The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions

Four hundred years after the death of John Marston, this collection of critical essays on his work by leading scholars in the early modern ®eld discovers, in the de-centred, hilarious, but unsettling work of this idiosyncratic Renaissance dramatist, an uncannily post-modern voice. Always at odds with his contemporaries, the censor, and sometimes his own audience, Marston is shown to be a deeply con¯icted ®gure, but the qualities which estranged him from previous critical eras are precisely those that now make him instantly accessible. This volume's essays reveal at every turn the full extent of his ambiguity towards politics, gender, and the very medium for and in which he wrote. t. f. wharton is Professor of English at Augusta State University. His publications include The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston, Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama, and books on Shakespeare's Henry IV and Measure for Measure published by Macmillan.

THE DRAMA OF JOHN MARSTON CRITICAL RE-VISIONS

edited by T. F. WHARTON

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011± 4211, USA www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de AlarcoÂn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain # Cambridge University Press 2000 The book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Baskerville 11/12.5pt

System 3b2

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions / edited by T. F. Wharton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0 521 65136 0 (hardback) 1. Marston, John, 1575±1634 ± Criticism and interpretation. i. Wharton, T. F. pr2697.d73 2000 822'.3 ± dc21 isbn 0 521 65136 0 hardback

For my wife, Rosemary DePaolo

Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Note on the text

page ix xi xii

Introduction

1

T. F. Wharton

1

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the Antonio plays

Rick Bowers

14

2 John Marston: a theatrical perspective

27

3 Varieties of fantasy in What You Will

45

4 Safety in ®ction: Marston's recreational poetics

60

5 Insatiate punning in Marston's courtesan plays

82

W. Reavley Gair Matthew Steggle

Patrick Buckridge Richard Scarr

6 Touching the self: masturbatory Marston

100

7 `Two parts in one': Marston and masculinity

124

8 The Malcontent: hunting the letter

145

9 The Dutch Courtesan and the pro®ts of translation

162

William W. E. Slights Sukanya B. Senapati Kiernan Ryan David Pascoe

vii

viii 10 11 12

contents Sexual politics in Marston's The Malcontent

181

Marston: censure, censorship, and free speech

194

Ill-mannered Marston

212

T. F. Wharton Janet Clare

Michael Scott

Index

231

Notes on contributors

rick bowers is Professor of English at the University of Alberta and author of Thomas Phaer and `The Boke of Chyldren' (1544). His work on Marston is part of a current project on the radically theatrical nature of early modern English comedy. patrick buckridge, born and educated in Brisbane, Australia, completed a doctorate on Marston at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975, and has been teaching literature at Grif®th University in Brisbane for the last twenty years. He has published widely on Australian literature, biography, the history of reading, and Renaissance English literature. janet clare is Lecturer in the Department of English, University College Dublin. She is the author of `Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (2nd edn, 1999) and numerous articles on Renaissance drama and on women writers of the Renaissance. Her Drama of the English Republic, 1649±1660 appeared in 2000. w. reavley gair was Professor of English and Director of the Teaching Centre at the University of New Brunswick (Canada); now retired, he is a visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle (UK) and an active member of the Renaissance Research Group there. He has edited two of Marston's plays in the Revels Series. david pascoe is Lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow. kiernan ryan is Professor of English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge. He is the author of Shakespeare (1989; 3rd edn, 2000) and Ian McEwan (1994), and the editor of King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays (1993), New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader (1996), Shakespeare: The Last Plays (1999), and Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (1999). ix

x

notes on contributors

richard scarr is a research student at the University of York. He is currently completing his D.Phil. thesis, entitled `Greasy Lips and Lascivious Tongues: the Growth and Development of Sexual Punning in Early Modern Comedy, 1597 to 1612'. He has previously published `Alan Bennett: Political Playwright' for New Theatre Quarterly. michael scott is Professor of English and Pro Vice-Chancellor of De Montfort University, Leicester. He has been Visiting Professor of English with Georgetown University, Washington DC since 1987. His books include John Marston's Plays: Theme, Structure and Performance (1978), Renaissance Drama and a Modern Audience (1982) and Shakespeare and the Modern Dramatist (1989). He is the editor of the Text and Performance series and The Critics Debate series. He is currently editing a book with Deborah Cartmell, Talking Shakespeare, which is concerned with the transformation of Shakespeare's `meanings' through reading and performance. sukanya b. senapati is Assistant Professor of English at Abraham Baldwin College, Tifton, Ga. She teaches World Literature and Literature by Women of Color. william w. e. slights is Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan. The author of Ben Jonson and the Art of Secrecy (1994), his Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books has been accepted by Michigan University Press and he is writing another book on the image and icon of the heart in the Renaissance. matthew steggle is Lecturer in English at Shef®eld Hallam University. His publications include Wars of the Theatres: The Poetics of Personation in the Age of Jonson. t. f. wharton is Professor of English at Augusta State University. His books include Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama and The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston.

Acknowledgements

The editor wishes to acknowledge the New York Public Library, and speci®cally Elizabeth Wyckoff of the Print Collection, for the use of images from F. Bertelli's Omnium Fere Gentium Habitus (1563) on the front and back covers.

xi

Note on the text

All citations, unless otherwise stated, are from the following editions of the plays: Antonio and Mellida, ed. W. Reavley Gair, Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1991). Antonio's Revenge, ed. W. Reavley Gair, Revels Plays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). The Malcontent, ed. G. K. Hunter, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1975). The Fawn, ed. David A. Bolstein, Revels Plays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). Eastward Ho, ed. R. W. van Fossen, Revels Plays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). The Insatiate Countess, ed. Giorgio Melchiori, Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1984). The Dutch Courtesan and The Wonder of Women, or The Tragedy of Sophonisba are taken from MacDonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill (eds.), The Selected Plays of John Marston (Cambridge University Press, 1986). What You Will is cited from M. R. Woodhead (ed.) (Nottingham: Nottingham Drama Texts, 1980). Woodhead gives act and scene divisions but the text is through-lineated. Jack Drum's Entertainment and Histriomastix are cited from H. Harvey Wood (ed.), The Plays of John Marston, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1934±9), vol. iii. Wood gives act divisions, but no lineation. Citations are therefore by act and page-number. Marston's satires are cited from Arnold Davenport (ed.), The Poems of John Marston (Liverpool University Press, 1961). xii

Note on the texts Ben Jonson is cited from C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson (eds.), Ben Jonson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925±51).

xiii

Introduction T. F. Wharton

It is just four hundred years since Marston embarked on his brief and sensational career as a commercial dramatist for the boys' companies. His ®rst play, Histriomastix (1598) was written, not for a boys' company at all, but for his peers at the Middle Temple,1 but then, in two brief creative bursts, ®rst for the playhouse at Paul's, then for the Blackfriars, he wrote eight sole-authored plays: for Paul's playhouse, between 1600 (possibly 1599)2 and 1601, Antonio and Mellida, Jack Drum's Entertainment, Antonio's Revenge, and What You Will; for the Blackfriars, between 1604 3 and 1606, The Malcontent, The Dutch Courtesan, The Fawn, and Sophonisba. The silent two- or threeyear interim marks Marston's virtual obliteration by Jonson in the `War of the Theatres'.4 Marston's vigorous participation in a literary war was typical. From the start, it is clear that he intended to be noticed, and the means he instinctively used was aggression. His chosen nickname, `Kinsayder', or `castrator's song', is a kind of pun on his own name (`Mar-stone'), and the literary stones of others were his targets, initially in verse satire, and subsequently in drama.5 His means of establishing himself in both genres was by attacking, with almost the ®rst words he wrote, their most recognized practitioners; respectively, Joseph Hall and Ben Jonson. He was `ready for trouble', and prepared to `enter the literary lists . . . in the role of challenger'. 6 In the verse satires, he sustained a belligerent relationship not only with his chosen rival, but with his own readership, his fellow Inns of Court men, whom he dubs `leud Priapians' in the very ®rst lines of Certaine Satyres (`The Authour in prayse of his precedent Poem' (Pigmalion)). Having provoked criticism, he then forestalled it. In his Scourge of Villanie preface, `To those that seem iudiciall perusers', he concludes that `Hee that thinks worse of my rimes then my selfe, I scorne him, 1

2

t. f. wharton

for he cannot, he that thinks better is a foole.' In the same volume's sixth satire, it is actually his own supporters who come off worst. Marston quotes a reader who thinks `that's prety, prety good', only to deride the praise of such an idiot: `O indignitie / To my respectlesse free-bred poesie' (93, 99±100). His literary persona seems to have been backed up by truly obnoxious social behaviour,7 and, to the end of his career, Marston was still challenging the censor and his own rivals. He and Jonson collaborated with Chapman on Eastward Ho in 1604/5, for which Marston's co-authors suffered imprisonment; the Sophonisba preface renews his attack on Jonson; and Marston went on to write a (lost) anti-James I play in 1608 for which he himself was imprisoned. Only then did he give up the ®ght, selling his Blackfriars share in 1608 and leaving William Barkstead to ®nish The Insatiate Countess.8 Marston's combativeness worked well, at least initially. In terms of attracting public notice, he was fortunate enough to be included in the bishops' ban on satires, and his works were among those burned publicly in 1599. In terms of thrusting himself into the canon, he gained almost instant recognition as one of the key `pregnant wits' of both satire and stage, and was included in every list of prominent playwrights of the time.9 Thereafter, however, Marston's critical reception is largely a chronicle of neglect or hostility.10 Robert Holub, re¯ecting on Jauss's theory of cultural `horizons of expectation', postulates a process of `continuous displacement', though `hitherto unnoticed features' may also come to light.11 Marston has been continuously displaced. Lacking the qualities which might correspond with the positives in successive ages' critical vocabularies ± `poetry' or nobility of characterization or moral loftiness or philosophical consistency ± Marston has been condemned over the centuries, even by his rare apologists. Hazlitt, though generally quite appreciative, also ®nds Marston `gross'.12 The ®rst-ever book-length study of Marston ®nds `no modicum of nobility' in Marston, and dismisses him as `next to nothing as a poet'.13 Sometimes, as reception theorist Wolfgang Iser remarks, `there are limits' to the negotiations of expectation between reader and writer, and, since one of Marston's essential qualities is his frustration of expectation, his work has provoked `intensi®ed negations'.14 As recently as the 1970s, even those who lauded his Absurdist elements were still, just like their predecessors, trying ± in vain ± also to discern qualities of `Moral Vision' in him, or to trace

Introduction

3

his `Quest for Moral Order',15 and were therefore still reading against the text, in a vain high-modernist attempt to ®nd in art the moral coherence that life denies. Since Marston actually sought out ± or created ± moral disorder and made it his medium, the `Oblivion' that this relentless self-publicist insisted (once at the end of The Scourge of Villanie; again on his tomb) that he craved for has indeed been his fate. In particular, his performance history is a virtual blank. Marston has thus been denied one of the most vital appeals of his work. Though he prepared his work for the press with great care, his primary focus was on producing `scenes invented, merely to be spoken', as he reminded even his original readers (The Malcontent, `To the Reader'). However, the relationship between critical reputation and stage performance, as Michael Scott's essay in this volume reminds us, is inextricable. The latter is fuelled by the former, and Marston stage revivals from the critical void have been few. Fortunately, current critical perspectives show us that Marston is capable of coinciding exactly with our own `horizons of expectation'. It is Marston's capacity to be read once again in terms of his contemporaneity which gives rise to the present volume of essays, drawn from Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The post-modern condition, where only `the worst / Are full of passionate intensity', tends not to valorize moral rectitude, so freeing us to value Marston's plays for different or even antithetical reasons. There are encouraging signs already that Marston is being, in a very literal sense, re-read. Following a period when most editions of Marston were out of print, we now have Keith Sturgess's new edition of selections of his work in the Oxford World Classics series, and, until their lamentable change of mind, Penguin seemed set to produce a new original-spelling edition. There are new reprints of the excellent Revels editions of various individual plays. Equally important, however, is a re-reading of Marston in the sense of our applying more current critical technologies to his work. The essays in this volume, registering the co-ordinates, not of Moral Vision, but of market forces, play, gender, and politics, locate the essential quality and appeal of Marston's appeal as never before. Possibly the most productive lines of enquiry that recent critical theory offers lead in exactly the opposite direction from moralism. Whether we address literature's commercial interchanges or the transactions of Bakhtinian `Carnival' or Barthean jouissance, the

4

t. f. wharton

discourse of criticism is now highly attuned to play and inter-play between text and audiences. This kind of perception offers us most hope of coming to terms with the unpredictable shifting, re¯exive quality that so marks Marston's work. Thus, while Jackson and Neill give full value to the `combative' element in Marston, they also comment on an unexpected vein of self-mockery, speci®cally regarding the character of Lampatho Doria in What You Will, usually taken to be one of Marston's several hostile depictions of Jonson: `Lampatho Doria is at one point dubbed with Marston's own satiric pseudonym, Kinsayder, [which] seems to convert the caricature into a teasing anamorphic double-portrait of the two rivals.'16 Reavley Gair identi®es four self-mocking references in Marston's plays to his own trademark red hair and little legs.17 Such self-deprecation converts literary pugilism into game, but demonstrates, too, a particularly shrewd commercial instinct, wooing the same audiences he had deliberately antagonized in his satires by creating a playful, self-mocking, and self-referential bond with them. The work of Agnew, Bruster, and others has examined the intimate relationship between theatre and the marketplace,18 and Marston's plays seem more fully contextual than most, the sites of intersecting cultural and speci®cally market forces. His ®rst theatre at Paul's was located ± rather like a modern American movie-theatre in a suburban shopping mall ± at the commercial hub of a ¯uid and upwardly mobile neighbourhood.19 His plays traded on the prospect that these same boys who were today acting these very plays might `come one day into the Court of Requests' ( Jack Drum's Entertainment v.234), and, when the `War' broke out, it was largely driven by rivalry for market share and speci®c market sectors.20 Yet, while Marston was keenly aware of the commerce of theatre, his attitude to his own position is again ambiguous. The prefaces to his published plays contain the usual disclaimers, including the pretence of the socially conscious writer that the author was `not implicated in putting the work into print'.21 This could be read as an up-market promotional ploy, and Reavley Gair's and Rick Bowers's essays in this volume interpret Marston as a dramatist entirely attuned to market forces; yet ± typically, in an author of such pronounced contradictions ± Kiernan Ryan's essay identi®es pronounced anticapitalist markers in Marston's work, and David Pascoe detects a sense of self-contamination in Marston's commercialism. More broadly, Ryan and Pascoe both imply a relationship which was at

Introduction

5

best ambivalent and at worst deeply hostile between Marston and his audience, a relationship which therefore closely mirrors the hostility of the verse satires. Yet other contributors emphasize the eagerness with which Marston accommodated himself to the marketplace, his stress on designing play and audience pleasure into his product, and even, as Janet Clare argues, his valuation of his audience as an ultimate and sympathetic court of appeal in the face of censorship. In all probability, both extremes are true and Marston's contrarieties remain unreconciled. His revulsion with his medium was matched by his fascination with it, and his contempt for his audience contends with his eagerness to succeed commercially. Rick Bowers's essay, opening the volume, gives full value to Marston's sense of a buying public, as he argues that Marston's decentred world of play is part of a careful strategy of supply and demand. Ironically, though, Marston gives the audience what they want by denying them what they expect; seeking to `unglue' (Marston's own neologism) dramatic and linguistic norms, and offering instead elements of carnival, farce, and parody, to produce, with the Antonio plays, what Bowers calls a `revenge musical'. This was Marston's `mart of woe', and he created an eager market for it. Reavley Gair's essay goes on to argue the extent and complexity of Marston's adaptations to the business of theatre. When Marston's market research, as it were, showed him a demographically different Paul's audience pro®le than the one he had anticipated ± less exclusive and more popular ± he adjusted his product accordingly; just as, not only at Paul's, but also in the Hall of the Middle Temple or at the Blackfriars theatre, he always adapted his theatre techniques and materials to supply what the speci®c space and audience demanded. The ludic element that Bowers stresses in Marston is also seen in the verbal exuberance of Marston's early plays, their manic and apparently random deployment of dramatic device, their extravagant use of music, or their complete inversion of dramatic convention. Now that we approach a text with the expectation that its structures might be de-centred or that its `meaning' will be a random `galaxy of signi®ers', the shifting surfaces of Marston's plays seem familiar territory. Even the exhausted debate of the 1970s as to whether the style of Marston's plays, and of the boy actors who played them, was `parodic' can be revived in terms of `pastiche',22 identi®ed by Fredric Jameson as a key marker of post-modernism's `glossy' `nostalgia art'.23

6

t. f. wharton

The present volume explores Marston's invocation of the play principle and his practice of it. Patrick Buckridge contends that, given the exigencies of censorship and repression in Marston's England, the author tried to elude political pitfalls by encouraging an alternative means of being read. In both his verse satires and in Jack Drum's Entertainment and other early plays, he stressed his own carnivalesque, metadramatic quality, urging a `recreative surrender to the play impulse'. Matthew Steggle likewise stresses Marston's `phantasticknesse', a quality he sees paralleled in Renaissance psychology and musical theory, which encourages a playful liberation of the text from serious design. Steggle identi®es this theme in many of the para-texts to the plays, including, in the case of What You Will, the entire ®rst scene, with its avowed invocation of the spirit of pleasure as the informing principle of his drama. It is a tendency which survives as late as the Prologue to The Dutch Courtesan with its anti-Horatian avowal that `We strive not to instruct, but to delight', and Richard Scarr explores, in that play and in The Insatiate Countess, the most basic level at which audiences may have accepted that invitation. In Scarr's demonstration of lewd pun and double entendre in every corner of the Marstonian text, we can imagine a constant actor±audience interactivity, and almost of collaboration, in the slippery games of double meaning. Sexuality is more than a local amusement in Marston's drama, however: it is probably the most insistent preoccupation of his work. Here, most clearly, the essentially duple nature of Marston's drama is apparent. He is as interested in gender as he is in sex; and if at times he seems particularly obsessed with what Mary Tew Douglas calls the `fetishization of purity',24 at other times it seems rather the `fetishistic staging of the boy actor' which preoccupies him.25 Both Peter Stallybrass and Bruce Smith26 stress the `indeterminacy' of stage gender, particularly in the liminal genre of tragi-comedy, Marston's special ®eld. That indeterminacy found its apogee in the boys' companies. What we will so often ®nd in Marston's plays is an intensely ambivalent attitude to women, which then converts into a far more radical ambivalence about gender roles and boundaries. Perhaps aware of the development of a female theatre audience,27 Marston creates some of the most outspoken female voices in the literature of the period: Meletza in What You Will, Crispinella in The Dutch Courtesan, Dulcimel in The Fawn, or of course Sophonisba; yet Sophonisba also demonstrates Marston's tendency to martyr good

Introduction

7

women;28 and another group of women, from the minor ®gures of Mistress Brabant or Camelia in Jack Drum's Entertainment, or Celia in What You Will, through to Aurelia in The Malcontent, Franceschina in The Dutch Courtesan, and Isabella the `Insatiate Countess', depicts women as men's betrayers. Recent work on cross-dressing in the theatres has stressed the anxieties about the body underlying that convention,29 and Marston's plays constantly dwell on the body ± desired, fed, disguised, evacuated, voyeuristically observed, assaulted, touched, or selftouching. This is the site of the full gamut of male anxiety: of cuckoldry, of impotence, of rejection, and of female witchcraft (notably in the Erichtho scenes of Sophonisba); and, conversely, the inscriptions of male fantasy on the female body. Sometimes, all these contend in the same play. It is in The Fawn, a play containing sexual fantasy, impotence, and cuckoldry, that Hercules strikes the key-note of anxiety: `If women should woo us to the act of love, we should all be utterly shamed: how often should they take us unprovided, when they are always ready' (iv.iv.131±2). It is therefore intriguing to see what Marston's drama contributes to the `fashioning' of gender and to the role of gender in `®guring social relations'.30 One mechanism he records is a re¯exive recoil from heterosexual and towards homosocial or auto-erotic pursuits. This is William W. E. Slights's theme in his analysis of Marston's construction of a politics of gender, an analysis which concentrates on gender issues speci®cally through the male gaze. Working primarily from The Fawn, Slights carefully tracks Marston's delineation of the patterns of male sexual anxiety regarding possession, in®delity, and disease, which drive male sexual desires back in on homo-social alliances and the `self ', with women stimulating only onanistic fantasy. Sukanya Senapati also traces lost gender certainties. Indeed, she sees in Marston's handling of gender an unexpectedly radical interrogation of the dominant tropes of patriarchy. While many of the plays faithfully echo then-current ideologies, Marston opens to question the entire ethos of male dominance by his questioning of gender identity and preference (as the boy actors uniquely enabled him to do), by his ridicule of the male anxieties of economic and sexual competition, and by his foregrounding of strong, oppositional female voices. Yet, Kiernan Ryan's analysis differs signi®cantly here. He, too, detects male anxiety at the very heart of Marston's own preoccupa-

8

t. f. wharton

tions, but, rather than perceiving Marston's as a controlled and analytical voice, he sees Marston as the victim of the condition. Drawing on the recent ground-breaking work on hysteria ± especially male hysteria ± and representation, he sees the buried drives and distinctive obsessions of Marston ± speci®cally in The Malcontent ± as the very source of the power and uniqueness of Marston's imaginative logic and idiosyncratic style. However, this power is nihilistic, tearing down the forms of social, artistic, personal, and ultimately economic register. Similarly, David Pascoe's essay traces a vein of deep negativity permeating Marston's work. The starting point in his theme is the story of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan, retold in Florio's Essayes of Montaigne, a work that exerted so strong an in¯uence on the later Marston, and speci®cally on The Dutch Courtesan. Pascoe parallels the act of translation with the translating sexual act, and traces ideas of adultery, adulteration, and sale from Virgil, through Montaigne and Florio; through Marston's own work as it projects these ideas on to the ®gure of Franceschina, the `Dutch Courtesan'; arriving ®nally at Marston's own conscious acts of prostitution in a ¯uid marketplace. Yet, other contributors see Marston as anything but self-indicting, and the next two essays, on the theme of Marston and politics, interpret him rather as targeting the political establishment of his own time with considerable self-con®dence and daring. T. F. Wharton, while seeing Marston as being, indeed, preoccupied with sex, prostitution, and gender, argues that Marston uses these themes, in The Malcontent, speci®cally to target patriarchal discourses in Jacobean statecraft. Examining the play's parallel vocabularies of political power and sexual potency, and the paralleled three dukes who gain, lose, or re-gain power in the play, he concludes that these dukes are differentiated largely by the degree of skill with which they control the politics of sex, and that sex constitutes the entire and only ®eld of political manipulation within the play. Marston's sceptical analysis here of the politics of sex is in keeping with the subversiveness which characterized him from the bishops' ban on his satires onward. Thanks to Jonathan Dollimore's work, the concept of Marston's `radical' implications is already familiar to us. Dollimore's analysis of the Antonio plays argues that they illustrate Raymond Williams's theory of complex `cultural moments', and that they covertly interrogate political ideologies from within. Indeed, Dollimore argues that Marston `subverts providentialist ideology

Introduction

9

and its corollary, natural law'.31 The same may be said of many of Marston's other plays. The ®rst play he wrote (Histriomastix) is his last politically conservative play. His plays of state impersonate the strategies of power only in order to expose them. This is no less true of Sophonisba than it is of The Malcontent. Peter Ure, over half a century ago, and Gustav Cross, nearly forty years ago, perceived that Sophonisba is a study in tyranny and compromise on the one hand, and resistance on the other.32 Eastward Ho steps over into direct impersonation and ridicule of aspects of Jacobean power, and of course the authorities responded repressively. In truth, however, the censor is the unseen presence in all these plays, as they tread the delicate balance between covert question and overt challenge. In this volume, Janet Clare's essay on censorship argues that Marston was much less prepared than most of his contemporaries meekly to accept regulatory restraint. In one of the contradictions that so characterize Marston's work, the `free speech' issue demonstrates a simultaneous playfulness and utter seriousness. As mentioned above, Patrick Buckridge's essay in this volume shows the strategies of play by which Marston sought to escape of®cial scrutiny. Clare's essay demonstrates the extent to which, nevertheless, Marston was prepared to push the limits. Examining cuts between various versions of the text, and tropes of free speech (a concept rare in the early modern period) within the plays, Clare shows that Marston made ± notably in The Malcontent, The Fawn, and The Dutch Courtesan ± extraordinary challenges to regal authority and the divine right of kings. The volume concludes with an unapologetic demand that the theatrical establishment should have the courage to put Marston where he belongs: on the stage. Michael Scott views Marston's essentially impolite and inconvenient voice, hard to subsume within neutralizing theories, as the reason for his long history of critical neglect, which in turn has dictated his theatrical oblivion. Scott argues for an acceptance of Marston on his own anarchic terms, so as to enable us to appreciate a theatrical genius in action. These, then, are the themes made evident to us by contemporary currents in literary theory and criticism and abundantly present in the plays of John Marston. One might claim not only that poststructuralist discourse can be applied to Marston, but rather that Marston's plays were made for it and have only been awaiting it. The essays in this volume demonstrate precisely this, revealing at every turn the sense of contemporaneity he is capable of evoking.

10

t. f. wharton

The terms in which he is admired are largely new to Marston criticism. This is not the snarling satirist, or the poet of lofty indignation, the moralist, the stoic, the tortured or bewildered cultural witness, or even the Absurdist ± the versions of Marston visible at previous `cultural horizons'. The essays in this volume reveal an unfamiliar Marston. Yet the Marston who emerges is immediately recognizable to us as our DoppelgaÈnger. The same Marston who shocked his contemporaries and baf¯ed whole centuries of critics is suddenly instantly accessible to us. De-centred and de-stabilizing, anarchically playful, constantly transgressing boundaries of literary convention, politics, or gender, Marston's vexing transactions with his audience always challenge us, not least by the jagged shifts of tone, characterization, and meaning which are not merely his protective colouration but his very essence. This is exactly the voice of post-modernism. Four centuries after the birth of Marston's brief and chequered career as a dramatist, we are once again equipped to discover af®nities for the very aspects of his work which have provoked the most `intensi®ed negations' in even the most sympathetic readers of previous generations. We can see in him, now, possibly the most modern voice of the entire extraordinary Renaissance period of English drama. notes 1 See Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 119±20. 2 For a 1599 date and Antonio and Mellida's claim to be ®rst, see W. Reavley Gair's Revels edition of that play (Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 21±4; and, for 1600, and the claims of Jack Drum's Entertainment, Anthony Caputi, John Marston, Satirist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 259±60. 3 G. K. Hunter, in his Revels edition of The Malcontent (London: Methuen, 1975), chooses to `disregard' the play's anti-James material, which frees him to contest the traditional dating of 1604, and argue an earlier date and an earlier company: see pp. xli±xlvi. 4 For a brief review of the more recent theories about the events of the `War', in which various companies contended and in which various rival dramatists traded caricatures in their plays, see T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster (Manchester University Press, 1995), Introduction, pp. 30±6. The `War' seems to have turned nasty, especially if we believe Jonson's brag (in the `Drummond Conversations', Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, vol. i, p. 136) of having beaten Marston and taken his pistol from

Introduction

5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

11

him. The conclusive literary blow was delivered in Jonson's Poetaster, with the Marston-character made to vomit up on stage his own neologisms. The humiliation seems to have driven Marston into hiding, leaving his Middle Temple chambers. When he returned, it was with a grovelling Latin Dedication to Jonson (though, as Richard Scarr has pointed out to me, `Gravissimo' could also be read as a sly insult to Jonson's bulk!), and with a severely chastened style. See Richard F. Hardin, `Marston's Kinsayder: the Dog's Voice', Notes and Queries n.s. 29 (1982), 134±5. Morse S. Allen, The Satire of John Marston (Columbus, Ohio: F. H. Heer, 1920), p. 19. MacDonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill (eds.), The Selected Plays of John Marston (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. xiii (modernized spelling), retell the well-known story from John Manningham's diary about Marston and Alderman More's daughter, whom Marston extravagantly ¯attered. When she responded that she thought he was a poet, he replied that this was true, `for poets feign and lie, and so did I when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foul'. The Revels editor of The Insatiate Countess, Giorgio Melchiori (Manchester University Press, 1984), ascribes certain scenes to Marston's own hand, but J. D. Lake's stylistic analysis sees the play as `uniformly nonMarstonian' (`The Insatiate Countess: Linguistic Evidence for Authorship', Notes and Queries n.s. 28 (1981), 166±70). For Marston's reputation in verse, see Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple, p. 85, n. 7. On Marston's reputation in drama, see Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, vol. i, pp. 3±4. For a full account of Marston's critical reception, see my Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (Columbia: Camden House, 1994). See Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1984). P. P. Howe (ed.), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, 21 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1967), vol. vi, p. 229. Allen, Satire of John Marston, pp. 160±1. Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 108. The phrases are titles of traditionalist books by, respectively, Robert Ornstein (Madison, Wis.: Greenwood Press, 1960) and Irving Ribner (London: Methuen, 1962). Macdonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill (eds.), The Selected Plays of John Marston (Cambridge University Press), p. xiv. Jackson and Neill also identify in The Insatiate Countess a mocking self-portrait of a satirist, and his work, `The Snarl'. See Gair's Antonio and Mellida edition, p. 9. See Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American Thought, 1550±1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1986);

12

19 20

21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29

t. f. wharton Douglas Bruster, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1992); but also Scott Cutler Shershow, `Marston, Calvinism and Satire: Rethinking the Economic Determination of Renaissance Drama', Renaissance Drama 26 (1995), 1±27. See Reavley Gair, The Children of Paul's (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 66±8, 69±74, 116±18. Robert C. Evans has established that Marston's ally, Dekker, speci®cally attacks Jonson's social inferiority, in Satiromastix, and thus attempts to discredit both Jonson's patron-worthiness and the social standing of the Revels company. See `Jonson, Satiromastix, and the Poetomachia: a Comic Countergenre in Marston, Jonson, and Middleton', Renaissance Drama 15 (1986), 369±83. See Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 174. The material on this topic is quite extensive, often overlapping with discussion of Marston's af®nity with Theatre of the Absurd or with Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt. The most notable proponent of parody theory in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and speci®cally in Marston is R. A. Foakes, beginning with his `John Marston's Fantastical Plays', Philological Quarterly 41 (1962), 229±39; the second part of Caputi's John Marston, Satirist is entirely dedicated to exploring Marston's parodic qualities; the chief opponent to the indiscriminate application of parody theory is Richard Levin. See `The Proof of the Parody', Essays in Criticism 24 (1974), 312±16. Fredric Jameson, `Post-Modernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism', New Left Review 146 (1984), 67. See Mary Tew Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge, 1984). Chapters 7±9 deal speci®cally with phobias concerning the `pollution' of female sexuality. See Peter Stallybrass, `Transvestism and the ``Body Beneath'': Speculating on the Boy Actor', in Susan Zimmerman (ed.), Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 64±83; 72. Michael Shapiro's claim, in Gender in Play (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), that gender ambiguity was less of a factor in boys' companies, seems unlikely (51). See, in Zimmerman (ed.), Erotic Politics, Bruce R. Smith's essay, `Making a Difference: Male/Male ``Desire'' in Tragedy, Comedy, and TragiComedy', pp. 127±49. See Jean E. Howard, `Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England', Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 418±40. See also Mellida in Antonio's Revenge, and the sufferings of Maria in The Malcontent and Beatrice in The Dutch Courtesan. See Stephen Orgel, Reconstructions: Studies in Gender in the English Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Other important work includes Catherine Belsey's `Disrupting Sexual Differences: Meaning

Introduction

13

and Gender in the Comedies', in John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (London: Methuen, 1985); Laura Levine, Men in Women's Clothing: Antitheatricality and Effeminization, 1579±1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Judith Butler, Gender Troubles: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990); and Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (London: Routledge, 1991). 30 See Karen Newman, Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. xxvii±xxviii. 31 Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton and Chicago: Harvester Press and Chicago University Press, 1984), pp. 6±8; 83. 32 Peter Ure, `John Marston's Sophonisba: a Reconsideration', Durham University Journal 10 (1949), 75±92; and Gustav Cross, `The Retrograde Genius of John Marston', Review of English Literature 2 (1961), 19±27.

chapter 1

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays Rick Bowers

In their recent book on English drama, Shepherd and Womack link early modern theatrical competition to a struggle for `product identity'.1 Certainly, as argued by critics like Agnew, Bruster, and Shershow, theatre and marketplace materially interanimated each other in the period.2 Marston, however, seems to be the only dramatist self-conscious enough to realize that his drama competes in a `mart' of re¯exive professional play. Indeed, the OED de®nes the term `mart' broadly as `a city, region, or locality where things are bought or sold', quoting as ®gurative ®rst use Marston's line near the end of Antonio's Revenge: `Farewell, mart of woe' (iv.iii.177). The play involves spectacular celebration of revenge possibilities where recompense is made abruptly, horribly, ridiculously convenient, where ± to quote one of the last lines of the play ± `Never more woe in lesser plot was found' (v.vi.59). I agree with Jonathan Dollimore that Marston's drama is `Radical', but the serious philosophical intention that Dollimore attributes to the playwright seems to operate in an `irony-free' zone.3 And Marston is nothing if not ironic (although other attributes ± importunate, outrageous, and gleefully intertextual ± also spring to mind). In fact, to take Marston seriously is to understand that his thrust is basically sensational, not moral; a matter of contemporary theatrical and popular culture, not ethical consistency excavated from the classics. The energies of Antonio's Revenge are not to be appreciated in considerations of causal plot structure or moral stance. Rather, the play aims at emotional involvement veering ever towards over-thetop absurdity. Balance and caution are rejected in favour of a delectably excruciating revenge, as signalled in Marston's earlier, more conventional, application in The Scourge of Villanie ii: `Hence idle Cave, vengeance pricks me on, / When mart is made of faire religion' (72±3). Like Christ, who snapped at the intolerable sight of 14

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays

15

money changers in the temple, the revenger too must drive out the miscreants. But unlike the exercise of justice (divine or earthly), revenge ± like theatre ± must above all be enjoyed in a space created by parody that simultaneously in¯ates and de¯ates possibilities. All stances are understood to be slippery histrionic stances. Attempts at impartiality are renounced in favour of sensational emotional involvement where each moment is bounded only by itself in relation to its self-conscious representation. And repetition is joyfully pervasive. Like shopping at present-day K- or Wal-Marts, or Asda superstores, any transaction itself is less important than its convenient, self-serving, histrionic presentation. But even sensitive critics of John Marston's drama tend to avoid Antonio's Revenge. Such avoidance, perhaps, enhances their reputation for sensitivity. The play itself is anything but sensitive. Rude, crude, and theatrically unglued (and the play is credited with ®rst use of the metaphorical term `unglued' at iv.ii.454), Antonio's Revenge constantly overleaps boundaries of convention, expectation, taste. Such excessiveness is seen especially in the play's eccentric and overstated sense of language and action. Consider the very opening; the picturesque stage direction reads: Enter piero unbraced, his arms bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one hand, bloody, and a torch in the other, strotzo following him with a cord.

Piero, the bloody, homicidal villain of the piece, outside of his daughter Mellida's bedroom at 2:00 a.m., maniacally and imperatively crows in triumph as follows: Ho, Gaspar Strotzo, bind Feliche's trunk Unto the panting side of Mellida. 'Tis yet dead night; yet all the earth is clutched In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleep; No breath disturbs the quiet of the air, No spirit moves upon the breast of earth, Save howling dogs, nightcrows, and screeching owls, Save meager ghosts, Piero, and black thoughts.

(i.i.1±8)

Granted, the speaker of these lines is insane. He physically implicates his own daughter in fornication in order to further his own vengeful agenda. Such action makes perfect sense to him, as it does in the play itself, a play that deconstructs notions of sanity and society and the conventional cause-and-effect relationships that purport to hold a society together. Antonio's Revenge pitches itself at sane expectations

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of interaction purposely to dislocate social and political comforts. And it does it all through an unremitting theatrical self-consciousness, a stylized sense of presentation that explodes consistent morality to retail revenge in all its mimetic ridiculousness. Mark Thornton Burnett cites performance and anthropological critics in his shrewd observation: `Marston experiments with performative styles to demonstrate the effect on individuals of a repressive society in which the use of language is strictly regulated.'5 Presumably Marston's fellow student at the Middle Temple, John Manningham, noted the same tendency in Marston as he set down the following anecdotal entry in his diary for 21 November 1602: Jo. Marstone the last Christmas when he daunct with Alderman Mores wifes daughter, a Spaniard borne, fell into a strang commendacion of her witt and beauty. When he had done, shee thought to pay him home, and told him she though[t] he was a poet. ` 'Tis true,' said he, `for poetes fayne, and lye, and soe dyd I when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foule.'6

The anecdote clearly relates the obverse of fashioning an acceptable self. Rather, the ®gure of Marston in the story fashions an unacceptable self that both revels in and insists on the shocked attention that it accrues. And language is used with all the retributive power of a blunt instrument. To be at the centre of such retailed gossip, Marston either actually did insult the young woman as described or was eminently capable of doing so. In fact, the anecdote reads like an urban myth. The warning is implicit but nonetheless clear: beware of this funny, sarcastic bastard. Calculated to offend, his is an ironic, vituperative performance style that disregards restraint even in the most innocuous of situations. Critics commonly make reference to the Cambridge frolic The Return from Parnassus, Part 2 to identify Marston's satirical technique in terms of his well-known nom de plume: `What, Monsieur Kinsayder, lifting up your legge and pissing against the world.'7 But the terms immediately following strike me as more signi®cant. Marston is referred to as a `Ruf®an' (269), `royster doyster' (272), `Aretine' (278): `Cutts, thrusts, and foines at whomesoever he meets, / . . . And at ®rst volly of his Cannon shot / Batters the walles of the old fustie world' (273±84). Aggressive, offensive, daring, risqueÂ, even avant-garde, Marston is set apart from all the other contemporary poets described in Parnassus by virtue of the fact that no positive classical references are made in relation to him. Aretine

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays

17

and comic pornography, explosive rhetoric, vituperation, and disgust ± such relations clearly and vigorously set Marston apart from his contemporaries. This is not to follow Samuel Schoenbaum's biographical identi®cation of Marston with the malcontented ®gures in his plays. Schoenbaum described Marston as some sort of maladjusted neurotic with a penchant for violence.8 Of course Ben Jonson, capable himself of extreme behaviour, seems to have seen Marston in much the same way, judging by his mention years later in conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden that he `had many quarrells with Marston beat him and took his Pistol from him' (Works i, 140). Jonson knew Marston personally, had been of®cially indicted with him over the excesses of their Eastward Ho collaboration, and was in direct competition with him for the entertainment penny of London playgoers. Such familiarity might well have bred Jonson's contempt. Besides, Marston's extreme pitch of dramatic situation within his plays, relentless linguistic faddishness, and crazed disregard for appropriate tonal balance, seems calculated to put conservative critics ± Jonson among them ± on edge, if not disturbingly off balance. But it is his critics, not Marston, who are off balance. Marston's drama amorally undermines, theatrically mocks, and constantly `batters the walles of the old fustie world' of conventional expectations. He is the theatrical bad boy of his time, assuming his audience to be familiar and interactive with contemporary popular theatre, and using a variety of ironic techniques successfully to surprise, entertain, and emotionally unsettle that audience. Jonathan Dollimore grants pride of place to Antonio's Revenge as a capital R `Radical Tragedy' in his book of the same name because of the play's insistent breakdown of coherent human subjectivity and displacement of comfortable providentialism. Again and again, through linguistic outrageousness, musical surprise, Senecan quips, and extremely contrived dramatic situations, ®gures in the play call attention to their arti®ce. They regularly step outside their roles to comment on the action of the play, make comments totally inappropriate to the action involved, or disavow any sense of human rationality or social connectedness. In doing this, they connect most outrageously with the audience itself which is enlisted within the terms of the arti®ce. Marston's theatrical production represents the product itself. Consider Piero, as product, roaring centre-stage with one eye on the audience in self-conscious realization:

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rick bowers The bulk of man's as dark as Erebus, No branch of reason's light hangs in his trunk; There lives no reason to keep league withal, I ha' no reason to be reasonable.

(i.iv.25±8)

His thematic opposite, Pandulpho, the ostensible voice of Stoic endurance in the play, likewise `sees the light' of his situation and is even more self-referential: Man will break out, despite philosophy. Why, all this while I ha' but played a part, Like to some boy that acts a tragedy, Speaks burly words and raves out passion; But when he thinks upon his infant weakness, He droops his eye.

(iv.v.46±51)

According to G. K. Hunter, `all the events in the play are equally surprising; . . . and the conclusion completes nothing but the thematic picture of a world of Hobbesian individualism'.9 I would suggest, however, that the `world' of Marston's play has more in common with the asserted display of Pirandello, Brecht, or Artaud. The speakers of Pandulpho's and Piero's lines really are boys playing dramatic parts. In his famous Philological Quarterly essay, R. A. Foakes called the situation `fantastical'. I would agree and add that it is capital T `theatrical'.10 And yet, critics still try to ®nd the answer to Marston's drama as residing somewhere within conventional rhetoric, theology, or philosophy. In `Stoicism and Revenge in Marston', G. D. Aggeler focuses on classical and biblical antecedents to read Antonio's Revenge as an ethical attempt to reconcile the duty of vengeance with lived morality through Stoicism. In Aggeler's reading, `Pandulpho demonstrates his mastery over his own emotions by laughing at the murder of his son, Feliche.'11 But Pandulpho not only laughs: he laughs and laughs and laughs. Three times within ®fty lines in Act i, scene v, Pandulpho is given the line `Ha, ha, ha', echoing and exceeding in unglued passion the intolerable frustration of Titus Andronicus. Marston signals parodic excess in a key of maniacal declamation, as when Antonio, a copy of Seneca's De Providentia in hand (like Hieronimo and Hamlet, Antonio loves books), reads the Latin lines, scoffs venomously in reaction, and then throws himself to the ground groaning,

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays Behold a prostrate wretch laid on his tomb: His epitaph thus: Ne plus ultra. Ho! Let none out-woe me, mine's Herculean woe.

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(ii.iii.131±3)

Ne plus ultra may well have been the motto alleged to have been inscribed on the Pillars of Hercules. In the theatre, however, one hears something quite different as in the blaring re¯exivity of Pandulpho's protest: Wouldst have me cry, run raving up and down For my son's loss? Wouldst have me turn rank mad, Or wring my face with mimic action, Stamp, curse, weep, rage, and then my bosom strike? Away, 'tis apish action, player-like. (i.v.76±80)

This is less a matter of neo-Stoicism than it is of frantic theatrical self-realization wherein the audience once again shares the irony of complicit theatrical understanding. To reach back through Seneca and Stoicism for Marston's resonances is to de-emphasize his more immediate sense of loud theatricalism and self-conscious parody. In his full-length monograph on Marston's drama, George Geckle seeks to exonerate Antonio's Revenge from all traces of parodic absurdity by studiously linking its many parallelisms in Thyestes. But such a strategy satis®es only academic and readerly approaches; Antonio's Revenge operates more expressly within theatre and performance. Geckle's linkage traces what he considers to be Marston's ethical conclusion of `woe' through a tradition that leads from Aristotle to J. V. Cunningham via the fourth-century grammarians Donatus, Evanthius, and Diomedes, as well as Sidney, Minturno, Cinthio, Castelvetro, Mazzoni, and Tasso ± critics whom Marston `may also have read'.12 But Marston does not `read' in such systematic and scholarly ways. Instead, he ®lches, twists, shouts, improvises, and parodies in a constant search for dramatic effect. His time signatures are not classical: they are immediate, disjointed, sensational. His characters have more in common with jugglers, clowns, dancers, and automatic mimes than they do with classical rhetoric. Classical rhetoric is used as background for sight gags. In `Marston, Calvinism, and Satire', Scott Colley forces a conventional Protestantism too much, but is accurate in his observation that `we can never hope to account for the full range of Marston's oddities by positing one simple or ®nal cause'.13 I would argue that Marston's `oddities' be considered as theatrical assertions.

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From the ®rst, Marston is interested in local theatrical effect, in comic in¯ation/de¯ation, in absurd and discontinuous action critically self-conscious of the very genre of revenge. The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Thyestes ± Marston entangles all of them and more with intertextual wit and sophistication, verbal pyrotechnics, and entertaining stage action. The tone is set in the Pirandello-like Induction to Antonio and Mellida, actually part one of Antonio's Revenge, where the child actor playing Antonio frets about his ability to double as an Amazon, and is set straight summarily in Kydian terms on the duplicity of human nature: `Not play two parts in one? Away, away; 'tis common fashion. Nay, if you cannot bear two subtle fronts under one hood, idiot go by, go by, off this world's stage!' (77±9). Boas long ago noted Hieronimo's phrase `go by, go by' as contemporary theatrical parody: `quoted over and over again as the stock phrase to imply impatience of anything disagreeable, inconvenient, or old-fashioned'.14 Thus Piero's abrupt and newly fashioned opening entry in Antonio's Revenge (quoted above) ± `unbraced, his arms bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one hand, bloody, and a torch in the other' ± is less an emblematic stage direction in the Senecan/Kydian mode than it is an outrageous attention-grabbing effect that explodes with irony (not to mention a Richard III-type exclamation) as Piero contemplates the availability of Antonio's newly widowed mother and exclaims: By this warm reeking gore, I'll marry her. Look I not now like an enamorate? Poison the father, butcher the son, and marry the mother ± ha!

(i.i.102±4)

This from the villainous ®gure whose moral awareness itself is farcically shallow. Piero, having murdered Pandulpho's son, feels a twinge of guilt in Pandulpho's presence and remarks matter-offactly: `'Fore heaven he makes me shrug; would 'a were dead' (ii.ii.26). Piero even gleefully manipulates his henchman Strotzo into a theatrical confession of all the killings, promising to exonerate him publicly at the last. The two of them take real pleasure in the contrived enormity of the effect they will create ± elaborating on the emotion of their rhetoric, the duplicities of their presentation, and the seeming sincerity of Piero's magnanimous forgiveness ± only to have Piero actually indulge in the sadistic pleasure of strangling Strotzo in front of all assembled upon receipt of the confession.

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays

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Conventional expectations are constantly undercut, as when Antonio, agitated by Pandulpho along with the ghosts of his father and Feliche, vows ®nally and emotively, `Fright me no more; I'll suck red vengeance / Out of Piero's wounds, Piero's wounds' (iii.ii.78±9). And Piero immediately enters `in his nightgown and nightcap', a touchingly ironic and harmless picture of concerned parenthood. Antonio, out to revenge the death of his father, overshoots such domesticity in his grotesque and ritualistic killing of Piero's little son Julio. Revenge authority Fredson Bowers codi®ed the scene as `a purely gratuitous piece of business brought in merely to make the audience shudder'.15 But the resonances of the scene run deeply through the monstrous irrationality of blood feud and human sacri®ce as argued by Rene Girard in his study of Violence and the Sacred.16 Extremity breeds extremes. Associations around consanguine terms such as `brother', `father', and `sister' sung from the mouth of the innocent Julio only further enrage Antonio and compel his vengeance. In fact the scene retains, even stresses, overstated theatrical imperatives, as when Antonio, having just murdered Julio, responds to a signi®cant and scripted groan `from under the stage' (iii.iii.50) as follows: Lo, thus I heave my blood-dyed hands to heaven, Even like insatiate hell, still crying; `More! My heart hath thirsting dropsies after gore.'

(67±9)

The paradoxical construction and stressed rhyme of the last few lines compresses and contains the whole overstated nature of the play in little: `heaven, / Even like insatiate hell', and `More / gore'. Ethical applications are de-emphasized in favour of theatrical extremities. And Marston's drama is especially successful in extremities. As if to accent and disperse the excruciating theatricality of the preceding scene, Balurdo enters `with a bass viol' (iii.iv.16) intent on serenading Maria on behalf of Piero. The pun is implicit visually and aurally: a `bass viol'/base vile is neither a solo nor a romantic instrument. Neither is a beat of Marston's satire. But it certainly is contrived, self-conscious and visually stressed, as the child actor handles the oversized musical instrument. This is the same Balurdo who entered Act ii `with a beard half off, half on' (ii.i.20), accentuating his detached arti®ce. Indeed, in the middle of Antonio and Mellida, Balurdo enters `backward, dildo following him with a looking glass in one

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hand and a candle in the other hand' (iii.ii.118), suggesting the misdirection and well-lit ludicrousness of this comic ®gure from the very ®rst. And at this point in Antonio's Revenge, Balurdo attracts further attention, as he very politely, in his own ridiculous words, makes a `most retort and obtuse leg' (iii.iv.19) to Maria. Balurdo's stressed and repeated fascination with the phrase `most retort and obtuse' has become a comic gag line, a recognizable lazzo that occurs throughout the play, even to the point of capping the outrageous assassination of Piero in Act v. During the obligatory masque, the revengers dance and whisper conspiratorially until suddenly Piero is bound to a chair, his tongue is plucked out, and a Thyestean/Titus Andronican dish of roast child is served up to him along with Antonio's arch comment: `Here's ¯esh and blood which I am sure thou lovest' (v.v.49). Pathetically, the speechless Piero `seems to condole his son' (49); maniacally, the revengers fall over each other in Marston's stage direction: `They offer to run all at piero and on a sudden stop' (73). The revengers blurt their vili®cation at Piero: Antonio calls him, `Scum of the mud of hell!'; Alberto: `Slime of all ®lth!'; Maria contributes, `Thou most detested toad' (v.v.65±6). And Balurdo is given the laughable last word, `Thou most retort and obtuse rascal!' (67). Then, after three delectably retributive stabbings, `They run all at piero with their rapiers' (79). Exclamatory, reckless, extreme, and disconnected ± the language and action of the play moves quickly and with a self-aware sense of stylized improvisation. Herein the play's `wholesale repetitiveness', of which T. F. Wharton once complained in Essays in Criticism,17 asserts itself as a standard comic technique. Everything within the play is bounded self-consciously by performance. The ®rst word of the revenge is given to Antonio in terms of drama: `Let's think a plot; then pell-mell vengeance!' (iv.v.95). What better `plot' than `pell-mell vengeance'? Antonio even enjoys his initial stabbing of Piero with the rhetorical intensi®er, `Now, pell-mell!' (v.v.76). In each case a note of reckless disorder is unmistakable, as in Antonio's disconnected imperative just prior to the murder of Julio: `Have at adventure, pell-mell, no reverse' (iii.iii.24). The blustering popular slang term `pell-mell' seems to cover all possibilities at the same time as it suggests the indiscriminate nature of the action. And yet, the characters of the play try always to assert the ®nest of discriminations. In this, and in their comic repetitions, lies much of the ridiculousness and conscious parody of Antonio's Revenge. Piero, in

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23

fact, is ®rst to use the term `pell-mell' in the play, and he is especially stage-conscious as he spouts residual classical terms from The Spanish Tragedy: O now Tragúdia Cothurnata mounts; Piero's thoughts are ®xed on dire exploits; Pell-mell!

(ii.v.45±7)

Even Richard III pre®xed his last oration in similar terms: `March on. Join bravely! Let us to it pell-mell ± / If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to hell!' (v.iii.313±14). The pell-mell play of Antonio's Revenge follows hard in rigorous and overstated theatricality, a theatricality of absurd commotion that unsettles dramatic conventions and de-centres moral certainties. Every theatrical revenger must somehow disguise himself, or otherwise evade responsibility, to face a corrupt and intolerable world. Antonio presents one of the most extreme strategies, as noted by the stage direction that begins Act iv: `Enter antonio in a fool's habit, with a little toy of a walnut shell and soap to make bubbles.' His mimetic childishness plays to the metadramatic situation of the boy players involved. His costume and props visually shout his disposition. And Antonio shouts it too in determined ironic resolve: `He is not wise that strives not to seem fool' (iv.i.25). But then Balurdo promised the same absurd function from the very ®rst, signi®cantly capping a discussion of performance art in the Induction to Antonio and Mellida as follows: g a l e a t z o. [To Balurdo] Well, and what dost thou play? b a l u r d o. The part of all the world. a l b e r t o. `The part of all the world.' What's that? b a l u r d o. The fool.

(28±31)

Moreover, in Antonio's Revenge nobody outpassions the `foolish' principal. Pandulpho declares himself `the miserablest soul that breathes' (iv.v.53), and Antonio ± characteristically prostrate in grief (a repeated physical gag) ± `starts up' (53) to set Pandulpho straight in lines of rhyme that draw attention to their arti®ce: I scorn't that any wretched should survive Outmounting me in that superlative, Most miserable, most unmatched in woe. Who dare assume that, but Antonio?

(iv.v.55±8)

Passion is asserted at the same time as it is undercut. Pandulpho began the scene with the curiously ambiguous line `Antonio, kiss my

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foot' (iv.v.1) as he laid the body of his dead son literally upon the body of Antonio. The revengers themselves inter Pandulpho's son through the helpful stage direction: `They strike the stage with their daggers and the grave openeth' (iv.v.64), going well beyond Hieronimo's lonely action in The Spanish Tragedy: `He diggeth with his dagger' iii.xiii.71). Moreover Antonio, in excessive Kydian passion, bellows `Vindicta!', only to be undercut immediately by Balurdo's pathetic poor Tom-ish interjection, `I am a-cold' (v.iii.42). Vengeance ± collectively, sadistically, theatrically ± perpetrated, Piero's body does not even have time to get cold before a hitherto unmentioned body of Senators enters of®cially to thank Antonio and his revengers for their act of revenge. This might best be considered as resolution ex machina. The ®rst Senator even gestures towards the revengers' performance in Brechtian estrangement, calling them `Well-seasoned props' (v.vi.25).18 As such, the revengers operate ®guratively as redressive structural underpinnings but also practically as the very self-referential material of the drama itself. And, true to the theatrical nature of their enterprise, Antonio and his group merely adopt another role: monastic resignation, with all of its ironic moral resonance. Finally, a telling stage direction: `The curtains are drawn; piero departeth' (v.vi.36). Doubtless the virtuoso actor, who ranted and raved in the oversized part of Piero, exits under cover then returns to perform with Antonio and the others in the concluding scripted direction of the play: once again, as throughout, `They sing.' The power of Antonio's Revenge is realized not through contested points of origin, presumed sources, or ®gurative ethical stances. I doubt that any audience ever made hagiographic connections between Antonio the revenger and Anthony the saint.19 Nor do I believe that the play is an attempt to correct the amorality of the revenge genre by exposing Antonio's essential villainy.20 If the play exposes anything essential about Antonio, it exposes throughout his essential theatricality and self-consciousness of representation. Indeed, as a revenge musical the play has more in common with stage strategies of Brechtian alienation and the Theatre of the Absurd than it does with excavations of classical thought and assertions of ethical consistency. Herein moral resolution is a scholarly afterthought; thematic consistency is a joke. The admittedly outrageous energies of the play are parodic, melodramatic, and satirical. And they are to be enjoyed as such. Even Marston's

John Marston at the `mart of woe': the `Antonio' plays

25

thematic preoccupation with vomit has less to do with Juvenalian satire than it does with local, repeated, visceral and theatrical effect. And the overall effect of Antonio's Revenge is to provide a theatrically convenient `mart' in which to perform a theatrically excessive `woe'. Marston himself promised nothing more. And doubtless his audience ± involved within the theatrical ironies, parodic effects, and energetic actions ± expected nothing less. notes 1 Simon Shepherd and Peter Womack, English Drama: A Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 63. 2 See Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American Thought, 1550±1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1986); Douglas Bruster, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Scott Cutler Shershow, `Idols of the Marketplace: Rethinking the Economic Determination of Renaissance Drama', Renaissance Drama 26 (1995), 1±27. 3 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton and Chicago: Harvester Press and Chicago University Press, 1984). 4 See Gair's note, p. 126; see also Appendix B, which lists and details Marston's use of words in Antonio's Revenge. 5 Mark Thornton Burnett, ` ``I will not swell like a tragedian'': Marston's Antonio's Revenge in Performance', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 90 (1989), 311±20; p. 319. 6 Robert Parker Sorlien (ed.), The Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, 1602±1603 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976), p. 133. 7 I quote from J. B. Leishman's edition of The Three Parnassus Plays, pp. 241, 242, silently regularizing all i/j and u/v reversals. 8 Samuel Schoenbaum, `The Precarious Balance of John Marston', PMLA 67 (1952), 1069±78. 9 G. K. Hunter, `English Folly and Italian Vice', in John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (eds.), Jacobean Theatre (London: Edward Arnold, 1960), p. 91. 10 My debt to Foakes's essay, `John Marston's Fantastical Plays: Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge', Philological Quarterly 41 (1962), 229±39, will be apparent throughout. Marston himself referred to his technique as `seriously fantastical' in his dedication to `the most honorably renowned Nobody' in Antonio and Mellida. I would add a further `fantastical' linkage within Marston's drama. In What You Will the character Quadratus expatiates upon contemporary poetry, valorizing the fantastical as follows:

26

rick bowers fantasticness, That which the natural sophisters term Phantasia incomplexa, is a function Even of the bright immortal part of man . . . By it we shape a new creation Of things as yet unborn, by it we feed Our ravenous memory, our [invention] feast: 'Slid, he that's not fantastical's a beast.

