Shakespeare and Religious Change (Early Modern Literature in History)

Shakespeare and Religious Change Edited by

Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington

Early Modern Literature in History General Editors: Cedric C. Brown, Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Reading; Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Sussex, Brighton Advisory Board: Donna Hamilton, University of Maryland; Jean Howard, University of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Sharon Achinstein, University of Oxford Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures.

Titles include: Andrea Brady ENGLISH FUNERARY ELEGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Laws in Mourning Mark Thornton Burnett CONSTRUCTING ‘MONSTERS’ IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Dermot Cavanagh LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY HISTORY PLAY Patrick Cheney MARLOWE’S REPUBLICAN AUTHORSHIP Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors) ‘THIS DOUBLE VOICE’ Gendered Writing in Early Modern England David Coleman DRAMA AND THE SACRAMENTS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Indelible Characters Katharine A. Craik READING SENSATIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND James Daybell (editor) EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER-WRITING, 1450–1700 Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (editors) THE RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK Christian Perceptions, 1400–1660 Tobias Döring PERFORMANCES OF MOURNING IN SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Sarah M. Dunnigan EROS AND POETRY AT THE COURTS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND JAMES VI Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr (editors) ENVIRONMENT AND EMBODIMENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington (editors) SHAKESPEARE AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer ENGLISH HISTORICAL DRAMA, 1500–1660 Forms outside the Canon Andrew Hadfield SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER AND THE MATTER OF BRITAIN William M. Hamlin TRAGEDY AND SCEPTICISM IN SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLAND Elizabeth Heale AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHORSHIP IN RENAISSANCE VERSE Chronicles of the Self Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (editors) THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550–1650 Gregory Kneidel RETHINKING THE TURN TO RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE Edel Lamb PERFORMING CHILDHOOD IN THE EARLY MODERN THEATRE The Children’s Playing Companies (1599–1613) Jean-Christopher Mayer SHAKESPEARE’S HYBRID FAITH History, Religion and the Stage Scott L. Newstok QUOTING DEATH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND The Poetics of Epitaphs beyond the Tomb Jennifer Richards (editor) EARLY MODERN CIVIL DISCOURSES Marion Wynne-Davies WOMEN WRITERS AND FAMILIAL DISCOURSE IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE Relative Values The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Renaissance Texts Research Centre at the University of Reading. Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–80321–9 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Shakespeare and Religious Change Edited by

Kenneth J. E. Graham and Philip D. Collington

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Kenneth J. E. Graham & Philip D. Collington 2009 Individual chapters © contributors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–21309–8 ISBN-10: 0–230–21309–X

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 18

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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In Memory of Sydna Louise Graham (1930–2007)

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Contents Acknowledgments

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Note on Spelling Conventions

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Notes on Contributors

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Introduction: Shakespeare and Religious Change Kenneth J.E. Graham

Part I

Shakespeare and Social History: Religion and the Secular

1. Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie: The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors Richard Strier 2. ‘In a Christian Climate’: Religion and Honor in Richard II Debora Shuger

Part II

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Dramatic Continuities and Religious Change

3. William Cecil and the Drama of Persuasion Alexandra F. Johnston 4. The Queen’s Men and the Performance of Allegiance, Conformity, and Difference in Elizabethan Norwich Mary A. Blackstone

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5. Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare’s Plays Elizabeth Williamson

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6. Staging Allegiance, Re-membering Trials: King Henry VIII and the Blackfriars Theater Karen Sawyer Marsalek

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Part III

Religious Identities

7. ‘Mirth in Heaven’: Religion and Festivity in As You Like It Phebe Jensen vii

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8. Speaking Daggers: Shakespeare’s Troubled Ministers Glenn Clark 9. Othello in the Wilderness: How did Shakespeare Use his Bible? Tom Bishop

Part IV

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Shakespeare and the Changing Theater: Religion or the Secular

10. Author, King, and Christ in Shakespeare’s Histories Jeffrey Knapp

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11. The Secular Theater Anthony B. Dawson

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Index

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Acknowledgments Many of the essays in this collection were presented at the Seventeenth Waterloo Conference on Elizabethan Theatre, ‘Religion and Theatre,’ held in Waterloo, Ontario, in June 2005. We would like to thank all the participants in that conference. We would also like to thank our families, Beth and Jimmy Graham and Tara, Emma, and Anne Collington, for their patience and support. We are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its generous financial assistance. Chapter 7 appears in expanded form in chapters 2 and 3 of Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare’s Festive World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). An earlier version of chapter 10 appeared as ‘Religious Pluralization and Single Authorship’ in Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andreas Höfele, Stephan Lacqué, Enno Ruge, and Gabriela Schmidt (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), 153–73. Both appear here by kind permission of the editors and publishers of these volumes.

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Note on Spelling Conventions In editing old-spelling texts, we have adjusted the use of ‘i’ and ‘j’ and of ‘u’ and ‘v’ to conform to modern practice, and we have expanded most contractions.

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Notes on Contributors Tom Bishop is Professor of English and Head of Department at the University of Auckland, where his principal teaching is in Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and postcolonial literature. He holds degrees from Melbourne University and Yale University. His publications include Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder (1996), Amores: A Verse Translation of Ovid (2003), and essays on Shakespeare, Jonson, Jacobean masques, Elizabethan music, and Australian literature. He is also coeditor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, published annually by Ashgate Press. He is currently working on a book on the poetics of scriptural allusion in Shakespeare. Mary A. Blackstone is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Director of the Centre for the Study of Script Development at the University of Regina. Her research and teaching are concerned with the role of culture and performance in the construction of community and national identity. Her recent publications in the area of early modern cultural history explore the ways in which touring performers ranging from players to itinerant preachers catalyzed popular participation in the formation of English nationhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Glenn Clark is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Manitoba. He has published articles on Shakespeare, Jonson, and Massinger, and is co-editor of City Limits: Interdisciplinary Essays on the Historical European City (publication pending). Philip D. Collington completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, and is Associate Professor of English at Niagara University in Lewiston, NY. He has published articles on Shakespeare and his contemporaries in English Literary Renaissance, Comparative Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly, Studies in Philology, Early Theatre, and Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, as well as in a number of book collections. Anthony B. Dawson is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and has written extensively on performance history and theory, on early modern theater and culture, and on matters related to editing and textual theory. His most recent books are The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England (2001, written with Paul Yachnin), an xi

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edition of Troilus and Cressida in the New Cambridge Shakespeare series (2003), and, with Gretchen Minto, an edition of Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare (third series, 2008). He has recently completed a series of articles on text and performance, and is currently at work on a book on memory and Elizabethan theater. Kenneth J.E. Graham is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, where he teaches Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, and rhetoric. He has published The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance (1994), and is writing a book on the relationship between English poetry and the disciplinary culture of the English Reformation. Phebe Jensen is Associate Professor of English at Utah State University. She has published articles on Shakespeare, provincial drama, recusancy, and Catholic political controversy, and is the author of Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare’s Festive World (2009). Alexandra F. Johnston is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A former Principal of Victoria College in the University of Toronto (1981–91), she co-founded the Records of Early English Drama Project, which she has directed since its inception in 1975. She has written or edited six books, including York (1979) and Oxford University and City (2004) for the REED series, and she is the author of 64 book chapters and journal articles on medieval and early modern drama. Jeffrey Knapp is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from ‘Utopia’ to ‘The Tempest’ (1992) and Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (2002). A companion volume to Shakespeare’s Tribe entitled Shakespeare Only is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Karen Sawyer Marsalek is Associate Professor of English at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She has published on medieval and early Tudor biblical drama as well as on Shakespeare. Her interest in King Henry VIII and topographical mnemonics originated at the recreated Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, during a 2004 NEH Summer Institute.

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Debora Shuger is Professor of English at UCLA. She is the author of Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance (1988), Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (1990), The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Subjectivity, and Sacrifice (1994), and Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in ‘Measure for Measure’ (2001). With Claire McEachern, she edited Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (1997). Her most recent book, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility: The Regulation of Language in Early Modern England, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2006. Richard Strier is Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English and the College at the University of Chicago. He has published two monographs, Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert’s Poetry (1983) and Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (1995); four co-edited collections, The Historical Renaissance: New Essays in Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture (1988), The Theatrical City: London’s Culture, Theatre and Literature, 1576–1649 (1995), Religion, Politics, and Literature in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688 (1996), and Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England (1999); and essays on Shakespeare, Donne, religious poetry, historicist formalism, and ‘the canon.’ He is completing a book to be entitled The Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton. Elizabeth Williamson holds degrees from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania and teaches English literature at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her first book is forthcoming from Ashgate’s Studies in Performance & Early Modern Drama series. Early Modern Stage Properties and the Materiality of Religious Practice addresses the overlap between popular culture and popular religion by focusing on the representation of sacred objects in the London theaters. Portions of this project can be found in Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (2007) and English Literary Renaissance (2009). Her new work on stage relics can be found in The Shakespearean International Yearbook (2007).

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Introduction: Shakespeare and Religious Change Kenneth J.E. Graham

Shakespeare and Religious Change is a collection of essays on the relationship between Shakespearean drama and the changing religious culture of post-Reformation England. As such, the book addresses the critical ferment of what has been one of the busiest and at times most contentious areas in Shakespeare studies over the past decade. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the study of Shakespeare and religion gained new life when the historical turn took a religious turn. Debora Shuger’s often-quoted remark that ‘religion during this period supplies the primary language of analysis’ appeared in the new historicism’s flagship monograph series and served as a manifesto for this development.1 Although one still encounters an occasional claim that Shakespeare’s plays illustrate a ‘strangely timeless’ Christianity, and although a theoretical approach to spirituality has begun to challenge historicism’s hegemony, approaches to religion in Shakespearean drama since Shuger wrote have remained predominantly historicist in method, seeking to understand the relationship between these plays and the shifting landscape of post-Reformation English religion.2 The religious turn in Shakespeare criticism has by now acquired its own history. In the 1980s and 1990s, E.K. Chambers’s influential argument linking theater to a process of secularization began to lose favor.3 Influenced instead by a prevailing historical orthodoxy usually traced to A.G. Dickens, critics initially concentrated on elucidating the Protestant purposes and thematics of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.4 In the most distinguished example of this work, Huston Diehl countered established ideas of the hostility between Protestantism and theater, portraying instead a vigorously reformist, Foxean theater in which text and image cooperated to produce a distinctively

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Protestant form of entertainment and instruction.5 But significant work was done on other faith traditions as well. James Shapiro published his landmark study, Shakespeare and the Jews. Shakespeare’s relation to Catholicism was studied in many quarters. Islam also received attention, particularly, in Shakespeare studies, through the confused category of the Moor.6 The range of this work (not all of which was intended to challenge the secularization thesis) was well represented at the plenary session of the Shakespeare Association of America’s conference in San Francisco in 1999. The panel comprised Diehl, who argued that Shakespearean comedy served Protestant disciplinary aims, Arthur Marotti, who spoke on Shakespeare and Catholicism, and Mary Fuller, who considered the significance of Islamic figures on the early modern stage. It was an important moment of professional recognition for a study that had come of age. The same year, a conference at the University of Lancaster and at Hoghton Tower played a key role in changing the critical conversation. The Lancastrian Shakespeare conference, together with several important studies published in 1999, galvanized interest in Shakespeare’s relationship to Catholicism.7 The groundwork for an explosion in Catholic Shakespeare studies had been laid in part by revisionist historians like Eamon Duffy and Christopher Haigh, who earlier in the 1990s had challenged the received history of the Reformation, arguing for a greater persistence of Catholic belief than had previously been acknowledged.8 Shakespeareans drew upon this new Catholic history as well as upon purported new evidence of Shakespeare’s personal ties to Catholicism to produce a remarkable revival in Catholic Shakespeare studies. The results were anything but monolithic: they included the nostalgic Shakespeare associated with Stephen Greenblatt, the accommodationist Shakespeare of Arthur Marotti’s ‘muddled middle,’ and the secretive, crypto-Catholic Shakespeare imagined by Richard Wilson and others.9 Although the relationship of Shakespeare’s plays to early modern Catholicism remains the subject of vigorous investigation, the idea of a consistently Catholic Shakespeare has not met with widespread acceptance.10 Nor has the best of this work claimed to find such a consistency.11 Rather, rejecting the strong tendency in early modern religion to think in terms of binary oppositions between Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew, and Christian and Muslim, it has stressed the surprising permeability of religious boundaries within an admittedly contentious and polarized environment. Our knowledge of theater’s place in this environment has been increased particularly by the archival research of the Records of Early English Drama project, which since 1975

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has been collecting evidence showing the close affiliation between religious institutions, such as the parish, and theatrical production, the complicated relationship between religion and festive culture, and the importance to drama of regional religious variations.12 Such findings have dovetailed with those of recent historiography, which has explored the complex coexistence of religious groups, the flexibility of religious categories, the development in local communities of distinctive religious identities, and the movement of individuals across confessional lines.13 Together these developments have laid the foundation for a new awareness of the variable and layered nature of religious identities in Shakespeare’s drama. For example, Jean-Christophe Mayer sees in Shakespeare’s plays a ‘hybrid’ faith that reflects the ‘fluid’ and ‘fundamentally unstable character of religious faith’ in early modern England.14 Such an awareness lies at the center of current historical research. The present volume originated in the Seventeenth Waterloo Conference on Elizabethan Theatre, held on the topic of theater and religion at the University of Waterloo, Canada, just as the Catholic Shakespeare wave was cresting in 2005. The consensus among conference participants was that faith in Shakespeare’s England and in his plays was indeed a complex mixture, if not therefore necessarily unstable (the decades of Shakespeare’s theatrical activity having been a period of relative stability). The idea was born of a Shakespeare volume that would present a balanced view of the varieties of religious identity, investigate Shakespeare’s relationship to earlier religious theater, and locate religious and theatrical change not only in local histories but within the broad sweep of history. The volume would bring together the threads of the critical tapestry, advancing the debate about Shakespeare’s relationship to a changing religious culture by focusing on a number of central questions. First and most generally, how did Shakespeare’s theater engage with religious controversy? Was it an agent of Protestant reform? A coded site of secret Catholic resistance? The voice of a common Christian culture? Or was it an essentially secular institution, a peaceful oasis in the midst of religious strife? Second, how did Shakespeare alter dramatic traditions rooted in Catholic religious practices for the stage of an officially Protestant England? How had those traditions already been modified in the decades before Shakespeare began writing, and in what forms do they survive in his plays? Third, was religion a source of stability or a destabilizing force in the world within and without Shakespeare’s plays? Did it do more to draw people together or to drive them apart? In what ways did it anchor or unsettle individual identities? Fourth, how did Shakespeare’s plays reflect and shape changing attitudes

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towards religious outsiders or ‘strangers,’ especially Jews and Muslims? Fifth and finally, how did the plays help to rethink the relationship between the sacred and the secular, and how might this rethinking in turn have brought about a new or renewed understanding of religion as a whole? The chapters in Shakespeare and Religious Change address these questions about religious controversy, dramatic traditions, social cohesion and psychic stability, religious identities, and the nature of religion primarily through historical, thematic, and formal analysis of dramatic texts. They represent many historical methods, from material history to intellectual history, from local history to national history, and from the history of reading to the history of performance. Four chapters were added after the 2005 conference, and the rest have been revised for this collection. They are divided into four sections. The first and last sections frame the collection with broadly conceived studies of religion and culture; the middle sections concentrate on more historically specific questions concerning Shakespeare’s relation to traditional drama, to religious reform, and to religious identities. The volume begins with two chapters that place Shakespeare and religion in the context of social and economic history. In doing so, these chapters respond to an important question: was the Reformation a break with Europe’s religious past and the beginning of a process of secularization? Richard Strier and Debora Shuger argue that, on the contrary, the early modern period saw not a breach but an expansion of the territory of religion. Strier finds in The Comedy of Errors an illustration of what Max Weber termed ‘inner-worldly’ holiness. According to this Protestant conception, holiness is not an ontological distinction shared by a limited number of places, people, and acts, but a characteristic of any experience that promotes a truly spiritual relationship to God, community, or family. The play’s celebration of ordinary bourgeois life does not, Strier argues, valorize the secular in opposition to the holy; rather, it critiques such an opposition, while defending the possibility of finding holiness in everyday activities. Shuger finds a similar opposition much harder to overcome in Richard II. Drawing upon Mervyn James’s work on aristocratic honor culture, Shuger sees a conflict between the Christian valorization of loss and an aristocratic culture where all that matters is winning. In the popularity of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, in the Earl of Essex’s mood swings, and in Richard’s efforts to change shameful defeat into blessing, Shuger traces this conflict between aristocratic norms and the Christian values whose spread was altering them.

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But while the Christianization of the aristocracy that this conflict reflects parallels in some respects Strier’s sanctification of the bourgeoisie, it also differs from it in important ways. Shuger’s story is essentially tragic, while Strier’s is comic. Shuger’s Christian economy is one of scarcity, while Strier’s is one of abundance. Shuger’s Christian otherworldliness hallows loss, while Strier’s Christian inner-worldliness hallows gain. And because, for Shuger, Christianity’s spirit of atonement conflicts irreconcilably with the competitiveness of aristocratic culture, the sacred must seek to change the secular, while for Strier the commercial ideal presented in The Comedy of Errors lacks harmful competition, so to sanctify the bourgeoisie is to value its own best practices, not to change them. These essays thus illustrate two ways in which the growth of religion – and the relationship between sacred and secular in early modern England – might be understood. The second section contains four chapters devoted to Shakespeare’s dramatic inheritance and its intricate relationship to the history of the English Reformation. Just as historians have come to understand the Reformation as a process lasting many decades, so literary critics are now recognizing anew that the Reformation theater – and particularly the London stage – did not break suddenly and completely from earlier dramatic traditions and forms. For example, John Cox has noted that the survival of stage devils right up to the closing of the theaters in 1642 ‘indicates that traditional dramaturgy survived well beyond the time that it is usually assumed to have disappeared.’15 Considering the parallel histories of traditional dramaturgy and traditional religion together raises many questions, whether those histories are seen primarily in terms of continuity or of change, of survival or of transformation. The first two of these chapters establish a context for the study of Shakespeare and religious change by examining the relationship between theater and religion in the tumultuous half-century prior to Shakespeare’s appearance on the theater scene. Alexandra Johnston investigates the Protestant elite’s belief in drama’s utility as an instrument of public policy in the mid-Tudor years. It is well-known that Thomas Cromwell had seized upon drama as a means of spreading Protestant doctrine throughout England, enlisting John Bale to write Protestant replacements for traditional religious drama. Johnston argues that this policy did not die with Cromwell but survived the intervening decades to flourish again under Elizabeth. Through a painstaking reconstruction of social alliances, family ties, and educational networks, Johnston shows that William Cecil was the key link between Cromwell’s policy and Elizabeth’s.

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While Johnston traces the transmission of a Protestant belief in drama’s power to persuade, Mary Blackstone asks how successfully drama functioned as a vehicle of persuasion in the last decades of the sixteenth century. Carefully painting the diverse religious landscape of Norwich in the 1580s and 1590s, Blackstone imagines the local reception of a likely performance of Robert Greene’s Selimus by the Queen’s Men in a city that also hosted a visit by the Queen in 1578 and a controversial sermon by William Burton in 1589. She argues that all three performances combined expressions of religious orthodoxy with at least the potential for a heterodox response. While Selimus seems intended to promote Christian unity in the face of the threat seen in the powerful Ottoman Empire (or possibly to complicate a Christian/Muslim binary, given the reality of English/Turkish alliances), Blackstone shows that the play might unintentionally have had a destabilizing effect on its audience, encouraging identification with Turkish others and promoting individual religious choice. Unlike Selimus, which staged a religiously outrageous tyrant, the entertainments presented to Elizabeth in 1578 emphasized her godly authority. While overtly celebrating the political and religious unity enjoyed under a divinely-appointed monarch, however, these entertainments sometimes recalled both the divisions in local religious history and the limits of monarchical authority. Finally, Burton’s sermon – a type of performance Blackstone suggests that Elizabeth may have believed less reliable than drama for inculcating orthodox views – questioned the extent of institutional power by stressing the clergy’s duty to reprove not only Catholics and Separatist Protestants, but also princes and church authorities. Though it may have been less successful than the other two performances in achieving its persuasive goals, it may have better reflected and motivated the spirit of independent inquiry that was leading the citizens of Norwich to rethink both Christian and non-Christian identities. The scene then shifts to Shakespeare’s London. The second pair of chapters in this section explore the ways in which Shakespeare draws upon the material traces of his theatrical and religious heritage. Elizabeth Williamson considers the relationship between dramatic tradition and religious history by focusing on the use of tomb properties in resurrection plays. Because most English theatrical traditions were historically Catholic in their associations, post-Reformation playwrights did not reproduce them exactly as they had been. But neither did they abandon them altogether. So, for example, the resurrection tradition survived, both materially and affectively, in an altered state, as dramatists found new ways to access – or to undercut – its power.

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Williamson analyzes Shakespeare’s experiments with stage resurrections, culminating in Hermione’s ‘return to life’ in The Winter’s Tale, where Shakespeare modifies Catholic dramatic convention in a way acceptable to Protestants. For Williamson, theater illustrates both the change and the continuity between old and new religious practices and beliefs. For Karen Sawyer Marsalek, too, theater links different historical moments, even while it marks their difference. Marsalek investigates how a Blackfriars staging of Henry VIII could have summoned up remembrance of past events in the same physical space. Such events, reaching back as far as the fourteenth century and including key moments dramatized in the play, still figured prominently in contemporary religious controversy. A Blackfriars Henry VIII, Marsalek argues, would have used the location of past conflicts to deepen reflection on Jacobean concerns about Catholicism. The permanence of the Blackfriars building, first as a site of the theatrical politics of religious show trials, now as a venue for a politicized theater of religious memory, helps Shakespeare and Fletcher bridge centuries of religious history. The third section turns to the central question of religious identities. The first two chapters explore the relationship of Shakespeare’s plays to Catholic and Protestant identities. Phebe Jensen continues her important rethinking of the meaning of festivity in Shakespeare’s comedies in light of the religious politics of festive culture. Such culture held devotional meaning for many; in particular, Jensen argues, it spoke to the nature of the English Catholic community, which resisted the efforts of many English Protestants to separate festivity from worship, instead embracing it as a key component of its oppositional religious identity. In a wide-ranging investigation of pastoral conventions and festival customs that touches on the religious and cultural significance of Robin Hood, piping, plays, hospitality, wrestling, hunting, and marriage customs, Jensen shows that many aspects of life in the forest of Arden would have appealed to an English Catholic sensibility. The play, she concludes, narrows the widening gap between festive pastime, theatrical performance, and religious ritual, making its ‘green world’ a welcoming place for many, including Catholics. Glenn Clark then turns our attention to the relationship between Shakespearean drama and Protestant pastoral discourse. The Reformed insistence that ministers not only preach true doctrine but also lead holy lives – a biblical combination given heightened prominence by the Book of Common Prayer – placed intense demands upon the clergy. Performing pastoral duties required them continually to examine their own motives and spiritual states. At the same time, they faced increased

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scrutiny from their flocks. Clark argues that Shakespeare’s representation of pastoral moments participates in this pastoral discourse, probing the complicated mixture of emotions that the minister was called upon both to feel himself and to provoke in others. Hamlet betrays the anxiety some felt about the need to ‘speak daggers’ to sinners, to afflict or wound them for their spiritual good. Measure for Measure’s Duke Vincentio shows the difficulty of the equally important pastoral task of consolation when he fails to comfort the incarcerated Juliet and the condemned Claudio. Vincentio also fails, in Clark’s reading, to subject himself to the external oversight his Reformed audience would have expected. These plays thus bespeak both the high hopes Shakespeare’s audience held for a Reformed clergy and their fears that the pastoral performance they desired could be fraudulent. Jensen’s and Clark’s chapters to some extent reflect one difference often said to exist between the two faiths. While both chapters concern versions of pastoral, Jensen’s is the mainly external pastoral of festivity and hospitality, consistent with a ceremonial religion in which external rituals take on a sacramental significance. Clark’s Protestant pastoral, on the other hand, is the more internal one of a preaching ministry. Neither Jensen nor Clark asserts that a particular confessional identity can be claimed for Shakespeare on the basis of their arguments. For both, Shakespeare’s plays respond to religious change in the same way: by contributing to a continuing cultural conversation about the significance of that change. Within this conversation, festivity is not simply Catholic any more than pastoral self-scrutiny is exclusively Protestant; sympathy for Catholics is not Catholicism, and critical engagement with a Protestant pastoral discourse is not evidence of Protestant beliefs. The third chapter in this section studies the interplay between Christianity and Jewish and Muslim strangers by tracking the continuing influence of a central source text on the portrayal of religion in Shakespearean drama. Tom Bishop considers how Shakespeare responds in Othello to the archetypal narrative of exile and return in the Hebrew Bible. Bishop traces a pattern of allusions that repeatedly sets Othello in the desert, a place of displacement where vision and identity are sought but not always found. Even as he fights the Islamic enemies of the Christian state to which he seeks to belong, Othello finds himself assimilated into the category of Jew by a language resonant with biblical meaning. In Bishop’s reading, Othello emerges as less a tragedy of mistaken identity (‘I took you for that cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello’) than a tragedy of unstable identity (‘That’s he that was Othello. Here I am’), an instability to which religion contributes much.

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The two chapters in the volume’s final section turn from the question of religious identity to consider the fundamental question of what we might call the identity of religion, both in history and on stage. Religious change brought new definitions of religion and new understandings of the relationship between the sacred and the secular. Did the theater bear witness to and seek to compensate for the withdrawal of the holy, as some have claimed?16 Jeffrey Knapp, who like Strier sees the Reformation as expanding the ground of religion, renews his challenge to C.L. Barber’s influential thesis that the Elizabethan theater is essentially a secular institution appropriating religious energy to empower the secular state. Knapp argues, as he did in Shakespeare’s Tribe, that Shakespeare’s stage seeks to enact an inclusive religious fellowship, but here he focuses on the place in this project of Shakespeare’s view of authorship. Countering a critical belief that notions of competitive authorship stood in the way of theatrical cooperation and community, Knapp reconstructs an idea of authorship as sacrifice that he finds in Shakespeare’s history tetralogies. As a consequence, he finds that Shakespeare’s eight-play cycle resembles the medieval Corpus Christi plays more than has been recognized. If Knapp’s Shakespeare looks back to religious cycle drama in finding a purpose for religion on the early modern stage, Anthony Dawson’s looks ahead to a theater whose separation from religion and the state constitutes a chapter in the history of secularization. Dawson provocatively asks whether the religious turn has gone too far, and suggests that most recent work fundamentally misconceives the relationship between theater and religion. Playwrights like Shakespeare and plays like Dekker and Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr, Dawson argues, appropriate or ‘cannibalize’ religious discourse for their own dramatic purposes. Drama develops its own languages and forms of action to generate aesthetic pleasure. When it draws upon religion, it wrests its language from the context of religious controversy, transforming it and giving it a meaning of its own. Interestingly, while Dawson and Knapp seek to characterize the early modern theater as, respectively, secular and religious, they share many of the same concerns: memory and martyrdom, audience and authority, and sacrament. For Dawson, the theater provides its audience with a mediated experience capable of transforming potentially cataclysmic events such as martyrdom into a benign memory. This theatrical memory alludes to the sacramental memory of the Eucharist, but is different in kind; the audience is made to remember the individual life of the dramatic character embodied by the actor, but the spectacle and the memory are free from doctrinal affiliation, and so are secular. For Knapp, Shakespeare’s history cycle fashions a new audience unity by

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memorializing the potentially divisive matter of religious violence. But for him this fellowship is itself a kind of religious communion occasioned by authorial sacrifice. Ultimately, Dawson and Knapp’s disagreement centers on the question of authority and authorship. Dawson finds in religion an illustration of Bakhtin’s idea of authoritative discourse. Because theater does not take doctrinal positions, it must for Dawson be secular rather than religious. Knapp, on the other hand, accepts a master narrative of religious pluralization rather than secularization, and suggests that it is through the peculiar nature of an authority that gives itself away through sacrifice that Shakespeare’s history cycle can move past religious differences to build a community that is at peace and truly religious. Their debate remains an important one, confirming the continuing interest of Shakespeare’s relation to religious change.

Notes 1. Debora Kuller Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 6. Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti survey and respond to recent developments in ‘The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies,’ Criticism 46 (2004): 167–90. 2. See A.D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 17. Nuttall elaborates: ‘Neither the Reformation nor the shock waves it produced in the counter-culture of Catholicism – the Council of Trent – make any palpable impression on the plays’ (17). For the theoretical challenge, see Ewan Fernie, ed., Spiritual Shakespeares (London: Routledge, 2005); Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and the second half of Jackson and Marotti, ‘Turn to Religion.’ 3. E.K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903). In The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), John D. Cox points out that Chambers’s thesis was questioned as early as 1966 by O.B. Hardison in Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). 4. A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (New York: Schocken Books, 1964). Dickens argued that the Reformation was accomplished quickly, propelled by both government policy and strong popular support. 5. Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Other examples include Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Martha Tuck Rozett, The Doctrine of Election and the Emergence of Elizabethan Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Donna B. Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11

England (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992); Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Bryan Crockett, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Patrick Collinson’s investigations of the impact of the Reformation on cultural forms played an important part in this development. See especially The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988). James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). The following works concerning Shakespeare’s Catholicism were generally not influential when they were published, but have been since: E.A.J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years’ (Totawa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1985); Gary Taylor, ‘Forms of Opposition: Shakespeare and Middleton,’ English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994), 283–314; and Peter Milward, The Catholicism of Shakespeare’s Plays (Tokyo: Renaissance Institute, 1997). On Islam, see especially Daniel Vitkus, ‘Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997): 145–76. Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and SeventeenthCentury Print Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Arthur Marotti, ed., Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999); Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Essays from the Lancastrian Shakespeare conference were published in two volumes, both edited by Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson: Region, Religion, and Patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400– c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), and Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) and Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004); Arthur Marotti, ‘Shakespeare and Catholicism,’ in Dutton, Findlay, and Wilson, eds, Theatre and Religion, 219; and Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion, and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). For a crypto-Catholic Shakespeare, see also Claire Asquith, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (New York: Public Affairs, 2005). See, for example, William W.E. Slights’s statement that ‘For all the current clamor about Shakespeare’s residual Roman Catholicism, there is little compelling evidence in his poems and plays that his habits of mind in writing fictions draw their strength from the intercessions of priests, the Church Fathers, the Virgin Mary, or the saints’; The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 100. For an insightful response to Will in the World, Secret Shakespeare, Shadowplay, and many other recent works on the subject, and for a cogent summary of the biographical

12

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Shakespeare and Religious Change evidence concerning Shakespeare’s religion, see John D. Cox’s review essay, ‘Was Shakespeare a Christian, and If So, What Kind of Christian Was He?’ Christianity and Literature 55 (2006): 539–66. Also see Sarah Beckwith’s review articles, ‘Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet and the Forms of Oblivion,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 261–80, and ‘Shakespeare, Crypto-Catholicism, Crypto-Criticism,’ Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 19 (2006): 259–70. For a nuanced view of the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and contemporary Catholicism, see Phebe Jensen, Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare’s Festive World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). But see also David N. Beauregard, Catholic Theology in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008). See Audrey Douglas and Sally-Beth MacLean, eds, REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First Twenty-Five Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Several chapters in the current volume draw heavily upon the REED volumes. For example, see Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Church in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Michael C. Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Christopher Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding their Peace (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Peter Lake with Michael C. Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Jean-Christophe Mayer, Shakespeare’s Hybrid Faith (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 8. Maurice Hunt, Shakespeare’s Religious Allusiveness: Its Play and Tolerance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), makes a similar argument and uses the term ‘hybrid’ in the title of his second chapter. Also see Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); and, on Protestantism, the emphasis of Jeffrey Knapp on Shakespearean theater as home to an inclusive, Erasmian-flavored Christian fellowship in Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Cox, Devil and the Sacred, 150. Recent work on the survival and transformation of traditional theater includes Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Katharine Goodland, Female Mourning in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); John E. Curran, Jr, Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Beatrice Groves, Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592–1604 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007); Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins, eds, Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); David Coleman, Drama and the Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century England: Indelible Characters (Basingstoke: Palgrave

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Macmillan, 2007); and Paul Whitfield White, Drama and Religion in English Provincial Society, 1485–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 16. This version of the secularization thesis, associated with the work of such critics as C.L. Barber, Stephen Greenblatt, and Louis Montrose, is discussed frequently in the essays in this volume.

