings that had terminated with Cadwallader, when the remnant of the British had been forced by the Saxons into the mountains of Wales, there to await the time when they would once again occupy their lost kingdom. Henry VII's naming of his eldest son Arthur seems to have been an acknowledgement of the potency of the British myth. Spenser's Faerie Queene contained in Books II and III a rhymed chronicle of the British kings from Brutus to Cadwallader as part of the genealogy for Gloriana or Queen Elizabeth. King James at his accession was similarly enmeshed in the old British History. For all his Scottish origins, he was related to the Tudors and could be associated with the Trojan-British genealogies that had been invented for the Tudors. The coronation entertainment for James devised by Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker resounded with allusions to Brutus and the Trojan foundation of Britain. The discovery that his full name, Charles James Stuart, could be anagrammatised as `Claimes Arthur's Seat' delighted ingenious minds and seemed to con®rm the special destiny of the new king. James' union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland gave an additional impetus to the British History, for in Georey of Monmouth's account Brutus had been the ruler of the whole of Britain, dividing it after his death between his three sons Locrine, Kamber and Albanactus, who inherited England, Wales and Scotland respectively. With the accession of King James, the ancient integrity of the island was restored, and the name of Great Britain was, at James' urging, introduced into the language of contemporary politics. The change was appropriately marked by the historian John Clapham, who reissued his Historie of England of 1602 in 156


Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts an enlarged version in 1606 with the title The Historie of Great Britannie. Almost inevitably, he began his work with a recollection of Brutus possessing the whole island in legendary times.1 There were, then, two competing versions of ancient British history current at the beginning of the seventeenth century: what one might call the Camdenian or authentically historical version, and the legendary version from Georey of Monmouth. The latter did include the former, for the history of Brutus' line did engage with the Roman invasions, although Julius Caesar would not have recognised his Commentaries after Georey had reworked them. Caesar and the British leader Cassivelaunus trade speeches about their common Trojan origins, and debate whether it is wise for one branch of Trojan stock to make war on another. Caesar marches on Trinovantum or New Troy, i.e. London, and overcomes Cassivelaunus, but once the Britons agree to pay tribute money, the two leaders become friends and give each other presents. There is no mention of the primitive conditions of the Britons in Georey; instead, they are imagined to be living in a ¯ourishing urban society. The two histories continued side by side in Jacobean writing, with each version having its supporters. Camden's history naturally attracted the learned men of the age, who praised it for its scholarship and painstaking honesty, whereas Georey continued to appeal to writers, especially poets, of an imaginative turn of mind who responded to the richness of the stories and to the glorious aura of antiquity with which they invested the nation. Camden's Britannia also gained a new relevance with the union of the kingdoms, for as he remarked in the preface to the 1607 edition, he had written his book about Britannia when it was a province of the Roman empire, and now once again Britannia had become a uni®ed entity: I tell posterity what I my self am an eye-witness of: . . . just whilst I am revising this work, King James, being by the favour of heaven, and his own hereditary title, invested in the Monarchy of this Island . . . (that as the Island is but one, encompass'd with one sea, under his own single person, one crown, the same language, religion, laws, and judicial process; so to settle it in a lasting happiness, and to remove all old quarrels, it should be called by one name;) King James (I say) in the second year of his reign, by a publick edict assum'd the title of King of Great Britain in all cases whatsoever, setting aside the instruments in law.2 1

2

Numerous works associated the new reign with the Trojan-British foundation myth. Relevant texts include A Prophesie of Cadwallader, Last King of the Britaines, published by William Harbert, of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1604, in which he welcomed King James as Àlbions mightie King / Our second Brute like to the morning starre', and Thomas Heywood's Troia Britanica: or Great Britaines Troy of 1609. The Lord Mayors' pageants in Jacobean London often sounded the Trojan theme, as, for example, with Dekker's Troia-Nova Triumphans: London Triumphing in 1612. For a fuller list of such works, see Vaughan Hart, Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts (London 1994), Chapter 2. Britannia (1607 edn), 1695 translation, col. cxxxvi.

157


Graham Parry Camden's importance to the scholarly community and to writers who celebrated the nation's past was proclaimed by his former pupil at Westminster School, Ben Jonson. Jonson never forgot his indebtedness to Camden, for his tuition had been the nearest Jonson ever got to a university education. He contracted his lifelong passion for learning and scholarship, especially in matters of antiquity, from Camden: as his Epigram xiv acknowledged, it was to Camden that he owed Àll that I am in arts, all that I know'. His habit of printing his masques with copious learned notes and references, exemplifying his belief that the imaginative inventions of poets should be `grounded upon antiquitie, and solide learnings',3 was surely something he had learnt from Camden. Jonson reverenced his master, with whom he became close friends, and he rarely lost an opportunity to declare England's fortune at possessing so eminent a scholar. Countries, after all, were to be judged by the great men they produced, and few nations could claim the equal of Camden. In the Entertainment he devised for the king's London entry in 1604, he acknowledged that much of his information about London was derived from Camden, whom he styled `the glorie and light of our Kingdome'. However, immediately after praising Camden, Jonson evokes the foundation of the city by Brutus, so going quite counter to the spirit of the historian. Camden had written of London: Antiquity has told us nothing of the ®rst founder; as indeed Cities growing up by little and little, but seldom know their original. Notwithstanding, this among others, has fabulously deriv'd it self from the Trojans, and is persuaded that Brute, second Nephew to the famous Aeneas, was its Founder. But whoever built it, the growth of it may convince 'twas begun with a lucky omen.4

For Jonson, such a statement about the obscure and anonymous beginnings of settlements is no spur to dramatic invention. He needs a suitably noble ®gure to embody the ancient origins of the city: the mentality of Europe since classical times had always thought in terms of speci®c named founders and inventors, and Jonson as a poet cannot bring himself to depart from that tradition. So Brutus is introduced, and a marginal note in the printed text apologetically explains: `Rather then the Citie should want a Founder, we choose to follow the received storie of Brute, whether fabulous or true, and not altogether unwarranted in Poetrie.'5 Poets do require a dierent kind of sustenance from historians, Jonson discovered; they need ®ctions that shadow the truth, and they need a viable mythology. Georey of Monmouth was much more serviceable in this respect than Camden, and Jonson had to admit that Brutus had a pleasing utility. A fabulous ancestor maybe, but he 3 4 5

Jonson, Hymenaei (London, 1606), Preface. Britannia (1607 edn), 1695 translation, col. 311 (Middlesex). `Part of the King's Entertainment in Passing to his Coronation', in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (Oxford, 1963), VII.92.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts had a cloudy distinction that was preferable to anonymous barbarians. For pageants and masques, Brutus was an admirable national progenitor, who gave shape and distinction to remote history that was otherwise a blur. He bestowed heroic action and the colours of chivalry on Britain at its inception; he was too good to dismiss, he was too good to be true. Georey of Monmouth and Camden were joint sources of inspiration for the Stuart masques when matter of national glory was required. Jonson drew on Camden's speculations about `The Name of Britain' that preface the Britannia for the etymological riddles in The Masque of Blacknesse (1605). The quest for the land `Whose termination (of the Greeke) / Sounds TANIA' is resolved by the sibylline ®gure Aethiopia, who gives a brief Camdenian lecture on the signi®cance of the country's name. Jonson turned to the fabulous British History when he devised the masques for Prince Henry, King James' eldest son. When the prince gave his ®rst independent entertainment in January 1610, he requested a short masque as a prelude to the passage of arms that formed the main business of the occasion. The theme of `Prince Henry's Barriers' was the revival of chivalry by the prince, but in Jonson's scenario, chivalry was not a medieval cult but a code of Ancient Britain. The Trojans were commonly regarded as the great exemplars of chivalry by the writers of the Middle Ages, and in line with this view, Brutus and his companions had disseminated chivalric values in their new society of Britain. The last ¯ower of this tradition that had prevailed here since ancient times was King Arthur, who was introduced by Jonson as the guardian spirit of Britain, `discovered as a starre above'. The presence of Prince Henry caused the dormant ®gure of chivalry to revive, and then the combats began. What is of particular interest about this entertainment, however, is the architectural view it aords of Ancient Britain, as imagined by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. The panorama of ruins of the chivalric world with which it opens is a composite scene of classical forms: an amphitheatre, porticos, columns, a triumphal arch, a pyramid and an obelisk. It would seem that in the mind of Inigo Jones, at least ± for presumably he was responsible for the visual ideas ± the architecture of Ancient Britain was similar to that of ancient Rome. A classical civilisation had developed in both countries ( for both had the same origins from Troy); the British record had been almost entirely obliterated, although, as we shall see, Inigo Jones thought he had found a remnant of it at Stonehenge. Jonson's verse complements the scenery, referring to Those Obelisks and Columnes broke, and downe, That strooke the starres, and raisd the British crowne To be a constellation:

The verse evokes the time of remote antiquity in Britain When every stone was laid by vertuous hands; And standing so, (O that it yet not stands!)

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Graham Parry More truth of architecture there was blaz'd Then liv'd in all the ignorant Gothes have rais'd. There Porticos were built, and seats for knights That watchd for all adventures, dayes and nights, The Nieces ®lld with statues, to invite Young valures forth, by their old formes to ®ght. With arkes triumphall for their actions done, Out-striding the Colossus of the sunne. And Trophaes, reard, of spoyled enemies, Whose toppes pierc'd through the cloudes, and hit the skies.6

This architecture may be something that Prince Henry will restore, along with the cult of chivalry, as the ®rst British prince since antiquity destined to inherit the united island kingdom, and of course, Inigo Jones would be the agent of his restoration of the native classical architecture of Great Britain. Fanciful speculations, perhaps, but there was a vein of extravagant fantasy in Jones' imagination that the masques allowed him to exploit. There were links too between the fantasies he designed for the Whitehall stage and his later achievements in stone. The attention given to porticoes in this entertainment ± the climatic moment is when Prince Henry and his companions are discovered in a noble structure called `St George's Portico' ± is perhaps a foreshadowing of Jones' most magni®cent construction, the giant portico for St. Paul's that he designed in the 1630s. This, surmounted by the statues of the two Stuart kings, was in its way the ®nal realisation of St George's Portico, ®rst imagined in 1610. It is dicult to know where Jonson stood in these matters. As Camden's friend and pupil, he must have been sceptical of this splendid vision of chivalry and classicism in early Britain, for he must have been aware of the scenes of primitive tribalism and wooden huts transmitted by the Roman writers on Britain. Yet as a poet and as the celebrator of the Jacobean settlement he had an imaginative commitment to the idea of a glorious British antiquity that was being renewed under the Stuarts. The disadvantage of the authentic historical record was that it involved the conquest and subjection of the British by the Romans, not a very satisfactory basis for panegyric. Fables on the other hand are adaptable, hence their powers of survival. Another masque in 1610 for a state occasion shows how Camden's Britannia could be used to give shape to a political festival. Samuel Daniel's Tethys' Festival was commissioned by Queen Anne to celebrate the creation of Prince Henry as Prince of Wales. The device that Daniel chose to dramatise was the homage of the rivers of Britain to the new Prince. The queen would appear as Tethys (or Thetis), Queen of the Ocean and consort of Neptune (Neptune the ruler of the seas was a common ®gure for King James in poetry 6

`Prince Henries Barriers' in Ben Jonson, VII.324±5, ll. 37±9 and 53±62.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts and masque). Her ladies would personate the nymphs of the rivers àppropriate to their dignity, seigneuries or places of birth'. So Princess Elizabeth represented the Thames, the Countess of Montgomery the Severn, Lady Arundel the Arun, and, since this was a masque for the Prince of Wales, the Welsh rivers featured prominently in the spectacle. The tribute of the rivers was surely a device inspired by the Britannia. As we know from Thomas Fuller's account of Daniel in The Worthies of England (in Somersetshire), Camden was one of the poet's principal friends, with whom he frequently conversed. Camden's mode of proceeding in his perambulation of the counties was to follow the rivers along their courses, and it was this riveroriented view of Britain that Daniel adopted for his masque. The general design of this masque was indebted to Camden, and his continuing utility to the inventors of literary projects is shown by the presence of Camden's ideas in Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, another celebration of the land by means of its rivers. This work has some claim to be regarded as Britannia versi®ed. Its subtitle is À Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Rivers, Mountains, Forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine'. Drayton was composing this deeply patriotic work throughout the ®rst decade of the century, securing along the way the patronage of Prince Henry, to whom the ®rst part was dedicated as `the hopefull Heyre of the Kingdom of this Great Britaine' (although it did not appear until 1612, the year Prince Henry died). The title, Poly-Olbion, is a characteristic example of Renaissance word-play. Olbion is a variant of Albion, the old Greek name for the mainland of Britain, and the pre®x `Poly' generates a title that means something like `the Variety of Britain'. That construction, however, is close to the Greek `polyolbos', meaning `rich in blessings', so Drayton's title con¯ates the name of Britain with the abundance of blessings it enjoys, an idea visualised on the title-page by the ®gure of Great Britain bearing a cornucopia, the emblem of those blessings, and wearing a gown showing the diversity of prospects of the land. The personi®cation of Britain in the engraving is derived from Camden's account of Albion in his section on `The Name of Britain', where he mentions that ìn the Coins of Antoninus Pius and Severus, Britain is ®gured sitting upon Rocks, in a womans habit'.7 Camden had included engravings of these coins, taken from the cabinet of Sir Robert Cotton, in the 1600 edition of Britannia, and these in turn inspired the engraved title-page of the 1607 edition of the work. (The same engraver, William Hole, was responsible for the illustrations to both Camden's and Drayton's books). In Drayton's book, Albion is a youthful woman, a nymph like those who danced in Tethys Festival, bare-breasted and wearing a triple strand of pearls (which the Romans particularly associated with Britain). The material for her gown, with its geography of rivers and hills and towns, looks as if it has been cut from the maps of Saxton that adorned the editions of 7

Britannia, 1695 edn, col. xxvii.

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Graham Parry Britannia from 1607 onwards. She carries the sceptre of sovereignty, and sits on her rocky base surrounded by sea, beneath a triumphal arch decorated with garlands of sea shells.8 Poly-Olbion is pre-eminently a river poem, in that it traces the course of the rivers within each county and narrates the events that have taken place on their banks, describes the towns and countryside through which the rivers pass, and the crops and commodities associated with them. The characters of Poly-Olbion are the river nymphs, whom Daniel set a-dancing in his masque. They are most engagingly depicted on the maps of the counties, bathing in their streams, waving gaily to the poetic traveller. As spirits of streams, the nymphs seem to belong by right of nature to a poem so concerned with Romano-British antiquity as Poly-Olbion. Drayton promises the reader that he will `steale thee to the top of an easie hill, where in arti®ciall caves, cut out of the most naturall Rock, thou shalt see the ancient people of this Ile deliverd in their lively images; from whose height thou mai'st behold both the old and later times, as in thy prospect, lying farre under thee'.9 He also engages to let his readers `see the Rarities and Historie of their own Countrie deliver'd by a true Native Muse'. Drayton has an intense interest in British antiquity, evident in the special preface `to my friends, the Cambro-Britans' ± that is, to the Welsh, considered to be the surviving remnant of the Ancient British people. When Drayton comes to write of `the ancient people of this Ile', however, we ®nd that he is a devotee of Georey of Monmouth's History, for all his indebtedness to Camden. So, the ®rst song in part recollects the story of Brutus and his wandering Trojans making for Britain, landing at Totnes, where they `First set their gods of Troy, kissing the blessed shore', and engaging in combat with the giants who were native to the land. Once more we encounter a poet who found Brutus irresistible for the heroic splendour he gave to earliest times. The Trojans and the giants are part of the machinery of the poem. Poly-Olbion, though pastoral in mode, is epic in length, and needs the assistance of its nymphs and shepherds, its British and Trojan heroes, to keep it moving and to lend incident and variety to the scene. Drayton as a poet was committed to the British History, and yet, aware of the sceptical climate of scholarly opinion, allowed a balance to be maintained by inviting the polymathic John Selden to provide notes or ìllustrations' to his verse. Drayton was probably in¯uenced by Ben Jonson's habit of providing learned annotations to the texts of some of his masques, and by the Renaissance commonplace that poetry should be a vehicle for learning, pleasingly conveyed. (Drayton also seems to have had doubts about his readership, for he hoped that the poetic descriptions would engage his female 8

9

For a fuller analysis of the title-page to Poly-Olbion, see M. Corbett and R. W. Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece (London, 1979), pp. 153±61. Poly-Olbion (London, 1612), `To the Generall Reader'. Note the masque-like conceit of the àncient people' discovered in arti®cial caves within a rock.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts readers, while the more searching males would ®nd plenty of solid matter in the notes). Selden was Drayton's friend, and also Camden's, but as a scholar and antiquary his judgments were entirely in harmony with Camden's. In his Preface, Selden admits that he lacks the `Historical Faith' of Drayton in the matter of `®rst inhabitants, name, state and monarchic succession' which are derived, he notes, from Georey of Monmouth, Matthew of Wesminster and the Polychronicon. He has some aection, he acknowledges, for the Brutus story as poetic fable, but he regards it as entirely implausible. `Touching the Trojan Brutus, I have (but as an Advocate for the Muse) argued; disclaiming in it, if alleg'd for my own Opinion'.10 In fact, he does his best to destroy the legend, attacking it with all the resources of his scholarship. As a man of scrupulous learning, he is outraged at the way this extravagant story survives, so full of ìntollerable anachronismes, incredible reports, and Bardish impostures, as well as from ignorance as assumed liberty of invention in some of our ancestors'. He reminds us that ùntill Polybius . . . no Greeke mentions the Isle; untill Lucretius, no Roman hath exprest a thought of us; untill Caesars Commentaries, no piece of its description is known, that is now left to posteritie. For time therefore preceding Caesar, I dare trust none; but with Others adhere to Conjecture.'11 He has agreed to help out his friend by identifying the sources of the fabulous history of Britain, but Ì importune you not to credit' the events reported by Drayton: Ì discharge my self; nor impute you to me any serious respect of them.' He declares himself to be a loyal follower of Camden, whom he praises as `that most learned Nourice of Antiquity'. He is an avowed modernist, proud of belonging to `this later age (wherein so industrious search is among admired Ruins of olde Monuments)', and regards it as his scholarly duty to dispel the old mythologies of history wherever they prevail. He acknowledges the power of `that universall desire, bewitching our Europe, to derive their bloud from Trojans',12 but modern scholarship must establish a new clarity in historical studies, and cherished ®ctions will have to go. All the fabled founders of the western nations are losing their credibility, and even Romulus may be only an imaginary ancestor of the Romans. There was one issue in the British History versi®ed by Drayton where he was able to wring some concessions from Selden, and that was the status of Bards and Druids in the ancient British world. Camden had mentioned both these groups in Britannia without giving them any unusual attention; his account of the Druids is restrained by the reports of Roman authors about their abominable rites of human sacri®ce, and of the Bards he had little to say. Drayton, however, magni®ed the Bards, insisting that they were the 10

11 12

Poly-Olbion, `From the Author of the Illustrations', in The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebel (Oxford, 1933), IV.viii. Ibid., pp. ix±x. Ibid., p. 22.

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Graham Parry repositories of the ancient history of Britain, the guardians of the national memory. Passing down their songs from generation to generation, they recollected the great deeds of the heroes, preserved the genealogies of the race, and praised the beauties of their land. (The fact that each section of PolyOlbion is called a Song suggests that Drayton considered himself to be directly in the line of the ancient Bards.) The Bards were closely associated with the Druids, who were also the exponents of an oral tradition of knowledge and wisdom. Why should not the true history of earliest Britain have been preserved orally by these groups, and why should men doubt that Georey of Monmouth had had access to these traditions persisting in Wales in the twelfth century? People doubt the existence of the British kings and heroes because Caesar had made no mention of them in his Commentaries, but if their history was transmitted by an oral tradition, it is not surprising that he said nothing about them, for how would he have been aware of them? In any case, Drayton argued, Caesar knew virtually nothing of Britain, so super®cial was his contact with the island: Unskilfull of our tongue but by Interpreter, He nothing had of ours which our great Bards did sing.13

As well as the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons and the Danes had all swarmed through Britain, all eager to destroy the native culture. No wonder there were so few records left. Selden in his notes agrees that there may be some justice in Drayton's complaint. Since classical authors had written respectfully of the Druids and Bards, Selden feels obliged to address the question of what they knew. One can sense how he begins to fall under the spell of these potent enchanters as he begins to corroborate the claims of Drayton's verse. He is prepared to entertain the posibility that the Bards had Orphic powers to charm and sway their hearers, and considers that the Druids may indeed have been ancient magi, the transmitters of religious mysteries by means of an oral tradition that could be considered comparable to that of Moses and the Cabalists. He is even prepared to believe, from a suggestion by Pliny, that they worshipped òne All-healing or All-saving power'.14 Monotheists, then, they might have been. He was certainly prepared to believe that they were the administrators of justice in ancient Britain. Since the historicity of Druids and Bards is guaranteed by reliable classical sources, Selden is prepared to show a sympathetic interest in them and take an indulgent view of their skills and powers. It is the stories of the Princes of Troy and their descending line of 13 14

Poly-Olbion, Song 2, ll. 320±61. Ibid., line 193. The notes to Songs 6 and 9 are particularly signi®cant for Selden's observations about the Bards and the Druids. In this context see also Georey G. Hiller, ` ``Sacred Bards'' and ``Wise Druids'': Drayton and his Archetype of the Poet', English Literary History li (1984), pp. 1±16.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts kings that he refuses to countenance. When in the Tenth Song Drayton has the River Dee sing a de®ant vindication of Brutus and the descent from Troy, Selden responds very coolly in his notes. The clash between poem and notes makes for interesting reading. What Drayton versi®es, Selden usually cannot or will not substantiate. The poem runs on in a pleasantly pastoral manner, with Drayton pointing out the beauties of the countryside in an amiable, undemanding way; then Selden weighs in with his dense, ingrown prose charged with historiographical information and prodigious learning in several languages. There is much harsh pedantry in these notes; Selden overstretches himself to display his erudition, and his prose must be amongst the most graceless and convoluted of the century. It comes as no surprise to ®nd that the second part of PolyOlbion, published in 1622, carried no more instructive illustrations from Mr Selden. What Selden's notes to the ®rst part did achieve, however, was the eective discouragement of any further claims for the historicity of Trojan Brutus in imaginative literature. Selden had already done some serious thinking about the Ancient Britons before he contributed to Drayton's patriotic poem. In one of his earliest works, Jani Anglorum Facies Altera, published in 1610, he had undertaken a study of English law, looking backward and forward from the Norman Conquest ± hence the Janus conceit of the title. His aim was to discover what the ancient rights of the people were, and to determine who made the laws in the early times, and how they were maintained or altered through the various changes of government in the land. He maintained that it was wrong to refer the origin of the country's laws to the Conquest, for they were of far older date, and he began his enquiry ± susprisingly ± with an account of the legendary founders of the nation, with Brutus and other enterprising but unauthenticated heroes, including Dunvallo Molmutius, reported by Geoffrey to have been King of Cornwall and the institutor of the ®rst legal code of Britain. For several pages Selden rehearses the fables of antiquity as if they were reputable history, then suddenly stops and rejects the whole collection of stories as arrant nonsense. He then introduces his trusted principle of `synchronism' as the only ®rm guide to historical truth. It is the principle announced and practised by Camden in the prefatory essays to the Britannia, entailing the use of sources as close as possible to the events described, collation with comparable documents, and the matching of events with a reliable chronology. By the application of `synchronism' to his sources, Selden announces that Caesar and Tacitus stand out as uniquely reliable reporters, both as contemporaries and eye-witnesses to the events they described. He follows Camden's suggestion that it is possible to deduce from these historians that the Gauls and the Britons shared certain customs, forms of government, laws and rituals, and that many details of ancient British society can be reconstructed by applying information from classical reports about the 165


Graham Parry Gauls and Germans to the British tribes. Selden experiences such a wave of gratitude towards Camden for leading him to a fruitful understanding of British society in antiquity that he interrupts his staid Latin narrative to apostrophise him: `Quem te memoram Camdene!', and there follows a brief Latin poem in praise of the master. One senses the intense admiration that scholars felt for Camden in a moment like this, the conviction that he was a luminous ®gure in a dark landscape. From the Roman writers, with Camden's help, Selden can reconstruct in some measure the polity of the Ancient Britons. They appear to have met in assemblies to discuss public aairs and to decide on matters of war and peace, and these assemblies were eectively the centre of government. The evidence that Selden accumulated suggested a considerable dispersion of power in preRoman Britain, and he was able to infer that kings in that society were relatively insigni®cant ®gures who played little part in creating civil society or in instituting its laws. British society, he came to believe, derived its unity from the binding power of a common law and a common religion, and not from any single political authority. It was important to establish that kings should not have been pre-eminent in the making of laws, for Selden's undeclared aim in Jani Anglorum was to ®nd the source of the laws of Britain and the centre of its government in assemblies, not in kings. Selden's political position at this time, as indeed at all times, was resolutely in favour of parliamentary government, and the apparent motivation for writing Jani Anglorum was the need to assert the antiquity and authority of the law over the whole community of the state to counter the threat of royal absolutism. King James' True Law of Free Monarchies, with its claims that kings were the institutors of civil government and laws, and its consequent assertion of royal supremacy in the business of state, has been identi®ed as the probable target of Selden's work.15 The constitution of Ancient Britain, so far as it could be recovered from reliable historical sources, was a valuable corrective to modern assertions of royal authority. If it could be demonstrated that the government of the native Britons was primarily by free assemblies, with kings having little part in the making of laws and the formation of policy, then given the vast respect for precedent in legal and political matters in Stuart England, the case for parliamentary authority against royal prerogative could be strengthened by invoking the customary rights and practices of the British people. One can understand why John Selden was so interested in the earliest known forms of political organisation in Britain, because the classical observers did indicate that kings were not signi®cant ®gures in the process of government, and that the British, like the Gauls and the 15

The most recent discussion of Selden's political agenda is Paul Christianson, Discourse on History, Law and Governance in the Public Career of John Selden, 1610±1635 (Toronto, 1996). Jani Anglorum Facies Altera is reviewed on pp. 11±36.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts Germans, had a participatory form of government that was readily adaptable to new circumstances. He returned several times to investigate the polity of Ancient Britain, beginning with his Analecton Anglo-Britannicon which he composed in 1607 but only published in 1615, a product of his researches in the library of Sir Robert Cotton that attempts to sketch a history of the government of Britain from pre-Roman times to the Norman Conquest, in order to deduce what might have been the ancient political rights of the British and Anglo-Saxon people before their liberties were suppressed by the Normans. His tract England's Epinomis (Òn the Laws of England') of 1610 repeated in an abbreviated form and in English some of the material he had drawn together for the Analecton. In his annotated edition of the ®fteenth-century jurist Sir John Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae (1616), he attempted to discover the status of the laws of the British during the Roman occupation. Were they overridden by Roman law, and did they survive and persist after the departure of the legions? He came up with the concept of law às something altering over time in relation to the changing needs of the community of the realm', continual change with seamless continuity.16 For Selden, ancient British history had to be documented and authenticated by trustworthy authority if it were to be used for political ends, as he believed all history should be used. Given Selden's known ideological interests, Michael Drayton must have been aware that he was inviting a collaborator with antipathetical views to annotate his topographical poem Poly-Olbion. But Drayton himself probably shared his friend's wariness of the growth of monarchical authority that was pushing Parliament aside. Richard Helgerson has observed that opposition to Stuart rule was inclined to express itself through celebrations of the land of Britain, in ways that excluded the monarch from praise.17 This was quite contrary to the Elizabethan habit of praising the land and its ruler jointly, as in Spenser's work, or in, for example, the Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger where Elizabeth is depicted standing tall on the map of England. Chronicles with their emphasis on the reigns of monarchs that had been so popular in Elizabethan times gave way in the early seventeenth century to a vogue for topographical poetry. This genre allowed patriotic sentiments to be vented without praising the king, and Helgerson notes that such works were not dedicated to the king. Poly-Olbion was dedicated to Prince Henry, for instance, and it is notable that Drayton broke o the list of monarches in the Seventeenth Song with Elizabeth, omitting to draw James into the illustrious record. Although Drayton accepted the British History of Georey on Monmouth in his poem, he was on the same side of the political fence as Selden. He was more explicitly patriotic than his friend, 16 17

Christianson, Discourse, p. 59. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992). See especially Chapter 4, `The Land Speaks'.

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Graham Parry more in love with his own country. His position had not changed by 1622, when the second part of his poem came out, prefaced by commendatory verses by William Browne, George Wither and John Reynolds, all men critical of James' policies. William Browne had made his own substantial contribution to the tradition of the topographical poem with Britannia's Pastorals in 1616, and predictably, he had revisited the scenes of the ancient British past. Browne was a Devonshire poet who had puritan sympathies and a great admiration for Spenser. His lengthy poem was dedicated to Lord Zouche, an opposition peer, also zealously Protestant, and was published with commendatory poems by Drayton and Selden, among others. Browne too like Drayton was committed to a patriotism in which the land itself is the supreme object of devotion: `Thus, dear Britannia, will I sing of thee', he begins. He delivers a pastoral vision of the land, moving like Drayton across the natural landscape with a particular regard for the rivers. The events of Book I consist of intricate pastoral adventures in the manner of The Faerie Queene, with Britain perceived as an Arcadian land with an unrecognisable topography. The emphasis here is on the land where wholesomeness and simplicity breed moral virtue and a resilient spirit. The court is a place to be feared for its corrupting ethos. The Spenserian mood is pervasive: the tuneful shepherds of the hills and vales express Protestant sentiments in ways reminiscent of Colin Clout; their integrity and simple faith belong to a known tradition of Protestant poetics. Shepherd knights who have served the cause are recognisable as Leicester, Essex and Raleigh, and are described as neglected and weeping in the Vale of Woe (Book I, Song 4), waiting for the day of their restoration. Book II, however, has a quite dierent tone, and seems to re¯ect Browne's response to reading Poly-Olbion. The poem now becomes more coherently topographical, and the ®gure of Thetis (Neptune's consort and Daniel's Tethys), is introduced to progress around the British coastline and mix with the British rivers. The historical content of the poem is increased, and a sympathy for British History declared. It is almost inevitable that he will support the stories of Georey, since Brutus was fabled to have landed at Totnes, in Browne's native Devonshire. So, with understandable pride, he speaks of `mighty Brute': Yet doth our warlike strong Devonian coast Resound his worth, since on her wave-worn strand He and his Trojans ®rst set foot on land Struck sail, and anchor cast on Totnes shore. (Book II, Song 1, 106±9)

The British story lends a suitable air of glory and antiquity to the origins of the nation. Just as ancient and glorious were the generations of British poets who have always made the countryside resound with patriotic song. Follow168


Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts ing Drayton, Browne imagines Brutus' fame was preserved by bardic tradition, when he writes of the brave issue of the Trojan line, Whose worths, like diamonds, yet in darkness shine; Whose deeds were sung by learned bards as high In raptures of immortal poesy, As any nations (Book II, Song 1, 93±7)

Although Browne easily accommodates the Bards into his pastoral scene, he manages to evade the spell of the Druids. Opening Book II with a description of Anglesea, he resists the opportunity to describe the priests and their sanctuaries. He is content with the Bards alone as ®gures who represent the long tradition of patriotic poets devoted to the praise of the land and its heroes. As Britannia's Pastorals becomes more of a topographical poem in the second book, and increasingly responsive to the genius of place and to regional character, Browne grows more fervent about the emotions Britain arouses in him. Towards the end of that book he ponders the question whether he prefers to imagine a heroic legendary origin for his nation in the tale of Brutus, or the vague obscurity oered by classical historians ± Caesar, Tacitus, Strabo, for example, had no clear ideas about where the original inhabitants of Britannia had come from. As he reads the old chronicles, and hears in his imagination the ancient bards singing their famous Brute; Striving in spite of all the mists of eld To have his story more authentic held (Book II, Song 4, 240±2)

he acknowledges that the old fables are more inspirational and more conducive to patriotism. The truth or otherwise of these stories is not in the end important: what matters is loyalty to the country. If the Brutus legends can strengthen that aection, they are welcome in his verse. Dramatists were slow to exploit the material of the ancient British world, perhaps because ancient Rome had more to oer in the way of political experience and complex characters. Shakespeare's engagement with the subject reveals no consistent approach. King Lear (1605/1606?) is set in some undated pagan past (Georey of Monmouth, incidentally, dated the Lear story to the time of Isaiah, an event he regarded as synchronous with the foundation of Rome). Lear's Britain has no towns apart from Dover (the action takes place in palaces and castles), and plenty of trackless waste: heaths, woods etc. The atmosphere of the play, however, is that of Shakespeare's medieval history plays with their warring lords and entourages of courtiers and heralds. The division of the kingdom makes a fertile subject for political observations on the eects of disunity, an issue that obviously had some bearing on King James' project of the union of the kingdoms, enthusiasm for 169


Graham Parry which was at its height in 1606.18 One could say that Shakespeare's use of the Lear story exempli®ed James' own counsel to his son in Basilikon Doron, where he wrote: Ì would have you to be well versed in authentick histories, and in the Chronicles of all nations; but specially in our owne histories, the example whereof most neerly concernes you . . . by reading of authenticke histories and Chronicles, yee shall learne experience by Theoricke, applying the by-past things to the present estate, quia nihil novum sub sole.'19 James had even drawn Prince Henry's attention to the old story of the division of the realm, advising his heir that if he had several children, he should pass the succession entirely to `your eldest sonne . . . leaving him all your kingdomes, and provide the rest with private possessions: Otherwayes by deviding your kingdomes, yee shall leave the seed of division and discord among your posteritie; as befell to this Ile, by the division and assignement thereof, to the three sonnes of Brutus, Locrine, Albanact and Camber'.20 Lear's actions obviously fall into this class of admonitory example taken from antique chronicles. In other respects, however, it does not appear that Shakespeare was imaginatively engaged in the ancient British world in this play. Cymbeline (1609?) is a dierent matter, for here Shakespeare exerted himself to exploit the ancient British theme quite richly. According to Georey's History, and in all subsequent redactions of it, including Holinshed, Shakespeare's main source, Cymbeline was the king who reigned in Britain at the time of Christ's birth. In the chronicles, Cymbeline's reign was uneventful, and it has been noted how Shakespeare transferred the violence and wars of his son Guiderius' reign into Cymbeline's. (The wars were the consequence of Guiderius' refusal to pay tribute money to Rome, and in Georey this denial was the cause of the Claudian invasion; in the historical record, Cunobelinus was the king of south-eastern Britain encountered by the Claudian troops, and Georey's name Cymbeline is a variant of Cunobelinus.) Shakespeare presumably reshued the chronicle history so that he could close the play with the achievement of a great peace and a harmony between Britain and Rome, and end with praise of the British king, `the radiant Cymbeline'. The Christian context of this peace, besides reinforcing the association of Cymbeline with James, might also have alluded to James' irenic policies concerning the unity of western christendom that always had a place in his political agenda. By depicting Cymbeline as a King of Britain with two sons and a daughter and with a notable interest in an honourable peace, Shakespeare made it fairly easy to forge a link with King James. The introduction of Imogen, a variant or mis-spelling of Innogen, who had been the wife of Brutus in the chronicles, suggests that Shakespeare had in 18

19 20

Daniel Woolf in his study of historical writing in the early seventeenth century believed that ùnion fever was at its height' in 1606. The Idea of History in Early Stuart England (Toronto, 1990), p. 56. Basilikon Doron in King James, Workes (London, 1616), p. 176. Ibid., p. 173.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts mind the sweep of British history from its beginnings, and was inclined to go along with those celebrators of the new reign who saw James as the restorer of the line of British kings. The Welsh setting of many of the scenes ampli®es the British theme, and the dramatisation of the young princes developing heroic virtue and learning plain living and simple piety in the rugged Welsh countryside suggests that Shakespeare found the British History a congenial source of inspiration and compliment. Like Jonson in the masques, like Drayton and Browne, he recognised that the poetic fables of Georey had an aecting glamour that promoted patriotic feelings by evoking an ancient nation full of robust heroes. The equality of Britain and Rome at the end of the play, arrived at when the victorious Cymbeline voluntarily agrees to submit to Rome and continue paying tribute, spoke of a growing conviction that Stuart England and Augustan Rome had a common destiny, both cultural and imperial: let A Roman, and a British ensign wave Friendly together . . . (Cymbeline V.v.480±82)

A play that dramatised the con¯ict of Britain and Rome from the viewpoint of accredited history was John Fletcher's Bonduca of circa 1613, a piece that deals with Boadicea's rebellion based on material from Book XIV of the Annals of Tacitus. Like Cymbeline, the play portrays the Britons and the Romans on equal terms, and concludes with an honourable peace between them. It opens with the victorious Bonduca exulting in her success over the occupying Romans. She is driven by a vehement hatred of the Romans, having suered rape and dishonour, and her desire for revenge and for the extermination of the Romans in Britain drives the action onwards. But Fletcher does not let her dominate the play. Her bloodthirsty reign comes to an end in Act IV, when she commits suicide after the rout of her troops, and Caratach (Caractacus), the British general, is allowed to alter the mood of the play to an admiration for the military virtues and civil conduct of the Romans. The ®nal defeat of the Britons, symbolised by the capture of Caratach, is represented as the digni®ed submission of a noble leader to an honourable opponent. Suetonius, the Roman general, accepts his submission with the words: Excellent Briton, do me but that honour, That more to me than conquests, that true happiness, To be my friend! (Bonduca V.v)

Fletcher's depiction of the Britons is reasonably faithful to his historic sources. He shows them as a rude valorous people, devoted to war and proud of their ancient freedom which they are determined to preserve. They dwell in `thatched houses', reverencing their gods and practising a stern 171


Graham Parry domestic virtue. His enactment of a druidic ceremony in Act III, scene i is probably the ®rst attempt to realise an entirely British scene in drama or verse. The Druids enter singing, for they combine the role of bards with their religious functions, chanting the noble deeds of the British heroes, and there is much music and dancing accompanying their sacri®ce. As reported in Tacitus, they in¯ame the British warriors to intensify their resistance to the Romans. It is a novel piece of stagecraft. But Fletcher's drift in Bonduca is to dramatise the respect of the Romans for the stalwart British and to show them sharing common values of valour, patriotism, honour and integrity. Although at the end Caratach departs for Rome as a captive, as was historically the case, his reception there is imagined as a kind of triumphal entry, a celebration of Britain's arrival on the world scene. The last words of the play are those of Suetonius, acclaiming his British counterpart: March on, and through the camp, in every tongue, The virtues of great Caratach be sung.