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20

And Lampatho de¯ates him immediately with a Marston-like rejoinder: `Most fantastical protection of fantasticness' (ii.i.586±600). G. D. Aggeler, `Stoicism and Revenge in Marston', English Studies 51 (1970), 507±17; 509. George Geckle, John Marston's Drama: Themes, Images, Sources (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1980), p. 92. Scott Colley, `Marston, Calvinism, and Satire', Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984), 85±96; 95. F. S. Boas (ed.), The Works of Thomas Kyd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), p. 406, n. 31. Fredson T. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587±1642 (Princeton University Press, 1940), p. 123. Trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Wharton's piece capped off a notable controversy. In the early seventies, Essays in Criticism featured a `Critical Forum' exchange about parody in English Renaissance drama. Richard Levin (`The New Inn and the Proliferation of Good Bad Drama', 22 (1972), 41±7) was countered in the same volume by R. A. Foakes (`Mr Levin and Good Bad Drama', 327±31), followed by Levin's reply (`The Proof of the Parody', 24 (1974), 312±17) and Wharton's article (`Old Marston or New Marston: the Antonio Plays', 25 (1975), 357±69). All parties, however, ended up focusing on Marston's dramaturgy, a point which must say something in itself about the power of irony, parody, and ¯exibility of interpretation in Marston's plays. This meaning of the word `property' is not recorded in the OED before 1685. See Cynthia Lewis, ` ``Wise Men, Folly Fall'n'': Characters Named Antonio in English Renaissance Drama', Renaissance Drama 20 (1989), 197±236. See Philip J. Ayres, `Marston's Antonio's Revenge: the Morality of the Revenging Hero', Studies in English Literature 12 (1972), 359±74; also Barbara J. Baines, `Antonio's Revenge: Marston's Play on Revenge Plays', SEL 23 (1983), 277±94.

chapter 2

John Marston: a theatrical perspective W. Reavley Gair

As George Whetstone remarks, in the dedicatory epistle to A Mirror for Magistrates, at the Inns of Court, `Those that are disposed study laws: who so liketh, without checks, may follow dalliance' and indeed he was right for `attempts to regulate extramural behaviour [at the Inns] ceased altogether during the second half of the sixteenth century and . . . students were perfectly free to attend plays or sermons as they chose, to drink in taverns . . . and patronise dicing houses or stewes at their pleasure.' 1 John Marston was one of those who followed dalliance for, as his father planned to say in his will, `my law books . . . I bequeath them [to him that deserveth them not, that is my wilfull disobedient son, who I think will sell them rather than use them, although I took pains and had delight therein. God bless him and give him true knowledge of himself, and to forgo his delight in plays, vain studies, and fooleries].'2 Marston had no love for the law, but he took his `fooleries' seriously. He approached the business of play-writing with an intense interest in the special tastes of his audience, with a precise concern for the actual effect the plays were designed to achieve, and with a detailed appreciation of the potentialities of the playing space available to him. During his career, he wrote for three radically different kinds of market, audience, and theatre building. His ®rst full-length play may well be, as Finkelpearl has suggested, Histriomastix or The Player Whipped, produced for the Christmas Revels of 1598/9 at the Middle Temple.3 The Hall of the Middle Temple is one of the ®nest examples of Elizabethan formal interior architecture extant. It was completed in 1570 and is built of brick and dressed stone. Its features and dimensions give a sense of signi®cant scale. It has ®ve bays with a dais end; on the north side there is a screens passage which is 8 foot, 9 inches wide (2.68m). It has windows with mullions and transoms; each light has a depressed 27

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arch. The interior dimensions are 88 (26.8m) by 39 feet (11.9m) or 3,432 square feet (318.83 sq m). The roof is a double hammer-beam and, at the east end, there is a spectacular Elizabethan screen which is some 23 feet high (7m). In the screen there are two double doorways (doors were added in 1671); the screen, completed in 1574, supports a Tudor minstrels' gallery. The spaces for the doors appear to be original and could have been converted into doorways simply by hanging curtains. Facing the screen, the left door is 68 inches wide (1.7m), and the right door 60 inches (1.5m); the door openings are both 10 foot, 6 inches (3.2m) from the ¯oor to the top of the arch. The screen has fourteen open window slots along its full length and the lower frontage is decorated with six Roman gothic columns. The Hall is some 57 foot, 6 inches high (17.53m). Originally it was heated by a ®replace in the centre of the ¯oor and the smoke made its way out through vents in a central cupola. Opposite to the screen is a dais at the west end set between the north and south bays.4 The Hall was originally lit by torches and candles; and, according to John Manningham, was the setting for a performance of Twelfth Night in February 1602: `We had a play called . . . Twelve Night or What You Will, much like the Comedy of Errors or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called [Gl']Ingannati.'5 Clearly the hall is amply large enough both for Shakespeare's comedy and for a big cast play like Histriomastix; all the riots and struggles of the ®fth act of Marston's drama would have had suf®cient room, and indeed the size of the space invited such a scene. As a dramatic spectacle, the play relies less on the physical structure of the stage than it does on making effective use of established conventions, many of them old ones. This does not mean, however, that Marston failed to utilize every physical feature of the hall available to him, since he probably used an extension from the dais at the west end as a stage and the two doors, at the east end, for processional entry for these seem to have operated in conjunction with each other. I am convinced that Marston used the whole physical structure of Middle Temple Hall as his playing space; the west end acted as a stage, the east end's doors functioned as an entry point from which processions ± with which the play is amply supplied ± could progress down the length of the hall to the dais. The spectators, I suggest, were accommodated along the sides of the hall and, probably, the more important among them on the edges of the dais-stage at the west end. On occasion both east and west ends

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

29

were used together as entry points; in Act i Velure, Fourchier, Voucher, and Lyon-rash enter `at severall doores' (251 s.d.) and this is, presumably, at the east end where the doors were situated but in the same stage direction, Chrisoganus appears in `his study'. I am inclined, because of the frequency of reference to it as a speci®c artefact, to believe that there was a raised platform used as a stage, and this was, probably, at the west end. It would have been extremely inconvenient for spectators, waiters and indeed actors for the doorways at the east end to have been blocked by a raised platform stage so Chrisoganus' `study' is likely to have been at the west end on the dais-stage there.6 Chrisoganus entered to it from one of the bays. After some conversation, the four characters `goe to Chrisoganus study, where they ®nd him reading'; I suggest they walked down the middle of the hall to the west end. Similarly in the ®fth act, Marston directs: enter Lyon-rash to Fourchier sitting in his study: at one end of the stage: At the other end, enter Vourcher to Velure in his shop. (289)

Later in the act, the mobs enter to begin a riot and they come into the hall through the doors; Chrisoganus, `scaping from among them', ends up `upon the stage' at the west end to orate (291). In the performance, Marston also used an interior discovery space on occasion as a separate entity; it may have been a curtained or tented space with an open front used in the old style as a separate `house' and was most likely on the dais-stage at the west end. This space functioned as a `market' when in Act ii, Enter Contrimen, to them, [and] Clarke of the Market: hee wrings a bell, and drawes a curtaine: whereunder is a market set about a cross. (258)

Clearly this space was designed to be large enough to take a market stall and for this stall to be clearly visible to the audience. The cross itself was substantial enough to allow one of Sir Oliver Owlet's men to stand upon its pediment and `cry a Play' (258). Already Marston is seeking to use devices which will later become something of a trademark with him for in Act iii, he directs that . . . Pride casts a mist, wherein Mavortius and his company vanish off the Stage, and Pride and her attendants remaine. (268)

The characters would have vanished into the side bays; later in the act they reappear to fall asleep on the stage. This technique of effecting an exit covered by an arti®cial fog is a theatrical arti®ce

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which suits the enclosed, indoor environment and is clearly comparable with his later exploitation of the indoor context of the children's theatres. The play could readily have been performed rather more as an `in-the-round' action than as a conventional proscenium-type presentation. The setting would, at times, represent an interior space not unlike a simpli®ed version of the later Paul's house, or any late mediaeval or Tudor country house hall; at others, it would be more like a city pageant with the actors streaming through the crowd of spectators. The dais-stage does not seem to have been high enough to allow the use of a trap door nor, indeed, was there suf®cient space beneath the ¯oor of the Hall for such a feature. The visual complexity of the action was complemented by a variety of musical entertainments. In the ®rst act there is a drinking song by the players, in honour of `nut-browne ale' (250) and, in contrast, at the end of the act the `harvest-folkes' along with the allegorical ®gures of plenty, sing a hymn to the Christmas holiday, `O blessed morne' (254). While there are no songs in the third act, there is a masque which has a musical accompaniment and music is used as a dramatic device to enhance the action since the masquers fall asleep on the stage and Envy, `the musicke sounding . . . breaths amongst them' (277). The music appears to be designed to reinforce the infusion of envy into their unconscious minds. Was this entertainment actually divided into parts, with the meal served perhaps between acts; or was the meal ongoing during the entertainment? There is some suggestion that drink at least was being served during the performance, for in the second act, the Usher of the Hall and the `Clark' of the Kitchen come in to discuss the food and wine available and invite a Morris who wish to perform to `drinke their skinnes full' (262); the Clark then announces that the `meat's going up' and there follows a song by the Players, `Brave ladds come forth and chant it, and chant it / For now 'tis supper-time' (262). Do we have here, a very early example of `dinner theatre'? One clear intention in this play is a condemnation of the professional stage with Inch, Belch, Gut, and Post-haste of Sir Oliver Owlet's Men as a parody of the `mechanicals' of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Marston allows his own actors scope for personal idiosyncrasies, like the fashion show to parody the pretensions of city wives which allows an opportunity for some transvestism, and a Morris is contrived an opportunity to perform in Act ii. In theory there are

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

31

some 120 parts in this play so all the Middle Templars who wished to perform could have done so. This play marks the beginning of Marston's developing sensitivity to the audience-appeal of the special talents of his actors. Histriomastix is full of legal jokes to appeal to an audience in which there would be many from other Inns; as late as 8 January 1623 Sir Simonds D'Ewes records going to `Lincoln's Inn to see their vanities'.7 In short, though a novice work, the play adapts itself skilfully to exploit the peculiarities and special qualities of its actors, its audience, and its playing space. What evidence there is suggests that Marston became a private theatre playwright in order to avoid debtors' prison. Henslowe's diary records that on 28 September 1599 he lent `unto Wm Borne . . . to lend unto Mr Maxton the new poet (Mr Mastone) in earnest of a book' the sum of 40s.8 Both Dekker and Jonson attest to Marston's penurious state at this time; in Poetaster Crispinus is arrested for debt (iii.iii) but he seeks to quieten his creditors by assuring Minos that he will `make a piece of poetry, and absolve all within these ®ve days' (iii.iv.65±6).9 Marston senior was openly hostile to his son's failure to pursue a legal career and this may well account for John Marston's debts. It was fortunate that he either already knew or, at this time, became acquainted with another law student from Lincoln's Inn. This was William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby. Was Stanley in the audience for Histriomastix? On 30 June 1599, George Fenner reported to Humphrey Galdelli that `The Earl of Derby is busy penning comedies for the common players.' 10 Marston and Stanley had theatrical aspirations in common and since none of Stanley's plays seems to have survived, one may conclude that he was seeking a venue where they might be performed without passing the scrutiny of a man like Henslowe. Marston could also have been acquainted with one of the two `Cardinals' who were responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Paul's choristers; Ambrose Golding, while curate at St Gregory's by Paul's, was also, since c. 1586, curate at Sargeant's Inn in Chancery Lane (f.43).11 The old master of the Choristers at Paul's, Thomas Gyles, was terminally ill in 1599 and a new master, Edward Pearce, had already been appointed in May of that year.12 By 13 November 1599 Rowland Whyte reported to Sir Robert Sidney that `My Lord Derby hath put up the plays of the Children in Paul's to his great pains and charge.'13 It was, in all likelihood, a great relief to Marston to discover that the Paul's Boys were in need of new plays.

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In the 1580s and 1590s plays by the Paul's Boys are described simply as being performed `at Paul's'.14 In 1600/1, however, William Percy speaks of the boys as `not to begin before four after prayers, and the gates of Paul's shutting at six', thereby locating the playhouse within the enclosed cathedral area. On 23 May 1603 Thomas Woodford, the theatrical entrepreneur, makes a deposition to assert that Chapman's Old Joiner of Aldgate was `played by the Children of Paul's in a private house, of a long time kept, used, and accustomed for that purpose'. One of the perquisites of the of®ce of Master of Choristers was control of the upper and lower cloister of the Chapter House precinct; in this cloister there was `a house . . . close adjoining to the upper end of the Chapter House wall' and this house was, in 1598, in the hands of Mr Gyles, Pearce's predecessor. Probably, the house was not only closely adjoining the cloister, but actually contiguous. In effect, the stage would have been attached to the outside cloister screen in a corner, probably the north west, of the Chapter House precinct, using the arches of the screen as doors. The discovery space may have been squared off by a wood screen which would have given some 7 feet (2.13m) of width and the stage was probably thrust out into the audience for at least 10 feet (3m) and probably more. The area of the main stage, as an absolute minimum, could have been as small as 70 square feet but this would not have allowed enough room for the cof®n and the seventeen characters who progressively gather on stage together for the last scene of Antonio and Mellida (v.ii.186.1±2); the thrust stage must, therefore, have been further extended into the main body of the small auditorium, although this would have reduced the audience capacity. Assuming that the stage was only of minimum dimensions ± and Doricus in What You Will declares that `the stage is so very little' (Induction, 94) ± there would have been some 300 square feet (90m) available for spectators on the main stage level and, if a spectators' gallery had been built, there would have been about another 250 square feet (75m) available above. This would have offered space for between ®fty and a hundred spectators. The Paul's house was, even if we assume space for only ®fty spectators, by no means the smallest commercially viable Elizabethan theatre,15 but clearly one of its marked features was its very small scale. One obvious and highly signi®cant difference, therefore, between Middle Temple Hall and the Paul's stage was that, while the former allowed for large casts with ample movement, the latter demanded

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

33

limited movement and static scenes if large casts were on stage, and Marston accordingly adapted his style to the physical demands of the new location. There is persuasive evidence that the ®rst play at the new Paul's house was Marston's Antonio and Mellida. This play is preceded by an Induction which ¯atters the `elect' audience and introduces the new company to them. He seems anxious to establish a bond with them, apologizing in advance for any weaknesses of style or expertise among dramatist and cast, offering to modify his style to suit the taste of the spectators, and attempting to demonstrate his likeness, and Stanley's, to his new audience. He even brings portraits of himself and Stanley onto the stage at the beginning of Act v to aid this familiarization. More signi®cantly, in terms of the physical disposition of his actors, the Antonio plays create a constant sense that characters and situations are miniaturized within an encircling frame of actors. In Antonio and Mellida the action proper is preceded by an Induction in which the eight principals discuss their roles in an essentially static situation; apart from entry and exit there is no indication of needed movement. In the ®rst act, there is a parade of all the actors but they are presented as an honour guard in static lines, and, apart from Piero embracing his supporters, the action takes place above. This action is, however, limited to a verbal analysis by the women of the qualities of the men on stage as prospective suitors. Similarly, later in Act ii (160, s.d.1±7) in another crowd scene, Marston again limits the activity on stage to the portrayal of an honour guard with the action con®ned to a `measure' (171, s.d.1) danced by three triples. This stately dance is focused by the enclosing honour guard. In like manner, he seeks to create emotional effects from sound, rather than action; in Act iv, scene i, the desperation of loss is piercingly re¯ected by the interruption by Antonio of a boy `who runs a note' (154, s.d.1). This pattern is consistent in the Antonio plays; a crowd pours onto the stage, but at once the text disciplines the actors into a static display and intensities of action ®nd expression in verbal rather than physical ways. Where there is important physical action, it is con®ned to one or two characters. Similarly in the last act, an impression is created of much activity and movement but, in fact, it is a series of more or less static tableaus; it begins with the analysis of two paintings; it moves into a singing contest (with three performers, each singing a solo); it then proceeds to metamorphose into a masque, but in place of action and dance, the ladies analyse the

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masquers' devices; ®nally Andrugio appears disguised in full armour and Antonio is brought on in a cof®n, but in both cases the only real activity on the stage is Andrugio reading a petition and Antonio rising from the dead. To his other innovations, therefore, we might add that Marston was accomplished at the creation of stage action without movement. Even his famed ± even notorious ± device of making his characters fall to the ground in passion may be seen as a technique for minimizing stage movement. Antonio and Mellida is, as Polonius de®ned contemporary plays, an example of a `tragical±comical±historical±pastoral' (Hamlet ii.ii.395±6); it is intended to be and is successful as a show-case of talent, of the actors, and of the theatre, but more particularly of the author. Viewing his audience as `attentive ears' and `fertile spirits', Marston goes out of his way to cater to them and to `press out the rarity of art'. He offers a kaleidoscope of changing moods, from the crudity of the sexual innuendo of farce, through the poignant delicacy of the loss of a lover, to the noble self-sacri®ce of a father for a son. He is intentionally displaying the range of his own talents in order to present himself as the consummate playwright, ready to produce anything his audience demands. Just as he accommodated stage movement to the physical demands of new location, he also adapted his style to what he assumed was his new audience, and Antonio and Mellida was so successful that a sequel ± Antonio's Revenge ± was demanded. In the meantime, however, it seems that Marston's view of the nature of his playhouse, his theatre environment, his actors, and his audience underwent a drastic revision which re¯ected the true facts of the situation. From the ®rst, Marston's chorister±actors were an unruly bunch who use not to light their candles at service time in the dark evenings (f.61v) . . . many of them do use great indecency in prayer time as leaning upon their elbows, sleeping, talking, and . . . in unmannerliness towards the Choir men . . . and use moreover with great impudence to importune men to give them money for their spurs without regard either of person, or time, or place and trouble them in their prayers.16

Piously it was hoped by some that instead of copying this unruly behaviour each chorister would `bring with him to church a testament in English, and turn to every Chapter as it is daily read or some other good and godly prayer book, rather than spend their time in talk and hunting after spur money whereon they set their

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

35

whole minds' (f.44). Those who were responsible for the choristers' welfare were, however, if anything, more irresponsible. The subdean, one Hugh Andrews, whose nickname was `cupdean', had `not tarried a sermon in Paul's for many years together . . . but spendeth that time often in drinking and playing at tables' (f.48v). The bellringers complained that `the scholars of one teaching in St Gregory's [a parish church attached to the cathedral] doth greatly annoy the church by playing, crying, and some other obstinate boys have threatened and offered to beat us' (f.60v). The bell-ringers' wives, however, were likely patrons of a revived Paul's theatre, since in January 1597, they, accompanied by Mrs Owen, Mrs Smith, Widow Fisher, Mary and Honour Slegg, and Mr and Mrs Harding (f.44) had a masque to make themselves famous . . . [and] danced . . . till about 12 of the clock in the night . . . in the college yard [the petty canons' precinct] with their minstrel, and in the end went to the college gate, which being locked according to order, these masquers break open most audaciously . . . and there with noise and tumult . . . disturbed the quiet of our whole society. (f.52v)

These local inhabitants and the crowds who thronged the main aisle of the cathedral where `there is an intolerable abuse daily suffered . . . in suffering porters, and such like people to make a common passage through [Paul's] . . . with all kinds of burdens, and unseemly carriages, to the great disturbance of walkers' (f.46v) were transacting business and they provided a ready-made audience for the taking. As a result Marston seems to have realized that he needed to develop a form of entertainment less `exclusive' in attitude, less aimed at a coterie, and more popular and current. Marston's next two plays for Paul's, Jack Drum's Entertainment17 and What You Will are correspondingly more frankly sensational, episodic, and topical. Jack Drum bitterly condemns Brabant Senior, in whom the audience were free to recognize Jonson or any other popular literary ®gure, as a malignant opponent of the Paul's venture. Jack Drum offers `pleasing scenes', rather than `mouldy fopperies of stale poetry' (Introduction); Marston seems to have substituted the casual music of `taber and pipe' and a Morris from Highgate Green for the `sullen tragic scene' (Prologue, 7) of Antonio's Revenge. In some ways, he is still trying to cling to his initial notion of a special exclusive audience, and in What You Will, the sense of a select group who are his friends and will protect him is still present. At the same time, Marston seems to have come to realize that the

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audience has no rari®ed taste at all; it is `common' rather than select. This play is a casual afternoon entertainment for shoppers and businessmen, with many elements which suggest episodes designed to attract as wide an audience as possible; there is literary discussion, an attack on critics with a clear avowal that the audience knows best, contemporary allusion to the Poetomachia, elaborate devices to introduce the Acts, an intimate introduction to the actor's lives outside the stage, and a disclosure how new recruits were selected for the boy's company, with a suggestive homoerotic exploitation of the Simplicius/Holofernes Pippo scenes in ii.ii. These developments had clear commercial potential, though the management at Paul's seems to have been slow at ®rst to recognize the potential of the audience in the main aisle; perhaps Stanley was initially more interested in providing a venue for literally `private' performances than in the commercial possibilities of the house. Locally, however, in the parishes of St Martin and St Gregory, directly adjacent to Paul's, there were some 500 households in an economic position to afford the modest 2d. to 6d. that Paul's charged. This sum was less than half of 1 per cent of the disposable weekly income of the modestly successful haberdashers, tailors, barber surgeons, innkeepers, scriveners, weavers, goldsmiths, stationers, or teachers who populated the area. In the side aisles of Paul's there were numerous shops belonging to glaziers, bookbinders, school teachers, joiners, carpenters, stationers, mercers, and hosiers and it was a usual meeting-place for lawyers and their clients. It was cheap for the audience to attend a play at Paul's, but quite pro®table for the owners for, assuming an audience of seventy-®ve, with twenty-®ve at 2d., twenty-®ve at 4d. and twenty-®ve at 6d., the take from a single performance was some £1/5s. This represents a sum like the daily outlay of a rather extravagant courtier, William Darrell, who, in 1589, was spending £1/11s. on his entire household. One performance per day, for six days, would give a weekly take of some £7/10s. The outlays were small as choristers need not be paid, and the theatre building was Pearce's `grace and favour' perquisite. Even split three ways, and allowing for expenses, an extra £2.00 per week represents an economic success. Did Marston exchange his £2.00 advance from Henslowe, for a single play, for £2.00 per week at Paul's? On 29 September 1600 Henry Evans acquired the lease of `one great hall or room, with certain rooms over the same . . . being in the Blackfriars . . . furnished and built with stage, galleries and

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

37

seats'. Evans acquired the lease in order to use the building as a playhouse for the Children of the Queen's Chapel, `under the name of a private house'. This playhouse was in the Parliament Chamber or Upper Frater of the dissolved Dominican Priory in the Blackfriars; its internal dimensions were 66 feet (20.12m) from north to south by 46 feet (14.02m) from east to west or 3,036 square feet (282.04 sq m). The hall contained a stage from east to west, and galleries; there were additional rooms over the north end. The tiring-house was probably located at the opposite or south end of the hall; its dimensions were likely to have been 41 foot 6 inches (12.65m) by 11 feet (3.4m) or 456.5 square feet (42.41 sq m). The stage was some 4 foot 6 inches (1.37m) high and the tiring-house facade seems to have been designed as a three-door entry. The dimensions of the stage may have been 29 feet (8.84m) by 18 foot 6 inches (5.64m) or some 536.5 square feet (49.84 sq m).18 Marking a ®nal break with the Paul's Boys, Marston acquired a one-sixth share in this Blackfriars theatre and in the company of the Children of the Chapel. It is not clear when he became one of the backers for Evans's venture but there is some likelihood that he laid low for at least two years after leaving Paul's late in 1601, possibly as a direct result of his lambasting by Jonson in Poetaster. While the main stage is larger than that at Paul's, and the Blackfriars had an additional device as compared to Paul's ± machinery from the roof to allow descent from the heavens ± the con®guration was roughly the same: it had at least three access doors, probably one at either side, and one in the centre, the same as at Paul's: Enter m as t e r t o u c h s t o n e and q u i c k s i l v e r at several doors . . . At the middle door, enter g o l d i n g discovering a goldsmith's shop and walking short turns before it. (eastward Ho i.i.0, s.d.)

Clearly the doors were wide enough for processional entry but the movements of the actors were restricted either by the fashion for gallants to sit on the stage on stools or, as Hosley suggests, because the stage had built-in galleries at the main stage level. Paul's stage could accommodate seventeen actors and a cof®n at once; Blackfriars's could handle at least nineteen, with space enough in addition for a large trap. The main stage had a discovery space: s y p h a x draws the curtains and discovers e r i c h t h o lying with him. (Sophonisba v.i.0, s.d.)

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It also utilized a canopy bed, large enough to conceal musicians: A treble viol and a bass lute play softly within the canopy. (iv.i.200 s.d.)

The upper stage at Evans's Blackfriars contained at least one window, for Freevill of The Dutch Courtesan enters with `pages with torches, and Gentlemen with music' to play an aubade for Beatrice who enters `above' at her `chamber . . . window' (ii.i). The likelihood is that the above was similar to a Tudor minstrel gallery, like those at Middle Temple Hall or Paul's, with a window or windows at the side and a railed space in the centre, with curtains for entry and exit. This upper space may have accommodated musicians both at Paul's and at Blackfriars. However, this is where the similarities end. At Paul's Marston had excelled in the use of music and the exploitation of the solo voice, but in his plays for Blackfriars his use of song is muted. He is once again adapting his style to the resources of a new management and the demands of a new audience. In the four plays he wrote for this house, Sophonisba, The Malcontent, The Dutch Courtesan, and The Fawn, he averages only three songs but, in their place, there is a heavy reliance on orchestral performance. In place of excellence in song, especially with the solo voice which was a prominent feature of the performance mode at Paul's, Blackfriars seems to have concentrated on the quality and variety of the instrumental music. Music in this playhouse included an overture concert, entre-act music, preludes to acts, incidental music, and atmospheric music for special effects. One of the practical uses of the musical interludes was to allow time for the lighting or snuf®ng of candles for lighting effects,19 or, as at the beginning of the last act of Sophonisba, the effect could be reversed: A bass lute and a treble viol play for the act. s y p h a x draws the curtains and discovers erichtho lying with him. e rich t h o. Ha, ha, ha! syphax. Light, light!

In Sophonisba the third act is dominated by `Organs [i.e. regals] mixed with recorders' and later these two instruments play for Sophonisba's funeral: Organs and recorders . . . Enter in the meantime the mournful solemnity of m a s s i n i s s a' s presenting s o p h o n i s b a 's body. (v.iv)

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

39

Marston has adapted his style to the new playhouse's custom; Blackfriars is seeking to create an image for itself distinct from both Paul's and the Globe. In his career as a Paul's dramatist, Marston's efforts seemed most often directed towards innovation and invention in theatrical techniques; he was preoccupied by an urgent need for self-display and for a predominantly sensational appeal. He was so enthused by the possibilities of the dramatic medium that immediate effect became his entire procedure: the exploitation of a character or a situation or a speci®c stage device. This is no longer true of his contribution to the repertoire at the Blackfriars, particularly in the three plays, The Malcontent, Sophonisba, and The Fawn. As G. K. Hunter points out, in The Malcontent `Mendoza and Franceschina . . . both represent entirely believable engagements of the will with evil [and] their evil is shown as . . . the acceptance of folly as a way of life.' 20 There is a distinct and deliberate philosophical consistency here which is often subordinated to other effects in the earlier plays; the same holds true of both Sophonisba and The Fawn. In The Fawn a portrait is used as a stage device reminding us of the two portraits of Marston and Stanley in Antonio and Mellida, but the picture in the later play has a purely internal dramatic purpose. It purports to be a true likeness of Tiberio's father who is courting the ®fteen-year-old Dulcimel but is a fake. The father, contrary to the image of his youthful picture, has `hipgout, the strangury, the ®stula in ano, and a most unabideable breath, no teeth, less eyes, great ®ngers, little legs, an eternal ¯ux, and an everlasting cough of the lungs' (i.ii.194±7). The disguised Duke, therefore, declares that such a match would be `an enforcement even scandalous to nature' (206) and, throughout the action, seeks to contrive a more suitable match between the son Tiberio and Dulcimel, which does in fact occur. As compared to the earlier plots of the Paul's plays which had a dual function, both to act as the story line of the drama and to ful®l the need to establish a personal dramatist±audience bond, this drama has its effects focused purely on the theme and the action. This gives these Blackfriars plays a singularity of purpose which sharpens and intensi®es the consistency of the action as far as the evolution of the plot is concerned. This plot singularity and precision is continued in the punishment meted out to those who offend against the laws of love for they are sentenced to be transported `in the ship of fools, without either bail or mainprize' (v.i.280). In terms of the plot, this

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punishment ®ts the case neatly and consistently. In Antonio's Revenge the conspirators who have assassinated Piero retire to a monastery to satisfy what Marston seems to have seen as a necessary moralistic ending to ful®l the audience's sense of what was ®tting and to conclude the play on an appropriately Stoic note. In The Fawn, he focuses only on the needs of the plot. In this denouement, Marston is also returning to a theme from his earliest involvement with the drama. Revels at the Inns of Court generally utilized a framework which involved mock trials at a court of love where discontented or disaffected lovers were found guilty and sentenced to a dungeon till they repented.21 He is using the same concept and form in this play for in the last act Cupid declares: `Let it therefore be the main of our assembly to survey our old laws, and punish their transgressions, for that continually the complaints of lovers ascend up to our deity that love is abused, and basely bought and sold, beauty corrupted, affection feigned, and pleasure herself sophisticated . . .' (v.i.186±91). In this form of a love debate there is a suggestion that Marston is responding to a renewed sense of his audience as either courtly or with such aspirations, for these discussions on love and its duties and obligations were still assumed to be the courtly entertainment of choice. Marston is again adapting to a new audience and a new set of playhouse conditions. As with Shakespeare's later contributions to the Blackfriars repertoire, especially in The Tempest, Marston responds to the new demands of the contemporary audience and provides masque and anti-masque elements combined with the methods of the dumb show: Enter four Boys antiquely attired with bows and quivers, dancing to the cornets a fantastic measure; m a s s i n i s s a in his night gown, led by ast rub al and h a n n o, followed by b y t h e a s and j u g u r t h . The boys draw the curtains, discovering s o p h o n i s b a , to whom massinissa speaks. (i.ii.35 s.d.)

This is the wedding night of Sophonisba and Massinissa, destined never to be ful®lled, and it is celebrated by this hybrid dumbmasque-show. Marston is using the dancing talents of the boys along with their suitability to be dressed as cupids to stress the poignancy of this apparent ful®lment of desires in a Hymen masque, which is almost immediately rudely interrupted by the arrival of the severely wounded Carthalon. The masque is never completed. This is a stage device fully integrated into the dramatic form; there is no sense that

John Marston: a theatrical perspective

41

these techniques are also being used as mere devices to display the author's talents. At Paul's, Marston had very young actors to direct; his boys appear to have ranged in age from six to fourteen or ®fteen.22 At Blackfriars this changed; there the actors were `youths' of seventeen or eighteen or older. This would considerably change the perspective of the audiences; no longer could Marston easily exploit the sexual innuendo of his children, for he was in fact dealing with adults. These were only children now in the same sense that their theatre was private: both were polite ®ctions. There is another change, too, for Marston's linguistic innovation seems muted in these plays. In the Antonio plays he had introduced a new word on average every 14 lines, but now while there are occasional examples of this technique such as Mistress Mulligrub of The Dutch Courtesan who introduces the word `methodically' just as Balurdo introduced `unpropitiously' in the Antonio plays, it is a subordinated re¯ection of an earlier technique. In much the same way, his use of the stage space, while no longer miniaturized, is relatively conservative; he seems less concerned to use the stage for display and fashionable sensational effects than to subordinate the physical space to the requirements of the action. In The Malcontent there is little complexity in movement: no processions or large group effects and the number of actors needed was within the capacity of the Globe's company of twelve men and four boys. Marston's play needs ®ve ladies but only four are on stage at any one time. It was an easy play to `borrow' and the Globe performed it too. Marston, the innovator of children's drama, seems to be drawing closer at Blackfriars to the more common stage techniques of the Globe and the adult companies in general. His plays are now as suited to the adults of the Globe as to the youths of Blackfriars. A metamorphosis is occurring: as the Blackfriars actors mature, so the techniques on stage become less and less distinguishable from those anywhere else. At Blackfriars, in place of this sense of the personal, we have the more ample use of the whole playing space with activity rather than static display, the exploration of more mature themes, the examination of fashionable states of mind, like melancholia, the creation of newly fashionable effects, such as the incorporation of masque-like elements and a tendency to seek to create a deliberately more sober and severe image as a dramatist of stature.

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Marston had two masters, in terms of his dramatic evolution, the physical properties of his stage and the social composition of his audience. As a dramatist, his works can be measured in the ways they respond and adjust to these two in¯uences. He began with crowd scenes and ¯aring torches, he became a miniaturist, and then metamorphosed into a seriously philosophical and contemplative composer of plays for a socially elite segment of contemporary society. notes 1 W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590±1640 (London: Longman, 1972), p. 92. 2 See my edition of Antonio and Mellida, The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 10. 3 Philip J. Finkelpearl, `John Marston's Histrio-Mastix as an Inns of Court Play: a Hypothesis', Huntington Library Quarterly 29 (1966), 223±34. There is no speci®c written reference either in the Inns of Court records or in the works of contemporary diarists to this play having been performed at the Middle Temple. The evidence is circumstantial, but I believe that the probability of Finkelpearl being right is very high since the play itself has elements designed to appeal to a student/lawyer audience and is designed for a ¯uctuating-sized, but large, cast. Marston, at this time in his career, had no known connections with any other theatre. 4 The measurements given are taken from R. E. Burkhart, `The Dimensions of Middle Temple Hall', Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986), 370±1. 5 J. M. Lothian and T. W. Craik (eds.), Twelfth Night, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1975), p. xxvi. 6 R. E. Burkhart, in `The Playing Space in the Halls of the Inns of Court', South Atlantic Review 56 (1991), 1±5, questions the idea that temporary stages were erected in front of the door end of the hall: this would have seriously obstructed waiters (plays normally accompanying feasting). 7 E. Bourcier (ed.), The Diary of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, 1621±24 (Paris: Didier, 1974). 8 See my edition of Antonio and Mellida, Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 8±9. 9 Quotations from Poetaster are from the Revels Edition edited by T. Cain (Manchester University Press, 1995). 10 Calendar of State Papers Domestic (Elizabeth I) 1598±1601, p. 227. 11 The Visitation Book of Bishop Bancroft, 1598, Guildhall MS., 9537/9, f.43. Other references to this manuscript are given in parentheses. All the manuscript quotations are modernized by me. 12 See my The Children of Paul's: The Story of a Theatre Company, 1553±1608 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 115.

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13 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Lord de L'Isle and Dudley (Penshurst Place), vol. ii, p. 415. M. Shapiro, in `The Children of Paul's and their Playhouse', Studies in Philology 64 (1967), 197±209, challenges the suggestion that Paul's resumed playing in 1599, arguing instead that they had already resumed in 1597. He makes this assumption on the strength of a remark in Le Prince d'Amour or the Prince of Love which was presented as an entertainment at the Middle Temple for Christmas 1597/8; it refers to `any Play at Paul's' (see M. Shapiro, `Le Prince d'Amour and the Resumption of Playing at Paul's', Notes and Queries 18 (1971), 14). There are two essential obstacles to this deduction; ®rst, Gyles the master of Choristers, had been in decline for some time and certainly by 1598 was no longer carrying out his duties (the new master, Pearce, was unusually appointed on 11 May 1599 without Gyles being dispossessed of his place) and secondly, over forty witnesses subscribed comments about the state of the cathedral in The Visitation Book of Bishop Bancroft which was compiled in 1598 and not a single person makes any reference to the choristers being involved in drama. The Visitation Book is so detailed that such an omission is virtually inconceivable. The Prince d'Amour reference may be to a performance by the boys of Paul's school or more simply an old comment, as the Prince pageant shows signs of revision, relating to the earlier phase of activity at Paul's in the 1580s. Shapiro, however, is not only unhappy with the date of the resumption of playing at Paul's but with the whole foundation of my location of the playhouse within the Chapter House precinct. He cannot accept the very precise evidence offered by the accumulated contemporary references to its location because there is no witness who explicitly describes its exact site. In civil law it is the balance of probability which establishes a case, but in criminal law one must be convinced of guilt `beyond reasonable doubt'; in the case of the second Paul's and the location of its playhouse, I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the truth has been established through overwhelming circumstantial evidence. 14 See my The Children of Paul's, pp. 52±5, 181. 15 For a more detailed discussion of the evidence for the structure of the playhouse and the stage within it, see my The Children of Paul's, chapter 2, `Paul's Playhouse'. For other comparable small playhouses, see R. Hosley, `Three Renaissance English Indoor Playhouses', English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973), 166±82. 16 Choristers had the right to demand a ®ne from any man entering the cathedral wearing spurs. 17 See M. C. Andrews, `Jack Drum's Entertainment as Burlesque', Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971), 226±31. He plausibly suggests a date for Antonio's Revenge before Jack Drum's Entertainment. 18 See R. Hosley, `A Reconstruction of the Second Blackfriars', in D. Galloway (ed.), The Elizabethan Theatre i (Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 75±86.

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19 See I. Smith, Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and its Design (New York University Press, 1964), p. 230. 20 G. K. Hunter (ed.), The Malcontent, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1975), p. lv. 21 P. J. Finkelpearl, `Middle Temple Christmas Revels in Marston's The Fawn', Studies in Philology 64 (1967), 201±2. 22 Gair, Children of Paul's, pp. 154±5.

chapter 3

Varieties of fantasy in `What You Will' Matthew Steggle

If the constitution of man both for bodie and soule, had not some naturall, and nighe af®nitie with the concordances of Musick, the force of the one, would not so soone stirre vp, the cosen motion in the other.1

What You Will is a play whose reputation is so damaged by its link with the War of the Theatres that it has been almost completely bypassed by Marston criticism. The critics who do venture into this Jonson-irradiated dead zone of the Marston canon tend to divide into two types: those who seek to read What You Will purely for its alleged portrait of Jonson, and those who read it largely in order to show that it contains no such picture and that it conforms completely to the rest of Marston's comedies. This is a shame, as neither of these approaches reveals the best of What You Will, a lively, funny, and intellectually experimental play. In this essay I seek to avoid the debate about personation in What You Will and instead consider the play's treatment of music and of `fantasy', in various senses. These two themes, already the subject of critical attention elsewhere in Marston's work, prove in this play to combine in an unexpected and powerful way, that can provide insights into the play's ideas, its contemporary context, and even into its structure and poetics.2 To begin with, one should note the importance of music to What You Will. As has often been pointed out, Marston's use of music is especially elaborate and extensive, not just in his comedies but in the tragedies too. Critics have examined the ways in which music as an effect mirrors and comments on the action of the plays, a technique seen at its most developed in the almost operatic Sophonisba; the thematic and metaphorical importance of music in The Malcontent and other comedies; and the range and variety of the musical 45

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vocabulary deployed by Marston. One writer counts over 500 musical puns and allusions within Marston's plays.3 What You Will, performed as it was by the choristers of St Paul's, is another play that gives great prominence to music. On the most super®cial level, there is a number of songs and dances within the play, as well as music between the acts. Characters refer to the music that is to follow at the end of acts, and stage directions specify that activity on the stage restarts before this music has ®nished: in short, there is at best a blurred dividing-line between when the play is acting, and when `The Act is playing' (iii.i.927 s.d.). Many of these songs have some functional importance within the action: to take the most obvious example, the very ®rst song advances the plot, in that as a result of it being sung, and the reception it gets, Jacomo learns that his suit to Celia will be unsuccessful. For several of the characters, most notably the remarkable Quadratus, awareness of the music also constitutes awareness of his role as a character in a drama: `So ends our chat: sound music for the Act' (ii.ii.926). Quadratus, indeed, is a great fan of music: for him, `Dances, scenes, and songs' constitute `royal entertain', and `Music, tobacco, sack and sleep / The tide of sorrow backward keep' (ii.i.652, 667±8).4 But this argument can be pursued further. Within What You Will, one ®nds music and poetry aligned as if they were different forms of the same activity. One might cite, for instance, Jacomo: That I were but a poet now t'express my thoughts, Or a musician but to sing my thoughts, Or anything but what I am!

(i.i.247±9).

A second example occurs in Act v, when the Duke speci®es that the music he wants must be spiritually enrapturing and out of reach of the common man: Soul! And you cannot feast my thristing ears With aught but what the lip of common birth can taste, Take all away (v.i.933±5).

Quadratus leaps in to offer him, not music, but a drama for him to listen to, that meets all these requirements. This is an attitude one can parallel elsewhere in early Marston; notably in the satires, where ± as O'Neill points out ± Marston twice claims that he is writing a species of music in words. The more extensive of these comparisons runs as follows:

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47

Come prettie pleasing symphonie of words, Yee wel-match'd twins (whose like-tun'd tongs affords Such musicall delight,) come willingly And daunce Leuoltoes in my poesie . . . Come riming numbers, come and grace conceite, Adding a pleasing close, with the deceit Inticing eares . . . Come like-fac'd rime, In tunefull numbers keeping musicks time.

(The Scourge of Villanie, `Proemium in Librum Secundum: Ad Rithmum', 1±4, 11±13, 21±2)

It is worth adding that the same parallelling of music and poetry occurs in one other place within What You Will: the Induction. The sympathetic observer Doricus argues that the true test of a play's merit is not the faithfulness with which it follows rules of construction, but the reaction which it elicits from its audience: Music and poetry were ®rst approv'd By common sense; and that which pleased most Held most allowed pass; no, rules of art Were shap'd to pleasure, not pleasure to your rules.

(59±62)

Doricus rejects the Horatian emphasis upon the mixing of the `utile' and `dulce', in favour of simple concentration upon the `dulce'. Furthermore, in asking that the play be judged by the standards of music, this passage opens up the possibility of describing the play in terms of a musical metaphor. Here, for instance, is Thomas Morley's description of a fantasy, the most important genre of instrumental music at the turn of the seventeenth century: The most principall and chiefest kind of musicke which is made without a dittie [sc. without lyrics] is the fantasie, that is, when a musician taketh a point at his pleasure, and wresteth and turneth it as he list, making either much or little of it according as shall seeme best in his own conceit. In this may more art be showne then in any other musicke, because the composer is tide to nothing but that he may adde, deminish, and alter at his pleasure. And this kind will beare any allowances whatsoeuer tolerable in other musick, except changing the ayre & leauing the key, which in fantasie may neuer bee sufferred. Other things you may vse at your pleasure, as bindings with discordes, quicke motions, slow motions, proportions, and what you list.5

Fantasies enjoyed immense popularity, and were written by almost every composer in Renaissance England, from Dowland and Byrd downwards. They could be for solo instruments, or for small

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ensembles. They might occasionally use vocalists, but the vocalists would sing sol-fa rather than lyrics ± the relevance of this point will be seen later.6 And as a genre, the fantasy offered unparalleled freedom to the composer. `What you list' is not quite `what you will', but the thought is much the same. Doricus' tirade has the desired effect, of de¯ating Philomuse. They go on to discuss the genre of the play that is to follow: d o r i c u s: Is't comedy, tragedy, pastoral, moral, nocturnal or history? p h i l o m u s e : Faith perfectly neither, but even what you will, a slight toy, lightly composed, too swiftly ®nish'd, ill plotted, worse written, I fear me worst acted, and indeed what you will. d o r i c u s: Why I like this vein well now. (87±91)

Classi®cation of genres forms an indispensable part of the dramatic theories expounded by Renaissance literary critics such as Sidney, Meres, and Hamlet's Polonius. As a play, What You Will refuses to conform to any of these, and thus remains in a sense outside the control of such theories. Worse than that, What You Will shifts the responsibility for such generic categorization onto the audience. But it is also worth pointing out that a submerged imagery of music continues here too, not merely in such obviously neutral words as `composed' and `written', but in the description of the play as a `toy'. The musical sense of `toy' can be illustrated from Robert Greene, who describes a young man giving an impromptu performance on the virginals, and `the seueral toys and fancies hee plaied'.7 For Greene, then, and I suggest for Marston, `toy' can denote a frivolous piece of music, and is apparently nearly synonymous with the genre of the fancy or fantasy. Now, one might be prepared to concede the idea that What You Will is claiming the freedom of a piece of music, without endorsing the idea that fantasy is necessarily the genre that Marston has in mind. But it can be argued that `fantasy' as a word is given enormous prominence within What You Will. Cognates including `fantasticness', `fancy', and `phantasma', are used no fewer than twenty-three times, in ± as will be seen ± several different ways. And this, again, leads into areas already developed by scholarship upon other parts of the Marston canon. Several critics have noted how `fantasy' is an important idea in Marston's other work. Two, in particular, take their lead from what Marston says in the Dedication to Nobody that prefaces the 1602

Varieties of fantasy in `What You Will'

49

edition of Antonio and Mellida: `Since it has ¯owed with the current of my humorous blood to affect a little too much to be seriously fantastical, here take, most respected patron, the worthless present of my slighter idleness.'8 R. A. Foakes glosses `seriously fantastical' from Marston's Certaine Satyres, iii.31±40, where Ganymede is condemned as `fond, mad, fantasticall', for his extravagant dress and his determined pursuit of contemporary fashion. On this basis, he reads the Antonio plays as exercises in parodic imitation. Michael Shapiro offers a slightly different reading of the phrase, glossing it from the OED's de®nition of fantasy, sense 4b: `fanciful, impulsive, capricious, arbitrary', and adding, `It is this cluster of adjectives that also seems to describe the play's many sudden and surprising discontinuities' of style, tone, and action. For Shapiro, `seriously fantastical' is a phrase that can also be applied to other Marston comedies, including Jack Drum's Entertainment, that possess a similar, almost Absurdist roughness in their dramatic technique.9 A different tack again is taken by T. F. Wharton writing on The Malcontent. For Wharton, The Malcontent is a play about `Dreams, dreams, visions, fantasies, chimeras, imaginations, tricks, conceits': about the power of role-playing and wish-ful®lment, and the dif®culty of disentangling reality from self-indulgent delusion. `Fantasy', a word which, Wharton shows, recurs signi®cantly within the play, is one of the most important words for conveying this nightmarish sense of the fragility of reality.10 All three of these articles offer different approaches to the word `fantasy': as foppish imitation, as capricious unpredictability, and as unreal imagination. We have seen Morley using the word in a technical musical sense. There is also a ®fth meaning, a technical sense from the theory of the organic soul and brain, that can be illustrated from the works of Robert Burton: Phantasie or imagination . . . is an inner sense, which doth more fully examine the Species perceaved by common sense, of things present and absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind againe, or making new of his owne . . . In Poets and Painters Imagination forcibly works.11

Within What You Will, I suggest, all of these ®ve meanings are present to some degree, focused most of all upon the enigmatic and appealing Quadratus, and a favourite strategy of the play is to confuse and combine them. For instance, Quadratus in the following speech defends the fantasticness that was normally a favourite target of `comical satire', including Jonson's Cynthia's Revels:

50

matthew steggle A man can scarce put on a tuck'd-up cap, A button'd frizado suit, scarce eat good meat, Anchovies, caviare, but he's satir'd And term'd fantastical by the muddy spawn Of slimy newts; when, troth, fantasticness, That which the natural sophisters term Phantasia incomplexa, is a function Even of the bright immortal part of man. It is the common pass, the sacred door Unto the privy chamber of the soul, That barr'd, naught passeth past the baser court Of outward sense; by it th'inamorate Most lively thinks he sees the absent beauties Of his lov'd mistress; By it we shape a new creation Of things as yet unborn, by it we feed Our ravenous memory, our [invention] feast: 'Slid, he that's not fantastical's a beast.

(ii.i.582±99)

So Quadratus starts off with a de®nition of `fantastical' in terms of contemporary fads and fashions, and modulates from that into a celebration of the fantasy as a part of the organic soul. 12 Quadratus gives fantasy an important role in artistic creation: `we shape a new creation' refers on one level to phantasmata, the imaginary products of the fantasy, and at the same time to fantasy's wider reputation ± attested by Burton ± as the driving force behind poets and artists. Quadratus reiterates the point a few lines later: `So't be fantastical 'tis wit's life blood' (602). Furthermore, Quadratus' liking for fantasy is stressed on numerous occasions through the play. At the very start, his ®rst exchange celebrates the topic, hoping that Jacomo will remain in the fantastical state brought on by extremity of love (he does not): qu adr atu s : What strain's his madness of ? phyl us : Fantastical. qu adr atu s : Immure him, sconce him, barricado him in't: Fantastical mad, thrice blessed heart! (i.i.154±7)

As we have seen, Quadratus celebrates his own fantasticness. He frequently urges his colleagues, too, to `be fantastical and sociable' (ii.i.627: cf. ii.ii.911). And a pointed contrast is made on this topic between Quadratus and his rival Lampatho Doria. Lampatho is an enemy of fantasy. Revealingly, the only times he uses a word cognate with fantasy, they are in a pejorative context: he dismisses Laverdure

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as `a most complete phantasma, a most ridiculous humour' (ii.i.498±9; cf. 600). Despite repeated urgings by Quadratus to become fantastical, it seems that this is something Lampatho cannot manage. Indeed, although the two characters are in many ways very similar in their circumstances and activities, it is the presence of fantasy in the one and its absence in the other that best describes the difference between them. Furthermore, many of Quadratus' most fantastical utterances are somehow connected with music, as for instance, this taunt against Lampatho: Ha, he mount Chirall on the wings of fame! `A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!' Look thee, I speak play-scraps. Bidet, I'll down; Sing, sing, or stay ± we'll quaff, or anything. Rivo! Saint Mark! Let's talk as loose as air, Unwind youth's colours, display ourselves So that yon envy-starved cur may yelp And spend his chaps at our fantasticness.

(ii.i.522±9)

Quadratus is once again praising behaviour condemned by Jonson in Cynthia's Revels, most notably in his appropriation of `play-scraps' from Richard III and, apparently, Mucedorus: Cynthia's Revels reserves particular scorn for those who attempt to incorporate `play-particles' in speech in this way.13 Quadratus, in his associative, non-logical style, picking up quotations from plays along the way, is engaging in speech that draws attention to its own improvised nature. A few moments later, Laverdure goes even further, agreeing with Quadratus that Lampatho's threat to satirize them into `public scorn' should be disregarded: Pewt, bougra! la, la, la, tit, pshaw! Shall I forbear to caper, sing, or vault, To wear fresh clothes or wear perfumed sweets, To trick my face, or glory in my fate, T'abandon natural propensitudes ± My fancy's humour ± for a stiff-jointed, Tatter'd, nasty, tabor-fac'd ± pugh! la, la, ly, ro!

(554±60)

As Quadratus did, Laverdure too praises singing as something inherently fantastical. Laverdure, indeed, seems to be improvising upon his `fancy's humour' so enthusiastically that he has run out of words, and is instead resorting to musical notes. (Where musical fantasy does involve singers, it generally gets them to sing sol-fa.)

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Such sudden inarticulacy is common in this play, in which speeches often dissolve into singing, or stammering, or even just a despairing repetition of the play's catchphrase `what you will'. It may not come as a surprise that the same dichotomy between praise of fantasy and music on the one hand, and stiff formality and dislike of fantasy on the other, turns up in the Induction as well. Doricus, whose comparison of poetry to music we have already quoted, is haunted by a `merry genius'. Both in his playful manner of speaking, and in his direct reference to the subject, it is clear that he, like Quadratus, is a devotee of the fantastical: d or i c u s: Marry sir, Signior Snuff, Monsieur Mew, and Cavaliero Blirt, are three of the most to be fear'd auditors that ever ± phil om use : Pish for shame, stint thy idle chat. d or i c u s: Nay, dream whatsoe'er your fantasy swims on, Philomuse. (14±18)

The language of the organic soul proves on further examination to crop up all over What You will. Lampatho, for instance, describes his unsuccessful studies into the nature of the soul: How 'twas created, how the soul exists: One talks of motes, the soul was made of motes, Another ®re, t'other light, a third a spark of star-like nature. Hippo water, Anaximenes air, Aristoxenus music: Critias I know not what. (ii.ii.875±9)14

Lampatho, unable to connect the soul to anything corporeal, is lacking, in effect, the fantasy, whose job this is. In the course of the play love, or at least lust, seems to provide a partial answer to his problems: `My soul's entranc'd', he declares on meeting the wily ¯irt Meletza. Quadratus has earlier commented on the effect that female beauty has on males' philosophical doubts: O who would staggering doubt The soul's eternity, seeing it hath Of heavenly beauty but to case it up?

(iv.i.1639, 1586±8)

and this seems to work well upon Lampatho. Meletza adds further lexical confusion to the meanings of `fantasy' and its cognates, by introducing yet another sense in her aside describing the effect Lampatho has upon her: `Good faith I fancy, I fancy him' (iv.i.1614±15: cf. OED's s.v. fancy v. 2 and 5). In the world of What You Will, fantasy and love represent a potent combination.

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It is also an unstable one. Albano, ®nding that his wife is remarrying, expresses his frustration in terms of the soul: `The soul of man is rotten / Even to the core: no sound affection' (iii.ii.1037±8). Then, discovering that no-one now appears to recognize him, as he is being impersonated, he describes the process in terms of his soul and body becoming unglued from one another: The Samian faith is true, true, I was drown'd, And now my soul is skipp'd into a perfumer, a gutter-master . . . If Albano's name Were liable to sense, that I could taste or touch Or see, or feel it, it might 'tice belief; But since 'tis voice and air, come to the musk-cat, boy: Francisco, that's my name. (iii.ii.1239±40, 1259±63)

As Quadratus remarks, `Error deludes; who'll beat this hence: / Naught's known but by exterior sense?' (ii.i.677±8), which means that everything, including identity itself, is subject to delusion. However, in this play, in which the senses are celebrated, this is not merely a subject for lament. Quadratus, in particular, tends to praise intellectual pleasures indiscriminately mixed in with purely sensory pleasures, as if there were no division between the two: `Music, tobacco, sack, and sleep' (667). Other pleasures praised vary from food to drugs to drama itself, and include ± besides those mentioned by Quadratus above ± anchovies, caviare, herring, bottle-ale, Rhenish wine, aphrodisiacs, and dancing. Lampatho, who has practised the austere life of a scholar, is mocked for having missed opportunities to enjoy himself. Quadratus is not merely `square' in terms of his robust attitude towards criticism against him (565), but in terms of his physical bulk (iv.i.1474, 1508). But the most noticeable celebration of the body occurs in connection with love and sex. Albano recovers his identity because of a mark identi®able upon his body ± the birthmark recognized by his wife. And this device of the birthmark, which Aristotle called the weakest of all recognition-plots, is Marston's own invention. In one of Marston's possible sources ± Plautus' Amphityron ± the situation is resolved by an explanation from Jove. In the other, D'Oddi's I Morti Vivi, nobody recognizes the central character for who he really is until he is identi®ed by his steward, and after that no-one entertains any doubts.15 So this token is one introduced by Marston, and one made speci®cally relevant to the body, to sex, and to sexual ®delity. Indeed, at the moment where Celia remembers the

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birthmark and the words that he said to her before parting, one might well remember what Quadratus told us about the power of the fantasy to assist the remembrance of love: By it th'inamorate Most lively thinks he sees the absent beauties Of his lov'd mistress

(ii.i.593±5)

Like love itself, fantasy is about uniting the soul and body together, and it is this union that the end of the play celebrates in its revelry. Even the creative brain itself is depicted as not merely cerebral but corporeal, damp and squishy. To the enemies of fantasy, this state of ¯ux is repugnant, as with Lampatho's imagery of his brain producing satirical juice (`the sour juice / Of a tart brain' (ii.i.519±20)), or Philomuse's obsession with `some looser brain' that might `In ¯ux of wit uncivilly be®lth' the poet's work (Induction, 27±8). There is a clear link here to one of Marston's favourite ideas, the belief that the synderesis, or the channels of communication between the bodily and the spiritual, may be clogged up by impure humours in the brain. Yet, to the proponents of fantasy in this play, the imagination has the capability so to work on an audience as to make them, as Quadratus put it, `Strain'd from the mud of base [unable] brains' (v.i.1954, emphasis added), and the idea of the spontaneous ¯ow, of `whatsoe'er your fantasy swims on' (Induction, 18) becomes the play's creative ideal. The play therefore directly contests the Jonsonian, will-driven, left brain version of creativity, where the author so measures his product by what he sees as its intrinsic worth that he ends up proclaiming, `By ±, 'tis good, and if you lik't, you may.'16 Indeed, the play gives somewhat short shrift to the traditional bookish scholar±author. Lampatho, so lacking in the fantastical and spontaneous that Quadratus is often able to predict what he is going to say next, is `Devote to mouldy customs of hoar'd eld' (ii.i.450), which, as his famous `and still my spaniel slept' set-piece confesses, ends where the spaniel `knew as much as I' (ii.ii.851±72). By contrast, within the play, Laverdure says of one of Quadratus' poems that it is `so, so, tellement, quellement, as't please opinion to current it' (ii.i.690±1). As to the artistic process itself, aside from a modest craftsmanlike care that the product is not `unsquar'd or warp'd' (Induction, 69), fantasy becomes the chief enabling agent. One's control over, responsibility for, and investment in the material

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one produces becomes much less. Yet, this modest artistic stance is almost literally an author's salvation. Just as The Scourge of Villanie had argued17 that only `the spirits Pegase Fantasie' can relieve the ¯ow of the soul from the impeding `muddy slime' (viii.181±2, 192), so, likewise, in this play, Quadratus opines that `He can scarce be sav'd / That's not fantastical' (ii.i.608±9; cf. 585). Accordingly, What You Will is to an unusual degree given over to the free play of verbal exuberance, where the Latin mnemonics of `Sal, sol, ren et splen' quickly decay into the equally rhythmic but purely nonsensical `Rup, tup, snup, slup' (ii.ii.745, 748). Similarly, the play's own structure takes on a deliberately improvisatory quality, just as `a musician taketh a point at his pleasure, and wresteth and turneth it as he list'. At the smallest level, one ®nds Albano performing a Basil Fawlty-like fantastic variation upon a single command: Go wander, avaunt knight-errant; Celia shall be no cuckquean, my heir no beggar, my plate no pawn, my land no mortgage, my wealth no food for thy luxuries, my house no harbour for thy comrades, my bed no booty for thy lusts, my anything shall be thy nothing: go hence, pack, pack, avaunt, caper, caper, allons, allons, pass by, pass by, cloak your nose, away, vanish, wander, depart, slink by, away! (iii.ii.1156±63)

In fact, one could describe this speech as containing three miniature and interlinked fantasies: the ®rst, a set of seven variations upon `Celia shall be no cuckquean', the second, three variations upon doubled commands such as `pack, pack', and ®nally, seven variations upon single commands such as `away'. The difference between the second and third stages would be, in musical notation, a shift into double time. Furthermore, each of the three themes, represented by `Celia shall be no cuckquean', `pack, pack', and `away', are different ways of expressing the same meaning: they are variations upon each other. Nor need such miniature fantasies be restricted to a single word or idea. For instance, this speech, in which Albano imagines the preparations for his wife's wedding, is a fantasy upon the syntactical unit `now', subject, and verb in the present tense. Albano varies the length of the phrases, the order of the three elements, and the pattern of the repetitions, until ®nally ± like Laverdure's fantasy earlier on ± the momentum of the speech is so great that the words stop making sense.

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matthew steggle Now is Albano's marriage-bed new hung With fresh rich curtains: now are my valance up, Emboss'd with orient pearl, my grandsire's gift; Now are the lawn sheets fum'd with violets, To fresh the pall'd lascivious appetite. Now work the cooks, the pastry sweats with slaves, The marchpanes glitter; now, now the musicians Hover with nimble sticks o'er squeaking crowds, Tickling the dried guts of a mewing cat; The tailors, starchers, sempsters, butchers, poulterers, mercers, all, all, all, now now now, none think o' me, the f-f-f-French is te f-f-f-®ne man, de p-p-p-pock man, de ±18

(iii.ii.1066±77)

Albano's stammer, approximately notated in the text, offers an opportunity to the actor for virtuoso comic repetitions, variations, and improvisations. The sounds produced by Albano become almost more important than the meanings that they are supposed to convey. This is especially true of the section in Act iv where Albano and Francisco perform a sort of stuttering duet: a l b a n o: [within] B-b-b-bar out Albano! O adulterous impudent! f r a n c i s c o: [within] B-b-b-bar out Albano! O thou matchless g-g-g-giglot! ... a l b a n o: I'll f-f-®ddle ye. f r a n c i s c o: Dost f-f-¯out me? a l b a n o: Dost m-m-m-mock me? (iv.ii.1682±3, 1710±2)

At a larger level, entire scenes are constructed on this theme-andvariation pattern, a structural basis quite different from the more linear development of the main plot. For instance, every scene between Quadratus and Lampatho has the following pattern: Lampatho begins the scene speaking the language of some specialized role, and Quadratus mocks him, argues him out of it, and suggests a new role for him to adopt. In the course of the play, Lampatho is argued in succession out of over-courtly complimenting, out of philosophical melancholy, out of over-excitable satirical excess, and ®nally out of the rhetoric of romantic love. Even within the main plot, which is much more constrained by the linear development of a storyline, the four occasions on which people fail to recognize Albano are structurally very similar, but arranged in a sequence of steadily growing elaboration. And the idea of the fantasy can also explain some of the self-

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imposed limitations of What You Will. It is a play with a small dynamic range. No scene ever strays far from the overall tone of fantastic, self-aware comical satire. Even Bidet and the pages use the same sort of self-consciously witty, verbally fantastic language, and the same satirical devices of the Theophrastan characterization, as the `adults'. Even Lampatho's melancholy has no noticeable effect upon the mood of Quadratus or of the scene in which it takes place. Even Albano's serious speeches are never far away from de¯ation, either by his own stammer, or by his hyperbole, or by the relentlessly comic nature of his predicament. In the comedies of Shakespeare or Jonson, the mood changes scene by scene and even speech by speech: Marston, here, has no interest in creating such effects. The plotting and the continuity may be looser than one would expect in other dramatists, but the mood is much more consistent. In What You Will, one might say, anything is acceptable `except changing the ayre and leauing the key, which in fantasie may neuer be suffered'. In short, What You Will puns pro®tably on several senses of the word `fantasy', with a range of meanings from `foppish fashionability' through to a technical sense as a part of the organic soul, and including along the way a speci®cally musical connotation picked up by the repeated references to music within the play. This pervasive musical metaphor has implications for the poetics of the play, for the ways in which irony might or might not function within the play, and even for the structuring of individual speeches, scenes, and plot-lines. Through this connection of ideas What You Will celebrates the imperfectly articulated, the irrational, and the playful, or, put another way, a sense of fun. We are doing What You Will a disservice by considering it entirely according to traditional, broadly Jonsonian models of how a dramatic text ought to be composed and structured: What You Will is written in a different mode altogether. notes 1 Richard Mulcaster, Positions, ed. Robert H. Quick (London: Longman, 1888), p. 37. 2 M. R. Woodhead (ed.), What You Will (Nottingham Drama Texts, 1980). The resemblance-hunters' case is well stated by Roscoe A. Small, The Stage-Quarrel Between Ben Jonson and the So-called Poetasters (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1899): the opposition to this approach, by Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge, Mass.:

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3

4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11

12

matthew steggle Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 162±77. For a new review of the topic, see Matthew Steggle, Wars of the Theatres: The Poetics of Personation in the Age of Jonson (Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, 1998). A good survey of recent work on the War of the Theatres can be found in T. G. S. Cain (ed.), Poetaster (Manchester University Press, 1995), Introduction, pp. 30±6. See William Kemp (ed.), Sophonisba (New York: Garland, 1979), Introduction, pp. 24±5; R. W. Ingram, `Music in the Plays of Marston', Music and Letters 37 (1956), 154±64; on The Malcontent, see Christian Kiefer, `Music and Marston's The Malcontent', Studies in Philology 51 (1954), 163±72; on the 500 musical allusions, David G. O'Neill, `The In¯uence of Music in the Works of John Marston', Music and Letters 53 (1972), 122±33, 293±308, 400±11. On the use of music in What You Will, see also J. Jacquot, `Le ReÂpertoire des compagnies d'enfants aÁ Londres (1600±1610): Essai d'interpretation', in J. Jacquot (ed.), Dramaturgie et SocieÂteÂ: Rapports entre l'úuvre theÂaÃtrale, son interpretation et son public, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions du Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scienti®que, 1968), vol. ii, pp. 729±83. Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597), pp. 180±1. Interestingly, Morley himself had formerly worked at St Paul's: see R. Gair, The Children of Paul's: The Story of a Theatre Company, 1553±1608 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 79±80, and, on What You Will, pp. 138±42. For these details, see Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. vi, pp. 381±92 (s.v. `Fantasia'). `G.B.H.' (ed.), The Thirde and Last Part of Conny-Catching (London: Bodley Head, 1923), p. 29. Cf. OED s.v. `toy' n. 3b. Antonio and Mellida, Dedication 5±8. R. A. Foakes, `John Marston's Fantastical Plays: Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge', Philological Quarterly 41 (1962), 229±39; Michael Shapiro, Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeare's Time and their Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 132. The Malcontent i.iii.55±6; T. F. Wharton, `The Malcontent and ``Dreams, Visions, Fantasies'' ', Essays in Criticism 24 (1974), 261±74. In Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicholas C. Keissling, and Rhonda L. Blair (eds.), The Anatomy of Melancholy, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), vol. i, p. 152. For discussion of theories of the organic soul in the Renaissance, see C. B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 464ff. Lingua, a Cambridge University play of around the same date, makes the same joke in its use of the character Phantastes: see Thomas Tomkis, Lingua (1607; n.p.: Old English Drama Students' Facsimile edition, 1913).