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Part I Shakespeare and Social History: Religion and the Secular

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1 Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie: The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors Richard Strier

The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s most wholehearted evocation and celebration of bourgeois life. The Merry Wives of Windsor might reasonably be seen as a competitor, but that play is not, like Errors, thoroughly committed to the evocation of a commercial and urban context. Closer in time and spirit to Errors, The Taming of the Shrew evokes a bourgeois context, but does not seem especially interested in it, and Shrew, of course, evokes other contexts as well (a very grand aristocratic household in the ‘induction’; a mid-level gentry country household after the wedding). There is no representation whatever of aristocratic life in Errors; the duke in the play is, as we shall see, a figure conceived in terms of juridical rather than social status, and his initial presentation in the play is as participating in (something like) a trade-war. Errors gives us, uniquely, a world of merchants – every one of whom is honest, generous, and admirable. There is not a single lie, deception, crooked or devious business dealing in the play. Contracts are honored, and it is a matter of shame not to do so. Money in the play is neither filthy nor corrupting. No one is self-conscious about it and no one is greedy. It is taken as perfectly normal not to cheat and to expect not be cheated. If there is a play by Shakespeare that shows us people fully and happily at home in an urban, commercial world, it is The Comedy of Errors. One might think that in presenting such a context, Shakespeare is merely celebrating the secular and/or responding to the spirit of Roman comedy (Plautus’s Menaechmi is the major source for Errors). But we will see that the play reminds us that to establish the ‘secular’ as a positive realm involves a competition with a religious perspective that would demonize or at least downgrade it. My argument in this chapter will be that in Errors, Shakespeare presents a consciously Protestant conception of what, following Max Weber, we might call ‘inner-worldly’ holiness.1 17

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After the ‘frame story,’ the evocation of happily bourgeois life enters the play through the presentation of the ‘at-home’ Antipholus (Antipholus of Ephesus) and the representation of his experience (even when he is not the one having it).2 The first time that we meet this Antipholus, at the beginning of 3.1, he is coming home somewhat late for dinner (the midday meal) in the company of two friends whom he has invited to dine with him.3 The friends are, as the Folio stage direction tells us, ‘Angelo the Goldsmith’ and ‘Baltha[za]r the Merchant.’4 Interestingly, the merchant of Ephesus (like that of Venice) is introduced to us as ‘sad’ (3.1.19), but the dialogue here is a textbook model of humanist graciousness. Antipholus of Ephesus pretends to doubt his ability to be properly hospitable: ‘pray God our cheer / May answer my good will, and our good welcome here’ (19–20). Balthazar, in good humanist fashion, values the intention over the realization: ‘I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear’ (21). Antipholus, as the host who will be providing whatever ‘cheer’ there is, then makes the materialist point that, as Hamlet says, ‘one cannot feed capons so’: ‘A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish’ (22) (we know that, as they are speaking, ‘The capon burns, the pig falls off the spit’ [1.2.44]). Balthazar, as the non-materialist merchant-guest, disparages the importance of mere food: ‘Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords’ (3.1.23; poverty does not seem to occur to these people). Antipholus goes on to disparage mere words, and this bit of dialogue ends with each of the interlocutors getting off one final good line: BALTHAZAR

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast. Ay, to a niggardly host, and more sparing guest. (3.1.26–7)

EPHESIAN ANTIPHOLUS

Ben Jonson would have been pleased with this dialogue. It shows, like his own (and Martial’s) epigrams, ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper,’ a proper regard for both material and non-material values. Clearly both good will and good food are desirable and, in this context, expected. This is the world that the ‘errors’ interrupt. The expected experience of hospitality is aborted, and the goldsmith notes that they have ended up with ‘neither cheer … nor welcome’ (66). Balthazar, ever wise and witty, observes of ‘cheer’ and ‘welcome’ that ‘In debating which was best, we shall part with neither’ (67). Let us look at some other evocations of the normal life of Antipholus of Ephesus. The most striking and lyrical of such evocations occurs at the beginning of act 4, scene 3, where the stranger Antipholus (Antipholus of

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 19

Syracuse) muses on the nature of the urban experience that he has been having. He is, of course, having the experience of his twin, Antipholus of Ephesus: There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend, And every one doth call me by my name; Some tender money to me, some invite me, Some other give me thanks for kindnesses, Some offer me commodities to buy, Even now a tailor call’d me to his shop, And show’d me silks that he had bought for me, And therewithal took measure of my body. (4.3.1–9) This is truly an urban pastoral, and, unlike the urban pastoral in act 4, scene 6 of Coriolanus – ‘our tradesmen singing in their shops and going / About their functions friendly’ (Cor 4.6.8–9) – this vision is not in any way ironized.5 It is a vision in which friendship and commercial transactions are completely compatible and interwoven. Money is ‘tendered,’ money is owed; commodities are offered, appreciated, and individualized. Luxury items are accepted as normal, as connected to businesses, and as part of happy commercial and social life. This is all totally weird to Antipholus of Syracuse, but it is part of what it means to be Antipholus of Ephesus. Let us look in a little more detail at business transactions in the play. Act 4 begins with a scene that seems to suggest less than amiable business relations. The goldsmith (Angelo) owes money to another merchant (not Balthazar), who has an ‘officer’ with him to arrest Angelo if Angelo does not pay this merchant the money he owes him. It is significant that the merchant who thinks that he will need an officer to collect his debt is not a native of Ephesus.6 Angelo in fact has a perfectly plausible plan for payment – he will get the money from Antipholus of Ephesus, who owes Angelo ‘just the sum’ (4.1.7) that is in question – and, as Angelo says to the merchant, he will then be able to act perfectly in this world; he will be able to ‘discharge my bond, and thank you too’ (13). This should work out not only with no need for legal enforcement but with complete goodwill. Antipholus of Ephesus, for his part, is utterly willing to pay for the chain; he does not have the cash on him, but tells Angelo: ‘with you take the chain, and bid my wife / Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof’ (37–8). Everything is straightforward, honest, and goodhumored. No one wishes to cheat anyone or to avoid either payment or

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delivery. When the ‘errors’ manifest themselves here, and Angelo insists that he has already delivered the chain, Antipholus of Ephesus is indignant to be accused of non-payment: ‘You wrong me much to say so’ (66). This is a world where lack of complete transparency in business dealings is considered almost unthinkably dishonorable, a matter, as Angelo says, of ‘shame’ (85). When, at the beginning of the fifth act, Angelo is asked (by the non-resident merchant) to describe Antipholus of Ephesus’s status in the city, Angelo mentions the excellence of Antipholus’s ‘reputation’ and that he is ‘highly belov’d’ (5.1.5–8). But I have skipped over the term of praise that comes between ‘reputation’ and ‘belov’d’; Antipholus, Angelo says, is ‘Of credit infinite’ (6). And just in case Angelo’s merchant interlocutor might be under the impression that the goldsmith is speaking of ‘credit’ in a general sense, Angelo states that Antipholus’s word ‘might bear my wealth at any time’ (8). And the other Antipholus is as straightforward and honest as everyone else in the play; he is horrified to be accused of denying that he has received the chain – ‘Who heard me to deny or to forswear it?’ he asks (25), and he upbraids Angelo’s creditor for bringing such a charge against him: ‘Thou art a villain to impeach me thus,’ he asserts, using technical legal language (29). He draws his sword to defend ‘mine honour and mine honesty’ (30) – the bourgeois as well as the aristocratic code of pride; ‘honesty’ as well as ‘honour.’7 Even the Courtesan in this play seems to be an upright citizen. She is a direct descendant of Erotium in Menaechmi, but she does not play nearly as important a role in Shakespeare’s play as Erotium does in Plautus’s. She figures in Shakespeare’s plot as an object of sexual jealousy for Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, but as Antipholus of Ephesus insists – in a context in which we are pretty clearly intended to believe him – he has been accused ‘without desert’ (3.1.112). The Courtesan’s other function in the plot is in relation to the gold chain which tracks and generates so many of the ‘errors’ in the play. The chain was originally commissioned, with great insistence (it was ‘bespoke’ ‘Not once, nor twice, but twenty times’ [3.2.171–2]), by Antipholus of Ephesus for his wife, but, after being barred from his own house for dinner, he decides to ‘bestow’ the chain on the Courtesan instead (3.1.117). This would seem to be a fairly direct parallel to the valuable dress which, in Plautus, the at-home Menaechmus has stolen from his wife to give to Erotium, but even here the differences are striking. In Plautus, this Menaechmus has, with great delight in his own cleverness – he is wearing the dress under his cloak – stolen the dress from his wife to give to his ‘girl’; his wife’s resentment over this theft of a valuable from her is a major issue in Plautus’s play. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, the decision to give the chain to the Courtesan is a reaction to

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 21

the locking-out scene (as is Antipholus of Ephesus’s purchase of a ‘rope’s end’ with which to scourge his wife and her ‘confederates’ [4.1.16–17]). And in Shakespeare, the Courtesan, despite her designation, seems less a courtesan than the proprietress of an inn (‘the Porpentine’ [3.1.116]). Obviously, these roles can run together (as, perhaps, in Mistress Quickly), but Errors seems to insist not only on Antipholus’s lack of sexual involvement with the Courtesan, but also on her status as the ‘hostess’ of the Porpentine (3.1.119). Moreover, it turns out that Antipholus of Ephesus does not actually intend to ‘bestow’ the valuable chain on her. It turns out that he intends to trade with her for it. When she (as she believes) confronts him later, she says, ‘Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner, / Or for my diamond, the chain you promised’ (4.3.66–7). This is still a diversion of the chain from Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, and it is still a good deal for the Courtesan, since the chain is worth a good deal more than the ring (it is notable that we are given the exact value of each – the ring is worth 40 ducats [4.3.80, 94], the necklace 200 [4.4.132]). The Courtesan did not ask for the chain, and, when (through the errors) she does not get it, all she wants is her ring back, because, as she says, ‘forty ducats is too much to lose’ (4.3.93). In the face of this, she unhesitatingly decides to go to Antipholus’s home and report his bizarre behavior to his wife (89–92). In the next scene, the wife and the Courtesan seek Antipholus (of Ephesus) together. The Courtesan does redescribe Antipholus’s dinner-time behavior – ‘He rush’d into my house and took perforce / My ring away’ (4.3.91–2) – and this may qualify her for being ‘the only deliberate deceiver’ in the play.8 But she might well think him ‘mad,’ on the basis of the preposterous ‘tale he told to-day at dinner / Of his own doors being shut against his entrance’ (85–6), and her motive in redescribing his behavior is only to recover her property. In the next scene, the wife and the Courtesan seek Antipholus (of Ephesus) together, and they agree, with the Courtesan’s experience in mind, that he must be mad. Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife describes her husband as ‘Doing displeasure to the citizens’ (5.1.142). The Courtesan is fully in this category; the wife’s belief that her husband must be mad is based, as she says, on this ‘incivility’ (4.4.44). He is not behaving like a proper citizen, and is offending other citizens, other property-owners, in the city. Antipholus of Ephesus must be mad because he is behaving weirdly – that is, apparently dishonestly – with regard to property: stealing rings, not paying debts, and so on. The mention of Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife brings us to the other half of the celebration of bourgeois life in this play: its celebration,

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exposition, and demonstration of a companionate marriage.9 This was anticipated, as was the positive treatment of the business world, in the ‘frame’ of the play. But, again, for the real development of this theme, we must look to the life of the central Ephesians. Here again there is complete continuity between mercantile and domestic life. Shakespeare goes out of his way to give Antipholus of Ephesus’s house a name (‘The Phoenix’ [1.2.75, 88]), making it clear that, like the Porpentine, it is as much an establishment as a home; the Phoenix is a shop sign. Adriana, Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, is fully the mistress of both house and establishment (1.2.88). She is surprised at the thought that there is apparently an aspect of her husband’s financial life with which she is unacquainted – ‘this I wonder at, / That he unknown to me should be in debt’ (4.2.48–9). But that is only a small part of the evocation of this marriage in the play. Nowhere does Shakespeare depart more sharply from his major Plautine source than in his treatment of marriage and his handling of the character of the ‘at-home’ twin’s wife. This assertion puts me directly at odds with Stephen Greenblatt, who asserts in Will in the World that Shakespeare was incapable of imagining ‘what it would mean fully to share a life.’10 This, as I have suggested and will develop further, is exactly what is imagined in The Comedy of Errors. The wife, in Shakespeare’s play, is, as we will see shortly, a remarkable character, but before focusing on her, there is a question that must at least briefly be considered: does Shakespeare create an image of a companionate marriage by upgrading the woman while leaving the character of the husband basically unreconstructed? We have already noted the rejection of actual sexual infidelity on the part of the husband in the play. We should also take seriously the fact that he is having the chain made for his wife – ‘Go home with it, and please your wife withal,’ says the goldsmith (4.2.172) – and we should take it seriously that Adriana assumes Antipholus’s candor with her about his business situation. He takes it for granted that she will immediately and unquestioningly stand his ‘bail’ after he is arrested. It is in this context that we get the lovely household detail of ‘the desk / That’s covered with the Turkish tapestry’ (4.2.105–6). This is a home that is truly a home; Shakespeare’s Courtesan never says to Antipholus what Plautus’s Erotium says to Menaechmus: ‘this house is more of a home to you than your own.’11 Antipholus is looking forward to entertaining his friends and colleagues at home. When he tells the goldsmith to ‘excuse us all’ for coming late for dinner, and notes that ‘My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours’ (3.1.20), this may seem to be moving towards low comedy, but it is very mild (‘shrewish’) and limited to particular circumstances (‘when I keep not hours’). Antipholus’s

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 23

request may also tell us some things about the nature of his marriage. He is apparently not prepared simply to assert his ‘right’ to do as he pleases, and his request may also be seen as showing some genuine concern for his wife’s feelings: at least he feels compelled to offer an excuse (or have his friend do so). And after Antipholus and his companions are locked out, and Antipholus is threatening to break into his own house, Balthazar reminds him not only of ‘the unviolated honor of your wife,’ but also of what an impressive person she is, and is, apparently, known to be; he reminds Antipholus of ‘your long experience of her wisdom’ (3.1.89), and this seems, together with worry about ‘vulgar comment’ on his behavior, to work on him – ‘despite of wrath’ (3.1.108).12 When Antipholus of Syracuse is (naturally) puzzled at and unresponsive to Adriana’s address to him – she gives an extraordinary speech that we will examine later – Adriana’s sister (Luciana) asks him, ‘When were you wont to use my sister thus?’ (2.2.153). So, if Antipholus of Ephesus is not as distinct from the at-home Menaechmus as Adriana is from the wife in Menaechmi, this Antipholus is still a very long way from the husband in Menaechmi, and the marriage evoked in Errors is very far – even when considering the husband’s depicted and implied feelings and behavior – from the loveless, purely social arrangement evoked in Plautus’s play. Even the most bizarre moment in Shakespeare’s play, Luciana’s advocacy of marital hypocrisy – of the husband concealing his infidelity – is part of the play’s emphasis on the companionate aspect of marriage. In response to Antipholus of Syracuse’s apparently odd behavior in relation to Adriana, Luciana asks him a wonderful question: ‘And may it be that you have quite forgot / A husband’s office?’ (3.2.1–2). ‘A husband’s office’ here is much more than a matter of keeping the wife ‘in clothes, jewelry, and all the servants and provisions you could possibly need’ – the account of the husband’s duties given to by her father to the wife in Menaechmi.13 ‘A husband’s office’ here is a matter of showing affection. The couple are quite young, and (relatively) newly married. In amazement, Luciana asks of the (apparent) young husband, ‘shall Antipholus, / Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?’ (2–3). She is desperate for Antipholus (of Ephesus, of course) to show affection to his spouse, to show, as she says ‘kindness.’ She wants this under all possible circumstances. ‘If,’ she says with straightforward realism, ‘you did wed my sister for her wealth,’ then ‘for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness’ (5–6). And this desperate concern for her sister’s husband to show ‘kindness’ is what leads Luciana to her very odd and passionate recommendation of hypocrisy: ‘if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;…/ Let not my sister read it in your eye’ (7–9). The point is that he should

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‘look sweet, speak fair’ to his wife (11). This is ‘a husband’s office’: ‘Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife’ (26). The companionate aspect of marriage, on this account, is even more important than sexual fidelity. This is all irrelevant, of course, since we know that sexual infidelity is not an issue, and since the apparent husband is acting coldly for an entirely different reason, but the fact that this position is articulated in the play is significant. In Menaechmi, we do not actually hear the wife’s ‘pestering’ Menaechmus about his comings and goings; we only hear his protest against it and the wife’s father’s rebuke to her for such behavior, given the husband’s proper provision for her (quoted above).14 Adriana, on the other hand, while she shares the Roman wife’s concerns with her husband’s comings and goings, enters the play in her own voice, and offers a philosophical defense of her position (it is perhaps significant that in Plautus’s play, the ‘other woman’ has a name and the wife does not, whereas in Shakespeare the situation is reversed). Adriana first appears onstage in what is essentially a formal debate about gender roles within marriage. Her sister urges ‘patience’ on Adriana; Luciana serves as the voice of patriarchy, to which she suggests good-humored submission. ‘Good sister,’ she says, ‘let us dine and never fret’; there is no point in or justification for worrying about what husbands do, since ‘A man is master of his liberty’ (2.1.6–7). This is essentially what the wife’s father in Plautus says to his daughter. In Plautus, this is unquestionably seen as common sense and common wisdom (though the wife is not expected to put up with having her property stolen). The wife in Shakespeare rejects all of Luciana’s premises. I have discussed Adriana’s (and the play’s) critique of patience elsewhere; what I want to focus on here is her conception of marriage.15 She sees her marriage as what we would call a ‘relationship.’ She expects it to be fun, sexy, and intellectually interesting. She protests that her husband’s ‘company must do his minions grace, / While I at home starve for a merry look.’ She expects her marriage to be ‘merry’; she expects to be recognized as beautiful, asking rhetorically whether ‘homely age [has] th’ alluring beauty took / From my poor cheek?’; and she expects to be, and to be valued for being, a fine conversationalist. Again rhetorically, she asks, ‘Are my discourses dull, barren my wit?’ (2.1.87–91). Most interestingly of all, Adriana protests against the sexual double standard. ‘Why should,’ she asks, ‘their liberty than ours be more?’ (2.1.10). She rejects both the pragmatic argument for greater male ‘liberty’ (‘their business still lies out o’ door’ [2.1.11]) and the metaphysical argument for female restraint (‘There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye / But hath his bound’ [2.1.16–17]). Adriana’s point, as

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 25

becomes clear later in this dialogue and in the continuation of it in the scene following, is not that she wants greater ‘liberty’; what she wants is for her husband to have to play by the same rules that she does. She is perfectly happy to accept the ideal of chastity – here, of course, meaning not virginity but marital fidelity – but she rejects the notion that it does not apply equally to married males. Construing her marriage partner as an ideal classical friend (another self), and adding to that the idea of husband and wife as ‘one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24), Adriana sees distance within marriage as ‘estrangement from oneself’ (2.2.120), and she brilliantly uses the intensity of male sexual possessiveness as an argument for mutual marital faithfulness.16 She accepts the force and validity of male possessiveness, asking (to the wrong Antipholus, as it happens): How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious? And that this body, consecrate to thee, By ruffian lust should be contaminate?’ (2.2.130–3) She accepts the idea that, were she to be ‘contaminate’ in this way, it would be completely appropriate for Antipholus to issue ‘a deepdivorcing vow.’ She then goes on to play her trump card. She asserts that she is so ‘contaminate.’ ‘I am,’ she says, ‘possess’d with an adulterate blot.’ She claims that her very blood is infected: ‘My blood is mingled with the crime of lust.’ But this is not because of her behavior, but of his. In a triumphant and completely unassailable syllogism, she concludes: ‘For if we two be one, and thou play false, / I do digest the poison of thy flesh, / Being strumpeted by thy contagion’ (3.2.142–4). So, if Antipholus does not want his wife to be ‘adulterated,’ he must keep ‘fair league and truce with [his] true bed’ (2.2.145). Moreover, it should be noted that just as Shakespeare keeps Antipholus of Ephesus chaste in his relations with the ‘Courtesan,’ he keeps Adriana from sleeping with the wrong Antipholus when he is in her house with her. In the equivalent scene of the Plautus play from which Shakespeare borrowed the idea of the husband locked out while his ‘twin’ was with the wife within – Amphitryo, not Menaechmi – the wife does sleep with the figure who is identical to her husband (‘You had dinner with me and went to bed with me,’ she says to her husband).17 The wife in Amphitryo is held blameless (she could not have known that she was not with her husband, and the identical figure turns out to be Jupiter, in any case), but in The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare does not even allow the hint of such a development to ensue.18 It seems to be a possibility when Antipholus of

26

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Syracuse speaks of entertaining ‘the offer’d fallacy’ (2.2.186). But in the scene with the double within and the husband without – the Amphitryo situation – Shakespeare makes Antipholus of Syracuse emphatically disclaim any attraction to (the no doubt beautiful) Adriana: ‘She that doth call me husband, even my soul / Doth for a wife abhor’ (3.2.157–8).19 This talk of the ‘soul’ is significant. Marriage, in this play, is indeed a matter of finding a ‘soul-mate.’ Antipholus of Syracuse’s ‘soul’s pure truth’ (37) leads him to the choice of Adriana’s unmarried sister (who was clearly invented to serve this role in the plot). This Antipholus basically sees himself as already married to Luciana, since he addresses her in exactly the terms in which Adriana addressed him (taken to be her husband). He speaks of Luciana as ‘mine own self’s better part’ (61); Adriana spoke of herself in relation to Antipholus of Ephesus as ‘thy dear self’s better part’ (2.2.123). Men and women in this play seem to have the same idea of marriage and to manifest (more or less) the same high level of chastity. Even the servants seem (more or less) to keep to this level. When Luce or Nell acted seductively to the wrong Dromio, she apparently did so in the context of an engagement, since he speaks of her as ‘a wondrous fat marriage’ (3.2.92).20 The historian Keith Thomas has written on the double standard.21 His article is mainly devoted to documenting the surprising longevity of this arrangement in the British legal system – male (as opposed to female) adultery was only declared a legal cause for divorce in 1923 – and to trying to generate some explanation for this longevity. But Thomas does devote some space to opposition to the double standard. He notes that in the Middle Ages, ‘the idea that unchastity was as much a sin for the one sex as for the other steadily gained ground,’ but that with the Reformation the attack on the double standard grew much stronger.22 As with the development of the idea of the companionate marriage – to which the attack on the double standard is, of course, related – the socalled puritans took the lead.23 However, as Thomas P. Hennings points out, the idea of a single standard is explicit in the government-sponsored and required Homily on Matrimony, in which the first point of marriage is that man and woman should live lawfully ‘in a perpetuall friendship’; the second is ‘to bring foorth fruite’; and the third is ‘to avoide fornication’ so that ‘a good conscience might bee preserved on both parties.’24 Thomas sees ‘the other main source of opposition’ to the double standard as what he calls ‘the ever-growing current’ in the early modern period ‘of what can only be described as middle-class respectability.’25 Both of these factors must be seen as operating in The Comedy of Errors, and it might seem that the latter is clearer, but the two (as Weber and

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others have suggested) are related, and Errors must be seen as consciously Protestant as well as consciously committed to ‘middle-class respectability.’ The skepticism in the play, especially with regard to fairies and witches, is a recognizably Protestant skepticism; the combination medical doctor and exorcist who is mocked in the play, Dr Pinch, is marked as a Catholic figure.26 When attempting, at the request of Adriana and the Courtesan, to ‘conjure’ Antipholus (in this case, of Syracuse) back ‘in his true sense again,’ Pinch utters a formal adjuration: I charge thee, Satan, hous’d within this man, To yield possession to my holy prayers, And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight; I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven. (4.4.52–5) While the reference to ‘my holy prayers’ could have been said by a puritan exorcist – though even this is doubtful (the phrase bears a suggestion of set or ritual prayers, which the puritans opposed) – the last line of this adjuration could only have been spoken by a Catholic. No Protestant, however ‘high church,’ would have conjured (meaning ‘adjured’) ‘by all the saints in heaven.’27 Contra Ros King, Pinch is not an all-purpose ‘fanatic’; he is a Catholic.28 He is also a figure of fun – as totally misguided as are all the references in the play to supernatural forces. The one event that is described in the play as ‘past thought of human reason’ and a ‘miracle’ is clearly and evidently neither (5.1.189, 265). In the play, as in normative Protestantism, ‘the working of miracles is ceased.’29 But the strongest indication of the play’s conscious commitment not just to worldliness but to what I have called the Protestant conception of inner-worldly holiness occurs in the final act of the play. Suddenly, at the beginning of the fifth act, the figure of the abbess enters the play, an explicitly Catholic and, in specifically Catholic and institutional terms, an officially ‘religious’ figure. What is important to see is that this entire section of the scene is staged as a competition between the abbess and the wife (Adriana) for the right to take charge of Antipholus (supposedly of Ephesus) and his ‘treatment.’ In this scene (as opposed to that with Pinch), Adriana views Antipholus’s condition purely naturalistically. She refers to him as ‘my poor distracted husband,’ and she wishes to treat him in the normal way that mad persons were treated (placed, as the supposedly mad Malvolio is, ‘in a dark room and bound’ [Twelfth Night 3.4.121]). She has no doubt as to the proper locus for such treatment. ‘Let us come in [to the abbey],’ she requests or commands the abbess, ‘that we may bind him fast / And bear him home for his recovery’ (Errors

28

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5.1.40–1). The abbess, however, sees Antipholus’s condition exactly as Dr Pinch had – ‘How long,’ she asks, ‘hath this possession held the man’ (44; compare Pinch’s formal adjuration, quoted above) – and she immediately recognizes that she is in direct conflict with the wife. Through clever and seemingly neutral questions, the abbess tricks Adriana into presenting herself as obsessed with her husband’s (supposed) infidelity, and as allowing this obsession to color their entire domestic life (eating, sleeping, à deux, and in company). The abbess then produces a grand vision of how this behavior has poisoned and unhinged Antipholus – a Burtonian vision, we might say, of how lack of ‘recreation’ leads to madness and melancholy (5.1.69–86). Adriana is momentarily silenced by this maneuver, but interestingly, at this moment Luciana, previously the spokesperson for traditional hierarchy and patient endurance, speaks up in Adriana’s defense, asserting that Adriana ‘never reprehended [Antipholus] but mildly’ (87), and, even more strikingly, urging Adriana to reassert her normal rejection of patience and quiet endurance. She asks Adriana, ‘Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?’ (89). Adriana explains her silence as a tribute to the abbess’s rhetorical maneuver – ‘She did betray me to mine own reproof’ (90) – but Adriana perseveres, nevertheless, in her practical endeavor, commanding her followers to enter the abbey and ‘lay hold’ on her (supposed) husband (91). At this point, the abbess takes a different tack. She appeals to the special status of her locale, and, in particular, to the special legal status that this locale affords: ‘He took this place for sanctuary, / And it shall privilege him from your hands’ (94–5). ‘Privilege’ is precisely the legal meaning of sanctuary. Sanctuary ‘privileges’ those who claim it (by physical entrance) from the reach of the secular laws of the land or realm. Adriana is unmoved by this. She asserts her own special position with regard to Antipholus – ‘I will attend my husband’ (98) – and continues to refer to his condition in purely medical terms; she will ‘be his nurse’ and ‘Diet his sickness.’ She justifies her position thus: ‘it is my office, / And I will have no attorney but myself’ (99–100). She will have no mediator in her relation to her husband, and she invokes the great Roman term for social duties, for duties that define the polity and the social order, and that may even have divine sanction: ‘it is my office.’30 This term is used in the play primarily with regard to marital roles.31 Recall Luciana’s attempt to recall the apparent Antipholus of Ephesus to ‘a husband’s office’ (3.2.2). In answer to Adriana’s claim, the abbess first tells her to ‘Be patient’ (5.1.102) – a piece of advice that has been subject to critique throughout the play – and then lays out what we might call a ‘Pinchian’

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approach to Antipholus’s (supposed) condition. The abbess will use, she says, ‘wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers’ (104; Pinch, we recall, attempted to feel Antipholus’s pulse before adjuring the devil within Antipholus to ‘yield possession to my holy prayers’). Finally, in response to Adriana’s appeal to her special ‘office’ as a wife, the abbess appeals to her special (that is, Catholic) religious and institutional status; she sees treatment of Antipholus as ‘a branch and parcel of mine oath, / A charitable duty of my order’ (5.1.106–7). In response to this, Adriana reasserts her own sense of duty – ‘I will not hence and leave my husband here’ – and makes a sharp critical comment: ‘ill it does beseem your holiness / To separate the husband and the wife’ (110–11). This can be seen as merely saying that the abbess is acting badly, but ‘holiness’ is such a powerful word here, and the situation is so generically described, ‘To separate the husband and the wife,’ that it is hard not to feel, especially in the light of Adriana’s earlier reference to her body as ‘consecrate to’ her husband (2.2.132), that what is being asserted here is a competing notion of ‘holiness,’ a conception that would see the relation between ‘the husband and the wife’ as itself a form of holiness – as indeed, a higher form of holiness, and one with which it would be unholiness, sacrilege, to interfere. The abbess responds by once again telling Adriana to be quiet, once again refusing to hand her (supposed) husband over, and finally by exiting into her ‘privileged’ place. At this point, the newly bold and activist Luciana again steps in, introducing a new factor into the situation. The former rebuker of complaining suggests to Adriana: ‘Complain unto the duke of this indignity’ (5.1.113). Adriana eagerly accedes to this suggestion, stating that she will prostrate herself before the duke until her ‘tears and prayers / Have won his grace’ to come to the abbey and deal with the abbess (115–16). Suddenly the language of devotion – ‘tears and prayers’ – is being used in a secular context, although ‘his grace’ suggests that perhaps ‘secular’ is not quite the right term. This suggestion is further developed when Adriana addresses the duke (who turns out to be on the spot in any case, since the place of Egeon’s execution is ‘Behind the ditches of the abbey here’) in the following manner: ‘Justice, most sacred duke, against the abbess’ (5.1.133). Clearly there are two versions of ‘sacred’ figures in competition here, and clearly there is a matter of jurisdiction at issue. Adriana explains the situation (as she understands it) to the duke, who has a special interest in her marriage (‘at your important letters’), and concludes, with regard to her (supposed) husband: ‘Therefore, most gracious duke, with thy command / Let him be brought forth, and bore