The rebellion of Boadicea also provided the centrepiece for an unusual work of political enquiry that took a hard look at the Ancient British. This was Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Depraved, by Edmund Bolton, a frustrated scholar who never found a secure niche in the Jacobean establishment. An acquaintance of Camden and Cotton, an assistant of John Speed the chronicler, the brother-in-law of Endymion Porter, a hanger-on of the Earl of Northampton and the Duke of Buckingham, an unrewarded votary of King James, he pursued a less-than-successful career that illustrated the hazards of a scholarly life without a secure patron.21 This small folio, ®rst presented in manuscript to King James in 1622, published in 1624 and reprinted in 1627 when it was dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham, is an odd work, eectively a defence of forceful rule, for it purports to show that even that worst form of monarchy is to be preferred to rebellion or anarchy. The occasion of the treatise, according to Bolton's preface, seems to have been a court discussion about Roman history in which James declared Nero to be a villain, but Bolton paradoxically determined to show that even this most notorious of emperors could serve as a useful lesson in statecraft, that `No Prince is so bad as not to make monarckie seeme the best forme of government.'22 Surprisingly, Bolton did not deliver the conventional view of Nero as a totally depraved monster, but tried to present him as a ruler who aspired to public-spirited policies in the ®rst ®ve years of his reign. Daniel Woolf has summarised Bolton's thesis as: `Nero was the victim of evil counsel. By dethroning him instead of giving him better advice, the Romans sealed their eventual fate. Henceforth the 21

22

Bolton's career is summarised by Daniel Woolf in The Idea of History in Early Stuart England, pp. 190±99. Edmund Bolton, Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Depraved (1627), sig. A3v.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts army would continue to make and break Caesars.'23 A monarchy must guard against the excesses of supreme power by ensuring that authoritative advice is given to the ruler, and advisers must be secure against persecution. Bolton chose to make his study of the reign of Nero an opportunity to examine the state of Britain at that time, for he devotes the greater part of his book to British aairs. He tried to produce a more detailed account of the situation in Britain than was known from Tacitus by combing the works of later historians (which he knew well, for he had already translated the epitome of Roman histories by Florus), and by reaching out to new sources. As a disciple of William Camden, whom he calls `that most modest, and antient friend of mine' (p. 88), he tries to extract history from coins and medals, and utilises the inscriptions collected by Jacopo de Strada, Gruter and Camden. By these means, he is able to show, for example, that Londinium had developed into a substantial and ¯ourishing commercial city by Neronian times, a place of some renown. Londinium may have been a civilised place, under the in¯uence of Rome, but the tribal Britons in their many kingdoms were not a civilised people, in his view. In reconstructing Boadicea's rebellion, he was trying to make a true history on Camdenian lines, winnowing fact from fable, and putting historical evidence under critical pressure. He comes to be sceptical of Boadicea's motives for rebellion, her rape and that of her daughters, suspecting that these were exonerating ®ctions. Rather, he is inclined to view her as a bloodthirsty savage who was out to destroy the Romans at all costs, with no principles of liberty or British patriotism, but just a passion for violence. Bolton draws attention to the tranquillity of Britain in the time of Tiberius, and believes there was no general cause for the Britons to rise against the Romans, only a peverse desire for war. He portrays the Druids as supporters of Boadicea's fury because they knew that the Romans would suppress their cult, which `that wise and civil people abhorr'd as hellish' (p. 111). The savagery of her attack on the Romans is insisted upon, time after time. `The wilde uplandish crewes of her beggerlie kern, and savages, with the rest of that rable, spared nothing, quicke, or dead. Thirst of revenge in her, and rapine in them banisht all humanitie' (p. 145). Bolton had no doubts about the barbaric character of the British; he had not assisted Speed in the writing of his History for nothing, and Speed had both described and illustrated the primitive condition of the Ancient Britons. Bolton added a savage psychological dimension to these descriptions. The British atrocities make the reader ¯inch, and Bolton concludes: `Man is to man a divell at times; no where rather veri®de then here. The forms and paines of these murthers not to be out-gone for their invention, and execution, savage wit found how to aggravate by religious impiety, and irreligious contumely' (p. 152). He is particularly severe on the religious encouragement of atrocity made by the 23

Daniel Woolf, The Idea of History, p. 194.

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Graham Parry Druids, `who dealt in blood, the authors, and actors of all'. Religion urging on inhuman violence is the worst depravity of all. When Bolton oers his ®nal re¯ections on Boadicea's rebellion, he lists the failings and misjudgments that led the Britons into such a perverse course. These range from `feminine impotencie of mind' that caused Boadicea to confront the overwhelming superiority of Roman power, to the total lack of political wisdom amongst the Britons, who were so ready to provoke their own catastrophe. He warns of the horrors perpetrated in the name of `libertie and reformation'. Bolton remarks on the almost universal acceptance of Roman rule in Nero's time, and praises its civilising tendency. He allows that savage warfare to prevent the ®rst invasion of the Romans was justi®ed, `for, untill then, that was just resistance, which seemed afterwards plaine rebellion' (p. 190). Altogether, Bolton put a strong case for the bene®ts of Roman imperial rule, even when exercised by a bad ruler, for the system of government was stronger than an individual's power to pervert it. Nero Caesar was nominally a polemical exercise in Roman history, but the title-page makes it clear that in Bolton's imagination it was really a Tale of Two Cities, Roma and Londinium, both of which were sacked and burnt as a result of Nero's policies. The two allegorical ®gures of the cities dominate the page: Rome with her foot upon the world and carrying the attributes of military power, London with the cornucopia of fertility and the sword of war, her foot upon an anchor, the dominion of the sea. The heads of both ®gures are crowned with burning towers, the signs of their destruction in Nero's time. But both ®gures are equal in stature and authority, and there can be no doubt that, in the author's mind, London owed her eminence to Rome's power. Both cities shared the same fate, and now, the implication is, London has succeeded Rome in the imperial role. Boadicea, ®gured addressing her troops in an oval inset above Londinium, has to be viewed as an enemy of the civilising process, a destructive barbarian. Bolton is however obliged to admit that Boadicea has a remarkable reputation in Britain as a champion of nationalism and as a heroic female leader: `Boadicia notwithstanding lives a name of glory among the fewest, for the great nobilitie of her pretenses, and the most roial qualitie of her undertakings, such as never any lady waged higher' (p. 193). That reputation may be unwarranted, but it has always been strong in Britain. Boadicea's lasting memorial, he believes, can still be seen: it is Stonehenge. In a most unexpected contribution to antiquarian studies, Edmund Bolton proposes that the kingdom's most mysterious monument was raised by the Ancient British to mark the burial place of Boadicea. She was the only ®gure worthy of such a mighty grave, and Stonehenge was surely a work of the Britons: `The dumbnesse of it . . . speakes; that it was not any worke of the Romans. For they were wont to make stones vocall by inscriptions' (p. 181). `That Stonage was a worke of the Britanns, the rudenesse it selfe perswades' (p.182). Bolton's 174


Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts conjecture was a remarkable shot in the dark. He was the ®rst person to suggest that Stonehenge might be an Ancient British monument. Legends abounded, but the common view, derived from Georey, held that it was the burial place of Aurelius Ambrosianus, the Romano-British leader at the time of the Saxon invasions, or of the British chieftans treacherously slain by Hengist. William Camden had confessed that he could not guess the origin or purpose of the stone circle. No one could conceive that the Ancient British had left any trace of themselves in enduring form, so Bolton's opinion was a striking conceptual breakthrough. Bolton's observations contrast favourably with those of Inigo Jones, who had turned his thoughts to the mystery of Stonehenge in 1620, when he had roughed out the notes for the treatise that was eventually published as StoneHeng Restored by John Webb in 1655. It is not Jones' attribution of Stonehenge to the Romans that interests us here, but his views concerning the Ancient Britons, their architecture and their state of civilisation that he sets down in the opening pages of his discussion. He begins by raising the possibility that the monument might have been built by the Druids or by `the ancient Britans, for the Druid's use' (p. 2), but he then rejects this line of enquiry by means of a long account of the de®ciencies of the British in all the departments of civilised life. In the approved modern manner of his friends Camden and Selden, he cites numerous classical writers who all concur that the Britons knew nothing of architecture or of building in stone, just as they had no towns, no roads, no public works of any kind. Their temples were groves, or clearings in the wood. Theirs was a totally primitive world, and they only began to acquire the arts of life in the time of Agricola's governorship. So we can see that Inigo Jones' view here is totally at variance with the image of the Britons and their architecture that he had supplied for the entertainment `Prince Henry's Barriers' in 1610. There, all the splendours of classical forms were on display in a masque that was based on Georey of Monmouth's stories of Britain's Trojan origins. The historian of architecture and the inventive artist were at odds, because their allegiance was to dierent versions of the past. Both versions had a power to stir the imagination. Georey's History delivered a glorious overture to the epic of England's achievements in the world, the classical historians reported scenes of primitivism that would in time be transformed by the presence of the occupying Romans. Both versions led to a vision of a classical destiny for Britain: the Trojans were a part of the classical world, the primitive Britons would be civilised by Rome and become part of the imperial scheme. Whichever version one chose, the consequences were the same: that Britain had a historically conditioned inheritance of classical values. In architecture and design, poetry and painting, in manners and in the conduct of civic life, in the exercise of authority and in the growth of empire, classical models should be the rule. That classical directive was certainly what Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson 175


Graham Parry would like to read out of the early history of the nation in whichever version they preferred. It was also acceptable to Camden and Selden. The primitive view of the natives, as described by the Roman and Greek historians, became the orthodox view after Selden's emphatic endorsement, but the Trojan scenario was available whenever poetic fancy demanded. The ®gure of Brutus, for example, has been identi®ed in Rubens' spectacular painting of `King James Recreating the Empire of Great Britain' on the Banqueting House ceiling.24 There he is depicted as an approving spectator of James' union of the kingdoms, for Brutus was the fabled ®rst ruler of a united Britain. Trojan Britons turn up in sculpture: there is a life-sized image of one, for example, on the tomb of Henry and William Cavendish at Edensor in Derbyshire, where the ®gure presumably symbolises Henry's prowess as a soldier.25 Britons continued to make occasional appearances in masques, notably in Aurelian Townshend and Inigo Jones' Albion's Triumph of 1632, and in Thomas Carew's Coelum Britannicum of 1634. In Albion's Triumph King Charles personated Albanactus, the son of Brutus who received Scotland as his portion, a suitable role for a king who was born in Dunfermline. Jones' designs for that masque were entirely classical. Carew's masque opened with a prospect of `the ruines of some great City of the ancient Romans, or civiliz'd Brittaines', a scene of `Temples, Theatres, Basilicas and Therme', for Jones once again delivered a completely classical set. Carew assumed that the Britons inhabited a classically appointed world, either by virtue of their Trojan origins or from their association with their Roman conquerors. The masque features various kinds of Britons in a pageant-like review of the ®rst and last phase of this country's history. Dances are performed by Picts and Scots and Irish in an antimasque, there are processional songs by a chorus of Druids and Rivers (a combination that seems to derive from Britannia's Pastorals), and the main masque is composed of British Heroes, clad in yellow embroidered with silver, wearing àntique Helmes curiously wrought'. A group of British primitives is produced to show how far civilisation has advanced in this island in the persons of the King and Queen. ®rst behold the rude And old Abiders here, and in them view The point from which your full perfections grew. You naked, antient, wild Inhabitants, That breath'd this Ayre, and prest this ¯owery Earth, Come from those shades where dwells eternal night, And see what wonders Time hath brought to light.26 24

25 26

See Roy Strong, Britannia Triumphans: Inigo Jones, Rubens and Whitehall Palace (London, 1980), p. 28. See Graham Parry, `Cavendish Memorials', The Seventeenth Century ix (1994), p. 280. Coelum Britannicum, lines 870±76, in The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, 1970), p. 176.

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Ancient Britons and Early Stuarts Coelum Britannicum oers an indiscriminate mix of antique ®gures, but they are all in some way forerunners of Stuart nobility or virtue. The last ¯ourish of the Trojan story in early Stuart times came, rather unexpectedly, from John Milton, in The History of Britain that he began composing in the mid-1640s. One would have imagined that Milton, so well read in the classical historians, would have started his work with the Roman invasions, but in fact he chose to re-tell the legendary tales of Georey at considerable length ± all of Book I, in fact. Milton's verse of the thirties, in English and Latin, was peppered with allusions to the Trojan heroes of Britain, evocations of a glorious past, but when he turned historian one might expect these ®ctions to be swept away. But no, they were retained, even though he acknowledged that Georey's stories have `by the greater part of judicious Antiquaries bin long rejected for a Modern Fable'. However, as a narrative historian, he needs a story to tell, and has a horror vacui, so the Trojan Britons are better than the blankness of nescience. He takes heart from Livy, who also began his History with fables, and takes the view that the traditional stories have acquired a privileged status for many readers, for legends that ®ll the gaps in the documentary history eventually become a form of alternative history sustained by popular belief. Besides, he has a poet's intuition that grains of truth are hidden in fables: oft-times Relations heretofore accounted Fabulous, have bin after found to contain in them many footsteps, and reliques of somthing true, as what we read in Poets of the Flood, and Giants little beleev'd, till undoubted witnesses taught us, that all was not fain'd; I have therefore determin'd to bestow the telling over ev'n of these reputed Tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English Poets, and Rhetoricians, who by their Art will know, how to use them judiciously.27

Milton makes no eort to reconstruct pre-Roman Britain in the manner of Camden, using modern critical deductive methods, but settles for the full colourful cast from Georey, including such ®gures as Gorbonian, `than whom a juster man lived not in his age', Elidure, who had à mind so noble, and so moderate, as almost is incredible' and Lud, who rebuilt Troynovant and made it London, who `was hardy, and bold in warr; in peace a jolly feaster'. Somewhat shamefacedly, Milton concludes his catalogue of British worthies with the remark Ì neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own.'28 This is history for the bene®t of poets, not for the enlightenment of judicious readers. When in Book II he moves on to the Roman occupation, he gives a dense account of the primitive natives they encountered, drawn from Caesar, Tacitus, Lucan, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Pomponius Mela, Herodian and Solinus, yet he oers no explanation of 27 28

John Milton, The History of Britain, 2nd edn. (London, 1677), p. 7. Quotations in this paragraph are from The History of Britain, pp. 33, 34 and 37.

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Graham Parry how the cultivated and chivalrous inhabitants of Book I had deteriorated to this level of wildness. `Progenitors not to be glori'd in' is his dismissive phrase. Milton's control of his history seems confused and contradictory; he claimed to be writing a `true history', yet he was enmeshed in fable. The tensions of con¯icting histories that strained Poly-Olbion are apparent again, but this time they are the product of a single author. The confusion may have arisen from his own mixed motives in writing his History. In principle he would have liked to celebrate the greatness of the nation from ancient times, but in practice he wanted to castigate his countrymen for their lack of resolution and for their incoherent political aims, and in the end his book was a long record of national failures. His dual version of ancient British history was probably the consequence of his divided intentions. Milton's dilemma here re¯ects in its own way the problems experienced by writers ever since William Camden had made it necessary to approve of one version or another of British antiquity.

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d:/3wells/smuts.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:9 ± disk/mp

Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations R. MALCOLM SMUTS

I

L

IKE most historians, those who specialise in past cultures must normally rely primarily on written and printed sources. Although works of art and music, archaeological remains and other forms of material evidence can be pressed into service, most of our documents normally consist of texts and often especially of poems, plays and other works of `literature'. Through this material we try to reconstruct beliefs and practices that, in most cases, depended far less on writing and print than performances, rituals, oral discussions and other transient events that we can no longer directly witness. Faced with this predicament it is natural to hope that if we only read carefully and ingeniously enough, we can somehow gain access to every aspect of a vanished culture through words on a page. Especially if the work under examination is a rich and compelling one, and the scholar studying it a trained and dexterous reader, the range of latent historical meanings can seem almost boundless. Social customs, ideologies and even deep economic structures can all be discovered embedded within the text, allowing a total history to be reconstructed on the basis of literary analysis. There is nothing intrinsically illegitimate about this methodology, which resembles all forms of historical scholarship in its attempt to extrapolate over-arching interpretations from patchy and incomplete bodies of documentary evidence. Works of literature always refer beyond themselves to a larger cultural universe that originally surrounded them. As Stephen Greenblatt has rightly argued, authors never truly create texts out of some mysterious inner quality of genius. They appropriate and manipulate materials borrowed from their surroundings, including language itself as well as meanings latent within material objects, political institutions and social customs. By examining these appropriations we can approach a text as a repository of past cultural attitudes and point of 179


R. Malcolm Smuts entry into the world that its writer and his original audience once inhabited.1 But although valid in principle, the enterprise of reconstructing history through textual analysis raises several vexing methodological issues. To begin with, the perspective oered by a literary source may be incomplete, biased or misleading in signi®cant ways, and unless we have some independent basis for controlling such distortions we risk being seriously misled. Some biases are suciently obvious to pose little danger. Renaissance literature plainly tells us far less, for example, about the outlook of illiterate agricultural populations than that of the privileged and metropolitan groups for whom it was mostly intended. But more subtle distortions can exist even with respect to things that our texts seem to describe thoroughly. Many printed accounts of court masques and London pageants, for example, incorporate framing narratives describing the circumstances of the original performance, often including details of music, costuming, scenery and even audience reactions. They appear to be full accounts of historical occasions, rather than mere theatrical scripts. But whenever we can check these narratives against other sources, we generally discover signi®cant omissions and biases. Printed masques invariably devote more space to poetic dialogue than to the music and dances that occupied most of a masque performance or the costumes that normally consumed the largest proportion of a masque budget.2 Reading a masque can therefore provide a highly misleading impression of what the original historical audience experienced. Modern scholarship has generally re¯ected this bias, by treating language and visual iconography as central to the masque, while largely ignoring music, choreography and elements of spectacle that must often have dominated the impressions of contemporary spectators.3 Even if we attempt to compensate for such biases, it is impossible to know for certain how an original performance might have altered the apparent meaning of the printed record that we need to interpret. Occasionally an eyewitness account provides enough information to reveal part of what a published text has silently edited out. Thomas Middleton's 1617 mayoral inauguration, The Triumph of Honour and Industry, included a `pageant of several nations', ostensibly celebrating `the prosperity of love, which by the virtue of trac is likely ever to continue' among trading partners. Actors impersonating a Frenchman, an Irishman, a Turk, a Jew, a `Barbarian' and a Spaniard made speeches complimenting the Society of Grocers, to which the 1

2

3

For the classic discussion see Stephen Greenblatt, `The Circulation of Social Energy', Shakespearean Negotiations (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 1±20. For a good discussion see Jerzy Limon, The Masque of Stuart Culture (Newark, Delaware, 1990), esp. Chapter 1. An exception is John C. Meagher, Method and Meaning in Jonson's Masques (Notre Dame, 1966), Chapters 3 and 4.

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Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations incoming mayor belonged. In the published version it all seems innocuously decorous. But a chaplain to the Venetian ambassador who saw the pageant recorded some signi®cant additional detail. The Spaniard: wore a small black moustache and a hat and cape in the Spanish fashion with a ru around his neck and others about his wrists, nine inches deep. He kept kissing his hands, right and left, but especially to the Spanish ambassador, who was a short distance from us, in such wise as to elicit roars of laughter from the multitude.4

Only the fortuitous presence of this Italian witness allows us to appreciate the satiric dimensions of Middleton's seemingly bland entertainment. Even if a dramatic script's meaning was not drastically recalibrated in performance, it is still likely to convey a dierent impression when read today in a scholar's study than it did when ®rst enacted.5 Reading facilitates re¯ection and systematic comparison, making it easier to discern complex intellectual meanings, whereas it can never fully capture eects created by gesture, vocal in¯ection, visual display and audience responses.6 Further distortions will be introduced if the reader approaches the text through methodologies and interpretative assumptions alien to the period of its composition. Biases can also be created by the way a writer shapes his text, for example by the information he volunteers or withholds in prefaces, marginal notes and narrative passages. Even the most rudimentary sort of historical interpretation will therefore invariably raise numerous problems. The diculties multiply the moment we attempt to treat a text not just as a record of a speci®c event but an expression of ideology, social con¯ict or other broad features of its period. With a modicum of energy and imagination, it is usually possible to discover an almost unlimited number of ways in which a text might have been responding to something in its contemporary environment. But how do we decide which of these connections actually mattered historically? Answering this question unavoidably requires an evaluation not just of the work in question but of characteristics of the society in which it was written and appreciated. The historical interpretations we read out of a text will always depend on the historiographical assumptions we ®rst read into it as a starting point for investigation. For only if we begin by knowing more or less what to look for and what kinds of questions to ask can we hope to achieve meaningful results. Many recent historicist studies have dealt with this problem by deploying highly generalised concepts of early modern culture, as a hegemonic system of power which literature may variously rearm, contest or subvert. This 4 5

6

Calendar of State Papers Venetian, V.15, p. 62. For a development of this point see W. McAllister Johnson, Èssai de critique interne des livres d'entreÂes francËais au XVIe sieÁcle', Les FeÃtes de la Renaissance III (Paris, 1973), pp. 187±200. The same point applies, of course, to some kinds of conventional historical evidence, such as written accounts of parliamentary speeches.

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R. Malcolm Smuts procedure posits a general framework within which textual analysis can proceed, circumventing the need to supply a more precise context through detailed research. By doing so it can easily beg any number of crucial questions. The issue at stake here is not simply the validity of the cultural theory underlying the analysis, although that is always open to debate. Even if a theory is correct, on some deep level, it cannot tell us all we need to know about how power and the cultural forms which embodied it operated in a particular historical situation. Additional information must invariably be supplied, whether by selective reliance on historical monographs or extrapolation from the literary texts themselves, on the assumption that they somehow contain in microcosm the beliefs and con¯icts of an entire society, in ways that close reading can uncover. This methodology will almost inevitably generate interpretations that impose a fairly high degree of uniformity and predictability on the cultures of the past.7 For only the assumption that cultural relationships work according to fairly consistent rules that we can know in advance will justify the intellectual leaps required to construct general interpretations from analysis of a few literary works. The model of culture employed may be complex enough to accommodate dierences of class and gender, or the persistence of obsolete `residual' traditions alongside newer èmerging' forms. But unless the complexity is subsumed within larger explanatory rubrics, the model cannot provide a reliable guide for locating speci®c texts within a larger universe of historical meaning. Yet no theoretical model, no matter how ¯exible, is ever going to account for the full range of issues that a genuinely historical study of literature must confront. For if literary texts always arise out of a history in which they also actively participate, they do so in such an enormous variety of ways that we can never safely predict in advance just how the process will work. Only by turning the relationships between our texts and the conditions in which they were ®rst written and absorbed into problems requiring active investigation can we hope to make signi®cant progress. Indeed the very notion of literary history is anachronistic in an early modern context, since the modern concept of literature fully emerged in the eighteenth century.8 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century minds normally thought instead in terms of various categories of performance, speech and writing ± such as playing, rhetoric and poesy ± which usually did not require the production of permanent texts. 7

8

For some sensible comments on this issue see the introductory chapter to Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice (Cambridge, 1997). See OED for the linguistic usage, and Gerald MacLean, Ìntroduction: Literature, Culture and Society in Restoration England', Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History (Cambridge, 1995) for a discussion. Another theoretical analysis, set within a French context but speci®cally addressing the work of American New Historicism, is the March/April 1994 issue of Annales, Histoires, Sciences Sociales, XLIX on `histoire et litteÂrature'.

182


Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations One of the ®rst problems requiring investigation is, therefore, just how and why the collection of `literary' documents we now possess ®rst came to exist. Why did certain ephemeral events ± but not others ± acquire a second life through the relatively durable medium of print? What motivations prompted the decision to publish, and how did these shape the resulting product? These questions are not always easy to answer. But only by pursuing them can we hope to achieve the critical perspectives necessary to develop a truly historical account of what we now call Renaissance literature.9 II

The remainder of this chapter seeks to illustrate this argument by focusing on a topic at the forefront of much recent historicist scholarship, namely the theatricality of Renaissance monarchy and the contributions to that theatricality made by poets and playwrights.10 In this period, we have frequently been reminded, monarchs were routinely compared to actors on a stage. Courts spent enormous amounts of money creating an elaborate mis-en-sceÁne for royal life. Masques, outdoor pageants and theatrical tournaments were important forms of propaganda, expressing ocial `cults' of rulers.11 But whereas the theatrical dimensions of royal life comprised an enormous variety of forms, modern studies of that theatricality have mostly concentrated on textual analysis of Stuart court masques and Elizabethan entertainments.12 The printed textual narratives of these events are frequently taken at face value, as unproblematic sources for studying not just the events they describe but political theatricality and royalist ideology in general. No one has systematically investigated just how, when and why accounts of theatrical events involving monarchs ®rst began to appear in print, or what special circumstances may have 9

10

11

12

Similar issues have been fruitfully pursued for some categories of texts in recent studies of manuscript culture and its relationship to print. See, in particular, Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993); Arthur Marotti, Manuscript, Print and the Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca and London, 1995) and H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts (Oxford, 1996). The discussion below attempts to complement this work by examining a kind of text for which the normal alternative to print was not scribal publication but an ephemeral performance. Among a voluminous literature see, for example, the various works of Stephen Orgel cited below, n. 11 and Matthew Wikander, Princes to Act: Royal Audience and Royal Performance 1578±1792 (Baltimore, 1993). Roy Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the Theater of Power (Boston, 1973) and Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969). In the second edition of the latter work (1997) Anglo expresses reservations about his earlier view of theatrical entertainments as propaganda. See, for example, Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones and the Theatre of the Stuart Court (Berkeley, 1973); Orgel, The Illusion of Power (Berkeley, 1982); Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment (Cambridge, 1987); David Lindley, ed., The Court Masque (1984); David Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry (Columbia, S. C., 1971).

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R. Malcolm Smuts in¯uenced what these texts recorded.13 By providing a preliminary study of this large subject, I hope to demonstrate the value of paying closer attention to the evidentiary base on which our interpretations of cultural history are erected. III

The ®rst point to emerge is that the history of royal theatricality in England is far older and more extensive than the printed records bearing upon this subject. Nearly all the theatrical traditions that remained important to the Tudor and Stuart monarchy developed long before the invention of print. These included skits that had developed in the context of tournaments, and events like the antics of lords of misrule during Christmas celebrations and other seasonal festivities within royal and noble households. Equally important was the rich tradition of pageantry that developed in fourteenth- and ®fteenth-century towns. Most civic pageants took place during religious holidays and did not involve royal participation; but pageants also embellished royal entries and other secular events.14 In London, as early as the ®fteenth century, royal and civic occasions had already supplanted religious holidays as the main sites for the city's pageant culture.15 Urban pageants and great theatrical performances at court frequently attracted considerable interest. Foreign ambassadors sometimes sent lengthy descriptions to their home governments, while English chroniclers like Hall, Holinshed and Stowe provide surprisingly full accounts of occasions like the Field of the Cloth of Gold or Henry VII's triumphant entry into London after the Battle of Bosworth. But specialised tracts devoted exclusively to descriptions of theatrical events were very slow to appear. Nearly all our information about this subject before the late sixteenth century comes from manuscript sources or accounts embedded in more extensive antiquarian chronicles. In this respect England diered from many continental societies, including parts of Italy, France and the Holy Roman Empire, where printed narrations of events like royal entries were produced in the early sixteenth century. Some of these texts were cheap pamphlets containing only verbal descriptions, but others were expensive and beautifully illustrated folio volumes. It is no coincidence that these luxury products normally documented a growing emphasis on antique forms such as triumphal arches and depictions of pagan 13

14

15

For a recent study along these lines focusing on continental material see Laurie Nussdorfer, `Print and Pageantry in Baroque Rome', Sixteenth Century Journal xxix (1998), pp. 439±64. See Anglo, Pageantry ; R. M. Smuts, `Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: the English Royal Entry in London, 1485±1642', in A. L. Beier, David Cannadine and James Rosenheim, eds., The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989); Bergeron, Civic Pageantry. I owe this point to an unpublished paper by Anne Lancashire.