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13 What You Will ii.i.522±9: Cynthia's Revels iii.v.119, cited Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson. 14 What You Will thus mentions Aristoxenus' theory, brie¯y and obliquely; just as it brings in Orpheus' use of music in his effort to reclaim his wife Eurydice from death (i.i.237). Therefore the play invokes classical sources that support a direct relationship between music and the soul, along the lines of the quotation from Mulcaster which is used as an epigraph to this essay, but these sources are not ± one might say ± harped upon. 15 Sforza D'Oddi, I Morti Vivi (Venice, 1567), 68. 16 Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, Epilogue 20. 17 See especially Satires vii, viii, xi, and Davenport's notes, Poems, pp. 346±7. 18 Incidentally, since Richard III is parodied elsewhere in What You Will by Quadratus' appropriation of `A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse', it is interesting that the syntactic theme of Albano's fantasy here echoes the opening lines of that play: `Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer . . .' See William Shakespeare, King Richard III, ed. A. Hammond (London: Methuen, 1981), i.i.1±8.

chapter 4

Safety in ®ction: Marston's recreational poetics Patrick Buckridge

The London of the late 1590s and early 1600s was a place in which satiric writing, whether for publication or for the stage, was anything but a safe pursuit. The death of Burghley in 1598, Elizabeth's increasing in®rmity, and the Essex Rebellion of 1601 were just some of the factors motivating the government's heightened intolerance of public criticism of its institutions or policies. Nashe's imprisonment for his part in the Isle of Dogs, banned and suppressed after one performance in 1597, and the prosecution in 1605 of Jonson and Chapman (Marston escaped unpunished) for their part in the writing of Eastward Ho, might be taken as chronological boundary markers for this turn-of-the-century burst of political sensitivity. At its midpoint we ®nd Elizabeth's famous (and astute) remark on the performances of Shakespeare's Richard II mounted by Essex supporters in the weeks prior to the Rebellion (`I am Richard the Second, know ye not that?'); and by the `Bishops' Bon®re' of the previous year (1599), in which several recently published books were banned, for somewhat obscure reasons, and copies of them seized from the booksellers and burned in the churchyard of Paul's by episcopal decree. Among the items destroyed in that unusually dramatic act of suppression were Marston's two collections of verse satires, Certaine Satyres and The Scourge of Villanie (both 1598) and his verse epyllion, The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, written in the manner of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander (both of which were also burned). Since the bishops' speci®c objections to the books were not explained it would be dif®cult to substantiate John Peter's eccentric view of the bon®re as `an act of literary criticism'!1 Clearly Marston was deemed to have overstepped the mark; yet no additional penalty seems to have been imposed, a fact that may suggest that he had done enough to satisfy a watchful and unforgiving censorship that he represented no real threat to national security. 60

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One of the ways in which Marston may have sought to discourage any perception of himself as a genuinely `dangerous' author, while at the same time projecting an image of a fearless scourge of public and private vice, was by adopting a very deliberate strategy for directing the general reader's response to his satiric writing along pleasurable, useful, and (from the poet/playwright's point of view) politically safe channels. The surprising autonomy and diversity of reading have become something of a commonplace in the last few years; indeed, the main emphasis in much recent work has been on the mobility and unpredictability of popular reading practices.2 Marston, I think, recognized the `rebellious and vagabond' nature of reading, but attempted to supervise and regulate it from within rather than indulging and falling victim to cruder and more coercive attempts to control it from without by censorship, prohibition, and suppression. 3 Relevant to the kind of analysis proposed here are Annabel Patterson's recent discussions of a hermeneutics of `reading between the lines' and of a poetics of `writing between the lines', as both of these emerged in the censoring society of Renaissance England.4 Patterson is interested in the kinds of reading and writing that enabled the systematic concealment of politically sensitive or subversive meanings in literature. Marston, I want to suggest, was engaged in an extreme version of this general project, one that went beyond traditional encrypting devices ± allegory, emblem, typology, and the like ± to the reading and writing processes themselves, to the development of principles and practices for poetry and drama that would direct the general reader's or spectator's attention quite away from the possibility of `real-world' applications and correspondences, away from the joys of allusion-hunting, puzzle-solving, and codebreaking, towards an alternative form of literary pleasure and pro®t. That alternative, in a word, was `recreation'. Such an approach to Marston might also appear to bring the present analysis within the ambit of those recent applications of the notion of `the carnivalesque' which derive from Bakhtin's seminal work on Rabelais. Broadly speaking, these have tended to stress the potential for political resistance in the traditional inversions and parodies of the rules, rituals, and hierarchies of the dominant social order which were tolerated during periods of `carnival' in European popular culture.5 I shall be stressing elements of revelry in Marston's work, but where I feel my analysis probably diverges from carnival-

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esque theory is in my emphasis on ideas of play that were understood and approved by of®cial Renaissance culture, usually as recreation, rather than on practices that were barely tolerated by that culture as the necessary release of socially subversive impulses.6 Does Marston's apparently genuine determination not to be subversive mean that his satires do not in fact glance at real individuals? Not necessarily. Even Marston's editor, the conservative Davenport, accepts several personal identi®cations (Hall, Jonson, and probably Shakespeare, among others); and Marston would be a rare bird indeed among Renaissance satirists if he had eschewed them altogether. But there is no reason to suppose that he would have wished to call particular attention to them, or even that they were important to the main literary effects he was seeking to produce. Nor perhaps is a handful of personal targets suf®cient to discredit his claim to be constructing a poetic and moral rationale for satire which was actually independent of the factuality of those targets, and indeed premised on their perceived ®ctionality. What better protection could a poet have, after all (short of outright political protection, which he may also later have obtained),7 than a carefully expounded theory of satire which repudiated and actively discouraged particularity of application? Marston would not have been the ®rst satirist, nor would he be the last, not to practise quite what he preached. His professed project makes its most explicit appearance in the Postscript to the Scourge of Villanie, addressed `To him that hath perused me', to whom he complains pessimistically that he will be much, much iniuried by two sorts of readers: the one being ignorant, not knowing the nature of a Satyre, (which is vnder fained priuate names, to note generall vices,) will needes wrest each fayned name to a priuate vnfained person. The other too subtile, bearing a priuate malice to some greater personage then hee dare in his owne person seeme to maligne, will striue by a forced application of my generall reproofes to broach his priuate hatred.8 (6±14)

There is a bit more here than the satirist's conventionally disingenuous disclaimer. This is a serious analysis of why and how people `misread' satire, and of what that misreading involves. There are, in other words, a right and a wrong way to read satire: the wrong or `injurious' way to read satire, whether motivated by ignorance or by malice, is to persist in translating the parade of social and moral types into a series of thinly veiled representations of real individuals. By implication, then, the `right' way to read satire ± and perhaps

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other kinds of literature too ± must contain within it a recognition of the essential virtuality or ®ctionality of the writing, which is to say a refusal to translate the feigned into the unfeigned. There are clear indications of the directions Marston's argument on representation will take in his handling of religious symbolism. In the second satire of the Scourge, with reference to the Eucharist, the Cambridge Puritans are said to `take the simbole vp / As slouenly, as carelesse Courtiers slup / Their mutton gruell', while the papists, by contrast, `Adore Wheate dough, as reall deitie' (94±6, 83). Both are aberrant forms of worship in relation to the Anglican `via media', but they are different aberrations. The same is true of the aberrant forms of reading with which they are (roughly) homologous. However, Marston is not content with explanation alone. To increase the chances of right reading, Marston used a time-honoured propaedeutic strategy ± explanation followed by demonstration and training ± in the early part of the volume. Explanation comes in a prose Preface addressed `To those that seeme iudiciall perusers', in which Marston rejects the metrical irregularity and verbal obscurity commonly regarded as decorous for satire. Arguing (with great perspicacity) that such expectations are based on historical ignorance ± that Persius and Juvenal, like Chaucer, were neither rough nor obscure (dark) to their original readers ± Marston undertakes not to `delude your sight with mists', but to observe only the `peculiar kinde of speech [suitable] for a Satyres lips' ± something he proceeds to demonstrate formally in the ®rst of the satires proper (though it has already been informally demonstrated in the immediately preceding verse diatribe against his `utterly unworthy readers'). The ®nal step in the propaedeutic process ± training ± is also supplied by the ®rst satire, `Fronti nulla ®des', and Marston is fairly explicit about its special function and status in the volume. In the prose Preface he claims that he wrote the ®rst satire `in some places too obscure, in all places misliking me', and that he did it to please the `vnseasond pallate' of those who think all satires must be `palpable darke, and so rough writ, that the hearing of them read, would set a man's teeth on edge'. The whole satire, in other words, is written to encourage and even cater for a certain kind of `bad reading'. Such a reader is personi®ed in `Torquatus' who `vnderstands not the least part of it', but who will nonetheless `vouchsafe it, some of his new-minted Epithets, (as Reall, Intrinsecate, Delphicke)'. The perceptive reader is warned about the imposture in the Preface, and

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it is con®rmed at the end of the satire itself when the speaker openly abandons his adopted style: Tut, hang vp Hieroglyphickes. Ile not faine Wresting my humor, from his natiue straine.

(The Scourge of Villanie i, 78±9)

Questions might arise as to whether Marston succeeded in differentiating this satire from the others stylistically, but there can be little question that he intended to. The word `Hieroglyphickes' (sacred inscriptions) makes it clear that one of the vices of style he wanted to represent (perhaps to parody) was precisely that `palpable dark[ness]e' he complains of in the Preface. Another is presumably the excessive irregularity or `rough[ness]' that `set[s] a man's teeth on edge'. Both are explained, exempli®ed, and rejected by the satirist in these ®rst few pages of verse and prose, and the expectation is clearly that intelligent readers will as a consequence be better equipped to avoid them in their reading of the remainder of the volume. Much more radically, however, Marston not only attacks wrong readings, but defends the act of ®ctitious creation itself. The fourth of the Certaine Satyres, as the title (`Reactio') suggests, is written in reaction to Joseph Hall's attacks on recent and contemporary poets, including Daniel, Drayton, and the Mirror for Magistrates. Halfway through his defence of the poets he inserts a defence and exposition of `®ction' itself: For tell me Crittick, is not Fiction The soule of Poesies inuention? Is't not the forme? the spirit? and the essence? The life? And the essential difference? Which omni, semper, soli, doth agree To heauenly discended Poesie? Thy wit God comfort mad Chirurgion What, make so dangerous an Incision? At ®rst dash whip away the instrument Of Poets Procreation? ®e ignorant! When as the soule, and vital blood doth rest And hath in Fiction onely interest? What Satyre! sucke the soule from Poesie And leave him spritles? oà impiety!

(87±100)

Marston is following Sir Philip Sidney in taking the essence of `right' poetry (as distinct from `divine' and `philosophical' poetry) to be `®ction' ± the representation, in Sidney's words, of `what may be and

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should be' rather than `what is, hath been, or shall be'. True poets, by their gift of feigning or imitation, create `another nature', a `golden world'. Furthermore, they not only `make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency, as nature might have done, but . . . bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses'.9 On this last claim ± the poet's power to `make many Cyruses', that is, to promote heroic virtue in the world ± Marston was somewhat less sanguine than Sidney; and it may be that had Sidney examined the problem of moral correction as intently as Marston, he would have agreed with him; Sidney was, after all, a devout Protestant of strongly Calvinist leanings. Perhaps his own predilection, as a writer, for romance and love poetry over satire enabled him, as it did most Protestant poets at the time, to skirt the lurking contradiction between a rhetorical poetics of moral persuasion and the doctrine of `necessary Grace'; though there is at least a hint of it in his alternative formulation of the power of the poet ± as one who `doth intende the winning of the mind from wickedness' (my emphasis). Intention is not accomplishment. Several passages in the Scourge reveal Marston's considered conviction as to the impossibility of moral change without the help of divine Grace. The most detailed exposition is in the fourth satire, where he explicitly rejects Stoic, Aristotelian, and Scholastic doctrines concerning the behavioural bases of moral change in favour of a near-Calvinist insistence on necessary Grace. In earnest thus, it is a sacred cure To salue the soules dread wounds; Omnipotent That Nature is, that cures the impotent, Euen in a moment; Sure Grace is infus'd By diuine fauour, not by actions us'd.

(The Scourge of Villanie iv, 114±18)

Several critics have acknowledged the Calvinistic ®deism implicit in the position that right conduct is only possible with the help of Grace; Caputi has even suggested it constitutes a serious inconsistency with Marston's ridicule of the Puritans elsewhere in the satires.10 But this ignores the markedly Calvinistic character of certain of the Lambeth Articles of the Church of England approved in the 1590s by Archbishop Whitgift who, far from being sympathetic to the Puritans, was a noted persecutor of them. Marston's doctrinal self-positioning, in short, is technically Anglican (as be®ts one who was later to enter the Church). But the

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emphasis he places on necessary Grace creates a dilemma for the satirist, whose scope for moral correction ± the traditional defence of satiric incivility since Antiquity ± is theoretically limited by such a doctrine. Where other Elizabethan satirists were content simply to imitate the classical models willy-nilly, Marston seems to have thought his way through the dilemma very carefully. If he could not, in good conscience, ignore the limits on human corrigibility set by his own Protestant theology, a different rationale was needed for moral satire, which might well have implications for its practice. The alternative rationale, worked out in a number of the poems in both volumes, seems to be that if satire cannot reliably function as a moral corrective it can at least work as a form of recreation. Recreation, in its highest function, was highly recommended by educational writers like Elyot, Ascham, and Mulcaster and by scholars like Harington, Burton, Walton, and Fuller, not only as a source of physical pleasure and relaxation, but as a source of spiritual solace and refreshment. The latter bene®t was related to its `memorial' effect: the temporary freedom and `bliss' associated with recreation could be seen as a ¯eeting shadow of the substantial freedom and bliss the soul possessed before its descent into fallen nature. It was in that sense, in Bishop Fuller's words, a `second creation' . . . the breathing of the soul'.11 (In Marston's distinctly Anglican mode of binary thinking ± a mode in which `shadows', though inferior to `substances', are recognized and respected for the thing they re¯ect or symbolize ± the soul's recreation shadows its original creation just as the Eucharistic symbol shadows the substance of Christ's body, and poetic ®ction shadows the creative power of God.) So highly did the Renaissance Humanists value recreation that some of them, at least, seem inclined (following Quintilian)12 to place recreation above even such things as healthy exercise and warlike training as the main bene®t to be derived from play. For such writers it followed that the point of regulating play was not just to discourage vice but to encourage and promote recreation. The `particular abuses' of gaming, for example, according to Sir John Harington, are three in number: sloth, pride, and avarice. But his discussion of each of them emphasizes not the moral dimension of the abuse in question but its propensity to inhibit the game's recreative effect on the spirits. Sloth or idleness in gaming ± which effectively means playing for too long ± `depresses the speryts', thereby losing the `cheefe end' and `trew use of play: to recreat the spirits for a short tyme'.13 Pride

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consists in playing for high stakes in order to impress the spectators; avarice means playing for the sake of the money; both involve a loss of recreative effects owing to the intrusion of desires extraneous to the world of the game. Thus, in broader, more abstract terms, Harington is offering a pair of different abuses, one of `addiction' to play, the other of ulterior intention. That same pairing of abuses occurs in Burton's Anatomy when he inveighs ®rst against professional cozeners who `labour most part not to pass their time in honest disport, but for ®lthy lucre and covetousness of money', and second against their choicest victims, those who have become wholly addicted to gaming as a way of life, who `when once they have got a haunt of such companies, and habit of gaming, they can hardly be drawn from it . . . they are mad upon their sport'.14 Nor are these abuses to be found only in gaming: educational writers like Juan Luis Vives and the early children's playwright John Redford in his secular morality Wit and Science identify the same types of abuse across a range of playful activities.15 These include dancing, in which the ulterior intention is usually lechery rather than avarice. Renaissance discussions of `honest recreation' and its impediments seem then to have focused on two general categories of abuse, namely `addiction' and `ulterior intention':16 the former is an ignorantly excessive surrender to the game; the latter a wilful refusal to surrender to the game for its own sake. Thus differentiated, it is striking how closely addiction and ulteriority correspond to the abuses of `ignorance' and `malice' identi®ed in the Postscript to the Scourge as the two prime `injuries' to satirists. Marston, in other words, was targeting precisely those abuses of reading which could be expected to hinder the experience of satire as a form of `honest recreation'. Satiric poetry could attempt to be `recreative' in two complementary ways: by playing a game with the reader, in the hope that the pleasure of the game will engender some spark of spiritual awareness in the reader; and by expressing the truth about the soul's divinity more seriously and directly to the `diuiner wits' capable of receiving the message. Marston makes no bones about the deep dichotomy in his envisaged readership. Eighty lines of preliminary insults to the `utterly unworthy readers' of the Scourge are followed by a sixteenline eulogy to those `celestiall soules, / Whose free-borne mindes no kennel thought controules' ± and who can therefore be trusted to understand his methods:

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patrick buckridge To you how cheerfully my poeme runnes.

(In Lectores prorsus indignos, 86)

For the unworthy, carnal, and ignorant majority, however, the ®rst method ± game-playing ± is the only one worth pursuing: The poore soules better part so feeble is . . . that shadowes by odde chaunce somtimes are got, But oà the substance is respected not.

(The Scourge of Villanie xi, 235±8)

The game is the largely vicarious one of satiric abuse, a spectator sport at which Marston's older contemporary Thomas Nashe was the undisputed champion; and Marston has devised a satiric style for the occasion in which, having ®rst given his readers some hints about how not to read his writing, he proceeds to stage a series of lively bouts for them featuring `W. Kinsayder', satyr/satirist extraordinary, against all comers. Here ends my rage, though angry brow was bent, Yet haue I sung in sporting merriment.

(The Scourge of Villanie xi, 239±40)

Simultaneously, in the intervals between diatribes, serious re¯ections on virtue, Grace, and poetry are articulated for the edi®cation ± that is, the higher recreation ± of the few. Given the breadth and seriousness of the satiric theory implicit in Marston's non-dramatic verse, it would be surprising if it did not make its presence felt in his writing for the theatre, especially since that theory both predicated and produced a dramatically playful style in his verse satires. The conditions of theatrical performance ± the ephemeral scripts and the boy actors ± might seem to militate against abuses premised, as in the verse satires, on an arrested relationship with words-in-themselves, with language as `hieroglyph'. But addiction and ulteriority on the part of the audience may be applied to actions and bodies on the stage as well as to words on the page; and in any case, Marston was not one to leave things entirely to chance. Accordingly, in his earlier plays especially, there are clear indications of a new, more speci®cally `recreative' set of principles governing both rhetoric and dramatic structure. Two early plays in particular, Jack Drum's Entertainment and Antonio and Mellida, show these principles at work. There is some debate as to the date of composition of Jack Drum, and on the question of its sole authorship. Neither question need concern us much since it was

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certainly written less than a year either side of Antonio and Mellida; both can therefore be regarded as early work. And if in fact ± as I am inclined to think ± Marston was working with an old play, as he had surely done with Histriomastix, he no doubt chose one that could accommodate his `recreative' modi®cations without too much distortion. The Prologue to Jack Drum is, like all of Marston's prologues, highly contrived in its `spontaneity'. The ®rst person to enter is the `Tyer-man', who announces with alarm that the author has just snatched the playbook away and `with violence keepes the boys from comming on the stage' (179). The Company will, he fears, `be forced to give you right John Drums entertainment ' (179) ± a colloquial phrase meaning `a brusque reception', and used thus by Jack Drum himself later in the play (i.185). An actor now enters (`one of the Children') and delivers a formal Prologue in which the author's motives in the recent backstage violence are explained: You much mistake his Action Tyer-man, His violence proceeds not from a minde That grudgeth pleasure to this generous presence, But doth protest all due respect and love Unto this choise selected in¯uence.

(179)

His `violence', we are told, proceeds from a sense of his inability to provide for the audience the exalted kind of pleasure he would have wished ± the entertainment of `art'. He vowes, if he could draw the musick from the Spheares To entertaine this presence with delight, Or could distill the quintessence of heaven In rare composed Sceanes, and sprinkle them Among your ears, his industry should sweat To sweeten your delights: but he was loth, Wanting a Prologue, & our selves not perfect, To rush upon your eyes without respect.

(179)

But the playwright has reconciled himself to his failure to express perfectly this `perfect Idea or fore-conceit' of his work, and to the failure of his boy actors to achieve the acting perfection that would have been a necessary part of that perfect expression. He has allowed the boys to present the play in all its imperfections, offering the audience a lower pleasure in place of the higher, contemplative delight associated with true Art. The boy concludes:

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patrick buckridge Yet if youle pardon his defects and ours, Heele give us passage, & you pleasing sceanes . . . And for our parts to grati®e your favour, Weele studie till our cheekes looke wan with care, That you our pleasures, we your loves may share.

(179)

The Prologue, then, postulates two forms for the play itself: its ideal, unrealized form of Art, and its real, achieved form of Entertainment. And it implies a corresponding pair of audience responses to the play: the rare response of `wonder' appropriate to the contemplation of a conceived (though unexpressed) perfection; and the more common `playful' response that produces recreation. The play addresses itself to these two distinct responses. In its achieved form the play operates as an experience of play leading to recreation. To communicate its ideal form, however, the play articulates an `argument' of sorts, implicit in the system of juxtapositions, cross-references, and comic deserts that make up the plot. This argument is designed to reveal the methods and goals of the play, not to reveal moral truths for application in life. As in the satires, however, the purpose of such inward reference is to create the conditions for an outward effect, namely, to offer the `perfect Idea' of the work, by means of inference, to the `diviner wits' in the audience for their contemplation; and thus to facilitate the higher, non-sensual or `intellectual' form of recreation that Marston calls the soul's `celestiall blisse'. To take this esoteric aspect of the play ®rst: most of the action embodies, in a fairly straightforward way, an abstract theme to which nearly every character contributes in some way. We can see this theme establish itself inductively through the play as a generalization about human behaviour by means of a series of super®cially dissimilar persons and actions, which nonetheless manifest (to the eye of the Intellect) an essential similarity. The theme, brie¯y stated, is the inevitable victory of `sensuality' over `reason'. The ®rst character to embody this theme is Mamon. He is a villain in a way that no other character in the play is, but he is by no means a cold-blooded villain; there are, in fact, no cold-blooded villains in any of Marston's plays. Mamon, like nearly every other character, subordinates his reason to sensual passions, speci®cally his lust for gold and his lust for Katherine.17 These are not the same thing, nor is there any attempt to suggest, for example, that the latter is in reality an avaricious rather than a sexual lust: Mamon keeps

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them quite separate in his own mind. Philosophically rather than psychologically, however, the two lusts are merely different facets of the one general abuse of the soul which is covered, in Marston's writing, by the term `sensuality'. As a direct consequence of it, Mamon is ®nally driven insane. His sexual lust causes him to have Pasquil `murdered' and to exult in a mad ecstasy over his apparent corpse (ii.201). It also causes him to dis®gure Katherine by throwing `venomde oyle' in her face when he realizes, in a frenzy of jealousy, that he can never possess her (iii.216±17). The ®nal blow to his sanity, however, is effected by the other facet of his sensuality, his lust for gold. After Pasquil tears up his bonds and obligations, and Flawne arrives with news of his other losses, Mamon begins to rave uncontrollably and is consigned to Bedlam. The fortunes of Mamon function as a paradigm for the experience of several other characters in whom the same surrender of reason to sensuality takes place, despite their somewhat greater moral attractiveness. The madness of Mamon represents the `raving spright' (The Scourge of Villanie viii, 142) of the sensualist, the `frantick fond pathetique passion' that `clip[s] the wings of contemplation' (The Scourge of Villanie viii, 110, 112). Pasquil and Katherine, the two young lovers, express their mutual passion with a physical and rhetorical intensity that might best be regarded, in Barber's famous phrase, as `festive folly' ± certainly Finkelpearl's description of it as latent sexual perversion misses the mark!18 But as with any festive pursuit, the game can go on too long or go too far, boundaries are transgressed, the world of sense reasserts its dominance, and what was ®rst experienced as a recreative intimation of divine freedom from sense can become an obsessive `humour'. Thus Katherine ¯ees, `tearing her haire' (ii.205), as soon as she overhears the mention of Pasquil's murder. Sensuality is equally clearly the cause of Pasquil's `frantick fond pathetique passion'. Having rescued Katherine from her suicidal frenzy he returns to ®nd that Mamon has thrown a dis®guring poison in her face, and his reaction to her harsh injunction ± `Leave and abandon me eternally / I merit now no love' (iii.217) ± is not loving concern but immediate insanity. Like the murderous Mamon and the suicidal Katherine, his sensual passion resolves itself into a `raving spright'. Brabant Junior's career follows the same pattern. Obsessed by his passion for the unworthy Camelia, he acts with irrational and

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unre¯ective haste to have Ned Planet, his best friend, murdered. Upon ®nding Planet innocent he must be forcibly prevented from wreaking similar violence on himself. Even the ®ckle and calculating Camelia, who is more like Mamon than any other character, is unable to resist the force of sensual passion and forsakes her usual self-interest to dote upon Planet, who hates and reviles her. Sexual lust is the catalyst for two other notable displays of violence and near-insanity. The Frenchman, Monsieur John fo de King, grotesquely `burst[s] vor a vench' (i.193) from beginning to end; and Jack Drum's harmless merriment turns into serious and ugly belligerence in the third act, under the in¯uence of his lust for Winifred (iii.208). The theme common to all these transformations is the degeneration of love into the `humour' of sensuality. But love is only one of the humours on display. The other is the `satiric' humour, and its victims are Brabant Senior and Planet. Both are witty censurers of others, though in different ways, and both practise satire as a form of play. And both of them, in the course of the action, allow the game of satire to extend beyond the bounds of recreation into a state of `sensual humour' in which the game is no longer merely a game: shadow is confused with substance. Brabant's particular humour, like his satire, has to do with words: describing his ill-fated plan to fool the Frenchman he sounds like a classic over-reacher: I will strait frame the strongest eternall Jest That e'er was builded by invention.

(iv.222)

Planet's mode of satire, like that of his predecessor `Kinsayder', is dramatic rather than verbal, and it moves into humorous excess when the role of moral scourge ± exercised playfully on Brabant Junior in Act i (190) ± becomes more than a mere pose. We see the change most clearly in his confrontation with Camelia near the end of Act iv where he berates her arrogantly and self-righteously for her rejection of his friend. His re¯ections are less than engaging: I am the scourge of light inconstancie (Exit Camelia and Winifride) Thus my deare Brabant, am I thy revenge, And whip her for the peevish scorne she bare To thy weake yonger birth: o that the soules of men Were temperate like mine, then Natures painte Should not triumph o're our in®rmities. (iv.229)

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Planet here becomes a victim of the `hateful humour' detected by Brabant Junior much earlier in the play. He has lost the control implicit in his playful use of it; the humour now controls him; and with unconscious irony he embarks on a diatribe against these bumbaste wits That are puft up with arrogant conceit Of their owne worth, as if Omnipotence Had hoysed them up to such unequald height, That they survaide our spirits with an eye Only create to censure from above, When good soules they do nothing but reprove.

(229)

Even Sir Edward Fortune, the most generous and virtuous character in the play, is unable to resist the universal tendency to surrender to sensuality, confusing substance and shadow. His reaction to his daughter Katherine's disappearance, inappropriately, is to carouse: Broach me a fresh Butt of Canary Sacke, Lets sing, drink, sleep, for thats the best reliefe: To drowne all care, and overwhelme all griefe.

(ii.206)

What are we to make of this repeating pattern? Classically, the representation of undesirable outcomes in comedy constitutes a persuasion to avoid the actions that lead to them in life. But Marston's play does not seem to work that way. There is no exemplary character who holds ®rm against sensual humours, nor is that possibility even implied. Instead, the play demonstrates, with a wealth of instances, the general truth that people inevitably succumb to sensuality in one form or another. Yet despite this gloomy central thesis the ambience of the play is generally optimistic, and its ending happy and redemptive. It is as if, within the world of this play, the amorous humours of Pasquil, Katherine, and Brabant Junior, the satiric humours of Planet and Brabant Senior, and the festive humours of Sir Edward and Jack Drum, are all redeemable, but only as `honest recreation'. All exercise an innocent and useful function in the playful world that exists for the duration of the ®rst act, and re-establishes itself by the end of the ®nal act. Sensual activities which show themselves, in between, as humorous obsessions, operate here as the various delightful aspects of life within the traditionally sanctioned sphere of country sport, where morris dancers, musicians, carousers, and fools mingle easily with a mocker,

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a railer, and lovers of various hues, in an atmosphere of equality, generosity, and revelry. There are two characters ± Mamon and Camelia ± whose presence is alien to the prevailing mood of recreation, and both are excluded both in Act i and again at the end of the ®nal act when Mamon is removed to an asylum and Camelia is denied a share of the otherwise universal happiness (v.237). Mamon is certainly a `hypocrite' in Marston's rather special use of the term, someone whose ulterior self-interest makes it impossible for him, in Sir Edward's phrase, to `court the presence of faire time' (i.182) ± in short, to play. He stands explicitly (i.183±4) for a Puritanical ethic of thrift that seeks to sacri®ce present pleasure to future advantage. The same could hardly be said of Camelia, however, who shows a genuinely playful impulse towards requiting the love of Brabant Junior (i.188): her vindictive exclusion by Sir Edward (v.237) expresses rather the Elizabethans' harsh intolerance of female `inconstancie', however playful the impulse. Thus the play as a whole can be interpreted as a veiled demonstration, to `judicial perusers', of the nature and value of the recreative experience. The immediate relevance, of course, is that the audience as a whole is supposed to be enjoying recreation as they watch the performance, and we have now to examine the ways in which Marston's dramatic method, as distinct from his meaning, was designed to serve the purpose he envisaged. Dramaturgically the play is not much out of the ordinary run of popular romantic comedies such as Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Mucedorus, and The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, and Caputi's contention that it is a `parody' of these plays lacks force. A miniature scene in Act i furnishes an insight (intended, presumably, for the `diviner wits') into the kind of dramatic effect Marston did have in mind. In full, the scene reads: Enter two Pages, the one laughing, the other crying. page 1. Why do'st thou crie? 2. Why do'st thou laugh? 1. I laugh to see thee crie. 2. And I crie to see thee laugh. Peace be to us. Heres our maisters.

(191)

Unlike the similarly emblematic scene in Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI (ii.v), where King Henry witnesses an anonymous `son who has slain

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his father' and a `father who has slain his son', Marston's scene embodies not a moral theme but a theatrical relationship. What the two pages exhibit, schematically enough, is a lack of emotional identi®cation one with the other, the suggestion being, surely, that a similar detachment will be appropriate for the audience as they observe the passions of the characters on stage. In effect, Marston is laying down the ground rules for a recreative response to the action of the play. The audience is not required to participate in the tearing passions of Mamon, Pasquil, Katherine, and the others, but to be `entertained' by them. The path of recreative response is fundamentally discontinuous with the path of humorous passion; and if we glance at some of the high moments of passion in the play we can see how Marston attempts to achieve that discontinuity in practice. The general technique is one of `de¯ation'. Sometimes, as in the speeches of Pasquil and Katherine, this is effected by a single discordance ± an unceremonious ®nal phrase, an incongruous simile, an exaggerated stichomythia ± that breaks the empathetic bond between the audience and the lovers, and foregrounds the acting (and therefore the actors). The ®ne speeches take on the aspect of playful performances, which the spectator shares vicariously with the boy actors. In other cases the structure of dramatic irony produces the same effect. Mamon's sanguinary gloating over the `corpse' of Pasquil is a good example. Without the knowledge that Pasquil is feigning death, Mamon's Satanic glee would make him an object of serious loathing, but the audience does in fact have this knowledge, and with it it is possible not only to enjoy the dramatic irony but to savour for itself the delightfully eloquent malice of Mamon's curse: Now smug fac'd boy, now nibble on her lips, Now sippe the deawe of her delitious breath. Stinke, rot, damne, bake in thy cluttered bloud, Snakes, toads, and Earwigs make thy skull their neast, Ingendring deaw-wormes, cling orethwart thy breast.

(ii.201)

Something similar happens when Brabant Junior thinks he has had Planet killed: the audience knows better, and can therefore be entertained rather than deeply moved by the violence of Brabant's remorse (v.232). Marston's dramatic method, then, is aimed at maximizing the recreative effect of the theatrical experience. This means, for

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example, that he does not dispose events with a view to their place in the action as a whole; thus, the narrative lines of the play are extremely blurred and disjointed. There is no attempt to make us aware of the vicissitudes of Pasquil and Katherine as a continuous action with a beginning, a middle and an end. As Caputi observes, it is `very mechanically drawn out by repetitious complications'.19 Another instance of Marston's apparent disregard for the organic wholeness of an action is the disappearance of Mamon, the archvillain of the piece, at the end of the third act. The line of action concerning Brabant Junior, Camelia, and Planet, on the other hand, does not even begin to get under way until the middle of the third act. Features such as these would fully justify our calling Jack Drum's Entertainment a clumsily structured play if it were not clear that Marston is not interested in complying with Aristotelian standards of composition. He is interested in combining action, speeches, and music in a varied mixture whose main purpose is to be entertaining from moment to moment. He does not fear that the higher, `intellectual' meaning of the play will be misunderstood by those few who are equipped to understand it, and he does not expect or want the majority of the audience to `understand' anything. Accordingly, he provides, for their entertainment, a large and varied cast of characters, all of whom display delightful and stimulating excesses of behaviour and language. The emotional crises that give rise to the most entertaining excesses are not structured around a single structural nadir; they are dispersed throughout the last four acts of the play. Katherine's crisis comes near the end of Act ii (217), but we do not witness Pasquil's full reaction until the middle of Act iv (225±6). Brabant Junior's crisis occurs in Act v (231±2). The same broad dispersal of high points is evident in the disposition of comic reversals. Pasquil's deception of Mamon is performed and revealed in the second act (201±2); Winifride's deception of the Frenchman and Jack Drum begins at the opening of the third act and concludes uproariously at the beginning of the fourth; Brabant Senior puts his `eternall jest' (to have his wife humiliate the Frenchman) into operation at the end of the fourth act, and is discom®ted by being instead cuckolded by him at the end of the ®fth. The ®rst act is necessarily devoid of crises and reversals which require some development of character and action, however perfunctory; but the entertainment value of theatrical performance is of course not limited to these devices, and Marston compensates

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for their absence by ®lling the ®rst act with a variety of festive activities ± songs, a morris dance and jesting ± and by introducing the entire cast of characters and allowing them to display their particular humours. Antonio and Mellida was written, probably in 1599, for performance by Paul's Boys.20 It is perhaps worth looking brie¯y at this play as it seems likely to have been Marston's ®rst `clean' composition, a work devised and written without an old play as a matrix. It might therefore be expected to reveal some striking differences from Jack Drum's Entertainment. In fact, despite the differences of setting and character-types, the two plays are remarkably similar in their recreative dramaturgy. One important resource for this must always have been the gap between actor and character inherent in the spectacle of children performing adult roles; and in Antonio and Mellida this receives more focused attention.21 The play begins with an extended Induction in which the boy actors, eight of them, come upon the stage `with parts in their hands, having cloaks cast over their apparel', and proceed to discuss in detail the requirements of their roles. We are reminded, inevitably, of the written character sketches in the published editions of Jonson's Every Man Out of his Humour (1599), but there are several important differences. Most obviously, Marston's `sketches' are part of the performance ± they contribute an immediate dramatic effect ± whereas Jonson's sketches are designed only to be read. A second difference is that Marston's Induction presents what is genuinely a discussion of roles, not of characters as such. The actors concern themselves explicitly with the practical aspects of their histrionic tasks: some profess themselves `ignorant in what mould we must cast our actors' (3±4); another despairs of his ability to act the double role of Antonio and the Amazon (66±7, 70±5). The actor who plays Feliche confesses: `I have a part allotted me which I have neither able apprehension to conceit nor what I conceit gracious ability to utter' (Induction, 105±7), thereby acknowledging the same gap between conception and realization canvassed in the Jack Drum Prologue. The main dramatic effect of this Induction, I would suggest, is to shift the auditors' attention away from matters of ®ctional content (or `substance') towards acting performance, preparing them for a display of less than perfect impersonations which, by foregrounding the boys' enjoyment, invites a vicariously playful response from the audience.

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If the Induction is designed to prepare the audience as a whole for playful recreation, the Prologue that follows it is addressed exclusively to those `Select and most respected auditors' (3), `diviner wits' to whose enlightened souls the higher `intellectual' type of recreation is possible. Such people, it is hoped, will see through the accidental de®ciencies of performance to the ideal `conceit' of the work; if not there is still `entertainment' accessible to all. Substantively, the dualism is the same as ever, but there is a detectable shift of emphasis away from the `rarity of art', which is now posited less as a higher form actually subsisting in the play than as an empty wish, a `mighthave-been': O that our muse Had those abstruse and sinewy faculties That, with a strain of fresh invention, She might press out the rarity of art, The pur'st elixeÁd juice of rich conceit, In your attentive ears.

(Prologue, 9±14)

As the redeeming notion of the `fore-conceit' begins to dissolve, even the enlightened few are invited to join the fun, and the `recreative' features explicitly designed for the unenlightened many in Jack Drum appear in more pronounced forms in Antonio and Mellida. The lines of developing character and action, for example, are unusually disjointed; so much so that G. K. Hunter notes the impossibility of plotting `any process of organic growth from one attitude to another'.22 Similarly, we ®nd the same ironic `alienation' of passionate speeches. Several major characters, including Antonio, his father Andrugio, Mellida, and the villain Piero, are subject to loss of control under the in¯uence of violent passions such as rage and grief. Andrugio, for example, `falls on the ground' during his opening speech; his son Antonio does the same thing several times (e.g. ii.i.210; iii.ii.193; iv.i.27); and both he and Piero lapse into incoherent babbling or stuttering. These lapses are not psychological; they signify, rather, a momentary breakdown of the conventions of emotional representation being used by the actors. They refer the audience's attention less to the mental condition of the characters than to the acting limitations of the Boys, and are thus continuous with the concerns expressed in the Induction. The passionate speeches are not thereby rendered absurd (as Caputi and Foakes

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have suggested) so much as partially alienated from the ®ctional context and presented to the audience for their pleasure in the performance itself. In each case, the boy actor makes his performance directly available to the audience for its vicarious and recreative participation. Finally, there is the question of the play's moral `meaning', the argument ± more vestigial here than in Jack Drum's Entertainment ± offered to those in the audience with the wit to understand. And as in the older play, the argument conveyed by the plot is not a moral argument in the usual sense but an endorsement of the value of recreation itself. Caputi and others have argued that the Stoic ideal of `patience' is set forth as the crucial moral ideal in Antonio and Mellida. But it might as easily be argued that patience itself is thoroughly discredited by the play: Feliche, the Stoic philosopher, attempts patience and succeeds only in enslaving himself to envy, a worse passion than the ones he imagines he has conquered; Andrugio not only fails three times to suppress his own passions, but ®nally, in Act iv, exhorts his son to impatient action. Piero, the obvious villain of the piece, is also full of `impatience' (iii.ii.188), but this is his saving grace, the quality that enables him to be part of the joyful conclusion without incongruity; for it is his highly impulsive, volatile temperament that reacts with `amazement' to Andrugio's entrance and then with an unexpected impulse of mercy towards both his enemies. The `thesis' of the play, in other words, is not really about human conduct in the world; it is about human conduct in the theatre, at least when a play by John Marston is being performed. Its message is not `Be patient in life' ± nor, of course, is it `Be impatient in life.' It is something more like `Surrender yourself to the impulses of the moment. Enjoy the show!' Many of Marston's later plays ± What You Will, The Dutch Courtesan, The Malcontent, and The Fawn ± exhibit much the same sort of design and dramaturgy we have seen in Jack Drum's Entertainment and Antonio and Mellida: that is, they are recreative rather than persuasive in their dramatic and rhetorical techniques. Most begin with an Induction or Prologue designed to prime the audience for a properly playful response to the performance; and most contain an implicit `argument' exemplifying and recommending those temporary human tendencies and attitudes most likely to interact recreatively with entertaining dramatic elements. Marston's úuvre is in that sense a

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remarkably consistent one, unfolding the dramatic possibilities inherent in a rationale and a formula established at the very beginning of his career, probably before he penned a single play. I began this analysis of Marston's aims and methods by alluding to the political atmosphere of fear and insecurity in which poets and playwrights found themselves in turn-of-the-century London. If, as I suggested then, Marston began at this time to develop a rationale and a practice for satire that promised a certain immunity from prosecution, it would seem that he found it so congenial a frame for the odd and interesting kinds of writing he was good at that he retained and elaborated it for the rest of his fairly short writing career. It seems likely that Marston was always less interested in moral heroism than his rival Jonson, and if the theoretical and doctrinal premises of his writing seem to have produced, in the end, surprisingly apolitical and ethically neutral plays, these were probably the necessary conditions for a lively and transgressive form of theatre in an increasingly repressive society. notes 1 John Peter, Satire and Complaint in Early English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 150. 2 Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette (London: Faber & Faber, 1990); Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994). 3 Chartier, Order of Books, p. viii. 4 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984; rpt 1990), pp. 15±20; Reading Between the Lines (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 11±36. 5 See, for example, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986), pp. 1±26. 6 Signi®cantly, one of the most persuasive identi®cations of play-effects in Marston's work also explains their function in terms of `of®cial' Renaissance intellectual categories, those of homoeopathy. See Joel Kaplan, `John Marston's Fawn: a Saturnalian Satire', Studies in English Literature 9 (1969), 335±50. 7 For a discussion of Marston's relationship with the household of Lady Alice Stanley, the Dowager Countess of Derby, see Arnold Davenport (ed.), The Poems of John Marston (Liverpool University Press, 1961), pp. 40ff. 8 Poems, p. 176. 9 Geoffrey Shepherd (ed.), An Apology for Poetry or The Defence of Poesy (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 100±1.

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10 Anthony Caputi, John Marston, Satirist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), p. 71, n. 24. 11 Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State, ed. M. G. Walten, 2 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1938), vol. ii, p. 183. 12 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (New York: Putnam, 1921±2), i.iii. 13 Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Parks, 2 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1966), vol. i, pp. 200, 204. 14 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. H. Jackson, 3 vols. (New York: Dutton, 1932), vol. ii, pp. 82±3. 15 Juan Luis Vives, Tudor School-Boy Life: The Dialogues of Juan Luis Vives, ed. and trans. Foster Watson (London: Dent, 1908), Dial. 22, `Leges ludi', pp. 206±9; John Redford, Wit and Science, in English Morality Plays and Moral Interludes, ed. Edgar T. Schell and J. D. Schuchter (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969), pp. 201±34. 16 This pairing of impediments to `honest recreation' represents a fairly drastic condensation of several Renaissance commentaries on the subject, in particular those of Juan Luis Vives, Sir John Harington, Robert Burton, and John Redford's secular morality, Wit and Science. A fuller discussion can be found in my `Play and Recreation in the Poems and Early Dramas of John Marston', PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania (1975). 17 Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), chapter 8, makes `passion' the key concept in his analysis of this play, arguing that surrender to passion is the pre-eminent vice of the play, and control over the passions the corresponding virtue, which the play recommends. My objections to this view will emerge in due course. 18 Ibid., p. 133. 19 Caputi, John Marston, Satirist, p. 121. 20 This is the date arrived at by W. Reavley Gair in his Revels Plays edition of the play; G. K. Hunter, in his Regents Renaissance Drama edition of the play (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965, pp. ix±x), arrives at the same conclusion. 21 See Jocelyn Powell, `John Lyly and the Language of the Play', in Elizabethan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 9 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 147±67. 22 Hunter in Antonio and Mellida, Introduction, xiii.

chapter 5

Insatiate punning in Marston's courtesan plays Richard Scarr

Examining the critical reception to Marston's dramatic work over the ages, it soon becomes apparent that two points are repeatedly alluded to. Firstly, that the ingenuity and eagerness he applied to extending the English vocabulary have meant that, of all the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, Marston is the one most often accused of lexical histrionics. Frederick Boas commented he had a `daring and extravagant vocabulary which might pass within the leaves of a book but which was a provocation to censorious ears when thundered from the stage'.1 Jonson famously satirized him in Poetaster where, thinly disguised as the character Crispinus, he is forced into vomiting a host of extravagant newly minted words. 2 W. Reavley Gair, writing on Marston's Antonio plays, deduced that `by the end of their respective ®rst acts, both plays have introduced a new word to the audience on average every ®fteen lines'.3 Thus we have an image of Marston at the cutting edge of the English language, constantly appropriating newly coined terms and creating his own nonce words to embellish his plays with a daring verbal extravagance. On one level his texts are like linguistic butter¯y cases, a place to display exotic words in order to charm and delight his audience. On another, they can be seen as the lexical equivalent of mud-throwing. If enough new words were cast at theatregoers, some would stick and become part of common usage while others would fade into obscurity the moment the play concluded. Thus, for every `capricious' there is a `catastrophonical'; for every `suppository', a `disesteem'. For every word that entered general coinage, there is one which failed to make the transition or fell into disuse soon after.4 The second commonly noted linguistic point is his use of ambiguity. Marston uses words perceptively to enable a plurality of readings to be made possible from even the shortest and simplest sentences. John Scott Colley jokingly recommended that `critical 82

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bifocals may be necessary to catch all the levels of tone, and meaning, in his plays'.5 This is certainly true and it may be seen as extending beyond the use of ambiguity in character speech. T. S. Eliot, commenting on the sensation of doubleness that Marston's work gave him, noted that the characters `are living at once on the plane that we know and on some other plane of reality from which we are shut out'.6 While I do not intend to conduct an existential reading of Marston, it is worth noting that although Eliot and Colley are making two very different points, taken together they reinforce the argument that meaning in Marston is never one-dimensional. It is not without justi®cation that the programme for Joan Littlewood's 1954 production of The Dutch Courtesan at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, described the dramatist, albeit hyperbolically, as `the theatrical experimenter of the age ± an Elizabethan James Joyce'.7 Thus, Marston's reputation as an innovative and ¯amboyant writer is secure. However, how his treatment of sex and sexual language ®ts in with this reputation has yet to be explored. Many playwrights of the Tudor and Jacobean periods included bawdy elements in their work. Indeed, City comedy as a dramatic genre was founded on the two speci®c tenets of greed and sex. Therefore, anybody writing within the con®nes of this form was almost duty-bound to include a degree of sexual punning. Where Marston differs from his peers is in the quantity of sexual references that appear in his comedies. Marston revels in sexual language; he puns almost inveterately, taking bawdy allusion and innuendo to such heights that even his non-sexual scenes can be interpreted as containing elements of suggestiveness. In order to show how Marston achieves this, I want to examine his use of the double entendre and the sexual pun. His dextrous application of these devices enables his comedies to move further into the territories of sexual discourse than any of his contemporaries. Nowhere is this better exempli®ed than in The Dutch Courtesan and The Insatiate Countess. Before proceeding, it must ®rst be noted that the denotational reading of the term double entendre is deceptive. A dictionary de®nition will tell you that it is `a word or expression so used that it can have two meanings; one of which is usually frivolous or bawdy'.8 To claim the doubles entendres of Marston, or Middleton, or Dekker, or many of the other playwrights working during the reign of James I, contained just two meanings would be to do them a disservice. Instead the double entendre must be read as a device which allows for a plurality of

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interpretations to be drawn from a given referent of which at least one may be construed as sexually suggestive. Its effect is to destabilize language by creating a disequilibrium between the different de®nitions implied. Sexual punning may be seen as a contest between meanings, of the bawdy interpretation(s) in a struggle for supremacy with their non-bawdy counterpart(s). Sometimes this is an even bout, with both categories carrying equal weight. At other times, a double entendre is so blatant that the non-sexual meaning becomes almost invisible, while at others the licentious meaning is so covert that it may pass by virtually unnoticed. The character who makes most use of the double entendre in The Insatiate Countess is the Venetian gentleman Mizaldus. He criticizes Guido and Roberto's attitudes towards love with `Marry, I fear none of these will fall into the right ditch' (i.i.16±17); he interrupts Roberto and Isabella's attempt to consummate their relationship by proclaiming `Madam, are you that were in for all day, now come to be in for all night?' (i.i.109±10). Most pertinently of all, as the play opens on the candle-lit mourning Isabella, he declares `What should we do in this Countess's dark hole?' (i.i.i). While it is possible to interpret each individual pun as connoting aspects of sexual activity relating to the female genitalia, every comment also has a denotational meaning devoid of any sexual content. Thus two independent readings occur simultaneously, the sexual and the non-sexual. However, this type of punning may be greatly expanded when a word has a larger plurality of denotational meanings, thereby making the term triple or quadruple entendre seemingly more appropriate. In The Dutch Courtesan Freevill informs Cocledemoy that Mulligrub is planning to ambush him in revenge for the theft of his goblets. Here the latter plays on the former's choice of terminology. f r e e v i l l. What, Master Cocledemoy! Is your knaveship yet stirring? Look to it, Mulligrub lies for you. cocl ede moy. The more fool he; I can lie for myself, worshipful friend. (i.ii.73±6)

The punning initially seems fairly straightforward. `Look to it', i.e. be careful, Freevill warns, Mulligrub is lying in wait for you. Freevill's `lies' of concerned retaliation is punned on by Cocledemoy's `lie' of false statement (`I can lie for myself '). However, a further meaning, that the vintner has retired to bed and is awaiting Cocledemoy's presence there, although highly unlikely, is still seman-

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tically feasible. Here the `look to it' changes from a warning to be cautious to a suggestion to hurry up ± make haste before your lover's mood wanes. The meaning of the `knaveship' then shifts from a description of Cocledemoy's dishonest leanings to representing the awakening arousal of his penis. While in the context of the play overall it would be dif®cult to justify this reading, what it highlights is the linguistic playfulness with which Marston infuses his comedies. If Cocledemoy can deliberately misinterpret Freevill's words, why cannot anyone else, particularly if they are in the audience? Freevill is not saying that Mulligrub is spreading untruths on Cocledemoy's behalf, yet that is how his statement is jokingly interpreted. Likewise, Freevill is not suggesting that Cocledemoy and Mulligrub are engaged in a homosexual relationship, yet that reading can be construed to be as sound as Cocledemoy's. An argument could even be made for a further reading with Freevill implying Mulligrub is having sex on Cocledemoy's behalf (`he lies for you'). Thus, in this one small expression, numerous de®nitions collide into each other. Marston reuses `lie' at the point when a smitten Malheureux asks Franceschina to have sex with him: m a l h e u r e u x . Will you lie with me? f r a n c e s c h i n a. `Lie with you? O, no! You men will out-lie any woman. (ii.ii.55±7)

Malheureux asks Franceschina to become his lover. She, like Cocledemoy before her, misinterprets the intended meaning of `lie' as a reference to false statement. Yet while Cocledemoy wilfully puns on Freevill's `lie', Franceschina's punning may be played as accidental, the confusion originating from her fractured understanding of English. Her questioning response of `Lie with you?' can be construed as both incomprehension of Malheureux's request and as an attack on his suitability as a potential bedfellow (`Lie with you?'). Either way, through manipulating the Puritan's request, Franceschina injects dramatic irony into the exchange. With her eventual agreement to Malheureux, that sex with her will be his reward for murdering Freevill, Franceschina continues the pun. She `lies' in the untruth sense (for she has no intention of ful®lling her bargain) by promising to `lie' in the sexual sense. Thus, the lying of deceit and of sexual congress merge so that the different meanings act to counterpoint and comment on each other.

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The only other time `lie' appears in The Dutch Courtesan is in Freevill's championing of prostitution: Every man must follow his trade, and every woman her occupation. A poor, decayed mechanical man's wife, her husband is laid up; may not she lawfully be laid down when her husband's only rising is by his wife's falling? A captain's wife wants means, her commander lies in open ®eld abroad; may she not lie in civil arms at home? (i.i.121±8)

Here yet another meaning for `lie' is drawn upon, that of death, and the captain's presence in the foreign ®eld may be as a corpse or a dying soldier. On the other hand, he may be copulating with one of the locals. He may even be simply resting or asleep. Alternatively he could be `lying low' to conceal himself from his enemies or to hide from his own soldiers because he does not want to ®ght. `Lies' may even be read in its `falsehood' meaning with the commander attempting to woo local women with tales of bravery. Similarly the `civil arms' his wife `lie(s)' in may be interpreted in several ways: `civil', meaning non-military, well-mannered, or accommodating; the `arms' themselves punning on the military register employed. Yet her `lie' leaves little room for the variety of responses her husband's `lies' is open to. It is clear she is being unfaithful, but the degree of that unfaithfulness (i.e. is she resting with another man, having sex with him, or simply telling untruths while in his embrace?) is open to interpretation. However, there is no such deliberation over `laid'. In this usage, the husband's `laid up' refers to his incapability to work; the wife's `laid down', a reference to prostitution as a replacement source of family income. Marston frequently juxtaposes an aggressive female sexual presence with a timid, or even semi-impotent, male one. Malheureux's `insuf®cient dullness' (ii.i.117) is only surmounted once he has met the voracious Franceschina, while Mistress Mulligrub's promise of a `piece of mutton [i.e. herself ] and a feather-bed' (v.iii.102±3) to Cocledemoy is contrasted in the following line by her husband's wittol-esque urging of his patrons to `pay' his wife (v.iii.107). Marston's technique of taking a word which contains a plurality of de®nitions and then repeating its usage, so that the meanings propagate, occurs several times in this text. Another example is the use of `bear' at the point when Crispinella and Tysefew negotiate the conditions of their marriage contract (iv.i.35±54). But where Marston excels is in the use of the double entendre in its cluster

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formation, when a single speech or a series of exchanges contains numerous sexual puns following in swift succession. Thus a whole section of text can be read as immersed in innuendo and sexual references, some overt, some not. A prime example is found in the opening sequence of The Dutch Courtesan when Freevill tells the story of Mulligrub's stolen goblets: f r e e v i l l. That man of much money, some wit, but less honesty, cogging Cocledemoy, comes this night late into mine host's Mulligrub's tavern here, calls for a room. The house being full, Cocledemoy, consorted with his movable chattel, his instrument of fornication, the bawd Mistress Mary Faugh, are imparloured next the street. Good poultry was their food: blackbird, lark, wood-cock; and mine host here comes in, cries `God bless you!' and departs. A blind harper enters, craves audience, uncaseth, plays. The drawer, for female privateness' sake, is nodded out, who, knowing that whosoever will hit the mark of pro®t must, like those that shoot in stone-bows, wink with one eye, grows blind o' the right side and departs. c a q u e t e u r. He shall answer for that winking with one eye at the last day. m a l h e u r e u x . Let him have day till then, and he will wink with both his eyes. (i.i.16±36)

A strict denotational reading of this tale renders it seemingly straightforward. Cocledemoy and Mary Faugh arrive at Mulligrub's tavern. Their intention is to hire a room, presumably for sexual purposes. As the house is full, they are offered a downstairs parlour. They eat heartily and when a harper arrives, request him to play. The romantic mood set by the violin music leads them to instruct the drawer they would prefer to be alone. Thinking he will receive a large tip for his discretion, he departs, the `winking' a reference to the popular expression of `turning a blind eye'. Caqueteur notes how those who ignore sin will ®nd themselves brought to account on Judgement Day. Malheureux agrees, adding that the drawer will continue ignoring such behaviour `with both his eyes'. However, reading this passage with a bias towards sexual activity, it takes on a very different meaning. First there are the character names: the `cock' in the pronunciation of Cocledemoy, and the popular expression of contempt, Mary Faugh.9 We learn Mary is a bawd, a position usually taken by a retired prostitute. Cocledemoy `consorted' with her, a word which not only means to converse but also to copulate, as well as having a further denotational meaning of a musical ensemble (the latter ties in with the description of her as

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an `instrument . . .', an object designed to give pleasure and entertainment, `. . . of fornication'). While syntactically Cocledemoy does not literally have sex with Mary Faugh at this point, `consorted' is used to prepare the way for the copulation that we will be invited to infer towards the end of the speech. The blind harper (possibly a covert allusion to love via Cupid) begs admittance (`craves audience') to Cocledemoy and Mary Faugh's room as he seeks to provide musical entertainment for remunerative purposes. Yet `crave' also connotes a passion dif®cult to control. On the harper's arrival, the drawer leaves for `female privateness sake'. This would indicate that Mary Faugh is about to do something she wants no-one other than Cocledemoy to see. The harper `uncaseth' and `plays', but is it his harp he removes or his penis he begins to play with? `Mark' was a euphemism for the female genitalia thereby making the pro®t it hits open to interpretation as the price charged by the bawd, the ejaculation of the consorting Cocledemoy, or even the achievement of orgasm by the masturbating harper. `Stone' was a recurring dramatic term for the testicles while `shoot' is self-explanatory, particularly as the part of the anatomy most often associated with having `one eye' is the penis.10 Thus an image is built of Cocledemoy and Mary Faugh making love in front of the blind harper who uses their grunts and groans as an aid to masturbation. In seeking `audience' his aim was not to perform in front of Cocledemoy and Mary (although technically through his onanism he is doing just that), but to be the audience to their lovemaking. As noted the passage concludes with Caqueteur reminding the audience of the Biblical prophecy that on Judgement Day all will be answerable for their sins, only this time it is `winking with one eye' ± the winking of the penis's `one eye' during masturbation ± they will have to atone for (the `blind o' the right side' a possible early reference to the myth of excessive masturbation causing loss of sight, hence the visually impaired musician). It is quite plausible to dispute the depth of sexual meaning I have drawn from this scene. However, I would argue that so far the reading is perfectly valid. Marston infused his comedies with sexual meaning. Whether he did this consciously or unconsciously is immaterial, but passages such as the above are charged with an excess energy of innuendo. Devotees of modern critical theory might argue that in this post-Barthes, Derridian-led deconstructionist age,

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the need to substantiate the sexual reading of this passage is immaterial; that if its presence can be detected, that is suf®cient in itself. However, this text was written to be performed, not analysed, and if the innuendoes it contains were not apparent to the audience (or at least part of them, depending on their intellectual organization), the comedy fails. Just because a lascivious interpretation is plausible to a modern critic does not mean it was valid to a seventeenth-century theatregoer. Yet the idea that the sexual reading may exist purely in the mind of the spectator, or the quarto reader, is one that Marston himself also addresses. As Freevill concludes the tale, Marston reduces the possibility for duplicitous interpretation by enforcing the denotational meaning of the ®rst half, thereby intimating that the second, sexual interpretation was solely of the audience's own making: Cocledemoy, perceiving none in the room but the blind harper (whose eyes heaven had shut up from beholding wickedness), unclasps a casement to the street very patiently, pockets up three bowls unnaturally, thrusts his wench forth the window, and himself most preposterously, with his heels forward, follows. The unseeing harper plays on, bids the empty dishes and the treacherous candles much good do them. The drawer returns; but out alas, not only the birds, but also the nest of goblets, were ¯own away. (i.i.37±48)

Thus the blind harper is indeed blind and playing his harp; the `nodding out' is revealed as a ruse to make the drawer depart so that Cocledemoy and Mary may steal the goblets and escape without paying for their meal. Marston has duped the audience into laughing at a bawdy tale before revealing that it was not one. The writer claims innocence of innuendo which he alone has created. He suggests the `wickedness' the harper cannot see lies exclusively in the minds of the audience, not in the words of the playwright. Yet the second passage is not without sexual suggestiveness. Cocledemoy exits the window `preposterously', which if taken literally means arse ®rst, while `unclasps' and `thrusts' can both be found in the register of sexual activity. Lying covertly in the discursive background is a comparison between sexual congress and criminal behaviour. In each instance one person is gaining access to another's personal belongings, be they silverware or genitalia. It is apparent that Marston deliberately employed the technique of the double entendre to create an environment where linguistic confusion could be aggravated and compounded. As the majority of

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comedy uses confusion as its baseline, verbal perplexity adds to the ensuing tangle. Multiple meaning equals aggregated opportunities for laughter. This formation also allows for a strati®cation of the comedic potential of the text allowing each audience, with its diversity of experiences, intellects, and degrees of perception, to receive the material at various levels of understanding. Indeed, the audience are an integral component in the construction of dramatic punning. Mark Rylance regularly points out that this was a time when theatregoers went to `hear' a play rather than to watch one.11 Such attentive listening, developed since childhood at grammar school, suggests that Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences were more attuned to detecting aural puns than their modern counterparts. The individual composition of each audience would ensure that every time the play was performed, it would receive a different reception, dependent in part upon its ability to acknowledge the sexual references being made (not to mention its members' enthusiasm or disapproval for such puns). Marston's plays, with their innuendoes concealed at every corner, seem designed to test their capabilities to the limit. Thus punning becomes a collaborative effort between the writer who places his puns within the text, and the playgoers who are charged with the task of recognizing them as and when they appear. However, while Marston exploits this technique of extended punning as a resource for obtaining laughter, it also serves other purposes. He often places a cluster of doubles entendres into the conversations of young female characters. By locating these women away from male listeners, he elicits non-sexual discussion on masculine behaviour while simultaneously suggesting a sexual sub-text. The women talk of female sexual desire, if not freely, then at least euphemistically, and Marston suggests this is how he believes women really behaved. It is a ploy best used in the dialogues between Beatrice and Crispinella in The Dutch Courtesan and Abigail and Thais in The Insatiate Countess (possibly co-authored). In the latter, the two new wives plot to usurp the plans of their husbands, Rogero and Claridiana, each of whom is resolved to cuckold the other. They intend to achieve this through double use of the bed-trick: a b i g a i l . The hour for both to come is six, a dark time ®t for purblind lovers; and with cleanly conveyance by the nigglers our maids they shall be translated into our bed-chambers. Your husband into mine, and mine into yours.