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hence for help’ (159–60). Adriana assumes that the duke has jurisdiction over the abbey – that his ‘command’ would govern the abbess – and it turns out that she is right in this assumption. The duke delays his intended business (the execution of Egeon) to deal with the situation that Adriana has brought to his attention, and he sees the matter as indeed a legal one, a case. Adriana had, after all, asked for ‘justice.’ The duke assumes jurisdiction, and himself takes on the role of judge: ‘bid the lady abbess come to me. / I will determine this before I stir’ (166–7). When Antipholus of Ephesus emerges onto the scene, he too asks the ‘most gracious duke’ for justice (190). Each character then tells his or her story with complete probity and with fully competent eyewitnesses, each of whom is willing to swear to the truth of his or her testimony (260). Each complainant claims to be (and is) telling the ‘simple truth’ and accuses the other of perjury (212, 227). The duke recognizes the situation as a legal conundrum – ‘what an intricate impeach this is’ (270) – a situation of legal claims and cross-claims (compare ‘Thou art a villain to impeach me thus’ earlier in the scene). What has happened is in doubt. What is not in doubt is the duke’s authority to sort it all out. The abbess appears at the duke’s command (281), and it turns out that the confrontation between the duke and the abbess does not have to take place. It is obviated by the great surprise that Shakespeare springs on the characters and the (at least initial) audience of the play: the abbess turns out to be Emilia, the long-lost wife of Egeon, the merchant condemned to death in the frame story.32 The conflict between abbess and wife, Catholic and Protestant sanctity, holy place and holy (secular) ‘office,’ disappears when the abbess turns out not only to have been a wife but to be ready, without a moment’s hesitation, to resume that role. She is happy to ‘gain a husband’ by Egeon’s freedom (340). Although redemption by money does not seem at all ironic in this play – in the frame story merchants die for ‘wanting guilders to redeem their lives’ (1.1.8) – Egeon is ‘redeemed’ not by money but through being reintegrated into his marriage. ‘I will loose his bonds, / And gain a husband by his liberty,’ says the former abbess (5.1.339–40).33 The ‘errors’ are cleared up without the need for supernatural intervention, and the family units are reassembled. There is, it is true, as Greenblatt says, no ‘scene of reconciliation’ between Antipholus of Ephesus and Adriana, but there is a defined moment of reconciliation.34 When Adriana turns toward Antipholus of Syracuse, and asks, ‘Are not you my husband,’ Antipholus of Ephesus steps vigorously in to say: ‘No, I say nay to that’ (371). This is certainly short and proprietary, but it is as certainly a reassertion of the marital

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 31

bond; it’s a strong statement, and a director could (and perhaps should) add appropriate physical action. The entire cast of honest bourgeois folk receive their due, including the Courtesan, who gets back her ring along with thanks for her hospitality (presumably, the second merchant gets his money from the goldsmith), and the abbess invites the whole cast into the abbey. Suddenly the abbey is no longer sacred through being a place apart from ordinary social life; rather, it becomes a place that will be a locus for a high form of ordinary social life, a feast. And it will, moreover, be sacred for being that. The Protestant conception of holiness, the conception that denies the existence of a special class of holy persons and places, substitutes for this conception a vision of the holiness of all legitimate earthly activity. Luther compared the prideful ascetic exercises of monks and nuns unfavorably to ‘the works of a farmer labouring in the field, or of a woman looking after her home.’35 This conception of holiness takes full possession of the end of the play. The abbey is not violated but, apparently, sanctified by the family reunion being celebrated there. The religious language of the abbess’s final speech is unmistakable. Still, as she must be, in her nun’s garb, the abbess asserts that to all of those who ‘by this sympathized one day’s error / have suffer’d wrong,’ ‘we shall make full satisfaction’ (397–9). This is a startling phrase if one is theologically or ecclesiologically attuned. ‘Satisfaction’ is the central feature of the Catholic sacrament of penance, the feature that produced much of the institutional and devotional structure of the medieval church, and that generated the realm of purgatory.36 The ‘satisfaction’ that the abbess and other characters will ‘make’ here is of an entirely different sort. Nor is it the purely monetary ‘satisfaction’ that the foreign merchant demanded of Antipholus (4.1.5). It is intellectual and emotional, not penitential or monetary. But the language becomes even more charged. Emilia presents the entire story that began in the opening narration and culminated here as an elaborate process of rebirth: ‘Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail / Of you, my sons, and till this present hour / My heavy burden ne’er delivered’ (5.1.400–2). Lewis Theobald pointed out long ago that the number here, ‘Thirtythree years,’ cannot be correct; the actual number of years that Emilia (formerly known as the abbess) was separated from members of her family is 25.37 But, of course, there is no need for emendation. Shakespeare clearly wanted the mystical and Christological number, regardless of the ‘facts’ of the matter. And Emilia’s/the abbess’s speech concludes by inviting the whole cast, designated by their social and familial roles, to a rather grand version of a feast celebrating a baptism; and she does so

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in language that seems to merge the mystical ‘rebirth’ of the Antipholus and Dromio twins with the birth that defined Christianity: The duke, my husband, and my children both, And you, the calendars of their nativity, Go to a gossips’ feast, and joy with me, After so long grief, such nativity. (5.1.403–6) This is the Folio reading of the abbess’s last line, and it is the reading adopted by most modern editors (though not by R.A. Foakes, who adopts ‘felicity’ to end the line, or the Oxford editors, who adopt ‘festivity’). Even if one believes that the final ‘nativity’ here is a mere eye-slip by the compositor, and that the word must therefore be emended, the idea is present nonetheless.38 Finally, one must ask what Shakespeare’s audience would probably have made of all this. Perhaps there were persons in the audience who would have been shocked at the play’s casualness about sanctuary and its lack of regard for the sanctity of the place and of the ‘oath’ and ‘order’ of the abbess. Perhaps. But I am not sure that such persons, devoted to the old religion and to the Counter-Reformation, would have attended the public theater (or even a performance at Gray’s Inn).39 Many in Shakespeare’s audience were not even born when the abbeys were appropriated by the crown and laicized in 1539, and surely few, if any, could remember them as functioning institutions in England.40 Most (or at least much) of Shakespeare’s audience would have been used to the idea of the ruler of the realm as the Supreme Governor (if not the Supreme Head) of the Church.41 And the general privilege of sanctuary was holding on by a thread in Elizabethan England, and was finally to be abolished in 1623.42 Interestingly with regard to The Comedy of Errors, merchants, from the late medieval period on, were generally negative toward sanctuary, since debtors made use of it to escape payment, and certain areas in London continued to be ‘pretended privileged places’ for debtors at least until 1723.43 I think, therefore, that there is no reason not to trust the play – which I would be inclined to do in any case. The ending is meant to be a happy one, and even, in its way, a holy one. I think that most of Shakespeare’s audience would have agreed with Adriana that it ill beseems holiness to separate the husband and the wife. With regard to the abbey, they might well have agreed with Andrew Marvell, a half century or so later, who, when considering a historical situation parallel to that which confronted Adriana early in act 5, asserted strongly

Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie 33

that spousal rights trumped Catholic ones, and that the nunnery in which a spouse was being kept was spiritually transformed for the better when it was made into a private estate. Of the moment of laicization, Marvell wrote: ‘Though many a Nun there made her vow, / Twas no religious house till now.’44 In The Comedy of Errors, at least, it seems that Shakespeare would have agreed.

Notes A fuller version of this chapter, with more complete documentation, will appear in my book, ‘The Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton.’ 1. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (1930; rpt New York: Scribner, 1958), esp. chap. 3. 2. I discuss the frame story of the play in the version of this chapter that will appear in ‘The Unrepentant Renaissance.’ 3. On the status and function of the midday meal, see Joseph Candido, ‘Dining out in Ephesus: Food in The Comedy of Errors,’ in The Comedy of Errors: Critical Essays, ed. Robert S. Miola (New York: Garland, 1997), 206–8, and the references there given. 4. For the Folio text of the play, I have used The First Folio of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman (New York: Norton, 1968). Quotations from the play, unless otherwise indicated, are from R.A. Foakes, ed., The Comedy of Errors, Arden 2 Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1968). 5. In Coriolanus, this vision is, of course, ironized by the military context. 6. For evidence that this merchant is non-native, see Foakes, Comedy of Errors, 61 n. Matt Stegle points out that the officer evokes the fear of punishment for debt, a fear that haunts the urban world of this play as an alternative to its normal workings; ‘Arrest for Debt in The Comedy of Errors,’ Shakespeare Association of America seminar paper, 2005. 7. On honor in the period, see Mervyn James, ‘English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642,’ in Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 308–415; on the different valence of ‘honesty,’ see Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), chap. 5. 8. See Laurie Maguire, ‘The Girls from Ephesus,’ in Miola, Comedy of Errors, 369. 9. I have been anticipated in this claim by Thomas P. Hennings in ‘The Anglican Doctrine of Affectionate Marriage in The Comedy of Errors,’ Modern Language Quarterly 47 (1986): 91–107. 10. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004), 131. Greenblatt sees this (supposed) incapacity in Shakespeare as having both personal and cultural sources. With regard to the latter, his suggestion that the idea of a ‘companionate’ marriage is anachronistic when applied to Shakespeare (128–9) is misguided, as the example of

34

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

Shakespeare and Religious Change Spenser’s poetry and life shows, as does (perhaps) the life and some of the poetry of Donne. Plautus, The Brothers Menaechmus, in The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, trans. E.F. Watling (London: Penguin, 1965), 115. Like some earlier editors (see Foakes, Comedy, 48 n), I have accepted Theobald’s emendation of ‘wrath’ for the Folio’s ‘mirth’ in this line, since ‘despite of mirth’ makes no sense, despite various editors’ attempts to explain it. Foakes, it should be noted, prints ‘mirth,’ as do all recent editions. Plautus, Brothers Menaechmus, 132. For the husband’s protest, see Plautus, Brothers Menaechmus, 106. For the critique of patience in Errors (and the further development of this theme in Lear), see Strier, ‘Against the Rule of Reason: Praise of Passion from Petrarch to Luther to Shakespeare to Herbert,’ in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, ed. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 23–42. Greenblatt notes the passion in Adriana’s speech (he quotes 2.2.119–29), but does not consider the ideal from which this passion springs, and to which it gives voice; Will in the World, 130. Plautus, Amphitryo, in The Rope and Other Plays, trans. E.F. Watling (London: Penguin, 1964), 258. Alcmena, the wife in Amphitryo, is eloquent, unafraid, outspoken, and completely virtuous; ‘An innocent woman is not afraid to speak out boldly for herself,’ she says (264). She, rather than the unnamed wife in Menaechmi, is the model for Adriana. Whether Adriana has sexual relations with the wrong Antipholus is not, contra Maguire (and the productions she cites), ‘a moot point’ in the play; ‘The Girls from Ephesus,’ 367. On the name-uncertainty here (Luce or Nell), see Foakes’s note on 3.2.107. Keith Thomas, ‘The Double Standard,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 195–216. Thomas, ‘Double Standard,’ 203. On the ‘puritan’ role in developing the idea of the companionate marriage, see Thomas, ‘Double Standard’; William and Malleville Haller, ‘The Puritan Art of Love,’ Huntington Library Quarterly 5 (1942): 235–72; Roland M. Frye, ‘The Teachings of Classical Puritanism on Conjugal Love,’ Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955): 148–59; and James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1987), chap. 2. Hennings, ‘Affectionate Marriage,’ 96–7; ‘An Homilie of the State of Matrimonie,’ in Certaine Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches In the Time of Queen Elizabeth I, intro. Mary Ellen Rickey and Thomas B. Stroup (1623; rpt Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968), 2.239 (italics mine). Thomas, ‘Double Standard,’ 204. On both of these points, see Richard Strier, ‘Shakespeare and the Skeptics,’ Religion and Literature 32 (2000): 171–96. For the Church of England position on ‘the saints in heaven,’ see George Herbert’s ‘To all Angels and Saints.’ I have discussed this poem at length in

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28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

‘“To all Angels and Saints”: Herbert’s Puritan Poem,’ Modern Philology (1979): 132–45. Aaron Landau, in insisting that Pinch is surely a puritan, has to omit line 55 from his treatment, and, in insisting that when Errors was produced, ‘exorcism was largely identified with Puritan sectarianism,’ he must fail to mention Samuel Harsnett’s attack on ‘Egregious Popish Impostures,’ and treat the association of exorcism with Catholics as somehow a later development, which is false (see ‘“Past Thought of Human Reason”: Confounding Reason in The Comedy of Errors,’ English Studies 85 (2004): 203). For exorcism in late Elizabethan England, see F.W. Brownlow, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the Devils of Denham (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993). See Ros King’s introduction to the updated New Cambridge Comedy of Errors, ed. T.S. Dorsch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12–14. I am not sure why Arthur Kinney thinks Dr Pinch an ‘unbeliever’ (‘Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and the Nature of Kinds,’ in Miola, Comedy of Errors, 158). The quotation is from Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, ed. Brinsley Nicholson (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), 39, but, as I have indicated, the position is normative. On Shakespeare’s apparent rejection of this position in a speech by Lafew in All’s Well that Ends Well, see Strier, ‘Shakespeare and the Skeptics,’ 177–80. While Landau, ‘ “Past Thought of Human Reason,’ ” is correct that Montaigne’s Pyrrhonism led him to rely on the institutional Catholic Church, Montaigne was scarcely, as his essay ‘On Repentance’ shows, a normative Catholic, and it hardly helps Landau’s argument that, as he ruefully notes, ‘English Catholics like Allen, Parsons, Fitzherbert, or Verstegan hardly ever resort to skeptical arguments’ (192). The epistemological skepticism of the play – as opposed to its skepticism about miracles and exorcism – does not have any clear confessional orientation, and, if one wishes to read it theologically, seems to call more for direct divine intervention (‘Some blessed power deliver us from hence’ [4.3.42]) than for reliance on an authoritative religious institution. For the peculiar religious position of Montaigne’s ‘Of Repentance,’ see Strier, ‘Self-Revelation and Self-Satisfaction in Montaigne and Descartes,’ Prose Studies 29 (2007): 405–25, esp. 407–12. The key text here is, of course, Cicero’s De Officiis, one of the most widely circulated classical texts of the Renaissance. The one exception occurs in the locking-out scene, when Dromio of Ephesus protests that the other Dromio has ‘stol’n both mine office and my name’ (3.1.44). Here too, the context is domestic, though not marital. On how unusual it is for Shakespeare to surprise his theatrical audience in this way, see Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare’s Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 9. Landau somehow sees these lines as affirming the papal prerogative of ‘binding and loosing’ (‘“Past Thought of Human Reason,”’ 201), and seems to confuse Emilia’s renunciation of her Catholic institutional status with an affirmation of it. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 130. See The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961) [under the title, The Pagan Servitude of the Church], 311, and see 345–9. Luther elaborates this conception in many places. For some further references (and some theological explanation), see Strier, ‘Against the Rule of Reason.’

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36. For an account of the conflicting doctrines of penance, see Strier, ‘Herbert and Tears,’ ELH 46 (1979): 221–47. 37. See Foakes’s note on line 5.1.400. 38. Foakes borrows ‘felicity’ from Hanmer; Johnson suggested ‘festivity,’ which is adopted by the Oxford and Norton Shakespeares, and (oddly, for an edition based on the Folio) by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen in their Shakespeare: Complete Works (New York: Modern Library, 2007). The old and new Pelican editions accept the Folio reading, as do the Bevington, New Cambridge, and Folger editions. The unique capitalization of the final word (adopted by the Pelicans) is editorial and interpretive, since, in the Folio, the word is also capitalized two lines before, so there is no difference between the two instances. 39. On the early stage history of the play, see Foakes, Comedy, xxxiv–xxxix. 40. For ‘An Act for the Dissolution of Abbeys’ (1539; 31 Henry VIII, c. 13), see G.R. Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 388–91. 41. On Henry as ‘Supreme Head’ of the Church of England, see Elton, Tudor Constitution, 364–5; for Elizabeth and her ‘heirs or successors’ as Supreme Governor, see 372–7. 42. See Isobel Thornley, ‘The Destruction of Sanctuary,’ in Tudor Studies Presented…to Alfred Frederick Pollard, ed. R.W. Seton-Watson (London: Longmans Green, 1924), 182–207. 43. For merchants and sanctuary, see Thornley, ‘Destruction of Sanctuary,’ 188– 95; and James R. Hertzler, ‘The Abuse and Outlawing of Sanctuary for Debt in Seventeenth-Century England,’ Historical Journal 14 (1971): 467–77. Stegle, ‘Arrest for Debt,’ following Nigel Stirk, ‘Arresting Ambiguity: The Shifting Geographies of a London Debtors’ Sanctuary in the Eighteenth Century,’ Social History 25 (2000): 316–29, shows that the privilege of sanctuary for debt continued to be invoked into the eighteenth century. For the quoted phrase, see Hertzler, 473, and Stirk, 318. None of the cases cited, it should be noted, involved functioning religious institutions. 44. Andrew Marvell, ‘Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax,’ lines 279–80. For contextualization, see Gary D. Hamilton, ‘Marvell, Sacrilege, and Protestant Historiography: Contextualizing “Upon Appleton House,”’ in Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688, ed. Donna B. Hamilton and Richard Strier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 161–86.

2 ‘In a Christian Climate’: Religion and Honor in Richard II Debora Shuger

I This chapter is about Richard II, but I want to start from left field with the question of why in the late sixteenth century Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (c. 370 BC) became so important. Spenser’s letter to Raleigh cites the Cyropaedia as the model for The Faerie Queene, announcing that, as Xenophon ‘in the person of Cyrus … fashioned a governement, such as might best be, …[s]o have I laboured to doe in the person of Arthure.’ Sidney’s Apology for Poetry hinges on the power of fiction ‘to make many Cyruses,’ and Frances Meres notes the relation between Xenophon’s Cyrus and Sidney’s own princes in his 1598 Palladis Tamia.1 Xenophon’s historical romance, first translated into English in 1552 (the earliest full-scale English translation of a Classical Greek text), recounts Cyrus’s conquest of the ancient empires of the East. The work is (explicitly) an instructional manual for gaining what the 1552 translation calls ‘soverayntie over man’ – for becoming a successful ruler (which is what Sidney means by ‘mak[ing] many Cyruses’).2 As Xenophon explains at the outset, the project of the book is to describe how Cyrus achieved the seemingly impossible feat of inspiring both his own people and the nations he conquered ‘with so great a desire of pleasing him’ that they willingly submitted to his rule.3 The key to this achievement, in Xenophon’s telling, turns out to lie in the ethical transfiguration of zero-sum logic, where ‘I win’ means ‘you lose,’ a logic that characterizes honor societies, both ancient and thereafter. Homer’s Sarpedon memorably articulates the zero-sum basis of the heroic code in his final exhortation to his comrade-in-arms: in Pope’s translation, ‘Or let us glory gain, or glory give’ (Iliad 12:52). One gains glory by killing the enemy; one gives it by being killed. Sarpedon is killed 37

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in the battle, and Troy left as smoking rubble. Although Xenophon’s Cyrus manages to find a way out of this zero-sum framework, after his death the deadly competition for glory reasserts itself among his sons, shattering Cyrus’s magnificent empire as rapidly as it had been built. So too in Shakespeare, the competition between Edward III’s offspring precipitates the zero-sum violence of usurpation, rebellion, and civil war that provides the history plays with their central narrative line. And so too Prince Hal affirms the winner-take-all apportionments of glory, boasting to Hotspur that ‘all the budding honours on thy crest / I’ll crop to make a garland for my head.’4 These are not literary formulae. As Mervyn James’s fine studies of sixteenth-century aristocratic culture make clear, the rules of zero-sum that characterize the honor ethics of pre-Socratic society continued to define the hard core of Tudor aristocratic manhood. James’s studies document the fiercely ‘competitive assertiveness’ that typified relations between elite males, each striving to acquire the honor only won by taking it from someone else.5 Up through the Essex revolt of 1601, the ‘pervasive violence’ of Tudor politics enacts, in James’s words, the ‘competitive violence of honor.’6 The fundamentally competitive nature of such honor – the fact that it can only be gained at another’s expense (that is, its zero-sum character) – comes through in Sir Francis Bacon’s observations that those who ‘are glorious must needs be factious; for all bravery stands upon comparisons,’ and hence honor sparkles brightest which ‘is gained and broken upon another.’7 It is a point that Shakespeare’s Ulysses reiterates: namely, that ‘honour travels in a strait so narrow / Where one but goes abreast … [and] emulation hath a thousand sons / That one by one pursue: if you give way, /… Like to an entered tide, they all rush by / And leave you hindmost.’8 First, hindmost; win, lose; the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. Both honor’s win-lose binary, whereby the one who gives way ends up not second but last, and its ‘competitive violence’ are strikingly illustrated in a vignette from Richard Barckley’s A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man (c. 1598). Arguing that ‘there is not a more daungerous passion … [than] desire of honour’ – that is, the ‘earnest desire to excell others’ to which ‘the worthiest men, and those that are endued with excellent gifts, are most subject’ – Barckley recounts how the Duke of Gelderland abducted and imprisoned his father. The emperor and the pope pressure the duke to submit to arbitration; however, Barckley continues, the duke said ‘rather then he would yeeld to those conditions, he would cast his Father headlong into a well, and throw himselfe after.’9 We are not

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told whether he made good on this threat, but it casts light on why the nobles who band together against Richard II include among their litany of wrongs the charge that the king has ‘basely yielded upon compromise / That which his ancestors achieved with blows.’10 Compromise is base, dishonorable. Indeed, insofar as honor is understood in zero-sum terms, compromise is impossible. There is only winning or losing, and what one might think of as compromise almost always gets assimilated to the latter position. It is against this backdrop that both Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and its sixteenth-century revival need to be understood, for the work is an attempt to envision an alternative politics: politics as the art of creating win-win scenarios, where your triumph furthers my interests. A single episode will suffice to show how this works. At the beginning of his meteoric sweep across Asia Minor, Cyrus conquers Armenia, which had for years been plundered by Chaldaean horsemen riding down from the mountains ringing Armenia’s fertile lowlands. However, instead of doing what conquerors usually do and subjugating the defeated Armenians, Cyrus offers to help them fight the Chaldaeans. Once they recover from their astonishment, the Armenians are ecstatic. Cyrus’s troops then head out to seize the mountain ridges, defeating the Chaldaean force. But having won, rather than pressing on to conquer Chaldaea, Cyrus sends his prisoners back to their king with a message that all he wants is to make peace between the two lands. In the end the three parties work out a deal whereby Chaldaea, where the soil is poor, will lease farmlands in Armenia; the Armenians will get the revenues; and Cyrus’s Persians will guarantee the peace by themselves retaining control of the strategically vital hilltop fortresses.11 Everybody wins. This episode, it is probably worth pointing out, stands in starkest contrast to the winner-take-all rules of ancient Greek warfare: the men on the losing side were killed, the women and children enslaved.12 Xenophon’s political ethics remain within the framework of honor, but he tries to imagine a way out of its merciless zero-sum reckonings, where one is either victor or victim, the predator or the prey. I have no idea whether Shakespeare knew the Cyropaedia, nor am I interested in suggesting that he did. But the work is relevant because these reckonings also structure the political and human tragedy that is Richard II. Thus in act 3, scene 3, Richard, having agreed to Bolingbroke’s ‘reasonable condition’ that his inheritance be restored, suddenly out of the blue proceeds to abdicate (3.3.142–82). It is only a couple of scenes later, however, that we get some explanation for this drastic gesture. At

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the moment of deposition, Richard tries to articulate his sense of what has just happened by comparing the crown to a deep well That owes two buckets filling one another, The emptier ever dancing in the air, The other down, unseen, and full of water. That bucket down and full of tears am I, Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high. (4.1.174–9) For one bucket to rise, the other must sink; one man wins because another loses, and the winner takes all, leaving the loser with, as Richard notes more than once, ‘nothing.’ There is no middle position because to compromise is, as Richard mutters to Aumerle, to ‘debase’ oneself, and hence already admission of failure (3.3.126). Yet Richard also makes repeated stabs at imagining an alternative way of understanding his defeat, another name for the defeated besides loser. Richard’s alternatives are not Xenophon’s – and, besides, they don’t work – but the play is wrestling with the same problem of how to transcend the honor politics of zero-sum. The popularity of the Cyropaedia in early modern England would seem to indicate that this was a cultural problem.

II Criticism of Richard II has tended to obscure the often quite fundamental ways in which Shakespeare’s play differs from the other Elizabethan versions of the same story: Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577), Samuel Daniel’s Civil Wars (1595), and John Hayward’s Henry IIII (1599). These texts focus on Richard’s misgovernment – his exorbitant taxation, his reckless expenditure on feasting and fashion, his cadre of wastrel minions – and whether or not this misgovernment justified Bolingbroke’s takeover.13 They make it clear that Richard was in fact guilty of the main charges against him, although only Hayward implies that this might justify his deposition. In addition, these narratives largely assume the normative framework of honor, portraying – and judging – Richard according to the criteria of courage and cowardice, strength and weakness. Daniel thus contrasts the resolve, firmness, and ‘innated valour’ shown in Richard’s initial decision not to relinquish his crown with his subsequent craven capitulation, impelled by ‘love of life and feare of being forst’ – a blot wiped away when, facing death, the

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deposed king with a sudden blaze of courage ‘Lion-like … flies’ upon his murderers.14 Hayward operates within the same honor framework: what damns Richard is that he preferred ‘abject and base safety, before hazard with honour.’ ‘A noble nature,’ Hayward comments, one whose ears had not been ‘stopped against al impression of manhood,’ would have withstood Bolingbroke rather than yield, choosing death with ‘glory’ over a life disgraced by ‘shame & perpetuall reproch.’15 Finally, and relatedly, the non-Shakespearean narratives operate within an almost wholly secular framework. Religion enters the picture only as the threat of impending providential retribution, and only at two points: in authorial asides (for example, Daniel’s ‘But ô in this the heavens we feare prepare / Confusion for our sinnes as well as his,’ prefacing the deposition scene)16 and in Bishop Carlisle’s denunciation of the proceedings against Richard, particularly Hayward’s version of this speech, in which Carlisle takes such an extreme position on divine right absolutism that numerous contemporaries suspected irony. None of these works attributes religious propensities to Richard.17 By contrast, Christian allusions suffuse Richard II (a subject to which we will return). The question of Richard’s misgovernment is left hopelessly murky: little in the onstage behavior of either Richard or his favorites corroborates the charges against them. When the king hears Gaunt is dying, he evinces an unseemly glee, but at the prospect of revenues ‘to deck our soldiers for these Irish wars’ (1.4.61). He is never shown carousing, preening in Italian fashions, or reveling with parasites and flatterers, although it would have been easy enough to have included such a scene. At the time Northumberland declares of Richard, ‘warred he hath not’ (2.1.253), the king is himself in Ireland fighting the ‘rough rug-headed kerns’ (2.1.157). So too, when Richard’s hated favorites appear on stage, they treat military preparations (1.4), comfort Richard’s queen, and discuss how best to avoid capture by Bolingbroke’s men (2.2), but nothing in their words suggests ‘caterpillars of the commonwealth’ or even party animals. While the play leaves it beyond doubt that Richard raised monies by dubious means to finance the Irish campaign, the English Crown did have extraordinary fiscal powers in times of war. In Hayward and Holinshed, Richard’s exactions pre-date the Irish revolt; the money is needed to pay for the king’s private extravagance.18 Shakespeare’s Richard gets accused of this, but since the play is awash in accusations and counter-accusations – some of which must be false, although sworn on a man’s salvation – one is at liberty to doubt. Shakespeare does not seem particularly interested in why Richard lost power; it is enough that he was believed to be a bad and weak king. Since

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it is not made clear what he actually did or didn’t do, the question of his misgovernment ends up being beside the point. Nor, consequently, does the play center on whether or not the usurpation was justified. Richard’s bucket sinks not because it is laden with crimes but because his tears weigh it down. What interests Shakespeare is not Richard’s demerits but his choking bitter anguish at ending up the loser.

III The play’s opening scenes delineate the cultural premises that determine – at least for Richard – the outcome and import of history. The first scene’s defiant challenges lay out the aristocratic ethos crystallized in Mowbray’s impassioned ‘Mine honour is my life’ (1.1.182): the interrelation of name, reputation, role, and identity; the absolute value of personal honor; its zero-sum stakes. Honor overrides allegiance, life, and salvation, and its vindication can only be purchased with another’s ‘heart blood’ (172): I win/you die. Richard, one recalls, cancels the fight at the last minute, urging the combatants to ‘purge this choler without letting blood’ (153), and only banishing both when they refuse his efforts to ‘atone’ them (202). The word, by associating the king’s attempt to reconcile his ‘wrath-kindled’ noblemen with the reconciling work of Christ’s Atonement, introduces the Christian counterpoint to honor’s theme.19 The attempt is of a piece with Richard’s characterization in these opening scenes, which show him consistently seeking to position himself over and above both the solidarities and enmities of honor: hence his insistence that his authority derives from God, not lineage; that blood loyalties will not ‘partialize / The unstooping firmness of my upright soul’ (1.1.120–1) nor spur him to revenge his kinsman’s death (1.3.58); and hence his decision to abort the combat on the grounds that the satisfaction of aristocratic choler was not worth risking ‘fair peace’ (1.3.124–38). It is important not to read Richard’s claims here in mid-seventeenthcentury terms. The divine-right implications of phrases like ‘our sacred blood’ (1.1.119) do not oppose a constitutionalist politics, but rather one based on ‘the lineage, the family and kinship group.’20 This tension between transcendent and tribal politics played a dominant role through, and well past, the Middle Ages. Richard’s stance is that of Edward Coke, whose 1606 charge to the Norwich assizes begins with a parable about a young man who, upon being offered a judgeship, almost refuses for fear of having to choose between the contradictory obligations of kinship and justice. Having been persuaded to accept the post, the young man

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calls together his friends and kin and announces that he must become ‘a stranger,’ banishing from remembrance ‘your former friendships and acquaintance, and onely in the person of a Judge … justly administer justice unto you all.’ In Coke, as in Richard II, this renunciation of the horizontal solidarities of blood, which are also the solidarities of honor, implies a re-grounding of identity and authority along the vertical axis of religion. For, as Coke proceeds to explain, judges ‘represent the person of our King,’ and the king is ‘next under Christ Jesus our supreame Governour’; so that ‘to Kings, Rulers, Judges, and Magistrates, this sentence is proper Vos Dii estis; you are Gods on earth: then by your execution of Justice & Judgment, the God of heaven is by your actions presented.’21 In Richard’s attempt to reconcile Bolingbroke and Mowbray by assuming a position above and outside the bonds of lineage, religion likewise functions – as, in different modalities, it functions throughout the play – as an alternative to the imperatives of honor. Yet, of course, for all his kingly authority, Richard cannot atone them. Both the positioning of religion as the counterweight to honor’s theme and its repeated failure to tip the scale lurk in an odd detail absent from Shakespeare’s sources. Responding to Bolingbroke’s charges of treason, Mowbray admits that he had once sought Gaunt’s life, but then adds that afterwards, ‘ere I last received the Sacrament / I did confess it, and exactly begged / Your grace’s pardon’ (1.1.137–41). Holinshed notes the admission and that Mowbray later reconciled with Gaunt, but neither he nor anyone else mentions that Mowbray did so as a precondition for receiving the sacrament – a precondition spelled out in the preface to the 1559 Prayer Book’s Eucharistic liturgy, which requires a minister bar those ‘betwixt whome he perceyveth malice and hatred to raigne’ from ‘the Lordes table untyll he know them to be reconciled.’ What makes this theological detail more than a throwaway allusion is Mowbray’s subsequent holy life – and death – fighting ‘for Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field’ (4.1.84).22 In these lines, Mowbray comes to figure the possibility of harmonizing honor and religion, warrior nobility and Christian sacrifice. Yet he is the only such character in the play and he disappears from the stage in the first act. As ‘true warfaring Christian’ he is an absent presence, like Gaunt’s ‘royal kings /… Renownèd… / For Christian service and true chivalry, / [As far] As is the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry, / Of the world’s ransom, blessèd Mary’s son’ (2.1.51–6). Such passages evoke an ideal integration of sanctity and honor, but the effect is to underscore their sundering in Richard’s kingdom. The abortive judicial combat occupies scenes 1 and 3 of the first act; between these episodes, the Duchess of Gloucester attempts to persuade