184


Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations gods and mythology.16 The in®ltration of classical iconography into the medieval pageant tradition, and the publication of elaborate accounts of important ceremonies of kingship, both re¯ect the growing in¯uence of humanist scholars and poets at royal courts and in the major cities called upon to entertain rulers during progresses.17 What mattered to these scholars was not simply ephemeral public spectacle but the serious scholarly and philosophical programme that lay behind the design of triumphal arches and pageant speeches. The publication of a quasi-ocial textual narrative provided a way of preserving and clarifying this intellectual design. The English were, however very slow to respond to these trends. In 1549 Henri II's coronation entry into Paris was embellished by a host of impeccably classical triumphal arches, recorded in a beautifully engraved folio.18 The previous year Edward VI's coronation entry was graced by pageants originally devised by John Lydgate for Henry VI, and the only printed account was that contained in Fabyan's Chronicle.19 Five years later the pageantry during Mary's ®rst London entry also seems to have been thoroughly traditional in character and to have left no printed text. Mary's coronation did give rise to two tracts ± written in Italian and Spanish and printed in Rome and Madrid. But English writers and printers again seem to have ignored it.20 The festivities associated with the queen's marriage to Philip II in 1555 did ®nally give rise to a reasonably extensive printed English description, a quarto pamphlet by a man named John Elder. His main concern was to provide a narrative of the restoration of papal authority in England and the favourable responses of the English Parliament and people; theatrical events associated with Philip's arrival and marriage were included as colourful and appropriate embellishments to his main story.21 Elizabeth's coronation entry of 1559 was commemorated in print, by the Protestant humanist schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster. Mulcaster's orientation 16

17

18 19

20 21

A discussion of this distinction in a seventeenth-century context is Nussdorfer, `Print and Pageantry', pp. 443±52. As will become clear, the more expensive and elaborate kind of pageant book did not appear in England until 1604 and remained very uncommon even thereafter. For examples see Lawrence Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva, 1986), esp. pp. 61±9; Frances Yates, `The Entry of Charles IX and his Queen into Paris, 1571', Astraea: the Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1973). For a discussion see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony. Anglo, Pageantry, Chapter 8. The following account is reconstructed from a study of the sources employed by Anglo and other secondary accounts, especially Robert Withington, English Pageantry: An Historical Outline (Cambridge, Mass., 1918) and, for the reign of Elizabeth, John Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823). It is possible that I have missed one or two printed texts, and rather more likely that texts that once existed are no longer extant. I am con®dent that the picture presented here is substantially correct, however. Ibid., p. 322, n. 3. The Copie of a letter sent into Scotland (London, 1555); Anglo, Pageantry, p. 325.

185


R. Malcolm Smuts was a mirror image of Elder's: virtually everything in his account emphasised the Protestant character of the new regime or the warm relations that existed between Elizabeth, the Protestant corporation of London, and the crowd of spectators. He did, however, provide a detailed narration of the entry, which has been extensively used by literary scholars and historians.22 It is not often noticed, however, that it took nearly ®fteen years before another comparable work appeared, although the Queen went on several progresses in the intervening period, during some of which she certainly witnessed theatrical performances.23 Printed records of progress entertainments only really began appearing in the 1570s. The earliest now extant is a broadside poem commemorating a visit to Rye in 1573, which survives in a single copy at Harvard University.24 Other similar documents may once have existed, though if so they seem to have vanished without trace.25 The next year Elizabeth visited Bristol and saw a series of pageants devised by Thomas Churchyard, who soon published them as part of a longer miscellany.26 During the 1575 progress the Queen witnessed an elaborate series of entertainments at the Earl of Leicester's residence of Kenilworth, which were subsequently commemorated in two printed texts. One of these, however ± George Gascoigne's The Princely Pleasures of the Court at Kenilworth ± is no longer extant and may have had a limited print run.27 Gascoigne also wrote up an account of a masque performed later in the progress at Sir Henry Lee's house at Woodstock, which reached print ten years later.28 In 1578 a progress through East Anglia gave rise, according to Holinshed's Chronicle, to `three half-penny pamphlets'. Only two now survive, one again by Churchyard, although an additional ballad and a sonnet commemorating the progress were both registered with the Stationers' Company.29 1581 saw the publication of the ®rst full printed 22

23 24

25

26 27

28

29

The Royal Passage of her Majesty from the Tower of London, to her Palace of Whitehall (London, 1559). The evidence is collected in Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. I. STC 7582.5. Untitled, it begins `The ®rst anointed Queen I am: Within this town which ever came'. Copies of verses were displayed ùpon every post and corner' during a royal visit to Sandwich in 1573, though whether these were printed or manuscript is unclear. (Nichols, Progresses, I.338). Given the very low survival rate of unbound printed sheets, we cannot be at all certain that the absence of other surviving specimens is signi®cant. Thomas Churchyard, The ®rst part of Churchyard's chippes (London, 1575), item 12. According to C. T. Prouty, George Gascoigne, Elizabethan Courtier, Soldier and Poet (New York, 1842) a unique copy was destroyed by ®re in 1879 (p. 177, n. 30). Fortunately the text was reprinted in Gascoigne's Whole Works (London, 1587) and subsequently by Nichols in Progresses of Elizabeth. The queens maiesties entertainment at Woodstock (London, 1585). Nichols cites B. L. Royal MSS 18 A xlviii as his source for this piece, perhaps an original presentation copy. Ber. Gar. [Bernard Garter], The joyfull Receiving of the Queen's most Excellent Majestie into her Highnesse Citie of Norwich (London, 1579) and Thomas Churchyard, A Discourse of the Queens Majesties entertainment in Suolk and Norfolk (London, 1579); Edward Arber, ed.,

186


Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations account of an Elizabethan court joust and 1585 the ®rst published record of a London mayoral entry.30 From this point on printed records of theatrical events involving the Queen become somewhat more frequent. What explains this relatively sudden proliferation of printed narratives? The authors' vanity may have played a role, especially in the earliest instances. Churchyard was a proli®c publisher, who in 1593 boasted of having eight dierent books recording pageants or verses presented to the Queen in print, along with numerous other tracts.31 George Gascoigne was another active poet, who had recently published a miscellany, A Hundred Sundry Flowers (1573), which Richard McCoy has described as òne of the most ambitious and inventive works of self-presentation of the sixteenth century'.32 Unfortunately this included a racy satire, `The Adventures of Master F. J.', which provoked the authorities into suppressing the entire volume.33 Gascoigne may have hoped to recover from this setback with the aid of Leicester's patronage by helping to devise the Kenilworth pageant and then printing a record of it. The author of the second account of the Kenilworth entertainment is more mysterious. Identifying himself variously as `Laneham' and `Ro La', he claimed to hold the non-existent oce of `Clerk of the Council Chamber door' and included a vignette of his role in preventing courtiers from listening at the keyhole during Council meetings. David Scott argued a number of years ago that this is spurious information, intended as a practical joke on the actual Clerk of the Council Chamber, Robert Langham. The real author, Scott argued, was an exchequer ocial and follower of Lord Burghley named William Patten, who had helped devise some of the Kenilworth iconography.34 Whatever the case, the tract's polished and jocular style suggests an eort at displaying courtly wit. The mid-1570s saw a burgeoning interest in poetry and literary theory within the orbit of the royal court. This trend may have encouraged Churchyard and Gascoigne to seek publication, while also creating a small market for printed accounts of progress entertainments. The publisher's epistle to Gascoigne's tract suggests as much, by claiming that the `sundry pleasant poetical inventions' employed at Kenilworth had `been sundry times demanded for, as well at my hands, as also of other printers'

30

31 32

33 34

A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554±1640 (London, 1875), II.158, 158b. For the joust see below, p. 193. The mayoral entry is George Peele, The Device of the Pageant born before Woolstone Dixi, lord maior of London; a second mayoral pageant by Peele appeared in 1591. Thomas Churchyard, Churchyard's Challenge (London, 1593), n.p. [Bi]. Richard McCoy, `Gascoigne's ``Poemata Castrata'': The Wages of Courtly Success', Criticism xxvii (1985), p. 31. McCoy discusses the circumstances surrounding Gascoigne's misadventure, ibid. David Scott, `William Patten and the Authorship of ``Robert Laneham's'' Letter (1575)', English Literary Renaissance vii (1977), pp. 297±306.

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R. Malcolm Smuts by `young gentlemen and others [who] were desirous to be partakers of those pleasures'.35 All these tracts also conveyed political messages, however. At Bristol these were rather bland, involving a defence of the realm's peace against the `Romish' spirit of `Dissension' that wanted to plunge England into war. But the Kenilworth pageants dealt with the far more contentious issue of the Queen's marriage, while also advocating more active engagement in European con¯icts.36 The Kenilworth theatricals hinted at Leicester's desire to marry Elizabeth but also implied that if she chose to reject his suit he wished to be set free to engage in warfare on the continent. Three years later the Privy council was deeply divided over a proposed marriage between Elizabeth and Francis Duke of Anjou, brother and heir of Henri III of France. The match was intended to provide England with a powerful European ally at a time when relations with Spain were steadily deteriorating; for this reason it was brie¯y supported by Lord Burghley. But if consummated, the marriage was also likely to improve the situation of English Catholics, since the French would certainly demand concessions on this score; there was also a chance that Anjou might become leader of a dissident conservative faction at court, opposed to the dominant Protestant group on the Council. The match was therefore favoured by the crypto-Catholic earls of Oxford and Arundel, but vehemently opposed by the staunchly Protestant Francis Walsingham. Leicester and Christopher Hatton, who stood to lose much of their in¯uence as royal favourites, were also hostile.37 One issue in the debate was whether England was suciently united behind its Queen and Protestant church to survive a Spanish attack without powerful foreign assistance. The 1578 progress traversed counties that were directly vulnerable to invasion from the Spanish Netherlands, whose local aairs had lately been disrupted by factional disputes involving puritan and recusant groupings among the local gentry.38 Protestants on the council and in the region itself seized upon the Queen's visit to orchestrate demonstrations of public support and engineer a crack-down on local Catholicism. A `great 35 36

37

38

Reprinted in Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth I.486. The subject of Elizabethan marital politics is thoroughly explored in Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996); Chapter 3 deals with Leicester and pp. 67±72 with the 1575 entertainments. The most satisfactory account of the background is now Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, Chapters 6 and 7. See, in addition, Wallace MacCarey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572±1588 (Princeton, 1981), Chapter 11 and idem, Elizabeth I (London, 1993), Chapter 16. A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk 1558±1603 (Oxford, 1974) and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suolk under the Tudors (Oxford, 1986) reach somewhat dierent conclusions concerning the course of these disputes, but both depict rather fractious political landscapes in which religious issues were of prominent concern. There is now a full account of the East Anglian progress, Zillah Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen's Journey into East Anglia 1578 (Madison and Teaneck, N.J., 1996).

188


Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations carved image of the Virgin Mary', found in the hayloft of a local gentleman named Edward Rokewood, was dragged before the Queen and publicly burnt, while Rokewood himself and twenty-three other recusants were imprisoned.39 Bishop Freke's campaign against puritan clergy was also reversed.40 Although the printed tracts contain no references to these changes, they take considerable pains to emphasise the warm welcome given the Queen, before describing pageants of an unmistakably Protestant and bellicose character. This is especially true of Churchyard, who begins his narration not with the Queen's arrival at Norwich, where his pageants were performed, but at her ®rst entry into Suolk. He describes the hurried eorts of the local gentry to out®t a welcoming party of `two hundred gentlemen clad all in white velvet . . . three hundred of the graver sort apparelled in black velvet coats' and 1500 `bravely mounted' followers, before moving on to the `sumptuous feasting and banquets' such as `the world had seldom seen' that accompanied Elizabeth's visits to successive local hosts.41 Not only the Queen, he claimed, but even the meanest members of her court were feasted and cordially welcomed wherever they went. This universal respect contrasted with `the old haughtiness and sti-necked behaviour of some places', especially near London, `where proud people will generally pass by many of the nobility, without moving either cap or knee,' having acquired àn unmannerly disordered boldness' from over familiarity.42 This narrative provides a signi®cant context for Churchyard's description of pageants that hinted unmistakably that Elizabeth should end her dalliance with a foreign suitor and rely on the love of her people. During her second day in Norwich the Queen saw Cupid and Venus being scolded and browbeaten, ®rst by a philosopher and then by Dame Chastity and her maids, Modesty, Temperance, Good Exercise and Shamefastness. This bevy of virgins seized Cupid's bow and arrows and presented them to Elizabeth, assuring her that she `had chosen the best life'. The philosopher meanwhile upbraided Cupid for spreading belief in false gods, causing him to storm o and join forces with Wantonness and Riot. Meanwhile Chastity appropriated Venus' coach and turned it over to Modesty, who approached the Queen in it `singing a song of chaste life'. The virginity topos has now become the most familiar of all Elizabethan royal themes, but as Susan Doran has shown, there is little evidence for its existence, at least in such a developed and unequivocal form, before this date.43 Churchyard may have invented the Virgin Queen in this pageant, as a 39

40 41 42 43

Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth II.217 quoting a letter by Richard Topclie to the Earl of Shrewsbury; Hassell Smith, County and Court, pp. 218±19. MacCulloch, Suolk, pp. 193±5. Churchyard, Entertainment in Norfolk and Suolk, sig. B 3. Ibid., sig. B 2. Susan Doran, `Juno or Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth I's Marriage in Plays and Entertainments, 1561±1581', The Historical Journal xxxviii (1995), pp. 257±74. References

189


R. Malcolm Smuts way of discreetly opposing Elizabeth's marital plans. In his printed tract he further elaborated the message through two poems unconnected with the Norwich pageant, which employed a chivalric imagery of knight errantry in commending the recently completed voyages of discovery of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Martin Frobisher. In praising Gilbert Churchyard engaged in heavy-handed moralising concerning the duty of good subjects to relinquish the pleasures of home life in order to serve Queen and country: Abroad where service is much honour may be won; At home our gay vainglory goes like shadow in the sun. Abroad bare robes are best and manhood makes the show; At home young master must be ®ne, or all is lost, you know.44

The rhetoric closely parallels that given to Dissension in the Bristol pageants of 1574.45 But there is no hint of irony in Churchyard's verse, which ®rmly links the virginity theme to emphasis on patriotic valour and marital virtues. Although a less complex document, the second surviving account of the progress, by Bernard Garter, conveys an essentially similar message. It complements Churchyard's tract by describing additional speeches and pageants connected with the Norwich visit. At her approach to the city Elizabeth was greeted by the mythical King Gurgunt, the reputed builder of the local castle. Although prevented by a sudden shower, he was to have delivered a speech informing Elizabeth that his uncle and father had razed and sacked òld Rome', just as her father `did sack and spoil' the `purple whore' of new Rome.46 After entering Norwich the Queen heard speeches by the biblical heroines Debora, Judith and Hester. Debora reminded Elizabeth that princes who `set God before their sight' receive his aid in vanquishing enemies. Judith praised the Queen as God's `mighty hand', destined to `conquer those which him and thee withstand'. Hester warned her that foes may proceed by guile and `smiling looks' as well as force, a hint to beware of Anjou and the French.47 Although Norwich's Protestant population may well have appreciated the themes of these pageants, there seems little doubt that their message was aimed primarily at Elizabeth herself. Since it seems unlikely that Churchyard and Garter would have had the temerity to intervene in a conciliar debate over a matter like the Anjou match without encouragement from powerful patrons, we can be con®dent that leading members of the Council were somehow involved. In that sense the Norwich pageants ±

44 45 46 47

to the Queen's virginity were normally balanced before this date by emphasis on her marriageability, except when Elizabeth herself expressed preferences for a maid's life as a way of fending o pressure to marry and produce an heir. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth II.230. Cf. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth I.400. Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., pp. 147±8.

190


Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations like those at Kenilworth three years before ± were essentially an episode in court politics, even though performed before the public in a provincial town. The published narratives of those pageants, on the other hand, were intended for a very dierent audience of readers. They need to be evaluated in the context of print culture during late 1578 and 1579, when they appeared and began to circulate.48 Controversy over Anjou intensi®ed in this period, especially after the arrival of the Duke's agent, Jehan Simier, in January and the Queen's repeated demonstrations over the next several months that she wanted the match to proceed. By the summer her obvious interest aroused xenophobic opposition well beyond the court, leading Elizabeth to attempt to prevent discussion from spilling into public forums by strictly forbidding sermons and printed tracts on the subject. She did not succeed. Anonymous lampoons and ballads attacking Anjou circulated in London.49 John Stubbs, brother-in-law to the famous puritan John Cartwright, published A Gaping gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage if the Lord forbid not the bans by letting Her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof, and paid the penalty by having his right hand severed by the public hangman on a London scaold. Other writers more circumspectly resorted to symbolism and allegory, including Edmund Spenser in The Shepherd's Calendar, whose anti-Anjou message has been decoded by modern scholars.50 The narratives of the East Anglian progress must have seemed especially appropriate as oppositionist tracts. The Queen could scarcely object to having her triumphant tour of Suolk and Norfolk commemorated in print but it would have taken little imagination to grasp the underlying message. The conciliar opponents of the match knew that public opposition might deter the Queen and scholars have suspected Leicester, in particular, of encouraging this press campaign. Did anyone at court encourage Churchyard and Garter to publish? The identity of the printer of both tracts, Henry Bynneman, is a suggestive clue, since he is described on the title page of Churchyard's as `servant to the right honorable Sir Christopher Hatton'.51 Churchyard dedicated other works to Hatton, including a 48

49 50

51

Both pamphlets were registered with the Stationers' Company in August of 1578 but neither has a publication date on the title page. MacCarey, Elizabeth I, p. 202. For discussion see Doran, `Juno vs. Diana', pp. 169±71. Doris Adler, Ìmaginary Toads in Real Gardens', English Literary Renaissance xi (1981), pp. 235±60 traces a bizarre aspect of this campaign, a ¯ood of abusive references to frogs and toads in tracts printed in 1579. Elizabeth, who was fond of giving her courtiers nicknames, had christened Anjou `her frog'. He is also described in this way in another pamphlet of 1579, George Best, A true discourse of the late voyages of discovery of a passage to Cathay. See the entry under Bynneman in the Printers and Publishers Index in vol. III of A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland . . . 1475±1640, 2nd edn., revised and enlarged by W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson and Katherine F. Pantzer (London, 1986).

191


R. Malcolm Smuts treatise on warfare also published in 1579, and seems to have enjoyed his patronage, along with that of another opponent of Anjou, Sir Francis Walsingham.52 IV

The rather belated appearance of printed accounts of pageants performed during royal progresses thus stemmed partly from dawning interest in `poetic inventions' but even more from a speci®c set of political circumstances. Knowing those circumstances drastically alters our appreciation of these texts as historical documents. Removed from their immediate context, the narratives of the East Anglian progress resemble entirely conventional examples of Elizabethan propaganda, exhibiting all the familiar scriptural, chivalric and erotic themes long ago identi®ed by scholars like Frances Yates, Roy Strong and John King.53 Only when they are evaluated as episodes in the political struggle over the Queen's marriage to Anjou does it become clear that they were actually expounding a contentious political message, encoded beneath decorous allegorical symbolism and fulsome expressions of loyalty. But if they arose in response to a particular debate within Elizabeth's court, these tracts also form part of the history of the use of print culture to fashion and disseminate political imagery focused around the Queen, during a crucial period of mounting tension that culminated in the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585. They help to reveal how a courtly language of sexual devotion that had originally developed around a marriageable female sovereign's relations with her court favourites and foreign suitors became a public language of bellicose Protestant nationalism, couched in terms of service to a perennially virgin Queen.54 To understand this transformation fully would require much more extensive research into both print culture and varieties of court poetry and entertainment never intended for publication.55 Some details will always remain mysterious, since not all the relevant evidence 52

53

54

55

Thomas Churchyard, A Generall Rehearsal of Warres. Some of the evidence for these relationships is presented in Merrill Harvey Goldwyn, `Notes on the Biography of Thomas Churchyard', Review of English Studies xvii (1966), pp. 1±15. Yates, Astraea; Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (London, 1977); John King, Tudor Royal Iconography (Princeton, 1989). Churchyard even included a brief cameo appearance by fairies that may belong to the prehistory of Spenser's great epic (Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth II.210). Catherine Bates, Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge, 1992) provides a broad perspective on this idiom. For the role of Oxford and other royal favourites in reintroducing Petrarchan love conventions at the court in the 1570s see Steven May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets (Columbia, Mo., 1991), Chapter 2. The importance of chivalric themes of service to the Queen in ballad literature was long ago emphasised by Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (Cambridge, Mass., 1939). The spread of this sort of imagery through printed literature, and more especially cheap print aimed at popular audiences, might well repay further study, however.

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Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations has survived.56 But it is highly suggestive that, with the signi®cant exception of the 1574 Bristol entertainment, all of the early published records of Elizabethan progress pageants are somehow connected with the twin issues of the Queen's marriage and the prospect of England's entry into European warfare. As Doran has pointed out, Elizabeth was able to adopt the role Churchyard had de®ned for her at Norwich in 1578 only after rejecting Anjou.57 Her abandonment of her suitor was signalled by the theatrical prelude to a court tournament in 1581, in which `Four Foster Children of Desire' were defeated in an attempt to storm the `Fortress of Perfect Beauty'.58 Suggestively, this was the ®rst court tournament commemorated in print, and consequently the earliest one that historians are able to study closely.59 As tension with Spain continued to grow, culminating in the outbreak of war in 1585, the virginity trope and related images of loyal Englishmen eager to serve their Queen through feats of valour proliferated. A number of printed accounts of theatrical events involving Elizabeth contributed to this development. In the year of the Armada alone, eight dierent items were registered with the Stationers' Company recounting her public appearances, including four that described her reviewing troops at Tilbury or elsewhere and two concerning her procession through London on 24 November to give thanks for the victory at St Pauls Cathedral.60 The Queen's willingness to appear before crowds of her subjects, and the crowds' corresponding enthusiasm for their ruler, was becoming an established rhetorical theme of printed tracts intended to encourage wartime loyalty. With the passage of time the language used to describe such events tended to become increasingly ornate and formulaic, so that it is not always clear that writers had actually witnessed the events they claimed to describe. At the outset of James I's reign one poet, Henry Petowe, actually published a verse narrative of the new King's coronation entry into London, including a description of the rapturous joy of the watching crowd, several months before that event took place.61 The contemporary printed texts that provide our fullest sources for studying royal theatricality in late sixteenth-century England were, therefore, shaped by imperatives that render their objectivity as sources of historical information 56

57

58 59

60 61

For example we appear to have only sketchy information about the erotic imagery that was undoubtedly used at court during Anjou's wooing of the Queen. Since she was by now in her late forties, giving up on Anjou meant accepting the fact that she could never hope to marry and bear children. Doran, `Juno or Diana', pp. 273±4. Henry Goldwell, A Briefe Declaration of the Shews, Devices, Speeches and Inventions, Done & Performed before the Queenes Maiestie & the French Ambassadors (London, 1581), rpt. in Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth II.315±29. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth II.544. Henry Petowe, England's Caesar (London, 1603). The actual entry, originally scheduled for July of 1603, was postponed because of an outbreak of plague and ®nally took place only in March 1603/4.

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R. Malcolm Smuts open to considerable doubt. Properly interpreted, those texts can tell us many things about the political culture of this period but they cannot safely be used as reliable sources of anecdotal information concerning the Queen's public performance of her role as monarch. For they were not written to provide a full an accurate account of the Queen's actual behaviour on public occasions, but rather to convey a rhetorically constructed impression of her behaviour calculated to inspire loyalty. Sometimes it is possible to supplement contemporary printed narratives with other evidence that is probably less biased, such as descriptions by foreign visitors to England.62 But these accounts are rarely as full as we would like and even foreigners were not necessarily objective and infallible observers. V

In light of the inherent limitations of our sources, it can be especially instructive to study a theatrical event for which the documentation is unusually full, allowing us to compare dierent sources with each other and assess the strengths, weaknesses and distinctive preoccupations of each. James I's ®rst ocial entry into London on 15 March 1604 is such an event. It gave rise to four separate printed tracts. Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, the rival poets who devised the seven pageants along the King's route, each published his own narration, while Stephen Harrison, the London joiner and self-styled architect who designed the triumphal arches used as pageant backdrops produced a handsome folio of engraved illustrations. In addition a man named Gilbert Dugdale, who had attempted to follow the royal procession on foot, printed a completely independent account. These sources can be further supplemented by several manuscripts, especially a draft order of march among the State Papers Domestic and a full Exchequer account of Crown expenditures on the royal procession.63 These manuscript sources depict the King's entry as a great processional ritual employing a highly traditional visual language of honour and magni®cence.64 The draft order of march, produced after careful scrutiny of the medieval precedents, ranked the King's attendants hierarchically. Minor 62

63

64

The most revealing of these accounts is probably the diary of a German tourist, von Wedel, published in Royal Historical Society Transactions ser. 2, ix (1892). Other comments on Elizabeth's behaviour in public can be found scattered through sources like Calendar of State Papers Venetian. For a composite modern-spelling text of the entertainment see R. Malcolm Smuts, ed., `The Whole Royal and Magni®cent Entertainment of King James through the City of London, 15 March 1604', in Gary Taylor, general ed., The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford, forthcoming). Public Record Oce SP14/6/97. John Nichols reprints a similar (but separate) processional order in The Progresses, Processions and Magni®cent Festivities of King James I (London, 1828) I.325±7.

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Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations court functionaries, such as messengers of the Chamber, came ®rst followed by progressively more important Crown servants, intermingled with bishops, peers and their wives and noblemen's sons. The procession therefore provided a visual map of the ranks of honour that culminated in the King's person, in which the place of every important individual in the realm was precisely determined. The emphasis on honour and tradition was further emphasised by the three ocers who marched immediately before the King, in positions above even those of the Lord Chancellor and Lord Treasurer: the Earl Marshal, the Lord High Constable and the Lord Great Chamberlain. The last oce had long since declined to an honorary sinecure held by the de Vere earls of Oxford, while the oces of Earl Marshal and High Constable had been vacant since 1601 and 1521. But in the high Middle Ages the holders of these posts had been responsible for overseeing the King's relations with the nobility and adjudicating all disputes concerning questions of honour. A temporary High Constable and Earl Marshal were appointed in 1604, so that the entry might re¯ect an ancient feudal hierarchy. The order of march represented a form of theatricality that had no need for words or artistic iconography, since it depended entirely upon the spatial arrangement of people during great ceremonies. The Exchequer accounts supplement this picture by revealing something of the procession's colour and opulence, especially the use of huge quantities of rich cloth and accoutrements like gold fringe, jewels and ostrich feathers.65 The canopy over James' head contained 38 yards of exceptionally ®ne yellow cloth costing £10 the yard, while his saddle cloth was made of purple velvet embroidered with pearls and silver twist. Queen Anne rode in a gaily painted and gilt chariot, followed by noblemen's wives in `two caroches covered with crimson velvet lined with crimson satin'. In all the Crown purchased more than 4,000 yards of red or scarlet cloth and spent over £36,000, twelve times what Rubens later received for the Whitehall Banqueting House ceiling and about twice what the Banqueting House itself cost to build. The Corporation of London spent an additional £4000, while the peers who marched in the procession had to furnish their own rich costume and saddle cloths, at costs rumoured to have run to as much as £4000 or £5000 each.66 None of the printed texts provides more than glancing references to this staggering level of opulence, which must have seemed overwhelming to spectators. Harrison's Arches of Triumph does provide, however, a visual record of the pageant structures along James' route. This volume was something of a landmark, as the ®rst English example of the use of engraving to preserve a record of a great ceremony of kingship. Only a few accounts of Elizabethan pageants were illustrated at all. The printed text of Gascoigne's narrative of the Woodstock entertainment of 1575 had contained a few 65 66

Public Record Oce LC2/4 (5). Nichols, James I I.401.

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R. Malcolm Smuts emblematic pictures, while a book describing the Queen's visit to the Earl of Hertford's seat of Elvetham had included a woodcut illustration of the pageantry.67 But only two previous books had employed engravings to illustrate public ceremonies involving Englishmen and both, signi®cantly, were connected with English intervention in the Low Countries. One was a Dutch volume commemorating Leicester's triumphant progress through the Netherlands in 1587, during his brief career as Governor General of the United Provinces. The other recorded Sir Philip Sidney's funeral in 1586, after his death at the Battle of Zutphen.68 The publication of Arches of Triumph might, therefore, appear to signal the desire of the cosmopolitan Jacobean court to imitate a European fashion for sumptuously illustrated volumes of this sort. But the textual evidence suggests that the initiative actually lay with Harrison himself, who sold the book directly from his house and alluded to his personal costs in producing it in the dedicatory epistle. Although we know little about Harrison, he seems to have been a self-educated artisan, immensely proud of the technical knowledge of classical architecture he had managed to acquire, much like his more talented contemporary and fellow joiner-turned-architect, Inigo Jones. His book says little about the royal court, while emphasising the roles of the London corporation and urban craftsman, for example by describing the ocial committees and teams of artisans that had done the actual work. Thomas Dekker's printed narrative also takes pains to stress the entry's character as a public and civic event. It incorporates orations by the Lord Mayor and a scholar at St Paul's grammar school alongside descriptions of Dekker's own pageants, while providing fairly lengthy accounts of the city's eorts to prepare a suitable welcome for James and the spontaneous loyalty of the crowd. Dekker also explicitly rejects the use of erudite imagery, as inappropriate to an event performed before a popular audience, `whose heads would miserably run a wool gathering if we do but oer to break them with hard words'. Jonson, by contrast, aggressively parades his learning and artistic craftsmanship, while dismissing the responses of the watching crowd as essentially irrelevant. His goal, he proclaimed, was to produce well-integrated `devices' capable of pleasing `the sharp and learned'; as for `the multitude, no doubt but their grounded judgments gazed, said it was ®ne and were satis®ed'. Jonson's textual presentation reinforced this point with numerous marginal notes documenting the classical sources from which he drew his imagery and elaborating on points of detail. This apparatus lifted his work out of its immediate context within a transitory public event and embedded it instead within a history of imperial imagery stretching back to Roman antiquity and 67

68

The Honourable Entertainment given to the Queene's Majestie in Progresse, at Elvetham in Hampshire, by the Right Hon'ble the Earle of Hertford (London, 1591). Thomas Lant, Sequitur Celebritatis et Pompa Funeris (London, 1588).

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Occasional Events, Literary Texts and Historical Interpretations the Bible. Far more than any other tract we have examined, Jonson's demands to be treated as a literary text rather than a record of a public occasion. The gap between this presentation and what most of those who watched the entry probably saw emerges with sharp clarity when we turn to Dugdale's tract. This provides only very generalised descriptions of the pageant arches and even less information about the recited speeches that dominate the narratives of both Dekker and Jonson. Dugdale admits that he was sometimes unable to get close enough to observe what was going on, and in one instance he seems to have completely misinterpreted a pageant. Dekker devised a scene in which saints George and Andrew joined together in amity and met the Genius (local deity) of London, represented as an old woman in a long robe. Dugdale recognised the saints but saw the Genius as a hermit, who was trying to reconcile them after a quarrel.69 On the other hand Dugdale reports circumstantial detail that none of our other texts records, such as the extreme intoxication of spectators who had taken advantage of the free wine that ¯owed all day from the city's water conduits. He also preserved two speeches ± by a very old man who claimed to have seen the royal entries of Mary and Elizabeth, and a London apprentice ± that Dekker and Jonson completely ignore. These seem to have been spontaneous eorts by individuals or small groups, rather than episodes in the ocial programme. In both cases James refused to wait and listen. Dugdale's account of these incidents provides an intriguing glimpse of ordinary members of the audience seeking to insert themselves into the day's festivities and the King's impatience with this sort of adulation. This comparison reveals a considerable lack of convergence among the dierent sources, underlining once again the perils of relying on any single document when trying to reconstruct a complex historical event. Yet if we accept the fact that all our sources are incomplete and biased, so that we will never produce a single de®nitive account of the entry, the discrepancies become revealing. They help us grasp the variety meanings that an occasion like this possessed and the complexity of the cultural issues it raised. Jonson's narrative may be of little value in helping us understand what `vulgar spectators' saw as they watched the royal procession move through London's streets. But it provides fascinating evidence of how an ambitious poet sought to fashion his reputation and attract court patronage. Similarly the muddles and confusions in Dugdale's narrative are far more revealing, for what they tell us about the diculty of absorbing complicated pageantry while manoeuvering through tens of thousands of cheering and sometimes inebriated spectators, than a more accurate report. It is equally revealing 69

This, at least, is how I interpret the discrepancy between Dugdale's narrative and Dekker's. The latter tells us that this pageant was neither performed as originally intended nor completely `laid by'. It may, therefore, have been modi®ed in ways he did not record. But it is easy to understand how a Genius with loose hair and a long robe might have been mistaken for a hermit, especially when seen from a distance.

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R. Malcolm Smuts that the manuscript sources produced by Crown servants re¯ect a highly traditional concern with rank, magni®cence and medieval custom, whereas the printed texts of Harrison and Jonson seem much more concerned with innovative classical imagery. Jacobean classicism has generally been regarded as a form of elite culture promoted by a scholarly King and aristocrats like the Earl of Arundel. In this instance, however, it was being fashioned for the court by men of plebeian background. VI

Recent historicist scholarship has very often attempted to collapse the distance between literary texts and history, by treating the former as social and political events rather than timeless cultural artefacts. This chapter has been arguing that we ought to be moving in the opposite direction, by becoming more conscious of the gap that must always exist between the texts we study and the history that once surrounded them. My intention in advancing this position is not to resurrect the old division between formalist literary analysis and archivally based historical research, but rather to advocate a deeper and more thoroughgoing kind of interdisciplinarity than that which has characterised some (though not all) recent historicist literary scholarship. The problem with this scholarship is that it does not go far enough in recognising the complexity and contingency of cultural history. It continues to cling to the illusion that by reading literature within a framework of large historiographical generalisations we can decipher the fundamental characteristics of a past society. Yet the `history' in which `literature' is embedded invariably consists, not only of large ideological movements and social trends, but a host of highly speci®c circumstances that we can only hope to unravel through focused research. Like all historical documents, literary texts can never provide us with more than fragmentary and imperfect evidence, which needs to be critically evaluated within appropriate contexts. The task of supplying those contexts is the fundamental starting point of any truly historical analysis.