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t h a i s. But you mean they shall come in at the back-doors? a b i g a i l . Who, our husbands? Nay, and they come not in at the foredoors, there will be no pleasure in't. But we two will climb over our garden pales, and come in that way (the chastest that are in Venice will stray for a good turn) and thus wittily will we be bestowed, you into my house to your husband, and I into your house to my husband, and I warrant thee, before a month come to an end, they'll crack louder of this night's lodging than the bedsteads. (ii.ii.63±76)

Despite the sexual matter at the heart of their conversation, on one level the plotting is a set of practical instructions. Each has arranged a rendezvous with the other's husband for six o'clock. Thais asks if the men shall arrive secretly, via the back-doors. Abigail replies in the negative. She claims they shall arrive via the front entrance, for they will gain no pleasure in cuckolding their neighbour unless they are seen to be doing so.12 The wives' maids will lead the men into their darkened bedrooms. The wives will then swap locations via their back-garden fence. Having accomplished the switch, each wife will then make love to her own husband under the cover of darkness, although the husbands will think they are making love to their neighbour's wife. Abigail concludes by telling Thais that Rogero and Claridiana's boasts of these conquests will be louder than the noises made by the bedsteads when the cuckolding actually takes place. This may be construed as the primary intention of the text. However, read with a bias towards innuendo, a very different interpretation may be made. The `translated into our bed-chambers' explains a transition from the public sphere into the private; from outside the boundaries of the family home into a more personal environment. Parallels may therefore be drawn with the act of sexual penetration, of the male entering the female's private space. The husbands will `come', meaning orgasm,13 at six (a time when both hands of the dial are symbolically aligned as a single, pointing shaft). Thais asks if they will enter their wives by the `back-doors' (the anus), a suggestion that Abigail seems surprised at (`who, our husbands?'). Instead they will enter via the `fore-doors' (the vagina). Abigail has even selected which sexual position to adopt: `we two will climb over our garden pales, and come in that way'. In the light of this extract, it is possible to perceive `garden pales' as a euphemism for their husband's penises, which the wives, by climbing over, will straddle.

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It is important to note the symbolic resonance of this carefully constructed image. If sex, like marriage, is based on power, then the notion of the wives atop their husbands in a physical sense enacts their intellectual and moral superiority (for the wives foil their husbands' plans to break the sixth and ninth holy commandments ± `Thou shalt not commit adultery' and `Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife'). It is this combination of sexual power with physical power, thereby equating to the mastery of men, temporary or otherwise, that attracts even `the chastest that are in Venice', for it enables women an opportunity to gain control over males. The Venetian maids will `stray' (leave their righteous path) for a good `turn' (bout of lovemaking), and what could be better than one where the female orgasm takes precedence (`we two will climb over our garden pales, and come in that way') The last line's sexual collocates of `lodging' and `crack', although not drawn upon, compound the sexual activity alluded to throughout the passage. A similar situation is found in The Dutch Courtesan. Here Crispinella, accompanied only by Beatrice and Nurse Putifer, describes male conduct before and after marriage. Again it is a subject with the differences in gender behaviour at its core, but it is discussed in a way that leaves the text open to at least two independent readings: A husband generally is a careless, domineering thing that grows like coral, which as long as it is under water is soft and tender, but as soon as it has got its branch above the waves is presently hard, stiff, not to be bowed but burst; so when your husband is a suitor and under your choice, Lord, how supple he is, how obsequious, how at your service, sweet lady! Once married, got up his head above, a stiff, crooked, knobby, in¯exible, tyrannous creature he grows; then they turn like water: more you would embrace, the less you hold. (iii.i.89±101)

Again the primary intended meaning is plain. Crispinella comments on male behaviour pre- and post-courtship. She notes the shift from the un-wedded `obsequious' suitor to the domineering `tyrannous' husband, commenting on how the power in relationships remains in female hands until it is surrendered via marriage. However, if studied with a bias towards sexual innuendo, the speech is transformed. The passage may then be construed as an extended synecdoche with the coral as a metaphor for the penis. Crispinella describes its transition from ¯accid (`soft and tender') to erect (`stiff '; `knobby'; `in¯exible'), through to ejaculation (`they turn like water') and lastly de¯ation (`the less you hold'). The speech is full of

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dormant collocates which add to this interpretation (the suitor/penis is `under your choice', `supple' and `at your service'). Thus in one reading Crispinella is mocking a core constituent of the male ego, sexual prowess, while in another she is satirizing a further two essential components, arrogance and pride. The effect of negotiating between these phenomena, the sexual and the non-sexual, so that each meaning holds equal status, can only be achieved through skilful word choice. These last two examples show how language can be used as a re®ning agent, allowing subjects that would not normally have been considered suitable for the stage (female orgasm; male ejaculation) to be discussed at length. Franceschina's occupation, like Isabella's insatiability, is the premise which allows the high levels of sexual language to be represented in these dramas. But while there is an inordinate amount of sexual punning ± too much for every aspect to be considered here ± there is also a lot of sexual practice. At the heart of each of these texts is a woman who is recognized as sexually active, has an established sexual history, and whose speech is constructed to display her promiscuity. The Insatiate Countess begins with the death of one of Isabella's lovers, her husband, Hermes, and continues with her seduction of a further four. These lascivious encounters are chronicled in the present as opposed to Franceschina's sexual history which is ®rmly grounded in the past. Isabella's insatiability is both physically enacted and discussed at length by both the Countess and her courtiers. This gives Marston numerous opportunities to use the rhetoric of physical desire. Isabella's wooing technique combines traditional erotic narrative with basic innuendo as is shown in her seduction of the Spanish soldier, Don Sago: Thus I will clip thy waist, embrace thee thus: Thus dally with thy hair, and kiss thee thus: Our pleasures Protean-like, in sundry shapes, Shall with variety stir dalliance.

(iv.iii.240±3)

There is no misconstruing this speech, no secondary connotations to be deconstructed. The reference to Proteus is one of many comparisons that Isabella makes between her bedfellows and the gods of ancient Greece. Gniaca is likened to `Adonis in his hunting weeds' (iii.iv.35); Roberto's attributes are considered heavenly gifts (`Apollo gave him locks, Jove his high front' (i.i.61); Don Sago is the `Mars of lovers' (iv.iii.248); while her short-lived commitment to

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Guido is con®rmed with `I am his now, / As sure as Juno's Jove's' (ii.i.159±60). By talking of her lovers in terms of superiority to normal males, Isabella raises her own status. For if her sexual conquests are like gods, then she too must rank among the deities. Her forging of a relationship with Guido is the most interesting of all these seductions. Twice he appears on stage without recognition from the Countess, yet when he arrives masked for her wedding celebrations she immediately substitutes her new husband for him. In doing so Marston satirizes the love-at-®rst-glance trope that dominated Elizabethan romantic comedies. Isabella's passion may shift ®ve times, but it is only when she declares her love for a man whose face she cannot see that the ridiculousness of her fancies becomes most apparent. The Countess's insatiability thus descends into parody. As if to compound the absurdity, Guido then dances so clumsily that he accidentally tumbles into Isabella's lap, thereby enabling the highly suggestive: `was I not deep enough, thou God of lust . . .?' (ii.i.158). While Franceschina's language is not as bold as Isabella's, it is still nimble whenever copulation is negotiated. When Malheureux arrives to collect his reward, claiming completion of the task set for him by Franceschina, the murder of Freevill, she bids him to be patient: You sall not gulp down all delights at once. Be min trat, dis all-¯es-lovers, dis ravenous wenches Dat sallow all down whole, vill have all at one bit! Fie, ®e, ®e! Be min fait, dey do eat vid spoons. No, no, I'll make you chew your pleasure vit love: De more degrees and steps, de more delight, De more endeareÁd is de pleasure height.

(v.i.28±35)

Franceschina uses the popular metaphor of hunger to discuss sexual appetite, with an added pun on `gulp', the contemporaneous meaning of which was to suck as well as swallow. Unlike other prostitutes, who aim for their clients to achieve orgasm as swiftly as possible, sex with Franceschina will be a slow, luxurious affair for the Puritan. The comparison between her own services and those who `sallow all down whole, vil have all at one bit!' extends the food metaphor while also acting as a reference to oral sex. Yet even the meeting itself contains analogous resonances for while at one level it is a ¯irtatious exchange between a sexually repressed Puritan and an

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experienced prostitute, on another it is an encounter between a murderer and his wronged sweetheart (as each perceives the other to be). But unlike The Insatiate Countess, where bargains made are paid in full, Malheureux is destined never to receive his bounty, for Franceschina's promise of sex is as false as Freevill's phoney assassination. Exaggerated European caricatures were staples of early seventeenth-century comedy and, like Franceschina, their misunderstanding and mispronunciation of English words were used as an effective comic device. But there are resonances to Franceschina's Dutch accent that illuminate pertinent gender concerns. Her pronunciation of `mistress' as `Mettress' (ii.ii.154), the aural equivalent of mattress, i.e. something you lie on top of, compounds the notion of the courtesan as an article of convenience and assists in the objecti®cation of her role. On the other hand, when she instructs Mary Faugh to tell Malheureux she is in her bath, her pronunciation of `bate' (iv.iii.32) plays with the notion of her naked body being the bait with which she lures men. The puns draw attention to the ways in which female sexuality is inscribed, even ± or especially ± when what Franceschina and Isabella actually make available in these two texts is not just sex, but fantastic sex. Both draw on erotic rhetoric to stir desire in those both on stage and in the audience. Franceschina is the `learned wanton' who proceeds `by art!' (v.i.36±7), thereby intimating a superior bedroom technique achieved through a combination of study and skilled practice. Her possession of a high degree of sexual expertise ties in with Cocledemoy's alignment of the profession of the prostitute to the twelve major London trade companies (i.ii.45±9). Isabella is the `creature made by Love composed of pleasure' (iii.iv.41), elevating her potential for superior sexual congress into the realms of the heavenly. In Act iii's bedding scenes, Isabella promises Gniaca that `thou shalt taste pleasures excelling nature . . . Venus' paradise' (iii.ii.104; iii.iv.77). On returning, after what the stage direction tactfully describes as `some short song', her satiated lover declares `I have swum in seas of pleasure without ground' (iii.iv.85). Don Sago claims Isabella is a `rarity of women' (iv.ii.157); to Gniaca she is a `delightful pleasure, unpeered excellence' (iii.iv.44); Guido claims her beauty greater than that of Helen or Danae (ii.iii.67±9); while Roberto compares her to a saint (i.i.22). Thus Isabella is continually depicted as beyond normal womanhood, and both she and Franceschina offer `unpeered' sexual value.

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Accordingly, both are demonized in a similar fashion. Isabella becomes `a devil, not a woman' (iv.ii.60), a `vild [sic] adulteress, whose sorceries / Doth draw chaste men into incontinence' (v.i.11±12). Franceschina is accused of being `a serpigo, venomed gonorrhoea to man' (ii.i.143±4), `a creature made of blood and hell' (v.i.82), and is even cautioned by Freevill not to `turn witch before thy time' (ii.ii.122). This ®nal comment sums up the Jacobean attitude towards libidinous females. It is the ultimate end for any female construed as sexually licentious by a judgemental patriarchy to be labelled diabolical. Yet, this is not to say that the patriarchal view necessarily has the last word. I started by commenting on Marston's literary reputation as an appropriator and creator of new and nonce words. I noted that Marston is distinct from his contemporaries through his daring linguistic approach. I believe he continues this adventurous attitude in his treatment of sexual language in two de®nite ways. Firstly, through his constant use of doubles entendres and punning he invigorates his comedies with a proliferation of covert and overt prurient references until sexual punning becomes an inescapable collaboration with his audience. It saturates the plays at every point. The nonsexual sections of his work take only a little scraping at their surface to reveal this. One example is when Freevill berates Malheureux's inability to restrain his lecherous impulses: Discourses, meditations, discipline, Divine ejaculatories, and all those aids against devils ± Cannot all these curb thy low appetite And sensual fury? (iv.ii.9±12)

Despite its primary denotation of religious pamphlets, to Marston a `divine ejaculatory' is also a wet dream, an unconscious ejaculation. Its divinity arises from it being achieved without physical stimulation, a mysterious act for which there was no reasoned explanation. To include it among the precautions Malheureux has taken to curtail his carnal desires links it directly to the pedant's lechery. Malheureux is unable to master his passion for Franceschina just as he cannot control his erotic dreams. Marston discreetly mocks those who claim that lust is controllable by identifying the slumbering Puritan's nocturnal discharges. Secondly, in the sheer quantity of puns and innuendoes that emanate from his female characters, he boldly stakes a claim for

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feminine equality in sexual desire in those who are objecti®ed and demonized, which other writers only hint at. Mary Bly notes: `For the most part, erotic innuendo in [early modern] drama remains the province of marginal characters. Old women, clowns, malcontents and male sidekicks, Parolles, Pandarus, Iago, lewdly mock and are mocked, but it is hard to ®nd a young heroine referring even indirectly to copulation.'14 In Marston this is not so. Franceschina, Isabella, Crispinella, Abigail, Thais: each discusses sex, and what they want from it, either directly or indirectly. Marston's frank young women do not just hint at copulation, they explore its possibilities with a depth, detail, and frequency greater than the female characters of any other writer, whereas the aspirant men of the middle classes ± Malheureux, Mulligrub, Caqueteur ± live in a state of constant apprehension, of sexual and intellectual inferiority to those dominant, desiring women. Even the names of the eponymous heroines convey this notion of salaciousness: in The Dutch Courtesan it is the sexually frank Franceschina who has the power to convert Puritans into murderers, while Isabella of Swevia, who can persuade Spanish colonels to slay noblemen, is The Insatiate C [o]unt [ess].15 As the latter ascends to the chopping-block near the play's ®nale, her executioner requests her to tie up her hair. She responds with: `O these golden nets / That have ensnared so many wanton youths' (v.ii.201±2). Similarly Marston's dialogue is also like a net, which catches the audience up in tangles of innuendo until they too are ensnared by language. notes 1 Frederick S. Boas, Stuart Drama (Oxford University Press, 1945), pp. 132±3. 2 Jonson represented Marston twice in Poetaster. First as the dandi®ed plagiarist Crispinus; secondly as Ovid Junior, the lawyer's son who, despite having trained in the legal profession, cannot refrain from writing erotic verse, much to his father's annoyance. This biographical similarity to Marston, although often overlooked, is too striking to be coincidental. 3 From his introduction to Marston's Antonio's Revenge, ed. W. Reavley Gair (Manchester University Press, 1978), p. 31. 4 All examples are from The Dutch Courtesan. According to the OED, the ®rst recorded use of `capricious' was in 1594 and `suppository' in 1599. Both were thus still relatively unknown when The Dutch Courtesan was written. `Disesteem' originated from Florio's 1603 translation of

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richard scarr Montaigne, a text Marston leaned on heavily when composing this play. `Catastrophonical' is a nonce word. John Scott Colley, John Marston's Theatrical Drama (UniversitaÈt Salzburg, 1974), pp. 2±3. T. S. Eliot, `John Marston', Elizabethan Dramatists (London: Faber & Faber, 1963), p. 162. This was the ®rst professional production of the play for over three hundred years. It was suf®ciently successful for Littlewood to revive it again in 1959. Since then there have been a further ®ve professional stagings in the UK: the National Theatre at the Old Vic (1964), LAMDA (1971), Bristol Old Vic (1985), Latchmere Theatre (1989), and Richmond's The Orange Tree (1992). The Insatiate Countess has not been performed professionally since before the interregnum. Most dictionary explanations are similar. This one derives from J. A. Cuddon (ed.), The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 259. The pronunciation of `faugh' is a contentious issue. Should the `augh' contain the same aural ring as it does in `laugh'? Or is Mary Faugh's name a playful modi®cation of `merry fuck'? The word appears in a number of turn-of-the-century comedies under different spellings including `faugh' in Marston's Antonio and Mellida (1599), `fugh' in Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton's Patient Grissel (1600), and `fough' in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (1600). A few years later `marry, faugh' seems to have become common currency if gauged by the number of comedies it appears in (e.g. Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, Dekker's 2 The Honest Whore, Marston, Jonson, and Chapman's Eastward Ho). The strength of `faugh' as an oath is commented on by the bawd herself in this play, although her response may be construed as ironical: f r e e v i l l . How far off dwells the house-surgeon, Mary Faugh? m a r y f a u g h . You are a profane fellow, i'faith. I little thought to hear such ungodly terms come from your lips. (ii.ii.86±90)

Its spelling of `marry fah' (in Dekker and Middleton's 1 The Honest Whore among others) may suggest the correct pronunciation, but it is also feasible that if it were pronounced `fuck' it would not be printed in a way which would lend itself to correct enunciation. 10 A similar ejaculatory pun is found in Henry Porter's 1598 play 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon when Will, the serving-man, in the belief that his master, Sir Raphe Smith, is conducting an illicit affair with his beloved dairy-maid, Nan, declares: `I carry his crossbow / And he doth cross me, shooting in my bow' (x.103±7). See Marianne Brish Evett (ed.) (New York and London: Garland, 1980). 11 Anyone who attended any of the discussions Rylance chaired during the Globe Theatre's 1998 season will be aware of the emphasis that he places on `hearing' plays.

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12 In some editions of the play this at ®rst seems somewhat ungrammatical. For example, in Melchiori's edition, from which the above quotation is taken, he uses `and'. This originates from a variant spelling of `an', which in the early seventeenth century meant `if '. Thus a truer re¯ection of the line would be: `Nay, if they come not in at the foredoors, there will be no pleasure in't'. 13 For an antedating of the OED's 1650 for `come' as orgasm, see Marston's Jack Drum's Entertainment (iv.221) and Timothy Twedle's speech: `well I know what the Wenches on the green are saying now, as well as if I were in their bellies, when will Timothy come?' (editor's n.) 14 Mary Bly, `Bawdy Puns and Lustful Virgins: the Legacy of Juliet's Desire in Comedies of the Early 1600s', Shakespeare Survey 49 (1996), 97±109; 98. 15 Marston frequently uses names and titles with sexual connotations, as commented on earlier with Cocledemoy and Mary Faugh. In The Insatiate Countess it is Guido who suffers most through his of®cial title as C[o]unt Arse[na].

chapter 6

Touching the self: masturbatory Marston William W. E. Slights

John Marston begins the prefatory letter to his 1604 comedy Parasitaster, or the Fawn with a disingenuous bit of self-analysis and strategic self-positioning vis-aÁ-vis his `Equal Reader': I have ever more endeavoured to know myself than to be known of others, and rather to be unpartially beloved of all, than factiously to be admired of a few; yet so powerfully have I been enticed with the delights of poetry, and (I must ingeniously [i.e. ingenuously] confess) above better desert so fortunate in these stage-pleasings, that (let my resolutions be never so ®xed to call mine eyes into myself ) I much fear that most lamentable death of him, Qui nimis notus omnibus, Ignotus moritur sibi. ± Seneca.1

The move is to disarm those critics who would not be even-handed (or `equal') by professing a deeply introspective and self-critical tendency that renders further scrutiny of this particular `stagepleasing' redundant. Marston also announces his philosophical allegiance with the Stoics, ancient and modern, the familiar burden of whose counsel is Nosce teipsum, Know thyself, and he opposes the strict virtues of self-knowing to the delightful blandishments of Dame Poesy. Even as he sets up knowledge as the higher goal, however, the very existence of this preface asserts his intention to continue his career on the public stage, to persist in his `selfhindering labours'. Why should Marston make such a point of simultaneously aspiring to the commonly approved goal of selfknowledge and revealing his resistance to it? The answer, I would suggest, is to be found in his profoundly negative response to the studied self. While he appears in his prefatory remarks to praise the virtue of withdrawing from public places into the self, Marston elsewhere in his plays and poems repeatedly reminds us of his favourite cynic philosopher, Diogenes, brazenly masturbating in the 100

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market in order to make his point that most people's private lives amount to nothing but self-indulgence. That is, he often equates selfknowledge with self-abuse, particularly in the realm of courtly sexual adventure that provides the setting for his satires. Over the years, I have become increasingly puzzled by Marston's take on the notion of Nosce teipsum, especially as the Renaissance discourse of self has come to be newly understood.2 Self-knowing did not remain an abstract philosophical activity under the pressure of economic and social circumstances that radically modi®ed institutional modes of identi®cation within the estates of early modern Europe. In this period serious negotiations began to take place between what writers as various as NiccoloÁ Machiavelli and Richard Hooker regarded as an autonomous self and a world seen to be much in need of re-shaping. An extraordinary number of manuscript and printed pages were devoted to advising more-or-less discrete individuals how they might fashion their experience into coherent life-stories and themselves into powerful, productive members of their communities. Some authors, like Sir John Davies in Nosce Teipsum, bemoaned the tendency towards a social kind of knowing at the expense of a more personal, inward kind: All things without, which round about we see, We seeke to know, and have therewith to do: But that whereby we reason, live, and be, Within our selves, we strangers are thereto.3

But for writers of Marston's satiric bent, introspection had already gone way too far (or perhaps it had just gone in the wrong directions), producing a tribe of narcissistic fops who had reduced self-knowing to various forms of self-indulgence and self-abuse. Far from celebrating the Renaissance `discovery of the self ', Marston, following the lead not of the neo-Stoics but of Montaigne and the neo-sceptics, debunks excessive self-regard in a sustained series of grotesque images of inward ®lth and masturbatory self-grati®cation. These galvanizing images represent strains (in several senses) in the cultural thinking of Jacobean England that require careful attention. In order to make my case that the Renaissance cult of the self had its detractors in England ± chief among them satirists like Marston and Ben Jonson ± I will trace some direct links between a precise socio-political moment in English history (around the turn of the seventeenth century) and a decidedly autoerotic discourse of

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self-knowledge that developed at this time. After making these joins, I will consider the vocational hazards faced by the Elizabethan/ Jacobean satirists, the reasons why the age was so at war with itself in the matter of `self ', and some cautions about how post-modern critics have been con®guring the Renaissance of the self in recent years. I take the work of John Marston, particularly The Fawn, as a focal point for these ideas partly because it has only recently been recognized as an eloquent ± if occasionally foul-mouthed ± witness to the complex cultural work that was done by the mass entertainment industry at the outset of James's self-promoting era. Ninteteen ninety-®ve saw the publication of a pair of ®nely matched essays on The Fawn, one by a political historian of early modern English culture, the other by a literary historian of the same period.4 Linda Levy Peck's `Ambivalence and Jacobean courts' shows us just how much a careful court critic like Marston could say about the new courts-within-courts that formed around James I immediately upon his arrival in London, while a less adept writer such as the Buckinghamshire preacher James Burgess raised more royal hackles with feebler criticism of the King's retiring habits and outrageous favouritism. Marston's keen awareness of the hard mechanisms of patronage/clientage trims down to size James's selfimage as intellect and ruler in the person of the ridiculous Duke of Urbino, Peck argues,5 but his equally ®ne sense of political balance allows for praise of the King through the perspicacity and magnanimity of the disguised Duke of Ferrara. Surely Peck is right that the play focuses on timely `issues of kingship, courtiership and succession' (130). Frank Whigham identi®es a more speci®c interpretive challenge within this constellation of issues in his essay `Flattering courtly desire'. The problem, he says, is to ®gure out why Marston's duke-in-disguise chooses ¯attery as the mechanism for sublimating his late-life libidinal urges into a virtuous social corrective and then to relate that action to the satirist's own practice of self-control for purposes of social mediation and medication. The answer, he says, lies in understanding how to mine beneath the rhetorical power of ¯attery covertly (through apparent abnegation) to displace a courtly superior by knowing his desires better than he knows himself. This permits Hercules, Duke of Ferarra (known in the play by his disguise-name of Faunus), to hoist court ¯atterers with their own petards and permits Marston to channel Hercules' earlier loosecannoning libido into a celebration of virtuous civic continuity.

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While Peck gives us a thoroughly politicized text and Whigham a thoroughly libidinized one (both extremely revealing in their ways), I propose an autoeroticized one that links the politics of the courtly self with Marston's continuous and devastating attack on Elizabethan/ Jacobean recon®gurations of Nosce teipsum. Begun in his 1598±9 verse satires, Marston's critique of pornographic, narcissistic fascination with the de-institutionalized self ®nds strong reinforcement in other plays of the period (by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and others) that demonstrate the theatrical ¯uidity of the self as a mirror of indulgence. When the undercover Duke Hercules enters in Act ii of The Fawn dressed in a ¯ashy new suit, Nymphadoro, a young court gallant, asks him what he feels about his own powers and position now that he has settled into the court of Urbino, but the question is mischievously misconstrued: n y m p h a d o r o How dost thou feel thyself now, Fawn? h e r c u l e s Very womanly, with my ®ngers.

(ii.46±7)

The Fawn turns himself on with his ®ngers, like a woman.6 Selfimage is punningly con¯ated with autoerotic ± and effeminizing ± self-touching. Like Samus' `smug wench' in the third satire of Marston's Scourge of Villanie who satis®es herself with `her instrument / Smooth fram'd at Vitrio' (that is, her glass dildo),7 Hercules can do his `feeling' on his own, thank you very much. The gender bending that accompanies his quibble is hardly straightened out when, later in the act, he borrows the wedding ring of the pathologically jealous Don Zuccone and slips his ®nger in it, commenting on the commonness of such sexual hole-®ngering (ii.284±6).8 The self-®ngering references continue in a passage in Act iv that David Blostein labels `obscure' but which may well allude to a long tradition of satirizing the masturbatory practices of monks and priests. Dondolo announces that among those embarked on Urbino's Ship of Fools are `priests that forsook their functions to avoid a thwart stroke with a wet ®nger' (iv.198±9). Blostein speculates that `avoid' may mean `to remove' (I would suggest `to void oneself [of semen]'), a `thwart stroke' may mean an untoward act of divine chastisement (though the more literal stroking of the penis suggests itself in the context), and `with a wet ®nger' was proverbial for `quickly' or `nimbly' (the nimbleness of that wet ®nger suggesting a deft masturbator reaching a wet climax). He also cites Gerald A. Smith's gloss,9 `being rubbed

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off the preferred list' of clergy, a phrase that itself does not escape the autoerotic implications of the line. What all these rubbing and ®ngering references have in common is the absence of a sexual partner. The mental images and physical objects that are enlisted in the masturbatory effort are both fantastical and anti-social, and the result of this particular sexual economy is (seminal) expense without (reproductive) gain ± or is it reproductive risk?10 The case of Duke Hercules/Faunus is especially rich in the exploration of autoerotic sublimation, that is, covert enactment of sexual impulse. Indeed, he moves through several cycles of libidinal containment/release/containment in the course of the play as he negotiates the con¯icting demands of chastity and dynasty. 11 As the play opens, Hercules, an ageing widower, explains that he is leaving Ferrara in a deputy's charge so that he can secretly observe how his sexually abstemious son Tiberio carries out his charge to woo the young daughter of the Duke of Urbino on Hercules' behalf. Using the partial sublimation of proxy wooing, the Duke proposes in soliloquy to throw off the restraints of sober statecraft and to let his sexual appetites take their course. And now, thou ceremonious sovereignty ± Ye proud, severer, stateful complements, The secret arts of rule ± I put you off; Nor ever shall those manacles of form Once more lock up the appetite of blood. 'Tis now an age of man ± whilst we all strict Have lived in awe of carriage regular Apted unto my place, nor hath my life Once tasted of exorbitant affects, Wild longings, or the least of disranked shapes ± But we must once be wild.

(i.i.37±47)

The phrase `secret arts of rule' translates one of King James's favourite precepts, the arcana imperii, only to toss over its regimen.12 The `disranked shapes' of the unruly imagination ± what John Cassian, the ®fth-century codi®er of monastic discipline, calls voluptariae cogitationes ± are the antithesis of good government, though in this case they constitute an experiment that will quickly be curtailed.13 Before the end of the ®rst act he has resolved to channel his sexual urges into a socially responsible procedure of using ¯attery to lead the sycophantic courtiers of Gonzago's court at Urbino to their own downfall.

Touching the self: masturbatory Marston I vow to waste this most prodigious heat, That falls into my age like scorching ¯ames In depth of numbed December, in ¯attering all In all of their extremest viciousness, Till in their own loved race they fall most lame, And meet full butt the close of vice's shame.

105

(i.ii.345±50)

Pulling back from a potentially disgraceful May±December match just in time, Hercules has chosen to waste his sexual/rhetorical heat on a less risky project. Timing is all-important for strategic withdrawal by both onanists and princes seeking to escape public scrutiny.14 The most notorious English Renaissance poem on wasting seminal ¯uid is Shakespeare's Sonnet 4, `Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend / Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?', which Joseph Pequigney dubs, `A Disquisition Forbidding Masturbation'.15 Working from the sonnet lines, `For having traf®c with thyself alone / Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive', Valerie Traub identi®es the paradox that, `the narcissism of taking the self as masturbatory object can only be countered and mastered by the narcissism of reproducing oneself in one's heirs'.16 I want to argue that Marston's Hercules walks straight into this paradox, de®ning a host of cultural anxieties as he goes. His two-fold project, once he resolves to sublimate and redirect his own libidinous urges, is to see his ducal line extended a generation beyond his son and to expose the narcissistic roots of all court ¯attery, including, signi®cantly, his own. The preening courtiers of Marston's Urbino (home of Castiglione's manual of courtiership, as both Peck and Whigham point out) cover the spectrum of behaviours that characterize the narcissist as de®ned by discourses ranging from the Gnostics through Ovid to Freud. The sickly Amoroso Debile-Dosso, the bragging Herod Frappatore, and the sexually voracious Nymphadoro all exhibit pathological symptoms of narcissism. Reuben Fine's `inclusive' de®nition of narcissism is `self-involvement' and a profound fear of losing control over an enormous libidinal investment in selfrepresentation.17 In scenes between Hercules/Faunus and the selfaf¯icted courtiers, Marston repeatedly enacts something very like the analysand/analyst transference that concerned Freud and his followers in dealing with narcissistic patients who desperately need to ®nd themselves re¯ected in the doctor's constructions. What is problematic for the psychoanalyst is desirable to the satirist's

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persona, producing precisely the vulnerabilities that he requires to do his mocking, deconstructive work. Here, for example, is the frantically jealous Don Zuccone handing over his own self-image for Hercules to elaborate with devastating effect: zu cc on e Fawn, what's the whisper? What's the fool's secret news? h e r c u l e s Truth, my lord, a thing ± that beauty ± that ± well, i'faith, it is not ®t you know it. . . . Your lady wife is apparently with child . . . zu cc on e With child! By the pleasure of generation, I proclaim I lay not with her this ± give us patience, give us patience. h e r c u l e s Why? My lord, 'tis nothing to wear a fork. zu cc on e Heaven and earth! h e r c u l e s All things under the moon are subject to their mistress' grace. Horns! Lend me your ring, my Don. I'll put it on my ®nger. Now 'tis on yours again. Why, is the gold now e'er the worse in lustre or ®tness? (ii.258±86)

Having begged to hear the court gossip that his wife is pregnant (though only, we learn, by the old ruse of a pillow stuffed up her smock), Zuccone ®nds himself boasting of his sexual noninvolvement with any partner while his courtly con®dant symbolically ®ngers his wife. The con®rmed narcissist ¯ies into a rage, exclaiming to himself, `O, Zuccone, spit white, spit thy gall out' (ii.306±7). His ejaculatory image once again suggests the solitary, anti-procreative sexuality that characterizes Urbino's court before Hercules completes his analysis and `cure' later in the play.18 Hercules repeats this procedure of forcing acknowledgement of masturbatory self-involvement with each of Urbino's narcissistic courtiers. He is relentless in his mock-¯attering pursuit of those who place self before community, thereby subverting the authority of the Prince. In his classic psycho-literary study of `Subversive Individualism', Paul Zweig makes a persuasive case that the `energies of selfpreoccupation are turned consistently against authority and orthodoxy'.19 Whether these individualists be heroic lovers like Tristan and Isolde or what Eugene Waith calls Herculean heroes like Tamburlaine or the court ¯atterers in The Fawn, they all view themselves as self-generated, and they deny authority to anyone else. This results in the disengagement of the autonomous self that is deplored by Hobbes and, following him, the modern political philosopher Seyla Benhabib, who writes of `a narcissist who sees the world in his own image; who has no awareness of the limits of his

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own desires and passions; and who cannot see himself through the eyes of another'.20 All these ®gures, while denying authority to any external agent, paradoxically demand of others what J. Brooks Bouson calls `sustained empathic-introspective immersions into [their own] human subjectivity'.21 Hercules, I am arguing, exploits this need of the narcissists in order to re-establish his own political authority. Late in the play Sir Amorous complains that Faunus is a con®dant who not only `has wrought with us as strange tailors work' but one who has worked `all inward, inward, he lurked in the bosom of us' (v.287±9). No longer simply an outward observer and presenter of folly, Marston's satirist has slid serpent-like into the secret bosom of the courtiers. There he ®nds the `concern for self ' that, according to Foucault, `always refers to an active political and erotic state'.22 While the head of state in Urbino, `a weak lord of a self-admiring wisdom' (`Interlocutors'), tries to manage the erotic lives of his subjects with judgement in the Parliament of Cupid and with banishment to the Ship of Fools, the real ®gure of control is the penetrating, `inward' Duke Hercules. Another of Marston's inward dukes, Altofronto/Malvole, both uses and denounces the exercise of secrecy and the corruption of the inner self. His images for the politic man are obscene, as when he asks the old court marshal, `Did your signiorship ne'er see a pigeonhouse that was smooth, round, and white without, and full of holes and stink within?' and is told, `O, yes, 'tis the form, the fashion of them all.'23 Marston is at pains to expose not only the excremental but also the sexual secrets of private, inner space. The outspoken Crispinella from The Dutch Courtesan deplores a situation in which `You shall have an hypocritical vestal virgin speak that with close teeth publicly which she will receive with open mouth privately' (iii.i.42±5). Marston drives the point home at the level of plot with the contrast between the openness of Crispinella and deviousness of Malheureux, a professed enemy of lust willing to murder his best friend to have sex with a prostitute. `Uncivil privateness', claims Crispinella, `promises nothing but rough skins and hard stools' (iii.i.65±6). Marston adds treachery and attempted murder to this list. For him, the refuge sought in inwardness, then, issues in visceral stench, apt image for political and sexual corruption. The fusion of the political and the erotic was a feature not only of classical philosophies of self and the new court of King James but

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also of the satiric tradition out of which Marston writes. While his fascination with the workings of narcissism casts some doubt on Susan Baker's assertion that `[t]hroughout his career, Marston [was] a social, rather than a psychological, writer' (my emphasis), there can be no doubt that the sexual mores of his own Middle Temple and of the royal court provided the ground of his satire.24 As he makes clear in The Scourge of Villanie and later in The Malcontent, being politically ambitious was synonymous with being sexually promiscuous. The stage satire produced during the decade of Marston's active writing career (1598±1608) registers a host of anxieties associated with heterosexual activity, chief among them fears about contracting syphilis, being cuckolded, producing feeble or irresponsible offspring, and failing to perform sexually. The most devastating of the pocky presenters is Thersites in Troilus and Cressida (1601±2): `[ V ]engeance on the whole camp! Or rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache! for that methinks is the curse depending on those that war for a placket' (ii.iii.18±20).25 According to this reckoning, violent con¯ict arising out of an assault on a woman's (Helen of Troy's) petticoat/genital slit (`placket') produces nothing but disease.26 Although it has been argued that `in the third decade of the sixteenth century . . . syphilis was attenuating and losing its virulence [and] had already been exorcised from the minds of its contemporaries', the disease ± variously known as malo di Napoli, mal francese, mal dell'Indie, and male spagnolo ± still loomed large in the repertoire of terrorist jokes current on the English stage in the early seventeenth century. The only known ways to avoid falling prey to the ravages of venereal disease (and the jokes that both taunted and psychologically defended men against it) were either abstention27 or, in Shakespeare's phrase, `having traf®c with thyself alone'. Closely related to jokes about the pox are the innumerable cuckold jokes that course through the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Marston. Banter such as that quoted above between Hercules and Zuccone about forked husbands works by removing women from sexual discourse, fostering men's fantasies of revenge or indifference to women, and holding at a distance the fear that plagues a classic cuckold imaginaire like Jonson's Kitely in Every Man in His Humour (1598). In the throes of his jealous humour, Kitely generates an elaborate symptomatology that links faculty psychology with old diseases such as the black plague and the relatively new one, syphilis:

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A new disease? I know not, new, or old, But it may well be call'd poore mortalls plague: For, like a pestilence, it doth infect The houses of the braine. First, it begins Solely to worke vpon the phantasie, Filling her seat with such pestiferous aire, As soone corrupts the iudgement; and from thence Sends like contagion to the memorie: Still each to other giuing the infection, Which, as a subtle vapor, spreads it selfe, Confusedly, through euery sensiue part, Till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, Be free from the blacke poyson of suspect. Ah, but what miserie is it, to know this? Or, knowing it, to want the mindes erection, In such extremes? Well, I will once more striue, (In spight of this black cloud) my selfe to be, And shake the feauer off, that thus shakes me.28

The net result of inscribing his marital anxieties in medical discourse is to make Kitely resolve `to be' all by himself, to achieve `the mindes erection' in autoerotic mode, and to keep his suspicions secret from his wife. And so, for the fantasy-infected males who troop through late Elizabethan and Jacobean satire, the only secure form of sexual activity often appears to be onanism, even if Onan's anxiety about copulating with a brother's wife is not the issue (which, incidentally, it is in the case of Herod Frappatore and the wife of his brother, Amoroso Debile-Dosso, in The Fawn). Creating offspring, a traditional theological defence for married sex, is not, as Thomas Middleton's Phoenix (another duke in disguise) calls it, a source of `Dangerless pleasures'.29 Generational economics are deeply perplexing in this drama. An unthrifty son can wipe out a family fortune overnight. The dynastically anxious patriarch, whether Duke Hercules worrying about his sexually backward son or Middleton's Quomodo fretting about bequeathing his ill-got fortune to an imbecilic son, becomes a favourite target for the satirists.30 Middleton in particular seems to have been amused by inheritanceanxiety among the London professional and merchant classes. His allegorically named lawyer Michaelmas Term from the play of the same name, arriving in London for the autumn court sessions, bemoans his childless state:

110

william w. e. slights I have no child, Yet have I wealth would redeem beggary. I think it be a curse both here and foreign, Where bags are fruitful'st, there the womb's most barren; The poor has all our children, we their wealth. Shall I be prodigal when my life cools, Make those my heirs whom I have beggar'd, fools?31

Like Marston's Duke Hercules, this character worries about the advent of sexual cooling and the diminution of his `bags' (both moneybags and scrotum, a common con¯ation)32 and anticipates the redistribution of his fortune among the very same fools of his own generation from whom he has robbed it. Parents in the play are equally anxious about the next generation, and three of them ± Mother Gruel, the country wench's father, and Ephestian Quomodo ± set about to denounce and disinherit their children. While the usual response to such fears among Middleton's characters is to try to beat the odds with promiscuity, the impulse in Marston's plays is as likely to be towards `safe' autoeroticism. Besides preventing disease and unwanted children, a further advantage of solitary sex for the self-absorbed characters in early modern satire is the absence of a critical audience at the occasion of their performance. The gallant's boasts are safe from the kind of scrutiny that Shakespeare's Cressida promises Troilus: `They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one' (Troilus and Cressida iii.ii.84±7). Her hundred-fold diminution of that (seminal) discharge suggests that observant women note that a good deal of what are hilariously referred to in Dr Strangelove as `precious bodily ¯uids' are jealously reserved for the strange love rituals of the onanist. Even semi-private performances of the `dribbling dart of love' (Measure for Measure i.iii.2) are to be eschewed in order to maintain not only the decorum of the theatre but also the precarious sexuality of satire's solitary fools.33 Marston repeatedly mocks his narcissists who, feeling contempt for others, prefer to act alone. Dondolo, the professional fool in The Fawn, remarks wistfully, `would I were a fool alone' (v.29) and explains that Gonzago is banishing courtiers to a Narrenschiff `because he would play the fool himself alone' (iv.235). Withdrawal from sexual and, in a broader sense, social involve-

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ment is re¯ected not only in the defensive fools' suffering sexual anxieties but in the satirist's own dilemmas of interiority. Conscientious satirists from antiquity to the present day have had to confront the temptation to separate themselves from the potentially corrupting in¯uence of debased social settings and institutions. More than one critic has accused Marston of sinking to the level of his most corrupt courtiers, not only ventriloquizing their foul language but reinscribing their perversions.34 By refusing to remain aloof from the ugliest social practices of his day, Marston risked identi®cation with the dregs of his society, and hence contamination of his own identity. As Reuben Fine notes, the problem of identi®cation ± the obverse of the pathology of narcissism ± struck Freud very early as one driven by powerful fantasies. For example, `the agoraphobic woman identi®es unconsciously with a streetwalker, and her symptom is a defense against this identi®cation and against the sexual wish that it presupposes'.35 John Donne experiences something like this moral anxiety in speci®cally agoraphobic terms at the beginning of `Satyre i', when he debates with himself about leaving the `wholesome solitarinesse' of his study in order to accompany his court-bound friend.36 As Camille Wells Slights argues, Donne's satiric persona attacks his dilemma as a case of conscience, resolving it ®nally in `Satyre iv': Preachers which are Seas of Wit and Arts, you can, then dare, Drowne the sinnes of this place, for, for mee Which am but a scarce brooke, it enough shall bee To wash the staines away; Though I yet With Macchabees modestie, the knowne merit Of my worke lessen: yet some wise man shall, I hope, esteeme my writs Canonicall. (lines 237±44)37

Though Marston has had a harder time achieving canonicity, he worries over the same issue of engagement vs. withdrawal. At the end of Certaine Satyres he proposes a respite from his enterprise: Now doth my Satyre stagger in a doubt, Whether to cease, or els to write it out. The subject is too sharp for my dull quill. Some sonne of Maya show thy riper skill. For I'le goe turne my tub against the sunne, And wistly marke how higher Plannets runne, Contemplating their hidden motion.

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william w. e. slights Then on some Latmos with Endimion, I'le slumber out my time in discontent, And neuer wake to be maleuolent, A beedle to the worlds impuritie; But euer sleepe in still securitie.

(v, 167±78)

Unwilling any longer to wield the beadle's scourge, the satirist ®gures his withdrawal as the irresponsible star-gazing that Diogenes Laertius deplores (vi.23) and perhaps, by association, what Arnold Davenport calls Diogenes' own `shameless autoeroticism'. 38 The alternative to withdrawing into the study and the self is often presented by Marston and his contemporaries as a kind of shameless voyeurism. Spying out vice has earned satirists a reputation for prurience, and we frequently ®nd them defending themselves against the charge by making their satiric personae highly self-conscious about their activities and the objects of their gaze. There is, as Whigham points out, a kind of uneasy bond between Marston's covertly peeping and fawning Duke and the invisible offstage audience, based on a `form of sadistic hidden-gaze dominance'.39 Marston, we should remember, had explored the dynamics of such voyeuristic control in his earlier masterpiece of autoerotica, The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image (1598). The Pigmalion story is the pornographer's dream come true. In it, gazing and fantasizing turn to touching, not only statue-touching but also self-touching. Intense concentration on the image rather than the reality of a heterosexual partner encourages the shameless male gaze, unfettered by the restraints of modesty. Running his eyes down the naked body of his self-made image from hair to breasts to `Loues pauillion', Pigmalion wondered that she blusht not when his eye Saluted those same parts of secrecie: Conceiting not it was imagerie That kindly yeelded that large libertie. O that my Mistres were an Image too, That I might blameles her perfections view.

(Pigmalion Stanza 11)

Marston has a marvellous time with the whole earnest issue of Protestant iconophobia (`Looke how the peeuish Papists crouch, and kneele / To some dum Idoll with their offering' (Stanza 14)), transporting his excitable male reader's gaze from studio to church to bedroom. His satiric strategy in Pigmalion, as in The Fawn, is to let

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images of religion, government, and art all slip inexorably into pornographic, masturbatory imagining.40 The mystical transformation of lifeless stone into living ¯esh occurs only in the solitary space of the artist's bed as he prays ecstatically to Venus for what might seem at ®rst to be a sexual mate but what is ®nally a solitary, self-induced orgasm. What better image could there be of the pornographer's art than the arti®cial female body between the sheets, a kind of chilly poupeÂe gon¯able? Recent theorists of pornography have been very clear about the point that not only the objecti®cation of the female body but also the careful manipulation of positionality among the pornographer, the generally solitary spectator, judgemental society at large, real female bodies, and the pornographic image, can have socially devastating effects.41 As in the lines quoted above, Marston's speaker keeps eliding the perfervid imaginings of the sculptor Pigmalion with his own desire to remake his mistress in the image of the image ± that is, completely unresisting to his will, completely without female modesty, completely ready to lie by as he achieves his own sexual grati®cation. As the real (albeit ®ctional) woman assumes an identity and position identical to the statue, naked and resistless to male gaze and touching, the positions of poetic speaker and engaged reader also start to fuse until, between Stanzas 32 and 33, Marston intervenes to thrust the reader back into his solitary peepshow booth to do whatever it is he feels compelled to do: O wonder not to heare me thus relate, And say to ¯esh transformed was a stone. Had I my Loue in such a wished state As was afforded to Pigmalion, Though ¯inty hard, of her you soone should see As strange a transformation wrought by me. And now me thinks some wanton itching eare With lustfull thoughts, and ill attention, List's to my Muse, expecting for to heare The amorous discription of that action Which Venus seekes, and euer doth require, When ®tnes graunts a place to please desire.

Marston knows full well that the place where his present reader/ auditor will satisfy his sexual desire is not in bed with his lady but sitting reading this coyly titillating non-`discription' of a man getting it off with a statue. With growing insistence he asks his reader,

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`Could he, oh could he, . . . Could he abstaine mid'st such a wonton sporting / From doing that, which is not ®t reporting?' (Stanza 35). The obscene act, the one not ®t to report, is not copulation but masturbation. Marston returns to his incomplete portrait of the masturbator in Satyre iii in The Scourge of Villanie, emphasizing the self-absorption and contempt for women that are to become central concerns in The Fawn. `Luscus hath left his female luxurie' to `quench / Her sanguine heate' with her dildo (lines 34, 30±1) so that he might `practise' the autoerotic skills of his `Cynic Dad', Diogenes (48, 35).42 He rejects the company not only of his female bawd but of `Cynedian boyes', `Veluet cap'd Goates', and `du[t]ch Mares' (lines 49±50), preferring instead to `vse the Cynick friction' (line 52) to achieve his orgasms. The realities of self-sex or manufriction lack the humorous charm of the Pigmalion fantasy but entail the same narcissistic, antisocial fascination that propels the court of Duke Gonzago in The Fawn. In the contest between self and other, between the courtiers whom Hercules leads to their own undoing and the women who suffer their abuse, it is the women who emerge as resourceful and, ®nally, grati®ed members of the community. The route to their comic triumph is not an easy one, misogynistic obstacles lying thick along the way. Even Hercules in extruding Nyphadoro's `humour to the very thread' actively diminishes the world of `wenches': `Nature made them pretty, toying, idle, fantastic, imperfect creatures; even so I would in justice affect them, with a pretty, toying, idle, fantastic, imperfect affection; and as indeed they are only created for show and pleasure, so would I only love them for show and pleasure' (iii.19±24). This sneer leads Nymphadoro, the `perfect Ovidian', into an extended recitation on the topic, `be she young or old, lean, fat, short, tall, white, red, brown, any, even black, my discourse shall ®nd reason to love her' (iii.50±2) and eventually to the assertion that `women are men turned the wrong side outward' (iv.128±9). The `natural' attributes of age, physique, and skin colour are the signs both of insult and indiscriminate lechery. The wrong-side-out inversion he has in mind concerns forwardness in courtship, but it is also a clear formulation of the single-sex model of genital anatomy, a model that retained for men the advantages of sexual heat and display.43 Women represent not only all monstrous deceit to the young bachelor Tiberio (`Hypocrisy and vanity brought forth

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[Woman], / Without male heat, [a] most, most monstrous being' (iii.467±8)) but a virulent genital threat, according to the selfidenti®ed cuckold, Zuccone, who yells at his wife, Hence, avaunt! I will marry a woman with no womb, a creature with two noses, a wench with no hair, rather than marry thee. Nay, I will ®rst marry ± mark me, I will ®rst marry ± observe me, I will ®rst marry a woman that with thirst drinks the blood of man, nay, heed me, a woman that will thrust in crowds, a lady that, being with child, ventures the hope of her womb, nay, gives two crowns for a room to behold a goodly man three parts alive quartered, his privities hackled off, his belly launched up. Nay, I'll rather marry a woman to whom these smoking, hideous, bloodful, horrid, though most just spectacles are very lust, rather than re-accept thee. (iv.290±301)

He threatens to embrace the ultimate pornographic outrage: a woman who pleasures in a snuff spectacle featuring a man as its mutilated victim. The fantasy of the wombless woman is the ultimate justi®cation for masturbation, self-stimulation being the sole remaining use for penile activity if only (in Zuccone's terms) `we could increase like roses by being slipped one from another, or like ¯ies procreate with blowing' (iv.387±9). Male autogenesis would obviate the need to transact power negotiations with women at court, thereby freeing the self from a threatening relationship. As Benhabib points out, because `[t]he narcissism of [the] sovereign self is destroyed by the presence of the other . . . [t]he denial of being born of woman frees the male ego from the most natural and basic bond of dependence'.44 Ranks of `self-made' men who populate the Jacobean stage yearn for this sexual independence and an end to the anxieties of syphilis, cuckoldry, offspring, and sexual performance. The making of the inward self, that imagined refuge against subjection by a sexual or political other, has been widely reported to have its origin in the social transactions and writings of the early modern period. The process appears to have bothered John Marston. Too much of the purely indulgent seems to have marched under the banner of self-knowing and the type of courtiership taught in manuals of the day and enacted on the stage. Marston made a brief career as a popular writer anatomizing the urge to fetishize the self in the persons of the revenger in the Antonio plays; the sexual predator in the verse satires, Jack Drum's Entertainment, What You Will, and The Dutch Courtesan; the courtier in The Malcontent and The Fawn; and the political women in Sophonisba and The Insatiate Countess. He was able to do so because he observed with great care the ways that

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London's well-to-do classes (those with time to indulge in re¯ections on the self ) struggled to de®ne themselves as free from the very same discursive forms of socialization that they were striving to imitate. To my mind, recent commentary on the self in early modern England has slipped by us a false dichotomy, even as it fulminates against binary thinking. I refer to the notion that identity, especially sexual identity, was thought of as originating either with `a divine law inscribed essentially in each of God's subjects (which makes it unalterable)' or `in the domain of custom, of the social, of that which can be contested'.45 As Marston makes abundantly clear in The Fawn, the reasons that things are so terribly fouled up in Urbino ± and London ± are both nature's `one touch [in the loins] that makes all men kin' (Troilus and Cressida iii.iii.175) and the discourses of the self that make advantage appear to accrue from self-aggrandizing acts of ¯attery and acts of sexual self-preservation. There is no either/or here. Like his clear-sighted female commentators Crispinella and Philocalia, Marston is unimpressed by the supposed virtues of a private self that stands apart from public responsibilities. While it can be argued, as indeed I have elsewhere, that a Marston character like Altofronto/Malvole can learn about himself in the course of a play, the means of such self-knowledge is neither meditative nor narcissistic. Only by active participation in the present polity can self-improvement issue from looking inward. Most other versions of Nosce teipsum amount, in Marston's biting satiric anatomies, to what the OED calls, in its de®nition of masturbation, `practising self-abuse'. notes 1 The quotation from Thyestes, 402±3, means, `who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown' (F. J. Miller's Loeb Library translation). Marston had used similar terms to demolish the show-off Deceus in Certaine Satyres: `The world too much, thy selfe too little know'st / Thy priuate selfe' (iii, 91±2). 2 I began to address this issue in an essay entitled `Unfashioning the Man of Mode: a Comic Counter-Genre in Marston, Jonson, and Middleton', Renaissance Drama 15 (1984), 69±91. Katharine Eisaman Maus has greatly extended the study of the self in her book Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1995). On pp. 14±15 she surveys various recent explanations of the Renaissance fascination with interiority (e.g. Lacey Baldwin Smith's attention to

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3 4 5

6

7

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child-rearing practices; Frank Whigham's study of an expanded elite class and their scrutiny of social behaviour; Devon Hodges's work on the homologies of psychological and physiological anatomies; Wendy Wall's scholarship on the print revolution and the intrusive new reading public). Maus's own explanation turns on the con¯icts of religious enactment in the English Reformation. A more positive, perhaps too accepting, account of the `inner life' and the `real self ' emerges from Anne Ferry's study of the sixteenth-century English lyric, The `Inward' Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne (University of Chicago Press, 1983). As Michel Foucault points out in his essay `Technologies of the Self ', for the ancient Greeks epimelesthai sautou, meaning to be concerned with oneself or to take care about oneself, was a paramount principle for civic and personal conduct. It was displaced in later times by the Delphic exhortation gnothi sauton, to know yourself (especially in formulating an address to the oracle). See Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 19. Nosce Teipsum, lines 89±92. See The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Robert Kreuger (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Both appeared in David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (eds.), The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576±1649 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). This much of her argument owes a good deal to Philip J. Finkelpearl's John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in His Social Setting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). Finkelpearl errs in identifying King James solely with the self-assured Duke Gonzago, who ends up unwittingly facilitating his daughter's match with Hercules' son, in the process producing quantities of banal and self-contradictory sententiae. The anonymous author of Onania: or, the heinous sin of self-pollution and its frightful consequences (in both sexes) considered, 15th edn (London: for J. Isted, 1730) distinguishes between boys' `manufriction' and the girls' masturbatory technique, `cum Digitis' (Preface, p. v). Female ®ngering, he surmises, is as prevalent as male masturbation, and, he assumes, far more shocking. Marston's Nymphadoro speaks of Sir Amorous using a range of sex stimulants, presumably on himself: `fomentations, baths, electuaries, frictions, and all the nurses of most forcible excited concupiscence' (ii.153±5). The Scourge of Villanie iii, 32±3. Lucea, later in the same satire, likewise prefers even a hurried session in a `ioulting Coach, with glassie instrument' to `her husbands luke-warm bed' (iii, 121±4). In his edition of The Poems of John Marston, Davenport cites analogies from Juvenal's second satire (line 95) and Thomas Nashe, The Choice of Valentines; or,

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william w. e. slights Nashe, his Dildo (p. 291, n. 33). A commonplace book compiled by Joseph Hall (not the Bishop of Norwich) around 1630 includes the following verse among a list of Aenigmate: Betweene a maydens legs bestride I sawe a thinge sit ope and wide with a round thinge in her hand stiff it was & well did stand she loosed the runninge of her morter to put ye one thinge to the other & with ye same she wrought so fast the liquor sweete she got at last.