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Gaunt to avenge her husband’s presumptive murder. Gaunt refuses, countering her passionate appeals to blood-loyalty by urging submission to ‘the will of heaven’ (1.2.6) and to God’s ‘deputy anointed in His sight’ (37–8). As in the previous scene, the assertion of the transcendent source of royal authority positions the monarch above the honor fray. However, rather than addressing Gaunt’s claim that the king is not primus inter pares but de super, the duchess angrily informs her brotherin-law that ‘That which in mean men we entitle patience / Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts’ (33–4). The line introduces what will prove to be the play’s dominant problematic. For her response implicitly acknowledges that what appears cowardice from the vantage point of honor, presents itself from a theological perspective as the virtue of patience, and this acknowledgement, in turn, points to a second possible resolution to the problem of zero-sum: not Xenophon’s win-win solution, which is not an option in the world of Richard II, but the Christian transvaluation of failure. This transvaluation lies at the heart of the Gospel paradoxes, but what matters for our purposes is its central role in Tudor-Stuart religion, where one finds Christianity time and again understood as a system for hallowing loss. Thus while prosperity, Bacon writes, ‘is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New,’ for ‘virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.’23 The religious texts of the period almost always associate Christian virtue not with active fortitude, nor even with an active charity, but rather with patience: with patient suffering in adversity. So the homily on Christian charity presents this not as doing good for the sake of others but as patiently enduring evil from them – even as Christ loved his enemies, ‘patiently taking whatsoever they spake or did against him. … And, as a sheep that is led unto the shambles to be slain … make[s] no noise nor resistance, even so went he unto his death.’24 One finds the same emphasis in the theological literature throughout the century: in Tyndale’s insistence that a Christian ought ‘suffer all things patiently …[committing] vengeance to God,’ in Latimer’s claim that ‘in all adversities’ the ‘armour of the children of light …[is] patience and prayer,’ as in Perkins’s declaration that ‘being servants of Christ we are … to bear crosses patiently …[for our] likeness to Christ is in bearing afflictions.’25 This Christian alternative to zero-sum, which pronounces divine benediction on human unsuccess and glorifies patient endurance of wrongs, is, as the Duchess of Gloucester suggests, at odds with the canons of honor. Her exchange with Gaunt thus underlines the tension between Christianity and honor that comes to dominate the play: implicit in Richard’s failed atonement,

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but also in his subsequent repeated, and repeatedly frustrated, attempts to make a blessing of adversity. The duchess, like almost all the characters in Richard II, particularly the women, has little use for the Christian side of the equation. Moreover, her contemptuous reference to ‘that which in mean men we entitle patience’ links this tension to the problematics of zero-sum: is losing to be suffered patiently (with its etymological link to Christ’s Passion – patience as bearing one’s ‘sour cross’ [4.1.231])? Or do real men fight? Following Richard’s banishment of the combatants, John of Gaunt dies and Richard claims the duke’s inheritance. The king then leaves for Ireland at the head of his army; in his absence, Bolingbroke enters England with 3000 soldiers. The ensuing dialogue between the queen and York in 2.2 returns to the meaning of human unsuccess. Their language is, as so often in this play, heavy with theological resonance. She tells Bushy, ‘I will despair, and be at enmity / With cozening hope’ (68–9), but when York enters, begs him, ‘for God’s sake speak comfortable words’ (76) – an echo of the Prayer Book’s ‘hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith to all that truly turn to him.’26 York, however, can only remind her that ‘Comfort’s in heaven, and we are on the earth, / Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief’ (78–9). This is the medieval rhetoric of contemptus mundi, which carried over undiminished into the early modern era. Bishop Bayly’s phenomenally popular The Practise of Pietie echoes York’s sense of ‘all our woe’: And in this miserable estate [of man’s life], whither wilt thou goe for rest and comfort? the house is full of cares, the field full of toyle. … And who can enumerate the losses, crosses, griefes, disgraces, sicknesses and calamities, which are incident to sinfull man?27 Here loss, failure, and misery are the condition of fallen existence, and, as ‘crosses’ – which is York’s term as well – suggests, the imitation of Christ. The issues introduced in these scenes become central to Richard’s selfunderstanding, and hence to his tragedy, in the final three acts. Upon reaching England in 3.2, Richard’s first words are his famous declaration of magical royalism (God and His angels will fight for the king) – a fragile mood, punctured by news that the Welsh troops have disbanded, at which point Richard lapses into defeatism until roused by Aumerle’s ‘remember who you are’ (78), which sparks a burst of kingly self-assertion. But as hope of victory slips away, Richard begins struggling to come to terms with defeat by reimagining his life in the categories

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of Christian selfhood. He finds the role hard to sustain. In response to Scroop’s bad news, Richard thus tries for religious detachment (‘The worst is worldly loss. … If he [Bolingbroke] serve God / We’ll serve Him too, and be his fellow so’ [90–5]). Samuel Johnson remarked that these lines show Richard ‘in his distress’ having become ‘wise, patient, and pious,’28 yet this detachment quickly sours into rage and morbidity: ‘Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay’ (98). Then, briefly misled into thinking his favorites have betrayed him, he pictures them as ‘Judases,’ and so himself, by implication, as Christ, but an angry bitter Christ, calling down curses upon his erstwhile friends (129–30): ‘Would they make peace? Terrible hell make war / Upon their spotted souls for this offence!’ Yet on learning his mistake, the anger gives way to a haunting and anguished memento mori that in its final recognition of the king’s own vulnerable humanity calls to mind Lear on the heath: mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence. … For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread, like you; feel want, Taste grief, need friends. (3.2.167–72) This Christian humility, however, fails to impress Bishop Carlisle, who dryly responds that ‘wise men’ fight rather than ‘wail their present woes,’ whereupon Richard condemns his pious strivings as a mere ‘ague-fit of fear,’ rejects all comfort (except that of self-pity), and, declaring himself ‘woe’s slave,’ dismisses his followers. The elements of this scene recur in all Richard’s remaining ones: the groping for a mask or role – as hermit, as penitent, as sacral king, as suffering Christ – that could transmute shame into sanctity and provide an identity, a name, for a self that without some sort of mask is merely nothing; Richard’s inability to get anyone to ratify these experiments in Christian self-fashioning; and their collapse under surges of untransmuted bitterness. Neither his followers nor, later, his mirror, reflect back the halo – or crown of thorns – with which he had hoped to dignify indignity. Those around Richard (and, at bottom, Richard himself) more than half suspect piety to be an opiate for the defeated and the last refuge of a failure. Thus in the next scene (3.3), Richard agrees to Bolingbroke’s seemingly reasonable demand for restitution of his lineal rights, but then whispers to Aumerle how vile he finds this enforced stooping. As in the opening

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scene, compromise here is equivalent to prostration; one is either on top or on the bottom. And so, having granted Bolingbroke the dukedom he sought, Richard, to the considerable embarrassment of all present, surrenders the crown, renouncing ‘the name of King’ in exchange for ‘a set of beads,’ ‘an almsman’s gown,’ and ‘a palmer’s walking staff’ (145– 51). But accents of impotent rage seep into this abjuration of earthly vanities, which ends not with Richard turning towards heaven but back in the two-term logic of zero-sum – either a ‘large kingdom’ or ‘an obscure grave’ – and his bitter vision of his future self not as a holy man but a corpse buried on the common road, where his former subjects will trample ‘on their sovereign’s head’ as they now walk all over his heart (152–7). The same movement recurs when Richard enters in 4.1, first protesting that he has not had sufficient time to learn to grovel, then imagining himself as Christ betrayed – ‘Yet I well remember / The favours of these men. Were they not mine? / Did they not sometime cry “All hail!” to me? / So Judas did to Christ’ (4.1.158–61) – but this typology gives way to the image of the bucket sunk under the weight of tears, while Bolingbroke’s dances triumphantly above. In the long divestiture speech that follows, Richard washes away his royal balm with his own tears and releases his subjects from their vows, asking God’s pardon for those who have injured him. He is struggling towards charity here, but despair intrudes, and he ends by wishing only to die and die soon. In his next speech, he takes back the forgiveness: his enemies are ‘damn’d in the book of heaven’ (226); ‘Pilates’ who have ‘delivered me to my sour cross, / And water cannot wash away your sin’ (230–32). Yet the mirror, for which he then calls shows neither the king of grief29 (‘No deeper wrinkles yet? … / no deeper wounds’) nor a king of England (‘the face / That like the sun did make beholders wink’), but merely a face ‘outfaced by Bolingbroke’ (267–78), and so he breaks it. He breaks it because it fails to reflect back any of the meanings with which he sought to invest his existence; he finds the shattered slivers on the floor a more adequate image for what another of Shakespeare’s dispossessed kings will call ‘that within which passeth show.’ The mirror episode seems to be reworking Gascoigne’s ‘The Steele Glas’ (1576), in particular, its opening autobiographical narrative.30 Like Richard, Gascoigne’s speaker calls for the mirror in response to finding himself on life’s losing end. The zero-sum motif makes itself felt from the outset, as the speaker declares that his ‘weary Muse’ will sing ‘in spite of their despite / …[who] make my back a ladder for their feet.’31 Like Richard’s image of the two buckets, the ascent imagined here requires

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that someone be on the bottom. And then at once comes the reference to usurpation: for his enemies, the speaker avers, use him as a ladder in order ‘to climb the throne, wherein myself should sit’ (line 17). Both themes reappear shortly before the speaker’s demand for the mirror. His singing is done ‘in corner closely couched / … since that the stately courts, / Are now no place for such poor birds as I,’ who have been thrust from throne and court by a cuckoo that ‘sucks mine eggs … / And licks the sweet, which might have fed me first’ (lines 142–4, 155–6). As he contemplates his ‘reckless youth misspent’, the speaker’s thoughts turn to the topic of mirrors. For ‘now [that] pride of youth is past,’ he desires ‘to see myself in deed, / Not what I would, but what I am or should,’ and therefore calls for a ‘trusty glass of steel,’ which, unlike the new crystal mirrors, does not show ‘the thing much better than it is’ but tells the truth (lines 147, 189, 228–32). Yet when he looks in the steel glass, his reflection appalls him. Wherein I see a Sampson’s grim regard Disgraced yet with Alexander’s beard: Wherein I see a corps of comely shape (And such as might beseem the court full well) Is cast at heel by courting all too soon: Wherein I see a quick capacity, Berayed with blots of light inconstancy: An age suspect because of youth’s misdeeds. A poet’s brain possessed with lays of love: A Caesar’s mind and yet a Codrus’ might, A soldier’s heart, suppressed with fearful dooms: A philosopher, foolishly fordone. And to be plain, I see myself so plain, And yet so much unlike that most I seemed, As were it not that reason ruleth me, I should in rage this face of mine deface And cast this corps down headlong in despair, Because it is so far unlike itself. (lines 235–52) The lines point ahead not only to Richard II’s mirror scene but also to the king’s prison soliloquy: the recognition that a man is not who he had thought he was; that his face reflects not the ideal selves (suffering Christ, sun-like king; soldier, philosopher) with which he had sought to identify, but instead images a little world peopled by a discordant

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assemblage of cultural types. In Gascoigne, as in Shakespeare, the scene ends in a spasm of self-loathing, although, since metal mirrors do not break, Gascoigne’s speaker imagines hurling down his body rather than its steel shadow. The mirror’s failure to reflect back Richard’s imagined identities is replayed in his encounter with the queen, who meets him as he is being taken prisoner to the Tower. Richard responds to her greeting with grave piety, urging her to enter a cloister, for having awakened to ‘the truth of what we are / … Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown’ (5.1.19– 24). The queen, however, will have none of this, but, like Gloucester’s duchess, drives home the non-negotiable gulf between Christianity and honor: the ‘lion dying,’ she upbraids her husband, does not ‘mildly kiss the rod,’ but ‘thrusteth forth his paw / And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage / To be o’erpowered’ (29–32).32 In the corresponding scene in Daniel, she tells Richard the opposite: Thou still doest rule the kingdom of my heart; If all be lost, that government doth stand And that shall never from thy rule depart. … I love thee for thyself not for thy state.33 For Shakespeare’s queen, however, and for Richard as well, a man’s self is not finally separable from his social identity. As Mowbray had said, ‘Mine honor is my life, both grow in one’ (1.1.182). In York’s account of Richard’s passage through London – where, as the crowd hurls dust ‘upon his sacred head,’ he shakes it off with ‘gentle sorrow’ (5.2.30–1) – one momentarily has the sense that Richard has indeed begun his journey down the way of the Cross. Had the rest of the play somehow been lost, one might have assumed that it ended with Richard prefiguring Eikon Basilike, a possibility strengthened by Carlisle’s prophecies in act 4, scene 1, which, unlike Richard’s earlier hopes for divine intervention, are fulfilled. The play seems to be moving into the sacral ambit of typology and providentialism. But this is not, of course, what happens. When Richard next enters, his opening words dismiss religion, along with the rest of his hopes. ‘Thoughts of things divine’ founder on contradictions of Scripture, no less than ‘thoughts tending to ambition’ on the impossibility of digging through stone walls with one’s fingernails (5.5.11–21). Although he finds ‘a kind of ease’ in the thought that others ‘have before endured the like,’ it amounts to no more than the cold comfort misery takes in knowing it has company. None of the possible selves he imagines becoming – holy man,

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reinstated king, beggar – redeems, or even mitigates, the searing shame of having been ‘outfaced’ (4.1.276). What so torments him seems less the loss of something than the fact of having lost. Thus Richard’s conclusion, that neither he ‘nor any man that but man is, / With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased / With being nothing’ (5.5.39–41), seems less an insight into the human condition than a sour admission that, for him, being stripped of love and honor is worse than death. The dying Gaunt had said much the same – ‘love they to live that love and honour have’ – to which Richard had then replied with all the cruelty of one on top, ‘And let them die that age and sullens have’ (2.1.139–40). But now when his groom reports how his beloved horse Barbary allowed the usurper to mount him, for a moment Richard mourns its betrayal, but his thoughts rapidly transmute Bolingbroke’s riding his horse into a metaphor for the core truth of his own existence: ‘I was not made a horse, / And yet I bear a burthen like an ass, / Spur-galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke’ (5.5.92–4). The image, which allows for only two positions – on top or on bottom – perfectly captures the structure of zero-sum play, and the unbearable humiliation of losing. Nor can Richard bear it, but turns violently first on his keeper, then the murderers. The ending is, it seems to me, deeply ambiguous. Holinshed explicitly states that Exton’s blow killed Richard ‘without giving him respite once to call to God for mercy of his passed offenses.’34 In his last moments, Shakespeare’s Richard urges his soul to mount ‘on high’ (5.5.111), which has a hopeful ring, yet there is no calling on God for mercy. His remark to his jailor seconds before the murderers rush in – ‘The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee! / Patience is stale, and I am weary of it’ – does not bespeak a sanctified frame of mind.35 Comparison with the Henry VI plays confirms such reservations. These quite consistently distinguish between good deaths and noble ones. The former are signaled by forgiveness of enemies and confession of sin; the latter, like Richard’s, by assurance of eternity. Some of those who die noble deaths in the Henry VI plays are clearly good men, as, for example, Talbot, who in his last minutes imagines how he and his son ‘wingèd through the lither sky / … shall scape mortality.’36 Some, however, are not. As his enemies surround York, whose ambition precipitated the war, he exclaims, ‘My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads’ (III.1.4.168). Warwick expires with similarly unrepentant and unforgiving confidence, bidding his comrades ‘farewell, to meet in heaven’ (III.5.2.49). These warrior magnates die according to the canons of honor – as, apparently, does Richard II, who turns on his murderers as a ‘lion dying thrusteth forth his paw, / … with rage / To be o’erpowered’ (5.1.29–31). This is how Exton perceives

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Richard’s final moments. He notes that in death Richard showed himself ‘as full of valour as of royal blood,’ but says nothing about his soul mounting (5.5.113). Richard dies nobly, but I’m not sure an Elizabethan Protestant (or Catholic, for that matter) would have allowed this to count as dying well. It is a distinction that, surprisingly enough, matters to the politics of the play.

IV For various well-known reasons, Richard II has long been associated with the Essex uprising, usually on the assumption – one borne out by Sir John Hayward’s 1599 version of the same events – that the effeminate Richard ‘stands for’ the female Elizabeth; the resolute, ambitious Bolingbroke, for the resolute, ambitious earl. Since the play stages a nobleman’s revolt against his sovereign, it thus seems to prefigure the grounds, if not the outcome, of Essex’s rebellion against Elizabeth and her hated favorites, Sir Robert Cecil above all. Yet if one even glances at accounts of Essex, it is hard not to be struck by how closely he resembles, not Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke, but his Richard. Shakespeare is unlikely to have known Essex except at a distance, and the relevant portions of Essex’s life mostly postdate Shakespeare’s play, so unless I wished to argue (which I do not) that the earl modeled himself on Richard II, particularized imitation is out of the question. Yet if the lines of cultural filiation connect Essex to Richard rather than to Bolingbroke, this cannot but bear on the political import of Shakespeare’s play. What initially caught my attention were the repeated mentions of Essex’s theatricality and his inability to deal with losing. A recent historian comments that as early as 1587 Essex’s ‘overly theatrical’ political style betrayed the ‘emotional, almost suicidal, flamboyance that was to characterize his reaction to any personal setback or affront.’37 As a member of the Essex circle remarked, the earl knew not how to keep ‘his passions in his pocket.’38 Instead ‘he invariably either overacted or overreacted,’ unable to ‘give in to others … without feeling both humiliated and inadequate.’39 His letters written when in disgrace with fortune and the queen’s eyes specialize in histrionic anguish and yearning for death. During his imprisonment following his unauthorized return from Ireland in September of 1599, he thus describes himself as ‘thrown into a corner like a dead carcass.’40 To Elizabeth he writes that he has become ‘hateful to himself that he is yet alive, and importunate on death.’41 A modern scholar comments that Essex’s sense of his own destiny and

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dignity made it increasingly impossible for him ‘to confront the possibility of failure; or to practise the virtue of religious patience.’42 According to Camden, throughout his life the Earl ‘made it his business to outstrip all Persons.’43 He was, Sir John Harington writes, a ‘haughty spirit [that] knoweth not how to yield.’44 Yet Essex’s contemporaries ‘all recognized in him a “deep and powerful” religious strain.’45 As his own fortunes waned, his behavior began to show a pattern of oscillation between Christian otherworldliness and the self-assertive imperatives of honor. Thus in 1599 Essex, then under house arrest, ‘apparently determined to withdraw from the vanities and delusions of the world,’ writing to Southampton, I have left to Martha to be solicita circa multa, and believe with Mary, that unum sufficit …[to be] in favour of that God, under whose protection there is only safety. … I know that your lordship … may say unto yourself … that this is but vapour of melancholy, the style of a prisoner … yet I cannot distrust that goodness of my God. … It was just with God to afflict me in this world, that he might give me joy in another.46 Camden similarly notes that after about six months in custody, the earl seemed to undergo ‘a very serious change of Sentiment,’ evident in his newly ‘patient, humble and modest Temper,’ and repeated declarations that he had ‘drowned his Ambition in his Tears.’47 The mood clearly did not last since only a year later Essex launched his rebellion – the last English rebellion primarily motivated by ‘the cult of honour and its code.’48 Even during the months he was planning the uprising, he seems to have ‘rushed from opposite to opposite.’49 Harington noted in his journal how Essex ‘shyftethe from sorrowe and repentaunce to rage and rebellion.’50 Bacon likewise commented on these bursts of spasmodic piety, which he suspected were largely play-acting. After Essex was placed in custody, Bacon remarks, ‘he did transform himself into such a strange and dejected humility, as if he had been no man of this world, with passionate protestations that he called God to witness, That he had made an utter divorce with the world … that the tears of his heart had quenched in him all humours of ambition.’ Yet no sooner was he released, ‘but, notwithstanding his former shews of a mortified estate of mind, he began to practise afresh … the surprising and possessing the queen’s person and the court.’51 Camden’s account of the weeks leading up to Essex’s revolt describes how the earl then ‘liv’d retir’d, and gave himself up to the Service of God,’ and yet was writing

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letters ‘which indeed his Friends condemn’d as relishing too much of an indiscreet Resentment’: as, for example, the 1601 letter protesting ‘ “That his Enemies had wounded him in every Pore of his Body: That their Insolence could not exceed his Constancy and Resolution: that let them look as big as they pleas’d, he would never be the Slave that should Cringe to them.” ’52 Whatever the mix of theatricality and truth in Essex’s religion, it met with a cool reception. Activists in Essex’s circle ‘were particularly intent on breaking the mood of religious submission in patience to which Essex was intermittently inclined.’ Henry Cuffe thus reported to Essex that his friends had begun to murmur that he “‘had lost all his courage with praying … and was now become a coward.”’ Essex himself claimed that his sister, Penelope Rich, likewise ‘did continually urge me on with telling me how all my friends and followers thought me a coward, and that I had lost all my valour.’53 These insinuations, coupled with Essex’s increasingly desperate situation, had the desired effect. Essex rebelled: rebelled because in a contest of power with Cecil, he lost; and having lost, he tried his hand at Christian resignation, but found that patience grew stale and he was weary of it. During his trial and immediately thereafter he seems to have been preparing for the steadfast death of a ‘man of honour,’ maintaining his integrity and innocence and ‘defying Fortune by his fearless acceptance of his fate.’ John Chamberlain centers his account of the conspirators’ trial on the Earl’s ‘boldness, and show of resolution and contempt of death,’ and its contrast to Southampton’s self-abasement, which, although arousing ‘great commiseration … yet methought he was somewhat too low and submiss.’54 Chamberlain was scarcely a warrior aristocrat, yet he takes for granted the evaluative framework of honor with its polarities of courage and weakness, defiance and submission – from which perspective, as Richard’s queen makes him painfully aware, Christian virtues count as ‘base humility’ (5.1.33). Essex, however, like Richard in his final moments, showed himself determined to die as ‘a brave soldier should, in scorn of his enemies and of death.’55 Yet in its final cadence the music of Essex’s life shifted into a new key. The sentence of death having been pronounced against him, Essex asked for his chaplain, Abdy Ashton, apparently expecting comfort and sympathy.56 Ashton, ‘shocked at the condition of Essex’s soul,’ made it clear to him that a brave death was not the same as a Christian one. By the end of the day, Essex had confessed the entire plot and begged forgiveness of his enemies and of God. On his way to the scaffold, he besought God for ‘strength and patience.’ Once there, he did not urge

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his soul to mount but prayed for ‘ “true repentance, true patience, and true humility.”’ He again ‘most passionately desired, in Christian charity, forgiveness at the hands of those whom he had particularly called his enemies’ and confessed himself to be ‘a most wretched sinner’; then ‘lying flat along one of the boards, his hands stretched out, he said, “Lord, have mercy upon me, thy prostrate servant.” ’57 By confessing and begging his enemies’ forgiveness, Essex had abjured the canons of honor. And while some early accounts, including Cecil’s, laud the earl’s ‘truely Christianly’ end,58 others were less impressed. Writing to Lord Mountjoy, the Earl of Nottingham sneered at the allunexpected ‘weakness and unnaturalness’ Essex betrayed in the hour of his death.59 Camden reports that ‘the French Marshal Biron, and some other lewd Persons, did ridicule his Piety, as a way of dying fitter for a Gown-man, than a Soldier; as if,’ Camden interjects, ‘a Christian might not startle at the Terrours of Hell, without forfeiting his courage.’60 But Biron’s take is that of Gloucester’s widow, who, when Gaunt refuses to ‘lift / An angry army against’ his prince – ‘God’s substitute, / His deputy anointed in his sight’ – scornfully reminds him that what ‘in mean men we entitle patience / Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts’ (1.2.33–41). Essex’s volte-face dramatized on the political stage the incommensurability between the demands of religion and of honor that structures Shakespeare’s play. At the end, Essex would have shared Carlisle’s horror that ‘in a Christian climate souls refined / Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed’ (4.1.121–2). Yet up to his play’s last scene, Essex’s life poses the question implicit in the whole of Richard II: namely, why do these souls seem so little refined by their Christian climate? Why has Christianity not moralized politics? Why the compulsive iterations of zero-sum play, where one person’s victory means another’s loss, and losing is intolerable? Why will men not ‘atone’?

V Neither the reading of the play given above nor the historical context proposed for it comport with the standard view of Richard II as narrating the passage from the sacral kingship of the Middle Ages to the demystified realpolitik of modernity. This view has an impressive critical pedigree, but it cannot be right because it makes no sense historically. Full-blooded sacral monarchy is more a creature of the Tudor era than the Middle Ages, particularly the late Middle Ages with its weak kings and demystified Aristotelianism.61 It was the break with Rome that raised the

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monarch to exclusive possession of the seat, in Coke’s words, ‘next under Christ Jesus our supreame Governour.’ The relation of God and king forms the leitmotiv of Henrician apologetics: the monarch is, according to Stephen Gardiner in 1535, ‘as it were the ymage of God upon earthe,’ representing, according to Richard Taverner in 1539, ‘unto us the parson even of god himself.’62 This high sacral view of monarchy continues in full vigor into the mid-seventeenth century, although, as in the Middle Ages, it coexists, sometimes very uneasily, with political theories of a quite different stripe.63 It seems inconceivable that Shakespeare would have imagined it passing away in 1399. Rather than depict the historical supersession of sacral by secular order, Richard II centers on the relation of Christianity to the exercise of political power. It is an issue that haunts many of Shakespeare’s political plays, from the Henry VI trilogy to The Tempest. The political (and theological) problematic informing these works is suggested by Owen Feltham’s ideal of Christian self-fashioning: ‘As for Man,’ Feltham writes, the Gospel ‘teaches him to tread on Cottons, milds his wilder temper: and learnes him in his patience, to affect his enemies.’64 These are not, on the face of it, kingly attributes, which raises the question – a question that seems to have fascinated Shakespeare – of what the Christian virtues of mercy, gentleness, and forbearance have to do with those requisite for governing a nation, especially its ambitious and restive warrior elite. In several plays, the answer is apparently ‘not much.’ The Henry VI trilogy thus recounts the descent into violence and anarchy precipitated by its saintly monarch’s inability either to dominate or reconcile his factious nobility. Other plays – Henry V, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest come to mind at once – seem to be attempting to imagine, at times with unsettling results, how Christianity might shape a political praxis – what a godly prince might actually look like. Shakespeare’s investment in this question should not surprise. A good deal of late Elizabethan literature concerns itself with reconciling the princely virtues of an aristocratic governing elite with Christian ethical ideals: The Arcadia and The Faerie Queene, for example. As Mervyn James has shown, Sidney’s romance charts the process ‘whereby the man of honour matured from the quest for glory … to an acceptance in “patience” of a discipline of suffering.’ Hence, in marked contrast to Shakespeare’s Richard, Sidney’s princes ‘in prison, as death approaches … assert their completion of the full circuit of wisdom through the attainment of a religious fortitude, that of patience.’65 For James, Tudor efforts to square the ideals of honor with Christianity derived, above all, from the Protestant emphasis on personal faith and the priesthood

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of all believers.66 However, the specifically political dimension of the problem – the dimension on which Shakespeare’s attention homed — probably owes something to Machiavelli’s assertion that Christianity breeds, in the current phraseology, ‘girlie men’: men ‘more disposed to endure injuries than to avenge them’ and more desirous of ‘humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects’ than such ‘qualities as render men formidable …[and able] to achieve great deeds.’67 Richard II is a Machiavellian play, not because Bolingbroke embodies il principe inglese, but because the work engages, at whatever distance, the challenge thrown down by the Florentine. And while Shakespeare was scarcely the only sixteenth-century writer to pick up this particular gauntlet, there seems to have been no one standard or orthodox response. Shakespeare himself responds differently in different plays. As far as Richard himself is concerned, the ‘Christianization’ of honor and its ‘warrior values’ – what James considers the distinctive cultural project of the age – is never an option, and by act 5 he seems to share Machiavelli’s view. Yet in the final scenes, the prospect of a rapprochement suddenly surfaces, when the new king, who is, if nothing else, ‘formidable …[and able] to achieve great deeds,’ declares that he will ‘pardon him [Aumerle] as God shall pardon me’ (5.3.129). Here, for the first time, we seem to be in the presence of a monarch at once strong and merciful, effectively ruling others and humbly aware of his own sins. The visionary moment, however, does not last, since Henry immediately goes on to promise swift ‘destruction’ to the other conspirators (5.3.137). It may be, as the Arden editor suggests, that we are supposed to understand this as Henry IV proving himself a ‘wise ruler’ by ‘tempering … mercy with justice,’68 but since the new king gives no hint as to why his invocation of the Lord’s Prayer does not apply to these other conspirators, one may be excused for suspecting that Aumerle’s pardon has more to do with his mother’s importunity than religious principle on Bolingbroke’s part. This pattern of expectation followed by ambiguity recurs in the play’s conclusion. Henry’s declaration upon hearing of Richard’s murder that he will ‘make a voyage to the Holy Land / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand’ (5.6.49–50) opens the possibility that bloodshed might be expiated rather than avenged. The play ends with this possibility, with Henry taking up Richard’s attempt to find in Christianity an escape from the endlessly iterating ‘competitive violence of honor.’ Yet, as we know and as Shakespeare must have known when he wrote these lines, Henry never leaves England, and in I Henry IV the zero-sum play of competitive honor violence keeps on without missing a beat.

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Notes 1. Edmund Spenser, The Complete Poetical Works of Spenser, ed. R.E. Neil Dodge (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 136; Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Forrest Robinson (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 16; Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (London, 1598), Nn8r−v . 2. The Bookes of Xenophon Contayning the Discipline, Schole, and Education of Cyrus the Noble Kyng of Persia, trans. M. Wylliam Barkar (London, [1552?]), B2v . 3. Cyropaedia; or, The Institution of Cyrus, trans. Maurice Ashley (London, 1803), 35. 4. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: Norton, 1997), 5.4.71–2; see also 3.2.145–52. All further references to Shakespeare’s plays will be to this edition. 5. Mervyn James, Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 309, 312–13. 6. Mervyn James, English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642 (Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1978), 32. 7. Francis Bacon, ‘Of Vain-Glory,’ The Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1826), 2:366–8. 8. Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.148–54. 9. Sir Richard Barckley, A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man. Or his Summum Bonum (London, 1603), 135–6. 10. Richard II, 2.1.254–5. Further references to this play will be given parenthetically in the text. 11. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 113–31. 12. See, for example, Thucydides, Peloponnesian Wars, 5.7.116. 13. Peter Ure notes that Woodstock and Mirror for Magistrates present Richard in a similar light; Introduction to King Richard II, ed. Peter Ure, Arden 2 Shakespeare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), xxxvi, xl. 14. Samuel Daniel, The First Fowre Bookes of the Civile Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke (London, 1595), 2.112–14, 3.76. In a later version, Daniel lays out the same contrast in his concluding analysis of Richard as a bad king primarily because he was ‘weak’; yet, to balance the picture, Daniel adds as his highest tribute that, at least early on, he ‘shew’d much Martiall valour’; The Civile Wars betweene the Howses of Lancaster and Yorke (London, 1609), 3.85. 15. John Hayward, The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie the IIII (London, 1599), 82–3. See also James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 421. 16. Daniel, The First Fowre Bookes, 2.111. 17. Forker notes that such religiosity is attributed to Richard only in the fifteenth-century French manuscript sources, which there is no evidence that Shakespeare knew; Introduction to King Richard II, ed. Charles Forker, Arden 3 Shakespeare (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002), 152, 156–7. 18. Forker, King Richard II, 129; Hayward, King Henrie the IIII, 55–6. 19. Prior to 1600, ‘atone’ was not a common word nor a theological one; however, the noun, ‘Atonement,’ referring to Christ’s reconciling sacrifice, goes back to Tyndale’s 1526 translation of Romans 5:11. Cranmer, Coverdale, the Geneva Bible, and the King James version likewise use ‘Atonement’ at Romans 5:11

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20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Shakespeare and Religious Change to translate Paul’s καταλλαγ´η. See also Phebe Jensen’s chapter in this volume, which notes a comparable use of ‘atone’ in As You Like It. James, English Politics, 15. Edward Coke, The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge With a Discoverie of the Abuses and Corruption of Officers (London, 1607), B2r –C4r . This account of Mowbray’s death is not in Shakespeare’s sources. Bacon, ‘Of Adversity,’ Works, 2:254–5. Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches (Oxford, 1859), 68. William Tyndale, ‘A Prologue upon the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans,’ online at http://www.williamtyndale.com/0romans.htm (accessed 23 October 2006); Hugh Latimer, Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses, online at http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/latimer/card/sermon05.htm (accessed 23 October 2006); and William Perkins, The Work of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 259. The Booke of Common Praier (London, 1559), M7v (spelling modernized). This is part of the Communion liturgy. Lewis Bayly, The Practise of Pietie (London, 1621), 65–8. The work went through over 65 editions between 1606 and 1699. Quoted in Forker, Richard II, 493. Richard applies the phrase to himself at 4.1.191–3; George Herbert applies the same phrase to Christ in the opening line of ‘The Thanksgiving.’ The connection is briefly noted in Peter Ure, ‘The Looking-Glass of Richard II,’ Philological Quarterly 34 (1955): 220. George Gascoigne, ‘The Steele Glas,’ in Richard Sylvester, ed., English Sixteenth-Century Verse: An Anthology (New York: Norton, 1984), 275–317, lines 13–15 (modernized). Subsequent citations will be given parenthetically in the text. The queen’s words, like those of the Duchess of Gloucester in 2.2, are English counterparts of the Corsican rimbecco; see Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 71; S. Wilson, Feuding, Conflict, and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 203. Daniel, The First Fowre Bookes, 2.89–90; qtd in Ure, ed., Richard II, 203–4 (modernized). Qtd in Ure, ed., Richard II, 197. The first line occurs in Holinshed (‘The divell take Henrie of Lancaster’), but not the second (see Ure, ed., Richard II, 197). Shakespeare, Henry VI, I.4.7.21–2. Subsequent references to the Henry VI trilogy will appear parenthetically in the text, the traditional three parts indicated by initial Roman numerals. Lacey Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 203. The speaker was Henry Wotton (see Smith, Treason, 197, 251). Smith, Treason, 196, 217. Qtd in David Jardine, Criminal Trials (London, 1832–35), 1:302. Quoted in Smith, Treason, 260: see also Jardine, Criminal Trials, 1:301–3. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 438; see also Smith, Treason in Tudor England, 202–3.