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The Politics of Aectivity in Early Modern England STEVEN N. ZWICKER

I

` F the Body Politique have any Analogy to the Natural, in my weak judgment, an Act of Oblivion were as necessary in a Hot, Distemper'd State, as an Opiate woud be in a Raging Fever.' So Dryden wrote in the preface to that masterpiece of bodily politics, Absalom and Achitophel.1 I would postpone, for a moment, an inquiry into the strategies of this analogy, or of the whole of that superb essay on body politics that constitutes the poem itself; but I want to register here both the analogy and the hypothetical mood into which Dryden has cast that most common and commonplace of political ®gures. The year is 1681 and the occasion is the defeat of Exclusion: Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, the cornerstone of late Stuart divine right theory, has just been published;2 the Earl of Shaftesbury has been put to trial on charges of high treason; and Charles II would now begin his rule without parliaments. But Absalom and Achitophel, the text that proved the most enduring and most entertaining of patriarchal arguments, begins with didence and caution: 'Tis not my intention to make an Apology for my Poem: Some will think it needs no Excuse; and others will receive none. The Design, I am sure, is honest: but he who draws his Pen for one Party, must expect to make Enemies of the other. (The Poems, I.215, 1±4)

Far from an exultant celebration of Tory fundamentals, or a trumpeting of divine right authority, far even from a nostalgic invocation of the organic wholeness of the commonweal, the Preface seems to propose not the logic or likelihood but the mere possibility that an organic way of thinking about the state might allow the prescription of political remedies. It had not always been so. In James I's addresses to his parliaments, in Donne's sermons at Whitehall, in Jonson's hymn to the Sidneys at Penshurst, in the emblematic theatre of the court masque, the body politic had been 1

2

The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford, 1958), I.216, 61±4; further citations to Dryden's work are to this edition and will be indicated parenthetically in the text by volume, page, and line numbers. On the publication of Filmer, see Johann P. Sommerville, ed., Patriarcha (Cambridge, 1991), pp. ix±xxxiv.

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Steven N. Zwicker ®gured as the certain centre of civic relations, and its idioms were invariably love and desire. By the close of the seventeenth century desire still haunted politics, but its forms and practices came closer to pornography than to Platonism, and not only in the scurrilous satires or elegant and scandalous verse that circulated at Charles II's court. The hesitant ¯utter of Dryden's analogy may not suggest the entire narrative of early modern political aectivity, but it helps locate one of the central metaphors of the early modern political imagination at a moment of brilliant if unsteady selfre¯ection. The natural body of James I had been the occasion of scorn and slander,3 but no one conjuring the body politic on behalf of James' court could have proposed the analogy in quite the cool and ironic tones of Dryden's preface. Shakespeare's Menenius toys with the ®gure of the body politic at the opening of Coriolanus, and Menenius' slightly bullying tone ± `What do you think, / You, the great toe of this assembly?' ± allows him to quell civic disturbance, but there seems nothing in the slightest bit ironic about the argument on behalf of political reciprocity that forms the centre of the belly's fable or about the play's deeply felt meditation on political eros and personal autonomy. The belly's fable utters a truth about love and reciprocity whose violation licenses, indeed demands, the destruction of Coriolanus. Shakespeare's Roman play examines the politics of desire with an unsettling intensity, but his engagement with that theme is not particular to Rome. His English histories, his romances and tragedies map the full range of political aectivity at the opening of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the theatre with its mingling of visual spectacle and popular entertainment, of royal patronage and commercial venture is unusually responsive to the civic and psychological dimensions of the metaphor of the body politic; surely no text provides a more searching anatomy of political aectivity than Shakespeare's King Lear. From the words with which Kent opens the play, Ì thought the King had more aected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall' (I.i.1± 3),4 to its closing scene where, heartsick and yearning for his master, the loyal servant refuses to sustain the state, the play's political meditations are conducted on and through the aective life of its characters. The content 3

4

See Alastair Bellany, ` ``Raylinge Rhymes and Vaunting Verse'': Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England, 1603±1628', Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Stanford, 1993), pp. 285±310; and more generally on libel and slander in early modern England, see M. Lindsey Kaplan, The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997); Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621±1624 (Cambridge, 1989); Cogswell, Ùnderground Verse and the Transformation of Early Stuart Political Culture', Political Culture, Cultural Politics in Early Modern Europe, ed. Susan Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995), pp. 277±300; and Richard Cust, `News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England', Past and Present cxii (1986), pp. 60±90. King Lear, ed. Kenneth Muir (London, 1985), I.i.153±4; further citations to the text of Lear will be to this edition and will be indicated parenthetically in the text by act, scene, and line numbers.

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The Politics of Aectivity of those meditations is the nature and force of the aections in the binding together and sundering of the state; and in the play's twinned analyses of domesticity and nationhood, Shakespeare seems to propose that the most profound transgression of the commonweal is the denial of love. `Tell me, my daughters, / Since now we will divest us both of rule, / Interest of territory, cares of state / Which of you shall we say doth love us most?' (I.i.47±50): the drama begins with Lear's wilful and arresting contest, and it closes as the king dies of a broken heart. In between we have disowning fathers, patricidal children, cuckolded husbands, and betrayed siblings; and at every point the domestic is constitutive of the civic. The violence released at the opening of the play derives not from the king's partition of the state, but from a denial of love: `Which of you shall we say doth love us most?' In the performance of forged and denied aections that follows, the state is both literally and ®guratively remapped. Love is the key word in this play, the central ®gure on which all the devastating variations are played as Lear and the royal family are educated in the passions, imperfections, and distempers of the body and the state.5 The play insistently compounds aections, reproductivity, and sovereignty, making them the primal chord in Lear's terrible cursings of Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan, and the central argument in Gloucester's exposition of family troubles. Reeling from Edmund's exposure of Edgar's supposed plot, Gloucester misdiagnoses the sources, but not consequences of discord: Love cools, friendship falls o, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. (I.ii.103±11) 5

On the analogy between the body natural and the body politic there is a tradition of scholarship reaching back to Ernest Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957) and which includes such works as David G. Hale, The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature (The Hague, 1971) and Leonard Barkan, Nature's Work of Art: The Human Body as Image of the World (New Haven, 1975). Both Hale and Barkan treat the ideological status rather than political or social force of the metaphor; more recent work such as Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 1993); Phyllis Rackin's `Foreign Country: The Place of Women and Sexuality in Shakespeare's Historical World', in Richard Burt and John Michael Archer, eds., Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford, 1997); and Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1998) have examined the body and its ®gures within the discursive ®elds of early modern medicine, gender relations, philosophy, and social practice. My own essay is an eort to explore the relations between the language of the body politic and early modern notions and practices of political aectivity.

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Steven N. Zwicker Here is the full panoply of aective relations that weld together family and state: what binds the one is the very thing that holds together the other. When Edmund answers his father's soliloquy, he mocks Gloucester's fatuous astrology but not his political analysis. Even as Edmund proudly proclaims his illegitimacy, he does not deny the rules of love, `Well then, / Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: / Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund, / As to the legitimate' (I.ii.15±18). Love may not make this world go round ± other forms of desire play a role in that physics ± but love ties together, and its violation undoes, the state. When, near the close of the play, Goneril and Regan unfold their plots and desires, Shakespeare insistently con¯ates political ambition and sexual appetite. No consequences of the aective life are discounted; when passions of state are such a commonplace, love withheld, love misunderstood, love misbegotten, and love violated extract a cost that would not have been dicult for the playgoers to calculate. The argumentative force of aectivity in King Lear is tested not by alternative schemes of aliation, but by a plot that would undo all forms of political integration. At the close of the play neither interest nor honour, neither prudence nor fear, and indeed not love itself, seem adequate to the job of restoring and sustaining the whole. It is small comfort that the loved and the loveless alike lie scattered on the stage. The relentlessness of the play's undoing of the whole might seem a strong challenge to any scheme of political aliation and argumentation. Yet I would suggest that the play's conclusion must have felt, circa 1605, not like a denial of the integrity of the body politic, but more like an undying armation of its truth, the play exposing not the fragility of the metaphor but its strength. It is not that the dissolution of the state could not be imagined in 1605, but that it was safe to ®gure dissolution because it would have been dicult for Shakespeare's audience to conceive a world where aections would not be instrumental in binding together the whole. In 1681 ± the year of Absalom and Achitophel, and the year when King Lear was `Reviv'd with Alterations' by Nahum Tate6 ± no playgoer would have had the slightest diculty in acknowledging the futility of civic passions or imagining the failure of an aective commonweal. Tate trimmed, re-plotted, sentimentalised Shakespeare's play to enormously interesting eect.7 By the mid-eighteenth century Tate's Lear had become a target of opportunity for critics who regretted the fashion for cutting and rewriting Shakespeare;8 what they did not regret, and what Tate's initial audience, and what succeeding 6

7

8

Tate, The History of King Lear, Acted at the Duke's Theater, Revivi'd with Alterations (London, 1681). On Tate's Lear, see Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660±1761 (Oxford, 1992), esp. pp. 80±85, and Richard Strier, Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism and Renaissance Texts (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 203±32. See Jean I. Marsden, The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adaptation, And Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory (Lexington, Ky., 1995), pp. 120±22.

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The Politics of Aectivity generations of playgoers, admired was the play's elevation of feeling and its discrimination between politics and sentiment. Tate conceived the work of adaptation almost wholly as a matter of aesthetics; he criticised Shakespeare's Lear for the disorder of the play's structure, its extravagance of language, and its failure of regularity and probability. His solution was the union of Edgar and Cordelia, and its provision Tate conceived as a formal èxpedient to recti®e what was wanting in the Regularity and Probability of the Tale', a way to translate Edgar's `disguise' from a mere `Shift' to a `generous Design', and, most important, a way to elevate distress.9 The union of lovers in the rewritten conclusion of the play provides a realm of sentiment whose very re®nement depends on the distillation of desire from politics. The taint of ìnterest' warns Cordelia against Burgundy and `draws just suspicion on the Race of Men'; but the purity of despairing Edgar, shorn of his prosperous estate, wins Cordelia's hand. It is the very distinction between politics and love that informs Cordelia's heart, and it is the opposition between love and empire that drives the play to its lofty height. At the conclusion of Tate's Lear, not only do the virtuous survive, but the very separation of love from politics assures virtue its success: Our drooping Country now erects her Head, Peace spreads her balmy Wings, and Plenty Blooms, Divine Cordelia, all the Gods can witness How much thy Love to Empire I prefer! Thy bright Example shall convince the World (Whatever Storms of Fortune are decreed) That Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed. (V.v.155±61)

That Tate should see both the problem of adaptation and its solution in wholly aesthetic terms is the play's most telling commentary on the political, for sentiment in this play is not an integral part but an occlusion of politics. The occlusion occurs through enhancement, through elevation, through a distinction between the terms that Shakespeare binds so relentlessly together. No one watching the adaptation in about 1680±81 would have seen the consequences of Tate's revision as sentimentality, or at least not in our sense of the word. The very aim of the heroic drama had been the production of sensation and sentiment. By the late eighteenth century, and certainly by the mid-nineteenth century when it was ®nally removed from the stage, the ¯aw of Tate's Lear had been identi®ed as sentimentality; but what critics in the late eighteenth century did not argue, and what I suggest Tate's contemporaries would not have seen, is that Tate's impulses were, in the ®rst instance, ideological and not, if we might make the distinction, aesthetic. 9

Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare, ed. with an introduction by Christopher Spencer (Urbana, 1965), p. 203; further citations are to this edition and will be indicated parenthetically by act, scene, and line number in the text.

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Steven N. Zwicker The years that lay between the ®rst staging of Shakespeare's Lear and its adaptation in the Restoration had made the consequences of aective politics only too clear. In Leviathan Hobbes proposed the terror of absolute rule as a restraint on those passions that had wrecked the state; in the revival and alteration of King Lear, Tate proposed, or rather participated in, a dierent, more plausible, and ®nally more productive solution. If the passions might be occluded, and the body retired from politics, then party, interest, corruption, and ®nally arithmetic or science could be entrusted to regulate matters of state, and the aections ± in their turn ± might be released into the realm of the aesthetic or sequestered in the nearly domesticated heart. But the history of early modern political aectivity does not move quite so ¯uently as this proleptic sentence suggests, nor is the body quite ready to yield up its political ghost in 1681. At the very moment Tate was attempting to extract the passions from the politics of Shakespeare's play, Dryden seems to have been calculating the possibilities of rescuing and refashioning an organic language of state. So we might return now, and more fully, to the hesitant mode in which Dryden proposes analogy between the body politic and the body natural, especially in light of the ®guration of the poem's opening lines: In pious times, e'r Priest-craft did begin, Before Polygamy was made a sin; When man, on many, multiply'd his kind, E'r one to one was, cursedly, con®nd: When Nature prompted, and no law deny'd Promiscuous use of Concubine and Bride; Then, Israel's Monarch, after Heaven's own heart, His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command, Scatter'd his Maker's Image through the Land. (I.217, 1±10)

Part of the force of this verse ± or of the gallery of David's virtuous friends, or even of the brilliant cartoons of the king's factious enemies and of the poem's scenes of political seduction ± is the articulation of that familiar argument for a state founded in passion, sustained by desire, nourished by bene®ts and gratitude. All the old arguments for patriarchy are here recalled, and yet they are transformed in the telling, shielded by the verse's uncanny ability both to allow and disallow nostalgia. The high spirits and certain cadence of this verse suggest bemusement, even aggression; and if we earlier paused over the didence of analogy in the Preface, we must allow that the poem's opening lines hardly suggest uncertainty. No one reading this verse in 1681 detected much didence in the Poet Laureate, and a second reading of Dryden's modesty in the Preface might suggest that it belongs not only to didence but also to aggression. Nor would we be wrong to suspect that more aggression lies ahead in the poem. And in the 204


The Politics of Aectivity Preface itself the cautious analogy between body politic and body natural comes abruptly on the back of the surgeon's knife: The true end of Satyre, is the amendment of Vices by correction. And he who writes Honestly, is no more an Enemy to the Oendour, than the Physician to the Patient, when he prescribes harsh Remedies to an inveterate Disease: for those, are only in order to prevent the Chyrurgeon's work of an Ense rescindendum, which I wish not to my very Enemies. To conclude all, If the Body Politique have any Analogy to the Natural, in my weak judgment, an Act of Oblivion were as necessary in a Hot, Distemper'd State, as an Opiate would be in a Raging Fever. (I.216, 57±64)

The harsh remedies proposed in place of opiates are memory and the sword, and both seem to compromise the organic form of politics proposed at the beginning of this poem, and indeed at the beginning of this Restoration with its act of indemnity and oblivion, suppression of names and distinctions, and hopeful assertions of wholeness and harmony.10 The complex and contradictory moves of Dryden's prose and verse make us aware of both the language of the body politic and the conditions under which that language was operating in about 1681. A distance has opened between the two halves of Dryden's analogy, some slippage can be detected in the gap between the argument of organic politics and Dryden's mock forbearance, his quizzical inquiry. We are not so late in the day of this metaphor that analogy has given way wholly to hazing and ridicule, nor has the language gotten into such desperate straits that modesty forbids the imaginative ®eld. Indeed, we might discover that the analogy Dryden means cautiously to test in the Preface turns out to bear the weight of some important structures in the poem itself: the brilliant and scandalous analysis of royal fecundity in the opening lines; the physiology of rebellion in the superb caricature of the crook-backed Achitophel; the image of usurpation as rape; Dryden's contempt for Shimei's cool shrieval cellars and Corah's onanism; the shadowy corporeality of law and grace; and the quite vivid birthing body of perjury in David's closing lines. In all these passages the body politic is pointedly invoked; but we must also note that everywhere it has been satirically sharpened and determinedly sexualised. Dryden is keenly aware of the contemporary resonance of patriarchalism, not least through the publication of Filmer's Patriarcha in 1681 and the ongoing crises of paternity that marked Charles II's rule. He is willing to imagine the body politic and deploy the idioms of patriarchalism, but the ground had shifted beneath those ®gures, and it was necessary not only to adjust the articulation of metaphor in order to absorb the movement of those 10

For the text of Charles' Àct of free and general pardon, indemnity, and oblivion', see The Stuart Constitution, 1603±1686: Documents and Commentary, ed. J. P. Kenyon (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 339±44.

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Steven N. Zwicker tectonic plates, it was a fashionable advantage to display the old metaphors made new, through wit and irony. If we read deeply in those late seventeenthcentury collections called `poems on aairs of state', we might even think that irony had now become a necessary precondition for the invocation of the body politic. Irony allowed the language of the body politic to be wielded in satiric attack in 1681, but the events of the previous decades had diminished its capacity to sustain utopian argument. When Dryden himself turned to theorise the state in his poem, he carefully stepped away from the body politic to seek the shelter of custom and prudence, not the certainties of patriarchal authority but the temporising language of balance and mediation, of compromise and patchwork measure. Dryden's ventriloquism of the body politic allows us to hear the impact of a whole series of dislocations, linguistic and political, which need to be traced back at least as far as the civil wars and execution of Charles I. The wars had dis®gured the body politic and dismembered the king, they had rent the fabric of the polity, and the new republic steered clear of idioms and images of patriarchal love and authority, invoking in their stead `liberty, safety, and interest'.11 When Marvell sought in 1649 to balance the old order against the new, he situated the vulnerable body wholly in the past, transforming Charles' comely head from a shocking prop on the stage of political demise to a mere sign of republican destiny: So when they did design The Capitols ®rst Line, A bleeding Head where they begun, Did fright the Architects to run; And yet in that the State Foresaw it's happy Fate.12

Both the vulnerability of the softened body of monarchy and the architectural force of classical republicanism are caught in these lines that layer contemporary history over political theory and classical archaeology. They predict for us a good deal of the aesthetic drama played out over the body of the king in the weeks and months following regicide, and of the ®gural dilemma of a republic which lacked a naturalising, organic language of rule.13 11

12

13

For a discussion of republican eorts to suppress the language and imagery of Stuart monarchy, see Kevin Sharpe, ` `Àn Image Doting Rabble'': The Failure of Republican Culture in Seventeenth-Century England', Re®guring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics From the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 25±56. Àn Horatian Ode', The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, 3rd edn., ed. H. M. Margoliouth, revised by Pierre Legouis in collaboration with E. E. Duncan-Jones (Oxford, 1971), I.93, ll. 67±72. James Harrington attempts to resolve the republican ®gural dilemma in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1659) by re-imagining the body politic in terms of William Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. Harvey equated the heart with the sovereignty of the king in his new

206


The Politics of Aectivity In both literal and ®gurative terms, the interregnum was haunted by the body of Charles I, nowhere made more visible than in the frontispiece to the Eikon Basilike which portrayed the aestheticised king as suering servant, nearly rapturous in his sacri®ce. Not only was the image broadcast through the thousands of copies of the Eikon put into circulation by an unprecedented royalist publishing programme in the year following the regicide;14 but prayers and hymns, Psalters and meditations echoed and elaborated the visual gestures; and emblems and badges from the book itself multiplied the sanctifying repertoire.15 Even the new coinage of republic and Protectorate did not replace, but simply circulated alongside, the old coins with their royal images and mottoes.16 The ideology of the new republic may have been intended to suppress the body in the imagination of the state, but such erasure proved no simple matter. Moreover, the Protectorate allowed some embrace of old languages and styles, and poems like Marvell's funeral elegy on Cromwell reminds us of the deep yearning for patriarchal authority in his regime.17 The mortal body of the king may have perished at Whitehall, but the haunting image of the body politic more than survived the years of republican and Protectorate rule. The carnal body of monarchy was ®rmly resituated at the center of the state in 1660, and the recovery was greeted with near ùnexpressable joye'.18 Charles II would prove both a brilliant and embarrassing tactician of its pleasures, but in the immediate process of this political recovery, fractures now deeply imbedded in the state were covered over. Few wished to see them in the early 1660s, but by the time of the Exclusion, Dryden called them ùgly Scars'(l.73), `Seams of wounds, dishonest to the sight' (l.72). In the counterpointing of satire and celebration in Absalom and Achitophel, he combined the contradictory conditions and impulses of the body politic, and his poem allows us to see how these antagonisms form if not a dialectic, then a set of alternative moves: an impulse toward the heroic and the nostalgic but as well an acknowledgement of the seductive power of irony and cynicism, perhaps

14

15

16 17

18

physiology, but Harrington places parliament at the center of his political anatomy, `So the parliament is the heart which, consisting of two ventricles . . . sucketh in and gusheth forth the life blood of Oceana by a perpetual circulation . . .', The Commonwealth of Oceana, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1972), p. 174. On Harvey's and Harrington's political anatomy, see I. B. Cohen, `Harrington and Harvey: A Theory of the State Based on the New Physiology', Journal of the History of Ideas lv (1994), pp. 187±210. See the bibliography of editions of the Eikon in F. F. Madan, A New Bibliography of the Eikon Basilike of King Charles I, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, n.s., 3 (Oxford, 1949). See Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649±1689 (Ithaca and London, 1993), Chapter 2, `The King's Head and the Politics of Literary Property'. See Sharpe, ` `Àn Image Doting Rabble'' ', Re®guring Revolutions, pp. 31±2. See Derek Hirst and Steven Zwicker, Àndrew Marvell and the Toils of Patriarchy: Fatherhood, Longing, and the Body Politic', English Literary History lxvi (1999), pp. 644±5. See John Evelyn on the king's return, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford, 1955), III.246.

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Steven N. Zwicker even despair. Dryden's poem allows us to feel the strains within, indeed the likely demise of, a metaphor now stretched between the temptations of sentimentality and pornography. By 1700 neither nostalgia nor cynicism, neither the organic state nor the sexualised politics of what had been the Caroline court, could sustain political argument and imagination. The abrogation of Stuart rule in the persons of William III and Queen Mary seemed wholly to deny the possibilities of an aective commonweal; the couple were pilloried as Tarquin and Tullia,19 the king ridiculed as crookbacked, impotent, and a sodomite,20 and the barren queen mocked for gluttony and lust.21 Nor did Queen Anne's maternal body with its repeated disappointments and paradoxes restore the discursive capacities of this language. Whatever `provision' the childless, and after 1708 widowed, queen would make for her Protestant nation, it would not be through `bene®t of linen'.22 Nor was Anne willing to make the ®gurative provision of an invitation to Sophia, Electress of Hanover to live in England ± a gesture that would have signalled an untroubled Protestant succession. Though Anne repeatedly deployed motherhood to frame her political agency in the years as Princess of Denmark and then Queen of England, her eorts to transform the disappointments of a childbearing body into the symbolic maternity of a nation were fraught with diculty, as if the royal body by the time of the Hanoverian succession had been denied both literal and symbolic force. Nowhere is the undoing of the political force of the body politic more strikingly imagined for these years than in Hogarth's engraving, Some of the Principal Inhabitants of ye Moon (1724).23 He renders the machinery of state in the emblematic ®gures of monarchy, episcopacy and the law, but the ®gures are now faceless, oddly fragile and disembodied. The images may hearken back to the traditional embodiments of civic authority, but they betray nothing of the corporeal, no suggestion of desire, not even the excesses of physical corruption, but the impersonal and implacable distillation of all politics into commercial interest. What Hogarth conveys is the utter evacuation of the body from the state. Of course, political languages are never wholly and evenly transformed, and we should not be surprised to ®nd the old ®guration surviving alongside signs of its decay. William Sherlock's Resolution of Some Cases 19

20 21 22

23

`Tarquin and Tullia', in Poems on Aairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660±1714, ed. George deF. Lord et al. (New Haven, 1963±75), V.47±54. `The Coronation Ballad, 11th April 1689', Poems on Aairs of State, V.40±45. `The Re¯ection', Poems on Aairs of State, V.60±61. For the language and politics of royal childbearing in the early eighteenth century, see Toni Bowers, `Queen Anne Makes Provision', Re®guring Revolutions, pp. 57±74. The image is reproduced in Hogarth's Graphic Works, compiled and with a commentary by Ronald Paulson (New Haven, 1965), II.47; and see Paulson's commentary, vol. I, catalogue no. 44.

208


The Politics of Aectivity of Conscience provides a striking case in point. Sherlock's tract on behalf of church unity and conformity was published in 1682 and went through three editions in six years.24 It insists on the old ®guration and, with it, a politics of uniformity that would deny distinction and dissent: And when I call the Church a Body or Society of Men, I oppose a Body to single Individuals, or particular Men, and to a confused Multitude, without any order or Union among themselves. For tho the Church consists of particular Men, and when their Numbers are encreased, of great Multitudes, yet the Church consists of such particular Men, not considered in a private and separate capacity, but as United into a regular Society, which is called a Body, in allusion to the natural Body, in which all the parts and members are United in an exact Order. (p. 2)

All the old structures and feelings are here ± the body as ®gure for an organic community of believers, the opposition between the fragmenting multitude and uni®ed society, the reciprocal and naturalised relations between particular men and the corporate whole. The Resolution of Some Cases of Conscience was written and published in the same year as Absalom and Achitophel, but Sherlock seems more Sir Robert Filmer's contemporary than Dryden's. There is no question that Sherlock spoke a language soothing and familiar to his contemporaries ± perhaps all the more attractive for its nostalgia ± but it is equally true that Dryden was responsive to transformations in the language of politics that Sherlock could not or would not hear. For all of Dryden's distaste for the commercial and the contractual, for the instruments of pro®t and the idioms of interest, he understands the necessity of brokering some compromise between commerce and community; yet the ties between the refractive individual and the organic community are left unresolved by his poem, not least because they are the fractured and unresolved political conditions of the late Stuart state. Perhaps Dryden's brilliant and disruptive gallery of villains and fools stands in such sharp contrast to the corporate resolve of David's friends in order to demonstrate a psychological and social as well as political point, that the binding ties of loyalty and community demand a subduing not only of individual interest but of personality itself. But Dryden's poem shows us no way to naturalise these tensions; indeed, the juxtaposition and contrast ± the counterpointing of bodies, and the tensions between principles and personalities ± seem crucial to the rhythm of this poem. Their resolution would come soon enough and not in a poem but through a series of political, social, and civic conveniences: a revolution that cloaked the abrogation of old forms with ®ctions of continuity, a theory of the state that proposed voluntarism of association, and a theory of society that imagined community more as 24

William Sherlock, A Resolution of Some Cases of Conscience with Respect to ChurchCommunion (London, 1682); later editions appeared in 1683 and 1685.

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Steven N. Zwicker elevated conversation than as a church of true believers. The apostle of those changes was Dryden's contemporary, John Locke. They had lived through the same political experiments and climacterics, and despite the radical dierence of their politics and their patrons in the 1680s, Dryden's ironic embrace of the language of patriarchalism is a good deal closer to Locke's scepticism than it is to Sherlock's invocation of the drama of the body politic. Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) was cast as a response to Filmer's Patriarcha, and Locke had no choice but to address relations between paternity and patriarchy; Filmer's very premise was the political reality of the metaphor, not the mere analogy but the concomitance of family and state. But Locke's discriminations are not mere polemics; he forces a social and political distinction between the family and the state in order to transform the very premise of political society: Let us therefore consider a Master of a Family with all these subordinate Relations of Wife, Children, Servants and Slaves united under the Domestick Rule of a Family; which what resemblance soever it may have in its Order, Oces and Number too, with a little Common-wealth, yet is very far from it, both in its Constitution, Power and End: Or if it must be thought a Monarchy, and the Paterfamilias the absolute Monarch in it, absolute Monarchy will have but a very shattered and short Power, when 'tis plain, by what has been said before, That the Master of the Family has a very distinct and dierently limited Power, both as to time and extent, over those several Persons that are in it.25

If we compare this to the Preface to Absalom and Achitophel, we discover Dryden and Locke operating out of a similar understanding of the language of politics, and a similarly sceptical awareness of the strengths and vulnerabilities of the metaphor of the body politic. Locke is intent on delimiting the ®gure, but he is nervously aware of its logic and status. He aims not wholly to deny the force of analogy but to draw attention to its ®gurative status and in turn to the dangers of metaphorical thinking. Dryden hopes to rescue by wit and irony the very metaphors that Locke means to defuse; but both are aware of the limitations, the inconvenience, and the anachronism of patriarchalism and the body politic. One of Dryden's great gifts is to feel the conditions and limitations of the languages he deploys; and on the analogy of the body politic to the body natural, Dryden is absolutely up to date. That is why the opening of the poem is awash in contradictory motions, incommensurate states of argument and belief ± the authority of the language of the body, but as well its comic and compromising character. In mapping the conditions of political culture in about 1681, Dryden outlines the consequences of both too much and too little scepticism about the life of the aections within the state; he aims to balance whatever is outdated or overbearing by irony and wit, by 25

Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1961), p. 341; further citations are to this edition and included parenthetically by page number in the text.

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The Politics of Aectivity rapidity of gesture and image, by a swell of couplets that sets in ®nely balanced motion memories of the world of political fecundity and mutuality and a shrewd awareness of the forces of interest and individualism. Sherlock tells us the story of too little scepticism about the organic nature of community in the late seventeenth century; the Earl of Rochester displays the consequences of too much. In 1660 Rochester had joined Dryden and Locke in celebrating both the restoration of monarchy and the language of political desire: at age thirteen he had written of the ècstatic duty' that drove the union of three kingdoms, and of his own `manly wishes and more vigorous love' to take up arms in honour to a father and in homage to a king.26 But by the 1670s Rochester drove the metaphor of the body politic about as far in the direction of daring scepticism, indeed nihilism, as any of his contemporaries would go. Marvell had foreshadowed the indictment of politics as whoring in his brilliant allegory of Charles II's attempted rape of Britannia in The Last Instructions (1667);27 but Marvell, at least in the 1660s,28 seems not wholly to despair of the ideal of an aective commonweal, and his literary tactics do not match the brutal analytic force with which Rochester transforms the idioms of organic politics into a pornographic language of state: Restlesse he roalles about from Whore to Whore A merry Monarch, scandalous and poor. Poor Prince thy Prick, like thy Buoons at Court, Will governe thee because it makes thee sportt. 'Tis sure the swaucyest that e'er did swive The proudest premptoriest Prick alive. Though Safety, Law, Religion, Life lay on't, 'Twould breake through all to make its way to Cunt. . . . . . . . . . . I hate all Monarchs, and the Thrones they sit on From the Hector of France to the Culley of Britaine.29 26 27

28

29

The Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Keith Walker (Oxford, 1984), p. 3. See Zwicker, `Virgins and Whores: the Politics of Sexual Misconduct in the 1660s', The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and A. D. Cousins (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 102±4. For a less optimistic and slightly later note, see Marvell's letter to William Popple, c. 1670: The King of France is at Dunkirke. We have no Fleet out, tho we gave the Subsidy Bill, valued at eight hundred thousand Pounds, for that Purpose. I believe indeed he will attempt Nothing on Us, but leave Us to dy a Natural Death. For indeed never had a poor Nation so many complicated, mortal, incurable, Diseases. You know the Dutchess of York is dead. All gave her for a Papist. I think it will be my Lot to go on an honest fair Employment into Ireland. Some have smelt the Court of Rome at that Distance. There I hope I shall be out of the Smell of our. (The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, II.323). The Poems of John Wilmot, pp. 74±5.

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Steven N. Zwicker Such assault and such display could not but drain from the body politic the metaphysics of natural order and the mysteries of rule. It is not simply that the body parts of rule have changed, that Menenius' fable took for granted that sovereignty was ®gured as the head ± though we should not underestimate the importance of Rochester's new distribution of anatomical authority ± but that the implications of metaphoric thinking, either in the form of republican despair (in these verses for which Rochester was banished from court) or of apocalyptic ®re (at the conclusion of Rochester's pornographic court drama, Sodom) have been utterly transformed. If we are to take the body politic seriously in the 1680s, the inversions and the degradations implied by those speaking from within and outside the court are unavoidable. Locke imagined a way out of the conundrum by abandoning the organic language of state to ®gure community as a wholly voluntary social and spiritual compact. The Second Treatise argues the foundational importance of the voluntary will to the full formation of political society, and the Letter Concerning Toleration makes the identical argument for spiritual community. À Church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God, in such manner as they judge acceptable to him, and eectual to the salvation of their souls. I say it is a free and voluntary society.'30 It was not simply the natural exhaustion of the vocabulary to which Locke and a number of his contemporaries were responding, but the necessity of diminishing and containing a mode of thought whose implications had become all too clear in the 1640s and, which once again, though for dierent reasons, had made the costs of a passional state in which sovereign and subject are variously ®gured in paternal, patriarchal, conjugal, domestic, and ®lial embrace too burdensome to endure. We began with a play that argued the interrelations of politics and the passions on the broadest scale; I want to conclude with some re¯ections on a comedy of manners which seems to narrow those acts of implication, but which in its own turn forms a striking commentary on the politics of aectivity at the close of this century. I refer to Congreve's Way of the World,31 and in particular the brilliant proviso scene of Act IV, the site of prenuptial negotiations between Mirabell, the scheming hero of Congreve's play, and Millamant, its reluctant heroine. There is, of course, nothing particularly new about marriage contracts or about the theatricality of sexual politics, and Congreve drew on forty years and more of theatrical tradition in fashioning this encounter. What is new is the scene's utter denial of the aections, its argument for liberation of the individual from desire, and 30 31

A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendins (London, 1991), p. 20. The Comedies of William Congreve, ed. Eric S. Jump (New York, 1985), pp. 317±410; further citations are to this edition and will appear in the text with act, scene, and line numbers indicated parenthetically.