8

9 10

11

12 13

The answer to the riddle is `Almonds grounded in a morter held betweene her legs', and readers ®nd themselves surprised by sin, surprised, that is, by imagining the most salacious of all private behaviours. See Folger MS. v.a.399, f. 272v, subsequently renumbered 279v by Giles Dawson. This use of `®ngering' is widespread in Renaissance drama. For example, Lollio in The Changeling warns Alibius that should he take off his wedding ring (i.e. slack off his surveillance of his wife), `one or other will be thrusting into't' (Regents Renaissance Drama edn, ed. George Walton Williams, i.ii.31). Eric Partridge in Shakespeare's Bawdy, 2nd edn (New York: Dutton, 1969) cites the line, `if you can penetrate her with your ®ngering, so' (Cymbeline ii.iii.14±15), noting that `penetrate' derives from Latin `penitus' or `inwardly' (158; also see 105). The Fawn, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 76. Ned Planet in Marston's early play Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600) jokes about the anti-social vectors of self-love, explaining, `I lov'd but three things in the world, Philosophy, Thrift, and my self ', but goes on to say that the ®rst two have been poisoned, so that he now hates them and has become `as sociable as Timon of Athens' (i.190). Thirty years ago Joel Kaplan laid out the structural and generic underpinnings of The Fawn through a pair of myth-analogies involving Hercules (his getting ®fty women with child in a night and his diverting a river to sluice out the Augean stables) in a way that ties together brilliantly the dynastic comedy and the muck-purging satire of the play. The pornographic tone and narcissistic main character of the myths are consonant with my understanding of the play and its male cultural context, though I ®nd Marston dwelling more on autoerotic sublimation than on Herculean heterosexual prowess. See Joel Kaplan, `John Marston's Fawn: Saturnalian Satire', Studies in English Literature 9 (1969), 335±50. See Peck, `Ambivalence and Jacobean Courts', pp. 126, 133. The phrase comes from Cassian's twelfth Conference, as cited in Michel

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14

15 16 17

18 19 20 21

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Foucault, `The Battle for Chastity' (from vol. iii of Histoire de la sexualite ) in Philippe ArieÁs and Andre BeÂjin (eds.), Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, trans. Anthony Forster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 14±25, esp. p. 19. Foucault's cultural-historicist re¯ections on the largely covert business of practising and suppressing masturbation cast a strong light on the processes of socio-sexual surveillance and transgression in The Fawn. Whigham gives a brief account of the way that King James used to loiter either near or in the beds of his courtiers on the morning after they had consummated their marriages, relishing the role of `enabler' (Whigham, `Flattering Courtly Desire', pp. 146±7). On the sin of Onan, see Genesis 38: 9±10, and on King James's retiring ways see Whigham, `Flattering Courtly Desire', pp. 137±40. Even as he glosses the word `waste' as `instantiate' to accord with his reading of ¯attery as an instance of sexual sublimation, Whigham also notes that `associations of celibacy and autoeroticism with waste are particularly interesting' (p. 151, n. 30). Those interests need to be further represented. Compare, for instance, Marston's phrase, `wastes his spright [i.e. spirit]' (The Scourge of Villanie x, 11). Joseph Pequigney, Such is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets (University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 15. Valerie Traub, Desire and Anxiety: Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 139. Reuben Fine, Narcissism, the Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 55. The Freudian theory of drives, erotic and aggressive, more accurately describes the self-promoting characters in Marston's plays than does the Kohutian notion that the `disintegration anxiety' of `Tragic Man' requires the fully `empathic' response of the analyst. See Freud's Narcissism (1914) and Instincts and their Vicissitudes (1915) in The Standard Edition of the Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953±70), vol. xiv, and Heinz Kohut's `Narcissism as a Resistance and as a Driving Force in Psychoanalysis', in Paul H. Ornstein (ed.), The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut, 1950±1978, 4 vols. (New York: International Universities Press, 1978±91), vol. ii, pp. 54±61. Partridge cites Falstaff 's line `I would I might never spit white again' (2 Henry IV i.ii.212) as an apparent reference to `seminal emission' (Shakespeare's Bawdy, p. 187). Paul Zweig, The Heresy of Self-Love: A Study of Subversive Individualism (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 244. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 156. J. Brooks Bouson, The Empathic Reader: A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), p. 4.

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22 `Technologies of the Self ', p. 23. 23 The Malcontent i.iv.85±8. I am arguing here that Marston's `muck-pit slime' has a further function than helping to carry the pornography of Aretino into England at the same time as it moralizes against ®lth of all kinds, as is argued by Lynda E. Boose in `The 1599 Bishops' Ban, Elizabethan Pornography, and the Sexualization of the Jacobean Stage' in Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (eds.), Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 192. Such transgressive language in Marston ®nds its immediate target, I believe, in the cult of privacy that was being fostered by another newly popularized discourse, that of the self. 24 Susan Baker, `Sex and Marriage in The Dutch Courtesan', in Dorothy Kehler and Susan Baker (eds.), In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama (Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow, 1991), p. 219. 25 All Shakespeare quotations are from the Riverside edition, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mif¯in, 1974). 26 As Valerie Traub puts it, `aching bones becomes a symptom not only of disease but of male heterosexual desire' (Desire and Anxiety, p. 74). Traub does a ®ne job of tracing the equation of war, sexuality, and disease and concludes that `Asserting such an enclosed circuit of desires, Troilus and Cressida de®es any effort to imagine a sexuality that is not defensive or diseased ± in short, a desire that is not already thoroughly anxious' (p. 83). 27 Exhortations to be abstemious are highly gendered in the early modern discourse of sexual propriety. With the closing of the monasteries in England, encouragements to chastity shifted from monkish continence to virginity among women of the middling and upper classes. On the early history of institutionalized distrust of the desire for another's body see Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (1983), trans. Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). When Marston's charming 15-year-old princess Dulcimel rebels against the regimen of virginity, she strikes a blow against the autoeroticism that threatens to stagnate her father's court. Determined to share her sexuality with a partner, she tells her con®dante Philocalia that female `virtue' requires rede®nition. `[F]or the virtue of magnanimity, I am very valiant, for there is no heroic action so particularly noble and glorious to our sex as not to fall to action; the greatest deed we can do is not to do (look that nobody listen). Then am I full of patience, and can bear more than a sumpter-horse, for (to speak sensibly) what burden is there so heavy to a porter's back as virginity to a well-complexioned young lady's thoughts? (Look nobody hearken.) By this hand, the noblest vow is that of virginity, because the hardest. I will have the prince' (The Fawn iii.226±36). Keeping a close eye out for court spies, Dulcimel de®nes her own non-solipsistic virtues through her actions.

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28 Every Man in His Humour (ii.iii.57±74), quoted from the 1616 folio version in Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, vol. iii. 29 The line is part of the Duke's extended encomium to `Reverend and honourable Matrimony'. See The Phoenix, ed. John Bradbury Brooks (New York: Garland, 1980), ii.ii.166. Also compare Marston's account of how procreation ®gures in the Protestant ideology of marriage in What You Will and The Dutch Courtesan. Susan Baker's `Sex and Marriage in The Dutch Courtesan' is extremely useful in sorting out the temptations and constraints discussed in the evolving discourses of marriage. She begins her essay with the observation that `psychologized readings of The Dutch Courtesan partake of an ideology that valorizes sexuality primarily as an instrument of self-knowledge, self-development, and selfexpression' (p. 218). As she argues, this self-aggrandizing philosophy was not Marston's. 30 The theme of ®scal improvidence is also prominent in Roman satire. See, for example, Lucian's Timon on the squandering of inherited riches (especially 2:349±53, Loeb edition) and Horace's Satire i.1. 31 Thomas Middleton, Michaelmas Term (Induction, 19±25), ed. Richard Levin, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966). 32 See Herbert's `The Bag' and Jonathan Goldberg's reading of the poem in Voice Terminal Echo: Postmodernism and English Renaissance Texts (New York: Methuen, 1986), pp. 110±11. 33 The notion of theatrical decorum raises issues of another kind of `performance' perspective. The Fawn, like all of Marston's comedies, was originally performed by a children's company, which may explain why the sex is even more than usually all talk and no action. See Michael Shapiro's accounts of boys not quite performing sexual intimacy on the early modern stage in Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 143±72. A ®ne example of the sublimation of sexual congress into solitary speech is the transition into Hercules' soliloquy at the ends of Acts i and ii. 34 This moralizing tradition in Marston scholarship, represented particularly in such early studies as Morse S. Allen's The Satire of John Marston (Columbus: F. J. Heer, 1920), pp. 96±102, and Samuel Schoenbaum's `The Precarious Balance of John Marston', PMLA 62 (1952), 1069±78, has been corrected in subsequent pieces such as R. C. Horne's `Voices of Alienation: the Moral Signi®cance of Marston's Satiric Strategy', Modern Language Review 81 (1986), 18±33, and Steven R. Shelburne's `Principled Satire: Decorum in John Marston's The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image and Certaine Satyres', Studies in Philology 86 (1989), 198±218. Horne's emphasis on Marston as a pre-Enlightenment champion of Reason is less compatible with my own sense of Marston's remorseless self-scrutiny (and scrutiny of the very concept of the self )

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35 36 37 38 39

40

41

42

william w. e. slights than is Shelburne's. The shift away from hostile readings of Marston's fascination with corruption to an appreciation of his accomplishments as a satirist is carefully documented by T. F. Wharton in The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994). Fine, Narcissism, p. 59. John Donne: The Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters, ed. W. Milgate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 22. Camille Wells Slights, The Casuistical Tradition in Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton (Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 149±78. Arnold Davenport (ed.), Poems, p. 292, n. 35. Whigham, `Flattering Courtly Desire', p. 141. Part of the satirists' defence is that their art mediates the socially abhorrent act of peeping and conduces to a moral response in the reader. As Louise K. Barnett puts it, `Like any other antisocial impulses given literary expression, voyeurism is stabilized and conventionalized by the rubric of art. When the looking that a text privileges forces the reader into an uncomfortable awareness of his own voyeuristic response, this awareness can transform itself into a moral response' (`Voyeurism as Entrapment in Swift's Poetry' in Carl R. Kropf (ed.) Reader Entrapment in EighteenthCentury Literature, (New York: AMS Press, 1992) p. 47). Boose argues that Marston was, if not the only, then certainly the most potent begetter of a fully Englished version of Pietro Aretino's `new and aggressively sexualized form' of literature: `it was Marston who understood the pornographic in the full range of its investments and negotiations with the reader. In Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, one of his two works on the bishops' list [of banned books], he deliberately experiments with masturbatory strategies of inhibited desire designed to stimulate the reader's arousal by creating a friction with it' (`The 1599 Bishops' Ban', p. 192). Boose writes scathingly both of the invention of a pornography for the theatre and of privileged ecclesiastical censorship of it. Unlike David O. Frantz, she is unimpressed by Marston's selfdefence as a moralist attacking the pornographic consumer. In Festum Voluptatis: A Study of Renaissance Erotica (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989) Frantz argues that The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image `is comic from the outset and, through its careful manipulation of the narrator, wages skillful warfare with the ``leud priapian'' readers of its day' (p. 217). I would say that Marston mocks the reader only after he has thoroughly (and skilfully) titillated him. The most in¯uential statements of this position are Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Putnam, 1981) and Catharine MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodi®ed: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). For the story of Diogenes shamelessly masturbating in the public marketplace and commenting cheekily that `he wished it were as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach', see Diogenes Laertius,

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Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), 2:47. Marston might have been reminded of this story by a passage from Montaigne's essay `An Apologie of Raymond Sebond', which he draws on extensively in The Fawn and other plays, using the Florio translation of 1603. The passage about Diogenes in Florio is perhaps the ®rst use of the term `masturbation' in English. See The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio (London: J. M. Dent, 1919), 2:303. 43 See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), and Stephen Greenblatt, `Fiction and Friction', in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 66±93. 44 Benhabib, Situating the Self, p. 156. 45 The view is ubiquitous just now. I quote the formulation of Jonathan Dollimore in `Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Transgression: the Jacobean Connection', Renaissance Drama 17 (1986), 69. Like so many academic lectures on the self in connection with everything from Hooker to hookers, this essay insists repeatedly that nature and culture are `that most fundamental and violent of binary oppositions' (73). I would like to challenge that view.

chapter 7

`Two parts in one': Marston and masculinity Sukanya B. Senapati

Feminist scholarship tends to stress the extent to which women in the early modern period were valued only in terms of their commodity value in male-to-male exchanges, and that the primary ties in that society were in fact male-to-male. Luce Irigaray argues that although patriarchal society appears to be heterosexual it is in fact homo-social because the relationships that are acknowledged in patriarchy are political and economic ones amongst men: The historical system of brotherhood is in fact hom(m)o-sexual in nature. Heterosexuality is nothing but the assignment of economic roles . . . for in this culture the only sex, the only sexes, are those needed to keep relationships among men running smoothly . . . Reigning everywhere, although prohibited in practice, hom(m)osexuality is played out through the bodies of women, matter, or sign, and heterosexuality has been up to now just an alibi for the smooth working of man's relationship with himself, of relationships among men. 1

Ana Castillo clari®es that, when commodities are `given value by men and exchanged by men, but men themselves cannot enter . . . as commodities', woman `does not exist except as an object of transaction . . . [and] except through male perception'. 2 In Jacobean society, though some scholars stress the exceptions, women were dependent rather than autonomous. The distribution of economic resources based on the laws of primogeniture and patriarchal inheritance favoured older men above younger men and men over women. Women generally did not own or inherit wealth (women were given dowries, but these dowries remained under the guardianship of fathers and husbands) and could only under special circumstances, such as the death of a spouse, act as temporary guardians of minor sons' inheritances. 3 Patriarchal identity was predicated on possessing wealth, and economic resources were controlled by men. The corollary effect ± a devaluation of feminine 124

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characteristics ± increased proportionately to the scarcity of resources and the ferocity of competition, particularly since the patriarchal system privileged a few men only and left the rest resourceless. The resultant male competitive anxiety found its inevitable expression in misogyny. Scholars have often assumed that John Marston's plays are largely complicit in transmitting and fostering hostile stereotypes of women. Katherine Duncan-Jones, for instance, in her review of a performance of The Dutch Courtesan at the Man-in-the-Moon Theatre sees Marston's play as merely re¯ecting stereotypical gender roles, by which women are, ®rst, realized in terms of the `arbitrary roles men have constructed for [them]', and then are `marginalized'.4 Yet, in fact, Marston's view of women, as it emerges across the whole range of his plays, is more complex. Marston does indeed depict patriarchal misogyny, yet only within the context of showing the absurdities of anxious male competition. Far more radically, Marston also questions the arbitrariness of male±female gender boundaries in ways which the boys' companies for which he wrote uniquely enabled him to do; and, with both female and male voices literally equivalent in the androgynous boys' companies, Marston goes on to create some of the most powerful female counter-voices to patriarchal assumptions in the entire corpus of English Renaissance drama. Renaissance drama was, of course, the perfect medium for a complex discourse on gender. In an age when, as Stephen Greenblatt has argued, all identity was an ideological product,5 and when selective markers of clothing, speech, demeanour, action, etc., de®ned all identity, a medium whose very essence was the illusion of costume and gender would be uniquely positioned, at least with dramatists of real thoughtfulness, to contribute signi®cantly to the `fashioning' of gender relations of which drama was capable. 6 On stage, identities were constructed through complex interplays of dramatic characterization, actors' histrionics, costumes and stagecraft. Off stage, these signs were popularized, refashioned, and ultimately internalized, since, as Lacan suggests, ideology is encoded in the semantics of language and is unconsciously absorbed together with language acquisition. The `play scraps'7 that Marston's own characters frequently spout are their own testimony to the potency of plays in shaping language acquisition. When language and costume are used deliberately to complicate and confuse gender boundaries, the confusion radically undermines

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patriarchal rhetoric. Here, Marston uncannily anticipates recent gender and `queer' studies which argue that not only gender characteristics (as early feminists had argued) are socially determined, but even sex characteristics do not de®nitively separate male from female.8 Indeed, many feminists now argue that these divisions themselves entail an essential bias because of the binary opposition they set up, and the necessary privileging of one polarity over the other.9 A more complex and productive procedure is to explode sex/ gender categorizations and destabilize their divisive boundaries. Marston's plays actively engage in this kind of re-conceptualization. He both exaggerates gender traits and transposes sex-speci®c traits to characters of the opposite sex, thereby blurring boundaries and exposing the sex/gender concept as a construct rather than an immutable and `natural' given. Of course, gender categories were routinely crossed in any production of any English Renaissance play, given the convention of boy actors playing women's parts, and this was inherently dangerous to patriarchal stability. Since male power-structures were predicated on heterosexual models, any form of male/male sexual contact would fall within the interdicted negative patterns ± the insane, the sick, and the criminal ± which are inevitably deployed to help determine and de®ne the positive constructs of the sane, the healthy, and the sanctioned.10 Necessarily, then, as Lisa Jardine points out, the ` ``verisimilitude'' of boy actors created considerable moral uneasiness, even amongst those who patronized and supported the theaters'.11 Moralists argued that, `sexuality, misdirected towards the boy masquerading in female dress, is ``stirred'' by attire and gesture . . . [and] male prostitution and perverted sexual activity is the inevitable accompaniment of female impersonation',12 and Jardine cites evidence to support the moralists' claims.13 What Marston does is to take an issue which was already, therefore, potentially transgressive and then make transgression intrinsic to dramatic representation, exploiting the private theatre convention of all-boy casts, in which any actor might be called on to play either male or female parts. Gender thereby becomes interchangeable. In his earliest play for the commercial stage, he deliberately makes one of his boy actors play both genders, albeit with reluctance. The female impersonation, by `Antonio', of the Amazon, Florizel, creates an identity crisis for him ± a loss of the gendered self ± brought on by the confusion of sex-speci®c gender

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characteristics. `Piero' disparagingly refers to `Antonio' as an `effeminate boy', and Antonio is morti®ed by playing the female part of the `hermaphrodite', even the manly version (Amazon) of her. This anxiety not only re¯ects the extent of the ideological devaluation of woman ± woman being so devalued that no-one is even willing to play her part in a play ± but, much more pertinently, it re¯ects male fears about the instability and treacherous insecurity of gender roles. `Antonio' expresses an interesting anxiety about his ability, once he has played a woman's part, to return to his male identity: f e l i c h e : Why, what must you play? a n t o n i o : Faith, I know not what, an hermaphrodite ± two parts in one, my true person being Antonio, sone to the Duke of Genoa, though for the love of Mellida, Piero's daughter, I take this feigned presence of an Amazon, calling myself Florizel and I know not what. I a voice to play a lady! I shall ne'r do it. a l b e r t o : O, an Amazon should have such a voice, virago-like. Not play two parts in one? . . . a n t o n i o : Ay, but when use hath taught me action to hit the right point of a lady's part, I shall grow ignorant, when I must turn young prince again, how but to truss my hose. (Antonio and Mellida Induction, 69±83)

At the same time, Antonio's Amazon disguise outmanoeuvres patriarchy's taboo on explicit displays of pederasty by displacing it on to the staged bodies of women. As Rossaline (a stage female impersonator) ®xes `her' gaze on Florizel (a stage impersonator of a masculine woman), Mellida (another stage female impersonator) admonishes her `covet[ing] . . . novelties' (i.i.145), to which Rossaline glibly retorts (with an interesting obscene pun): ` 'tis our nature to desire things / That are thought strangers to the common cut' (146±7). While this `natural'/unnatural lesbian desire is constructed through the staged voice of `woman', with no `natural' precedent to follow, how authentic it would be would depend on the boy actors' level of ease in displaying love to each other. While lesbian love could appear comic and strange, it subverts patriarchy's obligatory heterosexuality, stages sexual desire as other than male-initiated, and constructs woman as an active agent of sexual desire, rather than a mere receiver of it. The ®nal complication is that every ®gure in the scene is a male playing a female. The meaning of sex, gender, and desire is thus endlessly deferred as the reader/spectator wonders: is Rossaline attracted to the Amazon, Florizel, or the boy actor playing

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the part of Rossaline attracted to the boy actor playing the part of Antonio, dubbed `effeminate boy'? In another early play, What You Will, Marston ventures much further, by depicting male homosexual desire on stage, and by implying a wide range of such interdicted desires immediately offstage. A key scene here is the pages' mock court scene in the tavern (iii.iii), in which they complain about the `profane' abuses they suffer and their reduction to `children and servants of darkness'. One of them, Noose, complains that his master `loves his boy [presumably himself ] and the rump of a cramm'd capon' and that he serves as his master's `froterer or rubber in a hothouse' (1310, 1315±6). Another is used as a pander, a third as a `male monkey', and all seem to be abused sexually, their dialogue revealing both the class bond that unites them and the sexual bond that is hinted at through ambiguous sexual innuendoes and doubles entendres. Homo-erotic innuendo is, however, not con®ned to this economic underclass, but extends even to the play's most respected voice, Quadratus. When, for instance, Quadratus warns Laverdure about being susceptible to ¯attery, Laverdure declares that such praise is inevitable and can stop only when he `abandon[s his] natural propensitudes ± / [His] fancy's humour ± for a stiff jointed, / Tatter'd, nasty, tabor-fac'd ± Pugh, la, la, ly ro' (ii.i.558±60). Quadratus responds to such a proposition with sheer maniacal glee that borders on pederasty: Now, by thy lady's cheek, I honour thee, My rich free-blood; O my dear libertine, I could suck the juice, the syrup of thy lip, For thy most generous thought. My Elysium!

(ii.i.561±4)

Quadratus' role as a malcontent allows him to speak freely but although his use of hyperbole here de¯ates a serious consideration of homosexuality, one has to remember that taboo subjects are often articulated in comic settings because they allow for a quick dismissal of the subject as a joke when the speaker gets into trouble. Quadratus makes snide remarks about the `strange beast . . . Yon chamlet youth, / Simplicius Faber, that hermaphrodite' (ii.i.445±6), yet he keeps constant company with the gay couple, Lampatho Dorio and the adoring Simplicius Faber. Simplicius' affections, however, prove migratory, in both heterosexual and homosexual directions, but more especially in homosexual ones, as becomes immediately apparent in the school-room scene

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which follows, a scene which features a Latin master and a group of very small boys, the smallest of whom, Holofernes Pippo, has not memorized his `aÃs in praesenti'. In a scene dense with sexual punning ± for instance on the Latin `aÃs' (`arse') ± there follows an `untruss[ed]' buttock-¯ogging scene (`mount him, mount him'), followed directly by the small boy's being rescued by none other than Simplicius Faber, who proclaims, `I am enamor'd on the boy. / Wilt thou serve me?' (ii.ii.792±3). Simplicius is recruiting Pippo as a page, but the term `enamor'd' makes it ambiguous and the connection between pages and boy actors playing women's parts and the latters' reputation for encouraging male prostitution is innocently hinted at by the school pedant who encourages Simplicius to `have' Pippo: `And you have a propensitude to him, he shall be for you: I was solicited to grant him leave to play the lady in comedies presented by children, but I know his voice was too small and his stature too low . . .' (ii.ii.796±9). The scene concludes with the admiring rescuer (`Umph! A sweet face' (812)) giving Pippo a `pudding pie' off stage, and the boy re-entering to announce that now he knows what `aÃs in praesenti' means. One has to assume a collusive audience/player homo-eroticism in such a scene, and indeed, in the ®rst lines of the play's Induction, with Doricus calling for lights so that `there be no deeds of darkness done among us', it is by no means clear whether the deeds of darkness might involve only the boys themselves. Having subverted patriarchal mores through the gender blurring of his early plays, Marston uses these same plays to ridicule the anxieties of male sexual/economic competition. Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge stage male competition for patriarchal identity through successive generations. In Antonio's Revenge, Piero Sforza, Duke of Venice, declares the cause of his animosity towards Andrugio, Duke of Genoa: `We both were rivals in our May of blood / Unto Maria, fair Ferrara's heir. / He won the Lady, to my honour's death' (i.i.23±5) (emphasis added). When Piero loses, he extends the competition by drawing on familial patriarchal privileges; he interdicts his daughter Mellida's marriage to Andrugio's son, Antonio, while he himself schemes to `poison the father, butcher the son, and marry the mother', and thereby gain victory and puissance by annexing Genoa (i.i.104). When this scheme fails, he constructs yet another one, simply by tapping into the built-in misogyny of patriarchy ± the standard accusations of feminine weakness and sexual excess ± and falsely accuses Mellida of promiscuity.

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Similarly, Piero's rival, Andrugio, the `good' patriarch, also uses his privilege as a patriarch to gain recognition and identity. With Andrugio poisoned, Maria valiantly attempts to thwart Piero's sexual and political advances, yet Andrugio's ghost appears, baselessly to accuse her of the same `typical' feminine failings of lust and weakness: Disloyal to our hym'neal rites What raging heat reigns in thy strumpet blood? Hast thou so soon forgot Andrugio? Are our love-bands so quickly cancelleÁd? Where lives thy plighted faith unto this breast? O weak Maria! Go to, calm thy fears; I pardon thee, poor soul. [maria weeps] O shed no tears; Thy sex is weak (Antonio's Revenge iii.v.1±8 (emphasis added))

After he is defeated, Andrugio maligns Maria and women in general to shore up his lost identity through misogynic rhetoric that de®nes human traits as sex-speci®c and ascribes to the female the negative ones. Although Maria has no female sex-speci®c shortcomings such as lust or weakness, Andrugio by evoking her sex imposes them on her. This evocation brings to the forefront his maleness, automatically precluding him from such `feminine' failings, drawing attention away from his failures and `weakness' as a defeated and replaced patriarch. However, when his subjects hastily and nonchalantly transfer their allegiance after `one battle lost' to his rival, Piero, Marston hints that Andrugio's strength is derived from his position rather than from his person (Antonio and Mellida iv.i.78). Patriarchal identity's reliance on wealth is made apparent in yet another way ± the doubling of the roles of Alberto and Andrugio. As Alberto explains: `The necessity of the play forceth me to act two parts: Andrugio the distressed Duke of Genoa, and Alberto a Venetian gentleman enamored on the Lady Rossaline, whose fortunes being too weak to sustain the port of her, he proved always disastrous in love (Induction, 21±25 (emphasis added)). This doubling not only connects two characters lacking signs of patriarchal identity ± the impoverished Alberto and the defeated Andrugio ± but emphasizes the social role-playing involved in pariarchal encoding. The Induction, which appears to be a peek at backstage, pre-play preparation, is a framing scene revealing, not actors in their own persons, but characters who are identi®ed as characters only, for `Alberto' makes the speech, not the actor playing the part of Alberto.

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The Andrugio±Antonio patriarchy is no match to Piero's military strength so, when it is defeated, its patriarchs engage in highly theatrical and epileptic displays of grief that rhetorically stage their strong and glorious past as an alternative to their current `real' defeats. Andrugio, ®nding himself miraculously alive after a crushing naval defeat in which he believes he has lost everything, `a son, a son, / A country, house, crown, son' (iv.i.86±7) ± all signs of patriarchal identity ± sustains his identity as a patriarch by recasting himself as the monarch of his own moral house and the ruler of his own soul: Why . . . I never was a prince till now . . . 'Tis not . . . Tyrian purple, chairs of state . . . That makes a prince. No, Lucio, he's a king, A true right king, that dares do aught save wrong . . . Whose brow is wreatheÁd with the silver crown Of clear content. This, Lucio, is a king, And of this empire every man's possessed That's worth his soul. (iv.i.45±65)

Conversely, Antonio, believing his father is dead, Genoa annexed by Piero, and his disguise as Florizel uncovered (therefore destroying his chance to win Mellida as his wife), ¯ees Piero's court declaring: `Antonio's lost. / He cannot ®nd himself, not seize himself. / Alas this that you see is not Antonio' (iv.i.2±4). In What You Will, male competition is presented as both bewildering and ridiculous, as the patriarchal sign ± the name and therefore the identity of the rich merchant, Albano ± ¯oats from one person to another: the perfumer, Francisco Soranza, disguised by Albano's brothers and Jacomo to thwart Celia's remarriage; the ®ddler disguised by Celia's chosen mate, Laverdure, to foil the brothers' plans; and the real Albano who returns from the dead only to be viewed as an impostor. Albano, after several failed attempts to reclaim his identity, ponders the impossibility of reclaiming a sign: `If Albano's name / Were liable to sense, that I could taste or touch / Or see, or feel it, it might [en]'tice belief; / But since 'tis voice and air . . .' (What You Will iii.ii.1259±61). Since the sign `Albano' fractures and the link between the signi®er and signi®ed is severed, Albano's identity is shorn of meaning and he becomes a piece of ®ction. Unable to rely on signs, Albano hesitates to use them as is indicated by his stuttering that progressively increases as more and more characters dismiss him as an impostor. Shorn of meaning,

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words fracture into incomprehensible phonemes and Albano's speech becomes incoherent to his family and friends until he accepts their ®ction ± the identity of the impostor: Now brothers; now, gallants; now, sisters, now: call [me] a perfumer, a gutter-master . . . by the mass, law! I am Francisco Soranzo! am I not . . .? I am Francisco Soranzo . . . O God! O slaves! O dogs, dogs, curs! . . . A ®ddler, a scraper, a minikin-tickler, ± a pum, a pum, even now a perfumer, now a ®ddler? I will be even what you will. (iv.i.1689±1706)

This acceptance of a ®ctional identity is disquieting both for willing and unwilling role-players, for although Albano-impostors ®nd impersonating him an easy task the loss of self alarms them: f r a n c i s c o: Why, good faith, I scarce know myself already; methinks I should remember to forget myself, now I am so shining brave . . . but thus brave? I am an alien to it. Would you make me like the drown'd Albano? Must I bear't mainly up? Must I be he? . . . You would have me take upon me Albano . . . Well, my beard, my feather, short sword, and my oath shall do't, fear not. (iii.i.930±53)

On the other hand, the identity gained by ®lling a patriarchal position acquired through a marriage liaison enhances a man's sexual prowess. Early in the play (ii.i), as a contender for Celia's hand, Laverdure, with his ®nery at pawn, tries to impress the gallants by instructing his page, Bidet, to `set . . . richest gloves, garters, hats, just in the way of their eyes' (422±3). But, when he becomes Celia's chosen consort, he is viewed as a threat to the gallants who contend with it by joking that they will `fame it all about / The Frenchman's gelded' (i.i.374±5), though they immediately speculate, `she knows too well 'tis false' (376), thus re¯exively turning their resentment against Celia herself: `Now what a giglot is this Celia . . . To match so sudden, so unworthily!' (347±8). The prominence of economic resources in patriarchal identity construction is fairly obvious, but woman's part in it is either rendered invisible or negatively portrayed. The smooth, vertical transfer of resources depends explicitly on female chastity (for assurance of paternity) and implicitly on a woman's life-long ®delity to a man even after his death. Since this implicit ®delity is not codi®ed and therefore invisible, Albano is helpless in the face of imperceptible ideology and since he cannot blame anyone in particular or ®nd the `real' target of his anger ± ideology ± he lashes out misogynistically and incoherently, revealing,

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in the ®gure of the sawn-off `prop', the extent to which he feels emasculated by the threat to goods and lineage: Yes, boy, I'll trust thee: babes and fools I'll trust; But servants' faith, wives' love, or female's lust, A usurer and the devil sooner. Now were I dead, Methinks I see a huff-cap swaggering sir Pawning my plate, my jewels, mortgage ± nay, Selling outright the purchase of my brows, Whilst my poor fatherless, lean, totter'd son, My gentry's relics, my house's only prop, Is saw'd asunder, lies forlorn, all bleak Unto the griefs of sharp necessities, Whilst his father-in-law, his father-in-devil, or d-d-d-d-devil f-f-f-father, or who-who-who-what you will ± (iii.ii.1051±62)

Yet Marston puts a quite different ®nal perspective on the play's anxious misogyny. The power women do have in patriarchy is made visible in this comedy ± if only for a moment ± when Celia enables Albano to gain his lost identity and thereby his wealth by identifying him as the real Albano when everyone, including his brothers, dismisses him as an impostor. Albano's lost identity reveals identity to be a construct of family, economic, and social recognition, but, by leaving its ®nal veri®cation in the hands of a woman who interprets patriarchal signs correctly, Marston momentarily empowers woman, even though she deploys this power only on the patriarch's behalf. While What You Will dramatizes the insanity of male competition, Jack Drum's Entertainment portrays its violence towards women and the supposed primacy of economic and homo-social bonds. Sir Edward Fortune unusually declares to his daughters: `I have land for you both, / You have love for your selves', but one suitor, the `club®sted Usurer' (i.187) Mamon who, with an eye to the conservation of resources, admonishes Sir Edward for keeping `too great a house' (i.183), operates under much less egalitarian assumptions, nonchalantly dismissing Pasquil, Katherine's chosen mate, as a `boy as bare as naked Truthe', who can be eliminated by the `force of gold and murder' (198). When he fails to erase the `boy / That kept rich Mamon from his joy', he retaliates violently against the woman also, by throwing acid on Katherine's face and ferreting her out as she hides to conceal her dis®gurement (ii.202; ii.217). As to homo-social bonds, Ned Planet urges Camelia's suitors to

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abandon her because his friend, Brabant Junior, has been dismissed as `a yonger brother, and a stipendiary' (ii.203). Shaped by patriarchal ideology, Planet fails to recognize its material workings and instead of questioning the ideology that fosters such competitions and establishes eligibility criteria through wealth and age, he blames women for it. Appearing to privilege men as a class, patriarchy blinds men to the privations of their particular positions by casting the prize ± woman ± as the villain who breaks their hearts. Thus despite intense male competition triggered by patriarchy, men retain their homo-social bonds through the `othering' process that makes woman (not like man, therefore the other of man) an easy scapegoat for all its ills. Both violence against women, and the patriarchal privileging of the public, homo-social bond above the private heterosexual bond, are dramatized more prominently in Sophonisba. In this play, homosocial bonds are repeatedly made and broken for personal and political gain, yet when the contest is between the homo-social alliance and the heterosexual alliance, the former becomes the transcendent signi®er. Initially, the interruption of the Sophonisba± Massinissa nuptials by the threat of war focuses on male identity formation shaped by the rhetoric of military patriotism. Massinissa poses as a patriotic man ± a pose secured by his de®nition of himself as `not woman', through scornful abjurations of sexual pleasures, which he engenders as female: `Appetite, / Kisses, loves, dalliance, and what softer joys / The Venus of the pleasing'st ease can minister, / I quit you all' (i.i.200±3). Massinissa's eager abandonment of his nuptials to prove himself on the battle®eld, his neglect of his heterosexual bond and privileging of homo-social bond, reveal not only the rejection of the female in male identity formation but male sexual anxiety and a deep terror of female sexuality and heterosexual relationships. Later, Massinissa, caught between two contradictory vows he has made ± his vow to protect Sophonisba from Roman enslavement and his vow to serve his new ally the Roman Scipio ± privileges the latter and relinquishes his wife. To try to enable her husband to live honourably amongst men, Sophonisba poisons herself. Though ultimately Massinissa still `for ever breathe[s] / Rome's very minion' (v.iv.46±7), Sophonisba's death, on the face of it, resolves the opposition between public and private, heterosexual and homo-social, male and female, revealing the ultimate disregard and erasure of the female category. But this dismissal is made

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problematic by Sophonisba's dying speech: `Behold me, Massinissa, like thyself, / A king and soldier . . . To save you ± you . . . I give up . . . life' (v.iii.93±100). Her masculine-like, `Fame-greedy' resolve actually stirs Massinissa's resentment: `could no scope of glory, / No reasonable proportion of goodness, / Fill thy great breast, but thou must prove immense?' (108±10). The closing line of the play, again delivered by Massinissa, problematizes Sophonisba, even as it honours her sacri®ce, as `Women's right wonder, and just shame of men', underscoring the shame of patriarchal honour that is built on female sacri®ce. In Jack Drum's Entertainment and Sophonisba, where misogyny is high and violent, women deploy the social taboo against overt displays of homosexuality to thwart sexual aggression against them. Within the play they script homosexual roles for their aggressors who are then exposed, ridiculed, and humiliated for their apparent homosexuality. This female-scripted homosexuality disrupts patriarchy, for males are made into commodities through the homosexual sign and are given sex value by females. In Jack Drum's Entertainment, Winifride the maid is relentlessly pursued and harassed by Jack Drum and John fo de king until she ®nally promises separately to yield to both of them. She instructs John to carry her in a sack for a secret rendezvous at Holloway and tells Jack that she will await him at Holloway where he is to be conveyed in a sack to `accesse . . . the pleasures of [her] private bed' (iv.220). Instead of Winifride, Jack enters the bag meant for Holloway and the unsuspecting John with Jack on his back in a sack is discovered by the town's gallants. The homosexual encounter staged by Winifride is deferred, but the public exposure of these two aggressors cast as homosexuals objecti®es them, in the same way as they had objecti®ed Winifride. Similarly, in Sophonisba, Massinissa's hasty departure creates a void in Sophonisba's bed that his rival, Syphax, forcefully but unsuccessfully tries to ®ll. Like Winifride, Sophonisba thwarts sexual aggression by substituting a man in her place ± Syphax's strong but drugged slave, Vangue, that Syphax has threatened he will use to hold her down as he violates her if she does not willingly yield to him. Syphax, anxiously praying, `O Hercules, / Let not thy back be wanting . . .' (iii.i.180±1), `leaps' into bed with Vangue and as the disoriented slave mumbles, `How came I laid? . . . / Where am I? . . . / O Jove how pleasant is it but to sleep / In a king's bed!' (iii.i.190±3, (emphasis added)), Syphax abruptly and needlessly

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murders him. The excessive violence of what, though the passage does not specify it, is presumably a stabbing may stem from sexual frustration or even perverse jealousy, but the penetration of the slave in the king's bed paradoxically suggests homosexual congress, through the very act that re¯exively recoils from it. Subsequently, in another lurid bed-scene, Syphax is tricked into sexual intercourse with the witch, Erichtho. It is a scene which fairly overtly demonizes the sexual desires aroused in men by women. It is `that which hath / No reason: love and woman' (i.i.73±4) that propels the entire Syphax plot, and the `wasting ¯ame' that feeds on his `amorous blood' ultimately drives him `deepest hell [to] try' (iv.i.90±6). The demonizing of female attractiveness is a theme fully pursued in Marston's last surviving play, The Insatiate Countess. Paradoxically, although patriarchy demands female chastity, in Sophonisba it is nonchalantly dismissed for political gain. The chaste queen Sophonisba is circulated like a common whore and sent from man to man ± ®rst to Massinissa, her husband, then to his rival Syphax, returns back to Massinissa and is then sent to Scipio. But, when a woman chooses to be unchaste, like Isabella in The Insatiate Countess,14 she is branded a strumpet and severely punished for it. Dismissing female chastity as a myth ± `Fair women play: she's chaste whom none will have' (i.i.56) ± Isabella uses the power sanctioned to a beautiful woman within the patriarchal scheme, but uses it to excess. Her reputation for insatiable lust makes her irresistible to men because their sense of sexual prowess increases in her presence as does their anxiety when she abandons them. But she terri®es them because she can neither be contained nor controlled. So, she is destroyed. No man in the play can resist her charm, but instead of the men being labelled `weak' ± a typical feminine characteristic ± her sexuality is labelled demonic and the men absolved of wrong-doing: `That vild adulteress, whose sorceries / Doth draw chaste men into incontinence' (v.i.11±12). Perhaps the injustice of her ®nal death-sentence causes the Duke of Medina to defend it by slipping into the patriarchal penchant for the necessary subjugation of women: `None here, I hope, can task us of injustice: / She died deservedly, and may like fate / Attend all woman so insatiate' (v.i.229±31 (emphasis added)). However, in this scene he accords clemency to a man who has committed murder even as he metes out death to a woman for her lust, and the clear injustice of his annihilation of woman and all that she represents

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within this masculine paradigm ± seductive sexuality ± is vividly evident as the chained and guarded Don Sago is arbitrarily set free and even promoted to colonel of horse, while the beautiful, eroticized Isabella is beheaded on stage. The disparity is too grotesque to be without irony, and Marston further complicates our responses to the ideologies expressed in the play by giving Isabella a de®ant counter-voice. Conditioned by patriarchal ideology she nonetheless wrestles internally with it each time she falls uncontrollably in love with a man. In the end, however, she discards it, refusing to be dictated to, shamed, or frightened by patriarchal representatives who break the same rules but blame her only for the transgressions. She disdains the authority of the Duke of Medina by mocking his weak, old body and counterdemonizing him: `You use square dealing, Medina's mighty duke: / Tyrant of France, sent hither by the devil' (v.i.127±8). She disregards the execution he imposes on her by refusing to acknowledge its punitive power as is revealed by the messenger who remarks that she comes totally `unprepared' to her beheading. When the Cardinal tries to force her out of her gaiety and terrify her by insisting, `Madam: to you none other than your dance of death', she fearlessly opposes his verdict: `Good, my Lord Cardinal do not thunder thus, / I sent today to my physician, / And as he says he ®nds no sign of death', thereby dismissing the authority of yet another patriarch through wit and de®ance (v.i.69±72). She ®ghts patriarchal power till the very end of her life, dying the way she has lived ± in complete disregard of their laws. Moments before her execution, asked by her executioner to tie her hair and blind her eyes, she responds by rhetorically staging the sexual power she has had over men, likening her presence to that of a god: I have lived too long in darkness, my friend: And yet mine eyes, with their majestic light, Have got new Muses, in a poet's sprite, They have been more gazed at then the god of day (v.i.207±10)

Viewed through a patriarchal paradigm, Isabella may appear as a lusty woman obsessed with illicit sex, but when viewed through a feminist paradigm she appears as an angry woman seeking retaliation through the only means available to her in patriarchy: her sexual body. Since the female, sexual body is the site for the most intense patriarchal control, a transgression of it may be regarded as

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a deliberate and de®ant challenge of patriarchal ideology. Although Isabella appears insatiate, what characterizes her is not so much her lust as her ®ckle ¯ight from and towards men. Refusing to surrender control of her body to any man, she uses and abuses it to defy the controlling ideology of female (though not male) chastity. She fumes at being `buried . . . alive' and `mewed . . . like Cretan Dedalus' by her ®rst husband (i.i.47±8), runs away with Count Massino during her second wedding, quickly falling in love with his friend the Duke of Gnacia. Massino typically then tries to control her, ®rst by ruining her reputation which fails to deter his friend the Duke of Gnacia, and then by physically interdicting her next admirer, Don Sago, who challenges Count Massino to a duel in which Massino is killed. However, she herself claims her own body and will not permit patriarchal ideology to be inscribed on it. She is not a nymphomaniac as Martin Wiggins suggests in his introduction to the play in Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies,15 for a nymphomaniac would not dread a sexual encounter as Isabella does her wedding night with Roberto: So to the house of death the mourner goes, That is bereft of what his soul desired, As I to bed, I to my nuptiall bed . . .

(ii.i.243±5)

Unlike a nymphomaniac she does not move from one man to another after sexual encounters that leave her insatiate (thereby causing male sexual anxiety), but falls in love before the relationships are consummated. Jonathan Dollimore suggests that an individual alienated from society through grief and despair because of an unfair and ineffective justice system can reintegrate into society by being activated by vengeance.16 Isabella's sexual conquests may be viewed as vengeance on patriarchal society that puts restriction on female bodies only. This vengeance is effective, for the intensity of desire she evokes in men is strong enough for them to risk everything for it, including the all-important homo-social bond of friendship. In addition, when she abandons them, they feel so emasculated that they either attempt to thwart her sexual escapades, as Count Massino does, or abandon heterosexual relations to seek solace in the all-male bastion of the monastery, as Roberto feels compelled to do. Roberto refuses to pursue Isabella ¯eeing from their nuptial bed, yet he betrays the loss of gender identity her abandonment causes for him:

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She that can forsake mee when pleasure's in the full, Fresh and untired, what would she on the least Barren coldness? . . . Since I cannot Enjoy the noble title of man . . . I leave thy lust to woo the love of Heaven

(ii.iv.20±57 (emphasis added))

Since in this play homo-social bonds lose their primacy and the gender hierarchy is reversed through sexual power, Isabella, the sexually potent woman responsible for this disruption, is destroyed. Isabella is potent because she uses the power sanctioned to both women and men in patriarchal society ± the power of beauty to the former and the power of wealth to the latter. She uses the marker of power in patriarchal society ± wealth ± to buy off both men (`disdaineÁd lord, / I paid thee for thy pleasures vendible, / whose mercenary ¯esh I bought with coyne' (iii.iv.152±4)), and their laws, as a nameless messenger testi®es: The countess comes, my lord, unto the death: But so unwillingly and unprepared, That she is rather forced, thinking the sum, She sent to you of twenty thousand pound Would have assureÁd her of life.

(v.i.46±50)

In The Dutch Courtesan, also, female attractiveness is demonized. The courtesan, Franceschina, is an extraordinarily beautiful woman who arouses strong passions in men despite her heavy Dutch accent that makes her comical (therefore her passion ridiculous) and her lowly status as a prostitute that makes her morally despicable. Thus, when Franceschina names the price of her love to the enamoured Malheureux ± the death of his friend Freevill ± Malheureux, unlike Gnacia in The Insatiate Countess, chooses friendship over passion; yet, Freevill rewards his friend with public humiliation and a scary encounter with execution. The Franceschina±Freevill±Malheureux triad parallels, yet mocks, the Isabella±Massino±Sago triad in The Insatiate Countess, and because in The Dutch Courtesan patriarchy's homo-social bonds retain their hegemony, and Franceschina lacks economic resources to make her power socially viable she, unlike Isabella, is dismissed only with a whipping. In addition, since the play does not enact male competition the misogynistic rhetoric is reserved only for the `punk rampant' (ii.ii.109). The sado-masochistic nature of gender relations, the powerlessness of women, are very visible in this stable patriarchal play world. Men frequent brothels,

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yet female chastity is deployed as a marker of male potency. The philandering Freevill treats his chaste ®anceÂe, Beatrice, the same way he treats his whore Franceschina ± as a commodity.17 Unloading Franceschina on his friend Malheureux to purge the latter of his prudery, he fakes his death to facilitate Malheureux's tryst with Franceschina. However, the cruel suffering Freevill thereby imposes on Beatrice and his deliberate lengthening of it just so that he can revel in her grief-stricken love is sadistic: I'll to my love, the faithful Beatrice; She has wept enough, and, faith, dear soul, too much. But yet how sweet it is to think how dear One's life was to his love: how mourned his death!

(The Dutch Courtesan v.i.115±18)

Also, Beatrice's love for Freevill is masochistic for instead of being outraged by Freevill's philandering, she apologizes to him for her artlessness: I cannot with a mistress' compliment, ForceÁd discourses, or nice art of wit Give entertain to your dear wisheÁd presence; . . . O let not my secure simplicity Breed your mislike . . .

(ii.i.12±21)

Although women in patriarchy are separated into distinct `in-law' and `out-law'18 categories and the former promised protection and privileges, representatives from both categories, Beatrice and Franceschina, are treated in the same deplorable manner: as pawns. While Isabella wants control over her own body, Freevill wants control over all female bodies ± the `in-law' kind and the `out-law' kind. He orders Franceschina around, goads Malheureux about Franceschina after he has dumped her, and enjoys watching Beatrice from behind his disguise as a pander freezing both women in a male gaze that denies them freedom and agency. However, even in this play, Marston allows women powerful counteractive voices. At ®rst Beatrice in the tradition of the `inlaw' model offers Freevill chaste, artless love, but when Freevill responds with exaggerated and theatrical antics of love, she coldly stymies him: `Dear . . . be not so passionate; / Nothing extreme lives long' (ii.i.49±50). On discovering her token of love, her ring, in Franceschina's possession, Beatrice does not suffer silently or lose her composure, but pithily indicts his callous cruelty: `He did

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not ill not to love me, but sure he did not well to mock me: gentle minds will pity though they cannot love (iv.iv.73±5). If the play's primary function is to purge excessiveness ± prudery and lust ± the exposure of the excessiveness of the mastermind who orchestrates this purging, Freevill, is ironic. Beatrice's indictment ± a clear and exact summation of the wrong he has done ± cuts through Freevill's theatrical and hyperbolic speech. Since Marston in his plays repeatedly mocks exaggerated speech including the declamatory style of acting, Beatrice's sharp indictment is especially signi®cant. Even the powerless `out-law' woman, Franceschina, does not just silently accept her disenfranchised condition ± sexual objecti®cation and social humiliation ± but angrily protests its inhumanity, accurately identifying such degradation as originating in the objecti®er: `O vile man, vat do you tink on me? Do you take me to be a beast, a creature that for sense only will entertain love, and not only for love, love? O brutish abomination!' (ii.ii.160±3). Furthermore, although she lacks social power successfully to battle Freevill's cavalier attitude towards her and her plan to have him killed fails, she obstructs him, for despite his wealth and power he fails to some extent in commodifying her body because she ruins the sexual tryst he sets up for Malheureux with her and exposes his philandering to his ®anceÂe and her powerful family. Unlike Freevill, Beatrice takes Franceschina seriously and without typically lashing out at the mistress makes Freevill accountable for the wrong he has done her. But the most devastating attack on patriarchal ideology is pronounced by Crispinella who falls into neither an `in-law' nor an `outlaw' category, and whose role parallels Freevill's in the purging of her sister's prudery ± though, unlike Freevill, who lacks true wit necessary for cathartic cleansing humor and has only scorn and power to humiliate people and make them objects of laughter, she is smart and witty. However, she abandons her humorous tone to speak plainly and directly to Freevill, reiterating his cruelty towards Beatrice and making it a real offence that cannot be dismissed as a joke: `Brother, I must be plain with you: / You have wronged us' (v.ii.66±7). Declaring, `A husband generally is . . . a careless, domineering thing' (iii.i.89±90), she repudiates marriage as lacking virtue (`Virtuous marriage! There is no more af®nity betwixt virtue and marriage than betwixt a man and his horse' (iii.i.105±7)), and

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rejects it (`I'll live my own woman, and if the worst come to the worst, I had rather prove a wag than a fool' (iii.i.101±3)), because of the constraints it places on women: `. . . To hear this word ``must''! If our husband be proud, we must bear his contempt . . . if a fool, we must bear his babble . . . where, on the contrary side, our husbands ± because they may, and we must ± care not for us.' (iv.i.36±44 (emphasis added)). She points to the power sanctioned to women during courtship that is withdrawn in marriage and without abjuring men or sexual pleasure, she rejects the patriarchal institution of marriage. Finally, recognizing patriarchal obsession with female chastity, she dismisses it as illogical and arti®cial and boldly designs a more sensible set of rules: We pronounce boldly robbery, murder, treason which deeds must needs be far more loathsome than an act which is so natural, just and necessary as that of procreation . . . For my own part, I consider nature without apparel; without disguise of custom or compliment, I give thoughts words, and words truth, and truth boldness. She whose honest freeness makes it her virtue to speak what she thinks will make it her necessity to think what is good. I love no prohibited things, and yet I would have nothing prohibited by policy but by virtue . . . (iii.i.39±53)

Thus, while Marston, in all his plays, faithfully records the voices of patriarchal superiority, he consistently sets them within contexts which expose them to disbelief and ridicule. Subjecting gender itself to radical questioning and anatomizing the absurd anxieties of economic and sexual competition, Marston ®nally allows the victims of a repressive system to shake off the conditioning that has been unconsciously internalized. The most effective weapon of the patriarchy is the `whore' label, but when women become whores without internalizing its pejorative connotations, or when the `giglot' becomes the enabling agent of patriarchal pride, or above all when women ± even `insatiate' ones ± are allowed a powerful oppositional voice, the processes of patriarchal power are subverted. Marston's plays emerge as a convincing example of Jonathan Dollimore's description of Jacobean drama's interrogation of ideology `from within, seizing on and exposing its contradictions and inconsistencies and offering alternative ways of understanding . . .'19 One need only add that what Marston offers an alternative understanding of, is the supposedly monolithic patriarchal ideology of sex and gender in the early modern period.

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notes 1 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), chapter 8, p. 172.. 2 Ana Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers (New York: Plume, 1995), p. 80. 3 See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500±1800, abridged edn (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), chapter 5, p. 136; and Sue Sheridan Walker (ed.), Wife and Widow in Medieval England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. viii. Stephen Orgel neatly summarizes the exceptions documented by Karen Newman, K. D. M. Snell, Patricia Crawford and others which evidence women apprentices, actors, roaring girls, and even voters. See Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. chapters 3, 6, and 7. 4 Times Literary Supplement 23 February 1990: 199. 5 Renaissance Self-Fashioning (University of Chicago Press, 1980). 6 See Karen Newman, Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. xxvii±xxviii. 7 What You Will ii.i.524. 8 Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), contends that sex, as much as gender, is a social construct rather than a `natural' interiority. 9 Julia Kristeva in `Woman's Time', Signs 7.1 (1981), 13±55, proposes that we recognize that the very structure through which we think, nomenclature, is itself oppositional and hierarchical. She suggests that we recon®gure at the fundamental, conceptual level, not just the categories ± sex/gender, male/female, man/woman ± but the ideology of gender and sex. Merely to champion the female and the feminine, while this might reverse positions in the gender hierarchy, actually reinforces the concept of hierarchy. 10 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1988). 11 Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Woman and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), chapter 1, p. 9. 12 Ibid. 13 Jardine claims that this issue of female impersonation was not limited to the theatre only, as is evident from the early modern ditties and riddles. A typical piece about female impersonation describes a male patron pursuing a woman who through slight displacement of clothing is revealed to be a boy and the startled patron mocked for his `illicit' desire. 14 The play's authorship is disputed, though there is consensus that Marston planned the whole play even if the text was co-authored. 15 Martin Wiggins (ed.), Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), refers to Isabella's `nymphomania' and her `career of nymphomaniac promiscuity', pp. vii and xiii.

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16 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton and Chicago: Harvester Press and University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 29. 17 Michael Scott in John Marston's Plays (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978), suggests that, `by the rule of ``correspondence'' in the moral structure of the play [between main plot and sub-plot], the prostitute is rated no more highly than a bag of gold or a dead ®sh', p. 44. 18 See Marilyn French's discussion of the `division of experience' in terms of masculine and feminine principles and the `in-law' (receiving patriarchal approbation) and `out-law' (receiving patriarchal censure) categories of the female principle: in Shakespeare's Division of Experience (New York: Summit, 1975). 19 Radical Tragedy, p. 8.

chapter 8

`The Malcontent': hunting the letter Kiernan Ryan

There is a mystery at the heart of Marston's drama, and it remains unsolved to this day. T. F. Wharton concludes his account of The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston from Marston's time to the present by advising critics who like their literature to yield coherent visions of the world to look elsewhere: `Those who seek consistency and wholeness will be disappointed, not only when they seek it across his canon but when they look for it within single scenes or even lines. His is not a rigorous theological or philosophical position.' 1 Keith Sturgess concurs: despite the publication of several full-length studies of Marston during the last three decades, his drama `remains enigmatic and dif®cult to place for the modern reader or theatre practitioner. There is little consensus about the source, or sources, of the distinctive dramatic voice we hear, or about the meaning and signi®cance of the texts themselves.'2 And nowhere is the enigmatic quality of Marston's úuvre more apparent than in the play most critics consider to be his masterpiece, The Malcontent. In other words, criticism of Marston still ®nds itself confronted with the questions posed over sixty years ago by T. S. Eliot's tantalizing essay on the dramatist. Of The Malcontent, Eliot writes: We are aware, in short, with this as with Marston's other plays, that we have to do with a positive, powerful and unique personality. His is an original variation of that deep discontent and rebelliousness so frequent among the Elizabethan dramatists. He is, like some of the greatest of them, occupied in saying something else than appears in the literal actions and characters whom he manipulates . . . It is not by writing quotable `poetic' passages, but by giving us the sense of something behind, more real than any of his personages and their action, that Marston established himself among the writers of genius.3

The precise nature of the play's ulterior import, however, defeats Eliot's powers of de®nition. He captures superbly our sense of `a 145

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kind of doubleness in the action, as if it took place on two planes at once': our feeling that Marston's characters `are living at once on the plane that we know and on some other plane of reality from which we are shut out . . . in conformity with the laws of some world that we cannot perceive'.4 But the `pattern behind the pattern'5 of his drama, and thus the secret of The Malcontent's strange resonance, are left seductively obscure. Notwithstanding the play's mocking glance at `the College of Critics' (Induction, 99)6 and the author's reproof of those of its members who `have been most unadvisedly over-cunning in misinterpreting me' (`To the Reader', 13±14), the moment strikes me as ripe for another stab at tracking Marston's `distorted and obstructed genius'7 to its lair. Eliot himself supplies a vital clue in his reference to the `positive, powerful and unique personality' that suffuses The Malcontent and that voices through it, as through all his plays, `an original variation of that deep discontent and rebelliousness so frequent among the Elizabethan dramatists'. But it was almost two decades before Eliot's hint was taken up and seriously pursued by Samuel Schoenbaum in his ¯awed but penetrating essay, `The Precarious Balance of John Marston'. Schoenbaum treats Marston's drama as the direct expression of its author's tormented personality, which is embodied in the protagonist of The Malcontent: `For Malevole's ``hydeous imagination'' is also Marston's. This personal note is perhaps the most striking feature of the dramatist's work; Marston is an artist noteworthy not so much for what he has to say about the world around him, as for what he manages to reveal of the world within him.'8 It is hard not to bridle at Schoenbaum's glib con¯ation of Marston and Malevole and his dismissive diagnosis of the plays as a form of therapy: `There is too much of the turbulent and irrational in Marston's temperament for writing to have served as anything more than a means of expressing the disordered fancies and halfacknowledged impulses that rankled within him.'9 Schoenbaum himself is obliged to revise his contention that Marston's drama reveals more of himself than it does of his world, when he concludes that Marston `was fortunate in that his own maladjustment coincided with the malaise of his age',10 and thereby concedes that Marston's world had no trouble tracing its own image in the imprints of his mind. Nevertheless, given Schoenbaum's admission that Marston's disposition was exemplary rather than eccentric, it would

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be perverse to deny the accuracy of his analysis of the playwright's personality, his isolation of the elements of what Eliot calls the `Marston tone'.11 These elements include an extravagant relish for physical and verbal violence, a fascinated loathing for the physiological imperatives of the body, and a crippling contempt for the dramatic art on which he plainly staked his identity and reputation. The `Marston tone' is summed up by Schoenbaum in one word: `hysterical'.12 The epithet is apt, and its appropriateness to Marston merits more consideration than Schoenbaum accords it, not least because it crops up repeatedly in subsequent critical appraisals of the dramatist, especially in connection with his language. 13 To describe Marston's drama as hysterical is to charge its author with being at the mercy of an unmanageable excess of emotions, and thus not in full control of what he means. It is also to run the risk of reducing his writing to a case history and the playwright to a candidate for the psychiatrist's couch ± although Freud's remark that `a case of hysteria is a caricature of a work of art'14 suggests that such a move might not prove as reductive as it seems. Certainly Marston himself had no qualms about confessing the debt The Malcontent owed to derangement, to a sense of being driven by personal demons. The motto he appended to the appeal `To the Reader' that prefaced the ®rst quarto of the play was `me mea sequentur fata' (`let my fates pursue me'); in the third quarto this was replaced by the tag `sine aliqua dementia nullus Phoebus': `there is no poetic inspiration without some measure of madness' (`To the Reader', 38). Whether the madness invoked here by Marston deserves to be taken literally, however, let alone identi®ed as an access of hysteria, is another matter. Such a diagnosis would at least be invulnerable to the charge of anachronism, since we know from contemporary medical treatises such as Edward Jorden's A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603) and from King Lear's celebrated self-diagnosis ± `O how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio!' (King Lear ii.iv.52±3)15 ± that this particular strain of dementia was a widely recognized af¯iction in Marston's day. But we also know that at least one close acquaintance of Marston's had no doubt that the playwright was suffering from exactly the same complaint as King Lear. In Ben Jonson's Poetaster Marston found himself ridiculed by his rival as the verbose versemonger Crispinus. In the central scene of the play, Jonson engineers

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a confrontation between Crispinus and the mighty poet Horace, who is driven to distraction by the claptrap with which Crispinus batters his ears. Their encounter includes the following exchange: h or a c e. Is your mother living, sir? c r i s p i n u s. Au! Convert thy thoughts to somewhat else, I pray thee. h or a c e. You have much of the mother in you, sir. Your father is dead? c r i s p i n u s. Ay, I thank Jove, and my grandfather too, and all my kinsfolk, and well composed in their urns. h or a c e. [Aside] The more their happiness, that rest in peace, Free from th'abundant torture of thy tongue; Would I were with them too. (iii.i.180±9)16

Malicious satire hardly counts as documentary evidence, but, despite the violent distortions inevitably involved in the act of mockery, Jonson's travesty of Marston is too closely tailored to the contours of his life and work to be discounted as inadmissible. As the Revels editor notes in his gloss on this passage, Jonson has deliberately adapted lines from Horace to ®t Marston's circumstances. Marston's father, whose hopes that his son would follow in his footsteps were dashed by his desertion of the law for the stage, had died in 1599, while his mother, Maria Guarsi, the second-generation Italian immigrant at whose knee he had learned the exotic tongue into which his characters are prone to erupt,17 was indeed alive and in fact lived on until 1621. The precise biographical parallels put the identi®cation of Marston with Crispinus at this point in the play beyond dispute. It is tempting to infer from these skeletal circumstances an Oedipal ¯ight from the paternal incarnation of the law into the maternal embrace of language and literature. But what matters here is the crucial connection Jonson makes between `th'abundant torture' of Marston's style, his alleged subjection to `the mother' and his implicitly impugned masculinity. Hysteria was known as `the mother', of course, because it derived from the Greek word for the womb, hystera, and its symptoms were believed to be caused by the unruly behaviour of that organ within the af¯icted female's body. To portray a character like King Lear or Marston himself as in thrall to `the mother' was thus to accuse him of acting like a woman, to rebuke him for being unmanned.18 It was also to assume that he would behave in an overwrought, histrionic fashion and spout pure gibberish. What Jonson abhors more than anything about Marston is his abuse of language: Crispinus is excoriated for his addiction to `lewd solecisms and worded trash' (iii.i.107), his compul-

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sion to `hunt for wild, outlandish terms / To stuff out a peculiar dialect' instead of heeding Virgil's injunction to `let your matter run before your words' (v.iii.537±9). From such a corrupter of words, in Jonson's view, can only come drama of the lowest order, the ¯atulent, stagy bombast promised to the actor Histrio by Tucca, as he commends him to the genius of Crispinus: `Go, he pens high, lofty, in a new stalking strain, bigger than half the rhymers i' the town again. He was born to ®ll thy mouth, Minotaurus, he was: he will teach thee to tear and rant, rascal: to him, cherish his Muse, go!' (iii.iv.165±9). For Jonson, who perceived in `the wantonnesse of language' the proof of `a sick mind',19 Marston's `new stalking strain' was a clear symptom of mental and physical disease, the direct expression of his seizure by `the mother'. Consequently the only cure for his proxy, Crispinus, whose overindulgence in `outlandish terms' has `®lled / His blood and brain thus full of crudities' (v.iii.521±2), is to force him, in the notorious climactic scene of the play, to vomit up Marston's vocabulary, to purge himself of the `terrible windy words' that are the `sign of a windy brain' (v.iii.490±1). The bearing of all this on The Malcontent and `the pattern behind the pattern' of Marston's plays becomes apparent if we turn to the work of modern psychoanalytic critics and theorists fascinated by hysteria's links with language, narrative, and representation. In Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the Literary Subject, Linda Ruth Williams recounts how Freud came to realize, through his analysis of hysterical patients, that this cryptic syndrome was in fact a form of symbolic system, `a ``pantomime'' of symptoms' that could be construed as `external ``representations'' of internal unrest'.20 Through their dramatic contortions of normal physical and verbal behaviour, the victims of hysteria stage a displaced performance of their distress, whose true origins are thereby masked. For Laplanche and Pontalis, authors of The Language of Psychoanalysis, hysteria is consequently best de®ned as a `malady through representation'. 21 In Approaching Hysteria, Mark Micale hails the syndrome as nothing less than `an alternative physical, verbal, and gestural language, an iconic social communication'; and Robert M. Woolsey views it likewise as a `protolanguage', whose symptoms are `a code used by a patient to communicate a message which, for various reasons, cannot be verbalized'.22 Granted these de®nitions, it is not dif®cult to see how Freud wound up discerning in a case of hysteria the warped epitome of a work of art.