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43. Camden, Annals, in The Complete History of England, ed. White Kennett (London, 1706), 2:361–676, at 637r . 44. Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Park (London, 1804), 1:180. 45. Beach Langston, ‘Essex and the Art of Dying,’ Huntington Library Quarterly 13 (1950):118. 46. Comment and citation in Langston, ‘Essex,’ 118–19. 47. Camden, Annals, 2:262r , 628v . 48. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 416. 49. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 459 n, quoting Lytton Strachey. 50. Harington, Nugae Antiquae, 1:178–9. 51. Bacon, A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert Earl of Essex (1601), in Works, 3:150. 52. Camden, Annals, 2:629r−v . 53. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 447; James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath, eds, The Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1862), 9:237 n. 54. Spedding et al., eds, Works of Francis Bacon, 9:233. 55. Langston, ‘Essex,’ 120. 56. Langston, ‘Essex,’124. 57. Jardine, Criminal Trials, 1:368, 376–7; Langston, ‘Essex,’ 110–11. 58. Langston, ‘Essex,’ 111 n. 59. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 455, 458. 60. Camden, Annals, 2:637v . 61. J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350–c. 1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 353–4, 364–6. 62. Coke, Gardiner, and Taverner are cited in J.H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds, The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 180–1. 63. See Richard McCoy, Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 1–2, which argues that the Glorious Revolution, three-quarters of a century after Shakespeare, marked the crucial transition from sacral to constitutional monarchy. 64. Owen Feltham, Resolves, A Duple Century (1628; rpt Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1975), 55. 65. James, Society, Politics, and Culture, 387, 390. 66. James, English Politics, 11–12. 67. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses 2.2, in The Prince and the Discourses, ed. Max Lerner (New York: Modern Library, 1950). 68. Ure, ed., Richard II, lxxiii.

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Part II Dramatic Continuities and Religious Change

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3 William Cecil and the Drama of Persuasion Alexandra F. Johnston

Six months after the accession of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Ambassador, the Count of Feria, reported to his master, Philip II of Spain, that William Cecil was using plays and players for propaganda purposes.1 Recent research has confirmed that this was, in all probability, true.2 Feria, a Jesuit, was familiar with the English court. He had been a member of Philip of Spain’s entourage during Mary’s reign, and he married Jane Dormer, a favorite lady-in-waiting to the queen, who was a member of the extended Dormer/Sidney/Dudley clan. Feria was, then, to some extent an ‘insider,’ a well-known personality, privy to the court and to the complex and often seemingly contradictory web of alliances of kinship, marriage, and intellectual and religious affinity that created the rich tapestry of Elizabethan culture. William Cecil was 38 when Elizabeth came into her inheritance. Most biographers rush over the first four decades of his life to chronicle the last three ‘decades of power’ when, some say, more than the queen herself, he ruled England. But by 38, Cecil’s bonds of kinship, marriage, and intellectual and religious affinity had been firmly established – bonds that informed his decisions and the advice he offered to his sovereign until his death in 1598. This chapter attempts to draw together the evidence that supports Feria’s contention that Cecil continued Thomas Cromwell’s custom of using drama as an instrument of public policy. In 1535, an impressionable 15-year-old, Cecil entered St John’s College, Cambridge, the cradle of English Protestant humanism.3 He remained in Cambridge for six years and, although he did not take a degree (since he was not intending to take orders), he was part of the life of a community where the new learning of the continent and the radical new approach to the Christian faith were topics of everyday debate. Men who would become leaders in the approaching political and religious 63

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struggles were at various colleges, but St John’s was the center. John Cheke, soon to become regius professor of Greek, was there struggling with new approaches to translation; Roger Ascham, later tutor to Princess Elizabeth, was there; George Day, later almoner to Queen Catherine Parr and Bishop of Chichester, was there; Thomas Hoby of Bisham, translator of Castiglione’s The Courtier, was there; as was Robert Horne, later Dean of Durham, Bishop of Winchester, and a leader in the Edwardian debates over the Eucharist. Nicholas Grimald, the playwright who later went to Brasenose, Oxford, was in Cambridge taking his first degree at Christ Church; Thomas Norton, co-author of Gorboduc, was at Michaelhouse; and Thomas Smith, philologist and secretary to Cecil under Elizabeth, was at Queens’. Among the clergy were two who would dominate the second wave of the Reformation of the English Church under Elizabeth as long-suffering and beleaguered archbishops – Matthew Parker of Corpus, and Edmund Grindal of Magdalen and Pembroke. And standing behind these men were their admired Cambridge predecessors – the bishops Hugh Latimer of Clare, Thomas Cranmer of Jesus, and Nicholas Ridley of Pembroke, and the polemicists John Bale of Jesus and Thomas Becon of St John’s. Cecil was absorbed into this milieu and, to the chagrin of his country gentry family, married into it when, in 1541, he married John Cheke’s sister Mary at the age of 21. This marriage lasted only three years before Mary died, but it did produce a son, Thomas, who was Cecil’s eldest son and heir, succeeding him as the second Lord Burghley. This bound Cecil to the Cheke connection for life. Cecil’s second marriage was into a country gentry family similar to his own, but one destined, through sheer intellectual ability, to a position of extraordinary influence in late sixteenth-century culture and politics. In 1544 he married Mildred Cooke, one of the five formidable daughters of Anthony Cooke, governor to Prince Edward. Mildred’s sister Anne later married Nicholas Bacon and bore Francis Bacon, and her sister Elizabeth married first Thomas Hoby, whom Cecil had known at St John’s, and, after Hoby’s death, John, Lord Russell, son of Cecil’s friend and fellow Privy Counselor, Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford. These three sisters remained close and loyal friends to Queen Elizabeth all her life – based on a bond formed when they all studied with Anthony Cooke as young girls. This circle constituted the moderate Protestant elite who firmly rejected the Roman Church but were equally suspicious of schismatic evangelicalism. They endorsed the idea of a state church governed and disciplined by an episcopacy accountable to the crown. Eclipsed during Mary’s reign, it came into its own with the accession of Elizabeth, but

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its members had been key figures in various events in the dying years of Henry VIII and during the reign of Edward. It was in Cecil’s London house and the house of Richard Morison (an important influence on Cecil and on the course of drama), for example, that the seminal debate about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist took place in November 1551. Cheke, then tutor to the king, was there, as were Robert Horne, recently appointed Dean of Durham, David Whitehead, chaplain to Catherine Brandon, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, and Edmund Grindal, the future archbishop of both York and Canterbury (but then one of the king’s chaplains). This disputation was preliminary to the parliamentary debate on the introduction of the new prayer book. Throughout his life, Cecil was committed to the advancement of the Protestant cause, and so it should come as no surprise that, in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, he seems to have been prepared to use drama, a medium long used as a vehicle of often strident political and theological discourse, as a tool to reinforce the return to Protestantism. Cecil’s tenure at Cambridge (1535–41) corresponded with the flowering of Cambridge drama. He could not have avoided being drawn into the many dramatic experiments, since so many of his associates were involved. As Alan Nelson has put it, in 1535, Richard Wade put on a comedy, John Hatcher a dialogue, John Cheke a Play by Terence, and John Redman ‘dyuerse playes.’ Later, possibly the following year, Thomas Smith of Queens’ organized a production of Aristophanes’ Plutus at St John’s in the original Greek, pronounced according to rules which Smith had devised in collaboration with John Cheke. In 1537–8 St John’s produced ‘vij comedes’ and one ‘diolog in greke.’ Thomas Watson of St John’s wrote his Absalom c 1539–40. … By 1544–5 play-acting had become such an established part of St John’s College life that it was institutionalized in the college statutes.4 These new university plays were written almost exclusively in Latin – the language of instruction – and their target audience was those young men who would later lead the nation. The fashion for writing new plays rather than simply performing the classics came from the humanist and Reformation circles on the continent. Scholars often refer to these plays as ‘Terence Christianized,’ but a more accurate description for the majority of plays performed in England and particularly at Cambridge would be ‘Terence Protestantized.’

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Many of these plays, in keeping with the humanist theory, were based on the scriptures; not, as the medieval plays had been, to teach the essential narratives of the faith, but rather to draw moral lessons from biblical material. As Martin Bucer, the continental reformer who spent the last two years of his life (1549–51) as regius professor of divinity at Cambridge, put it in his De Honestis Ludis (1551): For the making of tragedies the Scriptures constantly offer an abundance of material in almost all the stories … [that are] thickly packed with godlike and heroic people, with emotion, with character, with actions and with unforeseen events moreover which happen contrary to expectations and which Aristotle calls ‘reversal of fortune.’ Since all these qualities have wonderful power to strengthen faith in God, to arouse love and desire of God and to create and increase not only admiration of piety and justice, but also the horror of impiety and of the sowing and fostering of every kind of evil, how much more fitting would it be were Christians to take their poems from sources which can depict great and famous human thoughts, struggles and inborn talents, changes of feeling and of fortune, than from the profane plays and stories of the pagans!5 Bucer saw plays as tools to be used by teachers to shape the thoughts of their students. So important did he see the use of drama to be that he argued that playwrights should be ‘religious men … schooled in the knowledge of Christ’s Kingdom and also endowed with discrimination.’6 Here we have the clear articulation of the theory behind the use of drama in the schools and universities of humanist Europe. A famous example of the increasingly Protestant tone of humanist drama is the anti-papal play, Pammachius, written by the German humanist Thomas Kirchmayer and dedicated to Archbishop Cranmer in 1538.7 Written in Latin, still the lingua franca, it was one of those continental compositions that could be immediately adopted by English university teachers. The premise of the play is that Pammachius, Bishop of Rome, turns his back on the true word of Christ and, with the help of Satan, aggrandizes himself with wealth and earthly power, setting the pattern for all subsequent popes. Kirchmayer intended to inculcate a hatred and fear of the papacy in the young. As he says in the dedication to Cranmer, ‘I have judged that it is of the greatest importance that from childhood minds should be imbued publicly with a keen hatred of tyranny of the sort which the popes have practised for more than 400 years.’ The play ends after only four acts with Satan and

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Pammachius rallying the nations loyal to them to fight the rise of the followers of Christ. The epilogue then steps forward and shares Kirchmayer’s apocalyptic vision of Christ himself coming to end the world and the play: Do not expect now, good spectators, that a fifth act is to be added to this play. Christ will act that out one day at his own time … Nor must we hope that in human affairs things will be better, unless God shall put an end to that tragedy by the arrival of his son who shall carry off from the world his own, as gold out of dung, and shall hand over the wicked to the everlasting fires, this will be the dénouement of this play. In the spring of 1545, four years after Cecil had left the university, Christ Church, Cambridge, performed this play in Latin.8 The ensuing altercation between the conservative Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and then Chancellor of Cambridge, and Matthew Parker, later Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury but then Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, was heated and inconclusive; but it shows the degree of importance that English clerics and educators gave to the performance of academic drama.9 Anti-papal drama or drama with Protestant themes flourished in much more political ways under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chancellor. Cromwell had come from bourgeois stock and owed his advancement to the highest office in the land to his own innate ability and the skill with which he served his employer, Cardinal Wolsey, in the matter of the king’s divorce. After Wolsey’s fall he served as Henry’s chief agent in the complex matter of the dissolution of the monasteries and the transfer of their lands and wealth to the crown. Committed to the evangelical cause, Cromwell became close to, among others in the Reformation party, Miles Coverdale, through whom he made connections with the Cambridge humanist reformers. These included Richard Morison, who, although associated with Wolsey’s Cardinal College in Oxford, had spent time in Cambridge in 1533 before going to the University of Padua for four years. It was Morison who later shared the task of hosting the debate over the Eucharist with Cecil in November 1551.10 In about 1535, the year Cecil went up to Cambridge, Morison, then Cromwell’s secretary, wrote A Discourse touching the Reformation of the Lawes of England. Morison was Cromwell’s chief propagandist, and he saw in drama a way to attack the Roman church using its own tools. His position is very close to the one later enunciated by Martin Bucer. He

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advocated first the abolition of Catholic drama and then its replacement by Protestant anti-papal drama in the vernacular: Howmoche better is it that those plaies shulde be forbidden and deleted and others dyvysed to set forthe and declare lyvely before the peoples eies the abhomynation and wickedness of the bisshop of Rome, monkes, ffreers, nonnes, and suche like, and to declare and open to them thobedience that your subjectes by goddes and mans lawes owe unto your magestie. Into the commen people thynges sonner enter by the eies, then by the eares: remembryng more better that they see then that they heere.11 The perfect vehicle to allow Cromwell to carry out Morison’s plan was another Cambridge reformer, John Bale. Bale, a former Carmelite monk, had been converted to evangelicalism by Thomas, first Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead. He put his talents as a polemicist and playwright to the cause of the anti-papal campaign launched by Cromwell to gather support for the break from Rome in the mid-1530s. The partnership between Bale and Cromwell in this campaign is now a well established and important thread in the history of English drama. The other playwright associated with Cromwell in this campaign is Nicholas Udall, one of the Oxford humanists, who was, in this period, the headmaster of Eton. The plays of Bale and Udall paralleled the university plays and were based on much the same principles. The themes and stories treated were similar with the same purpose of championing the Protestant cause. The major difference was that they were written in the vernacular for a less elite audience than the university plays and, especially in Bale’s work, modeled on the native tradition of episodic drama rather than the classical forms used in university plays. Bale’s company toured the countryside in the late 1530s under Cromwell’s patronage with such plays as King John, God’s Promises, Johan Baptystes Preachynge, The Temptation of Our Lord, and Three Laws. His players and Udall’s Eton boys both performed at court in the last years of Cromwell’s power. All this came to an end with the passage of the Act of the Six Articles in May 1539. Bale fled to the continent where he continued to write evangelical tracts and anti-Roman Catholic martyrologies. Cecil was still in Cambridge when Bale fled to the continent but he had left by the time the controversy about the production of Pammachius erupted. Yet in the tight circles of Cambridge intellectuals and humanists he must have been aware of both events and so alert to the power of dramatic performance as propaganda. In 1541, he moved on to Gray’s

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Inn where he met, for perhaps the first time, his future brother-in-law and colleague in Elizabeth’s early government, Nicholas Bacon. Bacon had had a very successful academic career at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in the 1520s before moving on to Gray’s Inn where, when Cecil arrived, he was well on the way to becoming a bencher of the Inn, having already served under Cromwell in the Court of Augmentation. Cecil’s father Richard was able to secure the first official position for his son as chief clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, a position that set him firmly on the path of civil service. But the last years of the reign of Henry VIII were not conducive to the rapid advancement of young men known to have reformist sympathies. The first phase of the English Reformation had advanced quickly under Cromwell’s political guidance; but with the Act of the Six Articles, Henry’s innate theological conservatism reasserted itself, making it a heretical offense to deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and encourage clerical marriage. The conservative members of the Privy Council now felt they could unseat Cromwell and, although it took them over a year to do so, they brought him down. He was executed 28 July 1540. The effect of his fall on Cromwell’s web of propagandists was immediate. Bale, as we have seen, had already fled to the continent. Udall remained in England but he lost his appointment at Eton and, although the evidence is equivocal, was convicted of the sexual abuse of one of the students, the son of Thomas Cheyne, a Catholic Privy Counselor who was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He spent an unspecified time in Marshalsea prison but re-emerged in 1542 with the publication of his Apophthegmes, a translation with commentary of selected passages from the work of Erasmus. This seems to have brought him to the attention of the last of Henry’s queens, Catherine Parr, who brought him into her household to help with a project she had undertaken with the royal children to translate Erasmus’s paraphrase of the New Testament. It is in the court of Catherine Parr that many of the personal, intellectual, and political alliances of the early years of the reign of Elizabeth were forged as men of learning, old and young, came together under the queen’s patronage. Her household provided a vital link between the reformers of the 1530s and the continuing reforms that began with the accession of Edward VI in 1547. Henry married Catherine on 12 July 1543 after the brief and disastrous tenure of Catherine Howard. Already twice-widowed and with a long-standing relationship with Thomas Seymour, Catherine had come to the king’s attention as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Mary who, since

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1536, had enjoyed her father’s favor. Catherine brought to the marriage stability, learning, and an apparent desire to heal the wounds in Henry’s family. She brought the three royal children together for the first time and, although Mary was almost a generation older than her siblings (she was 27 in 1543 while Elizabeth was ten and Edward six), she shared her new stepmother’s love of learning. The younger children were quick to learn. A key figure in bringing the circle of Cambridge humanists into the royal household to teach the children was George Day, Bishop of Chichester, the queen’s almoner who had been Cecil’s brother-in-law John Cheke’s tutor at St John’s. Day recommended Cheke as the tutor to the young prince, bringing into the circle not only Cheke but occasionally Roger Ascham, a close friend of Cecil’s, whom Elizabeth would later invite to be her tutor. Most scholars agree that Anthony Cooke, who would become Cecil’s father-in-law after his second marriage in 1545, was also attached to the household. Although Cecil, a young man still making his own career in the civil service, is not mentioned as one of the new queen’s circle, he was closely connected to those who were. The playwright Nicholas Udall’s connection with the queen’s household may have been long-standing. Susan James, the queen’s biographer in the new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that the character of Christian Custance in Ralph Roister Doister is modeled on Catherine. As we will see, the queen did patronize a troupe of players. What is known for certain is that Udall worked closely with Princess Mary on Erasmus’s Paraphrases upon the New Testament, published 31 January 1548. Their shared scholarly interest may explain why Udall remained in favor during Mary’s reign, providing entertainments for her court despite his evangelical convictions. James McConica has written of this island of comparative calm in the final turbulent years of Henry’s reign: English humanism was directed, after the fall of Cromwell as before, from the court, but … the nature of this direction had changed. Instead of the professional propaganda circle of Cromwell’s day there is a group of distinguished humanists collected by Catherine Parr to provide instruction for the royal children and for her own friends and associates, in learned pietism.12 Meanwhile other Protestant and evangelical networks were being established. Although many of the more radical evangelicals like John Bale chose to wait out the uncertain last years of Henry’s reign in exile, others did not. One who would become an important voice in the later years of the century and beyond, John Foxe, the martyrologist, spent these years as tutor to the children of the Protestant gentry and nobility.

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Foxe was an Oxford man, one of the evangelical minority of Magdalen College and a fellow of the college in the early 1540s. The statutes of the college required that every fellow take orders within one year of lecturing after completing an MA. Since the Act of the Six Articles had reinstated priestly celibacy, Foxe resigned his fellowship in 1545, being unwilling to ‘castrate myself and leap into the priestly caste.’13 He was then out of a job and forced to seek patronage elsewhere. His first appointment as a tutor was for the children of Sir William Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford, a friend of Bishop Hugh Latimer. His major breakthrough into the center of the Protestant elite came, however, in 1548 when Mary Howard, the Duchess of Richmond, widow of Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, invited Foxe to be tutor to the children of her brother Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Foxe was not only the central figure in the many editions of Acts and Monuments, now a major source for our understanding of the crosscurrents of the mid-sixteenth century, but also a playwright. His Titus et Gesippus was written when he was still at Magdalen, and his Christus Triumphans was published in Basel (where he was working in the printing houses during his exile in 1556) and possibly performed in Magdalen in 1561–62.14 Both were academic Latin plays. It was Foxe who famously said that ‘Players, Printers and Preachers be set up of God as a triple bulwark against the triple crown of the Pope to bring him down.’15 During the years that he lived in the duchess’s households in Mountjoy House in London and Reigate in Surrey, Foxe became part of the influential circle that included Bishop Ridley, John Hooper, Edmund Grindal, John Bale (returned from exile), the Duchess of Suffolk, and her young friend William Cecil. Although still a relatively young man, Cecil moved in circles of power and influence within the Protestant elite, who were well aware of the persuasive power of drama. These connections were to survive the common experience of many of them in exile during Mary’s reign to be consolidated in the early years of Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Cecil was advancing his political career, becoming a member of parliament during Henry’s last years. He was the member for Stamford in Edward’s first parliament in 1547. We can associate the rising young civil servant not only with the Protestant gentry but also with Queen Catherine’s circle. These associations came through his bonds of marriage and intellectual and religious affinity and are reflected in the preface he wrote for Queen Catherine’s Lamentation, or Complaint of a Sinner (1547). In it with the fervor of his own evangelical convictions he asserts his faith and exhorts the reader to read on: Here is our anchor; here is our shepheard; here we be made whole; here is our life, our redemption, our salvation, and oure blisse; let

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us, therefore, now feed, by the gratious queenes example, and be not ashamed to become in confession publicanes, since this noble ladie will be no pharisie.16 These convictions recommended him to Edward Seymour, who became the effective ruler of England on the death of Henry VIII. Seymour made Cecil his personal secretary, bringing him into the inner circle of power for the first time. Edward Seymour was the brother of Prince Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour. Seymour’s religious convictions had not been clear under Henry, but he soon revealed himself to be committed to returning to the reform program aborted with the passage of the Act of the Six Articles. Soon styled Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, Seymour, with the help of Archbishop Cranmer and bishops Latimer and Ridley, brought the English Church back to the state of evangelical theology that it had been approaching in 1539. In this enterprise he was ably assisted by what has been called ‘a small group of advisors’ that included Cecil and Cecil’s friend from Cambridge, the philologist Thomas Smith. With Edward Seymour came the Seymour extended network that included his brother Thomas, who quickly married the Queen Dowager Catherine Parr – only to have her die in childbirth in 1548. A distant kinsman of the Seymours, Thomas, Lord Wentworth, patron of John Bale who had been present at Edward’s christening, became a member of the Privy Council in August 1547 and other ‘godly’ connections began to displace the conservative ministers and civil servants who had dominated the last years of Henry’s reign. As soon as Edward Seymour felt assured of his power, he gathered around him, besides Cecil and Smith, strong evangelical voices from the 1530s including William Turner as his personal physician and Thomas Becon as one of his chaplains. Both men had been patronized by Wentworth and were Cambridge humanists. Turner’s scientific interests were matched by his strident attacks on Gardiner in such pieces as The Huntyng and Fyndyng out of the Romishe Fox (1543). Thomas Becon had already had a colorful career as a maverick polemicist and his works had been banned in the last years of Henry’s rule. He was a writer of dialogues – a public form of polemic largely ignored by students of drama – and is credited with one play, A New Dialog betwene Thangell of God & the Sheperdes in the Felde. John King dates this piece circa 1547 and discusses the ways in which it differs from medieval treatments of the same episode.17 He also comments, ‘Because the writing of plays was a normal duty of chaplains in large Tudor households, Becon’s composition of the work during service to Seymour places him in the company

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of such clerical playwrights as Skelton, Medwall, Bale and Udall.’18 King recognizes Cecil’s importance both as a moderate Erasmian himself and as someone who, even after the fall of Seymour, promoted the interests of the more radical ‘gospellers.’19 Paul White has emphasized the control that Cecil and Thomas Smith wielded in the early years of the reign of Edward VI, since they were charged with the licensing of all printed works under the crown policy introduced in 1549.20 It seems likely that Cecil and Smith were also behind the prohibition against playing issued by Seymour and promulgated in August of that year. 1549 was a year of localized rebellions that began in the West Country and spread to East Anglia and the Thames Valley. Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk began during a local summer festival in Wymondham not far from Norwich. Holinshed gives us this version of the events: and so it rested till the sixt of Julie, at which time there should be a publike plaie kept at Wimondham, a towne distant from Norwich six miles, which plaie had beene accustomed yearlie to be kept in that towne continuing for a space of one night and one daie at the least. Whereupon the wicked continuers of this unhappie rebellion, tooke occasion by assembling of such numbers of people as resorted thither to see the plaie, to enter further into their wicked enterprise.21 The records of Wymondham from 1537–38 give us a detailed account for the ‘wache and play’ that includes gear for a giant, shoes for a devil, and a costume for a knight, as well as payments to players and for torches.22 Clearly the rebels took advantage of a large assembly of people enjoying a long-standing local Midsummer tradition similar to many across the country. There seems to have been nothing particularly ‘political’ about the Wymondham ‘play,’ but public gatherings of any kind were deemed to be dangerous that year. Furthermore both Cecil and Smith knew the power of polemic drama and probably persuaded the Lord Protector to issue an extraordinary prohibition on August 6 (a month after the Wymondham event): For asmuche as a greate number of those that be common Plaiers of Enterludes and Plaies, as well within the citie of London, as els where within the realm, do for the moste part plaie such Interludes as contain matter tendyng to sedicion, and contempnyng of sundery good orders and lawes, where upon are growen, and daily are like to growe and ensue, muche disquiet, division, tumultes, and uproares in this realme; the Kynges Maiestie, by the advise and consent of his

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derest Uncle Edward, Duke of Somerset, Governour of his persone, and Protector of his realmes, dominions and subjectes, and the rest of his highnes privie Counsall straightly chargeth and commaundeth al and every his Majesties subjectes, of whatsoever state, order or degree thei bee, that from the ix daie of this present moneth of August untill the feast of all Sainctes nexte commyng [1 November], thei ne any of them, openly or secretly plaie in the English tongue any kind of Interlude, Plaie, Dialogue or other matter set furthe in form of Plaie in any place, publique or private within this realme, upon pain that whosoever shall plaie in English any such Play, Interlude, or other matter, shall suffre imprisonment, and further punishment at the pleasure of his Majestie.23 Local authorities were to see this proclamation enforced throughout the entire kingdom. The traditional festival season still celebrated in many parts of the country ended with Midsummer, so the target for the prohibition must have been as much the traveling troupes performing all over the countryside as local plays like the one in Wymondham. It seems to have been remarkably effective. Only two appearances of troupes of traveling players patronized by major national figures have so far been recorded in the database of Records of Early English Drama for the second half of the year 1549.24 Edward Seymour fell in late October, brought down with his personal household by the Earl of Warwick, who felt he had gained sufficient power to challenge the king’s uncle. Cecil was not immediately imprisoned in the Tower but, by November, he had joined his companions. However, he had powerful friends not associated with the Protector in John Cheke, Anthony Cooke, and the Duchess of Suffolk.25 He was released in January 1550. In the months that followed he proved his political astuteness by maintaining a balanced position among the factions of Edward’s Privy Council, and by September 1550 he was himself appointed to the council and, along with William Petre, as one of the two secretaries of the king. As one of his biographers has put it, ‘In his position as Secretary, Cecil was the servant of the King and his Council, and not of one vulnerable patron. He had reached the comparative safety of the royal bureaucracy, where loyalty and efficiency preserved a man from the dangers of factional strife.’26 Cecil had arrived at the bureaucratic center of power in the kingdom, a position he would hold (except during the reign of Mary) until his death 48 years later. By the autumn of 1551, he seems to have concluded that the future of the reign lay in the hands of Warwick and became one of Warwick’s followers

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honored by the king in October that year when Warwick became the Duke of Northumberland. He was knighted along with Henry Sidney who found him ‘a most rare man, both for sundrie and singular gifts of nature, learning, wisdome and integritte.’27 Cecil was now even further entrenched in a position of quiet power. The continuing attacks on the papacy from the stage during Warwick’s years of power are mentioned by the Venetian ambassador writing home in May 1551: ‘And this is the summary of what he can tell about the disobedience of the English to the Pope, besides their demonstrations of contempt for him, in paintings, comedies, and in all their amusements.’28 We can, perhaps, see in these remarks the hand of William Cecil, who was in a position to guide the official propaganda machine of the Edwardian court. In the spring of 1553 as Edward’s health was failing, Cecil was himself ill and away from the court. When he recovered it was clear that Northumberland was determined to abrogate Henry VIII’s will and substitute Henry Grey’s daughter Jane for Princess Mary. Despite his Protestant convictions, Cecil opposed the move as unlawful, but, like many involved in government, he was placed in an impossible position. He was the last of the Privy Council to sign the document favoring Jane Grey. In the event, although he went as far as making conveyances of his land and properties lest he be sufficiently caught in the political crosscurrents to lose his life, Cecil survived. He made his peace with Mary, although he declined to serve in her government on religious grounds, and retired to his estates in Lincolnshire. He did not, as did so many of his close relatives and associates in the Protestant cause (including Cheke, Cooke, Richard Morison, and the Duchess of Suffolk), go into exile on the continent but he kept in touch with them through frequent correspondence. One of his concerns during this period was the management of some of the estates of Princess Elizabeth, whom he had known since her childhood and who was now studying with his old friend Roger Ascham. When Elizabeth came to the throne in November 1558, Cecil was called upon to serve her as he had served her brother. His service to Elizabeth was to be his longest and last and to leave a permanent mark on English history and culture. On 24 April 1559, Philip of Spain wrote to the Count of Feria, his ambassador to the English Court, urging him to frighten his erstwhile sister-in-law with the insecurity of her tenure on the English throne. His purpose was to force her to leave the religious settlement of Mary intact, to agree to marry one of Philip’s German cousins, and to accept his (Philip’s) protection. The tone of the letter is peremptory and bullying – as if Philip believed that the young queen could be browbeaten by the