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The Politics of Aectivity its celebration of self-determination over harmony, reciprocity, and union. The heroine's idiom is `personal will', and ìndividual pleasure'; she recoils at the conventions of exchange and endearment and she triumphs in selfdetermination. Millamant dismisses the language of marital aection and banishes gestures of intimacy: there is to be no familiarity, no fondness, no touch of desire. Husband and wife are to maintain cool distance, a perfect liberty to move at will, to deny family and social obligation, to preserve, in other words, complete authority over the self. The culmination of Millamant's declaration of rights is her claim of sole propriety over personal relations and personal space: As liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive Letters, without Interrogatories. . . . To wear what I please, and choose Conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with Wits that I don't like, because they are your acquaintance, or to be intimate with Fools, because they may be your Relations. Come to Dinner when I please; dine in my dressing-room when I'm out of humour, without giving a reason. To have my Closet Inviolate; to be sole Empress of my Teatable, which you must never presume to approach without ®rst asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These Articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a Wife. (IV.i.234±49)

The scale is diminutive, but the principles of propriety, privacy and autonomy could not be uttered with greater clarity. Millamant would recon®gure the social relations, the spaces, and the authority of the household in order to found a union not within the forms and force of patriarchy ± that premise of a naturalised masculine authority with all its implications of dominance and desire ± but on the principles of individual rights and female sexual selfsuciency. Mutuality, trust, and endearment are the idioms of female friendship (II.i.179±88); marriage is a contest driven by interest and the struggle for dominance, and neither sexual union nor childbearing spark either intimacy or desire: Mirabell: Item, when you shall be Breeding ± Millamant: Ah! Name it not. Mirabell: Which may be presum'd, with a blessing on our endeavors ± Millamant: Odious endeavors! (IV.i.279±84)

Whatever else these prenuptials display, the negotiations over domestic autonomy bear the imprint of the larger world of social exchange and civic theory.32 Congreve draws these out in the play's ®nal act with its dizzying repertoire of deeds and contracts, black boxes and legal conveyances which at 32

See Richard Kroll, `Discourse and Power in The Way of the World', English Literary History liii (1986), pp. 727±58.

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Steven N. Zwicker every point implicate the domestic in the civic: this is not merely the theatre of gossip and domestic triangulation, but the re¯ection of an entire world of social relations, and more than re¯ection is written into these words. The proviso scene twins the denial of desire with the assertion of liberty because the ®rst is the fundamental condition of the second. Congreve intuits or understands, and not only for the domestic spaces of his play, that aectivity implies a politics ± an organic state with principles of desire, fecundity, and interdependence ± that is at odds with liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness: My dear Liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful Solitude, my darling Contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? ay-h adieu, my morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, all (ye douceurs, ye Sommeils du Matin) adieu. ± I can't do't, 'tis more than Impossible. Positively Mirabell, I'll lie a-bed in a morning as long as I please. (IV.i.203±10)

And in the very next exchange, Millamant declares her independence from aection and its names, `. . . as Wife, Spouse, My Dear, Joy, Jewel, Love, Sweetheart and the rest of that nauseous Cant in which Men and their Wives are so fulsomely familiar' (IV.i.217±20). Without denying the wit of this scene, I would stress the importance of its ideas, the way in which Congreve articulates together, as one tightly braided argument, the pursuit of (self-) pleasure, the assertion of liberty, the denial of aection, and the restructuring of the social compact (and certainly not sacrament) of marriage. Nor is it hard to think, if we credit the analytic force of the old analogies between the body natural and the body politic and between the family and the state, that Congreve is reporting not only a new stage in the war of the sexes but a commonwealth of relations that has transformed the subject into the citizen. It had happened in the 1650s, and it would happen a century later in the colonies. This is not to claim that Congreve rejected the well practised idioms of Restoration comedy or the world of courtly wit that nourished that theatre. Congreve's dedication to the Earl of Montague is a beautifully managed essay in a very familiar idiom with all its implications of deference and dependence, and its claims of access to an intimate world of privileged exchange. Nor is it to argue, what must seem an even more remote case, that The Way of the World prophesies the Declaration of Independence or the American Revolution. But it is to suggest that Congreve is recording, draw what implications you will, a transformation of aective relations that reaches far beyond the theatrical spaces in which this play was performed or the domestic spaces which are inscribed in it, and an emptying out of the feelings and associations of an entire theory of the state. Toward the end of The Second Treatise of Government Locke had written of the reluctance with which men change foundations: `People are not so easily got out of their old Forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be 214


The Politics of Aectivity prevailed with to amend the acknowledg'd Faults, in the Frame they have been accustom'd to' (p. 432). Dryden had pressed to full rhetorical advantage the argument that ®ckleness of political humour drove the nation to rebellion every twenty years, and Locke is clearly defending against the notion that a campaign of pageants, slogans, and mere opinion would leave a people vulnerable to dissolution. It may not be entirely clear who had taken the more accurate measure of the volatility of the times (and the recent debate over deference and the confessional state in Augustan England has sharpened our awareness of the continuity of political culture over the whole of the early modern period),33 but surely Locke had grasped the quite unrevolutionary character of a people long ®xed in forms of so intimate and feeling a politics as the analogy between the body political and the body natural implies, a state founded not simply on bene®cence and reciprocity but on something like the passionate will to hierarchy, connectedness, and community. Nor is the eros of political desire so easy to write out of history. A series of political events and public personalities had exhausted its psychology by the end of the seventeenth century, but the body politic, for all its implications of violence and desire, and for all the unsettling odours of humanity that Swift discerned in the company of his fellow humans, seems to have a surprisingly, indeed shockingly, resilient life.

33

See J. C. D. Clark's English Society 1688±1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985); and the response to Clark's work in Joanna Innes, `Jonathan Clark, Social History and England's `Àncien Regime'' ', Past and Present cxv (1987), pp. 165±200; Linda Colley, `Salvaging Lost Causes', Times Literary Supplement (14 March 1986), p. 271; H. T. Dickinson's review of English Society 1655±1832, English Historical Review cii (1987), pp. 684±7; and J. P. Kenyon on English Society 1688±1832, Journal of Modern History lix (1987), pp. 590±92.

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SHAKESPEARE IN CONTEXT



Ìn thievish ways': Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Early Modern England HEATHER DUBROW

I

P

ROCLAIMING her resolve to remain faithful to Romeo, Juliet catalogues the dreadful fates she would accept in lieu of wedding his rival: O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From o the battlements of any tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house. (IV.i.77±81)1*

Few members of Shakespeare's original or twentieth-century audience would be likely to list a promenade ìn thievish ways' (79) as their favourite leisure activity, but Juliet's reaction to that prospect is surprisingly vehement: she implicitly likens such a walk to a particularly horrendous form of suicide, to close encounters with serpents and bears, and to the terrors of the grave, proleptically and vividly detailed later in the speech.2 Shakespeare's poems and plays frequently mention thievery, troping loss as a consequence of it and often though not invariably evoking it with a dread reminiscent of Juliet's. Some of these passages allude to literal instances of the crime; others brandish accusations of it as insults, demonstrating how blame may reveal anxieties unrelated to its ostensible subject, as does its step-sibling praise. Thus Egeus accuses the importunate and unfortunate Lysander of * I wish to thank Professors Donald Rowe and Linda Woodbridge for valuable assistance with this essay. 1

2

All quotations from Shakespeare are from G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974). English law carefully distinguishes the several crimes categorised as thievery; burglary, for example, involves entering a building under speci®ed conditions, and robbery, unlike larceny, includes violence or intimidation. Throughout this chapter I attempt to retain the legal usages of these terms and therefore use `thievery' for the overarching category even at the price of occasional repetitiveness.

219


Heather Dubrow stealing his daughter, a trope echoed by Brabantio and Iago. Attempting to justify his mistreatment of Rosalind, Duke Ferdinand declares to Celia, `she robs thee of thy name' (I.iii.80). Richard II repeatedly labels Bolingbroke a thief, and Hamlet describes his stepfather as à cutpurse of the empire' (III.iv.99). Timon asserts that sun, sea, and earth are all thieves, ending his embittered diatribe on the accusation, Àll that you meet are thieves' (IV.iii.446). Despite the current critical interest in materiality and in many forms of transgression, however, by and large Shakespeare's extensive commentaries on thievery are either overlooked or mentioned in passing; thus essays on The Rape of Lucrece generally discuss this metaphor for Tarquin's behaviour only brie¯y, and analyses of the Henriad typically rehearse the important but familiar point that the court no less than the tavern is a den of robbers.3 References to thievery recur with particular frequency in Shakespeare's sonnets, and these allusions gloss and are glossed by the preoccupation with that crime in Tudor and Stuart England. Hence exploring how and why the sequence engages with thievery can provide new perspectives on these texts, on other Shakespearean poems and plays, and on their culture. Studying this felony also raises broader issues that currently concern many critics, notably ambivalences about agency, the workings of place and displacement, and the breakdown of systems of classi®cation that has recently been termed a `category crisis'.4 Moreover, a journey down the `thievish ways' of the sonnets can shed light on the current state of the academic ®eld variously and contentiously known as èarly modern studies' and `the Renaissance'. In particular, examining those poems demonstrates that the traditional study of formal strategies and the emphasis on history and politics in contemporary critical practice can and should be symbiotic, not antithetical. The imputed con¯ict between such approaches owes more to the politics of the academy itself than to the workings of the methodologies in question. II

The signi®cance of thievery in Tudor and Stuart England is manifest in the wide range of documents ± notably records of indictments, royal proclamations, manuals for magistrates, and the literature of roguery ± that allude to it. Among the most revealing are the records of the assize courts, which detail the names and occupations of indicted defendants and the disposition of the 3

4

One important exception, which I read only after completing this chapter, is the discussion of thievery in Patricia Parker, Shakespeare From the Margins: Language, Culture, Context (Chicago, 1996), esp. pp. 121±31, 150±74. The contexts she establishes for that crime, which include adultery, conveying, and translating, are signi®cantly dierent from but compatible with my own emphases. The concept has been deployed by a number of critics; one particularly in¯uential instance is Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York, 1992).

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets cases. I am not of course claiming these records lend themselves to a positivistic reading; indeed, they oer an intriguing test case for the evidentiary problems of literary and cultural history. Their principal editor, James Cockburn, admits their lacunae, notably the fact that most records for Tudor and Stuart England refer only to the home counties; other historians have uncovered such errors as a telling tendency to ascribe the occupation `labourer' to defendants who apparently were in other lines of work.5 Moreover, students of crime, who disagree on almost everything else, are united in lamenting the epistemological dangers caused by the so-called `dark ®gure' of unreported crimes that inevitably aects these and many other records. Poststructuralism in general and pragmatics in particular enjoin us to interpret such records not as factual indications of what crimes occurred but rather as indications of what members of a certain community agreed to call and prosecute as a crime. Yet such caveats impel students of Tudor and Stuart culture to read the assize records with caution, not to avoid reading them at all. For example, the lack of such documents for northern counties delimits but does not destroy their value in studying other areas of England. And in this instance as in so many others, the position that a particular observer or community constructs a so-called fact needs to be distinguished from the less persuasive claim that no material reality exists separate from those constructions, a distinction that even, or especially, Richard Rorty acknowledges;6 hence admitting that crime is a constructed category does not preclude adducing the assize records for useful data about its material manifestations. Some evidence suggests that market towns, a category that includes Stratford-upon-Avon, suered an unusually high incidence of theft; Shakespeare's familiarity with thievery in its most literal sense may well have gone back to his childhood in Stratford, warning us against the tendency, common in some though not all new historicist writing, to focus on London to the exclusion of other areas.7 But in any event the assize records testify that thievery in its various forms ± burglary, robbery, purse-snatching, horse stealing, and so on ± was the principal felony throughout the Tudor and 5

6 7

The literature evaluating these records is extensive. See, e.g., J. M. Beattie, `The Pattern of Crime in England 1600±1800', Past and Present lxii (1974), pp. 52±8; J. S. Cockburn, `The Nature and Incidence of Crime in England 1559±1625: A Preliminary Survey', in J. S. Cockburn, ed., Crime in England 1550±1800 (Princeton, 1977), esp. pp. 49±55; V. A. C. Gatrell and T. B. Hadden, `Criminal Statistics and Their Interpretation', in Nineteenth-Century Society: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for the Study of Social Data, ed. E. A. Wrigley (Cambridge, 1972); J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550±1750 (London, 1984), esp. Chapters 1, 3. The issue of the designation `labourer' is discussed in Victor Bailey, `Crime, Criminal Justice and Authority in England', Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History xl (1980), p. 39. See, e.g., Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 4±5. On the prevalence of crime in market towns, see Joel Samaha, Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The Case of Elizabethan Essex (New York, 1974) p. 21.

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Heather Dubrow Stuart periods in the counties for which such texts survive. The older view that crimes of violence dominated the sixteenth and seventeenth century, to be succeeded by crimes against property in the succeeding century, is still upheld by certain criminologists, particularly French scholars; students of crime in England, however, typically cite the assize documents to indicate that most crimes during those centuries were in fact against property. In Essex, Joel Samaha reports, ninety percent of all reported felonies fell into that category.8 Assize transcripts also repeatedly demonstrate that a high proportion of crimes was committed by members of the same or adjoining communities ± a pattern that, as I will suggest, renders cultural myths about rogues and vagabonds, outsiders who intrude on the pastoral serenity of a community, especially revealing. Many of these crimes were petty robberies of goods such as food, making it harder to catch the perpetrator or even be sure the crime had occurred; in the case of food, the miscreant might well consume the incriminating evidence long before being apprehended. Hence a number of instances of thievery in small towns were attended with uncertainty ± did someone in the family, not a marauder, eat the pie? Poststructuralist doubt, like charity, begins at home. There is considerable evidence of an increase in crime during the Elizabethan period, though this may be more true of some counties than others. In particular, J. A. Sharpe asserts that crimes against property rose to a peak in the 1590s and possibly were also high in some years of James' reign.9 This increase may well have been especially marked in London.10 Contemporary documents suggest that such a change was certainly perceived in some quarters ± or that the perception was encouraged as a rationale for stringent legislation. Thus a royal proclamation against handguns dated 1600 declares that `great and manifold disorders, insolencies, robberies, and murders have grown and been committed within this realm and other her majesty's dominions by the common carrying and use of guns'.11 It is suggestive that many authorities document a rise in crime in the late 1590s, the very years the Henriad was being performed; Shakespeare's original audience may well have feared that many avenues of their city were turning into Juliet's `thievish ways'. Burglary, which typically involved entry into a dwelling at night, was punished more severely than many other types of robbery;12 twentieth8 9

10 11

12

Samaha, Law and Order, p. 22. J. A. Sharpe, `The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Review of the Field', Social History vii (1982), p. 190. J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, p. 56. Tudor Royal Proclamations: The Later Tudors, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, C. S. V. (New Haven, 1969), III.218 (no. 804). See, e.g., Cynthia B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 169±71.

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets century sociologists report that victims often react with special anxiety to that crime.13 The intense responses in both cultures probably stem, at least in part, from the burglar's violation of a home, a private space. Thus that felon challenges yet another distinction, the divide between inside and outside; all crime is transgression, and the burglar literally trangresses in the sense of stepping over a boundary. Moreover, the perpetrator intrudes into a `forfended place' (King Lear V.i.11), a phrase Regan deploys in the dierent but not unrelated context of Edmund's adulteries; the connections between violating a house and a woman's body become explicit in The Rape of Lucrece, as well as in several documents I will examine shortly. Not only the nature of the crime but also the status of the accused oender aected how rigorously his or her oence was prosecuted and punished. Throughout much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, loopholes in the law and ineciencies allowed defendants variously to escape any punishment and to avoid the most severe penalties; for example, many convicted criminals escaped hanging by relying on bene®t of clergy, the procedure by which a defendant could evade execution by proving that he or she could read and hence was ostensibly a clergyman. A number of theories have been adduced to explain why a culture that clearly feared crime so deeply was lenient in such instances; among the most persuasive are the arguments that many oenders were indigent neighbours and hence evoked sympathy.14 As we will see, the tension between vigorous condemnation and exculpation is staged as well in Shakespeare's sonnets. Conversely, the assize records repeatedly demonstrate that oenders who were outsiders to the community were more likely to be prosecuted sedulously and sentenced harshly than its members.15 The attitudes behind such statistics are manifest in the fascinating manual on law enforcement that William Lambard published in 1581, Eirenarcha. He assures justices that they may seize the goods of ànye outlandishe persons (calling themselves Egiptians)'.16 Notice that the covert pun òutlandishe' links social transgression and the Other who is literally from an outlying land. Notice too that the phrase `calling themselves' implies that their title may itself involve deceit. This connection between crime and a deceptive self13

14 15

16

See Arthur J. Lurigio, Àre All Victims Alike? The Adverse, Generalised, and Dierential Impact of Crime', Crime and Delinquency xxxiii (1987), p. 464; Dean G. Kilpatrick, Benjamin E. Saunders, Lois J. Veronen, Connie L. Best, Judith M. Von, et al., `Criminal Victimisation: Lifetime Prevalence, Reporting to Police, and Psychological Impact', Crime and Delinquency xxiii (1987), esp. p. 485. See, e.g., Herrup, The Common Peace, pp. 31±3. This is one of the few issues on which students of crime come close to unanimity. See, e.g., Cynthia B. Herrup, `Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England', Past and Present cvi (1985), p. 118. Williard Lambard, Eirenarcha: Or of The Oce of the Justices of Peace (London, 1581), p. 198. Additional references to this book will appear within my text. In citing all Renaissance texts, I retain the original spelling but regularise i/j and u/v.

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Heather Dubrow fashioning appears in many other cultural texts; royal proclamations, for example, repeatedly suggest that vagrants, never having seen military service, pretend to be demobilised soldiers. And it is no accident that near the beginning of 1 Henry IV Falsta at once reveals and conceals his role as thief by assigning a series of names to it. Such misrepresentations were particularly threatening, I suggest, because they undermine the hope that crime, that arena of epistemological uncertainty, can be controlled by recognising, classifying, and labelling its perpetrators (some early modern treatises even list the names of putative villains) ± a hope that also impels the emphasis on line-ups in popular twentieth-century treatments of crime, notably televised police dramas. Lambard's concern about outsiders recurs in a book that he published three years later, The Duties of Constables. Here Lambard asserts that ocers `may also arrest such strange persons as do walke abroade in the night season'.17 In the late sixteenth century, `strange' could mean `belonging to another country', `belonging to some other place or neighbourhood', ùnknown, unfamiliar', and àbnormal'.18 Thus the word both records and enacts the process of Othering by linking the foreigner to the deviant and associating the unknown with the abnormal. To the extent that these outsiders are from a dierent neighbourhood or country, they are menacingly displaced both geographically and temporally: they have entered a community where they do not belong, and arguably Lambard is also implying that by walking at night they are temporally as well as spatially out of place. Might not Lambard's vehemency in denouncing outsiders attempt to de¯ect onto them the transgressions that he is loathe to associate with intimates and neighbours? As the ¯ood of legislation on the subject testi®es, during the English Renaissance considerable anxiety also swirled around one particular genre of outsider, those people described in contemporary texts as rogues and vagabonds.19 These groups, repeatedly mentioned both in laws and in the 17

18 19

William Lambard, The Duties of Constables, Borsholders, Tithing-men, and Such Other Lowe Ministers of the Peace (London, 1584), p. 13. OED, s.v. `strange'. I am indebted to the work of the literary critics who have commented on the literature of roguery in recent years; they have, however, devoted little attention to the issue of thievery. Thomas Harman, a sixteenth-century writer who describes rogues and vagabonds, is discussed in one of Stephen Greenblatt's most in¯uential essays, Ìnvisible Bullets', which ®rst appeared in Glyph viii (1981), pp. 40±61; was reprinted in revised form in a number of collections, including Patricia Parker and Georey Hartman, eds., Shakespeare and the Question of Theory (New York, 1985), and Peter Erickson and CoppeÂlia Kahn, eds., Shakespeare's `Rough Magic': Renaissance Essays in Honor of C. L. Barber (Newark, 1985); and also appears in Greenblatt's Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, 1988). Greenblatt's suggestion that Harman is as much a dissembler as the villains he chronicles might be related to my arguments about insiders and outsiders. Recent studies of rogues and vagabonds include William C. Carroll, Fat King, Lean Beggar: Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca, 1996); Patricia Fumerton, `Not Home: Alehouses, Vagrancy, and Broadside Ballads', a paper presented in 1995 at the

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets pamphlets to which I will turn shortly, were represented as shiftless criminals and often as thieves; vagabonds or vagrants in particular were portrayed as roving far from their original homes to prey on honest citizens by begging and committing crimes. Yet thieves were not necessarily perceived as vagrants or rogues in the eyes of Tudor and Stuart England; indeed, as I have suggested, indictment records demonstrate that oenders typically were not vagrants but rather insiders in the sense of members of the community and were clearly recognised as such. That fact, however, makes rogues and vagabonds more, not less, important to an analysis of the texts of thievery. For these two groups, I will argue, were represented in the ways they were in part because their culture was attempting to suppress the fear that crime was often, so to speak, an inside job. A range of documents has been adduced in studying rogues and vagrants. The widely respected work by the social historian A. L. Beier relies heavily on arrest records and legislation attempting to control the imputed threats in question.20 Among the most tempting sources of information, however, are lively accounts of the habits of these groups written by contemporary observers. An early contribution to this subgenre of the picaresque is Thomas Harman's Caveat for Commen Cursetors (1566±1567).21 Robert Greene recounts the tricks and habits he ascribes to rogues in his three cony-catching pamphlets, A Notable Discovery of Cosenage (1591), The Second Part of Conny-Catching (1591; rev. edn 1592), and The Thirde and Last Part of Conny-Catching (1592).22 The appearance of these three texts within two years suggests the popularity of their subject matter. Among the many other pamphlets responding to and intensifying that popularity are Thomas Dekker's Belman of London (1608) and its sequel, Lanthorne and Candlelight (1608). Until the ®nal decades of the twentieth century, historians and literary critics regularly cited such texts as a largely accurate portrait of an underclass.23 More recently, many social historians have persuasively insisted that

20

21

22

23

`Material London ca. 1600' conference at the Folger Institute (I am grateful to her for making her essay available to me before publication); Barbara A. Mowat, `Rogues, Shepherds, and the Counterfeit Distressed: Texts and Infracontexts of The Winter's Tale 4.3', Shakespeare Studies xxii (1994), pp. 58±76. A. L. Beier, `Vagrants and the Social Order in Elizabethan England', Past and Present lxiv (1974), pp. 3±29, and Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560±1640 (London, 1985). The text was apparently originally published in 1566, but the only extant version is dated 1567. The publication history of these treatises is also complex and vexed. See Francis R. Johnson, `The Editions of Robert Greene's Three Parts of ``Conny-Catching'': A Bibliographical Analysis', The Library ix (1954), pp. 17±24. See, e.g., Gamini Salgado, The Elizabethan Underworld (London and Totowa, N. J., 1977); also cf. the defence, though quali®ed, of the accuracy of these pamphlets in Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (1913; rpt. London, 1967), pp. 77±8.

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Heather Dubrow the type of organised crime that Dekker, Greene, and others detail was far less prevalent than those writers suggest, if indeed it existed at all.24 Crime, they remind us, was typically the work of local individuals or unorganised small groups, not the large gangs evoked in contemporary literature on the subject. But to fault the literature of roguery as inaccurate is not to dismiss it as useless. As I noted, the miscreants in question are often presented as thieves, and it is precisely the constructedness of the treatises that makes them valuable for studying thievery in Shakespeare's sonnets and his culture. For that literature shows us how some in¯uential writers wanted to perceive crime in general and the felony on which this chapter concentrates in particular ± or how they wanted to persuade their readers to perceive those subjects. In perusing these texts, we can watch stereotypes being created, ideology being shaped.25 Kai T. Erickson has argued, provocatively if not wholly persuasively, that transgression was not successfully controlled in Puritan culture because the work it performed in allowing the culture to de®ne its own social boundaries was more valuable than the damage it wrecked.26 Similarly, one might speculate that the cultural work performed by the myths surrounding roguery and vagrancy outweighed the fear they excited. Hence the popularity of the literature on the subjects ± and hence the imperative to explore it despite all the caveats oered by social historians. The literature of roguery addresses the fear that the thief is really the boy next door by suggesting that he ± and, signi®cantly, often she as well ± is in many senses an outsider. Displaced in more ways than one, rogues and vagabonds are seen as coming from a distant area: sometimes what is described simply as the north and sometimes Ireland. (Despite ± or more likely because of ± recent interest in Ireland among students of early modern literature and culture, the construction of a broader and no less signi®cant category, the north, has not received the attention it deserves.) On the issue of geographical origins if not on many other questions, contemporary accounts of roguery accord with other sources of information, such as the parish records that indicate that migrants were from areas other than the home 24

25

26

Among the many books and articles presenting this argument are Bailey, `Crime, Criminal Justice and Authority in England', esp. 37±8; and two studies by A. L. Beier: `Vagrants and the Social Order'; Masterless Men, esp. Chapter 8. John L. McMullan attempts to negotiate a middle-of-the-road position on the existence of the type of oences the literature of roguery details; he argues that organised crime did exist but was local rather than constituting a uni®ed subculture (`Criminal Organisation in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century London', Social Problems xxix (1982), pp. 311±23; The Canting Crew: London's Criminal Underworld 1550±1700 (New Brunswick, 1984) ). His arguments are, however, limited by their lack of speci®city and precision about dates. Similarly, in studying criminal biographies from a somewhat later period, Lincoln B. Faller traces how they developed myths (Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987) ). Kai T. Erickson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York, 1966), esp. Chapter 1.

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets counties; the extensive legislation generated by Elizabethan fears of migrants and the unemployed insists on returning miscreants to the place of their birth or last employment.27 This geographical Othering is mirrored by more implicit connections between the rogues and vagabonds on the one hand and Catholics on the other: Dekker and Greene both repeatedly refer to lockpicking, one of several types of thievery described in their treatises, as the `black art', and a number of pamphlets stress the secrecy and cunning of rogues and vagabonds, thus echoing commonplace condemnations of Catholics as sorcerers and secretive villains.28 Though such parallels between Catholics and rogues remain at best subterranean in the treatises in question, the association of Spenser's Abessa with robbery buttresses the suggestion that anti-Catholicism is in play, and, more to the point, at work, in these and similar descriptions of miscreants. An intriguing passage in Harman's Caveat for Commen Cursetors recasts the geographical dichotomy of self and stranger in dierent spatial terms: `When Night approched y poore housholders repaired home to their houses, the other wayfaring bolde beggers remayned all night in the barne';29 shortly afterwards Harman adds the observation, èvery of them havinge his woman' (sig. A3v). These references to barns associate the animal-like sexuality of the rogues and vagabonds with the abodes of animals. Displaced from their customary homes, these groups are associated with a site that is symbolically ®tting. Their bedchamber appropriately signals and reinforces their status as outsiders: they not only come from outlying areas in England but also sleep in outbuildings. One of the basic premises of Aristotelian philosophy can explicate the description of those bedchambers: Aristotle repeatedly associates kind and place, maintaining that one characteristic of a given kind is to belong in a particular place, so that, for example, rocks will fall to the ground because that is their proper position. The outsiders in question deviate from their kind by animal-like behaviour, and this deviation is signalled by their sleeping in the wrong place, the outbuildings usually reserved for animals. Hence here, as in many other instances, the twin issues traced in this chapter, displacement and category crises, are closely related. Immediately after this passage, a suggestively ambiguous phrase connects rogues and vagabonds with sexual transgression, though the exact form of behavior being described is unclear. Èvery of them havinge his woman,' Harman writes, èxcept it were two wemen that lay alone to gether for some especyall cause' (sig. A3v). If this phrase does in fact represent one of the very 27

28

29

For example, in `Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598±1664', Paul A. Slack reports that a group of Salisbury vagrants contained a cohort of Irishmen (Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxvii (1974), p. 365). For this usage of `black art', see, e.g., the title page of Greene's Second Part of Conny-Catching (London, 1591). Thomas Harman, A Caveat for Commen Cursetors (London, 1566), sig. A3v. Subsequent references to this book will appear within my text.

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Heather Dubrow few allusions to lesbianism in Tudor culture, it suggests that the women are outsiders in two senses: they are estranged both from conventional morality and from the heterosexual amorality of their own social group. This marginality is again ®gured by spatial estrangement in the tantalising oxymoron àlone together'. The lines are themselves linguistically transgressive in the way they both tempt and resist interpretation: do they suggest that, motivated by morality, these women are avoiding the customary sexual libidinousness of their cohorts ± or that they are indulging in their own lesbian version of it? Or is there perhaps a hint that they are menstruating and hence following one social norm, at least, in avoiding men? Notice how the words `for some especyall cause' tease us, hinting at an explanation they do not oer. Thieves' cant, a subject on which the tracts in question typically dwell at length, also involves the contrast between insiders and outsiders that is so central to crime in general and thievery in particular. Rogues talk what Harman's Caveat for Commen Cursetors labels `pedlers Frenche' (sig. A4); this term, echoed in other contemporary accounts, establishes its speakers as outsiders both socially and nationally. The assumption that they are foreigners in more ways than one is reinforced by the references to Egyptians. Yet rogues and vagabonds, like other criminals in Tudor and Stuart England, represent and provoke category crises, and the reassuring classi®cation of them as outsiders is a case in point. Indeed, the very characteristics that render rogues and vagabonds outsiders could be reinterpreted to classify them as both inside and outside at once, thus replicating the anxiety that a criminal is really a neighbour or, to put it another way, that a stranger is a native. If the language attributed to these groups is in one sense determinedly foreign, nonetheless English words are used: linguistically as well as in so many other ways, the rogues and vagabonds are inside and outside at once. Similarly, throughout the cony-catching pamphlets Greene refers to the practices associated with particular crimes as `laws', a usage that other writers on the subject adopt as well.30 Embodying yet another category crisis, this term unresolvably confounds the illegal and the legal ± thus again confounding outside and inside as well. Nor are rogues ®rmly categorised as unrelievedly evil. The cony-catching pamphlets, for all their surface morality, take pleasure in the cleverness and humour of the tricks they recount; the title page of Dekker's Belman of London promises that what follows is `delightfull for all men to Reade'.31 The blurring of the categories in which rogues and villains are cast ± outsiders segue into insiders, per®dious knaves into lovable tricksters ± involves a kind of epistemological displacement, yet another sense in which place is relevant. Although issues about displaced persons and blurred categories are germane to many types of criminal transgression besides thievery, those questions are particularly relevant to that felony. For 30 31

See, e.g., Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Coosenage (London, 1591), pp. 8±9. [Thomas Dekker], The Belman of London (London, 1608).

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets arguably not the least reason for the cultural preoccupation with thievery is that it renders such issues literal and material in that the thief actually eects the displacement of property. III

Thievery is as central to Shakespeare's sonnets as it is to the literature of roguery and other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century commentaries on crime, and questions of place and displacement and insiders and outsiders recur in these lyrics as well. For Shakespeare's sequence evokes a veritable crime wave, with thievery the primary oence. Love and beauty are cast as robbers ± À man in hue all hues in his controlling, / Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth' (20.7±8). The process of taking away is troped as robbery: `Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight' (36.8). The best approach to thievery in these poems, however, is close reading, for some of the most signi®cant allusions to that crime, like its most successful perpetrators, work subtly and even stealthily. Sonnet 35 is a dense lyric that encapsulates the negotiations, lamentations, and rationalisations that thievery typically evokes both in Shakespeare's other poems and in his plays: No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done: Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud, Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorizing thy trespass with compare, Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, Excusing [thy] sins more than [thy] sins are; For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense ± Thy adverse party is thy advocate ± And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence. Such civil war is in my love and hate, That I an accessary needs must be To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

This sonnet, like so many of Shakespeare's other texts, presents thievery not as an isolated incident but as an unending chain of events of which the actual alienation of property is but the beginning; it involves a long process that includes, even pivots on, the reactions and judgments of the victims. For they become implicated by excusing or even repeating the crimes; one robbery leads to another as inexorably as in the Henriad. Or, to put it another way, the sonnet sequence that is repeatedly drawn towards lyric repetition rather than the linearity and the closural propensities often (though not always) associated with narrative, the sonnet sequence whose couplets so often 229


Heather Dubrow twist back to an earlier unresolved concern, evokes a crime that is similarly circular rather than linear. Indeed, as I will suggest, thievery is not only an incident within several sonnets but also a metaphor for the workings of the genre itself. In Sonnet 35, as in many plays by Shakespeare and many texts from his culture, the repetitions of thievery involve epistemological and other types of instability. Categories and the ethical judgments grounded in them are established only to be undermined, and contrasts are announced, then erased. Agency, always unstable in this sequence, is particularly so in poems involving thievery, appearing and disappearing repeatedly within a single poem. The verbs in the ®rst line of Sonnet 35 insist on linearity: the addressee has been grieved in the past but need not be in the future, and the act occasioning that sorrow can be ®rmly located in the past through the tense of `hast done' (l. 1). The rest of the quatrain performs a cognate act of stabilising by assigning qualities to classes of objects in the natural world. Thus in lieu of the nominalism implied elsewhere in the sequence, this quatrain and the line that immediately succeeds it, Àll men make faults' (l. 5), presume a realist position and the ensuing possibility of predication. Or, to put it another way, these lines gesture towards a world of ®xed attributes and hence the possibility of stable valuation, an assumption attacked later in this sonnet and throughout the sequence.32 Thus in a sense the sonnet enacts in miniature the movement from a stable world of idealised vision to one of duplicity that Joel Fineman traces in the sequences as a whole.33 But the ®rst quatrain also hints at the forces that will challenge the order it ostensibly establishes. `Roses have thorns' (l. 2), for example, at once ®rmly establishes the attributes of the ¯ower in question and associates attribution with paradox. When roses have thorns, presumably thieves may be sweet. Similarly, whereas `hast done' (l. 1) positions the addressee's guilt in the past, the thorns, mud, stains, and canker coexist with their hosts in the present. Notice too that the reference to the canker suggests yet another entry into a place where the intruder does not belong; more speci®cally, Jean de Meun and Blake would both remind us that roses often trope the female body, though these resonances remain subterranean at best here. The second quatrain expands the conception of guilt in the poem and in so doing initiates the more overt challenge to categories that structures this lyric. The word `trespass' (l. 6) not only introduces religious connotations, thus linking sin and crime as Shakespeare does in Henry V when Bardolph steals the pax from the church, but also reinforces the connection between those two misdeeds and going where one does not belong, into a forfended place. 32

33

The issue of valuation in the sonnets is discussed in Lars Engle, Shakespearean Pragmatism: Market of His Time (Chicago, 1993), Chapter 2. This shift is one of the central arguments of Joel Fineman, Shakespeare's Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets (Berkeley, 1986).