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The hysterical patient invites the analyst to behave, after all, like a critic, to read between the lines of the tale encoded in the protolanguage of the patient's symptoms. The analyst's aim is to reconstruct the real story from the clues concealed in the hysteric's cover story: `so the focus becomes how one says what one says, how one's form of speech might contradict or subvert the tale one is telling, rather than what one `means' to say consciously and with full moral purpose. In stressing the forms of speech and imagery which emerge in analysis, the literary±linguistic nature of both the analytic situation and the divided mind itself becomes ever clearer.'23 The objective of the analysis is, of course, to effect a cure by releasing the patient from the symptoms to which he or she has fallen prey. Those symptoms are the somatic signs of imprisonment in a traumatic moment of the past, which the hysteric is doomed to repeat in its symptomatic guise in a quest for catharsis. As Freud and Breuer put it: `Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences.'24 Their unresolved past constantly invades and usurps their present, splitting the self into two: the irrepressible self that still dwells in the past and the besieged self that struggles, but repeatedly fails, to wrest the present from the grip of the previous. To cure the hysteric is to heal that divided self by unlocking and exorcizing the repressed history that holds the patient hostage. Hysterics are individuals who express their enslavement to their history through histrionics. The symptoms of hysteria are notoriously protean, shifting their shape as they adapt themselves to different individuals in different times and cultures. `Hysteria', as Elaine Showalter observes in Hystories, `is a mimetic disorder; it mimics culturally permissible symptoms of distress' by drawing on the `symptom pool' provided by the current social formation.25 Nevertheless, there is a con®guration of symptoms that recurs so persistently throughout the history of hysteria as to constitute the standard repertoire of the syndrome. The classic symptoms include: bizarre convulsions or paralyses of the limbs, sometimes so spectacularly absurd as to merit the term clownism conferred on them by Charcot:26 chronic disturbances of speech, especially incoherence, interruption, and multilingualism; complete loss of voice or mutism; a choking sensation, as if a ball (the globus hystericus) were lodged in the throat, usually accompanied by a general sense of constriction and claustrophobia; a disabling confusion of the waking world with the realm of dreams and fantasy; severe insomnia; and extreme

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eating disorders, most notably the refusal of food. In their fullblooded manifestation as grande hysteÂrie, these symptoms are performed by the histrionic alter ego of their host with all the melodramatic intensity and emotional exaggeration of a ham actor at his most outrageous. The male hysteric commands the same complement of symptoms as his female counterpart, but gives them a spin distinctive enough to lead some feminist critics to employ the term `testeria' to de®ne the condition as displayed by men. For the `testerical' man, attacked by a malady normally regarded as peculiar to women, the very nature of his sexual identity is at issue. It is true that hysteria is prone to throw conventional conceptions of both genders into crisis. As Juliet Mitchell points out, `Hysteria led Freud to what is universal in psychic construction and it led him there in a particular way ± by route of a prolonged and central preoccupation with the difference between the sexes . . . The question of sexual difference ± femininity and masculinity ± was built into the very structure of the illness.'27 But it is still the case to this day, when Lacanian theorists continue to construe hysteria as a metaphor for woman and the feminine, that the question of sexual difference poses an incomparably more acute problem for the male hysteric, whose masculinity is impaled at the outset on the incongruity of his plight. As a consequence, a hallmark of the male hysteric is his frantic struggle to shore up the ramparts of his sexual identity by vilifying everything he perceives as feminine, by erasing from his purview every trace of `the mother' that possesses him. That an unusually vicious version of this struggle animates Marston's drama and The Malcontent especially requires little demonstration. Marston himself was wryly aware that his name secreted an aggressive assertion of his masculinity: the pseudonym with which he signed his preface to The Scourge of Villanie was `Kinsayder', or the castrator (`kinse' being an obsolete word for `castrate'), which was in turn a paraphrase of `mar-stone', a `stone' being, of course, a testicle. Whether he was equally alert to the sexual anxiety lurking in his surname and his nom de plume is more doubtful. Either way, in Marston's case nomen est omen with a vengeance. By another odd coincidence, attributable not to Marston but to the instability of Elizabethan orthography, his ®nest play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 5 July 1604 as `An Enterlude called the Malecontent Tragiecomedia', a title which inadvertently highlights the

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concern with the masculine condition also inscribed in the name of the protagonist, Malevole. The entire plot of this `Enterlude' is little more in outline than a triumphalist male fantasy fuelled by bitter misogyny. The banished Duke Altofronto exploits his adopted disguise as Malevole, `the freebreathed discontent' (i.iv.31), to outwit and vanquish his male rivals, the treacherous usurpers Pietro and Mendoza, rescue his loyal, chaste wife Maria from the latter's predatory clutches, and restore himself to supreme power. En route to his redemption as ruler and husband, Altofronto's persona affords him the licence to rail with unmitigated fury at the vile lechery of womankind, to whose faithlessness his own spouse proves a unique exception: `Maquerelle, I tell thee', exclaims Malevole with relief to the decrepit bawd, `I have found an honest woman' (v.iii.35). But the play's virulent tirades against the female of the species are not con®ned to the malcontent. The most sustained outburst of misogynistic invective is placed in the mouth of Mendoza, who curses `these monsters in nature, models of hell' as `extreme in desiring, slaves unto appetite, mistresses in dissembling, only constant in unconstancy, only perfect in counterfeiting' (i.vi.85, 89±91). Pietro, in the guise of a holy hermit, quotes his own lament for the ®delity of women ± `O female faith! / Go sow the ingrateful sand, and love a woman! ' (iv.iii.27±8) ± before he supposedly plunges to his death from shame at the adultery of his wife, Aurelia. And this chorus of denigration, to which the sour fool Passarello lends his voice, is rati®ed by Aurelia's abject remorse, by the incorrigible incontinence of Bilioso's wife, Bianca, and by the independent evidence of the scenes in which the women of the court are schooled in deception by Maquerelle. Nor is it necessary to probe far beneath the commonplace fear of cuckoldry to detect in the text a pervasive revulsion from the female physiognomy and a rapt fear of the mortality of the ¯esh: `Do you know Doctor Plaster-face? by this curd, he is the most exquisite in forging of veins, sprightening of eyes, dyeing of hair, sleeking of skins, blushing of cheeks, sur¯ing of breasts, blanching and bleaching of teeth, that ever made an old lady gracious by torchlight' (ii.iv.29±34). Around this central parade of masculine anxiety and fear of the feminine revolves a whole constellation of staple hysterical symptoms. Most of them are focused in the person of Malevole, but they refuse to restrict themselves to the protagonist and end up infecting the entire play. The splitting of Altofronto into his latent normal self

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and his deranged double, who appropriates the `extremity of a malcontent' (i.iii.1±2) to discharge the rage he would otherwise be impotent to utter, enacts the hysteric's traumatic division into the self marooned in the present and the self immured in the past. As the other characters make plain from the start, moreover, to be a malcontent is to adopt an accepted posture, to exhibit a fashionable style of disaffection ®shed straight from the local symptom pool. The part of Malevole demands an exorbitant performance of alienation impressive enough to win the applause of the victims of his abuse: Pietro prides himself on being berated by `a monster, more discontent than Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence', whose `appetite is unsatiable as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven' (i.ii.18±21). Altofronto's duplication of identity is mirrored by Pietro's impersonation of the Hermit of the Rock and redoubled in the play's ®nal scene, in which Malevole dons a further disguise to dance in the masque of Mercury and Altofronto reveals the actor behind his role in the closing lines (v.vi.165±7). The hysteric's resort to a paralysed state of mute immobility ®nds its parallel in the scene where Malevole pretends to be a corpse, `poisoned with an empty box' (v.iv.88), a pretence which is replicated in the simulated deaths of Ferneze (whose fake demise is heralded by a sequence of dumb shows) and Pietro. Like the release of real death, the solace of death's own double, sleep, is denied to Malevole, whose subjection to `the mother' condemns his daylight hours to be plagued by the `dreams, dreams, visions, fantasies, chimeras, imaginations, tricks, conceits' (i.iii.55±6) that belong to the night, and his nights to be spent on the rack of insomnia: In night all creatures sleep; Only the malcontent, that 'gainst his fate Repines and quarrels ± alas, he's goodman tell-clock! His sallow jaw-bones sink with wasting moan; Whilst others' beds are down, his pillow's stone. (iii.ii.10±14)

Once again, not surprisingly, Malevole's surrogates exhibit similar symptoms: Pietro's guilty dream life threatens to intrude upon his daily life when `the strength of fantasy' (iv.ii.27) makes him talk in his sleep; and Mendoza greets Altofronto's victorious unmasking with the cry: `What strange delusions mock / Our senses? Do I dream? or have I dreamt / This two days' space? Where am I?' (v.vi.117±19). Further manifestations of hysteria emerge in the play's images of

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incarceration and its disgust at the basic human facts of ingestion, regurgitation, and excretion. For Malevole, the world is `the only region of death . . . the cruellest prison of men, out of the which none pass without paying their dearest breath for a fee' (iv.iv.27±9), while the role of a ruler is nothing but `A jailer's of®ce to keep men in bonds' (iv.v.120). And Pietro's punishment for his errant spouse, Aurelia, is the prospect of claustrophobic con®nement in his imaginary `cell of shame . . . / Where all at once one reaches, where he stands, / With brows the roof, both walls with both his hands' (iv.v.11, 21±2). Malevole's alimentary obsessions obtrude at every turn, as witness the gusto with which he lists the revolting ingredients of his mock aphrodisiac: `crab's guts baked, distilled ox-pith, the pulverized hairs of a lion's upper-lip, jelly of cock-sparrows, hemonkey's marrow, or powder of fox-stones' (ii.ii.20±2). Less appetizing still is his assurance that he would `rather follow a drunkard, and live by licking up his vomit, than by servile ¯attery' (iv.v.66±8). So compulsive is this particular ®xation that it is pressed into metaphorical service by Malevole to castigate ambitious servility: What pro®t, nay, what nature would keep down, Are heaved to them are minions to a crown. Envious ambition never sates his thirst, Till sucking all, he swells and swells, and bursts.

(i.iv.77±80)

Maquerelle, too, ®nds the perfect analogy for the ambitious in the act of consumption, performed in this case by her favourite dog, who is `so ravenous that what I give he never chaws it, gulps down whole without any relish of what he has, but with a greedy expectation of what he shall have' (v.ii.52±5). Malevole's deputy debunker, Passarello, proves so keen to vomit literally ± `why, then, will I spew up your lord again with this fool's ®nger' (v.ii.29±30) ± that the malcontent is obliged to prevent him by drinking the health of Maquerelle despite himself. The play's engrossment in the discourse of abjection reaches its nadir in Malevole's vision of the earth as a cosmic cesspit: `'tis but the draught wherein the heavenly bodies discharge their corruption; the very muck-hill on which the sublunary orbs cast their excrements' (iv.v.111±14). It is the idiosyncratic language of the malcontent and the play named after him that offers the most arresting testimony to the nature of the syndrome that consumes them both. Anacoluthon and

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aposiopesis run riot through the speeches of Malevole, as thoughts stumble abruptly into incoherence or are left hanging in mid ¯ight: p i e t r o. How dost spend the night? I hear thou never sleep'st. m a l e v ol e. O, no, but dream the most fantastical . . . O heaven! O fubbery, fubbery! (i.iii.45±7) p i e t r o. Prithee, be; I love much misery, and be thou son to me. m a l e v ol e. Because you are an usurping duke ± Enter b i l i o s o (To Bilioso) Your lordship's well returned from Florence.

(iv.v.74±7)

These tricks of speech are by no means restricted to Malevole. Any of the play's principal characters could be summoned to illustrate Marston's mastery of a `highly original dramatic language, incorporating the ellipses, interruptions, sidetrackings, stutterings and syntactical ambiguities of real speech'.28 The protagonist's cleft personality forces him to evince another exemplary feature of the hysteric's linguistic repertoire: speaking in tongues. This proclivity is most obvious when Malevole literally switches languages to cite one of his many Latin sententiae, such as `stultorum plena sunt omnia' (v.iii.44±5), or to indulge in his favourite, predictably phallic, Italian expletive, `Catso!' (i.iii.106). But it is also more subtly apparent in the ease with which he slips out of the measured blank verse and rhyming couplets of Altofronto into the heated colloquial prose of his DoppelgaÈnger: `bilioso entering, malevole shifteth his speech' (i.iv.43 s.d.). As the malcontent himself points out, multilingualism is a sure sign of malign possession: `Who dost think to be the best linguist of our age?' asks Ferrardo. `Phew! the Devil', replies Malevole. `Let him possess thee, he'll teach thee to speak all languages most readily and strangely' (i.iii.28±31). In which case, the whole play must be possessed by the same malevolent spirit, since its voice, as critics have often remarked, is a veritable cacophony of styles, idioms, and theatrical dialects. Editors of the text have been driven to distraction by its habit of confounding the distinction between verse and prose within the same speech, as in iii.ii.25±47. In The Malcontent, however, to quote G. K. Hunter, `Verse often grows out of prose as a point of view crystallizes out of disordered facts and then breaks down into prose again when passion overcomes the ordered vision of verse.'29 The style of this `bewilderingly active play', as Bernard Harris notes, refuses to stand

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still: `Its language shifts from philosophic re¯ection to bawdy abuse, from pathetic description and virtuous sentiment to serious invective.'30 As far as The Malcontent's diction and pitch are concerned, consistency and stability are likewise the last things Marston has in mind: `there is a restless neologizing and a refusal to live inside any norm of what modern linguists call ``register'' ± socio-stylistic tone'.31 The same restless spirit demands above all a theatrical strategy designed, in Michael Shapiro's words, `to keep the audience off-balance, to dazzle it with contrarieties',32 by jumping from music to dialogue to dumb-show and masque, from comedy to tragedy to satire or burlesque, from song to sword®ghts to dancing and direct address. The direct addressing of the audience in the `Epilogus' is one of the most blatant of the many devices in The Malcontent that `continually and insistently draw attention to their own identity as theatrical devices and disrupt any stable surrender of belief '.33 The most striking of all is the Induction ± itself succeeded by the `Imperfect Ode' of the `Prologus' ± in which members of the original cast at the Globe (Sly, Sinklo, Burbage, and Condell) pretend to be players discussing with one of the audience the provenance and merits of the play they are about to perform. Even without the Induction, the brazen theatricality of the play proper constitutes a sustained act of estrangement, which denies the spectators the naõÈve grati®cation of being enveloped in the illusion before them. But, in case any of them should be in danger of forgetting either themselves or the scripted status of the unfolding action, the characters can always be relied on to underscore the arti®ce of their language with lines like `Blirt a' rhyme, blirt a' rhyme' (i.iii.89), `I'll give you a simile' (iii.iii.63), or `O do not rand, do not turn player' (iv.iv.4).34 Every switch from blank verse to rhyme or from verse to prose, every aphorism ampli®ed by a couplet, every quotation thrown into Latin relief, and every aside or gibe muttered `TaciteÁ' works subliminally to enhance this effect and con®rm Alexander Leggatt's conclusion that `there is probably no writer of the period who reminds us so persistently that we are in a theater watching a play'.35 To appreciate the intensely re¯exive quality of Marston's `aspera thalia' (as he calls it in the dedication) is crucial to a clear understanding of the play's signi®cance. Malevole is the hysterical hero of a hysterical text, the central embodiment of the syndrome that grips The Malcontent. But, pace Samuel Schoenbaum, neither the

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character nor the play should be twisted into unwitting warrants of their author's own neurosis. However likely it is that Jonson's diagnosis of his rival's disposition in Poetaster hit home, the fact is that The Malcontent, as its title proclaims, is a deliberate dramatization of the condition personi®ed by its protagonist, not an involuntary confession of Marston's possession by `the mother'. The power of the play lies in its grotesque portrait of a whole society rife with hysteria, its knowledge that the malcontent's mentality is not the exception but the norm. Nor is it inappropriate to explain The Malcontent's importance in modern, psychoanalytic terms, not only because hysteria was a condition familiar to Marston and his contemporaries, but also because the play can now be recognized as an uncanny anticipation of a cultural malaise that was merely in its infancy in Marston's time, but which has grown into a rampant ogre in our own. The Malcontent's pre®guration of the mood of late modernity was undoubtedly what made it resonate in the mind of T. S. Eliot, a writer who was no stranger to the symptoms of hysteria, about which he wrote an extraordinary prose poem.36 Eliot's intuition that in The Malcontent Marston is `occupied in saying something else than appears in the literal actions and characters whom he manipulates', something `more real than any of his personages and their action', is an apt response to a drama that is a displaced enactment of a narrative whose reality is located elsewhere. The entire play is a smokescreen of words and deeds thrown up to mask the intolerable truth that Marston cannot utter. Yet the very process of displacement produces effects which excite the suspicion that the play is proceeding `in conformity with the laws of some world that we cannot perceive'. On the surface The Malcontent projects a tragi-comic fantasy of male power and pride triumphantly restored. That fantasy mutates in turn into a case of male hysteria effectively cured, as the redundant Malevole vanishes into the resurgent Duke Altofronto, who promptly dissolves into the actor impersonating both of them. But that reading is eclipsed by the realization that Malevole incarnates the ubiquitous dementia of his world, whose social logic is repeatedly exposed as a baseless fabrication: `there goes but a pair of shears betwixt an emperor and the son of a bagpiper; only the dyeing, dressing, pressing, glossing, makes the difference' (iv.v.116±19). This explicit demolition of the hierarchical framework that supports the plot is reinforced by the implicit impact of The Malcontent's

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metadramatic dimension. The barrage of re¯exive ruses deployed by the play invites the audience to re¯ect on the constructed nature of the reality on which The Malcontent is predicated. But at the same time it exposes the play itself to critique, undercutting its account of that reality by placing the entire script in quotation marks. Hunter has shown how `The whole structure of the play is concerned with speeches, passions, and persuasions which are rendered unreal by a context which highlights their manner rather than their matter.' 37 As a result of this, as Harris demonstrates, `The Malcontent escapes the categories of historical dramatic de®nition not through its author's carelessness or indifference but through artistic necessity; it breaks all the moulds it has assembled, discards all the masks it has assumed.'38 The Malcontent is written in such a way as to unravel its rationale as it proceeds, to cancel the validity of the universe it has fabricated. At its mysterious heart, in other words, beats the hysteria of writing, the anguish captured at that startling moment in the play when the predicament of the author and the plight of his protagonist converge: For as nowadays no courtier but has his mistress, no captain but has his cockatrice, no cuckold but has his horns, and no fool but has his feather; even so, no woman but has her weakness and feather too, no sex but has his ± I can hunt the letter no further ± [Aside] O God, how loathsome this toying is to me! (v.iii.38±43)

To take the full measure of this passage, we need to enlist the de®nition of hysteria developed by Slavoj ZÏizÏek with a little help from Lacan. `In the last resort', asks ZÏizÏek, `what is hysteria if not precisely the effect and testimony of a failed interpellation; what is the hysterical question if not an articulation of the incapacity of the subject to ful®l the symbolic identi®cation, to assume fully and without restraint the symbolic mandate?'39 For ZÏizÏek, `Hysteria is not some kind of private psychological state',40 but the state of perpetual discontentment to which the individual subject is consigned by the very structure of capitalism. Capitalism is obliged by its nature to breed an insatiable demand and subjects who can never ®nd satisfaction in the roles that reality assigns them. Consequently, `To say that the structure of capitalism is hysterical is just to say that this failure of identi®cation is built into it, as was ®rst perceived by Max Weber in his study of the Protestant ethic.'41 Altofronto's sudden halting of his hunt for the next alliterative letter and his

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revulsion from his role as Malevole mimic Marston's failure to identify with himself as a dramatist and his tormented relationship to the act of writing. Right from the outset, as T. F. Wharton has shown, the man Henslowe dubbed `mr maxton the new poete' was torn between a ferocious yearning for fame and a destructive disdain for his art and his audience.42 The nation's `Furor Poeticus' (as he was nicknamed in The Return from Parnassus) was compelled by his demons to stage pyrotechnical displays of extravagant invective and theatrical virtuosity; yet at the same time he was forced by a visceral scorn for his craft and his critics to recoil in disgust from his role as writer, and abandon himself and his work, as he did The Scourge of Villanie, `To Detraction' and `To euerlasting Obliuion'.43 For Marston, writing The Malcontent meant locking himself into language, constraining himself to `hunt the letter' through `the mean passage of a history' (Induction, 52±3), heedless of the urge encapsulated in his cry, `I would fain leave the paper' and his horror of imprisoning the actor's living voice in print (`To the Reader', 25±8). Small wonder that Eliot perceived in him `a writer who is, for some obscure reason, wrought to a pitch of exasperation'.44 The reason for that exasperation, however, should no longer be obscure. Nor should the reason why the vision of a playwright who was plainly `the most innovative and experimental of the theatre writers' of his day,45 `one of the strangest as well as one of the most modern of the Elizabethans',46 has found few disposed to applaud it. Marston's genius, and his curse, was to voice through his drama and enshrine in The Malcontent the inherent hysteria of capitalist culture at the point when that culture had just coalesced in its early modern form. Four centuries on, the hysteria of late capitalist culture has reached epidemic proportions, as Elaine Showalter's Hystories attests, and Marston's revelation has become far more dif®cult to repress. In the ®gure of the malcontent, whose `appetite is unsatiable as the grave', who is sentenced to dwell `as far from any content as from heaven', we behold not only the destiny of the writer who created him, but also the hysterical fate of every subject forged by the western culture of consumption. To recognize that fate is to realize that what ®nally commands us in such a culture is what Marston always knew that he was driven by: the desire for death, the hunger for the merciful extinction that stills the ache of appetite at last. `Oblivioni Sacrum': in the epitaph carved upon his tombstone in the Middle Temple Church, Marston etched the epitaph of capitalism itself.

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1 T. F. Wharton, The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994), pp. 105±6. 2 Keith Sturgess (ed.), The Malcontent and Other Plays, World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. viii. 3 T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 3rd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), pp. 229±30. 4 Ibid., p. 229. 5 Ibid., p. 232. 6 Textual references are to G. K. Hunter (ed.), The Malcontent, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1975). For evidence of Webster's authorship of the Induction, see pp. xlvi±liii of this edition. 7 Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 230. 8 Samuel Schoenbaum, `The Precarious Balance of John Marston', PMLA 67 (1952), 1069±78; 1070. 9 Ibid., 1077. 10 Ibid., 1078. 11 Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 227. 12 Schoenbaum, `Precarious Balance', 1070. 13 See, for instance, the remarks on Marston's `fragmented and hysterical style' and `hysterical iterations' in Hunter (ed.), Malcontent, pp. lxxv, lxxvi. 14 Sigmund Freud, `Totem and Taboo', in The Origins of Religion, trans. James Strachey, ed. Albert Dickson, The Pelican Freud (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1985), vol. iii, p. 130. 15 The Tragedy of King Lear, ed. Jay L. Halio, New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1992). 16 Tom Cain (ed.), Poetaster, Revels Plays (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995). 17 The most notorious instance is dismissed by Eliot as `the absurd dialogue in Italian in which Antonio and Mellida suddenly express themselves in Act iv, Sc.i' (Selected Essays, p. 224). Hunter suggests that Marston's Italian mother `might be taken to remind us of the romantic dream of an identi®cation with the exotic and the self-ful®lling which is also a continuously present element in Marston's art' (Hunter (ed.), Malcontent, p. xx). In this connection it is worth recalling Swinburne's view that `Marston is in more points than one the most Italian of our dramatists' (The Age of Shakespeare (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908), p. 119). 18 For illuminating readings of King Lear in the light of the protagonist's attack of hysterica passio, see CoppeÂlia Kahn, `The Absent Mother in King Lear', in Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (eds.), Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,

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1986), pp. 33±49, and Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, `Hamlet' to `The Tempest' (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), chapter 5: `Suffocating Mothers in King Lear', pp. 103±29. Discoveries, 957±8, in Ben Jonson, ed. Herford and Simpson, vol. viii, p. 593. Linda Ruth Williams, Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the Literary Subject (London: Edward Arnold, 1995), p. 4. Quoted ibid., p. 5. Both quoted in Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (London: Picador, 1997), p. 7. Williams, Critical Desire, p. 18. Quoted ibid., p. 9 (italics in the original). Showalter, Hystories, p. 15. Ibid., p. 69. Quoted ibid., p. 44. Macdonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill (eds.), The Selected Plays of John Marston (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. xvii±xviii. Hunter (ed.), The Malcontent, p. lxxviii. Bernard Harris (ed.), The Malcontent, New Mermaids (London: Benn, 1967), p. xvi. Hunter (ed.), Malcontent, p. lxxiv. Quoted in Wharton, Critical Fall, p. 79. Ibid., p. 66. For a fuller account of stylistic self-consciousness in Marston, see Elizabeth M. Yearling, ` ``Mount Tufty Tamburlaine'': Marston and Linguistic Excess', Studies in English Literature 20 (1980), 257±69. Quoted in Wharton, Critical Fall, pp. 73±4. `Hysteria', in T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909±1962 (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 34. Hunter (ed.), Malcontent, p. lxxx. Harris (ed.), Malcontent, p. xx. Slavoj ZÏizÏek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, 1989), p. 113. Peter Osborne (ed.), A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 32. Ibid., p. 33. See Wharton, Critical Fall, pp. 1±17. Arnold Davenport (ed.), The Poems of John Marston (Liverpool University Press, 1961), pp. 95, 175. Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 224. Sturgess (ed.), Malcontent and Other Plays, p. xxv. Harris (ed.), Malcontent, p. xx.

chapter 9

`The Dutch Courtesan' and the pro®ts of translation David Pascoe

So to this defective edition (since all translations are reputed femalls, delivered at second hand; and I in this serve but as Vulcan, to hatchet this Minerva from that Iupiters bigge braine).1

Dedicating his 1603 translation of Montaigne's Essayes to his main patrons (Lucie, Countesse of Bedford, and her mother, Lady Anne Harrington) John Florio compared himself to Vulcan, the `lame Lord of ®re' and god of artisans, who had delivered Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, in a singularly unconventional fashion. Breaking open the skull of his father, Jupiter, with a ®nely crafted axe, Vulcan allowed Minerva to be `brought foorth without a mother' (as Samuel Daniel, Florio's brother-in-law, put it), fully armed and ready for battle.2 At ®rst sight, this `Epistle Dedicatorie' might show Florio exhibiting false modesty about his own achievement, since, far from being completed at a stroke, the project to translate the essays had taken up several years, having been commissioned by the Bedfords in 1599. It seems that Florio, having completed the translation of an essay at the behest of Sir Edward Wotton, was reluctant to continue, but that Lady Anne, having seen a draft, urged him to press on. Among the prefatory material of the Essayes is a sonnet written on the occasion of `M. Florio's answere to the Lady of Bedford's Invitation to this worke', by `Il Candido' ± Dr Matthew Gwinne, who had also traced to their sources all the quotations from the classics which spangle Montaigne's work ± instructing his great friend to `Attend the vertue of Minervas writtes': after all, `who would resty rest, when Shee bids rise?' (The Essayes of Montaigne (subsequently EM ) xxiv). The comparison with the great craftsman gives Florio the liberty, then, to suggest that his actions in translating were as simple and straightforward as Vulcan's in breaking open his lustful father's 162

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head.3 The desired object ± Montaigne's Essais ± pre-existed; the process of translation was only a matter of removing it from the vessel which contained it. Florio's sense of translation as liberation is by no means unique; Theo Hermans has observed that, in the Renaissance, translation was frequently de®ned as the removal of something from one vessel and its transferral into another. Indeed the origin of the term `may lie in the Latin term ``transfundere'' '; but he adds: `it is rarely used without suggesting that this ``decanting'' can be done without spilling or loss of quality to the content'.4 Yet despite such a commonplace, the larger context of the myth demands that Florio's comparison deserves closer investigation. According to various versions, Vulcan, having delivered Minerva, falls in love with her, wooing her clumsily with his beautiful objects. She, having vowed never to marry, dismisses his awkward suit, and, anyway, has no need of his artisanship. After this rejection, Vulcan, whose leg was maimed when his father ejected him from heaven, is even more a broken man; and so to console his son, and, simultaneously, to punish Venus for refusing his own attentions, Jupiter bestows on him the goddess of love. However, she soon gets bored with her slow-witted, limping husband, and begins a clandestine affair with Mars. Tipped off by Apollo, Vulcan discovers the couple in ¯agrante delicto, and ¯ings a golden net over them, humiliating them in the eyes of the other gods. Not surprisingly, the marriage falls apart; but many years later, during the Trojan War, Venus returns once more to Vulcan and, using all her wiles, prevails upon him to forge a suit of armour for Aeneas, her son by Anchises. The myth of Vulcan appealed to Marston's ®ery imagination. In the early Certaine Satyres (Satyre v), `Parua magna, magna nulla', Mars' and Venus' dangerous liaison is discovered because Gallus slept, `when he was set to watch / Least Sol or Vulcan should Mauortius catch / In vsing Venus' (123±5). Consequently, `bright Phoebus did great Mars intrap', and `Poore Gallus', the sentry `whilom to Mars so deere', but who neglected his watch, is punished by the god of war, by being `turned to a crowing Chaunteclere' (126±8). Despite the fact that his affair was made public, Mars prospers: Whilst Mars, though all the Gods doe see his sin, And know in what lewd vice he liueth in, Yet is adored still, and magni®ed, And with all honors duly worshipped.

(133±6)

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Perhaps at this stage in his career, Marston, famous for his bellicosity, liked to think that his own name was a vessel for the god of war. A few years later, when Marston next alludes to the myth it is told from the perspective of the cuckold Vulcan, rather than Mars. In Parasitaster, or The Fawn, Hercules reminds Don Zuccone, the `causelessly jealous lord', of the great cuckolds of history: h e r c u l e s You will not be such an ass as Caesar, great Pompey, Lucullus, Anthony, or Cato, and divers other Romans, cuckolds, who all knew it, and yet were ne'er divorced upon't; or like that smith-god Vulcan who, having taken his wife taking, yet was presently appeased, and entreated to make an armour for a bastard of hers, Aeneas. zu cc on e No, the Romans were asses, and thought that a woman might mix her thigh with a stranger wantonly, and yet still love her husband matrimonially. h e r c u l e s As indeed they say many married men lie sometime with strange women, whom, but for the instant use, they abhor. zu cc on e And as for Vulcan, 'twas humanity more then human; such excess of goodness, for my part, shall only belong to the gods. (iv.343±58)

Roman women, emulating the actions of Venus, `mix' with numerous sexual partners, and yet remain wed; similarly, married men go to women whom `they abhor' ± that is to (ab-)whores ± for `instant' grati®cation. Faced with such bed-swerving all round him, Vulcan, in creating armour for Aeneas, showed divine forgiveness. In its combination of classical erudition, rhetorical energy, and sexual frankness this passage is characteristic of the mature Marston; but beyond the salacious details it reveals another aspect of the plays written between 1604 and 1607. For Marston, too, is deliberately adulterating his own work, mixing into it elements drawn from Florio's translation of Montaigne's essay, `Upon Some Verses of Virgill': Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Anthony, Cato, and divers other gallant men were Cuckolds, and knew it, though they made no stirre about it . . . And the God of our Poet, when he surprised one of his companions napping with his wife, was contented but to shame them: . . . And which is more, she becomes a suiter to him in the behalfe of a bastard of hers . . . Which is freely granted her: . . . In truth with an humanity, more then humane. And which excesse of goodnesse by my consent shall onely be left to the Gods. (EM 778±9; iii.v)

It has long been recognized that one of Marston's main sources for the plays written and performed after 1603 was Montaigne. In a

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series of articles at the turn of the century, Charles Crawford ®rst drew attention to the striking similarities between Florio's translation of Montaigne and Marston's drama; and more recently, J. Sainmont and A. Jose Axelrad have identi®ed further debts of origin.5 Yet before we attach to much signi®cance to the relationship with the French essayist, it needs to be remembered that `Marston was attracted by Montaigne's thought no less than by Florio's language, and this is no simple case of plagiarism . . . but the genuine adaptation of source material to the requirements of dramatic form.'6 Gustav Cross sensibly allows for the possibility that Florio's distinctive rendering was at least as much an in¯uence as Montaigne's arguments. After all, if `Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essaies [sic] was one of the most important books in Marston's life',7 then, as Frances Yates observes, it was `such a bad translation that it is nearly an original work; not Montaigne, but Florio's Montaigne'. 8 Marston seems to have been struck by only a handful of the 107 essays, and one above all, `Upon Some Verses of Virgill', on which he drew over twenty times in The Dutch Courtesan, and over a dozen times in The Fawn. In his edition of the latter, David Blostein states that this late work supplies Marston `with passages to illustrate virtually every subject of his ``farrago'' '; and that, following its example, `Marston camou¯ages his shrewd dramaturgical craftsmanship with a leisurely, discursive texture that imitates the process of a mind like Montaigne's recreating itself in wanton and youthful conceits.'9 The play is, therefore, an imitation of a recreation, and could be said to exist, as Florio claims all translations do, at `second hand'. The essay which Marston quarried so often for material orbits around two quotations, the ®rst excerpted from Virgil's Aeneid viii, which presents Vulcan back in the arms of Venus, who is persuading him, with `gentle dalliances and amorous blandishments', to fabricate armour for Aeneas: Dixerat, et niueis hinc atque hinc diua lacertis Cunctantem amplexu molli fouet: ille repente Accepit solitam ¯ammam, notusque medullas Intrauit calor, et labe facta per ossa cucurrit, Non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos . . . ± ea verba loquutus Optatos dedit amplexus, placidumque petiuit. Coniugis infusus gremio per membra soporem.

(EM 764; iii.v)

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Nothing is made sexually explicit, even in the description of the `Snowe-white arm' of Venus embracing Vulcan; the real detail goes in the drawing of the circumstances surrounding the embrace, the fact that he hesitates (`cunctantem'), since, understandably enough, he is reluctant to arm his errant wife's bastard. Yet in that moment of vacillation the lame god is lost, as Venus begins to fondle him, and in reaction, the `solitam ¯ammam', the familiar `wonted ®re', begins to burn now within his loins, as well as in his forge. Before long she will have him in a position that will bring him to declare a willingness to undertake her commission. Montaigne comments coolly that Virgil `depainteth her somewhat stirring for a maritall Venus' [il la peinct un peu bien esmeue pour une Venus maritale]; after all, within the `discrete match' [sage marche] of a marriage contract, `appetites are not commonly so fondling' [les appetits ne se trouent pas si follastres; ils sont sombres et plus mousses]. In other words, she does not behave like a wife; she behaves like a courtesan. This is not a love scene, so much as a transaction; one whose tenderness is carefully calculated, as Virgil makes explicit in the lines which follow, but which, oddly enough, Montaigne omits from his essay: sensit laeta dolis et formae conscia coniunx. tum pater aeterno fatur deuinctus amore: `quid causas petis ex alto? ®ducia cessit quo tibi, diua, mei? similis si cura fuisset, tum quoque fas nobis Teucros armare fuisset; nec pater omnipotens Troiam nec fata uetabant stare decemque alios Priamum superesse per annos. et nunc, si bellare paras atque haec tibi mens est, quidquid in arte mea possum promittere curae, quod ®eri ferro liquidoue potest electro, quantum ignes animaeque ualent, absiste precando uiribus indubitare tuis.' (viii. 392±404 (EM 764; iii.v)

The last part of this speech shows Vulcan losing his composure, as he loses control of his clauses and runs into anacoluthon, giving himself up to the power of the goddess, his errant wife. His verse limps along, as be®ts a god whose legs were broken when he was thrown from heaven by Juno at birth; or a man who has just made love with the goddess of love. By ignoring this speech, Montaigne is attempting to conceal a misrepresentation on his part; he is trying to hide the fact that this liaison can only take place when a husband ignores the wayward behaviour of his wife.10

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Another misrepresentation occurs in the second major quotation in the essay, the extract from Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, which depicts Venus' affair with Mars: belli fera munera Mavors Armipotens regit, in gremium qui saepe tuum se Reiicit, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris: Pascit amore avidos inhians in te Dea visus, Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore. Hunc tu Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto Circumfusa super, suaves ex ore loquelas Funde. (i.33ff. (EM 787; iii.v))

This passage forms part of the invocation to Venus which commences Lucretius' poem, in which she is called upon to lead the struggle against the forces of destruction controlled by her lover, Mars. Montaigne slightly misquotes the passage, and writes `devinctus' [shackled], when Lucretius' verb was `devictus' [conquered]; an understandable enough error, since he was clearly thinking about the Virgilian excerpt he quoted earlier in his essay where Vulcan, in raptures, is described as `tum pater aeterno . . . devinctus amore' [the father Vulcan, shackled by eternal love'] and which, R. O. A. M. Lyne suggests, Virgil deliberately based on the passage from Lucretius: `Even as Vergil describes Venus' overwhelming effect on her husband, he alludes to the most famous of her illicit affairs: behind her principled approach to her husband (if it can be called that) we sense, amusingly, her unprincipled embrace of the god of war.'11 Of course, even though he may not have forgotten the entrapment of Mars and Venus during their earlier affair, Vulcan, in the throes of passion, seems oblivious to the fact that he has been metaphorically shackled and conquered by Venus. Again, however, Montaigne's translation of the text into his own essay is resolutely unfaithful to the sense of the original, for, just after the excerpt breaks off, Lucretius makes explicit the reasons for Venus' actions: `petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem' [and for your Romans, illustrious one, craving quiet peace]. This, of course, means that Mars is in the same position as Vulcan, the very person he has cuckolded; in both liaisons Venus has sold herself in order to pro®t from a lover. Consequently, what is at issue ± and what Montaigne tries to excise from this essay ± is an act of prostitution. Finally, though, he admits:

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Might it not be Venus her selfe, who so cunningly enhanced the market of her ware, by the brokage or panderizing of the lawes? knowing how sottish and tastelesse a delight it is, were it not enabled by opinion, and endeared by dearnes? (EM 786; iii.v)

Florio's `cunningly' for `®nement', and `panderizing' for `maquerelage' gives the game away; everything has a price, even carnal knowledge within marriage. The practical artisan Vulcan, seduced against his better instincts by the courtesan Venus, ®nds himself entranced by `the market of her ware', and as the language of the market (`dearnes') coincides with terms of affection (`endeared'), he undertakes a commission which can only damage his reputation. Furthermore, Montaigne uses the myth of Venus to suggest that, in the frame of art, erotic experience is more concentrated than life itself, representing an ideal but unfaithful translation of our selves: the power and might of this God, are found more quick and lively in the shadowe of the Poesie, then in their owne essence . . . It representeth a kinde of aire more lovely then love it selfe. Venus is not so faire, nor so alluring all naked, quick and panting, as she is here in Virgill. (EM 764; iii.v)

The suggestion is that Virgil's poetry not only distorts amour, but also demonstrates how art isolates us from our desires. Clearly, in translating the passage, Florio also recognized this: the craft of `poesie' may fabricate and embellish, but it also necessarily casts a `shadowe', an appalling darkness, wherever it exists. He ampli®es Montaigne's simple phrase, `peinture de la poesie', to suggest that verse, in representing the world as `more lovely then love itself ', detracts from the original; and hence, for Florio, translation is `a shadowe of a substance' (EM xxii). As Lawrence Kritzman puts it: `there is no more continuity for a writer spatially and temporally cut off from past satisfaction than there is referential veracity in the poetic description of the nature of love'.12 Consequently, in Virgil, Venus is translated from the goddess of love into a `naked, quick and panting' (toute nue, et vive, et haletante) woman, desperate enough to offer her body for gain. The value of translation in Renaissance England was that it allowed the wisdom embedded in other languages to be imported into the new vernacular; as Marston put it, `Translators . . . doe striue to bring / That stranger language to our vulgar tongue' (Certaine Satyres iv, 42±3). Beyond this, it also allowed the writer `to publish [his] discursive ability without having to identify the auth-

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ority of the text as his own'; that is, he could distance himself from the content of the work he was translating.13 Such an exchange necessarily blurred the division between imitation and theft, as Patricia Parker observes: `Accusations of translation as pilfering were indeed frequent in the sixteenth century; and they increased along with the articulation of notions of authorship, authority and intellectual property, in a century that witnessed the shift from early humanist doctrines of faithful copying or imitatio to the development of the more modern sense of plagiarism.'14 Typical of the bookish dramatist's reaction to the proliferation of translation was Ben Jonson. When in the quarto Every Man in His Humour, Matheo, the poetaster seeking patronage, is ®nally confronted with evidence of his plagiarism of a passage from Daniel, he defends himself: `I translated that out of a book called Delia' (v.iii). In Poetaster, Jonson again associates translation with theft: `I could tell you he were a translater. / I know the authors from whence he ha's stole'; while earlier, the arraignment of Demetrius and Crispinus accuses them of `selfe-love, arrogancy, impudence, rayling, ®lching by translation, & c.' (v. iii). Florio was aware of the poor reputation of the practice, and in his `Epistle to the curteous Reader' of his Essayes, he mounted a defence of translators: `What doe the best then, but gleane after others harvest? borrow their colours, inherite their possessions? What do they but translate? perhaps, usurpe? at least collect?' (EM xxi). There are several possibilities touched upon here, ranging from gathering leftovers, through sheltering under the arms of a benevolent patron, to legal inheritance, and, ®nally, to usurpation, to receiving what is due in a suit of paternity. But Florio left untranslated the key phrase which preceded these possibilities: `Translata pro®cit'. At ®rst glance, `translata' here refers to metaphors; but clearly Florio would soon come to appreciate just how pro®table translated things could be.15 At the same time, however, there were basic issues to grasp: every language hath it's Genius and inseparable forme; without Pythagoras his Metempsychosis it cannot rightly be translated. The Tuscan altiloquence, The Venus of the French, the sharpe state of the Spanish, the strong signi®cancy of the Dutch cannot from heere be drawne to life. The sense may keepe forme; the sentence is dis®gured; the ®nenesse, ®tnesse, featnesse diminished: as much as artes nature is short of natures arte, a picture of a body, a shadowe of a substance. (EM xxi.i, `To the curteous Reader')

Florio argues that the translated sense ± meaning ± is akin to a soul that is passed from one verbal body to another, in the Pythagorean process of metempsychosis or transmigration of the souls. As Theo

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Hermans demonstrates, this idea was common at the time, and meant that language thus becomes the vessel; and the practice of translation, then, amounts to the continual reshaping of the container which can only ever be `the shadow of the substance' of the original.16 The dying cadence of that last phrase may have originated in a poem by Florio's friend and admirer, Nicholas Breton, where, it is claimed, death will make one `a shadow of a substance'; but it also pre®gures the description in `Upon Some Verses of Virgill' of the way in which `the shadowe of poetrie' (EM 764; iii.v) misrepresented Venus, translating her into something more or less than herself.17 Behind the easy fricatives of `®nenesse, ®tnesse, featnesse' it is clear that, in starker terms, if translation is the relation between shadow and substance, it also involves the relations between more and less, between pro®t and loss. An early essay ± one of the few to which Montaigne made no revision after 1580 ± traces this fact of life un¯inchingly, and from the point of view of both economics and biology examines the principle that `The Pro®t of One Man is the Dammage of Another'. Florio renders the key passage as follows: no man pro®teth but by the losse of others: by which reason a man should condemne all manner of gaine. The Merchant thrives not but by the licentiousness of youth; the Husbandman by dearth of corne; the Architect but by the ruine of houses; the Lawyer by suits and controversies betweene men: Honour itselfe, and practice of religious Ministers, is drawne from our death and vices. No Physitian delighteth in the health of his own friend, saith the ancient Greeke Comike . . . our inward desires are for the most part nourished and bred in us by the losse and hurt of others . . . Nature doth not gainesay herselfe in this, concerning her generall policie: for Physitians hold, that The birth, increase, and augmentation of every thing, is the alteration and corruption of another. (EM 73; i.xxi)

Florio's translation is unfaithful in several respects; `licentiousness' is not as strong as `debauche ', though he perhaps realized this as, in his address `To the curteous Reader', he later singled out `debauching', as an `uncouthe' term; and in the phrase `la cherte des bleds' Montaigne is not talking of a `dearth' of corn, but rather its high price. Finally, as if stuck for possibilities, Florio simply lifts the load-bearing terms `augmentation', `alteration' and `corruption' over from the French original as if to clarify the points Montaigne was making: if each generation augments the last, and every new birth is an act of alteration of the previous, then translated texts, even though they seem to exist

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independently of their begetters (like Minerva), also suffer from the same process of corruption. Consider, in this regard, Cocledemoy's formal mock-encomium in praise of bawds: Again, whereas no trade or vocation pro®teth but by the loss and displeasure of another ± as the merchant thrives not but by the licentiousness of giddy and unsettled youth, the lawyer, but by the vexation of his client, the physician but by the maladies of his patient ± only my smoothgummed bawd lives by others' pleasure, and only growes rich by others' rising, O merciful gain! O righteous income! (The Dutch Courtesan i.ii.53±62)

Marston draws heavily on Florio's Montaigne, but once again adulterates its message. The original argued that `a man should condemne all manner of gaine'; in the words of Marston's `witty city jester', however, such gain is `merciful'. Furthermore, `loss' is altogether less grievous, and associated in Marston's text with `displeasure' rather than `hurt', and Florio's general and humane `man' is now replaced by the impersonal commerce of `trade or vocation'; while, in an addition to the original sequence, youth is sensationally recalled as `giddie, and unsettled'. The activities of `Husbandman' and `Architect' are omitted by Cocledemoy, and the `Lawyer' is not associated with vexated clients, perhaps an experience familiar from the vocation of Marston's father; but unlike Florio's Montaigne, the dramatist cannot countenance the possibility that friendship might ever be at issue in the treatment of `maladies', which, given what follows, must include venereal diseases contracted on the job. At this point, Marston goes far beyond the original list and includes the bawd in his de®nition of `trade or vocation', though to do so was something of a clicheÂ. Dekker's The Deade Terme bluntly observes that the `setting up of a whore-house is now as common as the setting up of a trade: yea, and it goes under that name'.18 Cocledemoy earlier addresses Mary Faugh as my `blue-toothed patroness' (The Dutch Courtesan i.ii.4±5); and here Marston in¯ates Florio's translation in order to suggest that, uniquely, the prostitute (and, by implication, the ambitious writer) thrives by the pleasure rather than the displeasure of her patrons; they can enlarge their `income' by receiving commission from those whose `rising' they facilitate, and whose standing they secure. Behind all the Innish innuendo, there is a potent sense of the connection between writing and prostitution, which emerges more scabrously at the opening of Marston's Scourge of Villanie:

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david pascoe Must naught but clothes, and images of men But sprightles truncks, be Iudges of my pen? Nay then come all, I prostitute my Muse, For all the swarme of Idiots to abuse.

(In Lectores prorsus indignos, 59±62)

Marston imagines the patrons of his work as mere `images of men'; disembodied ®gures such as the gallant who features so memorably in `A Cynicke Satyre' (Scourge of Villanie vii). Super®cial, created through art, `nought but clothes, & senting sweet perfume' (41), he is `sprightlesse, sence or soule hath none' (44). And to be `sprightlesse' was to be nothing more than a `trunck', a container waiting to be ®lled. At his wildest moments, Marston seemed to associate prostitution with such empty vessels, as in Sophonisba, when Syphax leers at the heroine: Do, strike thy breast; know, being dead, I'll use, With highest lust of sense thy senseless ¯esh, And even then thy vexeÁd soul shall see, Without resistance, thy trunk prostitute, Unto our appetite.

(iv.i.57±61)

Prostitution (like translation) necessarily consigned individuality to a `trunk', a container to be circulated within the marketplace and ®lled.19 The idea emerges in Florio's translation of Montaigne's conclusion to the essay on Virgil: `I ®nde that love is nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired subject. Nor Venus that good huswife, other, then a tickling delight of emptying ones seminary vessels' [`descharger ses vases'] (EM 791; iii.v). Rather than a `huswife', Venus is here, the `indulgence of sexual desire' (OED i, 2). Reading such a passage, one can appreciate that Montaigne `is largely responsible for shaping, and even giving expression to, Marston's dramatization of man's attitude to certain bodily functions';20 more precisely, Florio's translation allowed him to consider the ways in which individuals (as well as texts) could be translated into vessels. `For many men, scared by the potentially engul®ng force of passion or the body, the attraction of prostitution was the controlled return of their own bodies.'21 In practice, this had the effect of protecting the true identity, allowing the courtesan and the client to remain disengaged from each other even as they `mixed thighs'. As Montaigne puts it, in the essay `Upon Some Verses of Virgill': `They sell but their bodyes, their willes cannot be put to sale' (EM 796; iii.v), an idea

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which emerges into Freevill's `They sell their bodies; do not better persons sell their souls?' (The Dutch Courtesan i.ii.151). At the heart of the play, we see how even a well-bred and bookish young man such as Malheureux is won over by such arguments, and seeks to embrace Venus. Outraged early on by his friend's attitudes, he talks of visiting a brothel only `to behold an impudent prostitution' (i.i.183±4); later this is balanced by Freevill's description of illicit sexual activity as the `prostituted impudence of things' (v.i.79). The sense is that prostitution works outwards, to contaminate `things' even as inert as Malheureux, and proceeds by making people oblivious to themselves: f r a n c e s c h i n a. O let me forget it; it makes us both despair. m a l h e u r e u x . Dear soul, what vow? f r a n c e s c h i n a. Ha! good morrow, gentle sir; endeavour to forget me, as I must be enforced to forget all men. (ii.ii.198±200)

Montaigne was especially fascinated by the means by which we come to forget ourselves: `The worst estate of man, is where he loseth the knowledge and government of himselfe' (EM 299; ii.ii). That observation was made in an essay `On Drunkenness'; but `the acte of generation' (EM 762; iii.v), too, was a form of corruption and adulteration which led to such loss. Montaigne claimed: there is neither Merchant, Lawier, Souldier, or Church-man, but will leave his accounts, forsake his client, quit his glory, and neglect his function, to follow this other businesse? And the burden-bearing porter, souterly cobbler, and toilefull labourer, all harassed, all besmeared, and all bemoiled, through travel, labour and [trudging], will forget all, to please himselfe with this pleasing sport. (EM 774; iii.v)

Marston, too, realized in a way that few other dramatists did that Jacobean theatre had become an activity in which people were made to forget together in order to follow the `pleasing sport' within the playhouses: characters in plays forgot themselves and their responsibilities, to become revengers, or fools, or perverts; actors forgot themselves on stage, and so a child could play a king, or a grown man a princess; and audiences in the yards of the public theatres forgot their class, their origins, and their morals, to become promiscuous. In an important essay, Jean Howard suggests that a group of city comedies performed between 1603 and 1605, and including The Dutch Courtesan, exhibit `widely-shared anxieties about the city as a

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place of mixing and mingling where boundaries are easily blurred between wife and whore, native and stranger, the household and the marketplace'.22 The `Fabulae Argumentum', the short argument printed before Marston's play, provides an explicit version of the recurring theme: `The difference bewixt the love of a courtesan and a wife is the full scope of the play, which, intermixed with the deceits of a witty city jester, ®lls up the comedy.' That `difference' ± or rather, the lack of it ± provided the `scope' of Montaigne's essay; but Marston is deliberately ambiguous, for `love of ' could either mean the abstract love felt by a man for a courtesan and a wife, or it could reverse the situation to announce the woman as lover. The play, then, might not simply concern itself with Freevill's and Malheureux's desires, but could also mix in the attitudes of women, both wives and courtesans, towards the men. Howard points out that the term `courtesan' was Venetian in origin, and denoted `a woman of pleasure noted for her conversation, beauty, ®ne manners and artful entertainment of clients'.23 Translated into London, such women, perceived to `have no landes to live upon but their legges', were desirable precisely because they were foreign; their bodies, imported from another country into early modern England, allowed them to negotiate new identities for themselves.24 In some crucial respects, they were akin to a pornographic text, such as those by Aretine which were `translated' in 1584; hence, `No new edition of drabbs comes out, / But seene and allow'd by Luxurios snout' (Scourge of Villanie xi, 140±1).25 Such an `edition' may either refer to a new translation of Venetian pornography, commissioned by gallants, or a newly arrived mistress. Either possibility implies that the livelihood of the courtesan roughly corresponds to the book trade, in that both prostitute themselves to an eager public, such as is represented by Luxurio.26 The newes he tells you, is of some new ¯esh, Lately broke yp, spanne new, hote piping fresh; The curtesie he showes you, is some morne To giue you Venus fore her smock be on. (SV xi, 148±51)

Venus here, as in Montaigne, is shown `fore her smock be on'; such a `curtesie' lay only in the realm of the `curtesan', such as Marston's Dutch example, Franceschina, who promises `Ick sall make de most of you, dat courtesy may' (ii.ii.67±8). Such courtesy, as Mary Faugh reminds her, implies that she has

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been `acquainted with the Spaniard, Don Skirtoll; with the Italian Master Beieroane; with the Irish Lord, Sir Patrick; with the Dutch merchant, Haunce Herkin Glukin Skellam Flapdragon; and specially with the greatest French; and now lastly with this English ± yet in my conscience an honest gentleman' (ii.ii.18±24). Her name announces her promiscuity, obviously alluding to the horny maidservant in the commedia dell'arte; but once more, Marston may be drawing on Florio, for in his Anglo-Italian dictionary, A World of Wordes (1598) it was stated that the masculine root Francese meant `French, a french-man'; while the verb Francesare meant `to infect with the french-pox'. Even in her name, then, Marston would have heard the very country and language of Montaigne (indubitably one of `the greatest French'), but also a fearful venereal disease. Furthermore, the list of nationalities with which she has been `acquainted' precisely echoes the lost of languages Florio set out in his address `To the curteous Reader': `The Tuscan altiloquence, The Venus of the French, the sharpe state of the Spanish, the strong signi®cancy of the Dutch' (EM xxii). But her grasp of each of these tongues is not suf®ciently strong, so that, as M. L. Wine observes, her own language becomes `a helter-skelter of Germanic, French, Italian, as well as pure English pronunciation, added to somewhat conventional grammatical errors'; while Jean E. Howard goes further to suggest that `when she talks she is a monster of deformity, a hybrid creature who masters no one language but roils about in a mixture of many'.27 And yet her `strong signi®cancy' has meant that, like a translator, `in this complicated market, Franceschina has found a way to overcome national boundaries and turn a pro®t'.28 Before taking Malheureux to bed with her, she promises: No, no, I'll make you chew your pleasure vit love: De more degrees and steps, de more delight, De more endeareÁd is de pleasure height

(v.i.33±5)

As a `learned wanton' who `proceed[s] by art' (v.i.36) ± `the Venus of the French' (EM xxii), as it were ± she has imported Florio's translation of Montaigne's observations `Upon Some Verses of Virgill' into the marketing of her trade. Hence, the original reads, `The more steps and degree there are: the more delight and honour is there on the top' (EM 795; iii.v); and while her `endeareÁd' was one of the `uncouth

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terms' for which Florio apologized to his readers (EM xxiii), he nevertheless used it to describe Venus selling herself: enhancing the price of the place, we raise the price and endeare the desire of the conquest. Might it not be Venus her selfe, who so cunningly enhanced the market of her ware, by the brokage or panderizing of the lawes? knowing how sottish and tastelesse a delight it is, were it not enabled by opinion, and endeared by dearnes? (EM 786; iii.v)

Only Cocledemoy fully understands the real cost, and the provenance, of Franceschina. At the beginning of Act iv, scene iii, he enters leading the melancholy courtesan: cocl ede moy. Come, cacafuego, Frank o' Frank Hall! Who, who, ho! Excellent! Ha, here's a plump-rumped wench, with a breast softer then a courtier's tongue, an old lady's gums, or an old man's mentula. My ®ne rogue ± f r a n c e s c h i n a. Pah, you poltroon! cocl ede moy. Goody ®st, ¯umpum pumpum! Ah, my ®ne wagtail, thou art as false, as prostituted, and adulterate, as some translated manuscript. Buss, fair whore, buss! f r a n c e s c h i n a. God's sacrament, pox! cocl ede moy. Hadamoy key, dost thou frown, medianthon teukey? Nay look here. Numeron key, silver blithefor cany, os cany goblet: us key ne moy blegefoy oteeston pox on you, gosling! f r a n c e s c h i n a. By me fait, dis bin very ®ne langage. Ick sall bush ye now. Ha, be garzon, vare had you dat plate? cocl ede moy. Hedemoy key, get you gone, punk rampant, key, common uptail. (Dutch Courtesan iv.iii.1±20)

Keen for sex with this courtesan, but unable to afford her, Cocledemoy is attempting to buy her with a display of `very ®ne langage', designed to `dazzle Franceschina into bed with him';29 when this ploy fails comes the accusation that she is `as false, as prostituted, and adulterate as some translated manuscript'. Earlier, Mary Faugh was described by Freevill as the `preface or exordium' to his `wench' Franceschina (i.ii.70±1). Now, though, Marston is pushing the cliche of courtesan as text, as an `edition of drabbs', in a new direction, thanks to the `Epistle Dedicatorie' of Montaigne's Essayes, in which, just before he compares himself to Vulcan, Florio tells the Bedfords that `all translations are reputed femalls, delivered at second hand' (EM xv). The terms are signi®cant: `reputed' is strangely ambiguous, hovering between a verb denoting common acceptance, and an adjective, carrying a sense of fame and

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notoriety; while `second hand', as well as announcing the vicarious nature of translations, has to admit that, as such, since they have been used, they can never be pristine. Florio is even more explicit in his address `To the curteous Reader', where he openly compares translation to prostitution: Yea but Learning cannot be too common, and the commoner the better. Why but who is not jealous, his Mistresse should be so prostitute? Yea but this Mistresse is like ayre, ®re, water, the more breathed the clearer; the more extended the warmer; the more drawne the sweeter. It were inhumanitie to coope her up. (EM xx)

Clearly the `translated manuscript' must derive from Florio; just like Minerva, `Learning', in the form of translation, needs to be released from the vessel which `coope[s] her up', so that, like three of the four elements, it can be `breathed', `extended', and `drawne'. But the connection made by Marston is not just to the prefatory material of the Essayes, but also to that great text which played so much on his mind from the moment he ®rst read it in translation: `Upon Some Verses of Virgill'. In it, Vulcan was naturally `jealous' of Venus, but when requested by her to hammer out armour for Aeneas, his `humanity more than human' (The Fawn iv. 356) permitted him to countenance the fact that his wife was `prostitute'. When his `®ne langage' fails, Cocledemoy, whose very name incorporates a cuckold's embarrassment at the hands of Venus, lures the courtesan with several items of metalwork, including the goblet and the plate ®lched from Mulligrub. The ploy works, since Franceschina is only prepared to kiss him once she catches sight of the items he brandishes. Having `buss[ed]' him ± clearly a stage direction is absent at this point ± she enquires about its origin: `vare had you dat plate?' It is a question which causes Cocledemoy to dismiss her. To answer Franceschina truthfully, informing her that the objects are at best `second hand', would show that like Marston, and like The Dutch Courtesan, Cockledemoy, too, has pro®ted from an act of translation. notes 1 `The Epistle Dedicatorie', The Essayes of Montaigne, tr. John Florio, ed. J. I. M. Stewart (New York, n.d.), xv. Hereafter abbreviated to EM. The standard account of Florio is still Frances Yates, John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1934). For useful accounts of the distinctions, or otherwise, of the translation, see Fritz Dieckow, John Florios Englische Ubersetzung der Essais Montaignes

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2

3

4

5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

david pascoe (Strasbourg, 1903); F. O. Matthiessen, Translation: An Elizabethan Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 103±67; and Tom Conley, `Institutionalising Montaigne', in Samuel Weber (ed.), Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature, Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 45±58. Cf. Delia, Sonnet ii: `Goe wailing Verse, the Infants of my loue, / Minerua-like, brought foorth without a Mother.' In the ®rst edition of the Essayes, Daniel addressed his prefatory verses `To my deere friend M. John Florio'; in the second edition of 1613, this was changed to `To my deere brother and friend'. Wood states that `Jo. Florio . . . married Sam. Daniel's sister' Rose. See Athenae Oxonienses, ed. P. Bliss, 4 vols. (London, 1815), vol. ii, p. 269. In the original Greek myth, Zeus lusted after the Titaness, Metis, but when she would not yield to his advances, he devoured her whole. Several months later, suffering from a bad headache, he asked Hephaestus to cleave open his skull, from which sprang Athene. Theo Hermans, `Images of Translation: Metaphor and Imagery in the Renaissance Discourse on Translation', in Theo Hermans (ed.), The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (London: Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 103±35. Charles Crawford's various articles in Notes and Queries at the turn of the century were published separately as Collecteana: Second Series (Stratfordon-Avon, 1907), pp. 1±63. Other allusions were identi®ed in J. Sainmont, In¯uence de Montaigne sur Marston et Webster (Louvain, 1914) and A. Jose Axelrad, Un Malcontent ElizabeÂthain: John Marston (1579±1634) (Paris: Axelrad, 1955), pp. 98±111. Gustav Cross, `Marston, Montaigne and Morality', ELH 27 (1960), 30±43. John Marston, The Wonder of Women or The Tragedy of Sophonisba, ed. William Kemp (New York: Garland, 1979), p. 11. Yates, John Florio, p. 228. David A. Blostein (ed.), The Fawn, Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, 1978), pp. 41±2. For a good modern accounts of this essay's complexities, see Dorothy Gabe Coleman, `Montaigne's `Sur Des Vers de Virgile: Taboo Subject, Taboo Author', in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical In¯uences on European Culture 1500±1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 135±40; of her Montaigne's `Essais' (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 83±93; Lawrence Kritzman, `My Body, My Text: Montaigne and the Rhetoric of Sexuality', in his The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance 13 (1988), 75±89. R. O. A. M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's `Aeneid', (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 40±1. Kritzman, `My Body', p. 39. Lorna Hutson, Thomas Nashe in Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 57.