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threat to have the pope declare her a bastard and so ineligible to rule. Five days later, Feria reported on a most unsatisfactory interview he had had with the queen during which she seems to have set out to bait him deliberately, saying she intended to adopt the Augsburg Confession and then, withdrawing the suggestion, telling him she did not want to argue about religion. Feria pressed his case: I told her neither did I, but desired to know what religion it was that she wanted to maintain … I was terrified to see that whereas the other princes were laying down their arms in order to cope with heresy, she with her kingdom tranquil and catholic, was doing her best to destroy religion; and besides this that she wanted to revoke the good and holy laws that God, your Majesty and the late Queen had enacted here. If for no other reason than the great obligations she owed to your Majesty she should reconsider this matter. The queen continued to be equivocal about religion but Feria reports her to have said ‘that she wished to punish severely certain persons who had represented some comedies in which your Majesty was taken off.’ As he reports this to Philip, Feria makes the side comment, ‘I knew that a member of her Council had given the arguments to construct these comedies, which is true for Cecil gave them, as indeed she partly admitted to me.’29 This is the context from which we glean the information that Cecil interested himself in dramatic presentations at this early stage in the reign. This conversation took place after Elizabeth’s first ‘proclamation against plays’ on 7 April 1559 but before the second one dated 16 May 1559.30 The second proclamation required all plays to be licensed (as Mary had required) but also required that no plays be played ‘wherin either matters of religion or of the governance of the estate of the common weale shall be handled or treated.’ Scholars have frequently taken this as a prohibition against all use of drama as propaganda. But there is a qualifying clause that follows the apparent blanket prohibition: ‘beyng no meete matters be wrytten or treated upon, but by menne of aucthoritie, learning, and wisdome, nor to be handled before any audience but of grave and discreete persons.’31 Given the pressure being applied by Philip and the sense of insecurity such international meddling must have created in the new government, this proclamation can be seen (as earlier such proclamations can be) as directed at unauthorized plays, not at plays sanctioned by the ‘menne of aucthoritie, learning and wisdome’ who constituted the Privy Council and their agents in the counties, cities, and towns of England. Far from prohibiting plays as

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propaganda, the proclamation sanctions them as instruments to be used by those in power to extend their interests. Scholars now accept that Thomas Cromwell used plays as instruments of public policy. However, we have been slow to recognize that this use of plays to influence public opinion did not stop with his death. Two problems have prevented us from understanding the situation. The first is the relative paucity of texts that can be assigned to this period and the state in which these texts have been preserved. Such plays as Nice Wanton, Lusty Juventus, The Virtuous and Godly Susannah, and The Patient and Meek Grissill, presumed to have been performed during Edward’s reign, were not printed until after the accession of Elizabeth.32 Some of their epilogues have been altered to suit the new reign and we have no way of knowing what else has been changed. Play texts are notoriously unstable. We now know from the evidence of the Protestant divine, Christopher Goodman, that the performance of the Chester plays in 1572 differed in significant ways from any of the manuscripts that have survived.33 Letters from Goodman to Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the North, protesting the performance in 1572, quote passages from the Last Supper play that maintain the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. This example and others should alert us to the ephemeral nature of performance. Hamlet altered the plot of the Murder of Gonzago to suit his purposes. We must not presume that the plays as they have come down to us are what every audience saw. We do know that the general tone of court performances during Edward’s reign was anti-Catholic and anti-papal,34 but we do not have the texts of these revels. The second problem that has hampered our understanding of the phenomenon of political drama has been any clarity about the conditions under which the plays were performed. Lacking texts that are stable enough to be satisfactorily analyzed and any clear sense of how, where, and to whom they were performed, scholars of the drama have tended to ignore what is emerging as a crucial chapter in the transition of English vernacular drama from the pedagogical tool of the late Middle Ages to the entertainment industry of the last quarter of the sixteenth century. However, over the last few decades the work of the Records of Early English Drama Project (REED) has been filling in the picture of the playing conditions for these plays. They were performed not just in London but all over the countryside by patronized companies. Recently REED has provided an important new research tool that allows us to trace the companies on the road in any given year and analyze their provenance. The Patrons and Performances website allows us, for the first time, to

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have access to all the relevant data in a form that enables scholars to posit hypotheses and then test them against the data.35 With Feria’s assertion that Cecil was following Cromwell’s policy of using drama as propaganda in mind, I formed the hypothesis that there might be a correlation between the Privy Counselors and the patrons of the companies on the road in the mid-century. I therefore divided the 28 years of the mid-sixteenth century into five periods: 1535–41, the years of Cromwell’s ascendancy; 1541–47, the years of conservative reaction under Henry VIII; 1547–53, the reign of Edward VI; 1553–58, the reign of Mary; and 1558–63, the first five years of the reign of Elizabeth. I used only the entries that used the terms ‘players,’ ‘interluders,’ ‘gameplayers,’ or ‘performers,’ leaving out the records concerning minstrels, bearwards, jugglers, and trumpeters. Using, in the main (though not exclusively), the database and the more recent REED volumes not yet entered into the database,36 I extrapolated whose players had been on the road during these periods and then discovered the relationship of each of the patrons to the government of the day. The results37 are illuminating and emphasize how, especially under Cromwell and Edward VI, and during the early years of Elizabeth, the traveling companies were clearly instruments of public policy ensuring, as Seymour’s proclamation of 1549 had decreed, that the companies were sponsored almost exclusively by the Crown itself or by the Privy Counselors of the reigning monarch. In the period 1535–41, 88 per cent of the players traveling were patronized by the monarch, his family, or his Privy Council. In the period 1541–47 there is a marked decline in the number of players of the king on the road,38 but 89 per cent of the total number of recorded payments are to companies patronized by the Crown and the Privy Counselors. During Edward’s reign (perhaps because of the ‘troublous times’) there is a further decline in the number of references, but the percentage of the recorded payments to companies patronized by the Crown and the counselors declines slightly to 85 per cent. Touring falls off even more drastically during Mary’s reign, and if we simply count the royal troupes and those of the Privy Council the percentage falls to 68 per cent. However, if we include the performances of the troupe of John de Vere, sixteenth Earl of Oxford, whom Mary had restored to his position as the hereditary Great Chamberlain of England in 1555, among the companies patronized by the Crown or counselors, the percentage of ‘government’ patronage returns to 85 per cent. In the first five years of Elizabeth’s reign, the number of performances rises dramatically to almost the number in the period of Cromwell’s dominance and, if we again include Oxford’s players, the percentage of ‘government

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sponsored’ troupes is 82 per cent. If we exclude the reign of Mary when Cecil and his circle had no influence from our calculations, 85 per cent of all players under the last years of Henry, Edward and the first five years of Elizabeth were ‘government sponsored.’ This analysis makes sense of the wording of the second major proclamation concerning playing promulgated by Warwick in Edward’s name in April 1551. Having first limited the freedom of the printing presses, the proclamation continues: Nor that any common players or other persons, upon like paines, to play in thenglish tong, any maner of Enterlude, play or mattre, without they have special licence to shew for the same in writing under his majesties signe or signed by .vi. of his highness privie counsaill: willing and straightly charging and commaunding al Justices, Mayors, Shirifes, Bailifes, Constables, & other officers and ministers, diligently to enquire for, and serche out al maner offendors within the limites and compasse of their commissions.39 In this proclamation we see plays being controlled not by minor functionaries but by the Privy Counselors themselves, the Edwardian equivalent of the ‘menne of aucthoritie, learning, and wisdome’ in Elizabeth’s proclamation of May 1559 – men who, themselves, reign by reign, lent their names to the companies of players who performed all over the country. Not all Privy Counselors were patrons but many were and in some cases the widows of counselors maintained their husbands’ companies. The most important and influential female patron is Catherine, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk and close friend of Cecil, who continued the activities of the company of her husband Charles Brandon, president of Henry’s council, well into Elizabeth’s reign (with the obvious hiatus of the reign of Mary). The players of Catherine Parr toured at the end of Henry’s reign, and those of her brother William, Marquis of Northampton, counselor to both Edward and Elizabeth, toured during those reigns. The major patron in the early years of Edward’s reign was the Lord Protector himself, with 18 appearances before his death in 1551, while Northumberland’s players appear only after he has gained power. His sons, both members of Elizabeth’s first council, had immensely active companies. Robert Dudley’s company, which was to become Leicester’s Men, is recorded 35 times in the period from 1558 to 1563, while Ambrose Dudley’s players appear 20 times in the same period. The as-yet-unanswered puzzle of the last years of Henry’s reign is who controlled ‘the prince’s players,’ who

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began to tour almost from the moment of Edward’s birth and appear 55 times between 1535 and 1547. The evidence being gathered by REED about the traveling companies comes, almost entirely in the mid-sixteenth century, from official town records. When a company sought the permission of the local authorities to perform in their jurisdiction, the town councils, acting on the repeated injunctions from the crown to fulfill their role as censor, commanded and paid for a performance. The surviving financial records, therefore, provide the evidence for authorized performances. Companies not patronized by the gentry or nobility rarely appear in the records of the mid-sixteenth century. The payments to players (as opposed to musicians) from neighboring towns and parishes so frequent in the records up to the mid-1530s have virtually disappeared in this period, especially from the records of the south and east. The proclamations against ‘rogues and vagabonds’ and ‘common players’ in this period are not against these patronized companies but the unauthorized, uncensored entertainers whose nature and repertoire we have no way of knowing and whose presence is rarely found in surviving records. But the period we have been analyzing – the 28 years from the break from Rome through the promulgation of the Elizabethan Settlement – was a unique period in the history of English drama. It seems apparent that what was started by the humanist propagandists under Cromwell survived his fall and re-emerged through the reign of Edward and once again in the early years of Elizabeth. This seems to have been drama of persuasion carrying the message of the Protestant cause – sometimes stridently, sometimes less so. The seeming prohibitions against playing and against debating matters of government and religion on stage can be read, as we have seen, as prohibitions against the unauthorized, independent entertainers, not against the plays performed by troupes patronized by Privy Counselors and sanctioned and paid for by local authorities. We have the Duke of Feria’s word that Cecil was behind this policy. What we know about his education and his circles of friendship, marriage, and intellectual and religious affinity makes this plausible. From his university days he had been accustomed to seeing plays that were powerful polemics in the Protestant cause. He was a close associate of Richard Morison, who had enunciated the theory that vernacular plays should be used for the inculcating of Protestant principles in the general population. He counted many playwrights among his friends and one of his most powerful patrons, the Duchess of Suffolk, was also a major patron of drama. Someone had to be organizing the campaign from inside the government. In the last years of Edward’s reign and in

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the early years of Elizabeth’s, Cecil was in the key position to do so. Who kept the idea alive from the death of Cromwell until Cecil became a Privy Counselor is harder to tell. What seems likely is that the machinery existed when he took office and Cecil found it a congenial policy to continue. Richard Morison had coupled the use of drama for Protestant purposes with the suppression of the Catholic drama. This happened in most parishes and smaller cities quietly during the last years of Henry’s reign.40 But the performance of the large civic religious plays in the north continued with some alterations well in to the reign of Elizabeth. It was not until Elizabeth and her chief secretary felt themselves secure after the defeat of the Northern Earls in 1569 that a concerted campaign was mounted to suppress the biblical drama performed in York and Chester. The active agent for that suppression was another Cambridge humanist, Matthew Hutton, supported by his patron and Cecil’s old acquaintance Edmund Grindal, newly appointed Archbishop of York, and by Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, the newly appointed Lord President of the North, a nobleman Cecil had first met when he was a boy in the household of Catherine Parr.41 When that mission was accomplished by the mid-1570s, the scene was set for a radical change in the nature of vernacular drama in England, with the opening of the first public theaters in London and the beginning of the Elizabethan entertainment industry, whose nature was quite unlike the drama of persuasion that it replaced.

Appendix 3.1 The patrons of traveling companies Table A3.1

Recorded payments to companies with royal patrons (11 patrons) 1535–41 1541–47 1547–53 1553–58 1558–63 Total

Henry VIII Prince Edward Edward VI Mary Philip and Mary Philip Elizabeth Anne Boleyn Jane Seymour Catherine Parr Duke of Richmond (Fitzroy) Totals

40 24

7 31 23

1 16 3 4 44

1 2

67

6 1

2

45

25

24

44

47 55 24 16 3 4 44 1 2 8 1 205

Table A3.2

Recorded payments to companies with patrons who were Privy Counselors (26 patrons) 1535–41

1547–53

1553–58

1558–63

5

5 1 7

1 5

2

12

3 15

5

13

7 5 3 1

1 2 7

3

2 5

5 18

1

3 5 1 5

3

1 1 4 6 1

2 1

7

35 20 75

2

46

43

50

Note: H = Henry; Ed = Edward; M = Mary; E = Elizabeth. The italicized names refer to the wives of Privy Counselors.

21 27 7 1 7 15 19

1 1 5 3

Total

1 2 5 2 11 8 1 5 1 1 7 8 2 2 35 20 221

82

Thomas, Lord Audley, Lord Chancellor d. 1544 H Lady Elizabeth Audley Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, President of the Council d. 1545 H Catherine (neé Willoughby) Duchess of Suffolk Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports d. 1558 H, Ed, M Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex d. 1540 H Thomas Howard 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Lord Treasurer d. 1554 H Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, Lord Chamberlain d. 1542 H John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford d. 1555 H, Ed Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford H, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector d. 1551 Ed Edward Fiennes de Clinton, Lord Clinton Ed, E Walter Devereux, Earl of Hereford d 1558 Ed John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Duke of Northumberland Ed Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel Ed, M, E Henry Grey, Earl of Dorset, D of Suffolk Ed William Parr, Marquis of Northampton Ed, E William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester Ed, M, E Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral d. 1549 Ed Thomas, Lord Wentworth Ed Thomas Wriosthesley, Earl of Southampton H, Ed John Bouchier, Earl of Bath M Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk M, E Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford M, E Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby M, E Lord Robert Dudley E Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick E Totals

1541–47

Table A3.3

Recorded payments to companies with patrons who were not Privy Counselors (35 patrons)

Henry Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, 6th Earl of Sussex John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, Great Chamberlain of England after 1555 Henry Daubeney, Earl of Bridgwater Arthur Plantagenet, 6th Viscount Lisle, Deputy of Calais Sir Thomas Cornwall, Baron of Burford Henry Bouchier, 15th Earl of Essex d. 1540 Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter d. 1539 Edward Grey, 4th Lord Grey of Powis d. 1551 Henry Stafford, Lord Stafford William Tooke Mr Henings Sir John Brydges, 1st Baron Chandos d. 1558 Sir Edward Bray, Constable of the Tower of London John Bray, 2nd Baron Bray William Sheldon Sir Anthony Kingston William Windsor, Earl of Windsor

1535–41

1541–47

1547–53

1553–58

1558–63

Total

2

7

1

1 9

23

11 32

3 4 3 1 1 1 1

1

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 3 1 2 1

2

4 4 3 1 1 2 2 2 1 3 1 3 1 2 1 (Continued)

83

84

Table A3.3

Continued 1535–41

1541–47

1553–58

1 1 1

Sir Henry Parker William Stafford George Somerset William Somerset, Earl of Worcester Henry Berkeley, 7th Lord Berkeley Henry le Scrope, Lord Scrope James Blount, Lord Mountjoy William Alley, Baron of Exeter William Willoughby, Lord Willoughby of Parham The Fortescues: Sir Henry Sir Andrew Mr Richard Mr [identity uncertain] Sir Percival Harte Sir Ralph Hopton Lord Burgaynes George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury John Neville, Lord Latimer Totals

1547–53

11

13

14

Total

1 3 3

1 2 1 3 1 1 1 3 3

2 2 1 5 2 1 1 1 3

2 2 1 5 2 1 1 1 3

54

108

1 1 1 1

16

1558–63

2

William Cecil and the Drama of Persuasion Table A3.4 1535–41 129

85

Totals of recorded payments (72 patrons) 1541–47

1547–53

1553–58

1558–63

Total

99

88

45

173

534

Notes 1. The Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, n.s., 1 (1558–67), 62; cited in David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 127. 2. Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 58–9. 3. Unless otherwise noted, the personal details of the individuals discussed have been drawn from the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, at www.oxforddnb.com. 4. Alan H. Nelson, ed., Cambridge, Records of Early English Drama, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 712. 5. Quoted in Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300–1600 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966–80), vol. 2, pt 1, 329. 6. Wickham, Early English Stages, vol. 2, pt 1, 329. 7. C.C. Love, trans. and ed., Five Sixteenth-Century Latin Plays (Toronto, 1992); online at www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/rnlp/rnlp.html (accessed 11 March 2009). 8. Nelson, Cambridge, 981. 9. The correspondence appears in Nelson, Cambridge, 133–41. 10. B.W. Beckingsale, Burghley: Tudor Statesman, 1520–1598 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 40. 11. Quoted in White, Theatre and Reformation, 14. 12. James McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 234. 13. DNB. 14. John R. Elliot, ed., Oxford, Records of Early English Drama, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 823, 853. 15. Foxe, Acts and Monuments; qtd in White, Theatre and Reformation, 3. 16. The Harleian Miscellany (London, 1808), 1:288. The edition gives no date but Susan E. James gives the date of the work as 1547 (DNB). The date of Cecil’s preface is not given but it seems to have been commissioned by her brother William Parr, the Marquis of Northampton (see Beckingsale, Burghley, 73.) 17. John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 290–6. 18. King, English Reformation Literature, 291. 19. King, English Reformation Literature, 109.

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20. White, Theatre and Reformation, 57. 21. Raphael Holinshed, ed., The Chronicle of England, Scotland and Ireland (1808; rpt New York: AMS Press, 1965), 3:963–4 22. David Galloway and John Wasson, eds, Records of Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1330–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 128–9. 23. W.C. Hazlitt, The English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 1543–1664 (1868; rpt New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 8–9; see also Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, The Early Tudors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 478–9. 24. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/reed/. 25. Beckingsale, Burghley, 33. 26. Beckingsale, Burghley, 34. 27. Cyndia Susan Clegg, ed., The Peaceable and Prosperous Regiment of Blessed Queene Elisabeth, facsimile from Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2005), section 13, page 570 (original page in Holinshed, 1550). This quotation is in the context of a memorial for Sidney, who died in 1586. 28. R.L. Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs: Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy (London, 1884), 5:347. 29. The Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, n.s., 1 (1558–67), 59–62. 30. The reference to the proclamation issued 7 April is in Holinshed: ‘The same time also [7 April 1559] was another proclamation made under the queens hand in writing, inhibiting, that from thensforth no plaies nor interludes should be exercised, till Alhallollwes tide next insuing’; Chronicle, 4:184. This seems strangely similar to the proclamation of Seymour in 1549, but without the same results. Touring continued apparently uninterrupted (see Appendix 3.1). 31. Hazlitt, English Drama, 19–20. 32. A helpful list of mid-century plays is provided by White in Theatre and Reformation, 175–80. 33. David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and its Whitsun Plays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 146–51; see also David Mills and Elizabeth Baldwin, eds, Cheshire, Including Chester, Records of Early English Drama, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 34. Suzanne Westfall, ‘The Boy Who Would be King: Court Revels of King Edward VI, 1547–53,’ Comparative Drama 35 (2001): 271 ff. 35. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/reed/. 36. Cameron Louis, ed., Sussex, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); James Gibson, ed., Kent: Diocese of Canterbury, Records of Early English Drama, 3 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); John R. Elliott Jr, Alan H. Nelson, Alexandra F. Johnston, and Diana Wyatt, eds, Oxford, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); John Coldewey, ‘Early Essex Drama: A History of its Rise and Fall, and a Theory Concerning the Digby Plays’ (PhD dissertation, University of Colorado, 1972); Galloway and Wasson, Records; and John Tucker Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 1558–1642, 2 vols (1910; rpt New York: Russell and Russell, 1963). 37. See Appendix 3.1.

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38. Only seven payments are to ‘players’ out of the total of 60 payments to other entertainers such as the king’s minstrels, jester, bearwards, and trumpeters. 39. Hazlitt, English Drama, 14. 40. Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘English Community Drama in Crisis: 1535–80,’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 248–69. 41. Johnston, ‘English Community Drama’; see also Johnston, ‘The City as Patron,’ in Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England, ed. Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 150–75.

4 The Queen’s Men and the Performance of Allegiance, Conformity, and Difference in Elizabethan Norwich Mary A. Blackstone

In their book, The Queen’s Men and their Plays, Scott McMillin and SallyBeth MacLean suggest a number of reasons why Elizabeth I formed a new theater company in 1583. Beyond centralizing control of the burgeoning theater industry at court, the queen and Privy Council’s agenda included ‘unifying the country’ by ‘spreading a court-inspired culture,’ not only carrying ‘the name and influence of the monarch through the country’ but also giving ‘the impression of a watchful monarch, one whose “men” ranged over the land.’ A key political concern of the government ‘centred on the religious arguments of the day, issues imbued with dangers from the old faith and problems from the new’, as Alexandra Johnston also demonstrated in the previous chapter.1 Viewed from the perspective painted by Patrick Collinson, Elizabeth I, with her insistence on moderate Protestant reform, anxiously presided as ‘a protestant paragon … head of Christ’s Church on earth’ over ‘popish recusants’ and ‘church papists,’ on the one hand, and the godly, Calvinist-inspired ‘hot-gospellers’ or ‘Puritans,’ on the other.2 Elizabeth herself of course could render the most authoritative public performances of the religious moderation she wished to foster while simultaneously seeking to inspire political allegiance to the head of the true Church. Such performances remained features of her public appearances both at court and on progress throughout most of her reign,3 and the performance texts of the progresses, in particular, could continue beyond the initial occasion in print. Between 1583 and 1591, however, deep religious divisions within the country made it unwise for Elizabeth to assert her policies and dominance through progresses. Instead, the Queen’s Men toured across the country. As noted by McMillin and 88

The Queen’s Men and the Performance of Allegiance 89

MacLean, the company provided ‘an avenue for bringing the theatre back into the service of a Protestant ideology’ which included ‘the “truth” of Tudor history’ – ‘the plain, unvarnished substance of history in a form appealing to all the people.’4 In contrast with ‘the feigned toy … [the] forged tragedy,’5 the ‘shadows and images’ of Marlowe’s poetry alluded to in the prologue of Selimus, the Queen’s Men ‘set forth’ truth and plain speech ‘on the stages which the radical reformers had been attacking. … Their approach to English history combines broad anti-Catholicism with a specifically Protestant style,’ and even in cases such as Selimus where the subject is not apparently English history McMillin and MacLean characterize the style of the Queen’s Men as ‘truth and plainness staged.’6 Although the Queen’s Men’s plays, like descriptions of Elizabeth’s progresses, religious tracts, and sermons, circulated in print, any influence they might have had on the largely illiterate general public would have derived from their public performance. But within the overall performative context of provincial communities, how successfully did the Queen’s Men and their plays actually realize the meaning and reception intended by queen and council? Scholars such as Susan Frye and William Leahy have clearly demonstrated the potential for divergent and contested responses to Elizabeth’s own ‘authoritative’ performances,7 and these in turn should lead us to consider the potential instability of the less ‘authoritative’ representation of ‘truth’ and ‘plainness’ by her players taking her name and authority ‘on progress.’ How effectively, then, did her players adapt theatrical performance for the purposes of persuasive rhetoric? What kind of meaning might the largely illiterate audiences have derived? To what extent did Elizabeth’s ‘true religion’ dominate grassroots perceptions in the provinces as well as London? Let us examine the potential religious impact of one Queen’s Men’s play, Selimus, within the broader intertextual milieu suggested by two other local ‘performance texts’ – accounts of the queen’s visit to Norwich in 1578 and an inflammatory sermon preached at Norwich Cathedral in 1589 by William Burton. An architectural point of intersection for all three performance texts, the cathedral emerges as a contested performance space encompassing not only Burton and various episcopal authorities but also the queen on progress, her players as rewarded by dean and chapter, and of course civic officials and other members of the community who were active participants in the negotiation of beliefs. When combined with further details of Norwich’s performative and religious climate in the 1580s and 1590s, the intersections of these texts drawn from what John Foxe identified as the ‘triple bulwarks’ of players,

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printers, and preachers should help us understand the way in which the Queen’s Men contributed to the complex formulation of popular religious allegiance and authority in the country’s ‘second’ city. Whereas Foxe saw these bulwarks as directed against ‘the triple crown of the Pope,’8 religious opposition in Norwich defied such clear and singular definition and therefore challenged both the theater’s supposed capacity to unify its audiences around shared beliefs and a government which equated political allegiance with religious conformity.

4.1 The Queen’s Men and the negotiation of allegiance through religious difference From 1583 through 1594/5, the Queen’s Men visited Norwich nearly every year and performed for civic officials, the dean and chapter, and the general public.9 Although we do not know for certain which plays they performed, McMillin and MacLean identify seven extant plays in their repertoire during this period, including Selimus.10 Published in 1594 and credited as Robert Greene’s response to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (first staged in the winter of 1587/8), Selimus was in their repertoire by early 1588.11 Thanks to a visit by the Lord Admiral’s Men to Norwich in 1592/3, local playgoers may well have had a chance to see Tamburlaine and make the comparison, although the frequency of the Queen’s Men’s visits could have meant that Norwich audiences would have seen Selimus before Tamburlaine. Although overall the play appears to promote an orthodox religious point of view, it does not construct a ‘church papists’ and ‘hot-gospellers’ binary, but rather positions the Christian, English audience in opposition to the infidel Turks. The Ottoman Emperor, Bajazet, bemoans the incursions of Christian ‘others’ ‘with fire and sword’ (1.64–7, 70–1),12 specifically identifying them as ‘the Hungarian’ ‘with his bloody cross’ and ‘the Polonian’ fighting ‘in honor of his crucifix!’ (4.11–15).13 Set in the early sixteenth century, however, when most of Christian Europe as well as England was Catholic, the play complicates this binary by temporarily distancing its ‘officially’ Protestant audience from these Catholics. In view of the Spanish threat to England in 1588 it also sets up an unexpected empathy with another country threatened by Catholic invasion.14 At one level this ambiguity derives from that of actual Elizabethan foreign policy. Elizabeth herself was complicating the Christian/Turkish antithesis by establishing closer diplomatic ties with Turkey to promote both trade and an alliance against Catholic countries like Spain.15

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In 1590 this complication was reflected in the make-up of the Queen’s Men as they toured with a ‘Turke’ who ‘went uponn Roppes at newhall.’16 Thus Greene’s Bullithrumble, the lone Englishman in a constellation of Turks, could have had his metatheatrical counterpart in the lone Turk amongst these Christian players performing almost exclusively Turkish characters in service of the English queen. While a Turk converted to the service of a Christian cause could have been seen as the ultimate prize in the conflict between Christians and infidels, another local connection casts doubt upon the extent to which this may have been the Turk’s position and the extent to which this agenda would have prevailed in the mercantile mindset of early modern Norwich. William Harborne, England’s first ambassador to Turkey, was originally from Great Yarmouth, Norwich’s port city, and upon his return to England in 1588 had settled in Mundham not far from Norwich.17 Despite criticism of his non-Christian behavior from ambassadors from other Christian countries, Harborne downplayed his Christian background in Turkey and explained to the queen that efforts at religious conversion were counterproductive to trade.18 In the light of popular anxieties regarding Turkey, however, Elizabeth must have realized that it would be unwise to publicize her alliance with ‘infidels.’19 Refugees fleeing the current Turkish emperor with stories of their experiences were finding their way even into the English provinces. In 1589/90, for instance, Bajazet’s reference to Hungarians could have had an immediate resonance in Norwich, where the cathedral’s dean and chapter gave 10 shillings ‘pro estraniis hungaris in hoc regno applicantibus et fugantibus extra captivitatem Turcii.’20 Such ambiguities and contradictions contribute to a surprisingly complex Ottoman/English binary which opens up the potential for an equally surprising degree of heterodoxy in the received meaning of that ostensibly antithetical binary in Selimus. On stage the Turkish/Christian antithesis may have initially appeared literally in black and white: uniformly tyrannical Turkish leaders set against Bullithrumble and the queen’s English values. The devout Acomat who swears upon ‘the holy rites of Mahomet, / His wondrous tomb and sacred Alcoran’ (12.19–20) differs little from the bloodthirsty atheist Selimus. Both agree that ‘The surest ground for kings to build upon / Is to be feared and cursed of everyone’; and although a king’s ‘subjects’ may ‘hate his wicked deeds,’ they should be ‘forced to bear them all with praise’ (14.44–5, 50–1). Many Elizabethans may have lost any distinction between Islam and Selimus’s rabid atheism in the stunning articulation of his ideas which, as

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Daniel Vitkus has argued, ‘would have been disturbingly transgressive, providing electrifying moments for the audience, who gasped to hear such fearless defiance of divine law.’21 Selimus does not simply call for ‘Mahound’s laws’ to ‘be locked up in their case’ but also extends his argument to all religious belief in a manner that sets him at one extreme of a surprisingly diverse religious spectrum. He counts it ‘sacrilege for to be holy,’ and with an ironically puritan twist, rejects ‘foolish ceremonies’ and ‘religious pomp’ (2.15, 38; 20.4). But he takes this rejection to its logical extreme by declaring ‘gods, religion, heaven and hell’ (2.95) to be ‘mere fictions’ and fables ‘to make us peaceable’ (2.107–8). In contrast with the surrogate image of Elizabeth in many other Queen’s Men plays, Selimus is motivated by the ‘plain truth’ that ‘nothing is more hurtful to a prince / Than to be scrupulous and religious’ (17.141–2). Yet because he is the central and dominant character – a tyrant who remains unpunished to the end – he achieves a profile and credibility that encourages the audience to identify with at least part of what he has to say, much as it may have done with another daring performer, the preacher William Burton. On the other side of the antithesis is Bullithrumble, the English shepherd tending his sheep in the Turkish countryside, whose ‘grassy lands’ (21.16) sound rather more like the Norfolk broads. The lowliest of characters in the play and clearly intended to engender popular identification, he initially mistakes the disguised Corcut for an attacking devil. In selfdefense he declares himself ‘a Christian’ by offering to ‘go forward in my catechism’ and invoking his ‘godfathers and godmothers … to swear it upon the font-stone, and upon the church book’ (21.73–4,77–8). Although the devoutly Muslim Corcut credits Bullithrumble with his conversion, it has much more to do with Corcut’s potential starvation. Ironically, as Corcut embraces a hunger for ‘the Word’ he becomes the play’s most articulate Christian. Faced with certain death he attempts to convert Selimus. Before calling upon ‘Thou God of Christians’ to receive his ‘dying soul into thy hands,’ he delivers a miniature evangelical sermon arguing that without repentance Selimus’s ‘soul shall be tormented in dark hell,’ and more broadly that we the audience ‘are reserved to lasting punishment’ (22.67, 78, 83–4). Considering the strength of Calvinist nonconformity in Norwich and its connection with conversion and repentance, some Norwich playgoers could have associated Corcut with evangelical puritans. While Corcut may be the only Christian convert in the play, he is not the only Muslim to articulate Christian values. These Turkish tyrants inspire several wise and loyal followers who, despite their devotion to

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Islam, could have achieved a sympathetic hearing from English audiences. For instance, Aga responds to Acomat with the aphorism: ‘Whom fear constrains to praise their prince’s deeds, / That fear eternal hatred in them feeds’ (14.46–47). Such observations fare poorly in the tyrannical world of the play, but just before Acomat gouges out his eyes and cuts off his hands, Aga offers another warning: ‘Where there’s no shame, no care of holy law, / No faith, no justice, no integrity, / That state is full of mutability’ (14.34–6). Custom-made to establish common ground with a popular English audience, Aga’s warnings introduce a theme of mutability reflected in the anxieties of a number of lesser characters who fear violent turmoil. Another follower of Bajazet, Mustaffa expresses true ‘allegiance to my king’ (9.75) and counsels him not to abdicate because this will lead his sons to ‘rend the bowels of this mighty realm’ and ‘waste the empire all with fire and sword’ (9.202, 207). This concern for order would have received a sympathetic hearing from many Elizabethans who feared the effects of internal religious differences, religiously motivated external threats like the Armada, or uncertainties as to the virgin queen’s successor.22 Although clearly concerned with contrasting the effects of morally motivated leadership and selfish tyranny, these characters complicate the Turkish/English binary by giving voice to both sides within the Turkish camp and by raising issues of concern within Elizabeth’s England. These loyal followers also make their leader more sympathetic and provide a basis for at least limited identification with a Turk who at times reminds us of the players’ patron. Bajazet is a reigning king beset with both foreign and domestic threats. Although he has provided for his succession – and at the same time for his precipitous downfall – through his three sons, his perspective on the ‘cares’ that ‘under crowns’ ‘do lie’ parallels that of the queen. Elizabeth clearly understood the fear of ‘hidden mischief [which] lurketh in the dark’ and of ‘Public disorders joined with private cark’ (1.22, 26, 28). Ultimately the image of the sword of Damocles hanging over the emperor’s throne and his confession that ‘we fear seditious treason … Our chiefest trust is secretly distrust’ (9.17, 23) were designed to generate empathy with monarchs generally as persecuted figures. Of course we gradually realize that Bajazet’s rise to power and his means of maintaining authority sit not much higher on the moral scale than those of Selimus, but the spectacle of Bajazet’s fall could have had a compelling effect much like the performance of the Turkish tightrope walker. We identify with Bajazet’s fundamental vulnerability and humanity in spite of his ethnic and religious orientation, his political position, and his tactics.