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets More to our purposes now, the second quatrain challenges the distinction between judge and wrongdoer that was so ®rmly established in the opening line. The act of contrasting, clearly, is as perilous as `compare' (l. 6). Or, to put it another way, the elision between insider and outsider that is so central to the ideology of thievery here metamorphoses into an elision of the self and other who were ®rmly contrasted in the opening. The temporality of the opening comes under attack as well: a clear division of past, present, and future, with the fault ®rmly located in the past, is replaced by a world of continuing error. No fewer than four present participles occur within the four lines of the quatrain. The breakdown of categories and blurring of apparent contrasts that I traced in lines four through eight accelerates in the third quatrain. `Sense' (l. 9) is the opposite of `sensual fault' (l. 9) if one glosses it as `good judgment', but it could of course refer to sensuality itself. An adverse party becomes an advocate. `Myself ' in line eleven could either refer to the addressee, who is a kind of second self, or more literally to the speaker, so the distinction between the two of them is yet another victim of the pervasive erosion. Not only categories but also agency blur in `'gainst myself a lawful plea commence' (l. 11): the speaker becomes at once subject and object. Unsettling the customary sonnet structure by establishing a major syntactical break after line eleven rather than line twelve, the conclusion of the poem also further unsettles systems of classi®cation and judgment. The thief and his advocate/accessory are united through the connotations of `civil war' (l. 12) even as the deictic in `that sweet thief ' (l. 14) attempts to re-establish the distance between speaker and addressee that seemed so clear in line one. That ®nal line replicates the failed attempt to create neat contrasts in another way as well: `sweet thief ' and `sourly robs' may sound at ®rst like a textbook example of that process, but while the adjective and adverb in the two phrases in question are clear opposites to each other, the nouns are not. The reader is primed by the syntax to expect something like `sweet thief who sourly gives'. Similarly, the Petrarchan oxymoron `sweet thief ' both creates and challenges the opposites it links (if the thief is sweet, is he really a thief? if he is a thief, is he really sweet?) The destabilisation of categories again accompanies the destabilisation of agency in this lyric. The very role of accessory both acknowledges and delimits agency. From another perspective, the speaker who assumed the role of judge in the ®rst quatrain, who traced his responsibility through the chain of present participles in the second one, here writes, `needs must be' (l. 13). It is the thief who is the clear-cut agent in the concluding line ± but also the thief who once again is blamed, for the speaker now excuses himself.34 Responsibility is shifted from the felon to his victim, as it so often is in the cultural 34

Compare Stephen Booth's comments on the competitive assigning of guilt in this poem (Stephen Booth, ed., Shakespeare's Sonnets (New Haven, 1977), pp. 191±2.

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Heather Dubrow texts I examined. And that ®nal line eects yet another reversal: the poem opened on `that which thou hast done', thus assigning the fault to the past, but `thief ' opens the possibility of repeated depredations ± an apt ending to a poem that stages the contagion of a continuing process of excusing and erring. Sonnet 35 suggests, then, that thievery generates not only an immediate deprivation but also long-term and continuing losses. Not the least of them is the demolition of the stable judgments that rest on a secure separation of good and evil and of victim and criminal. In lieu of such adjudications, the poem skids among condemnation, forgiveness, and confused combinations of those responses. This pattern is in some ways similar to the swerves between disapproval and sympathy that appear in the literature of roguery and in the legal system; the latter was characterised both by severe penalties and by many routes for escaping them. And this movement between accusation and forgiveness recurs repeatedly in Shakespeare's other sonnets and his plays. Sonnet 40 replicates both the emphasis on judging a criminal and the problems that ensue in Sonnet 35. Its opening line, `Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all', ostensibly accepts what will later be described as thievery, recon®guring it as accepting a gift. The unresolved tensions in that rede®nition emerge most clearly in the third quatrain: I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty; And yet love knows it is a greater grief To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

This poem, like Sonnet 35, demonstrates that not the least danger attendant on walking in Juliet's `thievish ways' (IV.i.79) is the peril of excusing the very crimes from which one suers. That danger is enacted in the apparent oxymoron `gentle thief ' (l. 9). To the extent that the adjective and noun do contradict each other, they demonstrate the ways the process of excusing has distorted the speaker's judgments. If they are not contradictory, however, they signal other types of distortion. Perhaps this thievery is dangerous because the apparent gentleness of the perpetrator conceals the crime at the same time that the apparent gentleness of the speaker permits it. This possibility remains speculative, but the odd introduction of the adjective `known' in line twelve implies that its secrecy is one reason love's wrong is so painful. Or `gentle' (l. 9) may retain its social connotations, introducing the problem of whether in this instance thievery is the province of the privileged rather than the underclass that the literature of roguery is so concerned to de®ne and that Shakespeare himself invokes in the phrase `vulgar thief ' (l. 8) in Sonnet 48. This particular category crisis recurs in the Henriad. The sonnets I have examined so far concentrate mainly on the guilt of the 232


Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets party who excuses the thief and the resulting fractures in subjectivity. In Sonnet 48 the guilt of the addressee is complicated in comparable ways and with comparable results: How careful was I, when I took my way, Each tri¯e under truest bars to thrust, That to my use it might unused stay From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust! But thou, to whom my jewels tri¯es are, Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief, Thou best of dearest, and mine only care, Art left the prey of every vulgar thief. Thee have I not lock'd up in any chest, Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art, Within the gentle closure of my breast, From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part, And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear, For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

Like Sonnet 35, this poem is structured around a series of unstable contrasts. The security of `truest' (l. 2), `sure wards of trust' (l. 4), and `truth' (l. 14) is played against the threats of `hands of falsehood' (l. 4) and the connotations of `prey' (l. 8). But these contrasts break down when `truth proves thievish' (l. 14). Similarly, the addressee is contrasted with the thieves who threaten that most precious jewel of all. Yet the poem hints that this jewel may be responsible, at least in part, for its own hoist. As Stephen Booth has pointed out, `to whom my jewels tri¯es are' (l. 5) carries a secondary, subterranean meaning of ìn whose estimation', and the statement in line 12 that the addressee may depart àt pleasure' (l. 12) raises the possibility that her or his sensuality is the source of the theft.35 In a poem that is about trust and its discontents (`sure wards of trust' (4) suggests both secure locks and reliability in a more literal sense), readers discover that they cannot trust apparent oppositions. As in Sonnet 35, the category crises of thievery breed a world of uncertainty. `Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art' (l. 10) enacts the same paradox of knowing and unknowing that Shakespeare eects in the second line of Sonnet 138, Ì do believe her, though I know she lies'.36 It is ®tting that the couplet incorporates the phrase Ì fear' (l. 13), intensifying that verb through its status as a rhyme word. As I have indicated before, in Shakespeare's texts as in his culture, thievery often involves suspicion and fear rather than certainty. This poem ± like so many of Shakespeare's sonnets ± is about not a realised loss but the suspicion that it has occurred or may shortly 35 36

Booth, Shakespeare's Sonnets, pp. 211, 212. I am indebted to John Klause for useful comments about Sonnet 138, as well as many other questions about these sonnets.

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Heather Dubrow occur. That suspicion feeds on the paradoxical workings of locks and chests: do they protect persons within from an outside marauder or imprison them lest they wreck harm themselves? The references to locking in this poem position it within a complex pattern of tropes concerning husbandry, protection, using, spending, locking, and releasing.37 The Parable of the Talents is invoked explicitly in Sonnet 94 but implicitly at many other junctures. On the one hand, the sequence advocates a husbandry that involves not storing but sharing: `Thy unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee' (4.13). That which is locked away is presented as sel®sh, wasted. Edward Hubler has termed this dynamic, `the economy of the closed heart'.38 But his study neglects the other side of this pattern, the celebration of the `sweet up-locked treasure' (52.2). Those who walk in thievish ways should provide themselves with the best possible security systems, and so these poems dwell on the need to lock one's valuables in literal strongboxes and within that other chest the heart. Indeed, they are ®lled with images of chests, vials, and other enclosures for precious objects.39 Within two lines Sonnet 92 encapsulates several of the tensions I have been tracing: `But do thy worst to steal thyself away, / For term of life thou art assured mine'. On one level the verb `steal' is reassuring: it implies that the beloved is indeed the possession of the speaker, an implication buttressed in the subsequent line, and possession is nine-tenths of this sonnet. But in another sense that verb renders possession ± and so much else ± dubious. This is one of the many occasions when Shakespeare's poems and dramas play on `steal' in the double senses of `to rob' and `to depart secretly'. Thus he recalls the linkage between burglary and the concealment permitted by night that contributes to the fear and loathing excited with that crime. Thus too he yet again associates thievery less with the clear-cut grief of an indisputable loss than with the uncertainty and confusion created by secrecy and manifest in responses to an event that may or may not have happened. The victim's reactions to thievery, I have stressed, are as important a consequence of the crime as the depredations of the thief. Equally signi®cant is the treatment of agency in the ®rst line of Sonnet 92: `But do thy worst to steal thyself away'. The addressee is both subject and object, both thief and prey. As in Sonnet 48, that beloved person is at once the precious object that may become the prey of a thief and an accessory to the crime, if not the very criminal. For all the anger that charges the line, those 37

38 39

Compare Thomas M. Greene's perceptive analysis of patterns of cost and expense in the poems (`Pitiful Thrivers: Failed Husbandry in the Sonnets', in Patricia Parker and Georey Hartman, eds., Shakespeare and the Question of Theory (New York, 1985) ). Edward Hubler, The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Princeton, 1952), 95±109. References to storage containers are also noted by Bruce R. Smith in Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics (Chicago, 1991), pp. 254±5. He suggests that the locked treasure may sometimes refer to the male genitals.

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets double roles also moderate guilt, much as Sonnet 35 shifts back and forth nervously between blaming and excusing. In the sonnets I have scrutinised closely, the characteristics of thievery include secrecy and a non-linear pattern of repeated robberies or repeated attempts to excuse them; its consequences include con¯ations of apparently opposite categories and confusions about agency that are both source and result of confusions about guilt. These qualities recur in the many brief references to that crime that are threaded through this cycle of poems. Sonnet 99, for example, is on one level a courtly compliment that waltzes to the music of the conceit that all the beauties of nature derive from the beloved ± `buds of marjerom had stol'n thy hair' (l. 7), and so on. That pleasing if unoriginal premise explains why the violet is called `Sweet thief ' (l. 2). These threats to categories and the ethical judgments that result from them remain only the faintest hint in this tri¯ing tri¯e of a poem. And yet the context of references to thievery in other Shakespearean sonnets activates the destabilisation latent in Sonnet 99; it becomes an undertow that can draw us a little nearer the deep waters of deceit and treachery in other sonnets. Placing these opening lines in the context of A Midsummer Night's Dream brings other disturbing possibilities to the surface. When Titania orders her retinue to keep Bottom in something other than the style to which he is accustomed, her instructions take for granted a form of thievery: The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees. And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, ... And pluck the wings from painted butter¯ies, To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. (III.i.168±9, 172±3)

Even the most committed defender of animal rights should be able to admit that these tropes are primarily playful; the tone of the passage mandates against solemn disapproval. And yet these lines, like so much else in the woods, invoke violence and loss in a context where they could easily have been avoided: Titania might well have spoken of borrowing the honey-bags from willing bees and asking the butter¯ies to do the fanning themselves. Instead she, like the speaker in Sonnet 99, creates a world of scarcity and competition whose denizens steal rather than share. It is what Katharine Eisaman Maus describes in the very dierent context of Jonson's plays and poems as an economy of scarcity in which `what one person has, another cannot have'.40 Time, like Nature, is a thief in Shakespeare's sonnets, but unlike the violet in Sonnet 99, it is an unambiguously dread criminal. Other types of ambiguity and ambivalence, however, surface in Sonnet 104 when the speaker laments, 40

Katharine Eisaman Maus, `Satiric and Ideal Economies in the Jonsonian Imagination', English Literary Renaissance xix (1989), p. 45.

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Heather Dubrow Àh, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand, / Steal from his ®gure, and no pace perceiv'd' (ll. 9±10). If the fact that the eects of time cannot be seen makes them less threatening in one sense, in another sense the element of stealth yet again creates more fear. Notice, too, how the simile con¯ates `beauty' (l. 9), which may either refer to an abstract quality or may synecdochically evoke the beloved, and time: thus the victim may again be the thief. Not surprisingly, the Dark Lady is cast as yet another thief in this overpopulated den of them: not from those lips of thine, That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments, And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents. (142.5±8)

Here, as in so many of Shakespeare's plays, love in general and adultery in particular are presented as forms of robbery in language that con¯ates material and marital loss. Line eight suggests that in the heart's forests, as in the forests of A Midsummer Night's Dream, an economy of scarcity and distrust that permits one to get only by taking and to own only by robbing prevails. It is telling, too, that the subject of `Robb'd' (l. 8) is the lips: here, as in several of the passages I have examined so far, thievery is connected with lying and deceiving. If one interprets robbery broadly, Shakespeare's sonnets not only stage that crime in the ways I have been tracing but enact it as well structurally. The many conclusions that either unsettle the sonnet structure by establishing lines twelve to fourteen or line fourteen itself as the syntactical unit rather than the couplet might be said to perform an action analogous to robbery: they open the neatly packaged ideas to interrogation, thus stealing away what readers thought they possessed. Or one might suggest that the couplet itself is potentially an enclosed treasure ± a jewel of epigrammatic certainty, a locked chest that we might hope to survey as does the miser in Sonnet 52. But this treasure is repeatedly stolen just as frustrated or troubled readers reach out for it. These disruptions are rendered more, not less, unsettling by the fact that, as Helen Vendler has demonstrated, the couplets are often closely related to the rest of the poem through what she terms a `couplet tie', notably patterns of repetition.41 As she points out, it is inaccurate to dismiss the couplets as super¯uous or inconsistent; but, I would add, their verbal links to the bodies of the sonnets make their attacks on the preceding quatrains all the more startling. Because thievery works these ways in the sonnets, it eects a reinterpretation of loss within the sequence. If loss is central to Petrarchism, it is unusually signi®cant in this particular cycle of lyrics. To begin with, its 41

Helen Vendler, `Reading, Stage by Stage: Shakespeare's Sonnets', in Russ McDonald, ed., Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts (Ithaca, 1994), p. 37.

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets author repeatedly explores the types of absence so pervasive in other sequences (the estrangement or disappearance of the beloved, of the ability to write, and so on). And forms of deprivation that are less common in Petrarchism ± the loss of generativity threatened in the procreation sonnets, the threats from Time, the results of competition with the Friend and with the Rival Poet, and the loss of the ideal vision described by Joel Fineman among others42 ± intensify the overwhelming preoccupation with what is gone, perhaps never to be attained again. Thievery, I have demonstrated, is typically cast as the source of many of these losses. Not fortune but a speci®ed enemy is responsible. Thus Shakespeare's sonnets establish privation as the result of criminal actions by an antagonist. And thus they frequently demonstrate the transfer ± the displacement ± of guilt. But that transfer is not a smooth one: many of the epistemological crises in these poems whirl around the question of who is the thief. IV

Tracing how Shakespeare's sonnets connect thievery to the breakdown of systems of classi®cation and to forms of displacement suggests perspectives for future work on that crime in his plays and his culture, though a lengthy discussion of texts other than the sonnets is necessarily outside the scope of this chapter. The most signi®cant connection between the tavern and court in the Henriad is not that so many denizens of both worlds are thieves but rather that so many may or may not be: as in the sonnets, the actions they have apparently performed are hard to interpret or even attribute with certainty (in what sense, if any, was the prince really a robber at Gadshill? did or did not his father rob Richard II of the throne?) Once again thievery steals away epistemological and moral certainty. The way thievery is constructed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England also indicates that the relationship of The Merry Wives of Windsor to the Henriad may be more intimate than Shakespeareans generally acknowledge. For Falsta does not simply trade his old role as highway robber for the status of would-be lover. Rather, his abortive romantic and economic plots render literal important characteristics of thievery; he is a displaced outsider intruding into the world of Windsor and a particular house within it. To say that he does not ®t in the play is to ignore the fact that that is the very point: this drama, like the crime of burglary, pivots on an act of invasion. And Autolycus is also associated with the social and geographical forms of displacement that are, I am suggesting, so central to thievery. Juxtaposing Shakespeare's plays with the sonnets can also provide an overview of why and how he associates thievery with entry into a forbidden place or displacement and with the epistemological destabilisations that result 42

Fineman, Shakespeare's Perjured Eye.

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Heather Dubrow from category crises. The crime itself may involve the displacement of entering a forbidden place, and those who commit it are often represented as displaced vagrants, displaced knights and princes, or the implicitly displaced social superior evoked in Shakespeare's oxymoronic pun on `gentle thief ' (40.9). Autolycus had been Florizel's servant, and, as Harry Levin has pointed out, Falsta is a knight without a horse.43 Similarly, in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falsta is displaced from another type of play. Such perpetrators further violate place by confusing the demarcation between inside and outside. Tarquin intrudes into Lucrece's house and her bedchamber as well as her body. In so doing the thieves violate place epistemologically as well: their crime is repeatedly connected with category crises, such as the blurring of pastoral and picaresque in The Winter's Tale or of self and other in Sonnet 35. And in thus compromising systems of evaluation and classi®cation, Shakespeare's thieves are prone to intrude within and corrupt a particularly precious or even sacred place, whether it be a nation or a woman's body. Et in Arcadia ego. As I have observed, thievery is so intimately connected to issues of place in part because it is sexualised. Sexual penetration is the underlying event behind many references to inside and outside, the primal scene about which the narratives of thievery hint: Shakespeare's characters repeatedly trope not only adultery but also courtship as a kind of thievery, while thievery itself is sometimes presented as a sexual crime, notably when Autolycus talks about gelding. But in the case of this social phenomenon like so many others, issues of sex and gender represent an essential but not exclusive perspective. First of all, the assumption that sexuality is invariably the subtext of robbery would demonstrate the less benign eects of twentieth-century popular Freudianism. Not only is a cigar sometimes only a cigar; to a dedicated tobacco grower, might not a penis sometimes represent a cigar rather than vice versa? In other words, given the deep tensions associated with robbery in Tudor and Stuart England, it is possible that sometimes sexual invasion was fraught precisely because it represented robbery. The tenor and the vehicle that is apparently securely attached behind it may jackknife on the slippery roads of Tudor and Stuart culture, ¯ip over, and change places. Furthermore, that reversal may recur several times: we need to think not in terms of a static system in which the secondary meaning encodes the primary one but rather a dynamic process, a continuing journey on those perilous highways. Another argument against assuming that all thievery encodes burglary and all burglary sexuality is crystallised by King Lear, which demonstrates that other valences of the crime may be equally signi®cant. Shakespeare's Edmund is as hungry for the social place denied him as for the forfended place between 43

Harry Levin, Shakespeare and the Revolution of the Times: Perspectives and Commentaries (Oxford, 1976), pp. 121±30. The chapter in question originally appeared as `Falsta Uncolted', Modern Language Notes lxi (1946), 305±10.

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Tropes and Robbers in Shakespeare's Sonnets the legs of the king's two elder daughters that is not denied him. And to Shakespeare's audience the word `place' and the concept behind it was social in several senses. Thieves literally enter forfended places in part because their crime is so often associated with or generated by struggles for a social place that is ®gured as a spatial one: the house of a social superior, the country from which Bolingbroke is exiled. The references to thievery in Shakespeare's sonnets, then, crystallise some explanations for the frequency with which his other texts refer to it and the intensity with which his culture fears it. His tropes demonstrate that this felony was both a clear and present danger in Tudor and Stuart England and a symbol for many other perils. The loss of property and the loss of stable systems of valuation, threats about sexuality and about social status, place and displacement, and insiders and outsiders all intersect and interact on the `thievish ways' of Shakespeare's sequence and his culture.

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d:/3wells/wells.3d ± 22/8/0 ± 14:9 ± disk/mp

An Orpheus for a Hercules: Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS

I

N the brief interval of calm following Martius' exile in the fourth act of Coriolanus, Brutus and Sicinius congratulate themselves on their astute handling of a dicult situation. Martius is safely out of the way and the `world goes well' (IV.vi.5).1 Then comes news that Martius has joined forces with Au®dius and is about to attack Rome. At ®rst the tribunes cannot believe their ears. `This is most likely!' says Sicinius, `The very trick on't' (70; 73). But Cominius berates them for their stupidity, assuring them that Martius will be merciless in his vengeance. `He'll shake your Rome about your ears', Cominius tells them. Às Hercules did shake down mellow fruit', adds Menenius (103± 4). Though there are only two allusions to Hercules in Coriolanus, Eugene Waith is justi®ed in describing Martius as the supreme Herculean hero. For Hercules is not only the archetypal warrior; he is also famed for his terrible vengeance. Shakespeare's most egregious example of the warrior-hero is truly Herculean, not just in his manly courage, but also in his vindictive rage. At the end of his writing career Shakespeare turns to an entirely dierent kind of political leader. If, as Waith suggests, the heroes of the martial tragedies are variations on a Herculean theme, the central mythological ®gure that dominates the late tragi-comedies is Hercules' symbolic antithesis. That ®gure is Orpheus, the divinely gifted poet-musician who was able to move even `moody Pluto' (The Rape of Lucrece, 553) by his eloquence.2 Though 1

2

Quotations from Shakespeare are from The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1986). Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (New York, 1965), p. 147. See also David Armitage, `The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Mythic Elements in Shakespeare's Romances', Shakespeare Survey xxxix (1987), pp. 123±33; Robin Headlam Wells, Elizabethan Mythologies: Studies in Poetry, Drama and Music (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 63±80; Peggy MunÄoz Simonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare's `Cymbeline': An Iconographic Reconstruction (Newark, 1992); Simonds, ` ``Sweet Power of Music'': The Political Magic of ``the Miraculous Harp'' in Shakespeare's The Tempest', Comparative Drama xxix (1995), pp. 61±90. Jonathan Bate discusses allusions to Orpheus in Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and brie¯y in The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII in Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford, 1993).

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Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' both Hercules and Orpheus are represented as peacemakers in Roman literature, they represent antithetical views of manhood and civilisation. Às the works of wisdom surpass in dignity and power the works of strength,' wrote Bacon in The Wisdom of the Ancients (1609), `so the labours of Orpheus surpass the labours of Hercules.'3 War is one of the most rigidly gendered of all human activities,4 and Hercules, the mythological founder of war, is the very type of heroic manhood. As Ben Jonson explained in a note to The Masque of Queens, Hercules was one of the principal ®gures in whom the ancients expressed à brave & masculine virtue'.5 Not surprisingly, the values of the warrior-society are masculine values. Orpheus, by contrast is a type of the creative artist and embodies a very dierent ideal of manhood. I

In Ovid's Metamorphoses ± the most accessible version of the Hercules story for Jacobean readers ± the greatest warrior of the ancient world does not come across as a particularly complicated character. Courageous but gullible ± he is an easy prey to Nessus' trickery ± he shows, as Ovid's sixteenth-century translator Arthur Golding puts it, that `valiantnesse of hart / Consisteth not in woords, but deedes: and that all slyght [ie, subterfuge] and Art / Give place to prowesse'.6 Though the suering he endures as he tries to escape the terrible pain of Nessus' poisoned shirt is truly heroic, it is, by its very excess, almost beyond human comprehension. Even his transmogri®cation is spectacular rather than moving. W. B. Stanford describes Hercules as a prototype of the muscle-man.7 But as those fabled muscles are consumed on the sacri®cial pyre he has built for himself, revealing the unrecognisable, god-like frame beneath (IX.262±70), Hercules is reminiscent, not so much of a contestant for the title of Mr Olympia, as of James Cameron's Terminator emerging from the holocaust of a burning fuel tanker, with all living tissue seared away, and nothing remaining but a gleaming titanium endoskeleton. Puri®ed by ®re, Ovid's hero is now ready for dei®cation. More interesting for the dramatist is the way Hercules is portrayed by Virgil and Seneca. In the Aeneid Hercules himself appears only in the interpolated story of the slaying of Cacus in Book VIII, itself an adumbration of Aeneas' 3 4

5

6

7

The Philosophical Works, ed. John M. Robertson (London, 1905), p. 835. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (London, 1997), p. 125. See also Margaret Loftus Ranald, `War and its Surrogates: Male Combat Sports and Women's Roles', Theatre Research International xxiii (1998), pp. 59±68. The Complete Masques, ed. Stephen Orgel (New Haven and London, 1969), p. 542. The other two heroes whom Jonson cites as embodiments of `heroic virtue' (p. 134) are Perseus and Bellerophon. `The Epistle', 199±200, Shakespeare's Ovid, trans. Arthur Golding, ed. W. H. D. Rouse (London, 1961), p. 5. Foreword to G. Karl Galinsky, The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1972), pp. ix±x.

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Robin Headlam Wells ®nal battle with Turnus. But he is there in spirit throughout the poem. At each stage of the story Aeneas is compared with Hercules.8 His trials are described as `labores', which, like those of Hercules, have been imposed on him by Juno. And like Hercules, too, he makes a descent into the underworld. By linking Aeneas with a hero who was dei®ed for his extraordinary virtus, Virgil is hinting at Augustus' own dei®cation.9 Augustus wanted the world to see him as a peacemaker, `Born to restore a better Age of Gold',10 and deliberately encouraged the association with Hercules, legendary paci®er of Arcadia.11 But as Tacitus tells us, the new stability for which Augustus' reign is celebrated was won by ruthless elimination of all opposition.12 While praising his patron as author of the pax romana, Virgil had to ®nd some way of justifying the judicial violence that seems to have been an essential item in Augustus' repertoire of ìmperial Arts' (VI.1177). It is a problem that he seems to have pondered deeply. The classic palliative solution is to demonise the enemy. In Book VIII Evander tells Aeneas the story of how Hercules defeated Cacus, a hideous creature who is half man, half beast and who feeds on human ¯esh. When Hercules exposes Cacus' lair to the light of day, even the gods are sickened by the horrors within. The implied message is clear: no violence can be too great when one is dealing with a monster of such depravity. To commemorate the defeat, the Rutulians establish an annual festival in Hercules' honour. As Karl Galinsky explains, the whole episode closely parallels Aeneas' struggle against Turnus in Book XII.13 In an expedient that is all too familiar in the history of colonialism, we seem to be led to the conclusion that, because there is, by implication, something demonic in Turnus too, Aeneas' brutal killing of an indigenous tribal leader is justi®ed. Yet in reality we know that Turnus is not an inhuman monster. He may be full of `Revenge, and jealous Rage, and secret Spight' (XII.110), but he has good reason: not only has his country been taken over, but his future bride has been appropriated by the invader. The more eective the thematic and verbal parallels between Cacus and Turnus, the less justi®ed do they seem. Erasmus is probably right when he says that no empire was built without shedding blood.14 However, because Virgil paints Aeneas' adversary 8 9 10

11 12

13 14

Galinsky, The Herakles Theme, pp. 132. Ibid., p. 138. Aeneid, vi. 1081, trans. Dryden, The Works of John Dryden, ed. Edward Niles Hooker, Alan Roper and H. T. Swedenborg, Jr. (Berkeley, 1956±89), V.564. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme, p. 141. Tacitus writes: he drew to himselfe the aairs of the Senate; the duties of magistrates and lawes, without contradiction of any: the stoutest by war or proscriptions alreadie spent, and the rest of the nobilitie . . . did rather choose the present estate with securitie, than strive to recover their old danger. (The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus, trans. Richard Grenewey (London, 1598), sig. A1). The Herakles Theme, p. 144. The Àdages' of Erasmus, ed. and trans. Margaret Mann Phillips (Cambridge, 1964), p. 320.

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Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' in the blackest colours, this does not mean that he is complacent in his apparent vindication of the violence that seems to be an inescapable part of the colonial enterprise.15 Heaven may have decreed that Rome's imperial destiny was `To rule Mankind; and make the World obey' (VI.1174), but that does not make the violence any more acceptable. Aeneas was known to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by the conventional epithet pius. But by repeatedly reminding us of his spiritual anity with Hercules, Virgil ensures that we are aware that Aeneas is not just the dutiful son who obeys heaven's will and protects his family gods, but also an empire builder `Whose Martial Fame from Pole to Pole extends' (VII.143). His heroic virtus is just as essential an aspect of his character as his legendary piety. In an interesting discussion of the Aeneid Gary Schmidgall reminds us of the connotations of Virgil's antinomies: pietas ± the virtue conventionally associated with Aeneas ± implies the dutiful subjugation of personal feelings to a higher cause, while furor signi®es those forces that threaten civilised order. Ìn the Aeneid,' writes Schmidgall, `the ``furious'' are invariably at odds with the ``pious'' . . . Virgil's is a world of political absolutes in which good and evil are easily discerned. On the side of civic decency and harmony is Aeneas. On the other side are Juno and her factors Dido, Turnus, and Alecto.'16 It is true that the Aeneid is built on a symbolic contrast between chaos, represented by the fall of Troy, and order, signi®ed by the founding of a new civilisation. But Virgil's binary oppositions do not work in the neat way that Schmidgall describes. One of the great ironies of the Aeneid is that, as his ®nal encounter with Turnus draws near, Aeneas seems increasingly to take on the characteristics of his aggressive adversary. As the poem ends with `pious Aeneas' plunging his sword into the heart of a disarmed and helpless enemy, we are left with a vision, not of universal peace, but of primal savagery. If the ethical and social conundrum confronting the peacemaker who must use force to subdue barbarism is never far from the surface of the Aeneid, it is at the very centre of Seneca's Hercules Furens. Though by no means his best play, Hercules has that grim logic that is typical of Seneca. Ostensibly a tragic tale of human error and divine persecution, the play is in truth a deeply pessimistic meditation on the futility of attempting to achieve peace through violent means. Like Aeneas, Seneca's Hercules is a peacemaker; his greatest ambition is to subdue tyranny and restore harmony to a discordant world: `Let restful peace kepe nations quietly,' says Seneca's hero on his triumphant return from Hades, `nor ®erce and fell lykewyse / Let tyrantes raygne' (929; 936±7).17 But even as he makes his appeal for universal peace, Hercules looks for more tasks to perform and new worlds to conquer, boasting that he will tame nature 15 16 17

See Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993), p. xii. Gary Schmidgall, Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 165±7. Hercules Furens, trans. Jasper Heywood, The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca (1581), (Manchester, 1887), I.33.

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Robin Headlam Wells herself, not by charming rocks and trees, as Orpheus had done, but by `smighting' them down (967±8).18 As he does so, Juno's spell begins its terrible work, and Hercules starts to have fantasies about leading the Titans in a war of liberation against Olympus. Though Hercules believes that the earth itself has been conquered (955), his triumph is a hollow one. Imagining that he has been cuckolded by Lycus, and deaf to his father's warnings about the folly of vengeance, Hercules murders ®rst his children, and then his wife. When his ®t of madness has passed, he resolves to redeem the `honour and renowne' of his sullied manhood (1270) by an act of suicide. But in what is arguably the most important speech in the play Theseus tells the world's greatest exemplar of heroic virtus that true manliness lies not in heroic rage, but in self-control: surge et adversa impetu perfringe solito. Nunc tuum nulli imparem animum malo resume, nunc magna tibi virtute agendum est: Herculem irasci veta. (1274±7)19 aryse thou up, and with thy wonted myght Subdue thyne yls: now such a mynde unmeete to beare upright No evill hap, receyve againe loe now with manhode gret Thou must prevayle even Hercules forbyd with yre to fret.20

Symbolic of the contrast between artist and warrior is the ironic discrepancy between the Chorus' Virgilian evocation of peace at the end of the ®rst act (139±58), and Lycus' vision, in the following act, of a state of endless warfare, with ®elds lying untilled and the inhabitants of the earth buried by the ashes of their own houses (365±7). For all the hero's honest desire for peace, it is that fate, Seneca implies, which is Hercules' real gift to humanity. His madness is symbolic of the madness of war itself. At the end of Act II the Chorus rehearses Hercules' exploits and asks Fortune to be kind to the hero in his descent into the underworld. But it concludes its prayer with the story of an another descent into Hades by a very dierent hero. The dramatic presentation of Hercules as a peacemaker who heroically risks a journey to Hades, who subdues the gods of the underworld and controls nature, who loses his wife and is tormented by grief, cannot help but evoke echoes of Orpheus; and in the play's second Chorus Seneca underlines the parallels between the two heroes. Where Hercules uses force to conquer the underworld, Orpheus shows that, in Heywood's translation, the `cruell lordes of spryghtes' can be `subdew'de with song' (569±71). When Renaissance humanists rehearse the myth of the origins of civilisa18 19 20

Hercules Furens, trans. Jasper Heywood, The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca, p. 34. Seneca's Tragedies, trans. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1927), I.112. Heywood, The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca, p. 42.