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14 Patricia Parker, Shakespeare from the Margins (University of California Press, 1994), p. 137. 15 In the years following the appearance of his famous translation, Florio was appointed gentleman-extraordinary and a groom of the privy chamber by James I, and, at the salary of £100 per annum, Reader in Italian to Queen Anne. 16 Hermans, `Images of Translation', p. 126. 17 `A Solemne Farewell to the World', in Nicholas Breton, Melancholike Humours, ed. G. B. Harrison (London: the Scholartis Press, 1929), p. 11. In 1603, Breton dedicated his prose work, A Mad World, My Masters, to Florio. 18 The Non-dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 5 vols. (Private publication, London, 1884±6), vol. iv, p. 58. 19 For important accounts of the relationship between the body, theatre, and market in the period see Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American Thought 1550±1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), and Richard Horwich, `Wives, Courtesans and the Economics of Love in Jacobean Comedy', in Clifford Davidson, C. J. Giankaris, and J. H. Stroupe (eds.), Drama in the Renaissance (New York: AMS Press, 1986), pp. 255±73. 20 P. Davison (ed.), The Dutch Courtesan, Fountainwell Drama Texts (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1968), p. 3. 21 John Twyning, London Dispossessed: Literature and Social Space in the Early Modern City (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 79. 22 Jean Howard, `Mastering Difference in The Dutch Courtesan', Shakespeare Studies 24 (1996), 105±17; 107. 23 Ibid., 110. 24 Thomas Dekker, Non-dramatic Works, ed. Grosart, vol. iii, p. 266. 25 John Wolfe was the ®rst to produce a complete edition of the Ragionamenti, in 1584. See H. R. HoppeÂ, `John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher, 1579±1601', The Library, series 4, 14 (1933), 241±87. Marston mentions Aretino on several occasions in his poetry. In The Scourge of Villanie iii, he claims that `greasie Aretine / For his ranck Fico, is surnam'd diuine' (79±80); while in Certaine Satyres ii, he asks: Did'st thou to Venis goe ought els to haue? But buy a Lute and vse a Curtezan? And there to liue like a Cyllenian? And now from thence what hether do'st thou bring? But surpheulings, new paints and poysonings? Aretines pictures, some strange Luxury? And new found vse of Venis venery?

(140±6)

26 See Paula Findlen, `Humanism, Politics and Pornography in Renaissance Italy', in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500±1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 49±109; David O. Frantz, ` ``Lewd Priapians'' and Renaissance Pornography', Studies in English Literature 12 (1972), 157±72.

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27 M. L. Wine (ed.), The Dutch Courtesan, Regents Renaissance Drama (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), p. xix; Howard, `Mastering Difference', p. 112. 28 Howard, `Mastering Difference', p. 111. 29 MacDonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill (eds.), The Selected Plays of John Marston (Cambridge University Press, 1986), annotation to iv.ii.12±20.

chapter 10

Sexual politics in Marston's `The Malcontent' T. F. Wharton

When Marston returned to the theatre after a three-year hiatus, with a new company and a new play ± The Malcontent ± the territory he explored in that play ± sex and violence ± must have seemed familiar to those who remembered him. His earlier work's invariable domain is the power of women to arouse, sometimes innocently, sometimes not, these destructive twin passions. It is not that `wanton jigga-joggies' (The Dutch Courtesan v.iii.184), so ubiquitous in The Malcontent and later plays, are rampant in the earlier ones. Certainly, though, when an earlier Marston play included a widow seemingly eager to re-marry, or the occasional virgin who seemed willing to let her two suitors `sheath both [their] weapons in [her]' ( Jack Drum's Entertainment iii.208), this had been enough to excite a frenzy of erotic and destructive passion. Unfortunately, since the females in these plays were greatly outnumbered by those who pursued them, and the competition was further heightened (at least in Jack Drum's Entertainment and What You Will) by the presence of over-sexed French rivals, arousal was mostly doomed to end in the worst male nightmares: of cuckoldry, rejection, and humiliation. A husband ± even a loving one like Albano ± could be left vainly wailing up at his wife's window, `Celia, open, open Celia, I would enter, open Celia' (What You Will iv.i.1651); or be told to his face by the Frenchman who has just cuckolded him, `by gor, de most delicat plump vench dat ever mee tuche' ( Jack Drum's Entertainment iii.239). The heraldic emblem Sir Edward Fortune suggested in the latter play for male desire and frustration was a maypole with the legend, `Frustra ¯orescit' (189). In the same play, Brabant Junior voiced the age-old lament: Oh that these womens beauties, This Natures witchcraft, should inchaunt our soules So in®nitely unrecoverable, 181

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t. f. wharton That Hell, death, shame, eternall infamy, Cannot reclaime our desperate resolves

(231)

and `desperate resolves' are, in both earlier and later Marston, frequently the sequel to sexual desire. One of the more striking motifs of Marston's plays is the number of times they feature murder or at least attempted murder over a woman; whether the intended victim is the woman herself, a rival for her, a person she wants dead, or some combination of these possibilities. Indeed, there are only a few murders or attempted murders which do not fall under this category. In the later plays, with female vituperation becoming more vocal and with male insecurities now including erectile dysfunction (The Fawn iv.i.132±3) and actual seduction by witchcraft (Sophonisba vi.i), so, too, the male response becomes increasingly violent. The Malcontent shares the same rejections, cuckoldings, humiliations of men by women, and consequent murder attempts. The unsuccessful are duly condemned to `an eternal uneffectual priapism' (ii.iii.32±3). However, where the earlier plays had placed even romantic love within a panorama of erotic and marital humiliation, The Malcontent's focus shifts from the discom®ture of the many to the successes of the one: the protagonist who can at once, by any devious means, excel his political rivals, and at the same time exert control and possession over his partner. Thus, both political failure and success are veri®ed in terms of potency and sexual dominance. In Act iv, scene ii of The Malcontent, Marston's disguised duke, Altofronto, in his persona as Malevole the malcontent, preaches contempt of the world and particularly of the world of politics and power, to the man who usurped his dukedom, Pietro. His argument runs as follows: `Think this ± this earth is . . . but the very muck-hill on which the sublunary orbs cast their excrements. Man is the slime of this dung-pit, and princes are the governors of these men' (iv.v.110±15). Altofronto/Malevole here has a pragmatic reason for preaching his lesson of contempt of governance: he wants his dukedom back, and hopes to make Pietro so despise politics that he will abdicate. The language in which he frames his message of contemptus imperii is therefore deliberately repellent, but is also highly Marstonian. Marston's own verse satires give us a useful gloss on the excremental imagery, and particularly the oft-repeated word, `slime'. The term relates to the Stoic-derived theory of synderesis, or divine rational soul, to which man has direct access. However, in Marston's

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version of the theory, the conduits or pipes through which divinity passes are clogged: `then sure the slime, that from our souls do ¯ow / Have stopp'd those pipes by which it was convay'd' (The Scourge of Villanie vii, 197±200). The word usually refers speci®cally to sexuality, and is often linked to excremental imagery.1 Satyre viii, for instance, speaking of those who adore `female painted puppetry', represents the adorers as `lusking at home in slime, / Such as was wont to stop port Esquiline' (Certaine Satyres viii, 198±204). In Marston's poems, perhaps the most vivid reference to slime as sexuality occurs in Satyre ii of The Scourge, which claims it Is but accounted gentlemen's disport To snort in ®lth, each hour to resort To brothel-pits; alas! a venial crime, Nay, royal, to be last in thirtieth slime!

(40±3)

The meaning of `slime' here is unpleasantly precise and there is an explicit link with `royal' behaviour. When, therefore, Marston's Altofronto, in the guise of his second self, Malevole, preaches to Pietro about men being `the slime of this dung-pit', and kings being the governors of these men, the sex/excrement connection is a familiar one, `slime' has an unmistakably seminal connotation, and in effect the political power which Altofronto formerly neglected but now wishes to regain is seen as a matter intrinsically sexual. The connection with even the ®rst few months of Jacobean politics is evident enough. Jonathan Goldberg's James I and the Politics of Literature argues that a prominent part of James's `theatricalisation of power' lay in his calculated annexation of the idea of family. James claimed power as the father of his people. By manipulating and insinuating himself into the position of head of the house, James could draw on the instinctive ties of blood to support his claim to absolute authority. He enacted his theories both literally and emblematically, intervening energetically in the marriage market, thrusting himself to the bedsides of bridal chambers, but also spelling out his own relationship to his kingdom in terms of bridegroom and bride. His own explicitly patriarchal treatise, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, claims the power to engender laws, the sole power to interpret constitutional discourse, and the power to `love' his subjects in the sense of possessing them and having his way with them, since they are bound to him, but he is not bound to them. On the basis of his claims as possessor of his kingdom, he claims in Basilikon Doron `to

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win all men's hearts to a loving and willing obedience'. This was the monarch who in the ®rst speech of his reign proclaimed, `I am the husband and all the whole isle is my lawfull Wife.' He entered London's triumphal arches for his coronation, as Dekker wrote, like the bridegroom entering the bride. A whole range of texts, visual, verbal, or both, colluded right from the beginning with James's thesis of patriarchal monarchy, as Goldberg demonstrates.2 Equally, a few early Jacobean texts ± like Marston's ± contested it. The connection of sex and politics is to be Marston's `radical' theme in The Malcontent.3 It is not simply that Marston creates one more sexual tyrant/villain (Mendoza) to join a whole gallery of similar monsters, but that politics is so consistently depicted in terms of sexual manipulations that the two seem inextricable. Cuckolding rivals, arranging marriages, testing chastity, seducing and fornicating, all the major ®gures of state in The Malcontent seem to conduct their body-political activities almost solely in terms of the body concupiscent. In effect, Marston produces a parody-version of James's theories of the monarchy-amorous. In Marston's rendering, dukes attain power through their control of women and of marriages ± their own or other people's ± and it is through their control of the bodies of women that they exercise political rule. Conversely, the loss of such control over women signals a ruler's certain political demise. In the pun-saturated world of Genoan statecraft, the two kinds of potency are virtually indistinguishable. What differentiates The Malcontent from, say, Antonio's Revenge, which shares, among many common features, a theme of marital politics, is that this theme is con®ned in the earlier play to the villainous Piero Young Galeatzo; ay a proper man, Florence, a goodly city; it shall be so I'll marry her to him instantly Then Genoa mine by my Maria's match

(iv.iii.136±9)

In The Malcontent, however, even the virtuous and (in his own words at the end of the play) `heaven-commission[ed]' monarch, in pursuit of his just title, uses the politics of sex. This emerges as a matter of sheer Machiavellian necessity. Altofronto, before his expulsion, was a ruler of immaculate virtue. He `bore with none', his throne `stood like a point in middest of a circle, / To all of equal nearness', and so he became vulnerable to

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the in®nitely promiscuous `lickerous' crowd and its manipulators, who worked through marital politics. It was the Duke of Florence, whose daughter was married to Pietro, who then contrived to get Pietro the dukedom, and in the process Altofronto was split from his own wife. Now, Altofronto, assuming a second self, his alter ego, Malevole, fully recognizes his former folly and sees that it was by being all Altofronto ± `suspectless, too suspectless' ± that he lost his dukedom. The bifurcation of his nature which he now undergoes seems a literal enactment of Kantorowicz's theory of the `king's two bodies',4 with Malevole as his necessary worldly self, the adroit political manipulator, whose skills Altofronto ®nds `loathsome' but also necessary: `better to play the fool lord than be the fool lord', and being the fool lord is by implication what he recognizes he was, when his nature was all Altofronto (v.iii.45±6). His very name suggests that the disempowerment Altofronto suffered was in a sense sexual: it is Malevole who gives us our clue here, when he insults the courtier Bilioso with the taunt that `your court nightcap makes you have a passing high forehead' (i.iv.49±50). The allusion is to the horns of the cuckold which make the forehead high. Altofronto's own name, however, means `with a high forehead', perhaps indicative of his high-browed integrity and intellect, but also the measure of his status as a political cornuto. We may therefore anticipate that, when Malevole begins to work on Altofronto's behalf, his operations will be speci®cally in the sphere of sexual appetite, and so it proves. His early resolve, `When the ranks are burst, then scuf¯e Altofront', is an allusion speci®cally to the breaking of marital ranks, when `the Duchess's sheets . . . smoke', and `impure Mendoza . . . `now broad-horns the Duke' (i.iv.33±9). He ®nds a ready context for such activity, since the play is awash with sexuality. The panderess Maquerelle has six scenes (though one of them is possibly the work of Webster), most of them lengthy, and distributed evenly throughout the play. She mixes freely not merely with the detritus of the court but with dukes and duchesses, and particularly the loose duchess, Aurelia. She is bribed to give Aurelia's new lover, Ferneze, access to Aurelia. Her conversation with various attentive court ladies on the subjects of cosmetics, lovers, and `restoratives' (ii.ii.) in effect leaves Aurelia and Ferneze unguarded so that Aurelia's husband, Pietro, and his allies, can rush in on them. She brings cosmetics, aphrodisiacs, oiled hinges, physical decay, and venereal disease into the common discourse and intercourse of the

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court, and is unable even to begin to count the number of maidenheads she has `brought to the block': `Let me see ± Heaven forgive us our misdeeds' (v.ii.93±4). Marston proceeds fully to situate Malevole within this world. Through the play, he is given protracted and ± in terms of plot development ± redundant scenes of innuendo with Maquerelle and her peers. In scene after scene he becomes irritatingly intrusive in his insistent dwelling on Pietro's or Bilioso's being a cuckold, thus fully identifying himself with the ethos of sexually dominant male power that de®nes the court. Sexual intrigue ¯ourishes, right at the centre of power, particularly in the ®gure of Aurelia, wife of the usurper-duke Pietro. Aurelia's unstable virtue engrosses most of the ®rst four acts, together with most of the thoughts of most of the principals, as they contemplate the achievement or loss of political power. The arch-villain Mendoza, beginning his rise to the dukedom and contemplating the `confused hum and busy murmur of obsequious suitors' which accompany a successful court favourite, thinks immediately of his own ascendancy in terms of annexing the Duke's wife: `O blessed state! What a ravishing prospect doth the Olympus of favour yield! Death, I cornute the Duke!' (i.v.24±5, 32±4). `Favour' here carries a simultaneous and double meaning. When Aurelia subsequently throws Mendoza over for Ferneze, which clearly pre®gures Mendoza's ultimate political disgrace, Mendoza's vows of vengeance are similarly couched in terms as much sexual as political: Shall I, whose very `Hum' struck all heads bare, Whose face made silence, creaking of whose shoe Forced the most private passages ¯y ope Scrape like a servile dog at some latched door?

(ii.i.18±21)

Like so many of Marston's males in earlier plays, Mendoza has to endure female humiliation, and his view of women comically declines, in two long soliloquies spaced a mere scene apart, from `angels!' (i.v.34) to `models of hell' (i.vi.85). His access to `privatest passages' is now blocked by Ferneze, and what he suffers is not merely a sexual but political frustration. Mendoza now improvises a plan to regain sexual and political power which is exclusively centred on exploiting Pietro's status as a cuckold and on reinstating himself as Aurelia's lover. It involves turning Pietro's suspicions (that he, Mendoza, was indeed Aurelia's lover) against the successful rival of both of them, Ferneze. The murder plan to which he now

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commits Pietro is fully scripted by him, and includes ®rstly the idea that the lovers should be taken in the act; also the insistence that he should have the personal pleasure of killing the man who succeeded him in Aurelia's bed; and ®nally the ruse ± his own pretended protection of Ferneze and Aurelia ± which will get him back into Aurelia's favour: You, with some guard, upon the sudden Break into the Princess' chamber, I stay behind, Without the door through which he needs must pass. Ferneze ¯ies; let him. To me he comes, he's killed By me; observe, by me; you follow; I rail, And seem to save the body. Duchess comes . . . I praise, excuse Ferneze, and still maintain The Duchess' honour. (i.vii.63±73)

On the night of the murder, he has one moment of doubt `if all [will] ope'; only to dismiss the thought. `± If ! Tush, / ``Fortune still dotes on those who cannot blush'' ' (ii.i.28±9). Like Machiavelli, he sees fortune as a woman to be seduced or coerced or in any way made to open, and indeed it is on the opening of a woman that his plans for political recovery are based. He proceeds to murder Ferneze (or at least thinks he does) and makes up with Aurelia, who then empowers him politically: `I'll make thee Duke' (ii.v.79). Conversely, Pietro's ineffective weakness as a ruler is measured by his wife's susceptibility to seduction (to Mendoza, then to Ferneze, and then once more to Mendoza) and by his uxoriousness towards her. His instructions for the murder of Ferneze, obediently echoing Mendoza's plan, show how fully vindicated Mendoza is in his diagnosis of Pietro's politico-sexual impotence: My Lady's shame is mine, O God, 'tis mine! Therefore I do conjure all secrecy: Let it be as very little as may be; pray ye, as may be. Make frightless entrance, salute her with soft eyes, Stain naught with blood; only Ferneze dies, But not before her brows. O gentlemen, God knows I love her! Nothing else, but this, I am not well (ii.iii.59±66)

The helpless divine invocations, the feeble intensi®ers, the diminutives, the overall negatives of the speech, the ®nal sickness and aphasia, the insistence on a ¯accid bloodlessness, all serve to feminize Pietro. The contrast with Mendoza's earlier lethally ef®-

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cient blocking of the same scene is very marked. Marston also insists that we register Pietro as an impotent male, with his confession, `I have no child' (71). He proceeds to nominate his cuckolder, Mendoza, as his successor to the dukedom, and to insist that, just as Mendoza suggested, Mendoza shall be `leagued with the Duchess' (ii.iii.50)! In a striking conclusion to his ®nal brie®ng of the murderers, he wishes he could disclaim and desecrate his own patriarchal line, if it would save him from the loss of his woman: Would I were forced To burn my father's tomb, unhele his bones, And dash them in the dirt, rather than this!

(ii.iii.79±81)

The only power still left to Pietro is through his father-in-law, whose `only force' (iii.iii.19) put him there in the ®rst place. Pietro now `only stands on Florence' stilts' (iii.iii.85±6). The sexual puns are unmistakable. Pietro's manhood had only ever been by proxy through his wife's paternal line, and now he has no manhood at all. It is in this context that Malevole begins to exercise his skills. Just as he had once been himself, Pietro is seen as an `Honest fool Duke' (i.vii.83), and Altofronto/Malevole sets about to exploit his weakness exactly as Mendoza had done. He gets himself employed by Mendoza as tool-villain to murder Pietro, thoroughly impressing Mendoza with his eagerness to do his bidding, which again he represents in amorous terms: to murder Pietro is `[his] heart's wish, [his] soul's desire, [his] fantasy's dream, [his] blood's longing', he tells Mendoza (iii.iii.75±6). He then promptly discloses all this to Pietro, and convinces him once and for all that Mendoza is a villain and is also Pietro's principal cuckolder. It is noticeable how Malevole openly sneers at Pietro's impotence, cuckoldry, and politico-sexual folly in this scene: `Thou, closely yielding egress and regress to her, madest him heir, whose hot unquiet lust straight toused thy sheets, and now would seize thy state. Politician! wise man!' (iii.v.17±20). Pietro is now entirely in Altofronto/Malevole's hands and ripe for the latter's disingenuous message that he should decontaminate himself from power and from loathsomely sexual humanity. However, for his own part, Altofronto/Malevole is interested only in fully and successfully re-entering that world. Of all the tropes of sex that permeate the play, the most persistent relate to rising, standing, penetrating, bursting, and falling, and Altofronto repeatedly represents himself in terms of rising. In Act i, he claims to an

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incredulous Mendoza, `I once shall rise' and supports the statement with the apothegm, ` ``No vulgar seed but once may rise and shall; / No King so huge but 'fore he die, may fall.'' ' Mendoza is clearly the `king' who must soon fall, while Altofronto/Malevole is the `vulgar seed' which will be raised. In the sexual world of Genoese politics, the bawd Maquerelle de®nes the process: `we women always note the falling of the one is the rising of the other' (v.ii.42±3), a curious thought, since it seems to suggest that the former is actually the stimulus for the latter. When Pietro renounces all political ambition, and dedicates himself to `Restoring Altofront to regency' (iv.v.131), Altofronto/ Malevole again asserts his own phallic ascendancy: ` ``He needs must rise who can no lower fall'' ' (143). Rising, however, is by no means enough. The rise must be sustained, and penetration is of course the goal. Mendoza boasts to Pietro's face of `intrusion / To places private and prohibited . . . the closer passages' (i.vii.25±8). He is what Malevole calls `the privy-key' (i.v.90), an interesting phrase, combining the penetrative with the excremental, and suggesting that Mendoza's unique talent is to insert himself into the kind of secret places that Altofronto/Malevole later denigrates to Pietro as `dung-pits' and `slime'. Mendoza's penetration into Aurelia had been with Pietro's collusion, `closely yielding egress and regress' (iii.v.17±18). Shortly, as Mendoza turns his attentions to Altofronto's wife, Maria, Altofronto determines not only not to repeat Pietro's error, but actively to thwart his marital rival. Though Mendoza therefore succeeds in being re-admitted to Aurelia, and thus apparently turns his initial political failure into success, his ®nal political demise is measured by a second failure of admission to a woman. In effect, the ®nal stages of the play enact an Odyssean contest between the returning exiled king and the `suitor', Mendoza, and the outcome will resolve the issue of the dukedom. Mendoza is interested in Maria because of the political potency he hopes to gain from her: `her friends might strengthen me and my faction' (iii.iii.99). In a plot-twist which typi®es early Jacobean dramas of moral experiment, Mendoza, in another pun-saturated passage, sends Maria's husband Altofronto/Malevole to the citadel on a mission of penetration: `Have entrance to Maria, the grave duchess / Of banished Altofront' (iv.iii.89±90).5 Altofronto/Malevole immediately consents, but at once returns, complaining that he has been denied entrance and needs a `stiffer warrant' than merely

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Mendoza's `ring' before he can `pass into the Castle of Comfort' (116±17). `Not enter!' replies Mendoza: `Sha't! What place is there in Genoa but thou shalt?' (118±19) and the play now turns on this issue of whether Maria shall grant entrance to Mendoza, through his surrogate, Malevole. What follows is a classic chastity test, resulting in Altofronto's ®nal ascendancy (`Wonder not I rise' (iv.v.146)), and Mendoza's attendant detumescence, just as Altofronto/Malevole had predicted in i.iv.80 (`he swells and swells, and bursts').6 The idea of the testing of Penelope had been implanted earlier in the play, with Malevole's warning to the newly appointed ambassador Bilioso of what might happen to his wife, Bianca, should he leave her at home: `Soft rest, sweet music, amorous masquerers, lascivious banquets, sin itself gilt o'er . . . Ulysses absent, O Ithaca, can chastest Penelope hold out?' (iii.ii.39±47). In a play featuring an unusually large number of women, all but one is promiscuous. Bilioso's wife Bianca, in fact, proves a conspicuous member of the legion of fallen women in the play, including among her lovers the `weasel', Ferrara, who could `hardly draw Ulysses' bow' (iv.i.56). Maria, however, proves to be a Penelope to her husband, even as he tries to persuade her that `he that loves thee is a duke, Mendoza. He will maintain thee royall, love thee ardently, defend thee powerfully, marry thee sumptuously, and keep thee, in despite of Rosicleer or Donzel del Phoebo. There's jewels' (v.iii.15±19). His approach is somewhat brusque, and perhaps he does not want to be too effective a pander, but Maria's response is immediately to think of her `dear'st Altofront' and to vow `I will live chaste' (25, 28). Clearly, Altofronto is not merely delighted but intensely relieved ± `I have found an honest woman' (35) ± and his ®nal words to her in the play where he accepts her `to my heart' (v.vi.164) show that the test is something she had to pass, in order for this to happen. It is a test in earnest, and with some tension and uncertainty attending it, and it is on the basis of the assurance he receives that Altofronto/Malevole now feels con®dent that his potency is in the ascendant and that others (including God) `stand' with him. It is on the basis of his `lady's' ®delity ± which must come ®rst ± that he can be politically uncuckolded, and his potency collectively stiffened: `My lady comes to court; there is a whirl of fate comes tumbling on; the castle captain stands for me, the people pray for me, and the Great Leader of the just stands for me' (v.iv.89±92). The denouement prominently features Maria and also Aurelia,

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with Mendoza repeating at length his attempts to seduce Maria. He does so not only in his own person but through the masked Altofronto/Malevole, a move which in effect re-enacts the earlier chastity test. The dance in the masque, in a further recapitulation, restores Aurelia to Pietro and Maria to Altofronto/Malevole, at which point Altofronto and his confederates, robed in white and crowned with laurel, unmask, seize Mendoza, and depose him. Thus, Altofronto is established emblematically as pure and legitimate, and also fully in possession of his chaste wife, while Mendoza's vantage point as audience turns out to exclude and isolate him. However, Altofronto's ®nal purity, just like his power, is by proxy, through his wife's chastity. In a ®nal sequence which is notable for the `providentialist ideology' which Dollimore sees as typically intrinsic to regal propaganda, with Altofronto blithely accepting `faith' and arbitrating `grace' (iv.v.132; v.vi.126), we also register his `ideological misrepresentation'.7 This is a play which represents religion as constantly `chang[ing] her robe' (i.iii.11). Four times, characters are asked what religion they are of and the answer is either evasive (Malevole answers, `of a soldier's religion' (i.iii.9)), or cynical (Bilioso responds, `Of the Duke's religion, when I know what it is' (iv.v.94)), or despairing (Pietro's `All is damnation' (iv.iv.16)), or a complete non-response (Mendoza's `Out with him!' (ii.iii.13)). Altofronto's religion turns out to be no more profound. When he speaks most providentially ± `Who doubts of Providence that sees this change?' (iv. v. 141) ± the speech is also most clearly marked by the language of rising and falling (`He needs must rise that can no lower fall ' (iv.v.143)) and by his confession of opportunism: `For who can sink that close can temporize?' (147). In a play in which the protagonist had called in vain for heavenly intervention ± `O Heaven, didst hear / Such devilish mischief ? Sufferest thou the world / Carouse damnation even with greedy swallow, / And still dost wink' (iii.iii.126±9) ± the concept of `Heaven's imposed conditions' and indeed the very concept of heavenly intervention and of `assum[ing one's] right' with which the play closes (v.vi.148, 166) comes across as a useful rhetorical ®ction, sanitizing slimier realities. This is of course not at all the same thing as Mendoza vowing that there is `Nothing so holy' that he will not `profane, burst, violate' (ii.i.15, 16), but when Altofronto calls down `damnation on a politic religion!' (i.iii.15), the speech is self-indicting. It is only by making himself a skilful navigator of cloacal waters that he succeeds, and it is only by

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assuming a `politic religion' that he disinfects himself from the prolonged and perhaps ongoing immersion. Certainly, the play leaves him still with one foot in the sewer. It is not only Altofronto and Maria who dance in the masque, but also Ferneze, Bilioso, Bianca, and Maquerelle, who speak, as they always do, of sexuality. It is not only God who `stands' for Altofronto but also Bilioso who claims that he `would stand for him' (v.vi.155±6). Even, therefore, as the masque celebrates marriage and purity, its enactment stresses the `aggressively sexualized'8 environment of which Altofronto/Malevole has inevitably become a part. This is the play's ultimate take on the statecraft which James I both preached and practised. The sneer against `Signior St Andrew' (v.v.24), together with various other anti-Scottish slurs in the play, shows that Marston has by no means lost his satirical machismo, but it is the play's overall message about Jacobean statecraft that proves it.

notes 1

2

3

4 5

The sex/excrement connection is actually something of a commonplace in early English texts. Predictably, it is often found in sermons, but perhaps the most striking examples come from a text which is otherwise dedicated to speaking of excrement qua excrement. Sir John Harington's mock-encomium of his newly invented water-closet speaks, for instance, of the angel who was not at all offended by a `beastly cart, laden with excrements', but crossed the road to avoid the `more stinking savour' of a `®ne courtesan laden with sinne'; or of a gentleman noted for his fastidiousness ± `the wiping of the spoon, etc.' ± who nevertheless patronized `as common, and as deformed A Jax of the feminine gender as any as was in the towne' (The Metamorphosis of Ajax, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno (New York: Columbia University Press; London: Routledge, 1962), pp. 85, 220). Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). Goldberg has particularly interesting passages on Measure for Measure, whose parallels with The Malcontent are evident. See pp. 81±6, 149, 184, 231±9. Jonathan Dollimore's handling of Antonio's Revenge (Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton and Chicago: Harvester Press and Chicago University Press, 1984)) has familiarized us to the idea of Marston's `radical' leanings. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton University Press, 1957). See my Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama (London: Macmillan, 1988)

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7 8

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for the motifs of disguised dukes and chastity experiments. The Malcontent combines both. Marston re-used this ®gure ± of proud erection, ejaculation, and fall ± in The Fawn: `Swell, you Impostumed members, till you burst' (ii.588). Incidentally, the same passage gives the same vocabulary to one of the vocal females mentioned earlier: the virtuous Zoya, who vows to be the `af¯iction' of her super-jealous husband's `unsancti®ed member' and to `boil him in his own syrup' (ii.348±50). Dollimore, Radical Tragedy, p. 6. Lynda E. Boose (`The 1599 Bishops' Ban, Elizabethan Pornography, and the Sexualization of the Jacobean Stage', in Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (eds.), Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England (New York and London: Cornell University Press, 1994) pp. 185±200, accuses Marston of promulgating a new and `aggressively sexualized' literature (192). Actually, Marston is the true accuser, and his accusation is of an `aggressively sexualized' politics which has become the new establishment.

chapter 11

Marston: censure, censorship, and free speech Janet Clare

The career of John Marston as satirist and playwright was perhaps unduly shaped by the exigencies of state controlled drama. Indeed, it seems to have been a speci®c act of censorship, in addition to cumulative acts of authorized interference with his drama, which brought Marston's life as a working playwright to a premature close in 1608. Moreover, it can be seen how the texts themselves serve to comment upon as well as exemplify the practice of censorship. It is the purpose of this essay, in tracing the inter-relationship between Marston's plays and the vagaries of Elizabethan and Jacobean censorship, to examine how tropes of the latter insistently ®gure in the dramatist's work, formulating a discourse on poetic liberty, censure, and censorship. From the outset of his career, in the non-dramatic satires, the mock-Ovidian Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certaine Satyres (May 1598) and the Juvenalian Scourge of Villanie (September 1598), Marston betrays a certain anxiety about his deployment of materials, erotic in the former, satiric in the latter. Although licensed, the works were not sanctioned by the authority of a patron, whose role is occupied by the judicious, well-informed reader. Pigmalion's Image begins with the commonplace apologia, as the persona W. K. addresses a prefatory verse `To the Worlds Mightie Monarch, Good Opinion', asking for a safeguarding of his `young new-borne Inuention' and the protection of `an Orphane Poets infancier'. The defensive tone is sustained still further in The Scourge of Villanie, where W. K., now `W. Kinsayder', constructs the prefatory material around the familiar dialectic of the just, discerning reader/critic and the ignorant, misjudging critic. The reader is shamed into an alliance with the satirist. As the `scourge of iust Rhamnusia' ± goddess of righteous indignation ± the satirist will, in lashing `the lewdnes of Britania', defy bad critics and submit to good. In the closing lines of 194

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the third satire, after exposing acts of prostitution, adultery, and rape in high places, which others extenuate, he demands to know whether such abuses should remain undisclosed `Whilst my satyrick vaine / Shall muzled be' and responds, `No gloomie Iuvenall / Though to thy fortunes I disastrous fall'. Like Juvenal, he implies, he is prepared to suffer banishment in order to speak freely against the social, economic, and sexual enormities of the times. Exile as the common fate of the free-speaking satirist is an idea which appealed to Marston, reworked as it is in the ®gure of the alienated, disguised dukes of The Malcontent and The Fawn. It is, moreover, a role which Marston himself seems to have enacted on the occasions in 1605, following Eastward Ho, and in 1608, following an unnamed anti-court satire, when formal proceedings were taken against him. Yet Marston's de®ance of authority is accompanied by an awareness that the texts offer interpretative ambiguities and he defends his satiric intentions. The Scourge of Villanie closes with an appeal, `To him that hath perused me', in which Marston, anticipating Jonson's defence of his own satire in the dedication of Volpone, awaits the reception of his work and anxiously anticipates its misappropriation: Yet I feare me, I shall be much, much iniuried by two sorts of readers: the one being ignorant, not knowing the nature of a Satyre, (which is vnder fained priuate names, to note generall vices) will needes wrest each fayned name to a priuate vnfained person. The other too subtile, bearing a priuate malice to some greater personage than hee dare in his owne person seeme to maligne, will striue by a forced application of my generall reproofes to broach his priuate hatred. (5±14)

It has been argued that such disclaimers should be read as a stockin-trade of satire and that, since there is little evidence that the powerful ever attempted any action against satirists, the expressed fear of libel is disingenuous.1 But accusations of libel could be manipulated against opponents, as Marston implies. According to Fulke Greville, friend of the Earl of Essex, following the Earl's disgrace his opponents `took audacity to cast libels abroad in his name against the state, made by themselves; set papers upon posts, to bring his innocent friends in question'.2 Libel in this period had inclusive terms of reference which made the position of the satirist particularly vulnerable. The dual and nebulous aspect of libel ± combining elements of personal defamation and seditious discourse ± meant that it was comparatively easy to bring, if not prove, charges of libel against an opponent.3 Certainly there are several instances of

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dramatic censorship which seem to have arisen from civil cases claiming libellous intent. In the political climate of the late 1590s, it would seem that the disclaimer of such intentions re¯ected a genuine anxiety and had not yet settled into the conventional topos it was to become. The nervous, edgy quality of Marston's non-dramatic satires appears to have been justi®ed in their suppression and subsequent burning only months after their licensing and publication. There has been much speculation about the causes of one of the few documented instances of Elizabethan artistic repression, namely, the prohibition on 1 June 1599 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, and the Bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, acting in their capacity as press licensers, of the further printing of satires and epigrams. The prelates also forbade the printing of English history without the prior consent of the Privy Council and reiterated that no plays should be printed without authority.4 As a symbolic but nonetheless effective act, a number of works including Pigmalion's Image and The Scourge of Villanie were burnt in the Stationers' Hall. What prompted the bishops to take issue with verse satire at this time? Or, in the words of Linda Boose, how can we decode `the silent semiotics of censorship'?5 In an early article, Richard McCabe has argued that the bishops were acting as ministers of state rather than moral guardians.6 Cyndia Clegg, in a detailed contextualization of events, has suggested that the ban was a response to political events, speci®cally the affairs of the Earl of Essex, that changed the way in which the offending texts were read. Clegg goes on to read the censorship of satire in tandem with that of history, in particular the well-known case of Sir John Hayward's Henry IV, which was suppressed within days of the ban on satire.7 But the events cannot be too closely knit. Although the history was called in and much attention was paid to its dedication to Essex, it was not until March 1600 that the historian was tried. In June 1599 it was not at all apparent that Essex's campaign in Ireland would end so disastrously. He had departed for Dublin in late March 1599 and his ill-fated meeting with the Earl of Tyrone in Ulster which provoked accusations of betrayal did not take place until the autumn. While the anxiety generated over the disturbances in Ireland undoubtedly contributed to the crisis of the late 1590s, it is only one of the contributory factors. Clegg refers to a speech by the Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Egerton on 15 June 1599, in which he spoke out against

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libels which censured the state and the Queen, as con®rmation that the 1599 satires were associated with Essex. But it would seem that Egerton was alluding to the proliferation of libels in general rather than speci®cally to the literary genre of satire. The speci®c ban on satire has to be read, I would argue, in the context of the political instabilities of the ®n de sieÁcle, of which Essex's rebellion was the culmination but not the sole cause. In a state dependent for information on an intelligencing system, we do not know all the probable accusations and motives which lay behind the ecclesiastical backlash against satire. It is probable that libellous charges had accrued since the satires had been licensed; it is only when satire is in the public sphere that such accusations materialize. The censorship of satire has also to be read in the cultural context of post-Marprelate sensitivities to the proliferation of the genre which, of all literary genres, carries the most subversive potential. Bancroft's earlier, if covert, censorial intervention occurred during the Marprelate controversy of the previous decade. Almost certainly with the tacit support of Whitgift, the Privy Council, and Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, Bancroft had initially sponsored a rejoinder in kind to the satiric anti-episcopal Marprelate tracts. Stage performances of this sponsored satire appear to have become increasingly anarchic and the bishops acted to suppress it.8 The bishops' further intervention in 1599 to control the circulation of satiric texts seems to have been stimulated by a similar anxiety about their potential effects on what was becoming, with a change of regime imminent, a precarious social order. Linda Boose has argued that the 1599 ban was not strictly an injunction against satire, but also a reaction against the emergence of a violently sexualized discourse.9 In focusing on the more pornographic aspects of the prohibited texts, including Pigmalion's Image, however, Boose tends to neglect their more pronounced social critiques. Indeed, it might be said that the satiric and licentious interests are opposed in The Scourge of Villanie, as Marston attacks a preoccupation with Aretino, whose pornographic in¯uence, Boose claims, lies behind certain of the satires.10 Like Juvenal, Marston castigates society by using exempla, portraying a degenerate present of debased patronage, sexual libertinism, economic exploitation, and religious hypocrisy. But The Scourge is much more than a series of moral portraits, and focuses very precisely on particular social abuses. In Satyre ii, for example, `Kinsayder' proclaims that he

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cannot refrain from attacking the practice of short-term leases which landlords are able to renew at a price and destroy the yeomanry: When tenure for short yeeres, (by many a one) Is thought right good be turn'd forth Littleton,11 All to be headdie, or free hold at least When tis all one, for long life be a beast, A slaue, as haue a short term'd tenancie When dead's the strength of Englands yeomanrie, When invndation of luxuriousnes, Fatts all the world with such grosse beastlines. Who can abstain? what modest braine can hold, But he must make his shamefac'd Muse a scold?

(134±43)

Puritans and Catholics are equally lined up for opprobrium, as they are in Pigmalion's Image. Neither is the Anglican Church immune, as ministers are accused of simony and the accumulation of bene®ces. Balbusa, `the demure Athenian' in Satyre iii, dreams `of the death of next Vicarian' ± an oblique reference to the parson of the neighbouring parish ± so that he can appropriate the living. Here, as throughout the satires, Marston follows his usual device of presenting characters after Juvenal or classical myth: Brutus, Fabius, Gracchus, familiar from Juvenal, appear in Satyre i, while Mars, Juno, and Diogenes, with all their pejorative classical associations, ®gure throughout the satires. Marston's satire is considerably more inclusive in its social critiques than has been allowed. Unlike Joseph Hall, he is primarily an urban satirist, but within these bounds the subjects of his ironic derision are numerous: courtiers, lawyers, landowners, churchmen, Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, social types, and, predictably, women. Like the Jonson of Poetaster, Marston's satire reaches to fellow writers. In Satyre vi he succeeds in attacking simultaneously the misjudging critic and the style of contemporary poetry: Hence thou misiudging Censor, know I wrot Those idle rimes to note the odious spot And blemish that deformes the lineaments Of moderne Poesies habiliments.

(23±6)

Complaint, which Marston anticipates throughout the text, could have come from any quarter. Evidently the use of a Juvenalian mode of exempla, which had failed to protect Juvenal himself, was also penetrated by the Elizabethan authorities and perceived as contributing to a subversive discourse.

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The idea that, following the decrees of June 1599, satire was channelled into the theatre, which was ®rst suggested by O. J. Campbell, has been appropriated by Linda Boose.12 Evidence for the thesis is limited. Of all the prohibited satirists only Marston for certain embarked on a career in the theatre.13 Part of Boose's argument rests on the notion that the theatre offered a less restrictive medium of expression. But this is patently not the case. Any aspiring writer in 1599 must have been conscious of the inhibitions of playwriting. Two years earlier, the theatres had been closed following performance of the `lewd and seditious' Isle of Dogs, which had been brought to the attention of the Privy Council by an informer. 14 Satire may have been countenanced by the Master of the Revels, just as verse satire had apparently been allowed at ®rst by press licensers, before its full potential was released. But of all genres it appears most vulnerable to post-licensing intervention and censorship. In 1601, following complaints that in Poetaster he had `taxed / The law, and lawyers, captains, and the players / By their particular names', Ben Jonson announced that he would renounce dramatic satire and turn to tragedy, which he con®dently af®rmed would be `Safe from the wolf 's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof '.15 As the censorship over his Sejanus attests, in this instance tragedy afforded Jonson no more immunity from censure and subsequent censorship than satire, but his perception that satire was the more provocative and dangerous genre is borne out by the several examples of its suppression at the turn of the century and early Jacobean period. Whether or not the ban on verse satire acted as a catalyst for the production of dramatic satire, Marston does not immediately transfer the tone and preoccupations of the satires to the plays which he wrote for Paul's Boys following the bishops' intervention. Felice in Antonio and Mellida begins to offer the kind of outspoken social comment associated with Malevole in The Malcontent and Hercules in The Fawn; but it is only in the later Jacobean Blackfriars plays that the acerbic and raw social critiques of Marston's non-dramatic satires are introduced into the plays. Nevertheless, from the beginning of his short dramatic career, Marston displays a self-consciousness about the threat of hostile judgement. In the induction to What You Will, three on-stage spectators discuss certain members of the auditory, predicting how the author should respond to their adverse criticism. Philomuse claims that the playwright will remain unaffected by his critics: `shall his bosom faint / If drunken Censure belch

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out sour breath, / From Hatred's surfeit on his labour's front?' Doricus' aphorism claims, however, that the author must be guarded against such opposition. ` ``The best seal of wit is wit's distrust.'' ' In what seems to be a reference to Jonson, Doricus affects amazement that a dramatist can be de®ant in the face of an audience's censure: I wonder what tight brain Wrung in this custom to maintain contempt 'Gainst common censure; to give stiff counter-buffs, To crack rude scorn even on the very face Of better audience. (29±31, 73, 51±5)

The implication is that, in contrast to Jonson, Marston will resist provoking hostile criticism; but as yet the critical argument remains couched in aesthetic rather than ideological terms. It is in The Malcontent, his ®rst Jacobean play, that Marston recovers both the objects of his non-dramatic satire and articulates strong defences of the satirist's art. The prefatory material, comprising the address to the reader and Induction, serves the same function as the preliminaries to the earlier satire as Marston defends his intentions, but implies that he cannot desist from attacking those `whose unquiet studies labour innovation, contempt of holy policy, reverend comely superiority, and established unity'. Such de®nitions of abuses and their perpetrators remain cautiously imprecise and open to interpretation. This, Marston implies, has been the problem: `some have been most unadvisedly over-cunning in misinterpreting me, and with subtlety (as deep as hell) have maliciously spread ill rumours'. The censorship of the text provides some clues about the nature of the play's provocation and alleged misinterpretation. The recovery of the snarling tone and style of the satires is evident in the language of Malevole, whose speech, says the usurper Duke Pietro, `is halter-worthy at all hours' (i.ii.27±8). In the persona of Malevole, Marston affords the same liberty of expression to the satirist as was traditionally associated in the drama with the fool. Pietro awards his `dogged sullenness free liberty' (i.ii.10±11) and in the following scene Malevole rejoices in the fact that his disguise gives him `that / Which kings do seldom hear or great men use ± / Free speech' (i.iii.161±3). In the following scene, he questions Celso, the only courtier who knows his true identity, as to how well he plays

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`the free-breathed discontent' (i.iv.31) which enables him to exploit current discord at court. This emphasis on the imperative of free speech is, however, in marked contrast with the textual censorship of the play, speci®cally of lines spoken by Malevole. Three different quartos of the play were published in quick succession in 1604 and several textual excisions, re¯ecting irregular procedures of censorship, can be detected in one or more of the editions.16 The ®rst illustration comes, ironically, after Pietro has commented that Malevole is `as free as air'. In response to the Duke's question: `whence come you now?', Malevole, recalling the numerous attacks on Catholic and Puritan religious hypocrisy of The Scourge of Villanie, replies that he has come `from the public place of much dissimulation, the church' (i.iii.3±5). In extant copies of the ®rst two quartos `the church' has been removed from the text. That this act of censorship took place following the of®cial licensing of the play is evident from the manner of the excision. In some copies of the ®rst quarto (B.L. Ashley 1100), `the church' has been cut from the text and the excision neatly pasted over. These copies clearly represent those produced from an early print run, since in other copies of the same edition `the church' has not been type-set and there is no additional space between the lines of dialogue. The word is restored in the ®nal version of the play printed in 1604, which represents an augmented text prepared for production by the King's Men. Although the latter version, in its expanded form and in the restoration of censored material, seems to approximate most closely to Marston's intentions, there is no consistent relationship between the three different editions and censorship. Absent in the ®rst issue, for example, is a pointed reference to opportunistic religious practice, in which Malevole mocks members of the court for their shifting denominational allegiances. Bilioso, the foolish old marshal, has recently returned from Florence and is asked what religion he will adopt, now that the dukedom has changed hands from Pietro to Mendoza. He replies, `Of the Duke's religion, when I know what it is' (iv.v.94). Censorship here may have resulted from a topical reading of the line, since with the change of regime certain courtiers were affecting conversions to gain the favour of King James. In May 1603, for example, only weeks after the succession, the Venetian ambassador noted that former Elizabethan courtiers were thus courting favour with the king: `Old Howard, [Henry Howard, the

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Earl of Northampton] who has lately been appointed to the Council, and Southampton, who are both Catholics, declare that God has touched their hearts, and that the example of their king has more weight with them than the disputes of theologians. They have become Protestants, and go to church in the train of the King.'17 Seen in this context, the excised line acquires a pointed satirical allusion. Another such pertinent allusion, however, is retained in the ®rst edition but removed in the two later editions. Bianca comments on one of the recently promoted courtiers: `And is not Signior St Andrew Jaques a gallant fellow now?' (v.v.24±5). The absence of `Jaques', as a result of some external interference with the text prior to publication, may not amount to substantial censorship; but the name's inclusion gives a passage of generalized courtly satire a much more topical resonance in evoking ironic images of King James's gallantry. This is all the more pronounced in Maquerelle's reply: `By my maidenhead, la, honour and he agrees as well together as a satin suit and woollen stockings.' Marston, like Jonson, plays with the ®ctionalized location of his plays, simultaneously denying and provoking contemporary resemblance and allusion. It is notable that, cumulatively, excised words, retrieved in other texts, are placed to suggest this very topicality, indicating a sensitivity to topical nuance. There is, moreover, a case for arguing that The Malcontent suffered other censorship, more ideological than topical. In the ®nal scene, in the third issue of the play re¯ecting the performance of the King's Men, when Malevole has unmasked and revealed himself as Altofronto, he addresses the assembled court detailing his observations on the corruption in their midst. The speech contains a warning to the ruler: Let them remember that th'inconstant people Love many princes merely for their faces And outward shows; and they do covet more To have a sight of these than of their virtues. Yet this much let the great ones still conceit When they observe not Heaven's imposed conditions, They are no kings, but forfeit their commissions (v.vi.143±9)

Of all of Malevole's critiques of the body politic that is arguably the most forceful, spoken as it is in his proper persona. The idea that kings by their conduct can forfeit the right of governance counters dominant ideologies of passive obedience to the sovereign and that

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of the divine right of kings. The passage is present only in the third quarto, and even here there are signs of nervousness about the sentiments: in some copies `men' is substituted for `princes' and `kings', so that any explicit reference to royal authority is removed. The question is whether Malevole's commentary and the ensuing dialogue in which Maquerelle and Bilioso comment on changes to patronage in the court of Pietro were late additions or represent a censored passage. Dramatically, there are strong reasons for thinking that the lines comprised part of the original text. In terms of content, the passage is not comparable with the other additions to the text and their ostensible dramatic purpose.18 In the two earlier versions, the play ends entirely on a comic note, with the expulsion of Mendoza. Once Malevole has unmasked, he has scarcely anything to say. Altofronto's words in the ®nal version, on the other hand, represent an appropriate peroration emerging from his earlier observation as Malevole, and the passage as a whole provides the play with a more strongly political, and contentious, closure. Curiously, The Malcontent was omitted from the 1633 collection of Marston's works, published when Marston had long since severed his connection with the stage to become a clergyman. The exclusion of what had formerly been one of Marston's most popular plays may well have been related to a certain notoriety attached to it and to the rawness of its satire and language. In dedicating the volume to Elizabeth Cary, the publisher William Sheres af®rms that `the author hath professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffe their scenes with ribaldry, and lard their lines with scurrilous taunts and jests'.19 This could hardly be claimed of The Malcontent or the early Marston. In any event, as is well known, it is evident that Marston wished to have no association with his dramatic output, since the second issue of the collection removes the author's name from both the title page and the dedication. The strain of anti-court satire prevalent in The Malcontent continues in The Fawn, again accompanied by a self-conscious awareness of the dangers inherent in engaging with such themes. But in the latter play the topical satire is less literal, and hence less susceptible to censorship. Marston was quite conscious of how the text could be transformed in performance, claiming in the address to the reader that the life of the play `rests much in the actors' voice' (21). The added dimension of performance, which Marston tries to evoke for the reader, makes what is implicit explicit, while allowing the

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playwright a certain immunity from any accusations of intentionality. The play's prologue strikes the familiar defensive posture in claiming that `no rude disgraces / Shall taint a public or a private name', but from the reception of the play it seems that the prologue may well have served to alert the audience to that very possibility. Emulating the speech of the protagonist Faunus, the prologue attempts to de¯ect censure by ¯attering the audience and appealing to the good opinion of its discerning members. The tone is less defensive than in The Malcontent and suggests a less confrontational dramatic strategy. As in the latter play, disguise and dislocation enable free speech and the disguised ruler has the liberty to comment freely on the court. Here, however, while Malevole derides members of his own court, Hercules as Faunus ¯atters and encourages in their activities `the ship of fools' ± courtiers of the neighbouring court of Urbin. Complementing the role of Faunus is that of Dondolo, the Fool, who also claims the convention of free speech; but it is Faunus who is its true exponent. At the end of each of the ®rst four acts Hercules has a soliloquy and at the end of the ®fth act he speaks the epilogue. In the ®rst two soliloquies in particular, a remarkable dialectic is formed and sustained between ¯attery and its opposite, free speech. The ®rst soliloquy, in which Hercules sees as exemplary those kingdoms where free speech is the norm, establishes the pattern: I now repent Severe indictions to some sharp styles; Freeness, so't grow not to licentiousness, Is grateful to just states. Most spotless kingdom, And men ± O happy ± born under good stars, Where what is honest you may freely think, Speak what you think, and write what you speak, Not bound to servile soothings!