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Despite his links with Elizabeth and his pleas for sympathy, Bajazet displays no particular religious commitment, and just before his death he utters an extended curse on heaven and earth. Elsewhere he betrays a questioning mindset which leads him to criticize authority and absolute monarchy: For what hath rule that makes it acceptable? Rather what hath it not worthy of hate? First of all is our state still mutable And our continuance at the people’s rate; So that it is a slender thread whereon Depends the honor of a prince’s throne. (9.7–12) Such questioning within the context of the Elizabethan political climate may have had nearly as breathtaking an effect on the audience as Selimus’s atheistic perspective. Elizabeth established subordination to her people’s will and loyalty as a common trope in speeches like the famous Golden Speech, but coming from a soon-to-be-deposed stage monarch this might have been a bit too ‘true’ and plainly spoken for Elizabeth’s taste in the 1580s and 1590s. Elizabeth’s balancing act negotiating the ‘slender thread’ of allegiance and loyalty could be quite compelling in person, but such a balancing act from a Turkish emperor on a stage could open up destabilizing critical reflection. If the purpose of establishing the Queen’s Men was spreading Elizabeth’s influence and ‘unifying the country’ around the ‘true religion,’ then Selimus constitutes a surprisingly complex and conceptually pluralistic approach. The play’s antithesis emerges as a continuum of such diverse and potentially destabilizing religious and political heterodoxies that it throws into question the extent to which playwright and players were consciously orchestrating the promotion of Elizabeth’s agenda. In attempting to counter Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, the players created the spectacle of the queen’s servants touring with and playing the Turk, thereby overtly profiling the alliance Elizabeth had established with the foreign infidel, perceptions of which caused Elizabeth some anxiety.23 It might be argued that the intention behind the play was to shift one-sided conceptions of the new Turkish allies.24 Just as the Christian reform was renegotiating what it meant to be Christian, so too the development of trade and diplomatic relations with the Ottoman empire was catalyzing a renegotiation of what it meant to be a Turk and a Muslim. The range of religious beliefs in this theatrical Turkish

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empire may have contributed to this renegotiation, but the play’s diversity along with Bajazet’s views on royal authority necessitate a broader consideration of the play’s actual reception. From the perspective of the performative and religious climate of Norwich it could well be that performing a character like Selimus, who asserts an individual and independent approach to religious belief so vigorously, may not have been the best choice for fostering the singularly conformist religious and political allegiances the queen might have intended.

4.2 Elizabeth I on progress and the negotiation of the ‘true religion’ The larger performance text within which Norwich audiences would have responded to Selimus included a live performance by the most obvious antithesis to its Turkish tyrants. Elizabeth’s arrival in the city with her court for a week-long visit in 1578 would have been etched in the minds of many Norwich citizens who watched Bajazet’s spectacular procession with ‘Mustaffa, Cherseoli and the janissaries’ at the beginning of Selimus.25 Like the performances of Selimus, Elizabeth’s ‘performance’ in Norwich continued beyond the actual event to encompass a much broader audience in print through two chronicles ‘set out playnely and truly’ to teach ‘a lesson, howe to behave’ when entertaining a queen.26 Both accounts portray the queen as a model Christian monarch and head of the English Church who inspires allegiance inextricably linked to the city’s welfare and identity. Most obviously, Elizabeth’s ‘performance’ of godliness included attendance at cathedral services and sermons while staying at Bishop Freke’s Palace (299). As if to highlight the contrast with infidels, her arrival at the cathedral was preceded by a song and speech presented by a boy dressed in headgear of ‘the Turkishe fashion’ (299). Through such pageants and spectacle the construction of the Christian queen became a mutual project of city and monarch. As with the Queen’s Men’s plays, allusions to English history – augmented in this case by biblical history – figured prominently. In the second pageant, for instance, five women – the personification of the City of Norwich; the biblical characters Deborah, Judith, and Esther; and Martia ‘sometime Queen of Englande’ (256) – contributed to the godly credentials of Elizabeth’s leadership and power over the ‘Tirant’ (259). Deborah observes that God’s ‘blessed giftes’ will ‘abounde’ and the kingdom ‘firmely stand’ because of godliness (257).

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Literally establishing common ground with the citizens as she entered the city gates, Elizabeth spatially reinforced the unity of monarch and city, past and present, and religious and political allegiances as represented by the gate decorations: a ‘scutchion of … Saincte George his crosse’, the city arms, ‘ye Falcon, hir hyghnesse Badge’, and the motto, ‘God and the Queen we serve’ (253–4). Annual civic celebrations commemorating key points of intersection between local and national history (the queen’s accession, the suppression of Kett’s Rebellion, and the defeat of the Armada) served to reinforce the authority of both governments,27 but on this occasion city and queen could mutually construct a godly image. The mayor reported that, ‘God being our guide,’ city magistrates have ‘so ordered the governance of this citie,’ as to preserve it for ‘your Majesties use, and [have] made the people therin (as much as in us lieth) first, most studious of Gods glory and true religion, and next of your Majesties health, honour, and pleasure’ (251). The spectacle of the ensuing pageants reinforced his message by embodying the ‘Common welth of the Citie’ with characteristics such as ‘God truly preached,’ ‘The people obedient,’ and ‘Universall concorde preserved.’ Elizabeth reciprocated by protesting that she had no need of the city’s gift of money but only ‘the heartes and true allegeaunce of our Subjects’ (253). By the end of the first day, these performances had clearly situated both queen and city in a Christian commonweal far removed from Selimus, but local residents as well as the queen would have framed this idyllic image of present and past with an awareness of recurrent local unrest.28 Although the city’s entertainments for the queen repeatedly reference ‘godliness,’ it is seldom developed with more specific particulars characterizing the ‘true religion’ – perhaps because religious consensus was not the city’s strength. For instance, brief allusion to Elizabeth’s ‘puissant father’ who ‘Did sacke, and spoile’ ‘new Rome that purple whore … of all hir glittering tire’ (253) would not have played very well with local residents who had supported Sir John Appleyard’s pro-Catholic uprising in 1570. Such loyalties did not dissipate quickly. Although the city initiated an annual sermon to commemorate deliverance from the Armada and Catholicism in 1588, it also had to dismiss a councilor for expressing his rage and disappointment at Spain’s defeat by assaulting a man.29 Despite confiscation of ‘popisshe stuff,’30 arrest, and imprisonment, Catholic sympathizers continued to achieve positions of power – even the mayoralty.31 Appleyard’s uprising had also drawn upon ethnic tensions by attracting individuals who resented the many Dutch and Walloon Protestants in

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the city. The participation of the Dutch minister in welcoming Elizabeth could hardly have dispelled such resentment. He addressed Elizabeth as ‘the nourse of Christ his church, whose minde obedient to Gods worde, the spirite of Christ, and zeale of Godlinesse … hath instructed’ (264). Given that Elizabeth had opened the country and Norwich to these ‘strangers’ fleeing persecution under Catholic Spain, he had good reason to praise and thank her. Yet his address foregrounded cracks in the carefully constructed common ground. Despite the minister’s assertions to the contrary (265), the ‘strangers’ were not universally well received, and Elizabeth’s association with these ‘others’ (like the Turks) would have been at best problematic. Another effect of the Dutch minister’s speech would have been to highlight the extent of puritan religious difference. Collinson has argued that the presence of the ‘strangers’ contributed to the growth of nonconformist sects.32 As we shall see, Elizabeth did not at all support such religious movements, so the evangelical ‘zeal’ urged upon her in this speech for ‘induing your majesties subjects more and more with true knowledge of him’ (266) could have caused the queen some discomfort. In fact, within a few months of her departure, Bishop Freke followed up on her insistent suppression of nonconformity and heresy by interrogating Matthew Hamont, ‘a ploughwright of possible Dutch descent’ who ‘denied the divinity of Christ, rejected the New Testament as a fable and slandered the queen.’ Knighted during Elizabeth’s visit for keeping both shows and city in ‘due and comely order’ (249), Mayor Robert Wood then had Hamont’s ears cut off for treason before having him burned to death.33 Several religiously motivated executions took place in Norwich during the ten years following Elizabeth’s visit. Executions for Arian beliefs took place in 1583 and 1587, but perhaps the most extreme and independently minded of the executed nonconformists was Francis Kett, nephew to the Robert Kett who led the earlier uprising on Mousehold Heath.34 Referred to as a Jewish Arian,35 he held that ‘Christ Jesus is not God, but a Goodman, as others be.’36 The Norwich preacher, William Burton, characterized him as a ‘monsterous’ heretic but betrayed fascination with Kett’s performance when executed in 1589: ‘When he went to the fire he was clothed in sackcloth, he went leaping and dauncing: being in the fire, above twentie times together, clapping his handes, he cried nothing, but blessed be God, and so continued until the fire had consumed all his netther parts, and until he was stifled with the smoke.’37 For some Norwich citizens, then, Kett’s performance of religious difference could have qualified memories of Elizabeth’s earlier Norwich performance as

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head of the church and a ‘loving nurse and mother’ (257) ‘ingrafted’ with ‘singular clemencie’ (252). These brief examples of Norwich’s religious heterodoxy betray cracks in the common ground of orthodoxy. For the queen, the issue was not simply religious conformity but also the authority and political allegiance associated with it. While nearly all the entertainments for the queen constructed and reconstructed her godliness, they also constructed a clear distinction and hierarchy relative to God’s authority. Several entertainments acknowledged duty or offered thanks first to God and then the queen. For instance, when the ‘Puritan firebrand’38 Stephen Lymbert offered thanks for the peace brought to England by the ‘true religion and the worde of God,’ he pointedly first gave ‘thankes unto God Almightie, unto whose goodnesse only with thankes wee referre all this our happinesse … [, a]nd afterwards, unto your highnesse’ (279). While Lymbert went on to underscore the city’s loyalty by offering ‘our goods and substaunce … our strengthes and bodies’ if she or ‘this flourishing realme’ should ‘come in daunger’ (271), his speech expressed a sentiment at the core of recent local dissent. In 1576 Bishop Freke suspended nine city preachers for failure to conform to the Prayer Book – including John More, who served for many years at St Andrew’s Church under the patronage of city magistrates.39 Although acknowledging Elizabeth’s sovereignty, the ministers protested that conformity would ‘be to prefer the ordinance of man before the worde of God.’40 Elizabeth herself made distinctions between earthly and godly power,41 but despite the fact that Burghley brokered the restoration of the ministers just before Elizabeth arrived, Lymbert’s speech may have renewed anxieties about loyalties. To some degree this was justified as several Norwich parishes continued to ignore the Prayer Book and vestments throughout the 1580s, and representations for further reform continued to flow from the city to the archbishop and the Privy Council.42 Despite the veneer of the Churchyard and Garter accounts, a third account of Elizabeth’s trip may confirm such anxieties. The Spanish ambassador who was traveling in Elizabeth’s entourage reported that when Elizabeth ‘entered Norwich the large crowds of people came out to receive her, and one company of children knelt as she passed and said, as usual, “God save the Queen.” She turned to them and said, “Speak up; I know you do not love me here.”’43 Catholic bias may have affected this account, just as Protestant bias may have influenced Garter and Churchyard. But the ambassador’s story nevertheless encourages reflection on the extent to which personal experience and local collective memory may have differed from the official printed recollections. Just as

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the range of religious attitudes in Selimus rendered it vulnerable to unintended interpretations, so the diversity of religious beliefs intersecting in these royal entertainments opened up a potentially destabilizing range of received and constructed meanings, both as performed and as remembered. Apparently, spectators were capable of independent alternatives to the official intent of readings or performances, and from some perspectives, ‘Christian’ enforcement of religious conformity in a ‘godly commonwealth’ may have looked very like tyranny.

4.3 William Burton and the performance of conformity and difference in 1589 William Burton’s vivid account of Francis Kett’s heresy and execution leads us to an important question. If the queen and her council wished to strengthen their religious and political authority by promoting a moderate ‘true religion,’ why did they not rely on people like Bishop Freke and George Gardiner, Dean of Norwich Cathedral, and on local preachers like Burton? Susan Wabuda has observed that with the English Reformation the sermon assumed ‘a political aspect it had not had in the middle ages,’ so surely, the single voice and clerical point of view of the sermon would have made it more promising than its distantly related cousin, dramatic performance, as a source of ‘truth and plainness.’44 Norwich city fathers certainly saw the potential of preaching. They supported numerous ministers financially and politically. When it acquired St Andrew’s Hall at the dissolution, the same hall where the Queen’s Men performed, the city inherited the seat of a formidable tradition of Dominican preaching, and throughout the 1580s the city paid for special sermons. Even a cursory look at William Burton’s sermons, for instance, attests to their popular appeal through compelling rhetoric laced with striking examples clearly intended for lively, performative delivery; and, like plays and chronicles of Elizabeth’s progresses, printed sermons could extend the impact of their performance text. With access to this more orthodox and dependable persuasive mode, why was it necessary, or even wise, for Elizabeth to invest players with such a responsibility? One answer comes from Elizabeth’s attitude towards preaching. When disputing with Archbishop Grindal regarding the suppression of ‘prophesying,’ a kind of preaching that thrived in Norwich, Elizabeth pronounced that ‘two or three preachers were sufficient for a whole county.’45 A closer look at the religious climate in Norwich and a sermon Burton preached at Norwich Cathedral in 1589 gives us insights into why she thought so. More particularly, it provides a

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snapshot of the religious beliefs towards authority held by one Norwich resident at roughly the same time that the Queen’s Men might have been performing Selimus. As a preacher in the Church of England, Burton could be seen – particularly when speaking at the cathedral with civic officials present – as a representative of local church authority charged with promoting the standard of orthodox religious beliefs that more secular performances might emulate. This sermon, then, should provide a better sense of the kind of performative competition local preachers provided for touring players as well as of the horizon of religious beliefs that Norwich residents might have brought to Selimus. As with the two previous performance texts, an appreciation of the sermon’s impact and received meaning depends on an understanding of the religious climate and in particular of the extremes of religious difference vying against orthodoxy. Burton echoes Corcut’s puritan zeal for conversion as he itemizes a bewildering array of ‘characters’ who might lead others astray if not converted: Jews, Anabaptists, Neuters, libertines, barbarians, Brownists, usurers, worldlings, turncoats, presumptuous or desperate persons, papists, church papists, the Turks, atheists, and Machiavels.46 Although several of these false believers sound as though they have just stepped out of Selimus, the Turkish/Christian binary of the play seems easier to negotiate than this preacher’s fractured vision of religious difference. Rather than focusing on a comfortable conformist/non-conformist binary, Burton constructs a whole constellation of beliefs, and then singles out three ‘sorts of men’ whose ‘uncharitable practices’ of excommunication appear to have local and personal significance. Obviously these include the ‘Papists’ whose allegiance to ‘the dyrtie decrees of an Italian Priest and devilish ordinances of hel itselfe’ (A4v ) was, as we have seen, both shared and persecuted by factions of Norwich citizens. A second category consists of the ‘Brownists, who cast of the whole church of Englande for no apparent Church of God’ (B1). When Burton first came to the area in 1581 to be vicar at Aylsham and master at Norwich free school,47 he would have encountered Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, the so-called Brownists or ‘congregationalists,’ who left Norwich with their congregation for exile in the Netherlands a year later – quite possibly inspired by the Dutch and Walloon exiles in Norwich. The Brownists believed that ‘everie whole church, and … the elders therein, is above the Apostle, above the Prophet, the Evangelist, the Paster, the Teacher and every particular Elder.’48 Although this extreme attitude might seem to set them on the fringes, Burton’s headmaster, Stephen Lymbert, who delivered the previously discussed oration to

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Elizabeth, promoted Harrison, and 173 other inhabitants of Norwich had joined Harrison and Browne in signing a supplication for further church reform beginning with the elimination of ‘the government of Antichrist also with all his archprelates and all his court keepers.’ Instead they called for government by the ‘holie Eldership.’49 These first two ‘sorts of men’ were perhaps predictable but his third category must have taken his audience by surprise. He deplores the fact that ‘Church governours, who use … to make excommunication hacken about the country for fees, for trifles & matters of no moment’ and ultimately cast ‘out members of the Churche to the devill’ (A4v ). Regardless of whether this alludes to recent executions, the removal of reforming clerics, or the censure of parishioners of all stripes through church courts, the boldness of his ‘truth and plainness’ from the cathedral pulpit could hardly have endeared Burton to the dean and chapter. He had previously demonstrated his capacity to challenge church authorities as early as 1583. Just as queen and council had hatched a plan for taking control of players, so too Archbishop John Whitgift had set out a program for managing reform and discipline within the church. Burton was one of 62 Norfolk ministers who signed a refusal to endorse the three articles directed particularly at puritan preachers. As the sermon proceeds, it becomes clear that Burton intends again to challenge orthodox religious authority. He daringly transforms the cathedral, with its intertextual intersections encompassing episcopal authorities, the queen, and her players, into a contested site for the negotiation of religious beliefs and allegiances. His puritan sympathies surface again when he castigates present day ‘Pharisees,’ presumably deans and bishops, as well as local parishioners who report what he sees as trivial faults of a minister and call him a ‘rebel’ if ‘he wil not weare the surplice every Sunday & holy day.’ Burton lists several similar breaches in protocol and after each one sarcastically queries, ‘Is not this a sufficient cause to deny the minister of his maintenance?’ (C4-D1). Declaring that ‘it is more dangerous now adaies to reprove sinne, then to commit sinne,’ he singles out ‘magistrates,’ who must not be criticized, and by implication church authorities, who will not brook any meddling with ‘abuses or corruptions of the church’ (D2). If ministers ‘complaine to the rulers’ about ‘remnants of idolatrie,’ for instance, they are seen as disobedient (H1r-v ). Burton’s motivation derives from a perception of allegiance, to which I alluded in discussing the entertainments for Elizabeth. His ultimate justification for reproof derives from a sense of responsibility: ‘I am but a servant, therefore I must doe my masters message. … [H]e that

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doeth but his masters message, is not therefore to be blamed’ (B3v ). To fulfill their responsibilities, ministers ‘must be no time-servers; against principalities & powers, against holdes mightie and strong … the world and worldinges, the devil and hell’ (E2v ). Citing scriptural justification, he distinguishes between the authority of God, his religious master, and that of princes: The Minister of God … hath authoritie by the word to reproove Princes, as the prophet saith, but not by the sword to remove princes, as the Pope saith. … He hath authoritie to reprove thinges amisse in the Church or commonwealth by doctrine, as the word saith, but not of himselfe to reforme by practise, as the Brownist saith. For deposition of Princes belongeth to God onely: reformation of Churches and Commonweales belongeth to Princes onely: but the reprooving of sinne in Prince, Church or commonwealth, belongeth to Ministers also. And this they may doe, this they ought to doe, yet with wisdome & discretion. (B4–B4v ) Elsewhere he extends the right and responsibility to question worldly authority even to the lay parishioner when he criticizes the sinfulness of the many who ‘under pretence of obedience to princes, would geve entertainment to any religion, forgetting that God must be obeyed before man’ (H3).50 Such thinking had proved problematic even for the likes of Archbishop Grindal. In his defense of prophesyings he told Elizabeth, ‘I am forced, with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess, that I cannot with safe conscience, and without the offence of the majesty of God, give my assent to the suppressing of the said exercises.’ He stood ready to be removed from office but asked her to bear with him, ‘if I choose rather to offend your earthly majesty than to offend against the heavenly majesty of God.’ He admonished her to refer matters of religion to churchmen and in this area not ‘use to pronounce so resolutely and peremptorily … as in civil affairs. Remember, Madam, that you are a mortal creature.’ Patrick Collison has observed that Grindal was the only Elizabethan prelate to make such an assertion ‘and the result was suspension from office and the irretrievable loss of … favour.’51 Despite the best efforts of some civic officials who heard and defended Burton’s sermon, a similar fate awaited him. The preface to the sermon reveals that after its delivery he was ‘accounted an enemy to Caesar, … turned out of living,’ ‘interdicted of his ministery for a sabboth of yeeres,

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and by a publique acte, disabled from all kinde of scholasticall function throughout the whole land.’ He acknowledges that ‘we are in all holy duety to give no offence, to Jew, Grecian, nor to the church of God’ (i), but he is publishing the text of the sermon ‘faithfully translated from the pulpit to the pen,’ including ‘those things whereof he was accused … even as they were uttered,’ so he can leave judgment of the sermon ultimately in God’s hands (iv). Even after his ostracism, Burton still asserts the higher authority of God over ‘Caesar’ and in so doing displays a fierce independence of religious belief. Rather than Elizabeth’s middle ground of religious moderation, Burton positions himself on the middle ground of critique between prince and Church of England, and between pope and Brownist.

4.4 Intentionality and received meaning Such models in the pulpit leave little doubt that cracks which appeared in the authoritative performance of godliness during the queen’s visit revealed religious divisions within the community and a bent towards the independent negotiation of religious belief that could have activated the destabilizing potential of the performance of Selimus. In fact, Burton’s forceful climactic plea for the ‘conversion or salvation’ (I) of ‘this our English nation’ (I4) could potentially transform the play’s Christian/Turkish dichotomy, and in particular Corcut’s Christian plea for Selimus’s repentance, into a critique of a less than perfect Christian commonwealth and its leader. Burton observes, ‘come Spaniards, and we hold together: goe Spaniards, we fall asunder: come sicknes, & we send for the minister: come health, we hate the preacher: come death, wee geve a little to the poore: come life, some take all from the poore’ (I4). Like Burton, Corcut resolves to ‘freely speak my mind’ (22.42) in a miniature sermon ostensibly directed to an ‘other’ but from Burton’s perspective equally applicable to his Christian audience: … before his [God’s] dreadful majesty There lies a book written with bloody lines, Where our offenses all are registered; Which if we do not hastily repent, We are reserved to lasting punishment. (22.63–7) While all three primary texts examined in this study were performed by individuals occupying ‘official’ positions of authority, the level of local

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religious diversity and resistance may very well have defied containment in unitary or conformist interpretations. Multiple versions of ‘truth’ and ‘plainness’ were vying for the attention of local citizens. In particular, Burton’s sermon amply demonstrates that the containment of puritan preachers may actually have been much more difficult than that of players. Despite the potential for improvisation, the licensing of scripts as well as performances at court and in London theaters provided a mechanism of control virtually without parallel in the churches of Elizabethan Norwich.52 Parishioners were encouraged to assess sermons and the order of services and to report heretical ideas or irregularities to diocesan officials,53 but if influential members of a congregation approved of a cleric’s particular stance, he clearly had considerable latitude. Preachers like Burton saw players as competition in need of greater control, and bemoaned the fact that ‘as soone shall we get a hare with a taber’ as get some people to attend divine service – yet ‘they can be at playes by candlelight, & heare them until midnight, … and sweare by their trothe they finde more edefying in one play, then in twenty sermons’ (G4). But Elizabeth may have found the ‘truth and plainness’ of plays more ‘edefying’ than sermons precisely because she perceived the potential lack of conformity by preachers as the greater threat. Ultimately, the most critical point of intersection among the three performance texts has to do with the positioning of religious (and ultimately political) authority over Norwich citizens. It must be asked, however, to what extent nonconformist challenges to the queen’s religious authority seriously compromised the level of political allegiance she could expect? Records of audience response to preachers for this period are as scarce as they are for players, but one Norwich parishioner did leave such an account of a sermon thought to have been preached by John More, the ‘Apostle of Norwich,’ who refused to conform to the Prayer Book and whom Burton admired. Intriguingly, the account appears in the posthumously published Repentance of Robert Greene. Given the attitudes towards religious belief expressed in Selimus, it is not surprising that this Norwich son admits to having been ‘one of no religion, but rather as a mere Atheist, contemning the holy precepts uttered by any learned preacher.’ Greene charts the course of a degenerate life through most of the stages identified by Burton (libertine, worldling, turncoat, presumptuous and desperate person), but he confesses to ‘a trueth.’ Having once ‘felt a feare and horrour … of Gods judgementes’ at a sermon preached at St Andrews ‘by a godly learned man, whose doctrine, and the maner of whose teaching, I liked wonderfull well,’ and whose ‘singleness of hart, and zeale in his doctrine’ was such ‘that hee might have

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converted the most monster of the world,’ Greene ‘began to call unto mind the daunger of my soule, and … I said in my selfe, Lord have mercie upon mee, and send me grace to amend and become a new man.’ The preacher ‘beate downe sinne in such pithie and perswasive manner’ that Greene began to see ‘that I should bee wipte out of the booke of life, if I did not speedily repent.’ Apparently, his conversion did not last long when his friends began to call him puritan and ‘Presizian’ and jokingly urged him to take up a pulpit.54 Situated within the context of his self-dramatized life of exceptional depravity, however, Greene’s account still credits the preacher with engendering a searching and thoughtful, though fallible attempt by an educated man to make sense of and apply religious belief. Nothing in this account suggests a more political reflection that might have proved an obstacle to Greene’s ultimate role as playwright to the Queen’s Men. Rather it suggests an appreciation for religious diversity and difference and the capacity for live performance (in this case a sermon) to facilitate and engender independent religious reflection. It should not be surprising that the varied religious texture of Selimus reflects something of the heterodoxy which marked the contemporary character of Greene’s home town. Through his response to John More’s earlier performance, he may have realized that the strength and fascination of live performance rests not in its capacity to instill a unitary orthodoxy or secure a particular position of authority or allegiance, but rather in its capacity to create a space for the interactive and intertextual exploration of difference.

Notes I would like to acknowledge Professor Cameron Louis, who assisted with some of the transcription of city and diocesan records used in this paper. 1. Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen’s Men and their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26–8, 34. 2. Patrick Collinson, The Reformation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), 116. 3. Mary A. Blackstone, ‘Performance and the Intertextual Negotiation of Community: The Example of Elizabethan Leicester,’ Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 43 (2004): 76–8. 4. Paul Whitfield White, ‘Patronage, Protestantism, and Stage Propaganda in Early Elizabethan England,’ Yearbook of English Studies 21 (1991): 39– 52; White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); McMillin and MacLean, Queen’s Men, 33.

106 Shakespeare and Religious Change 5. Robert Greene, Selimus, in Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 59; subsequent references to this play will be to the text of this edition, cited parenthetically by scene and line number. 6. McMillin and MacLean, Queen’s Men, 32, 35–6, 158–60. 7. Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), esp. 33–6; William Leahy, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 8. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570), 1524. 9. We only lack specific records for visits in 1583/4 (the year after the players had perpetrated the murder of a potential playgoer in the city), 1587/8, and 1592/3. See David Galloway, ed., Norwich: 1540–1642, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 65–76, 368. 10. The seven plays are Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, Troublesome Reign of King John, Selimus, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, True Tragedy of Richard III, Famous Victories of Henry V, and King Leir; see McMillin and MacLean, Queen’s Men, 100. 11. Vitkus, introduction to Three Turk Plays, 18. Given that Greene is thought to have been raised in Norwich and that his father still lived there, a play by Greene would have been a good choice for performance in Norwich. See Robert Greene, ‘The Life and Death of Robert Greene Maister of Artes,’ in The Repentance of Robert Greene Maister of Artes (London, 1592), C. 12. For further such references see 1.135; 2.158; 3.32–4; 3.39; 3.66–7; 4.11–19; 9.123–4; 9.214–15. 13. Reports from Elizabeth’s ambassador in Turkey during 1588–89 contain specific references to Turkey’s altercations with Poland and Hungary. See for example, PRO, ‘Edward Barton to [Walsingham?],’ 18 January and 1 February 1589, and ‘Edward Barton to Walsingham,’ 12 and 29 June 1589, Cal. S. P. For., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (January–July 1589) (London, 1950), 87–8, 346–8. 14. Vitkus has noted the potential comparisons to be made in popular minds between the threats to the English Protestant commonwealth posed by Selimus and those posed by ‘another demonized despot, Philip of Spain’; Three Turk Plays, 21, 44, 49. 15. PRO, ‘Edward Barton to Walsingham,’ 27 June 1589, Cal. S. P. For., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (January–June 1589) (London, 1936), 348. In 1588 Elizabeth’s ambassador to Turkey categorized the potential Muslim/Protestant alliance in terms of their common opposition to Catholicism: ‘the Grand Signor earnestly desires friendship with her Majesty … especially for that her Majesty nor hers worship not idols as other Christians’; PRO, ‘Edward Barton to [Walsingham?],’ 31 August 1588, Cal. S. P. For., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (July–December 1588) (London, 1936), 173. 16. Galloway, Norwich, 96. Of course exactly what the scribe who created this record of the payment to the Queen’s Men and their ‘Turke’ meant by this term beyond denoting an Eastern ‘other’ is impossible to tell. 17. Christine Woodhead, ‘Harborne, William (c. 1542–1617),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online at http://www.oxforddnb.com (accessed January 2008). 18. Harborne was a strong Protestant, but as ambassador he focused exclusively on the business opportunities Turkey offered. Just as there had been a shift

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19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

from the medieval emphasis on destroying the Turk to a concern with his conversion, so too Harborne effected a further shift to emphasize trade and diplomatic alliances; PRO, ‘Edward Barton to [Walsingham?],’ 29 August 1588, Cal. S. P. For., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (July–December 1588) (London, 1936), 165. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays, 7–8. [‘… for Hungarian strangers landing in this kingdom and fleeing from Turkish captivity’.] Norwich Record Office, DCN 10/1/37, 1589–90. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays, 22. For a discussion of how plays like Selimus evolved out of a broad range of contemporary English anxieties, see Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1962). See, for instance, PRO, ‘W. Orme to Lord Burghley,’ 27 April 1594, Cal. S. P. Dom., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (1591–94) (London, 1867), 491. Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 171–2; Vitkus, Three Turk Plays, 44. While the spectacular and processional nature of this entry is not entirely clear from the spare stage direction, such an entry is a characteristic feature of the Queen’s Men’s plays; see McMillin and MacLean, Queen’s Men, 131. Galloway, Norwich, 297. These chronicles were Bernard Garter’s The Joyfull Receyving of the Queenes most Excellent Majestie into hir Highnesse Citie of Norwich (London, 1578) and Thomas Churchyard’s A Discourse of the Queenes Majesties Entertainement in Suffolk and Norffolk (London, 1578). They are reprinted in Galloway, 247–91 and 292–33, respectively. Further references to both are cited from Galloway and will appear parenthetically in the text. See, for instance the Norwich Chamberlains Accounts for 1589–90, Norwich Record Office NCR 18a/9, 15v , 16r . These included Kett’s 1549 rebellion and Sir John Appleyard’s pro-Catholic uprising of 1570. Despite civic efforts to address the cause of such unrest (The Mayor’s Book of the Poor, Norwich Record Office NCR 20c), it remained very much a part of anxious civic memory through the 1590s when the city continued to pay for a sermon ‘in remembrance of’ Kett’s rebellion. Norwich Chamberlains Accounts 1591–92, Norwich Record Office NCR 18a/10, 101v . Mayor’s Court Books, Norwich Record Office NCR 16a/12, 191–2. Mayor’s Court Books, 1582–87, Norwich Record Office NCR 16a/11, 387. See for example, Chamberlains Accounts, 1580–89, Norwich Record Office NCR 18a/9, 162; Mayor’s Court Book, Norwich Record Office NCR 16a/12, 251 [between 228 and 231]; NRO DN/DIS/9/1a; Muriel C. McClendon, The Quiet Reformation: Magistrates and the Emergence of Protestantism in Tudor Norwich (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 242; Thomas Stuart Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, [1959]), 73; Matthew Reynolds, Godly Reformers and their Opponents in Early Modern England: Religion in Norwich, c. 1560–1643 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 79; Samuel Tymms, ‘Popish and Sectary Recusants in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1596,’ The East Anglian or Notes and Queries, 2 (Feb. 1865): 159– 60; Tymms, ‘Popish and Sectary Recusants in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1595,’ The East Anglian or Notes and Queries 2 (March 1865): 176–8, and (April 1865), 179–82. Despite Bishop Freke’s proactive pursuit of nonconformist

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32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

puritan ministers, even he was criticized for sympathizing and associating with Catholics. PRO, Cal. S. P. Dom., The Reign of Elizabeth [I] 1581–90, 153–4; McClendon, The Quiet Reformation, 241. Although McClendon’s work has been helpful because of her substantial study of Norwich mayor’s court records, I agree with Reynolds in Godly Reformers, who refutes her argument that Norwich was an oasis of religious tolerance in the Tudor period. Patrick Collinson, ‘Calvinism with an Anglican Face: The Stranger Churches in Early Elizabethan London and their Superintendent,’ in Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent, c.1500–c.1750, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), 71–102; Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), 114–15. Mayor’s Court Books, Norwich Record Office NCR16a/10, 386; Reynolds, Godly Reformers, 86–8. For local documentation of the burning of Francis Kett as ‘an heretique for denying the deytye of christe’ and the license given to the Sheriff of Norfolk to carry it out within the city, see the Mayor’s Court, Norwich Record Office NCR 16a/12, 229 [between 250 and 253]. For a discussion of this string of executions within Norwich’s broader religious climate see Reynolds, Godly Reformers, 86–8. John More, A Table from the Beginning of the World (London, 1593), 225. William Burton, Davids Evidenece [sic], or, The Assurance of Gods Love (London, 1592), 138. Burton, Davids Evidenece, 138–9. A preacher and headmaster at Norwich Free School, Lymbert is thought to have taught Robert Greene and to have worked with William Burton; H.W. Saunders, A History of the Norwich Grammar School (Norwich: Jarrold, 1932), 142, 256, 265, 269. For instance, in 1589–90 the city supported five special sermons; Chamberlains Accounts, Norwich Record Office NCR 18a/10, 1589–1602. BL Add MS 48101, 133v , as cited in Reynolds, Godly Reformers, 74. See, for instance, Frye, Elizabeth I, 346–8. See, for example, Norwich Record Office DN ANW 3/10 (no foliation) for evidence of puritan infractions and recusancy coexisting within parishes such as St Andrews and St George’s Tombland; see Reynolds, Godly Reformers, 73–6. PRO, Cal. S. P. Span., Reign of Elizabeth [I] (1568–79) (London, 1894), 611; as cited in Leahy, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions, 86. Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65, 89–99. Collinson, Reformation, 116. William Burton, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedrall Church in Norwich, the xxi Day of December, 1589 by W. Burton, Minister of the Word of God There [London, 1590], F3v –G1; all references to this sermon will be to the text of this edition, and will appear parenthetically in the text. Reynolds, Godly Reformers, 79–80 n.70. The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, ed. Albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson (London: Allen and Unwin,1953), 399. The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. Albert Peel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 1.157–60.