244


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' tion, it is usually the Orpheus story that they tell.21 Hercules can lay equal claim to the title of founder of civilisation, and is sometimes cited in Renaissance discussions of the origins of civilisation.22 But with its commitment to a political and cultural ideal based on a revival of the arts of antiquity, Erasmian humanism naturally looked to the artist rather than the warrior for its model of social leadership. George Puttenham followed Horace (Ars poetica, 391±401) in allegorising the Orpheus story. Ìt is fayned,' he wrote in The Arte of English Poesie, that . . . Orpheus assembled the wilde beasts to come in heards to harken to his musicke, and by that meanes made them tame, implying thereby, how by his discreete and wholsome lessons uttered in harmonie and with melodious instruments, he brought the rude and savage people to a more civill and orderly life, nothing, as it seemeth, more prevailing or ®t to redresse and edi®e the cruell and sturdie courage of man then it.23

It is this civilising power of the arts that Shakespeare's Lorenzo alludes to when he tells Jessica that the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and ¯oods, Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature. (The Merchant of Venice V.i.79±82)

There was no doubt an element of personal vanity in James' representation of himself as the musician-king of classical and Christian tradition.24 But given his sponsorship of the arts, and the unquestioned sincerity of his commitment to `the Musick of peace',25 the suggestion that he was a kind of latter-day Orpheus was not entirely fanciful. The clearest statement of the political ideal embodied in the ®gure of the musician-king is John Gower's evocation of Arion in the Prologue to Confessio Amantis. `Wolde god,' wrote Gower, during the period of civil chaos that culminated in Richard II's deposition in 1399, 21

22

23

24 25

See Kirsty Cochrane, Òrpheus Applied: Some Instances of his Importance in the Humanist View of Language', Review of English Studies xix (1968), pp. 1±13. See also John Warden, ed., Orpheus: The Metamorphosis of a Myth (Toronto, 1982); Charles Segal, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore and London, 1989); Neil Rhodes, The Power of Eloquence and English Renaissance Literature (New York and London, 1992), pp. 3±8; Headlam Wells, Elizabethan Mythologies, pp. 2±8; 63±80. Because it was Hercules who ®rst taught men to subdue savage beasts, he is regarded as a founder of civilisation through warfare (see Erasmus, `Dulce bellum inexpertis', The Àdages', edn cit., p. 317). The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge, 1936), p. 6. On the musician-king see Headlam Wells, Elizabethan Mythologies, pp. 2±8. Michael Drayton, `To the Majesty of King James' (l. 160), The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford, 1931±41), I.475.

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Robin Headlam Wells that now were on An other such as Arion, Which hadde an harpe of such temprure, And therto of so good mesure He song, that he the bestes wilde Made of his note tame and milde . . . . . . if ther were such on now, Which cowthe harpe as he tho dede, He myhte availe in many a stede To make pes wher now is hate.26

At his coronation pageant James was greeted with an Òrphean quire', while emblematic devices foretold a new dispensation under which the Àrts that were threatened to be trod under foot by Barbarisme' would now be àdvanced to most high preferment'.27 Bacon also evoked the musician-king as a guardian of `society and peace'. In presenting James with The Advancement of Learning in 1605, he warned that ìf [Orpheus'] instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion'.28 Four years later George Marcelline appealed, less subtly, to the same traditional image of the musician-king when he praised James as Orpheus redivivus: Behold how like another Orpheus . . . he draweth to the true knowledge of God, very salvage Beasts, Forrests, Trees, and Stones, by the sweet Harmony of his harp, the most ®erce and wilde, the most stupid and insenced, the most brutish and voluptuous, are changed and civilized by the delectable sound of his Musicke. The which may transport and ravish our eares, at his mellodious touchinges and concordes, and not tickle them with any delicate noyse, tending unto voluptuous and sensuall pleasure: but rather such, as by well tempered proportions are able to reduce all extravagant rudenesse, and circuites of our soules, though they had wandered from the right way, to the true path of dutie, and settle all thoughts in such a harmony, as is most pleasing unto them.29

Marcelline's sycophantic rhetoric is that of the court masque. But behind the hyperbole is a clear political signal: in contrast to Prince Henry, whose ambition was to lead a holy war in Europe, James had chosen to base his rule on an Orphic rather than a Herculean model of kingship, with all that those labels imply. Following his series of pessimistic analyses of the Herculean warrior-hero, Shakespeare now turns, at the end of his writing career, to the 26

27

28 29

Confessio Amantis, ll. 1053±8; 1072±5, The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1899±1902), II.34. Thomas Dekker, The Whole Magnifycent Entertainment Given to King James (London, 1604), sigs. B2; G3v. The Advancement of Learning, ed. William A. Armstrong (London, 1975), p. 89. The Triumphs of King James the First (London, 1610), p. 35 (®rst published in French in 1609).

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Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' question of how to evoke an Orphic political leader. The solution was not a simple one. In the theatre con¯ict is inherently more interesting than harmony. Moreover, the patron of the King's Men was far from the ideal monarch represented by panegyrists like Marcelline. Although his paci®st policies initially won wide support from a country tired of twenty years of war with Spain, politicians became increasingly irritated with James' self-indulgence, his ponti®cal style and his casual attitude to parliamentary business. While it seems likely that the King's Men would have felt obliged to make at least some gesture of compliment towards their patron, it would be an insult both to their intelligence and to James' to insist that Renaissance writers would inevitably have been either `for' or àgainst' the government. In The Tempest Shakespeare appears to be obliquely complimenting James as an Orphic ruler, while at the same time reminding him that a prince `may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself ' (Hamlet I.iii.19±20). In doing so he worked within a long theatrical tradition in which praise and blame were combined as a way of moulding the opinion of rulers who would probably not have been anxious to receive advice from a mere playwright.30 II

James I liked to claim that kings had their origin in those `who planted and spread themselves in Colonies through the world'.31 He had impeccable authority for his claim. Both the Bible and the Aeneid tell of the discovery of new lands and the founding of new dynasties. Just as God commanded Abraham: `Get thee out of thy country . . . unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make thee a great nation . . . and thou shalt be a father of many nations' (Gen. 12:1±2; 17:4), so Jupiter guides the Trojan remnant to a new land where their descendants will one day achieve world domination: `To them, no Bounds of Empire I assign; / Nor term of Years to their immortal Line', he tells Venus; `The subject World shall Rome's Dominion own' (I.378±9; 84). It is perhaps ®tting that, as a migratory species that has successfully colonised every corner of the globe, we should have built into two of the great de®ning texts of Western culture a prehistoric myth of conquest and subjugation involving discovery of a new land of security and plenty. Of course when the promised land is already inhabited, one can expect to encounter diculties from people like Turnus, who may not be enthusiastic about handing over government of their country to a small band of ragged sailors whose leader claims that he is the instrument of providence, especially when, as Turnus discovers to his cost, that leader assumes rights to women as well as lands. But dispossession 30

31

See Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1991). À Speach to Parliament', March 1609, Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), p. 182.

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Robin Headlam Wells of indigenous peoples never seems so bad if you can persuade yourself that your actions are part of God's plan for his chosen race. As many critics have noticed, Shakespeare knew both the Bible and the Aeneid intimately and echoed their themes, and even their phrases, in a number of plays. The Tempest is particularly rich in Virgilian echoes and allusions.32 Indeed some critics have claimed that Virgil's un®nished masterpiece is the key to an understanding of Shakespeare's own ®nal work. However, the Virgilian parallels are important, not, as several critics have argued, because they support colonialist readings of The Tempest, but because they show how little the play has to do with colonialism. It was the Virgilian idea of universal peace that seems to have interested both James and Shakespeare. Comparing Aeneas and Prospero as `tempest-tossed' exiles guided by providence, Gary Schmidgall argues that The Tempest is à highly compact version of Vergil's epic of a lost civilization rewon: the Aeneid focuses on a Troia recidiva, The Tempest on a Milan recidiva'.33 Robert Wiltenburg shares Schmidgall's sense that Shakespeare was working with the Aeneid at a very fundamental level when he wrote The Tempest: Virgil's poem was his `main source', and he imitated its `main pattern' in his last play.34 Not that The Tempest is simply a scaled down version of the Aeneid: Wiltenburg argues that, just as Virgil transforms Homer's stories about men who ®ght for personal honour into a story about a man ®ghting for a political cause, so Shakespeare adapts the story of a quest for law and justice into a search for a more humane civilisation.35 32

33

34 35

See J. M. Nosworthy, `The Narrative Sources for The Tempest', Review of English Studies xxiv (1948), pp. 281±94; Jan Kott, `The Aeneid and The Tempest', Arion, n.s., 3, 4 (1976), pp. 424± 51; Kott, `The Tempest, or Repetition', Shakespeare Today, Mosaic x (1977), ed. Ralph Berry, pp. 9±36; Schmidgall, Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic, pp. 74±5; 165±73; John Pitcher, À Theatre of the Future: The Aeneid and The Tempest', Essays in Criticism xxxiv (1984), pp. 193±215; Barbara Bono, Literary Transvaluations: From Vergilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragedy (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 220±24; Robert Miola, `Vergil in Shakespeare: from Allusion to Imitation', Vergil at 2000, ed. John D. Bernard (New York, 1986), pp. 254±56; Robert Wiltenburg, `The Aeneid in The Tempest', Shakespeare Survey xxxix (1987), pp. 159±68; Donna B. Hamilton, Virgil and `The Tempest': The Politics of Imitation (Columbus, 1990); Heather James, Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 189±221. On Shakespeare's knowledge of the Bible see Peter Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background (Bloomington and London, 1973); Richmond Samuel Howe Noble, Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer (Folcroft, Pa., 1976); Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical Allusions in Shakespeare's Tragedies (London, 1987); Biblical Allusions in Shakespeare's Histories (London, 1989); Biblical Allusions in Shakespeare's Comedies (London, 1993). Shakespeare and the Courtly Aesthetic, p. 75. Schmidgall draws further parallels between Aeneas and Prospero on pp. 169±73. Wiltenburg, `The Aeneid in The Tempest', pp. 160; 159. Ibid., p. 168.

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Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' Donna Hamilton also believes that the The Tempest owes a major debt to the Aeneid. In a book-length study of the relations between the two works, she argues that ìn Shakespeare's play the Aeneid has been dismantled, reversed, and rewritten'.36 Her reading of the play is more oppositional than Schmidgall's and Wiltenburg's. Since the early nineteenth century, scholars have been aware that, although Shakespeare set The Tempest in the Mediterranean, the play echoes the Bermuda pamphlets.37 In a seminal article of 1966 Philip Brockbank argued that what the play seems to oer as perennial truths has its origin in the colonising enterprises of Shakespeare's England; The Tempest is às much about the intrigues of men as the tricks of spirits'.38 Ten years later Stephen Greenblatt focused attention on Caliban as spokesman for the exploited in the in¯uential article `Learning to Curse'.39 By the 1980s it was a generally accepted truth in New Historicist circles that The Tempest re¯ects contemporary colonial activity in Virginia and Ireland, with Prospero's appropriation of `Caliban's island'40 standing for European exploitation of indigenous peoples. The fact that Caliban is himself the son of a North-African immigrant who was banished from Algeria for unspeci®ed atrocities (I.ii.265) is usually passed over, as is the fact that Sycorax seems to have had no qualms about torturing and enslaving the indigenous inhabitants of the island when they refused to àct her earthy and abhorred commands' (274). The important thing is that, with Ariel safely incarcerated in a natural torture chamber (I.ii.275±82; 287±92), Caliban had been his own king before Prospero's arrival (344). Naturally, he is not happy to ®nd his kingdom usurped by another 36 37

38

39

40

Hamilton, Virgil and `The Tempest', p. 4. Shakespeare's use of the Bermuda pamphlets was ®rst noted by Malone in 1808 (see Frank Kermode, ed., The Tempest, Arden edn. (London, 1954), p. xxvi). `The Tempest: Conventions of Art and Empire', Later Shakespeare, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (London, 1966), p. 184. Stephen Greenblatt, `Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century', First Images of America: the Impact of the New World on the Old, ed. Fred Chiappelli (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 561±80. Thomas Cartelli, `Prospero in Africa: The Tempest as Colonialist Text and Pretext', Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, ed. Jean Howard and Marion F. O'Connor (New York and London, 1987), p. 108. See also Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, ` ``Nymphs and reapers heavily vanish'': the Discursive Con-texts of The Tempest', Alternative Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis (London, 1985), pp. 191±205; Paul Brown, ` ``This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine'': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism', Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sin®eld (Manchester, 1985), pp. 48±71; Malcolm Evans, Signifying Nothing: Truth's True Contents in Shakespeare's Texts (Brighton, 1986), pp. 74±9; Joan Pong Linton, The Romance of the New World: Gender and the Literary Formations of English Colonialism (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 155±70; Barbara Fuchs, `Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest', Shakespeare Quarterly xlviii (1997), pp. 45±62. For useful critiques of colonialist readings of The Tempest see Meredith Anne Skura, `The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest', Shakespeare Quarterly xl (1989), pp. 42±69; Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 140±71.

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Robin Headlam Wells incomer. His angry riposte to Miranda ± `You taught me language, and my pro®t on't / Is I know how to curse' (I.ii.365±6) ± sounds suciently like the authentic voice of the dispossessed to enable these two lines to be made the basis for what has now become the orthodox interpretation of the play. Hamilton endorses New Historicism's colonialist reading of The Tempest by appealing to Virgil. Because the Aeneid is, as Hamilton says, the àrchetypal colonizing text of all time', it is to be expected that Virgil's grand theme should ®nd expression in a play that owes so much to his poem: àcknowledgment [of] the Virgilian presence in The Tempest in itself would all but require some treatment of the idea of colonization'.41 Hamilton supports her claim with persuasive evidence of the topicality of the Irish question at the time Shakespeare was writing his play. Not only is it clear from pamphlets, letters and speeches that Irish aairs were the subject of contemporary concern, but in dealing with the history of the English presence in Ulster, the authors of The Chronicle of Ireland (included in Holinshed's Chronicles of 1587), had been liberal in their citation of Virgil. In this way, says Hamilton, the Aeneid `functioned as an archive by means of which those involved in plantations could take stock of their project'. This supposed contemporary interest in colonial matters is re¯ected in Shakespeare's play; The Tempest, she says, is `cut through with a colonial discourse'.42 Until the Earl of Tyrone's submission in March 1603, the Irish problem had certainly been in the forefront of the nation's political consciousness. But it is dicult to discern evidence of that concern in The Tempest eight years later when the war was ended, Tyrone was in self-imposed exile, and plantation was progressing relatively smoothly.43 Recent historical scholarship has shown that contemporary interest in colonial ventures may have been exaggerated by New Historicists who have adapted the myth of a national literature born from the stimulus of imperial enterprise, and used it to underpin post-colonial readings of Shakespeare and other writers of the period. But as David Armitage argues, applying a nineteenth-century model of the relationship between culture and imperialism to early modern literature `demands an indierence to context and inevitably courts anachronism'; in reality `the impress of Empire on English literature in the early-modern period was minimal'.44 For the major 41 42 43

44

Hamilton, Virgil and `The Tempest', p. 65. Ibid., pp. 65; 64. Aiden Clarke, `Paci®cation, Plantation, and the Catholic Question, 1603±23', Early Modern Ireland, 1534±1691, ed. T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne, A New History of Ireland (Oxford, 1976), III.187±232. David Armitage, `Literature and Empire', The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Nicholas Canny, The Oxford History of the British Empire, general ed. W. Roger Louis (Oxford and New York, 1998±99), I.99±123. Nicholas Canny points out that, although by the end of the seventeenth century the English were the dominant presence in the North Atlantic, the transformation in England's position as a trading and colonising nation came about more by accident than design: `people in the seventeenth century had little awareness that they were on the threshold of some great

250


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' writers of the period colonial activity is not an important theme. Though Shakespeare used The True Reportory of the Wrack in writing The Tempest, he seems to have been more interested in Strachy's story as a cautionary tale of mutiny, treason and eective government than as a call to empire.45 Preoccupied with threats to his authority, Prospero shows not the least interest in establishing a colony. Having landed by chance on a `poor isle' (V.i.215), his main concern is to get away from it, see his daughter married into the Neapolitan royal family, and return to his dukedom in Milan.46 It is true that the way Prospero characterises Caliban, not just as an individual whom he ®nds personally distasteful (I.ii.321), but as one who is typical of a `vile race . . . [that] had that in 't which good natures / Could not abide to be with' (360±62), seems to anticipate the stereotyped view of indigenous peoples expressed by generations of European colonisers. It is true also that some characters in the play speculate about how they might order things if they had command of the island, though they are portrayed either as knaves or day-dreamers. But Prospero shows no interest in such `plantation' (II.i.148) schemes. Though Caliban claims, with some justi®cation, that he has cheated him of the island (III.ii.53±4), Prospero's main concern is to return to civilisation and realise his plan of achieving peace in Italy through dynastic marriage. Virgil's great theme in the Aeneid was Rome's imperial mission. If the realisation of that mission involves a cruel war, the means are ultimately justi®ed by the new civilisation that heaven has decreed will ultimately arise from the `sad Relicks of the Trojan race' (III.115): Then dire Debate, and impious War shall cease, And the stern Age be softned into Peace: Then banish'd Faith shall once again return, And Vestal Fires in hallow'd Temples burn. (I.396±9)

45

46

Imperial age' (edn cit., p. xi). See also Jerry Brotton, ` ``This Tunis, sir, was Carthage'': Contesting Colonialism in The Tempest ', Post-colonial Shakespeares, ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, New Accents (London and New York, 1998), pp. 23±42. Brotton argues that `colonial readings [of The Tempest] have oered a historically anachronistic and geographically restrictive view of the play, which have overemphasized the scale and signi®cance of English involvement in the colonization of the Americas in the early decades of the seventeenth century' (p. 24). See also Tristan Marshall, `The Tempest and the British Imperium in 1611', The Historical Journal xli (1998), pp. 375±400. Strachy writes: In these dangers and divellish disquiets (whilest the almighty God wrought for us, and sent us miraculously delivered from the calamities of the Sea, all blessings upon the shoure to content and binde us to gratefulnesse) thus inraged amongst our selves, to the destruction each of other, into what mischiefe and misery had wee bin given up, had we not had a Governour with his authority, to have suppressed the same? (A true reportory of the wracke and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, in Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow, 1905±7), XIX.32) Tom McAlindon, `The Language of Prayer in King Lear and The Tempest ', Studies in English Literature (forthcoming).

251


Robin Headlam Wells Whatever doubts Aeneas may have about his mission and the violence it involves, he is persuaded to put them aside by the vision his father's ghost shows him of `the long Procession of his Progeny' culminating in the `Youth of Form Divine' (Augustus) who is destined to restore the golden age (VI.1024; 1077±81). Prospero too is an unwilling exile. He too suers a `sea-sorrow' (I.ii.171). But unlike Aeneas, he is not directed by the gods to seek new lands or found a new civilisation; he is hurried away in the dead of night, put on a boat and cast adrift, not with a band of doughty warriors, but only an infant daughter for company. Though `providence divine' (160) brings him safely ashore, it doesn't command him to found a new colony or to smite his enemies. If it has any plans for `sweet Revenge' (Aeneid I.388), it doesn't mention them to Prospero. In addition to the explicit allusion to Aeneas and Dido at II.i.71±9, there are a number of evocative echoes of the Aeneid in The Tempest, most notably the supernatural storm with which both poem and play open, and the providentially directed voyage. But these are not thematic parallels. The dierences between the two works are far more important than the similarities, and point to a fundamental dierence of subject matter and outlook. There are no quarrelling deities in The Tempest; no divine championship of a favoured people; no chthonic revelations of future racial supremacy; no ethnic migration; no military conquest; no con¯ict between love and a national mission. The only reference in the play to the idea of a master race is Caliban's less-than-noble vision of an island peopled with the products of his own repeated rape of Miranda (I.ii.352±3), a fate that would have been all too likely had Prospero died on the island. Conversely, in the Aeneid there is nothing about books and learning, or the transforming power of music; nothing about charity and forgiveness; no reconciliation of dynastic dispute through the romantic love of a younger generation. This is not to deny that, in the course of its rich and complex afterlife, The Tempest has spoken in a powerful way to successive generations about the injustices of colonial rule.47 It is to say, rather, that, while the play has inevitably changed its meaning over four centuries, particularly for African and the West Indian readers and audiences, colonial exploitation was not part of Shakespeare's original play. Whatever it may have come to mean for later ages, The Tempest of 1611 is not about the founding of a new civilisation through subjugation of indigenous peoples; it is about the patching up of an old one by peaceful means. 47

Notable among re-readings and reworkings of The Tempest by West Indian writers are George Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile (London, 1960), AimeÂ CeÂsaire's Une TempeÃte (Paris, 1969), and Derek Walcott's Pantomime in `Remembrance' and `Pantomime': Two Plays (New York, 1980). See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Grieths and Helen Tin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London and New York, 1989), pp. 189±91; Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (London and Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 248±50.

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Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' III

In a discussion of West Indian revisionist readings of The Tempest, Jonathan Bate remarks that `Prospero's failure to appreciate Caliban's ear for music vitiates any purely ``Prosperian'' reading of the play.'48 To the colonialist mentality musical connoisseurship is the last thing one would expect to ®nd in an illiterate semi-savage islander. But as we have seen, Prospero is not a coloniser; his mind is on quite dierent matters. In the long speech in which he echoes Ovid's Metamorphoses he explains that he has used `heavenly music . . . / To work mine end upon their senses' (V.i.52±3). Since his whole `project' (V.i.1) has involved changing people's behaviour through the magical power of music, it would be strange if he imagined that Caliban might be indierent to its qualities. The fact that Caliban lacks musical education is neither here nor there. It was a well-known commonplace in Renaissance musical lore that even animals are susceptible to music. As Lorenzo tells Jessica, do but note a wild and wanton herd Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood, If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music. (Merchant of Venice, V.i.71±9)

Ariel uses the same bovine image when he tells Prospero how he lured Stephano and Trinculo into a stagnant pool with his tabor: like unbacked colts they pricked their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears That calf-like they my lowing followed. (IV.i.176±9)

Caliban is as susceptible to music as Lorenzo's unhandled colts are; and Prospero is obviously in the habit of using it to keep him quiet when he is taking his own afternoon nap (III.iii.138±48). The trouble is that although Caliban likes music, it doesn't seem to civilise him. According to Prospero, his nature is one on which `Nurture can never stick' (IV.i.188±9). Like Perdita's debate with Polixenes on the selective propagation of plants (The Winter's Tale IV.iv.79±99), Prospero's words about nature and nurture are a signal that Shakespeare is engaging in one of the age's great debating topoi. So familiar in medieval folklore, and Renaissance pageantry and iconography, is the ®gure of the libidinous savage who, despite his knowledge of 48

The Genius of Shakespeare, p. 247.

253


Robin Headlam Wells nature's secrets, is essentially ineducable,49 that it would be pointless to try to identify a particular source for Caliban. The important question is what Shakespeare does with this familiar ®gure. The answer seems fairly clear: he is responding to primitivist rewriting of the stereotyped savage. By showing us a savage who is anything but noble, Shakespeare appears to be taking sides in the art / nature debate and debunking the myth of sentimental primitivism. With hindsight we can see that the way he characterises Caliban is not very dierent from the way nineteenth-century colonisers characterised indigenous African, Australasian and New World peoples.50 Modern psychoanthropology has shown that IQ levels vary marginally, if at all, between those few modern tribes still living in Stone Age isolation and `civilised' peoples. But with no comparative anthropology, and little opportunity for even the most casual ®rst-hand observation of New World societies, it is not surprising that early modern explorers and writers encountering or imagining primitive peoples for the ®rst time should have a dierent view of race and class from our own. Their view of the primitive is far more likely to have been formed by classical and medieval authority than by observation. It is true that Prospero has an unpleasantly autocratic side to him. But unlike the colonisers of Australia, Tasmania and both North and South America, he has no interest in exterminating natives. To suggest, because he claims that Caliban is ineducable, that Prospero is playing out a parable of `transatlantic imperialism',51 is about as reasonable as accusing George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell of the suppression of women simply because, like every other middle-class woman in nineteenth-century England, they employed chamber maids and cooks. If anyone in The Tempest is guilty of terrorising 49

50

51

See Vaughan and Vaughan, Shakespeare's Caliban, pp. 62±71. On the mythical ®gure of the Wild Man see also Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952); Robert H. Goldsmith, `The Wild Man on the English Stage', Modern Language Review liii (1958), pp. 481±91; Hayden White, `The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an Idea', The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian E. Novak (Pittsburgh, 1972), pp. 3±38; Timothy Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism (New York, 1980); Peggy MunÄoz Simonds, ` ``Sweet Power of Music'' '. The following nineteenth-century example is remarkable only for its relatively moderate view of primitive peoples. Though familiar with aboriginal customs since childhood, and despite his own detailed accounts of the aborigines' highly sophisticated hunting skills, George Thomas Lloyd writes in Thirty-Three Years in Tasmania and Victoria (London, 1862): Òf that unhappy race it may truly be remarked that their moral and intellectual energies were of the most inferior order' (p. 43). As recently as 1982 a correspondent in the Australian Bulletin described Tasmanian aborigines as treacherous, murderous, war-like, ®lthy, gluttonous and vermin-infested. The white settlers, whom the writer denies were responsible for the extermination of aborigines, were by contrast, peace-loving and of high moral character (cited by Jared Diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee (1988; repr. London, 1992), pp. 254±5). Leslie Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare (London, 1973), p. 209.

254


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' and torturing natives, it is Sycorax, not Prospero. She is Shakespeare's invention and he disapproves of her. With most of the plays we have a source text and can see how Shakespeare modi®ed it in adapting the story for the stage. Despite the claims that have been made for the Aeneid, we still have no source for The Tempest story. However, we do have a contemporary analogue in the form of an enchanted island ®lled with magical music where people undergo surprising transformations. Though it is no more a narrative source than the Aeneid, Spenser's Faerie Queene may oer a more useful guide to what is going on in The Tempest than the Bermuda pamphlets or parliamentary exchanges on the Irish question.52 Like The Tempest, the ®nal canto of Book II opens with a terrifying ordeal at sea in which sailors fear for their lives: An hideous roaring farre away they heard, That all their senses ®lled with aright, And streight they saw the raging surges reard Up to the skyes, that them of drowning made aeard.53

Shakespeare's eye may have been caught by these lines when he described the `wild waters in this roar . . . mounting to th' welkin's cheek' (II.i.2±4). Spenser's description of the sea `belch[ing] forth his super¯uity' (3) may also have suggested Ariel's image of the `never-surfeited sea' `belching' up Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio on the island (III.iii.55±6). But these verbal sea-echoes ± if they are echoes ± are of no particular importance. What makes the analogue signi®cant is the transformation motif. As Guyon and his companions explore Acrasia's island they are ravished, like Caliban, by the magical sound of invisible music. Its origin is later revealed: Spenser's Acrasia is an enchantress who uses music to entice her victims into her sexual trap. She is in eect a kind of evil counterpart of Orpheus. According to the ancients, the point of the Orpheus story was to show, as Lorenzo explains to Jessica, that music could change people's nature, `for the time'. Where Orpheus uses music and song to civilise the savage heart, Acrasia uses those same arts to corrupt men. When she has satis®ed her lust, she transforms her victims into wild beasts. What Spenser has `clowdily enwrapped in Allegorical devise'54 is a commonplace of Renaissance thought, namely, that man is capable of developing either the rational or the bestial side of his fallen nature.55 52

53

54 55

In The Analogy of `The Faerie Queene' (Princeton, N. J., 1976), James Nohrnberg compares Prospero with Circe, but does not pursue the parallel. He writes: `Should the vision of man's potential for . . . self-transformation prove to be a temporary impression, then Miranda might be found awakening not on Prospero's isle, but on Circe's' (p. 790). The Faerie Queene II.xii.2, The Poetical Works, ed. J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (London, 1912), p. 131. Letter to Ralegh, Poetical Works, edn cit., p. 407. The most famous expression of this principle is in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Òration

255


Robin Headlam Wells Until Guyon arrives, Acrasia ®nds little diculty in accomplishing her scheme. Since she has the willing co-operation of sailors who are only too eager to accept her sexual invitation, this is not surprising. Prospero has a much more dicult task. It involves persuading clever men to forget past enmities and agree to the establishment of a new political union. But as a magus, his methods are the same as those of Spenser's temptresses. Quoting Alonso's lines about the song of the ocean (III.iii.96±9), David Armitage has suggested that `This imaginative connection between music (``sing'', `òrganpipe'', ``bass'') and the depths of the ocean is characteristically Shakespearean.'56 Though it is characteristically Shakespearean, the metaphor is not original. When Spenser's mermaids invite Guyon and his companions ashore, their alluring song seems to be echoed by the music of the sea. Like a mixed consort of instruments and voices, the rolling billows provide the bass, the waves breaking on the shore the mean, and the west wind the treble. The result is a `straunge kind of harmony' that sailors ®nd irresistible: With that the rolling sea resounding soft, In his big bass them ®tly answered, And on the rocke the waves breaking aloft, A solemne Meane unto them measured, The whiles sweet Zephirus lowd whisteled His treble, a straunge kinde of harmony. (II.xii.33)

Prospero too uses his magical powers to move and persuade. As his `high charms' begin to work on Alonso, his old enemy imagines that nature is singing to him, not of temptation, but of reformation: Methought the billows spoke and told me of it, The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper. It did bass my trespass. (III.iii.96±9)

As well as that of bringing his enemies to repentance, Prospero's `project' involves conquering his own desire for vengeance on the men who usurped his dukedom. In the long speech beginning `Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves' (V.i.33±57) Prospero admits how he has used `rough magic' violently to subdue nature. Ì have,' he says, rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar. (41±8)

56

on the Dignity of Man', trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes, The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall (Chicago, 1948), p. 225. Armitage, `The Dismemberment of Orpheus', p. 129.

256


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' Prospero's speech is a close imitation of Golding's translation of Medea's supplication of nature to help her rejuvenate her father-in-law Aeson (Metamorphoses VII.192±219).57 The fact that Shakespeare is apparently linking Prospero with a character who is not just a sorceress, but an unscrupulous murderess, might appear at ®rst to support colonialist readings of the play that see Prospero as a brutal opportunist intent on depriving Caliban of his birthright. But Prospero is not simply invoking magical powers. As Jonathan Bate points out, `Medea's powers are summoned up not so that they can be exercised, but so that they can be rejected.'58 It should be added that Prospero is speci®cally rejecting the `rough magic' that calls forth mutinous winds and tears up trees by their roots in favour of an altogether more àiry charm' (54) that relies on `heavenly music' (52) for its eects. Seneca makes precisely this comparison between violent and peaceful power over nature in Hercules Furens.59 Hercules too destroys trees in his conquest of nature; in his fury he is the epitome of mindless vengeance, and when he pauses for breath, Amphitryon urges him to calm his `furious rage' (975).60 As I have shown, Seneca's Chorus later contrasts Hercules with Orpheus, the hero who, instead of destroying rocks and trees, charms them with his magical music. It is this Orphic magic to which Prospero now turns. Urged by Ariel to listen to the promptings of his gentler feelings, he resolves to abjure the `rough magic' of destructive vengeance and employ a gentler art: `Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,' he tells Ariel, Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part. The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance. (V.i.25±8)

Prospero is in eect re-de®ning `virtue'. For the Herculean hero, virtue means military valour. When Cominius tells Rome's patricians that Ìt is held / That valour is the chiefest virtue' (Coriolanus II.ii.84±5), he makes it clear exactly what kind of courage he is talking about: Martius is a warrior who runs `reeking o'er the lives of men as if / 'Twere a perpetual spoil' (119±20) and whose every motion is timed with the dying cries of the slain (110). Like 57

58 59

60

Golding's translation reads: `ye Elves of Hilles, of Brookes, of Woods alone, / Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye everychone' (Shakespeare's Ovid, edn cit., p. 142). On Shakespeare's use of both Golding's translation and Ovid's original text in this passage, see Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford, 1993), p. 8. Shakespeare and Ovid, p. 252. On Shakespeare's use of Hercules Furens in Othello see Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The In¯uence of Seneca (Oxford, 1992), pp. 124±43. Erica Sheen discusses the use of Hercules Furens in Cymbeline in ` ``The agent for his master'': Political Service and Professional Liberty in Cymbeline', The Politics of Tragi-Comedy: Shakespeare and After, ed. Gordan McMullan and Jonathan Hope (London and New York, 1992), pp. 55±76. Hercules Furens, trans. Jasper Heywood, edn cit., p. 34.

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Robin Headlam Wells Martius, Prospero has been exiled from his own country, and would dearly like to be avenged on those who have struck him to the quick with their high wrongs. But at Ariel's prompting, he now resolves to suppress that Herculean fury and espouse a rarer kind of virtue. Mythologically, Hercules has ceded authority to Orpheus. In an essay called `Herculei labores' (1508), Erasmus argued that the only truly Herculean task for the modern world was the recovery of classical culture: `The nature of this kind of work is that it brings pro®t to everyone, and the only person to suer hardship is the one who undertakes to do it.'61 A century later Otto van Veen, or Vaenius as he is usually known, made a similar point in a device from his Emblems of Love (1608).62 Adapting the story of Omphale, usually moralized as a satire on termagent women,63 Vaenius showed Hercules at a spinning wheel with his club laid aside and Cupid singing from a music book. The moral of Vaenius' emblem is summed up in its title: Àmor addocet artes' ± `Love is the schoolmaster of the arts.' It is a variation on a familiar theme: the taming and redirection of the violent side of human nature by the arts of civilization.64 But in Vaenius' emblem, instead of the usual ®gure of Orpheus taming man's innate savagery, it is Hercules who is being taught to subdue his own passions. That music and love are complementary metaphysical principles is a commonplace of medieval and Renaissance harmonist thought. In the Symposium Plato explained how `Music, by implanting mutual love and sympathy, causes agreement between [the] elements . . . and music in its turn may be called a knowledge of the principles of love in the realm of harmony and rhythm.'65 Plato's principle is echoed by countless medieval and Renaissance writers. Stephen Gosson, for example, wrote: `The politike lawes in wel governed common wealthes, that treade downe the proude and upholde the meeke; the love of the king and his subjectes, the father and his chylde . . . are excellent maisters to shewe you that this is right musicke, this perfect harmony.'66 In portraying an Orphic ruler ± albeit a seriously ¯awed one ± who seeks to bring about peace through a dynastic marriage, Shakespeare turns an abstract metaphysical principle into a political metaphor that would have spoken very 61 62 63

64

65 66

The Àdages' of Erasmus, p. 209. Otto van Veen, Amorum Emblemata (Antwerp, 1608), p. 83. For Sidney `the scornfullness of the action stirreth laughter' (An Apology for Poetry, ed. Georey Shepherd (London, 1965), p. 136). In The Faerie Queene Spenser describes Hercules with his `distae vile', adding: `Such is the crueltie of womenkynd, / When they have shaken o the shamefast band, / With which wise Nature did them strongly bynd, / T'obey the heasts of mans well ruling hand' (V.v.25, The Poetical Works, edn cit. p. 298). See Peggy MunÄoz Simonds, `The Herculean Lover in the Emblems of Cranach and Vaenius', Acta Conventius Neo-Latini Torontonensis: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, ed. Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi and Richard J. Schoeck (Binghamton, N.Y., 1991), pp. 708±9. The Symposium, trans. W. Hamilton (Harmondsworth, 1961), p. 55. The Schoole of Abuse (London, 1841), p. 16.