(i.ii.329±36)

The antithesis is again present in the soliloquy of the second act, as Hercules/Faunus observes that `Free speech gains foes, base fawnings steal the heart' (ii.ii.587), while in the third he con®nes himself to more general comments about the necessity of circumspection on the part of those who `with safety would well lurk in courts' (iii.iii.532). Marston's preoccupation with the liberty of speech thus becomes central to the play, through the preoccupation with its opposite. The Fawn seems not to have suffered from any censorship, but it appears to have attracted a certain post-performance notoriety. In

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June 1604 the French ambassador commented on the comparative freedom with which the King was treated both in the pulpit and on the stage: `Consider for pity's sake what must be the state and condition of a prince, whom the preachers publicly assail, whom the comedians of the metropolis bring upon the stage, whose wife attends these representations in order to enjoy the laugh against her husband.'20 The Fawn has been identi®ed as one of the plays which gave rise to the ambassador's comment. Gonzago, the selfopinionated Duke of Urbino, who is characterized by claims of worldly wisdom, sententious speech, and gullibility, seems to share certain traits with James I.21 As James was prone to do, he parades his learning in elaborate rhetoric. On the page, of course, such an impersonation is latent and presumably eluded the attention of a theatrical licenser. Nevertheless, if Marston was hinting at James I in the representation of Gonzago, then the play was a very audacious piece of theatre. In the context of the French ambassador's observation, Linda Levy Peck has examined the different means by which playwrights and ministers offered counsel to the new monarch.22 Focusing on the case study of a Buckinghamshire clergyman, John Burgess, who preached before the king in June 1604 and was subsequently imprisoned for his outspoken advice, Peck has observed that, in contrast, Marston remained within the bounds of the politically acceptable in The Fawn. That no immediate reprisals followed is due in part to the elusive nature of the genre in which he is writing. More probably the comparative freedom Marston enjoyed relates less to his political circumspection and more to the auspices of the production. Theatrical production in the early years of James I was complicated by a system of two royal ± sometimes rival ± households, each with its own theatrical company.23 The Blackfriars Company, the Children of the Revels, received the patronage of Queen Anne and, as the Children of the Queen's Revels, the company submitted its plays for licensing not to the Master of the Revels, but to Samuel Daniel, Groom of the Queen's Bedchamber, who had been appointed licenser in the company's patent. How formal this position was it is impossible to say, since there is no record of Daniel's activities during his brief tenure of the post. Presumably acting with the support of his patron, Daniel appears to have sanctioned ± or failed to detect the extent of dramatic satire in ± a number of plays performed at the court and at Blackfriars. With part

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shares in a company sponsored by the Queen and with the licensing system in a temporary state of ¯ux through division in the royal household, Marston appears to have taken the opportunity to realize his oft-repeated ambition of the free expression of social satire. Marston's notoriety as a satirist is brie¯y alluded to by Antony Nixon in The Blacke Yeare (1606), apparently written in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. The treatise, Nixon states, has been `occasioned by the late treacherous proceedings, but mixed with various matter'. Preceding his anti-Catholic diatribe, Nixon decries current social practices, including the diminishing returns of the book trade. He blames this on writers who lack substance, despite their ¯owering phrases, or who are `neyther wise nor wittye'. But a further aspersion is directed speci®cally at Marston's satire: `Others', he concedes, `have good wittes, but so critical, that they arraigne other mens works at the Tribunall seate of every censurious Aristrarch's understanding, when their own are sacri®ced in Paules Churchyard for bringing in The Dutch Curtezan to corrupt English conditions, and sent away Westward for carping both at Court, Cittie and country.'24 There is no corroboration elsewhere of Nixon's account of The Dutch Courtesan having been seized and destroyed in Paul's Churchyard, the centre of the book trade; but the references to Eastward Ho and Marston's contribution to the city comedy are accurate enough. Following the reaction to the Scots satire in Eastward Ho, Jonson and Chapman were imprisoned, while Marston appears to have ¯ed the city. Thus, `sent away Westward', as well as carrying its usual associations of execution at Tyburn, may be alluding to Marston's escape from arrest in London. The social and anti-Scots satire of Eastward Ho and the relative parts of the contributors have been well documented and need only be rehearsed brie¯y here. Again, the full satiric potential of the play only fully emerges in performance, when in the fourth act two gentlemen make derisory comments about Sir Petronel Flash, and in so doing identify him as one of the newly invested Jacobean knights. Sir Petronel has been washed ashore on the Isle of Dogs, which is as far as he gets on his proposed venture to Virginia, and he is discovered by the gentlemen: 1 g e n t. . . . I ken the man weel; hee's one of my thirty-pound knights. 2 g e n t. No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o'the grand day for four pound, giving to a page all the money in's purse, I wot well. (iv.i.197±201)

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Recalling Marston's comment in The Fawn about the power of the actors' voices, it is probable that the speech was delivered in a mock Scottish accent in imitation of King James and that it thus drew the attention of the newly created knight Sir James Murray, who informed the King of the nature of the satire.25 In his supplicatory letter to the King written from prison, Jonson casts the blame on Marston.26 The play's offence, he argues, is related to two clauses only, and neither of these was written by himself or Chapman.27 Modern editors, on the other hand, have credited the offending lines to Chapman. The inference is that either satire against the Scots and the court in scenes written by Marston was more extensive in the play as it was performed or Jonson was simply casting the blame on his former antagonist, whose departure from the city presumably only reinforced the case against him. That the dramatists were aware of the satiric immediacy of the play is clear from the fact that they failed to submit it for licensing. Nevertheless, the furore it brie¯y caused reveals the unpredictable nature of theatrical censorship, particularly during the early Stuart years. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 4 December 1605, and published and twice reprinted in 1605, con®rming the validity of Crispinella's comment in The Dutch Courtesan: `as in the fashion of the time, those books that are called in, are most in sale and request' (iii.i.53±5). In the case of Eastward Ho, it would seem that the King's reaction to the play and its authors resulted in its becoming a text much in demand. The play's publication so soon after the opposition to its performance has been cited as an example of the overall leniency of censorship in the period. But it is worth noting that the integrity of the text was not preserved in printing. There are a number of typographical anomalies which suggest that pages were reset in order to accommodate the removal of offending lines.28 Such characteristics, for example, are present in Act i, scene ii, composed by Marston, in which he exposes the social airs of Gertrude who, following her marriage to Sir Petronel, wishes to display her status by imitating French and Scottish fashions. In a detailed stage direction with much comic potential, the tailor enters carrying a gown, a Scotch farthingale, and a French fall; Gertrude is dressed in a citizen gown and French head-dress, while her waiting woman leads in a monkey. Apart from Gertrude's pun on the common qualities of the Scottish farthingale and a miserly Scot, little is made of the stage properties. The blank spaces in the quarto

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and the printing of Gertrude's speech in short, ®ve-word lines suggest that lines have been excised from the text. Further gibes against the Scots may have been removed and, in view of the imitative potential of apes, it has been speculated that the ape might have made lewd or comic gestures at such references. Whatever the exact nature of the excision, it seems evident that we do not have all of Marston's satiric lines in this scene. Although much rests on speculation, it would seem that Marston did not entirely abandon contemporary, anti-court satire following the performance and suppression of Eastward Ho, although this production must have contributed to the loss of the Queen's patronage of the Children's Revels in c. 1606. Marston may have been the author of a lost satire performed at Blackfriars in April 1608 in which it was reported by the French ambassador that the players had `depicted the king, his Scottish demeanour and all his favourites in a very strange manner'.29 A few days earlier the Florentine agent in London wrote in one of his dispatches of a play ridiculing `the new fashion found in Scotland', adding that `the author of the play has run off in fear of losing his life, probably because he mingled ideas that were too wicked, in which so much was concealed'.30 Whether the anonymous author was Marston is open to question. Certainly, according to the Privy Council register, a John Marston was committed to Newgate prison for an unspeci®ed offence on 8 June 1608.31 The Insatiate Countess, Marston's last play, was completed by William Barksted months later and the following year Marston took holy orders. What emerges from the case of Eastward Ho is that, in contrast to Jonson, Marston's lack of patronage placed him in a vulnerable position. The satiric exposure of the patron/client relationship in The Fawn would seem to re¯ect Marston's own antipathy to seeking accommodation with the patronage network. To compensate for the absence of a patron, Marston appeals boldly to the good judgement of his audience and to right-minded criticism, and he articulates concepts of freedom of speech. Yet there remains an awareness that its opposite, censure, will prevail. The ironic dedication to Antonio and Mellida in which he appeals, as patron, to `Nobody', `Lord Protector of oppressed innocence', registers such uncertain, ambivalent feelings about dramatic reception. In commenting on Marston's application at the beginnings of The Malcontent and The Fawn of the Juvenalian motto `Vexet censura columbas' ± the judgement goes

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against the doves ± G. K. Hunter has made the point that it would be anachronistic to identify judgement, or censura, with censorship.32 Marston, however, employs the concept of censure in the most inclusive way, incorporating both its sense of sagacious opinion and that of adverse criticism. Part of the contention of this essay has been to demonstrate that for Marston, censure and censorship were akin. From the beginning of his career in The Scourge of Villanie, he projects his fear of the censuring, hostile critic who will misreport and claim to ®nd libels in his satire. His experience of the suppression of the satires, the textual interferences with The Malcontent, reactions to The Fawn contributing to the company's loss of royal patronage, and ®nally the reception of Eastward Ho, all serve to indicate how censure could lead to censorship. The hope of imposing some kind of self-regulatory norms on the text, expressed initially by Marston, approximates to one contemporary paradigm of early modern censorship. With the aim of moving the debate about censorship away from concepts of freedom and authority, Richard Burt, in his study of Ben Jonson, has sought to establish further de®nitions of censorship, in particular those of `court' and `market'.33 Burt focuses on critical self-consciousness, whereby a dramatist such as Jonson, by appealing to an idealized literary community sought to regulate the circulation of his writing and to establish norms of good and bad criticism. In a sense Marston, in attacking and deriding his hostile, censuring critic, the antithesis of `true iudging eyes, quick, sighted censurers', anticipated the Jonson of Poetaster. Burt is right to contend that more than one concept of censorship circulated in the early modern period, although the inferences that I would draw from this state of affairs are rather different. While Jonson ± and, I would suggest, Marston ± sought to legitimate such innovatory forms of censorship, they could not control the reception of the texts. State censorship proved to be more powerful than any self-regulatory literary practice which aspired to replace it. Free speech and poetic liberty, which are often regarded as post-Enlightenment concepts, and as anachronistic in relation to the early modern period, are consistently expressed as ideals in Marston's dramatic and non-dramatic satire. Such arguments are harnessed by appealing to wise judgement and right censure, familiar from classical satire. As is apparent from the vicissitudes of his career, Marston did not, however, succeed in countering the arbitrary hand of institutionalized censorship.

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1 See R. C. Horne, `Voices of Alienation: the Moral Signi®cance of Marston's Satiric Strategy', Modern Language Review 81:1 (1986), 18±33. 2 See Sir Fulke Greville: Life of Sir Philip Sidney, with an introduction by Charles Nowell Smith (Oxford, 1907), p. 156. 3 The inclusiveness of the offence is conveyed by the royal proclamation of April 1601 offering a reward of £100 for information about libels `tending to the slander of our royal person and state, and stirring up of rebellion and sedition within this our realm'. See Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (Yale University Press, 1964±9), vol. iii, pp. 233±4. 4 See A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554±1640, 6 vols. (London, 1876), vol. iii, pp. 677±8. 5 Lynda E. Boose, `The 1599 Bishops' Ban, Elizabethan Pornography, and the Sexualization of the Jacobean Stage', in Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (eds.), Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England (New York and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 185±200; p. 190. 6 Richard A. McCabe, `Elizabethan Satire and the Bishops' Ban of 1599', Yearbook of English Studies 11 (1981), 188±94. 7 See Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 215±17. 8 See Janet Clare, `Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship, 2nd edn (Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 45±6. 9 Boose, `The 1599 Bishops' Ban'. 10 See, for example, Satyre iii: `Nay then chast cells, when greasie Aretine / For his ranck Fico is surnam'd divine' (79±80). 11 The allusion to `Littleton' is a reference to the standard book on tenures by Sir Thomas Littleton, published in 1481. 12 See O. J. Campbell, Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's `Troilus and Cressida' (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Publications, 1938), p. 1; and Boose, `The 1599 Bishops' Ban'. 13 Snarlinge Satyres, included amongst the texts suppressed on 1 June, has been identi®ed as T. M., Micro-cynicon. Six Snarlinge Satyres, which might include Thomas Middleton amongst the verse satirists. 14 Clare, `Art Made Tongue-tied', pp. 72±5. 15 See Tom Cain (ed.), `Apologetical Dialogue' to Poetaster (Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 262±75. 16 For a discussion of the different editions or issues see G. K. Hunter's Revels edition of the play (London: Methuen, 1975), pp. xxiii±xxxi. 17 Quoted by L. L. Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), p. 55. 18 For a discussion of the additions to the third edition see Hunter (ed.),

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22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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The Malcontent, pp. xlvi±liii. Hunter does not consider the possible censorship of the ®nal scene. The Workes of Mr John Marston, being Tragedies and Comedies collected into one volume (London, 1633). Quoted in F. von Raumer, History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Illustrated by Original Documents, 2 vols. (London, 1835), vol. ii, p. 206. The identi®cation of Gonzago with James was ®rst made by A. H. Bullen in 1887 (Works of John Marston, 3 vols. vol. i, p. xliii). For an extended discussion of the subject, see Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in his Social Setting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 221±4. Linda Levy Peck, `John Marston's The Fawn: Ambivalence and Jacobean Courts', in David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (eds.), The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576±1649 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 117±36. See Leeds Barroll, `The Court of the First Stuart Queen', in Linda Levy Peck (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 191±208; and Clare, `Art Made Tongue-Tied', pp. 121±2. Anthony Nixon, The Blacke Yeare (London, 1606), sig. b2r. This is according to Jonson's account of William Drummond, in Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, vol. i, p. 140. The supplicatory letters to patrons written by Jonson and Chapman are printed in Eastward Ho, ed. R. W. Van Fossen (Manchester University Press, 1979), pp. 218±25. For the conclusions reached on the division of the play's authorship, see Eastward Ho, p. 226. See Ben Jonson, vol. iv, pp. 495±500 and J. Q. Adams, `Eastward Ho and its Satire against the Scots', Studies in Philology 28 (1931), 689±701. See J. J. Jusserand, `Ambassador La Boderie and the Compositor of the Byron Plays', Modern Language Review 6 (1911), 203±5. See John Orrell, `The London Stage in the Florentine Correspondence, 1604±1618', Theatre Research International 3 (1977±8), 157±76; 164. See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1923), vol. iii, p. 428. Most modern editors accept the identi®cation with the playwright. The Malcontent, p. xx. Richard Burt, Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 1±25.

chapter 12

Ill-mannered Marston Michael Scott

In 1986 the Royal Shakespeare Company opened the Swan Theatre. It is, the company stated, `a Jacobean-style playhouse staging the once popular but now rarely seen plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries during the period 1570±1750'.1 Since 1986 the RSC has staged many Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Restoration plays. Dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, William Wycherley, and Aphra Behn have all had revivals of work in the Swan but there has been no place for John Marston; not a single performance of one of his plays has been staged. Yet arguably, for a brief period of time around 1602±6, Marston was one of the most controversial playwrights in London, competing in popularity with Shakespeare. It can be conjectured that Shakespeare's musings on theatrical competition in Hamlet refer to an extent at least to Marston's plays performed by the boy actors at St Paul's: there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for't. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages ± so they call them ± that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither. 2

The Malcontent (1602[?]/1604[?]) was such an attraction that it was revised in 1604 by John Webster for a production at the Globe. The Dutch Courtesan (1603/4[?]/1604/5[?]) was provocative in its development of the ideas of the radical moralist, Montaigne. In doing so it possibly satirized Dekker's The Honest Whore.3 Yet Marston remains ignored by a company dedicated to bringing popular plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries to the modern stage. Why might this be so? Perhaps the plays are so poor that theatrically they will not work for a modern sophisticated audience. This, however, does not accord with the popularity of Marston's plays in twentieth-century 212

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production by Joan Littlewood at Stratford East, Jonathan Miller and Geoffrey Reeves at the Nottingham Playhouse, or William Gaskill, Piers Haggard, and Giles Block at the National Theatre. Possibly, the fact that these eminent directors in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had the courage to perform Marston means that the RSC does not need to bother entering territory already explored by others. Unless it produced Sophonisba it could not claim to give the ®rst signi®cant professional revival of one of Marston's major plays for 400 years. Such speculation, however, would be unfair. The reason is probably more complex. Marston perhaps does not ®gure in RSC directorial debates over repertoire because at British and American universities he hardly ®gures in syllabuses in English or in Theatre Studies. The present volume will do much to redress this situation; and bringing Marston into critical currency should also enhance his chances of theatrical revival. Up to this point, however, Marston has been l'enfant terrible of Jacobean drama. He is illmannered and as such has been unloved by traditional literary critics. Robert Ornstein in The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (1960) typi®es earlier attitudes when he draws a comparison between Marston and Beaumont and Fletcher: Only the tactlessness of scholarship would impose the uncouth Marston on so sauve and congenial a pair as Beaumont and Fletcher. Crowded in a little room they form an uncomfortable trio, so different in talent and temperament that it is hard to believe that they were contemporaries who wrote for the same audiences. We cannot imagine Fletcher committing Marston's artistic atrocities, nor can we imagine Marston losing himself in Fletcher's Arcadian dreamworld. As tragedians, however, they stood approximately equidistant from the `center' of Jacobean tragedy; men of considerable talents and little vision, they were in touch with, but not involved in, the tragic issues of their great contemporaries.4

As the title of Ornstein's book implies, he is a critic who has a personal certainty about issues of moral and universal value. These form the ideological backdrop to his line of enquiry and his critical stance. In such a mid-twentieth-century moral framework, Marston's theatrical behaviour no doubt did appear `uncouth'. Yet, even as the century drew to a close, his critics were using similar epithets. Frank Whigham, for example, in one of the more perceptive studies of a Marston play in recent years, still refers to `Marston's own oxymoronic identity as nastiest Elizabethan satirist and eventual Jacobean divine'.5 Marston's plays reveal what Pietro in The

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Malcontent calls a `Hideous imagination!' in relation to Malevole. To an extent it is true. Marston's Malevole revels in describing the grotesque picture of Pietro's court: Why, methinks I see that signior pawn his footcloth, that metreza her plate; this madam takes physic, that t'other monsieur may minister to her; here is a pander jewelled; there is a fellow in shift of satin this day, that could not shift a shirt t'other night. Here a Paris supports that Helen; there's a Lady Guinever bears up that Sir Lancelot ± dreams, dreams, visions, fantasies, chimeras, imaginations, tricks, conceits! (To Prepasso) Sir Tristram, Trimtram, come aloft Jack-an-apes with a whim-wham: here's a Knight of the land of Catito shall play at trap with any page in Europe, do the sworddance with any morris-dancer in Christendom, ride at the ring till the ®n of his eyes look as blue as the welkin, and run the wild goose chase even with Pompey the Huge. (i.iii.49±62)

This is a bitter hard-hitting description of a sexual landscape; of a society corrupted by its own incestuous relationship with itself. It is an expose of ways of thinking. Of its time it is as ill-mannered as Trainspotting or as ill-judged as Crash. Yet like both, The Malcontent is uncomfortable and confrontational for its audience. Marston's plays no doubt challenged the Jacobeans. They still have the power to question modern society in its preconceptions. It could, therefore, be expected that Marston's satire might ®nd favour with modern ideological critics. Yet puzzlingly it appears not. T. F. Wharton notes, `Marston has remained relatively untouched by poststructuralist criticism. There is no single Marxist reading of his work . . . though there are a few Marxist derivatives among the mere dozen interpretations that can be described even vaguely as feminist or new historicist.'6 Nevertheless, Marston's mode of discourse certainly has a relationship with late twentieth-century comedy. Just as in the 1960s and 1970s his plays could be considered in relation to modern satirists such as Jonathan Miller, who directed The Malcontent at Nottingham Playhouse in 1973, so his drama can now be read in the context of contemporary alternative comics such as the acerbic Ben Elton or Harry En®eld or the transvestite confrontation of Eddie Izzard. Indeed, when Frank Whigham instructively writes about voyeurism in the ten or so `disguised-ruler' plays written by a variety of dramatists, including Marston, between 1603 and 1606, he notes in relation to The Fawn that the comedy `retained something edgily pornographic, probably at several levels. The very institution of the

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theatre depended fundamentally upon, and renewed, pornographic energies, according to many of the hostile divines Marston was eventually to join' (p. 148). He continues: The sheer fact of Hercules's disguise disturbs his moralist brother, much as the institutional fact of the disguising and transvestite theatre did its enemies. Transvestism, both of rank and gender, seemed very close to perversion, if indeed any distance remained at all. And the spectre of voyeurism beckons the auditor, both in terms of identi®cation and of witness, engagement and detachment . . . we enjoy watching voyeurs, both to identify and to condemn. (p. 149)

Transvestism today still retains its attractive theatrical power as is evidence by Izzard and a number of less-talented comic crossdressers on the modern stage. Although in a liberal age its confrontational aspect may not be quite as strong as it was for the Jacobeans, transvestism nevertheless still fascinates in a voyueristic manner. Marston's plays, moreover, are blatantly unafraid to confront his society with an unromantic, bawdy sexual banter as found also in Webster's Induction to The Malcontent: `We stayed for you at supper last night at my cousin Honeymoon's, the woolen draper. After supper we drew cuts for a score of apricocks, the longest cut still to draw an apricock. By this light 'twas Mistress Frank Honeymoon's fortune still to have the longest cut; I did measure for the women' (23±8).7 The sexual pandering of the language is comic in itself, yet aggressive in the attack it makes on Marston's contemporary society. Just as today Izzard will, through the ambiguity of his guise, humorously expose the immoral posturings of political manipulation, or the banality of middle-class consumerism, so Marston has no qualms about attacking the audiences viewing his plays. He does it through outrageous character constructs. Prepasso opens the action of The Malcontent, for example, addressing both characters and spectators: You think you are in a brothel-house, do you not? ± This room is illscented. Enter One with a perfume So, perfume, perfume; some upon me, I pray thee. The Duke is upon instant entrance; so, make place there! (i.i.6±9)

While this is being spoken, there is a cacophany of noise from beyond the stage, as Malevole plays his so-called `music'. The Duke enters asking, `Where breathes that music?' (i.ii.1). The Duke is thereby revealed as a construct who will dress up even discord in a

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language of civility. Beneath, however, is the sleaze which is immediately exposed by Malevole in his attack on the courtiers: Yaugh, god o'man, what dost thou there? Duke's Ganymede, Juno's jealous of thy long stockings! shadow of a woman, what wouldst, weasel? thou lamb a'court, what does thou bleat for? ah, you smooth-chinned catamite! (i.ii.5±9)

There is no time for the equivalent of sound-bite politicians or smooth-dressed spin-doctors in Marston's world. Why therefore does such hostility by Marston to social convention, to norms of moral codes, and to dominant ideologies not attract contemporary historicist, cultural materialist, or feminist critics? The Dutch Courtesan, for example, which, it could be expected, might appeal to the feminist line in new critical trends, is ignored by Jonathan Dollimore in Radical Tragedy (1984) and also by Kathleen McLuskie in Renaissance Dramatists (1989) in the Feminist Reading Series. It is discussed by feminist Susan Baker, in an essay concerned with `the contradictions implicit in marriage discourses of Marston's time' and the history of the play's criticism which `exposes much about the ideologies of sex and marriage in our own time'.8 Her chapter, however, almost ignores the theatrical identity of the play in a Jacobean context and certainly in a twentieth-century one. There is no reference, for example, to Joan Littlewood's pioneering, radical production at Stratford East in 1954 in which Avis Bunnage did not present Franceschina as a caricature, as Baker suggests she is, but rather as a rounded character. In underestimating the power of the dramatic action as opposed to the narrative of the work, Baker is thereby forced into a tamed response. Thus she speaks of the plot: At the center stands Franceschina, the Dutch courtesan, a stock ®gure. She is neither every man nor every women, but she is a ®gure for one condition faced by everyman and everywoman. As a `punk rampant' . . . she embodies pure erotic desire ± unbridled, untamed, undomesticated. Her ludicrous accent makes her comical at times, as sexuality is often comical, but she is a creature of remarkable energy; the play argues how very dangerous this energy can be when it is unharnessed, unrestrained by social practice or convention. (p. 219)

The weakness with this kind of criticism is that it imposes themes onto the play or provides naõÈve answers to the questions asked by the play. Montaigne, used conspicuously throughout The Dutch Courtesan, was not the ®rst to point out the comedy in the sexual act. Marston's dramatology goes further than stock characters or simplicities about

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humour and energy. Its effectiveness is found precisely in its refusal to be tied down by answers or ideologies of any kind. The Dutch Courtesan throws up problems and contradictions. It neither solves them nor even attempts to do so. It rather wrestles with them in order to expose them.9 Is it for this reason that other ideologically orientated contemporary critics have largely ignored Marston? Is it that contemporary critical trends just cannot afford ambiguity and question as the essence of the play rather than speci®c polemical explanation? Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton omit Marston from their collection of essays, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama (1992), as do David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass from their Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1991). This latter book sought overtly to replace `R. J. Kaufman's Elizabethan Drama (1961) or Max Bluestone and Norman Rabkin's Shakespeare's Contemporaries (1962) as an anthology of `recent criticism' which has its focus on Renaissance drama, `not primarily as a ``poetic'' and individual art, but as a theatrical and collaborative activity, demanding a focus both on its discursive complexities and on the institutional conditions in which it was produced, demanding, that is, theoretical and historical commitments unnecessary and impossible for Kaufman and his contemporaries'.10 Yet Marston, one of the most theatrically challenging dramatists of the period, is absent from a `focus' on `discursive complexities' and `institutional conditions'. R. J. Kaufman in 1961, at least, had included Samuel Schoenbaum's provocative essay, `The Precarious Balance of John Marston', even though it patronized the satirist from a dominant liberal humanist viewpoint. Schoenbaum found excuses for Marston's ill manners: He was fortunate in that his own maladjustment coincided with the malaise of his age, and that he was temperamentally suited to gratify the tastes of his spectators . . . he stimulated the jaded tastes of his frivolous and sophisticated aristocratic audience ± an audience that lacked a feeling for true tragedy, an audience that was pleased with sensationalism, satire, exaggerated emotions, and sententious declamation. Marston was able to satisfy these needs; he included, moreover, a gratuitous display of his own morbid tendencies, for he found his audience receptive to the cynical, the tortured, and the perverse.11

Some of what Schoenbaum has to say could be equally applied to Tamburlaine, Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta, or Titus Andronicus or to

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passages in The Unfortunate Traveller. Judicial victims were hanged, drawn, and quartered in London in the 1590s as a popular spectacle. The impoverished starved in the streets and disease was virulent. `Institutional conditions' sprang from social realities. Perfume was required to dispel stench. If Schoenbaum was outside a social understanding of Marston's plays, the omission by Scott Kastan and Stallybrass of this `discursive dramatist' is still more unfortunate. Dollimore, at least, discusses the Antonio plays. In doing so, however, he reveals that as a critic he is working to ®nd harmony in the artistic work: In Antonio and Mellida reintegration, of self, and of self with society, is achieved arti®cially through the play's tragic-comic denouement; the main characters confer familial identity upon each other . . . and after being further consolidated by `wedlock' . . . their harmony is complete . . . By contrast, in Antonio's Revenge, reintegration is achieved through a resolve which derives from a vengeful commitment which is itself conditional upon brutalisation . . .12

This is another example of a radical critic sanitizing a demanding dramatist in accordance with a personal world-view or ideology. Ironically, Dollimore's political radicalism is as conservatively conditioned as the earlier liberal humanism of Samuel Schoenbaum or Robert Ornstein. Despite their protests the political critics work within a tradition of artistic acceptance which, Marston's plays demonstrate, he attacked. How far is Dollimore's search for harmonization, for example, from T. S. Eliot's view of Sophonisba? This, Eliot regarded as Marston's best play, inviting the reader to contextualize it with the works of Corneille and Racine rather than Shakespeare. He found within it: a pattern behind the pattern into which the characters deliberately involve themselves; the kind of pattern which we perceive in our own lives only at rare moments of inattention and detachment, drowsing in sunlight. It is the pattern drawn by what the ancient world called Fate; subtilized by Christianity into mazes of delicate theology; and reduced again by the modern world into crudities of psychological or economic necessity.13

The search for patterns, for harmony, for mazes of delicate theology or coherent conditions for left-wing ideological interpretation, frame a tradition of dramatic criticism which underpins a reaction to Marston's plays, to his ill manners. Nevertheless, the historical location of Marston's work has produced some of the most signi®cant critical studies. Philip

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Finkelpearl's 1969 thesis placing Marston within the ambience of the Middle Temple has proved invaluable.14 The relative paucity of pertinent criticism in the 1990s receives some compensation in recent historical studies of The Fawn, particularly by Linda Levy Peck and Frank Whigham. Yet even with these critics, Marston causes problems, not merely related to issues of confrontation but of his refusal to be explicit. Thus Linda Levy Peck cannot in the end decide whether The Fawn is satirical of King James and his court or laudatory of it. There is no doubt from her argument that Marston's play is drawing pertinent parallels with the court: `written in 1604 or 1605, a year or two after James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as James I, Marston's satire titillates because it apparently mirrors aspects of Jacobean court life'.15 She continues that The Fawn provides `a deliberately multivalent reading of the Jacobean court rather than a realistic portrait of King James' noting that the `Jacobean court was not monolithic' but composed also of the courts of Queen Anne and eventually Prince Henry (p. 118). The play thereby goes beyond the super®ciality of titillation into the heart of the respective courts. It draws parallels with the self-constructed persona of the King. Nevertheless, in doing so it leaves questions of tone and purpose. She concludes, `The Fawn presents not a real portrait of James I but a ®ction that came to be current in his lifetime and which bloomed in the hothouse of Commonwealth propaganda. We respond to this portrait of James I, although it has been subjected to historical revision, because it retains its narrative force' (p. 136). In one sense this is a neat solution to her critical problem but it does not go far enough. It is useful to conjecture whether the force of the satirically orientated narrative in Marston is synonymous with a dramatic one. Is the theatrical signi®cance wholly dependent on the speci®city of the satiric focus? Can it still be credibly realized once the pertinence and immediacy of the targeted environment or object of scorn has, through history, been lost to an audience? T. F. Wharton argues that The Fawn is not often performed on the modern stage because `all of Marston's dramatic wildness has gone, and there is little force or point to what is left'. 16 He may be correct. Yet in 1983 Giles Block successfully staged the play at the National Theatre in a delightful, even elegant production which, if not satirically challenging, still proved humorous and dramatically satisfying for a modern audience.17 Wild, it was not. It had lost its

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political, satirical speci®city. It thereby gave the appearance of a softer, kinder Marston than we ®nd in the Antonio plays, The Malcontent, or The Dutch Courtesan, but still a dramatically effective one. We can only surmise through historical studies that The Fawn may have been a harder, more dangerous, and politically orientated stage play in 1604. Nevertheless, the original intent and purpose aside, it still worked as a comedy in modern production, exposing the generality of human foibles. Frank Whigham's study of The Fawn takes the historical line of enquiry to a different level, linking it with the psychological and sociological. As a `disguised-ruler' play it has a concern with the new King. At the centre of this genre of plays is the Gazer, the disguised prince, who is given a complex dramatic identity: The relational dyad is presented as invariably structured asymmetrically: the Gazing subject dominates the seen known object of the Gaze. If unseen, unknown, the Gazer is so much the more dominant. This ®gure obviously describes the doubly hierarchical relation between disguised ruler and unaware subject. It can also parse the shared practice (analogous by reversal) of playwright and audience, who bond in a voyeuristic relation of unseen comprehending dominance . . . both to the onstage scene and to its offstage referent.18

James, well known by his contemporaries for his voyeurism in relation to the marriage bonds of his courtiers, has an af®nity with the Gaze motif. Aristocratic marriage unions took place through the agencies of his court and authority. He then voyeuristically investigated the intimacies of the couple's sexual encounter on their ®rst night, to ensure that all was as it should be. Within The Fawn Duke Hercules, in disguising himself in Urbino, has not only a political but libidinous intent. He transforms the latter into `¯attery, as a form of public service, purging or gratifying himself and curing . . . the neighbour kingdom of its ills all at once' (p. 144). Such an interpretation of The Fawn takes the play beyond the speci®cities of the Jacobean court and the society of its ®rst production. Whigham points towards `tabloid fascination' (p. 146) to describe the attractive compulsiveness and simultaneous repulsion of such behaviour. We might go further. At a time when the Monica Lewinsky affair has highlighted, if not a general decadence in Western society but at least a current failure in the West to comprehend permanent notions of moral realities, Marston's analysis may go beyond satiric interpretations on the one hand or comic

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elegance on the other. Society is in a spin when the President of the United States is challenged by the country's Senate over issues of truth and deceit which neither seem to be able to de®ne. The public, meanwhile, looks on supposedly scandalized yet engaged by the intricacies of the affair. Its fascination is fed, even spawned, by the voyeurism of modern commentators in the media. Even the generalities of contemporary production could prove pertinent in their confrontation with modern preoccupations. Marston's world has an equivalent in our own. Whigham helps show that The Fawn is part of Marston's general, as well as speci®c, satiric landscape. Nevertheless, in the end, Whigham, like so many other critics, resorts to a norm of moral or social bearing which Marston resists. He even provides a realism to the play which is distracting after the perceptive criticism of his opening discourse. He states, for example. `In fact, I think, when Fawn encouraged Tiberio to respect his father's wishes (the marital negotiation assignment) he was even then encouraging Tiberio in self-indulgence ± indulgence of his inappropriate, withholding urge to chastity, a self-indulgence in ®xation, analogous to the courtiers' pathologies' (p. 155). Such speculation is not far from the literary critical follies exposed over sixty years ago by L. C. Knights in `How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?'19 More seriously, however, Whigham, after having revealed the potential power and confrontation of The Fawn, resorts to answers which sanitize the rebellion of the text. He talks of Marston as `a conjurer, summoning and welcoming a new future across the long half-life of the radioactive bitterness his early works purveyed'. The dramatist becomes one of `warmth' rather than `heat' (p. 156). All is found to be rounded off by the dramatist since the plot allows Duke Hercules to `(re)-subject others to that which has subjected him: the invisible and inescapable obligation to moral propriety'. This Whigham holds is conserved in Hercules' `ducal uprightness' and suggests that `in the force of its enforcement lives his privately felt revenge' (p. 152). L. C. Knights's strictures are still not far away. In trying to ®nd an answer in `a morality of indulgence and trust' (p. 156) Whigham mistakes the ¯ow of the narrative as being synonymous with the force of Marston's arguments. In the context of Shakespearean comedy Catherine Belsey, drawing on Congreve, has pertinently reminded us that comedies `are more than their endings'.20 The advice equally applies to Marston in both his comedies and his tragedies. The preposterous

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ending to Antonio and Mellida in which Antonio rises `from the dead' is mirrored by its `tragic' complement in Antonio's Revenge when the revengers seek the simplicity of the monastic life and are allowed to resort to it. Both, however, reinforce the moral uncertainties of the plays themselves. It may be argued that Marston, like his own ®ctional Antonio or like Shakespeare's malcontented construct, Jaques, moved from the ¯uid bitterness of satire to the fabricated solidity of the Church. Yet such paralleling of the dramatic and historic, prevalent in Marston's criticism from Schoenbaum to Whigham, does not provide a critical framework for an understanding of Marston's theatricality. As we try to move forward in an understanding of an apparently ill-mannered Marston, we are constantly thrown back to G. K. Hunter's seminal essay `English Folly and Italian Vice' (1960) in which he described Andrugio, the father of Antonio in Antonio and Mellida, as being `meaningful to us, less as a representative of human misery and more as a philosophic stance, in a world which can be commented on and exposed from this point of view ± though the point of view will hardly serve as a basis for action or ``improvement'' '.21 G. K. Hunter's perception that the satirist may not himself be speaking from a stable rostrum caused a critical storm, especially once it had been endorsed by R. A. Foakes and later by T. F. Wharton and Michael Scott. Hunter and the others wrote at the time of the theatre of the absurd when contemporary plays did not have to have a speci®c sociological content. Harold Pinter, for example, explicitly described his work at that time as apolitical. In such a context, Marston's plays could be understood precisely in their re¯ection of a landscape that is the human condition. The dramatic form re¯ected such a landscape, not in the context of the dramatist's life but in relation to the forms, structure, juxtaposing, and performances of the dramatic artefacts. The theatricality of the plays is stable in that there is a tight hold over the totality of the structure, but the philosophy is neither didactic nor reliable. Rather it is satirically derided even as it attacks others. The false posture, the lack of any real sense of durable solutions, usually paints a torrid landscape but neither cleanses it nor builds upon it. Marston's strength is in the dramatic effectiveness of the play itself. He is the ultimate cynic, the Jaques ®gure unable or unwilling to ®nd a solution to what he sees since he and his works are part of the scene being described. As Duke Altofronto comments in The Malcontent:

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Why, man, we are all philosophical monarchs or natural fools . . . Discord to malcontents in very manna; When the ranks are burst, then scuf¯e Altofront.

(i.iv.32±3, 38±9)

It is the `discord' itself which is the `manna' and the manner of Marston's plays. His dramatic work, without solutions, is a re¯ective theatricality of the human condition. Once written, it may, for him, have been complete and so `scuf¯e' Marston, the dramatist. This is not, however, to agree with Whigham to an oxymoronic dilemma in the writer's identity. It is rather to focus the discussion on the immediacy and potential power of the drama as it is performed. The omission of Marston from the RSC's theatrical repertoire is all the more lamentable in this respect. The company, since its inception, has been in¯uenced by dominant critical trends. Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary helped develop the company's theatrical style in the 1960s. Peter Brook's King Lear (1962) and Peter Hall and John Barton's The Wars of the Roses (1962±3) were heavily dependent on Kott's contemporization of Shakespearean narratives. In the 1970s Trevor Nunn and Terry Hands were similarly in¯uenced by the anthropological concept of festive comedy found in the work of literary critics such as Northrop Frye and C. L. Barber. In the 1990s it might have been argued that the RSC was similarly being in¯uenced in its selection of Jacobean drama by the fashions of contemporary literary criticism. Marston in being largely omitted from the literary±critical debates, is thereby also being ignored by the theatre. Yet a theatrically orientated form of criticism as found, for example, in semiotics, may help to re-engage him with the modern stage. The semiotics of drama is rooted in theatre itself. Before contemporary semiological critics such as Keir Elam, George Savona, and Elaine Aston were advocating an understanding of spatial and visual, as well as verbal communication in theatre, Peter Brook in The Empty Space was pointing to the importance of theatrical symbols as found in Beckett's drama: a true symbol is speci®c, it is the only form a certain truth can take. The two men waiting by a stunted tree, the man recording himself on tape, the two men marooned in a tower, the woman buried to her waist in sand, the parents in the dustbins, the three heads in the urns: these are pure inventions, fresh images sharply de®ned ± and they stand on the stage as objects. They are theatre machines. People smile at them, but they hold

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their ground: they are critic-proof. We get nowhere if we expect to be told what they mean, yet each one has a relation with us we can't deny.22

The `critic-proof ' `theatre machines', confronting the literary conventionalist and defying dominant ideologies, identify a dramatic genre that establishes Marston's particular contribution to theatrical history. In this regard, modern theatrical movements and performance criticism is helpful in understanding his particular voice. It provides an alternative form of criticism from those of a moral, ideological, or poetic base. There is a need for an understanding of a `new romanticism' in post-modern production.23 A text-andperformance approach to drama insists on a comprehension of the totality of the dramatic experience ± a play's construction, its production, and its reception. It involves textual, historical, and intertextual study in relation to the process of performance. In this it naturally allows for harmony and disharmony, and for congruity and incongruity. It can ful®l certain expectations and simultaneously frustrate them; uphold certain theatrical traditions and yet break with them. John Marston is regarded as a minor dramatist in the canon of literary writers and yet his drama might point us in a direction which challenges conventional literary ideas. His overtly challenging theatricality frees him from the constraints that traditional literary criticism would place on him.24 Attila Kiss, in a challenging essay in 1995, pointed to examples in Renaissance drama where verbal and non-verbal modes of discourse are used interactively and metatheatrically to communicate the presence of a constructed social experience: the violence of rhetoric (or, the rhetoric of violence), and the violated, abjected body are used in Renaissance drama as a representational technique, as a semiotic attempt in order to surpass the limitations of language, to involve the spectator in a theatrical experience which overcomes the insuf®ciency of representation. In this respect, the multiplication and exuberance of violence on the late English Renaissance stage can be treated not as a decline into decadence and sensationalism but as the development of an attempt to bring theatrical semiosis to perfection, to achieve the immediacy of experience.25

One of the early expressions of this dramatic mode is found in Marston, where example after example of stark stage pictures dominate the communicative expression of the plays. If organicist critics regard Shakespeare as the great poetic dramatist, they are unlikely to evaluate Marston as a proponent of visual drama

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dependent on the artistic image. Yet this is exactly how his plays work. The absurd resurrection of Antonio in Antonio and Mellida and the banal monastic resolution to Antonio's Revenge are examples of a confrontational dramatic technique which structures the process of the plays. There are, however, many other notable instances: the hanging body of Feliche throughout the majority of Antonio's Revenge; the eventual laying of the body across the revenger's breast in the same play; the thunderbolt from the skies striking the lover, Mendoza, in The Insatiate Countess; the poisoning with the empty box in The Malcontent; the use of the black mass and of surrealist dancing and cacophony in Antonio's Revenge and The Malcontent; the androgynous behaviour of the court in The Malcontent; the pretensions and affectations leading courtiers to the ship of fools in The Fawn. Even Sophonisba which is often considered as Marston's most literary play derives its dramatic power, not only from its oral language, but from its theatrical language developed through the accumulation of a series of juxtaposed stage images and semiotic set pieces. Syphax's sudden change of tactic, for example, in iv.i. when confronted with Sophonisba's virtue is immediately developed by the dramatist into the invocation of the witch, Erichtho. Thus while one moment Syphax can re¯ect: Woman's forceÁd use, Like unripe fruit's no sooner got but waste; They have proportion, colour, but no taste.

(iv.i.69±71)

he can the next revel in the grotesque description of a necrophiliac, across whose face, `A loathsome yellow leanness spreads' (iv.i.102). Such a revelatory juxtaposing of elements of the human psyche is not isolated. Examples dominate the dramatic process of the play. Syphax has a repeated delusion that he is to sleep with Sophonisba. He relishes the anticipation of his sexual encounter: Stay, take thy delight by steps, Think of thy joys, and make long thy pleasures.

(iii.i.174±5)

only to ®nd, almost farcically, on one occasion that the drinkinduced Vangue is in the bed, whom he brutally kills, or on another that it is the foul Erichtho, by whom he is repulsed, as in a medieval fable, Thou rotten scum of hell ± O my abhorreÁd heat! O loathed delusion!

(v.i.2±3)

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Moreover, at the play's apparent moral core is exposed a lack of stability in man's action or words. Marston's dramatic sense revels in the Gothic dilemma of Massinissa's vow to Scipio set against the vow given to Sophonisba. On the realization of the contradiction Massinissa `runs mad': . . . which way? Run mad! ± impossible! ± distraction!

(v.iii.80±1)

The problem is settled, narratively, by the sacri®ce of `wonder'. Throughout the tragedy, however, the fragility and absurdity of the human condition has been emphasized by spectacle, dramatic juxtaposition, and contradiction. The ®nal scene is no exception. It is expertly crafted. Scipio enters `in full state, triumphal ornaments carried before him'. Syphax is led out bound as a slave in defeat. Cornets are sounding. At another door the other triumphant general, Laelius, appears. He has to speak formally across stage to Scipio and his retinue. The stage positioning thereby theatrically complements the speech itself. All the characters are seen by the audience to be trans®xed by Laelius' exalted description of Massinissa's perplexity: Long time he tossed his thoughts And as you see a snowball being rolled, At ®rst a handful, yet, long bowled about, Insensibly acquires a mighty globe, So his cold grief through agitation grows, And more he thinks, the more of grief he knows.

(v.iv.12±17)

The impact of the heroic rhetoric, stage positioning, and theatrical presentation is exacerbated for the audience by their prior knowledge of Sophonisba's death. They have just witnessed her suicide and the solemnity of her being carried off stage in a chair, followed by the emotionally stricken Massinissa. Two formal processions, one of grief, one of triumph, have been juxtaposed against each other. Marston engenders through a combination of the formality of stage presentation, with the exalted language and the dramatic irony, an anticipation for a third exalted moment. `Organ and recorders play to a single voice' as the warrior Massinissa re-enters the stage in `mournful solemnity' (v.iv.36 s.d.) to present the body of Great Asdrubal's `farfamed daughter' (Prologus, 9) to Scipio. Oaths have been kept but the cost is not necessarily compensated by virtue. Massinissa concludes the action with a proclamation of silent grief:

Ill-mannered Marston Rest all my honour! O thou for whom I drink So deep of grief, that he must only think, Not dare to speak, that would express my woe ± Small rivers murmur, deep gulfs silent ¯ow. My grief is here, not here. ± Heave gently then; Women's right wonder, and just shame of men.

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(v.iv.54±9)

Nothing has been satisfactorily resolved even by death. The play's overt theatricality, with its contradictions, juxtapositions, and dominating staged events, outweighs the hollow moral sentimentality of the linear narrative. It exposes, moreover, the contradictory aspects of the human psyche. This is seen to be so equally whether with the evil bestiality of Syphax or the virtuous nobility of Massinissa. Marston, as elsewhere in his work, is exploiting the power of theatre. Semiologically, and metatheatrically, he builds up his stage presentations emphasizing pictorial relationships which exaggerate the narrative and complement the linguistic ambiguities. By such means he moves towards providing the totality of dramatic experience. Marston's claim is not for literary greatness but for dramatic competence. At the conclusion of The Dutch Courtesan, Cocledemoy comes out of his role to address the audience: And now, my very ®nd Heliconian gallants, and, you, my worshipful friends in the middle region: If with content our hurtless mirth hath been, Let your pleased minds at our much care be seen; For he shall ®nd, that slights such trivial wit, 'Tis easier to reprove than better it. We scorn to fear, and yet we fear to swell; We do not hope 'tis best; 'tis all, if well. (v.iii.185±92)

In John Marston's Plays, I point to a particular scene in which Marston's power as a dramatist is found, not in terms of philosophical meaning or poetic vitality but rather of an acute perception of the versatility of the semiotics of the theatre. It occurs in iii.ii of Antonio and Mellida: In the centre of the picture is a man wearing a crown. In his hands he holds a skull ®lled with wine, which he offers to his lips as a toast to a number of other ®nely dressed yet foppish characters around him. Rushing through this crowd of ®nery and causing some excitement is a sailor. He appears to be shouting, and the shape of his head resembles somewhat that of the skull in the king's hands. To the left of the picture, just entering, is a femininelooking page who appears to be starting to dance through the crowd. Above on a gallery is a woman running and shouting in a state of panic. To

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the right, a cold cynical man leans against a wall summing up the situation and singing sardonically. The king's face has an expression which is changing from delight to bewildered annoyance, whilst the whole scene is caricatured in the extreme and gives a total impression of speed and utter confusion.26

This reveals the visual surrealist theatricality of John Marston which is the strength of his artistry as a dramatist. That the RSC, as the premier theatrical company presenting Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, has not had the courage to tackle the theatrical sophistication of such images in production should be a matter of concern for the Company. It exposes a vulnerability in the RSC's claims and presumptions about its overall artistic policy. Marston will not conform to criticism nor to theatrical fashion. He confronts both and, in doing so, will probably always remain at the margins of English cultural activity. Yet, to ignore the margins is unhealthy since it implies an unwillingness to be confronted in the dominant expectations which we all hold, whether directors, actors, audiences, or critics. The repertoire of Jacobean theatre in contemporary performance neglects the works of John Marston at its peril and our loss. It is to be hoped that this volume of essays may prompt the RSC to consider Marston again and to include one of his plays in their repertoire in the early years of the new millennium. notes 1 Printed in the General Preface for all the RSC programmes of the Swan productions in the opening seasons, 1986±7. 2 Hamlet ii.ii.340±5. William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Compact Edition (Oxford University Press, 1988). 3 The date of the two plays in uncertain. Some critics would argue that The Dutch Courtesan came after The Honest Whore and is as late as 1605. Others would regard it as being as early as 1603. Harry Keyishian, `Dekker's Whore and Marston's Courtesan', English Language Notes 4 (1967), 261±6, considers Marston's play as written to an extent at least as a reply to `Dekker's sentimental treatment of the reformed prostitute' in The Honest Whore (261). 4 Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960), p. 151. 5 Frank Whigham, `Flattering Courtly Desire', in David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (eds.), The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576±1649 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 145. Whigham's essay concentrates on The Fawn.

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6 T. F. Wharton, The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994), p. 91. 7 Induction by John Webster to The Malcontent, 22±7. T. F Wharton, `The Malcontent and Dreams, Visions, Fantasies', Essays in Criticism 24 (1974), 261±73, notes that Webster's Induction `faithfully represents the play' particularly in the way it `plays such obvious games with the idea of actor and audience'. 8 Susan Baker, `Sex and Marriage in The Dutch Courtesan', in Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker (eds.), In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama (Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow, 1991), pp. 218±32. The quotations come from pp. 219 and 220 respectively. 9 For my discussion of The Dutch Courtesan see Michael Scott, John Marston's Plays: Theme, Structure and Performance (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 38±47. I argue that the play is confused by the competing narrative and moral sources on which Marston is drawing. I note, nevertheless, the sophisticated way in which the main narrative and its sub-plot interweave. Despite my 1978 apparent hostility and reservation about Marston's artistic hold on his material, the play in its inconsistencies may well challenge audience perception in a similar manner to that found in the swift juxtaposing of narrative events in the Antonio plays. The artistic issue appears more acute in The Dutch Courtesan since Marston is drawing not only on theatrical conventions of romance comedy or revenge tragedy but the moral philosophy of Montaigne on the one hand and the neo-Platonists on the other. This makes it one of the most complex and challenging of Marston's plays for audiences and critics alike. 10 David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (eds.), Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p.1. 11 Samuel Schoenbaum, `The Precarious Balance of John Marston', PLMA 67 (1952), 1069±78; 1078. 12 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton and Chicago: Harvester Press and University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 35. 13 T. S. Eliot, Elizabethan Dramatists (London: Faber, 1963), p. 165. 14 Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan in his Social Setting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). 15 Linda Levy Peck, `Ambivalence and Jacobean Courts', in Smith, Strier, and Bevington (eds.), Theatrical City, pp. 115±36: 115. 16 Wharton, Critical Fall and Rise, p. 103. 17 Reviews of the production, which opened at the Cottesloe Theatre 14 July 1983, can be found in The Times 15 July 1983 (Irving Wardle); The Observer 17 July 1983 (Robert Cushman); The Sunday Times 17 July 1983 ( James Fenton). 18 Whigham, `Flattering Courtly Desire', p. 140. Whigham's interpret-

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24

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ation of the Gaze makes reference to Jean-Paul Sartre, `Concrete Relations with Others: Love, Masochism, Sadism', in Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1943), trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). L. C. Knights, `How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Shakespeare Criticism' (Cambridge, 1933, repr. in Explorations (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946)). Catherine Belsey, `Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies', in John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 187±8. G. K. Hunter, `English Folly and Italian Vice: the Moral Landscape of John Marston', Stratford upon Avon Studies I, The Jacobean Theatre (New York: St Martin's Press, 1960), p. 90. Peter Brook, The Empty Space (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 65. See Michael Scott, `Confrontational Comedy', in Jacobean Drama as Social Criticism, ed. James Hogg (New York and Salzburg: Salzburg University Press, 1995), for an argument for a `new romanticism' in contemporary productions of Shakespearean and Jacobean comedy. Drawing on the work of art historian, E. H. Gombrich, Brian Vickers, Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 135 states, `. . . spectators of a painting bring with them a set of conventional expectations: there is no innocent eye. Yet Gombrich argued, artistic conventions are far from arbitrary, being determined by the psychological constraints of visual perception. Resemblance constitutes a condition of representation and artistic conventions have been introduced or regularly challenged in the name of a more accurate resemblance.' Expectations, perceptions, and conventions change as ideologies change. We impose theory and convention onto plays and, however we regard them, that sense of imposition will be present. Under current social, political, and cultural ideologies, Marston's plays will continue to prove uncomfortable in their confrontation and exploitation of the dramatic form itself. The critic of theatre, therefore, needs, as far as possible, to get below imposed meanings to the semiotics of the work; to see, that is, how the plays work as drama. Attila Kiss, `Abjection and Power. The Semiotics of Violence and Jacobean Tragedy', in Hogg (ed.), Jacobean Drama, p. 98. Michael Scott, John Marston's Plays, p. 89.

Index

audience, demographics of in St Paul's area, 35±6 audience collaboration in word-play and double entendre, 89±90

Classical allusion in Marston, 23, 52, 65, 100, 112±13, 163±4, 182, 194±5, 197±8 seen as used solely for local and theatrical effect 18±19, 22±3 collaboration, co-authorship, and coproduction, 2, 11 n.8, 41, 68±9, 90, 143 n.14, 156, 201, 206±8 Colley, Scott, 19, 82 confrontation, as Marston's style of writing, 1±2, 4±5, 157±9, 213±15, 204, 224 cuckolds, see male anxiety

Bishops' ban and burning of the satires (1599), 2, 8, 60, 122 n.40, 196±9 Blackfriars theatre, Marston's work for, 1, 2, 5 auspices of, 199, 205 physical and audience characteristics of 36±41 body and bodily functions, Marston's unpleasant depiction of, 7, 39, 54, 75, 147, 152, 154, 182±3 Boose, Lynda, 119±20 n.23, 122 n.40, 196, 197, 199 boy actors, ages of, 41 unique qualities of, 4, 5, 6, 7, 18, 23, 68, 75, 77, 78±9, 121 n.8, 125, 126 See also gender Burton, Robert, 49±50, 66, 67 Calvinism as an element in Marston, 19, 65±6 Caputi, Anthony, 10 n.2, 12 n.22, 65, 74, 76, 79 carnival, festivity, revelry; elements of, in Marston's plays, 3, 5, 6, 54, 61, 71, 73±4, 77, 223 cast sizes, 23, 30±1, 32±3, 37, 76 censorship, in late-Elizabethan/earlyJacobean England, 5, 60±1, 22, n.40, 195±7, 199 Chapman, George, 2, 32, 60, 206, 207 chastity, female, as patriarchal theme in Marston's plays, 6, 74, 95±6, 120 n.27, 129, 132±6, 140, 152, 189±91 challenged by Marston's female characters, 90±1, 92±3, 96±7, 137±8, 140±2 see also female sexuality, male anxiety

dancing, in Marston's plays, 22, 33, 40, 46, 73, 77, 94, 153, 156, 191, 192, 225 Daniel, Samuel, 64, 162, 169, 205 de¯ation, see parody Dekker, Thomas, 12 n.20, 31, 83, 98 n.9, 171, 184, 212 disguise, in Marston's plays, 7, 23, 39, 102, 127, 131, 140, 152, 153, 185, 195, 200, 204, 214, 215, 220 Dollimore, Jonathan, 8, 14, 17, 123, 138, 142, 191, 216, 218 economics of Marston's theatres, 36 Eliot, T. S., 83, 145±6, 147, 157, 218 Essex, Earl of, 60, 195, 196±7 fantasy, in Marston and his drama, 6, 7, 43, 47±57, 109, 114, 115, 150, 152, 153, 157, 188 farce, see parody female characters, strong, 6, 7, 90±3, 96±7, 133, 134±5, 137±9, 140±2, 165±8 female sexuality, depicted in Marston's work, 90±5, 103, 137±8, 163±4, 181±2, 185±6 as demonic, 136, 181±2, 186, 225 seen as equivalent to prostitution, 86, 96, 142, 164, 173 Finkelpearl, Philip J., 27 and 42 n.3, 71, 218±19

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232

index

Florio, John, see Montaigne Foakes, R. A., 18, 26 n.17, 49, 78, 222 Foucault, Michel, 107, 117 n.2, 126 and 143 n.10 freedom of speech, as topic in Marston, 6, 9, 90, 92±3, 97, 107, 141±2, 200±1, 208±9, 214±16 Freud, Sigmund, 105, 147, 149, 150, 151 Gair, W. Reavley, 4, 58 n.5, 81 n.20, 82 Geckle, George, 19 gender, indeterminacy of, in Marston's plays, 6, 7, 103, 125±9, 214±15 Hall, Joseph, 1, 64, 118 n.7, 198 Henslowe, Philip, 31, 159 homo-social/sexual con®gurations in Marston's plays, 36, 124±5, 127±9, 134, 135±6, 139, 216 Howard, Jean, 6 and 12 n.27, 173±4 Hunter, G. K., 18, 39, 78, 155, 158, 209, 222 hysteria, Marston's, as evidenced by his plays, 147±57 impotence, see male anxiety imprisonment of Marston and other writers, 2, 31, 60, 206±7, 208 James I, King, 2, 102 and 117 n.5, 107, 183, 192, 205, 206±7, 219, 220 Jonson, Ben, 17, 31, 62, 77, 98 n.9, 101, 103, 108, 169, 195, 199, 200, 202, 209, 212 and his antagonism to Marston in the `War of the Theatres', 1, 4, 10±11 n.4, 12 n.20, 35, 45 and Poestaster, as conclusive blow in `War', 37, 82, 147±9, 157, 198 physically beating Marston, 10±11 n.4, 17 as collaborator with Marston in Eastward Ho, 2, 17, 60, 206±8 King's Men, and the Globe theatre, 39, 41, 156, 201, 202, 212 `Kinsayder', Marston's nickname, 1, 4, 16, 68, 72, 151, 194, 197 Levin, Richard, 26 n.17 Littlewood, Joan, 83, 213, 216 male anxieties, depicted in Marston, 7, 53, 56, 108±10, 131±3, 134, 151, 171±3, 174±7, 181 Manningham, John, 28 Marston, John, relationship with father, 27, 174

his Italian mother, 148 and the Middle Temple, 5, 16, 27±31, 108, 159, 219 ®nancial debts, 31 rudeness, 2 and 11 n.7, 16 and deliberate market appeal, 3, 4±5, 6, 14, 20, 25, 27, 31, 34, 36, 40, 54±7, 67±71, 75±9, 82, 85, 90, 97, 100, 204, 208±9 seen as a form of self-prostitution, 172, 175, 176±7 and the `War of the Theatres', see Jonson, Ben and self-allusion in his plays, 4, 33 and abandonment of stage and theatre, 2, 3, 159, 203 works of: Poems The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, 1, 60, 112±14, 194, 196, 197, 198 Certaine Satyres, 1, 49, 64, 111, 163, 168, 183, 194 The Scourge of Villanie, 1±2, 3, 14, 46±7, 60, 62±4, 65, 67±8, 71, 103, 108, 114, 159, 183, 194, 195, 196, 197, 201, 209 Histriomastix, 1, 27±31, 69 Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1, 4, 6, 7, 35, 49, 68±77, 78, 79, 115, 133±4, 135, 181 Antonio and Mellida, 1, 20, 21±2, 23, 32±5, 39, 49, 68±9, 77±9, 126±7, 131, 199, 208, 218, 222, 225, 227±8 Antonio's Revenge, 1, 14±25, 34, 35, 40, 129±31, 184, 218, 222, 225 What You Will, 1, 4, 6±7, 32, 35±6, 45±57, 115, 128±9, 131±3, 181, 199±200 The Malcontent, 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 38, 39, 41, 49, 145±59, 181±92, 195, 200±4, 208±9, 212, 214, 215±16, 222±3, 225 The Dutch Courtesan, 1, 6±7, 8, 38, 41, 83, 84±90, 92±7, 107, 115±16, 125, 139±42, 165, 171±7, 181, 206, 207, 212, 216±17, 227 Parasitaster, or The Fawn, 1, 6±7, 9, 38, 39, 40, 100, 102±10, 114±16, 164, 165, 182, 192±3 n.6, 195, 203±5, 207, 208±9, 214±15, 219±21, 225 The Wonder of Women, or the Tragedy of Sophonisba, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 37±8, 40±1, 45, 115, 134±6, 172, 182, 213, 218, 225±7 The Insatiate Countess, 2, 6, 7, 90±2, 93±4, 95±6, 98, 136±9, 142, 208, 225 Eastward Ho, 2, 17, 37, 60, 195, 206±9 masturbation, see self Middleton, Thomas, 83, 103, 108, 109, 110, 212 misogyny, in Marston's characters, 7, 56, 71, 74, 96, 106, 108±10, 114±15, 129±40, 151±4, 186

Index Montaigne, Michel de, in¯uence of on Marston, 97±8 n.4, 101, 164±8, 170±7, 212, 216 Morley, Thomas, 47, 49 music, its prominence in Marston's plays, 5, 6, 17, 24, 30, 33, 35, 38, 40, 45±8, 51, 73, 76, 88, 156, 215 Parnassus plays, 16, 159 parody, sense of, in Marston's work, 5, 15, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26 n.17, 64, 74, 94, 184 see also, theatrical extremes patriarchal survival, as pursued by Marston's characters, 102, 105, 106±9, 124, 131, 132, 136, 139±40, 182, 184±92 Paul's boys, Marston's involvement with, 1, 4, 31±7 Peck, Linda Levy, 102, 105, 205, 219 prostitution, see female sexuality puns (especially sexual), frequency of in Marston, 1, 6, 21, 46, 57, 82±97, 103, 127, 129, 184±92, 207 quotations from other authors' plays in Marston, 20, 22, 23, 24, 51, 125 recreation, as principle of Marston's work, 61, 64, 66±70, 75, 78±9 Revels, Children of, see Blackfriars

233

revenge and evenge conventions, in Marston, 5, 15, 18±25, 40, 72, 84, 108, 115, 129, 173, 218, 221, 225 Royal Shakespeare Company, 212±13, 223, 228 Scott, Michael, 144 n.17 Schoenbaum, Samuel, 17, 146±7, 157, 217±18, 222 self-abuse and sexual solipsism, in Marston's characters, 87±8, 103, 106, 109, 112±15 Shakespeare, William, 28, 40, 57, 60, 62, 74±5, 103, 105, 108, 110, 212, 222 Sidney, Sir Philip, 19, 48, 64±5 theatre, Marston's ambivalence towards, 5, 8, 158±9, 173, 177 theatrical extremism, Marston's, 19, 20±5, 34, 51, 55±7, 74±9, 154±6 translation, see Montaigne transvestism and costume, as motif in Marston, 126±9, 214±15 venereal disease, see male anxiety voyeurism, see self Whigham, Frank, 102, 103, 105, 112, 213±14, 219, 220±1 Wharton, T. F., 8, 22, 26 n.17, 49, 121±2 n.34, 145, 159, 214, 222