258


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' directly to the royal audience who saw The Tempest when it was performed as part of the betrothal entertainments for Princess Elizabeth and the Elector of the Palatinate in 1613. IV

The atmosphere in which negotiations for Elizabeth's match with Prince Frederick took place had not been easy. For some years the whole question of royal marriage had been a source of friction between James and his increasingly assertive elder son. In 1608 the militant-Protestant campaign for a crusade against Spain had led to an embarrassingly public pamphlet war between Whitehall and St James' Palace.67 Now the impending marriage question resulted once more in semi-public dispute. On one side, Henry's advisors were anxious to see the Northern anti-Catholic alliance strengthened by Protestant marriages for both prince and princess. On the other, James, despite his earlier caveats in Basilikon Doron about mixed marriages,68 inclined increasingly towards a Catholic match for Henry as a way of uniting Europe's warring nations in peaceful union. The war party was appalled by James' plans. English militant Protestants believed that a Spanish alliance would play straight into the enemy's hands. Ìt is the Spaniard that is to be feared,' wrote Sir Walter Ralegh in a pamphlet commissioned by the Prince, `the Spaniard, who layeth his pretences and practices with a long hand . . . it were a horrible dishonour to be overreached by any of those dry and subtleheaded Spaniards.'69 However, if Henry were to marry a German princess, this would give him a foothold in Calvinist Europe from which to pursue his great ambition of leading a holy war against Spain. This was the political environment in which negotiations for Princess Elizabeth's marriage were conducted. `Those last months before the arrival of the Palatine Elector were characterized by an escalation of Protestant agitation against Catholic Europe,' writes J. W. Williamson, ànd at the centre of that aggressive talk sat the image of Prince Henry as the conqueror knight, like a shrine to which the national sacri®ce to Mars must be addressed.'70 As a national symbol of `Courage and Heroique sprite',71 Henry stood for a self-consciously masculine military culture. Austere and reserved, he was noticeably unresponsive to women. To his admirers he was a very type of Roman virtus, while his crusading zeal seemed like a living reproach to his 67

68 69

70 71

J. W. Williamson, The Myth of the Conqueror: Prince Henry Stuart: A Study of SeventeenthCentury Personation (New York, 1978), p. 61. Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 40±41. À Discourse Touching a Marriage Proposed between Prince Henry and a Daughter of Savoy', quoted in Williamson, Myth of the Conqueror, p. 135. Williamson, Myth of the Conqueror, p. 141. Henry Peacham the Younger, `The period of mourning', quoted by Elkin Calhoun Wilson, Prince Henry and English Literature (Ithaca, N. Y., 1946), p. 140.

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Robin Headlam Wells father's epicurean self-indulgence. Williamson has shown how, building on this royal image of masculine asceticism, Protestant pamphleteers developed an anti-feminist rhetoric that sought to portray all potential Catholic brides as deceivers intent on corrupting their Prince's high-minded purity. À woman's tongue caused Peter to deny his Master, and Dalila persuaded Sampson to betray his strength and life to her,' wrote Sir John Holles, `This is the surest engine and instrument the devil hath, and the pope and his ministers for the planting his kingdom employ not other.'72 Summing up his warning of the way even the most austere of men may be brought down by a temptress, Sir John Holles cited the example of John the Baptist, the anchorite with the camel's-hair shirt (Matthew 3:4), who was beheaded as a result of the wiles of a seductive woman: `Christ sent before him John the masculine but the pope delights more in Jone the feminine.'73 Cautious, as he was, of involving the government in high-risk plantation ventures,74 James would have been be unlikely to have seen The Tempest as pro-colonialist polemic, especially since the play ends with all its European characters abandoning the island and returning to their courts. But as a tale of reconciliation and reunion involving a marriage alliance between former enemies, it could hardly have been more topical. Here was a story that touched on his own most dearly held policies.75 Indeed he must have wished that his own son had been more like the gentle and tractable Ferdinand who falls in so readily with Prospero's plans. In contrast to the coldly aloof Prince 72

73 74

75

`Speech of Sir John Holles, concerning Prince Harry's Marriage', quoted by Williamson, Myth of the Conqueror, p. 136. Ibid., quoted by Williamson, Myth of the Conqueror, p. 136. Louis B. Wright points out that, although colonial aairs were under the aegis of the king and the Privy Council after 1609, the activity that did take place was `carried out by joint stock companies with only nominal support from the government'. He writes: `The reign of James I ended without the development of a well-thought-out colonial policy' (`Colonial Developments in the Reign of James I', The Reign of James VI and I, ed. Alan G. R. Smith (London and Basingstoke, 1973), p. 139). I take a dierent view of The Tempest from Frances Yates, who sees the play as part of àn archaising revival, a deliberate return to the past by an old Elizabethan living in the Jacobean age' (Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach (London, 1975), pp. 79±80). It was Henry, not James, who wanted to bring about a return to England's heroic past, an ambition with which Shakespeare would seem to have had little sympathy. David M. Bergeron discusses The Tempest as a `re-presentation of the politics of the Stuart royal family' in Shakespeare's Romances and the Royal Family (Lawrence, Kans., 1985), pp. 178±203, but does not consider the political issues that divided James and Henry. However, in an important essay published after this chapter was written David Bevington argues for a topical reading along the lines I have suggested: the play's wedding masque ìs a means of preserving a balance of power and a reconciliation of warring principalities' (`The Tempest and the Jacobean Court Masque', The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and David Holbrook (Cambridge, 1998), p. 221). In Shakespeare's Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the Romances (Ithaca and London, 1997) Constance Jordan, notes that `The future of both [Prospero's] dukedom and [Alonso's] kingdom is at last secured by the marriage of the two heirs Miranda and Ferdinand; the romance of The Tempest concludes with a political union' (p. 148).

260


Virtue Rede®ned in `The Tempest' Henry, Ferdinand has an eye for female beauty: `Full many a lady / have eyed with best regard,' he tells Miranda, and many a time Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear. For several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed And put it to the foil. (III.i.39±46)

Though Prince Henry was keenly interested in negotiating a marriage contract that would help him realise his political ambitions in Europe, and even made secret plans for a Protestant match, he seems to have shown little romantic interest in the various princesses that were presented to him as potential brides.76 Writing to his father, he said, `my part . . . which is to be in love with any of them, is not yet to hand'.77 By contrast, Ferdinand conveniently falls in love Àt the ®rst sight' (II.i.443) with the very woman who will serve Prospero's grand scheme of uniting Milan and Naples: Hear my soul speak. The very instant that I saw you did My heart ¯y to your service; there resides To make me slave to it. (63±6)

Though Ferdinand uses the old Petrarchan clicheÂ about the enslaved heart, we have moved on from Romeo's imagined world of disdainful mistresses and unrequited passion. Miranda is no cruel tyrant, but a gentle-hearted fourteenyear-old who weeps to see her aristocratic lover being forced by her `crabbed' father to perform menial tasks. Though he says that it is the `sweet thoughts' of her tears that persuade him to continue playing the `patient log-man' (67), it is dicult to imagine Ferdinand asserting his right to the woman he loves in the way that Othello does. When we see him in private conversation with Miranda, he comes across not as a warrior-hero, but as a man of sensibility. On hearing of Prospero's marriage plans, he admits that the height of his own ambition is `quiet days, fair issue, and long life' (IV.i.24). And when Prospero's masque is concluded, he and his bride declare in symbolic unison, `We wish your peace' (IV.i.163). Anything less like the recalcitrant and ®ercely masculine Henry it would be dicult to imagine. As if to suggest the providential nature of the match that Prospero hopes will bring about peace in Italy, Shakespeare invests the meeting between the young lovers with portentous emblematic overtones. Tom McAlindon has shown how a commonplace of Greek and medieval romance ± the hero's mis76 77

Williamson, Myth of the Conqueror, pp. 132±3. Quoted by Williamson, p. 139.

261


Robin Headlam Wells identi®cation of the heroine as a goddess ± is transformed into a solemn act of mutual homage whose language forms part of a rich pattern of liturgical imagery in the play.78 Prayer is one of The Tempest's central motifs. Beginning with the mariners' cries: `To prayers, to prayers!' (I.i.49), the play ends with Prospero supplicating the prayers of his audience (Epil. 16). When Ferdinand and Miranda ®rst meet, he asks her to accept his humble prayer (I.ii.425±8). Heaven's blessing is repeatedly invoked in the play. The fact that some of the references to prayer in The Tempest are to speci®cally Catholic forms of liturgy79 may be an oblique but tactful allusion to a potentially far-reaching foreign-policy decision, namely, James' plans to bring about peace in Europe by arranging a Catholic match for his son. Unlike Alonso, who chose not to `bless Europe' with his daughter (II.i.130), James hoped that through diplomatic marriage Prince Henry would realise the peace plans that he himself had spent so many years devising. It is one of the cruellest ironies of James' reign, not just that Henry did not survive to marry, but that it was James' own son-in-law who, as King of Bohemia and leader of the antiHabsburg coalition, was a key ®gure in precipitating the catastrophe of the Thirty Years War.

78 79

McAlindon, `The Language of Prayer in King Lear and The Tempest'. Prospero's words to Alonso ± Ì rather think / You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace / For the like loss I have her sovereign aid' (V.i.143±5) ± echo the Catholic practice of intercession of the Virgin Mary, while Gonzalo's ®nal speech ± Ò rejoice / Beyond a common joy! And set it down / With gold on lasting pillars' (V.i.209±11) ± recalls the Compline (see Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background, pp. 26; 29). When Ariel alludes to St Paul's voyage to Rome (Acts 27:34) in reporting how the survivors of the shipwreck were miraculously spared with `Not a hair perished' (I.i.218), it is the Catholic Rheims Testament from which he is quoting (Milward, p. 86). On Shakespeare's possible Catholic upbringing see Milward, pp. 15±23. See also J. S. Smart, Shakespeare: Truth and Tradition (London, 1928), pp. 69±71; John Henry De Groot, The Shakespeares and the Old Faith (1946; repr. Freeport, N. Y., 1968); E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: the `Lost Years' (Manchester, 1985); Richard Wilson, `Shakespeare and the Jesuits', Times Literary Supplement (19 December 1997), p. 11.

262

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INDEX absolutism 34, 72 acting adults 101±2 children 101±3, 144 universities 98±9 Akrigg, G. P. V. Jacobean Pageant: Or, The Court of King James I 140 Alabaster, William 65 Altman, Joel 21 anachronism 35±6, 47 Andrewes, Lancelot 68 Anjou, Francis, Duke of 188, 190, 191, 192 Ankersmit, F. R. 17±18, 19n, 20, 37n Annales school 3 Anne, Queen 160±1, 208 anti-realism on stage see staging Aristotle 121 Armitage, David 27 Arthur, King, in masques 159 atheism 119n Attewell, George 108 Augustine of Hippo, Saint 123 On the Faith in Things Unseen 117±18 Austin, J. L. 127 Bacon, Sir Francis, Viscount St Albans 80, 241, 246 Advancement of Learning, The 246 Wisdom of the Ancients, The 241 Bakhtin, Mikhail 143 Bards 163±4, 169, 172 Barrow, John 25 Barthes, Roland 14, 15 Beard, Charles A. 4±5, 7 Beaumont, Francis Knight of the Burning Pestle, The 100 Becker, Carl 4, 7 bene®t of clergy 223 Berkhofer, Robert 18, 31±2, 37 Bermuda pamphlets 249 Bible, uses of 62±8, 98, 247±8 Blackfriars consort 109

Boadicea 171±2, 173±5 body politic 204±8, 212, 215 Bolton, Edmund 172n, 174 Bolton, Robert 172±5 Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Depraved 172±5 boy companies 101±3, 144 Brannigan, John 13 Brecht, Bertolt Verfremdungseekt 103 Bristol pageant 188, 190, 193 Britain, ancient as Arcadian land 168±9 constitution 166±7 histories 155±65 patriotism 168±9 personi®cation in masques 161±2 and Rome 164, 167, 170±4 in writings Bolton 172±5 Browne 168±9 Camden 155±66 Drayton 161±8 Fletcher 171±2 Jonson 158±60 Milton 177±8 Selden 162±7 Shakespeare 169±71 Britons, ancient, in early Stuart writings 155±78 Browne, William Britannia's Pastorals 168±9, 176 Brutus (Trojan prince) 155±9, 163, 165, 168±9, 176 burglary see thievery Butler, Martin 27 Butter®eld, Herbert 22 Calvin, John 125 Camden, William 77, 81, 155±66, 173, 175±8 Britannia 155±62, 163, 165 Campion, Edmund 115

263


Index Carew, Thomas Coelum Britannicum 176±7 Carey, John 76 Carr, David 19 Carr, Robert 149 Catholicism, Roman 85 under Elizabeth I 76±7 and inwardness 123±4 liturgy in The Tempest 262 and Protestantism 101±2, 188±9, 259 theology and practices 97±8 Cecil, Robert 76±7 Cecil, William, Baron Burghley 146 censorship 38±9, 144 Chapman, George Bussy D'Ambois 142, 148±9 Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois 148 Charles I 71, 206±7 Eikon Basilike 207 Charles II 205, 207, 211 children's companies 101±3, 144 chivalry 159±60 Christ, representations of 62±8 Chronicle of Ireland, The 250 Churchyard, Thomas 186, 187, 189±92 classical writings on ancient Britain 155, 176 see also Tacitus, Julius Caesar Clapham, John Historie of England 156±7 Historie of Great Britannie 157 Cleaver, Robert 113, 118±19 clergy, bene®t of 223 Cocke, John 93 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 54 colonialism 247±55, 260 Condren, Conal 35, 36 coney (cony)-catching pamphlets 131, 225, 228 see also illusion, thievery Congreve, William Way of the World 212±14 coronation entry Edward VI 185 Henri II 185 Elizabeth I 185 James VI and I 193±5 corpses, removal from stage 104±5, 109 court ethics 72±4, 77, 81, 86±8, 138±9, 140±1, 148±9 politics 191±2

royal theatricality 184±98 tournaments 193 Cox, Jerey 11 crimes in London 130±1 punishment 222±3 see also thievery Croce, Benedetto 2±3 cross-dressing 94, 96±8 Cultural Materialism 33, 57 curtain-calls 106±9 dance and drama 108±9 Daniel, Samuel Philotas 142 Tethys' Festival 160±2 Darwinism 25±6 deception see illusion Dekker, Thomas 194, 196±7, 225, 227, 228 Belman of London 225, 228 Lanthorne and Candlelight 225 Devereux, Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex, 72, 77, 85±6, 142, 144±5, 149 Ditchley Portrait 167 Dod, John 113, 118±19, 120 Donne, John 64±5, 67, 71, 74, 76, 87, 199 Deaths Duell 64 Drakakis, John 11 Drant, Thomas 67 Drayton, Michael 161±5, 167 Poly-Olbion 161±2, 164, 165, 167, 168, 178 dress as mark of status 94 see also cross-dressing Druids 163±4, 169, 172, 173±5 Dryden, John 199±200, 204±8, 209, 215 Absalom and Achitophel 199, 207, 210 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 188, 191 Dugdale, Gilbert 194, 197±8 Dyke, Daniel 124 Eagleton, Terry 24 Edward VI coronation entry compared with Henri II 185 Elder, John 185±6 Elizabeth I, Queen compared to Roman emperors 80 coronation entry 185 depiction of 167 Jonson views 71, 84±6, 90 last years 143±4, 146, 147, 151

264


Index pageants 186±7 public appearances 193±4 suitors 188, 190±2 Elizabeth, Princess (daughter of James VI and I) 259 Ellis, John 26 Elton, Sir Georey 3, 5 Elton, W. R. 9 empiricism 8±13 Empson, William 48±62, 64±5 equivocation 126±7 Erasmus, Desiderius 242, 258 espionage 75±6, 82, 86, 129±30 evolutionary theory 25±6 Fabyan, Robert Chronicle 185 Family of Love 129 Filmer, Sir Robert Patriarcha 199, 205, 210 ®n-de-sieÁcle 145±6 Fitzgerald, James, Earl of Desmond 76±7 Fletcher, John Bonduca 171±2 Foucault, Michael 13±14, 36, 53, 55, 121n Foxe, John 118, 120 Acts and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) 124 Francis, Duke of Anjou 188 Frazer, Sir James 54±5, 56, 60±61 Freud, Sigmund 54±60 Fuller, Thomas Worthies of England, The 161 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 7, 13, 26 Gallery to the Temple 67 Gardiner, S. R. History of England from the Accession of James to the outbreak of the Civil War 1603±1642 139 Gardner, Helen 8±9 Garnet, Henry 127 Garter, Bernard 190, 191 Gascoigne George 186, 187, 195±6 Hundred Sundry Flowers, A 187 Princely Pleasures of the Court at Kenilworth, The 186 Gee, John 93±4 Gentili, Alberico 98±99 Georey of Monmouth 155±9, 162±4, 167±71, 175, 177 British History 156, 162, 167, 175

Globe Theatre 91, 108, 109 Goodman, Bishop Godfrey 147 Gorman, J. L. 19 Gosson, Stephen 94 Plays Confuted in Five Actions 93 Gower, John Confessio Amantis 245 Grady, Hugh 11, 12, 27 Greenblatt, Stephen 10 Greene, Robert 225, 227, 228 Notable Discovery of Cosenage, A 225 Second Part of Conny-Catching 225 Thirde and Last Part of Conny-Catching 225 Greville, Fulke 144±5 Alaham 144±5 Antony and Cleopatra 144±5, 150 Mustapha 143, 144±5 Grudin, Robert 9 Gunpowder Plot 71, 82±3 Haec Vir 94 Hakewill, George 115 Vanity of the Eye, The 117 Harington, Sir John 92±3 Treatise on Play 92±3 Harman, Thomas Caveat for Commen Cursetors 225, 227, 228 Harrington, James Commonwealth of Oceania, The 206±8 Harrison, Stephen (joiner) 194, 195±6, 198 Arches of Triumph 195±6 Haskell, Thomas L. 37n Hawkes, Terence 27 Haydn, Hiram 8 Hayward, John First Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV 144 Heidegger, Martin 7 Henri II coronation entry 185 Henry, Prince (son of James VI and I) 159±61, 259±62 Herbert, George 48±56, 63±8 Sacri®ce, The 49, 51, 54, 55, 57±8, 60, 61, 66, 67 Temple, The 52, 66 Hercules as archetypal warrior 240 compared with Aeneas 241±3 compared with Orpheus 240±1, 243±5, 257±8

265


Index Heywood, Thomas Apology for Acting 99 Hic Mulier 94 Hirsch, E. D. 5±6, 7, 23, 24 Validity in Interpretation 5±6 historical interpretation of literature 179±98 bias 180±2 eye witness accounts 180±1, 184 masques 180±1, 183 problems 181±3 sources 179±83 reliability 193±4 historicism 1±27, 36 principles 1±3, 5±6 historism 2±3 Historismus 2 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan 204 Hogarth, William Some of the Principal Inhabitants of ye Moon 208 Holderness, Graham 11 Hole, William (engraver) 161 Holinshed, Raphael 126 Chronicle 186 Holles, Sir John 260 Hooker, Richard 117 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 113 horse stealing see thievery Howard, Jean 12 Howard, Henry, Earl of Northampton 82 Hume, Robert 36±7 illusion, dramatic 91±4, 100, 109±10, 116±17 illustration of printed texts 195±6 impersonation 100n indigenous peoples, views of 249±55 inwardness 111±37 and Christianity 117±20, 121±4 distinct from privacy and individuality 133±5 historical vs philosophical argument 132±3 modern writers on 120±23 Jacobean tragedy, formative elements 143±5 James VI and I addresses to parliaments 199 Basilikon Doron 39, 78, 114, 259 compared to Augustus 80 coronation entry and pageant 193±5

and Cymbeline 170 unpopularity 140±1, 146±51 early reign 146±9 and Jonson 47, 84±6, 90 as musician-king 245±7 on origin of kings 247 and The Tempest 260 True Law of Free Monarchies 40, 166 Jenkins, Keith 16, 31n John of the Cross, Saint 63 Johnson, Robert 134 Jones, Emrys 9, 21 Jones, Inigo 159±60, 175±6, 196 Albion's Triumph 176 Stone-Heng Restored 175 Jonson, Ben and the monarchy 71±90 Charles I 71 Elizabeth I 71±8, 80, 81, 84±5, 87, 90 James I 47, 71, 78, 84±5, 87, 90, 194 views on monarchy 71±2 views on courtly wickedness 72±3 advocacy of courtly virtue 84±8 economy of scarcity 235 espionage 75±6 Gunpowder Plot 82±3 imprisonment 75, 76, 82 indebtedness to Camden 158 in¯uence on Jacobean tragedy 143±5 Selden 162 on inwardness 135 panegyric 80±1 politics 43, 71, 75±7, 82±3, 86, 88 presentation of texts 196±8 religion Protestantism 82±3 Catholicism, Roman 76, 82 satire 80±1 social views 88±90 view of history 158±60, 175±6 Jonson, Ben, works Epigram xiv 158 hymn 199 masques 83, 84, 158, 159±60, 162 poetry 73, 75±6, 83±4, 87, 89, 90 Bartholomew Fair 100 Catiline 83, 89±90 Cynthia's Revels 72, 73±4, 80±1, 84, 86, 87 Devil is an Ass, The 102±3 Discoveries 78, 81, 85 Eastward Ho 82, 148

266


Index Loomba, Ania 12 `ludo' 14th-century de®nitions 96 Lyotard, Jean-FrancËois 31, 33

Entertainment 80 Everyman Out Of His Humour 72 Golden Age Restored, The 87 Masque of Blackness, The 159 Masque of Queens 241 Panegyre 79, 84, 86 Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue 87±8 Poetaster 72, 74±5, 77, 79, 97 Prince Henry's Barriers 84, 86 Sejanus His Fall 71, 72, 74±5, 77±9, 82±90, 143, 145±7, 149±51 The Staple of News 89 Underwood 15, 25, 76, 88 Volpone 83, 86, 88, 90 Jorden, Edward Brief Discourse of a Disease called the Suocation of the Mother, A 113 Julius Caesar, on ancient Britons 155, 157, 164, 165 Juvenal Satire X 89 Kamps, Ivo 12 Kemp, Will 108, 109 Kenilworth pageants 186, 187, 188, 191 Kennett, White, Bishop of Peterborough 139 Knack to Know a Knave, A 108 Knevet, Ralph 67 Kuhn, Thomas 32 Lambard, William 223 Duties of Constables, The 224 Eirenarcha 223 Lamprecht, Karl Deutsche Geschichte 3 lesbianism 227±8 Lever, Christopher Cruci®xe, A 64 Lipsius, Justus Two Bookes of Constancie 40 Livy History 177 Locke, John 210, 212, 214±15 Letter Concerning Toleration 212 Two Treatises of Government 210, 212, 214 Loe, William 63 Logan, Robert 115 London crime and criminals 130±1, 221±2 exploitation of newcomers 130±1 growth and history 130, 157, 158, 173

Machaut, Guillaume de 57 Malcontent, The 143, 145, 149 Mandelbaum, Maurice Problem of Historical Knowledge, The 4 Manningham, John 146 Marcelline, George 246, 247 market towns, thievery in 221±2 Marlowe, Christopher 93, 103, 135 Doctor Faustus 102 Martin, Richard 71, 73 Martz, Louis L 56n Marvell, Andrew 206, 207, 211 Last Instruction, The 211 Marxist view of history and literature 3, 33, 138±40, 141±2, 146 Mary I, Queen, pageants 185 Mary II, Queen 208 masques 159±61, 176, 180±1, 183, 186, 199 see also pageants McElroy, Bernard 9 Medwall, Henry Fulgens and Lucrece 96 Meinecke, Friedrich 3n meta-narratives 31±34 metatheatre 91±110 Middleton, Thomas 147, 149±50 Changeling, The 150 Game at Chesse, A 94 Phoenix, The 147, 149 Revenger's Tragedy, The 149, 150 Second Maiden's Tragedy, The 150 Triumph of Honour and Industry, The 180 Witch, The 150 Women Beware Women 150 Milton, John History of Britain, The 177±8 Milward, Peter 9±10 minorities, religious 12 monarchy growth 167 and Jonson 71±90 opposition to 167 theatricality 183±98 see also court morality of court see court ethics More, Sir Thomas 80, 126±7 Dialogue concerning Heresies 127 Mulcaster, Richard 102, 185±6

267


Index Munday, Anthony 115 Munslow, Alan 23, 31n Munz, Peter 19±20 music as civilising in¯uence 253, 255±6, 258 Nashe, Thomas 75 Neo-Stoicism 39±42 Neville, Sir Henry 83±4 New Historians 3±6, 9 New Historicism 10±13, 48, 142, 249±50 Norbrook, David 27 Norwich pageant 190, 191, 193 O'Neill, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone 250 oratory and acting 99 Orkin, Martin 12 Orpheus 255 compared with Hercules 240±41, 243±5, 257±8 Overbury, Sir Thomas 87 Ovid Metamorphoses 241, 253, 257 pageants 138±51, 183±98 Bristol 188, 190 as comments on monarchy 189 James I coronation 246 Norwich 189±90 printed accounts 192 religious content 189 see also masques panegyric 74, 80±81 paradigms, theory of 32±3 parliamentary opposition, emergence of 21n Passion plays 97 patriarchalism 210 Patten, William 187 Patterson, Annabel 33, 38±9 Perkins, William 92, 113 Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience 119 persecution, religious 124n Persons (or Parsons), Robert, SJ, and Allen, William (Cardinal) 127, 129 Phelips, Sir Edward, speaker 79±80, 81 Phillips, James State in Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays, The 8 Pinker, Steven 25±6 Plato Symposium 258 play, 14th century de®nitions 96 playing fear of 91±110

hostility towards 101 Puritans' attitude to 91±2 and witchcraft 92, 94 relationship with audience 95 Pocock, J. G. A. 22±3 political culture 29±47 politics of theatre 69±153 see also individual subjects Popper, Karl 1±2 Poverty of Historicism, The 2 postmodernism 31 post-revisionism 33±4 pretence see illusion primitivism 254 Protectorate 207 Protestantism 85, 188±9, 192 and Catholicism, Roman 101±2, 188±9, 259 and fear of playing 97±8 and inwardness 123±4 see also Christianity providence and fate in Sejanus 43±6 Puritanism 85, 91±2, 124 purse-snatching see thievery Puttenham, George 245 Art of English Poesie, The 245 Quarles, Francis Emblemes 65 Rabkin, Norman 9 Rainolds, John 97±8 Ralegh (Raleigh), Sir Walter 86, 113, 116±17, 120±1, 134 History of the World 113 Sceptick, or, Speculations 116, 120±1 Ranke, Leopold von 2±4 realism, dramatic and anti-realism 109 dangers of 97 and prose 104 ReÂe, Jonathan 36±7 revisionism 33±4 Reynolds, Larry 11 robbers and robbery, see thievery rogues see thievery Rossiter, A. P. 8, 9 royal theatricality 184±98 Rundle, David 80n Salkend, John Treatise of Angels, A 119

268


Index Sandys, George 68 scientism 4 Scot, Reginald Discovery of Witchcraft, The 125 Seeley, Robert 61 Selden John 87, 162±8, 176 Analecton Anglo-Britannicon 167 De Laudibus Legum Angliae 167 England's Epinomis 167 Jani Anglorum Facies Altera 165, 166 self-knowledge, traditions of 121n, 123n Seneca 141, 241 Hercules furens 243±4, 257 Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 120±1 Shakespeare, William and ancient Britain 169±71 in context 217±62 illusion, attitude towards 93 in¯uence on Jacobean tragedy 143±5 on inwardness 135 thievery 219±22, 229±39 kingship models 246±7 political aectivity 200±2 response to James I accession 146 staging of 91 Shakespeare, William, works All's Well that Ends Well 107 Antony and Cleopatra 105 Coriolanus 105, 148±9, 200, 240, 257±8 Cymbeline 170±1 Hamlet 7, 100 ending 104, 105±6, 109 illusion 103 inwardness 111±12, 113, 115, 134 courtly politics of 96, 145, 148, 247 1 Henry IV thievery 224 2 Henry IV 107±8, 144 Henry V 103, 107, 145 Henry VIII 99±100, 107 Julius Caesar 105, 106, 108, 109, 145 King Lear 105, 148, 169±70, 200±4, 223, 238±9 Macbeth 105, 115, 148 Merchant of Venice, The 245 Merry Wives of Windsor, The 237±8 Midsummer Night's Dream 100, 103, 106±7, 108, 109±10, 235 Othello 105, 149 Rape of Lucrece 220, 223, 238 240 Richard III 94±5, 103±4

Romeo and Juliet 219 Sonnet 35 229±33, 235, 238 Sonnet 40 232 Sonnet 48 232±4 Sonnet 52 236 Sonnet 92 234±5 Sonnet 99 235 Sonnet 104 235±6 Sonnet 107 146 Sonnet 138 233±4 Tempest, The and colonialism 247±55, 260 compared with Aeneid 248±52 dynastic marriage 258±62 music 253, 255±6 Orpheus 247, 255±6, 258±9 primitivism 254 Titus Andronicus 104±5 Troilus and Cressida 96n Sherlock, William 208±11 Resolution of Some Cases of Conscience 208±9 Sidney, Sir Philip 97, 99 Defence of Poetry, The 113 Sidney, Sir Robert 83±4 Skinner, Quentin 5±6, 22±3 sonnets, structure 231, 236 Spedding, James 80n speech-act theory 127 Spenser, Edmund 167, 191 Faerie Queene, The 156, 168, 255±6 Shepherd's Calendar, The 191 staging limits in performance 135±6 non-realist 103±4 problems, removal of corpses 104±5, 109 realism 91 see also fear of playing Stoics, on inwardness 121 Stone, Lawrence 5 Stonehenge 174±5 Strachy, William True Reportory of the Wrack, The 251 Stratford-upon-Avon, thievery in 221 Stubbes, Philip Anatomy of Abuses 94 Stubbs, John Gaping Gulf, A 191 subjectivity de®ned 134 see also inwardness synchronism 165

269


Index Tacitus on ancient Britons 155, 165, 171±2 in¯uence on Jonson 39±42, 73, 75, 76, 78, 83±4, 89, 143±4, 150±1 Opera Omnia 151 Tate, Nahum, revival of King Lear 202±4 Tel quel 14, 15 `theatre of estrangement' 102, 103 theatre, politics of 69±153 see also individual subjects theatrical events see pageants, masques thievery 219±39 accounts by contemporary observers 225±6 categories of 219n of certainty 237 as entry into forbidden places 237 excuses 231±5 geographical implications 226±7 increase in Elizabethan period 222 likened to marital loss 236 limitations of sources 220, 226 lock-picking 227 in market towns 221 outsiders 226±7, 228±9 in Puritan culture 226 rogues and vagabonds 224±8 sexualised 238±9 signi®cance in Tudor and Stuart England 220±5 spoken language 228 victim 229±32, 236 Henry IV Part 1 224 King Lear 223, 238±9 Merry Wives of Windsor, The 237±8 Midsummer Night's Dream, A 235±6 Rape of Lucrece 238 Romeo and Juliet 219 Sonnets 238±9 Twelfth Night 108 Winter's Tale, The 238 Thompson, J. M. 6 Tillotson, Georey 8 Tillyard, E. M. W. 7±8, 9, 11 Shakespeare's History Plays 7 Townshend, Aurelian Albion's Triumph 176

tragedy, Jacobean 138±51 Tricomi, Albert 146 Anticourt Drama in England 1603±1642 143 Trojans 155±9, 162±4, 168±9, 177, 247, 251 True Tragedie of Richard the Third, The 99 Tuve, Rosemond 48±62 Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools 108 uniformity, religious 209 universities, playing in 98±9 Vaenius (Otto van Veen) Emblems of Love 258 vagabonds see thievery Vaughan, William 114±15 Veeser, H. Aram 11 Virgil Aeneid 241±52, 255 virtue in The Tempest 240±62 Walsingham, Sir Francis 129, 192 Webb, John 175 Webster, John 149 Duchess of Mal®, The 149 Monumental Column, A 149 White Devil, The 149 Westcott, Sebastian 102 Whately, William Bride Bush, A 113 White, Hayden 14±19 Metahistory 15 William III 208 Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester 211 Sodom 212 Wilson, Scott 11 Winstanley, Lilian 11n Wittgenstein, Ludwig 51, 52, 54, 55, 56±61, 66 women as outsiders 227±8 Wormald, Jenny 78n Wright, Thomas 120 Passions of the Mind, The 114, 118, 134 Wroth, Sir Robert 84 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 141 Zagorin, Perez 2±3n, 17n

270

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