The Queen’s Men and the Performance of Allegiance 109 50. Burton, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedrall Church in Norwich, H3. For a broader discussion of ‘resistance theory,’ the critique of princes as applied to Elizabeth, and the ‘ideological capacity’ of her subjects to critique and resist the monarchy as ‘a ministry under God,’ see Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon, 1994), 43–8. 51. Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 60, 195–6. 52. See Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), especially 74–86. Only the Dutch church in Norwich had a system for vetting and approving their preachers’ sermons each week; Norwich Record Office NCR 17d, 38v . 53. See for instance Norwich Record Office NCR 16a/11, 42, 52, 362; 16a/12, 308, 540. Wabuda credits the laity’s critique of preachers as an important development deriving from the Reformation and the royal supremacy; Preaching during the English Reformation, 93–9. 54. Greene, ‘Life and Death of Robert Greene,’ B, C2v –C3. As with much of the material published under Greene’s name after his death, we cannot be sure that he actually wrote this account, but the section dealing with his time in Norwich does seem accurately to reflect what we know about the preaching climate there.

5 Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare’s Plays Elizabeth Williamson

I In the penultimate scene of The Winter’s Tale (1610), the Third Gentleman describes Hermione’s statue as ‘a piece many years in doing and now newly performed’ by the artist Giulio Romano.1 This tantalizing clue about the material process of making the statue challenges any simple identification of the work as Giulio Romano’s, but the phrase ‘newly performed’ also has implications for our reading of the text itself. When the statue of Hermione comes to life in act 5, the miracle is explicitly construed as a theatrical performance choreographed by Paulina. The association between visual art and live theater is thus established by the phrase ‘newly performed’ and then materialized in the play’s final scene, which trades the artfulness of the statue for the miracle of the living actor. The fact that the piece has been ‘many years in doing’ and is now ‘newly performed by that rare Italian master’ suggests an analogy between Romano and Shakespeare, who has created his play by revising an existing artwork, the prose romance Pandosto (5.2.95–6; 301A). At the same time, the revelation of the actor’s body behind the guise of the statue also signals the emergence of a new type of theatrical event. The Winter’s Tale thus acknowledges its own influences while calling attention to the ways in which Shakespeare has reconfigured existing dramatic forms. So what were the other forms or conventions that contributed to the final scene of The Winter’s Tale? In attempting to align this text with broader trends in early modern drama, many scholarly readers have turned to other plays that include statues, specifically, statues that move.2 The Winter’s Tale was also influenced, however, by a set of performance traditions that developed around the use of tomb properties 110

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and Hermione’s resurrection can be read as the result of generic conventions surrounding the tomb property that were ‘many years’ in the making, though ‘newly performed’ in Shakespeare’s play.3 I argue here that The Winter’s Tale is not the last in a long line of statue narratives but one of a significant group of early modern plays whose resurrection scenes, in which an actor steps or leaps out of a tomb, reference and refigure a set of existing tropes. Shakespeare’s play closely resembles other Jacobean resurrection plays such as Thomas Heywood’s How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602), The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (1611), and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614), all of which revolve around mistreated women. And although these seventeenth-century resurrections were essentially secular, they themselves were heavily influenced by the mystery cycles performed in pre-Reformation England, as evidenced by the similarity between early modern stage devices and the tomb properties used in the Catholic dramas of the Middle Ages.4 In the next chapter of this volume, Karen Sawyer Marsalek highlights the emotionally charged nature of performance spaces, such as the Blackfriars, that physically embodied the Catholic past evoked by English history plays. In what follows I lay out a similar pattern of material traces, stage properties, and gestures that carried with them a deeply rooted form of cultural memory. Shakespeare had been experimenting for years with this particular set of tropes, looking for new ways to exploit its dramatic potential. The more powerful these stage resurrections became, however, the more carefully they had to be distanced from the taint of idolatry. In the case of The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare created a fundamentally different theatrical aesthetic in order to access the affective power of the Resurrection without duplicating its Catholic trappings. As Darryll Grantley has argued, many of the difficulties associated with reading plays such as The Winter’s Tale ‘arise from critical approaches that do not take sufficient account of the tradition of religious drama and art – a tradition which is not an unimportant element in the background to Shakespeare.’5 In an effort to remedy this lack of attention to the medieval period, Anthony Dawson has supplied a provocative theory about the relationship between the theater and other forms of cultural production, including religious practice. He argues that certain ‘habits of thought’ – inspired, in the example he provides, by post-Reformation debates about the status of the Eucharist – continued to revolve around religious questions, and that these habits of thought in turn informed the subject matter that appeared in the public theater.6 This view of the English theater as one whose vocabulary was still conditioned by questions of sacrality is an attractive one, validated by the persistence

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of religious drama in the provinces and by the London theater’s own increasingly sophisticated methods of appropriating religious themes. To some extent, religion had been ‘emptied out’ of the theater, but this does not mean that affect (or ‘resonance,’ as Stephen Greenblatt calls it) was entirely absent from the early modern stage.7 On the contrary, the plays of this period work strategically to access the emotional qualities associated with religious dramas of resurrection. As Dawson argues in chapter 11 below, the theater’s ability to recontextualize the affective power of religious ritual actually helped facilitate its development as a distinctly secular cultural institution. One way of building upon the insights of Greenblatt and Dawson is to break down the concept of resonance into more specific terms. The two that will be employed in this essay are ‘material technology’ and ‘affective technology.’ On the early modern stage, a material technology was defined by the use of the stage property, and by the relationship between the object and the actor’s body. Together, the body and the tomb supplied a necessary, if not a sufficient, condition for accessing the emotional charge of the original religious event. Practically speaking, both medieval and early modern tomb properties had to be large and stable enough to house an actor, unless they contained holes that allowed the actor to enter them from a trap door in the stage; and both objects may have included a moveable lid. Characters are often described as being ‘in’ a coffin or tomb, and some scripts specify that the actor should ‘lift’ up his head or torso out of the tomb, while others call for characters to ‘rise’ from the tomb. Several tombs are ‘discovered,’ while others are carried on stage.8 The adjective ‘material’ is thus meant to encompass the series of decisions about how the resurrection was to be physically enacted. The lighting effects and gestures that accompany the moment of resurrection can also be described as material technologies. These techniques are not coded as either religious or secular; they are simply the tools used by actors to create a visual image. The term affective technology represents the emotional quality that the theater managed to translate from a religious medium to its own secular plots. Because it has to do with emotion rather than ritual or religion per se, the concept of affect may be useful in helping us tease out the continuity between various theatrical practices, rather than focusing on the distance between the social contexts in which they were produced. Admittedly, the sources and nature of theatrical affect are very difficult to pin down. It is easier to argue that a scene has a certain emotional quality than to identify the constituent elements that create that quality. But under the right conditions, the use of tomb properties opens up a new

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structure of feeling, one based on the power of interchanging absence and presence, that corresponded to the theater’s changing engagement with popular religious practice.9 Not all early modern resurrection scenes include an affective component, but those that do indicate that performers still had access to the powerful biblical narratives that provided the impetus for much of medieval theater. Both the material and affective technologies that link the mystery cycles to the plays performed in London’s public theaters rely on the interplay between absence and presence, a dynamic that can be traced back to the account of the Resurrection in the New Testament. The biblical story is not part of the theatrical tradition, strictly speaking, but like the dramatic forms that developed out of the liturgy, its emotional power derives from the disciples’ inability to comprehend Christ’s miraculous transfiguration. His return evokes a sense of pathos as well as joy, especially in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, which is characterized by the starkly human responses of the witnesses and by an increasing sense of confusion and deprivation. After visiting the sepulcher and handling the empty grave clothes, Peter is left bewildered, ‘wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.’10 And when Christ first appears to the apostles, their confusion deepens, for on the road to Emmaus he presents himself in the guise of a fellow traveler and they fail to recognize him as their lord. Only when they invite him to supper and he blesses the bread are they at last able to identify him, but this moment of recognition is immediately followed by one of profound loss: ‘[a]nd their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight’ (Luke 24:31). Although Christ’s appearance to his followers confirms the reality of the Resurrection, their various encounters with him serve to mystify rather than to explain his enduring presence. In fact when they find him standing among them later the same day, they are ‘terrified and affrighted’ thinking that they have seen ‘a spirit’ (Luke 21:37). The events described in Luke are noteworthy because they foreground the conflicted emotions of the disciples, and if we read this chapter as a constructed fiction, we can see that it employs absence strategically as a way of heightening the reader’s experience of the event. This technique provokes our emotions because Christ is suddenly present when we expect him to be absent and absent when we expect him to be present, first in the tomb and then later when he suddenly disappears in front of the disciples’ very eyes. The drama’s source material thus openly acknowledges the difficulty of describing the miraculous process by which Jesus becomes Christus resurrectus. Theologically speaking,

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this disappearance serves as proof that a miracle has taken place, but in Luke absence also operates on a structural level, for a description of the Resurrection itself is pointedly missing from the story. In England, the re-enactment of the Resurrection began with the liturgical drama, which celebrated the miraculous absence of Christ’s corpus – represented here by the consecrated communion wafer – from the tomb on Easter Sunday. The affective charge associated with the tomb in this early dramatic form derives both from the joy of knowing Christ’s divinity, and from the sense of loss expressed by the three Marys who come to visit the tomb looking for their lord. This highly emotional narrative was then carried over into the cycle plays, which represent a departure from the biblical narrative and the Catholic ritual in that they go so far as to depict the moment in which Christ bursts from his tomb leaving his grave clothes behind. These dramas were more realistic than symbolic, and the men who performed them were faced with the challenge of representing the Resurrection in believable terms while using a human actor to portray Christ. In response to this challenge, medieval performers heightened the confusion and sorrow of the other characters, suggesting that, at least on one level, Christ is still ‘missing.’ This dramatic tension between Christ’s absence and the disciples’ longing for his presence created good theater and took some of the pressure off the representational problem of making a human actor look like Christ. As in the biblical narrative, the moment of Christ’s Resurrection was often accompanied by a general sense of pathos and confusion, even in the post-Resurrection scenes where Christ appears to his apostles to comfort them. Thus, the emphasis on absence was simultaneously an element of the underlying theology, a material solution to a practical problem, and a means of shaping audience response. As we shall see, this interplay between absence and presence also structured The Winter’s Tale’s use of older dramatic forms, all of which were designed to negotiate the tricky problem of representing the miraculous. One of the advantages of distinguishing material and affective technologies from one another is that this strategy allows us to examine staging details apart from the political or religious conditions under which they were produced. By focusing on the material technology associated with the tomb property, we can gather important clues about what was physically possible on the London stage. The dramatic record suggests that medieval performers were aware of the representational pitfalls involved in depicting the Resurrection, and that they compensated by developing various strategies for provoking suspense and wonder among the citizens who gathered to watch the plays.

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The dramas performed as part of the Easter service in medieval English parishes dealt with the problem of representing the Resurrection by emphasizing the separation between the actors and the persons depicted in the narrative. One of the earliest forms of this tradition is the visitatio sepulchri, a piece of staged dialogue accompanied by the singing of hymns in which the three Marys come to see the body of their lord, only to be told by an angel that ‘non est hic’ – he is not here.11 In an English version of this ceremony, taken from the tenth-century Regularis Concordia of St Ethelwold, the stage directions repeatedly highlight the distance between the actors representing the Resurrection and the actual biblical characters. The brother portraying the angel is to enter ‘as if on other business’ before approaching the sepulcher, while the three ‘Maries’ are to wander ‘in the manner of seeking for something.’ Finally, after a short piece of dialogue, the Marys, who are referred to using the masculine pronoun to indicate the monks’ status as actors, reach into the tomb and take out the shroud, ‘as if demonstrating that the Lord has risen and is not now wrapped in it.’12 Some parishes apparently found a middle ground between the actor and the wooden crucifix, resulting in the resurrection puppet show. As part of a sermon against idolatry delivered in November of 1547, Bishop Barlowe of St David’s is said to have ‘shewed a picture of the resurrection of our Lord made with vices, which put out his legges of the sepulcher and blessed with his hand and turned his heade.’ He subsequently allowed several boys from the audience to destroy it.13 Equally suggestive is William Lambarde’s 1581 account in his Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum et Historicum, which claims that the inhabitants of Witney attracted visitors to their fair by staging ‘the hole Action of the Resurrection’ with ‘certein small Puppets, representing the Parson of the Christe, the Watchmen, Marie, and others.’14 Among contemporary representations of the Resurrection, these puppet shows were the most overtly anti-realistic. But as the liturgical scripts demonstrate, biblical events such as the Resurrection and Christ’s appearance to the disciples were difficult to stage convincingly, even in the most reverent atmosphere. In the cycle plays the act of resurrection itself is described with tantalizingly brief stage directions such as ‘Christus resurget’ and ‘Tunc Jhesu resurgente,’ along with references to the singing of a relevant hymn. But although surviving English play-scripts are short of detail, accounts of the French theater provide several clues about possible solutions to the problem of staging the Resurrection. The Paris play, for instance, calls for Jesus to appear ‘clad in white or quite naked, accompanied by the angels,’ and for him to ‘cunningly and suddenly rise up from the tomb through a

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wooden trapdoor which will close itself again as soon as he has risen, and our Lord shall sit down on the tomb without touching or knocking it in any way.’15 Informed by such evidence, David Bevington suggests that in the Chester play the action surrounding the supper at Emmaus might have been similarly arranged on two levels, and that Christ’s sudden exits and entrances may have been effected using a curtain and a trap door.16 In a play text associated with Mons, the actor playing Jesus is directed to rise ‘and put his right leg out of the tomb first.’ This seemingly irrelevant detail about the order in which Christ’s legs should appear reminds us that the author of the stage direction was thinking about the best possible way of presenting the actor’s body. The Mons author was also able to call for a particular set of special effects: ‘there should issue with him a great brightness and smoke of incense and light.’17 Although they are not as well documented, resurrections on the English stage may have employed similar devices, as suggested by the contemporary documents poking fun at the ‘Drummers’ who make ‘Thunder in the Tyring-house’ and the ‘twelvepenny Hirelings’ who make ‘artificial Lightning in their Heavens.’18 Although they go so far as to present the moment of Christ’s Resurrection on stage, many English play-scripts take advantage of the fact that the biblical narrative does not include any witnesses. In a majority of the cycles, the soldiers hired to guard the tomb are present during the act of resurrection, but because they sleep through the miracle they are forced to report the theft of the body without understanding what has occurred. As in the narrative from Luke, the soldiers’ confusion mirrors the difficulty of depicting the Resurrection, and consequently their remarks focus on the miraculous disappearance of Christ’s corpse rather than attempting to describe the presence of his resurrected body. The cycle plays give us hints about the material possibilities of staging the Resurrection, but more importantly they reveal the fact that the problems associated with dramatizing such an event were not unique to the London theaters. All of the resurrection dramas highlight the considerable emotional charge that accompanies Christ’s sudden appearances and disappearances, but the characters’ pained responses are especially poignant in the Chester play. It is only after Jesus vanishes that Luke and Cleophas grasp the identity of the ‘traveler’ they have been speaking to, and their response is pure grief: ‘Alas, alas, alas, alas! / This was Jesus in this place.’ The focus in the Chester dialogue is on ‘non est hic’ and on the apostles’ inability to see their lord, particularly when Christ literally ‘disappears from their eyes.’19 Nor does this initial encounter prepare the apostles

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for their next meeting, in which they mistakenly believe they are in the presence of a ghost. The Chester script makes the most of the sense of sorrow and confusion that marks their post-Resurrection meetings with their lord, and even the soldiers, who are often characterized in other plays by fright or outrage, convey some of this sense of loss. The dialogue in this scene also provides crucial hints about the staging of the Resurrection. ‘Owt, alas!’ the first soldier exclaims when he awakens. ‘Where am I? / So bright abowt ys herebye / that my harte wholey / owt of slough ys shaken.’ The third soldier is even more descriptive: ‘Alas, what ys thys great light / shyuning here in my sight? / Marred I am, both mayne and might.’20 Christ has already disappeared by the time they become aware of his absence, but they realize immediately that ‘Jesu ys rysen’ by the aftereffects of the miracle, which include the ‘great light’ mentioned by the third soldier, and their ‘alas’ seems to register some understanding of what they have missed.21 The script should not convince us, however, that the audience necessarily saw the ‘great light’ the soldiers failed to see. The dialogue’s insistence on the sudden brightness accompanying the Resurrection may indicate that these English performers were not able to recreate the spectacular effects of the French theater, and thus had to describe it verbally. In other words, the performers who produced the English mystery plays may have relied on their audience’s familiarity with the biblical narrative, and on their own imaginative powers, rather than on spectacular special effects. The re-enactment of Christ’s Resurrection has long been associated with the development of the public theater, but even in acknowledging the continuity between various dramatic expressions of this trope, scholars still tend to draw firm lines between medieval and early modern modes of performance. In many cases, this demarcation leads to unnecessary confusion, for as Michael O’Connell points out, the tradition of staging the Resurrection was still a ‘vital cultural practice’ in the early seventeenth century, a set of conventions that continued to inform and enhance the dramas being staged in the London public theaters.22 According to contemporary banns and other accounts, the Chester cycle was still being performed in the late sixteenth century, in 1560–61, 1565– 66, 1566–67, 1567–68, 1571–72, and finally in May of 1575. Clifford Davidson has concluded that the Chester cycle was ‘doomed’ in the same way all ‘popish images’ were doomed in sixteenth-century England, but in recent years scholars such as Lawrence Clopper have provided evidence to support Michael O’Connell’s insight, convincingly arguing that these and other cycle plays should be seen as part of a continuing tradition of dramatic performance that survived the Reformation because

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it was adapted to suit the times.23 And although one of the witnesses to the last performance of the Chester cycle speculated that some parts of the play were excised ‘because of the superstition in them,’ Clopper points out that it is difficult to find anything particularly superstitious in the text, or anything that can be related to tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is more likely, he suggests, that the plays were initially criticized for the way they represented the godhead, or for their association with individual Catholics.24 Moreover, the very fact that the cycle was produced at all in the 1560s and 1570s – probably without the figure of God the Father – makes it a noteworthy example of the kind of adaptation that was available to performers after the Reformation. This earlier evolution can also be seen as a precursor to the more drastic recontextualization of biblical subject material that went on in the public theaters a few decades later. In Clopper’s words, we need to be aware of the secular drama’s ‘indebtedness to and sharing with the persistent “medieval” traditions.’25 These traditions do not necessarily give us all the clues we need to reconstruct actual stage performances, but they remind us that early modern actors were confronting the same set of representational challenges that their counterparts faced in producing the cycle plays. If we give credence to O’Connell’s claim that there exists some continuity between the elements of the religious theater and those of the London playing companies, it is possible to see that not all the plays produced in Shakespeare’s day are concerned with ‘removing the experience of death from a sacred to a neutral zone,’ as Marjorie Garber and Michael Neill have suggested.26 On the contrary, audiences’ familiarity with the trope of resurrection established by the medieval drama allowed sixteenth- and seventeenth-century playwrights to draw upon the affective power of the events first depicted in the Bible.27 Thanks to the emotional power of the dramatic trope that was still available to them and to their audiences, the public theater companies were able to sidestep the more controversial aspects of the staging conventions they inherited from their Catholic predecessors. Early modern actors may have shared with their medieval counterparts a common set of parameters when it came to staging resurrections, but the way in which theater practitioners negotiated them was necessarily affected by government-sponsored attempts to exclude religious matters from the stage. Beginning in the 1560s, church authorities began to crack down on the mystery plays for their superstitious content, issuing orders such as the one that instructed the citizens of Wakefield not to allow the persons of the Trinity to be represented during civic

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productions.28 But censoring theologically controversial material was only one of the reasons for exerting tighter controls on theatrical production. After the brief return to Catholicism during Mary’s reign, Elizabeth and her ministers set about re-establishing domestic stability by enforcing absolute loyalty to the newly established Church of England. As a result, they outlawed not only the use of Catholic implements but also any unauthorized play ‘wherin either matters of religion or of the governaunce of the estate of the common weale shalbe handled or treated.’29 In addition to these changes in the subject matter of public theater plays, the playgoing experience itself was shifting from participation to consumption. The public companies used permanent, purpose-built playing spaces and their performances were funded by ticket sales rather than by civic and guild monies. Post-Reformation audience members, unlike their medieval counterparts, paid out of pocket to see plays that had been officially sanctioned by the Office of the Revels, and were aware that any depiction of explicitly religious material would be deemed illegal as well as blasphemous. On the other hand, their new role as consumers gave audience members the power to vote with their feet when it came to the content of public theater plays, and the flood of Protestant attacks against inappropriate treatment of religious subjects on the stage suggests that many audience members had a persistent interest in sacred subjects which the playing companies were more than willing to indulge. The Jacobean period, in particular, was characterized by the surprising prominence of religious themes and properties on the public stage. In an antitheatrical sermon published in 1608, William Crashaw complained bitterly that the London companies now ‘bring religion and holy things upon the stage.’30 In the years leading up to Crashaw’s outburst, forms of unauthorized popular drama had prompted the 1606 Acte to Restraine Abuses of Players, which specified that any person who ‘shall in any Stage play, Interlude, Shewe, Maygame, or Pageant jestingly or prophanely speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie, which are not to be spoken but which feare and reverence ... shall forfeite for everie such Offence by hym or them committed Tenne Pounds.’31 As Eamon Duffy and others have argued, the enforcement of Elizabeth’s articles of uniformity was neither immediate nor comprehensive. Moreover, the very ambiguity of those laws created a climate in which the nature of religious practice continued to be contested in a variety of media, including the pulpit, the printing house, and the stage.32 As the playing companies became more and more comfortable with their new medium and with mixed

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genres such as the tragicomedy, they continued to find new ways of reintroducing sacred subjects into their performances. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the struggle to reform the excesses of the stage continued during the later years of James’s reign and well into Charles’s. This reactionary trend culminated in William Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix (1633), a voluminous compilation of the offenses committed by players, both pagan and papist, throughout Western history. Prynne condemns, for instance, the ‘desperate madnesse’ of Catholics who turn the history of Christ’s life, including the Resurrection and the Ascension, into ‘a meere prophane ridiculous Stage-play.’33 Fortunately for Prynne, the London playing companies were not in the business of staging the Passion, but he still maintains that the very act of performing in public was enough to produce a negative effect on any playgoer. ‘Alas, what goodnesse, what profit doe men reape from stage playes,’ he demands, ‘that should any way engage their affections to them? Do [plays] not enrage their lusts, adde fire and fewell to their unchast affections; deprave their minds, corrupt their manners, cauterize their consciences?’34 Despite the fact that religious content was the exception rather than the rule on the London stage, Prynne and other critics of the stage were deeply anxious about the power that plays exerted over the emotions of their audiences. Prynne in particular seemed painfully aware that the continuity between the wicked Catholic past and the otherwise enlightened present was the theater itself. More so than any of his predecessors, he understood that the drama’s ability to provoke affective responses among members of its audience was, if not recognizably papist, dangerously uncontrollable.

II In his edition of The Duchess of Malfi, John Russell Brown suggests that John Webster found a tomb property lying disused in a tiring room, recognized its dramatic potential and wrote a script around it.35 The surviving evidence, however, belies this conclusion. Tomb properties were, in fact, employed in a wide variety of public theater plays, and early modern resurrections ranged from the satirical to the tragic. Resurrections were common enough, in fact, that they came to be associated with certain generic tropes – the jealous lover, the virtuous wife who is not truly dead, the missing person who reappears in another guise – which typically appeared in tragicomedies such as Thomas Heywood’s How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad and John Day’s Law Tricks (1604). In each of these plays, a husband attempts to poison his blameless spouse, but the poison has been replaced with a sleeping potion and

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she emerges from her tomb to marvel at her situation before forgiving him and appearing at his trial to save him from execution. Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) inverts the trope of the jealous husband and the wronged wife by calling for two young lovers, believed dead, to be brought back to life simultaneously, while John Mason’s The Turk (1607) presents a darker view of sexual fidelity, in which the female protagonist goes on a murdering rampage of her own after she is resurrected by her lover. Even Othello (1604) can be said to flirt with this tradition when Desdemona rouses herself just long enough to pronounce her husband’s pardon several minutes after he has smothered her. The widespread popularity of this theatrical tradition is evidenced by the consistent set of generic tropes associated with the tomb property, but also by the variety of ways in which playwrights, including Shakespeare, manipulated and reinvented those themes and conventions. The fact that the New Testament provided the source material for both medieval and early modern resurrections indicates the limitations of reading play-scripts as either sacred or secular based on their chronological proximity to the Reformation. This distinction, which is alien to traditional modes of performance, also falls short when used to describe the possible impact of an onstage resurrection in the public theater. Many early modern dramas can be construed as having an interest in the sacred insofar as they work to access the emotional charge associated with the original religious narrative. The force of that narrative comes not just from the theology behind the event, but also from the entertainment value of suspense, which was a factor in both the Catholic drama and in the commercial theater. The material and affective similarities between the two types of theatrical production, both of which sought to engage audience members’ emotions through a mixture of absence and presence, pathos and joy, provide important clues about Shakespeare’s contribution to the growing body of resurrection dramas being performed in the London theaters. Ever sensitive to the richness as well as the constraints of his medium, Shakespeare employed a wide variety of resurrections in his plays, and once we begin to pay attention to them within the context of an evolving dramatic tradition inherited from the medieval theater, it becomes evident that he had been experimenting with this set of material and affective technologies throughout his career as a playwright. Over a period of many years, he worked through a number of permutations of this staging convention until, sometime around 1610, he produced The Winter’s Tale. Several of the plays that precede it – Romeo and Juliet (1596), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), and Pericles (1608) – also make

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creative use of tomb properties, and thus provide an immediate context for the self-conscious appropriation of the resurrection tradition in the later work. Strictly speaking, the material technology that the London playing companies inherited from the medieval theater was the business of having an actor step or leap out of a coffin-like object. The tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet thus departs from other onstage resurrections because it does not call for Juliet to rise from her tomb. Instead, the play sets her resurrection – the moment in which the sleeping potion wears off and she ‘stirs’ (5.3.147; 76A) – in her family monument, where she lies in full sight on her bier, and experiments with the pathos of having Romeo mistake her false death for a true one.36 The force of this scene derives from the ironic juxtaposition of Juliet’s fake death, her revival, and her actual death: she is brought back to life from a false suicide only to die in earnest. Here the contrast between what might have been, had this been a comedy, and what actually takes place is made all the more striking by the fact that the scene takes place in a tomb. Through the appearance of Romeo just before Juliet’s reawakening, the play flirts with a comic ending, just as some comedies gesture toward a tragic ending before producing the necessary resurrection. Among this latter category of plays is Much Ado About Nothing, in which Hero’s wedding is broken off and immediately followed by her funeral. Her death is then carefully orchestrated by the friar, who urges her to ‘die to live,’ and prompts her father to maintain the fiction by performing ‘all rites, / That appertaine unto a buriall’ (4.1.253; 116A, 207–8; 115B). The friar’s hope is that the enactment of Hero’s death, and the lively presence of her ghost, will help Claudio on the path to repentance. ‘Th’ Idea of her life,’ he reasons, ‘shal sweetly creepe / Into his study of imagination. / And every lovely Organ of her life, / Shall come apparel’d in more precious habite: / More moving delicate, and ful of life,’ than when she lived in fact (224–8; 115B). The song sung at Hero’s funeral also hints at the possibility of her return, calling upon the surrounding graves to ‘yawne and yeelde your dead,’ until Hero has been properly laid to rest (5.3.19; 120B). The setting of this scene is the family mausoleum, but unlike Romeo and Juliet this play does not show Hero’s body, for she is awake and breathing in her father’s house. Playgoers are thus able to enjoy the irony of Claudio performing his penance in front of an empty tomb. Although it uses a different kind of stage property, one that underscores Shakespeare’s unconventional relationship with the generic tradition I have been describing, Much Ado About Nothing clearly relies on its

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audience’s awareness of the material technologies associated with early modern resurrection plays. This comedy deploys thematic elements that run throughout many of these scripts: it exhibits the potentially disastrous effects of male jealousy, but also the potential for love to triumph over death. In this sense, Much Ado About Nothing prefigures the treatment of the resurrection motif in The Winter’s Tale. Claudio’s devotions, and his promise to maintain them nightly, echo the repentance that Leontes performs after his wife’s death. Both Hero and Hermione survive because they have allies who are able to convert their husbands’ jealousy into repentance, mediators who understand that this transformation can only take place in the absence of the beloved. And like Much Ado About Nothing, in which the only substitute for the dead Hero is the live Hero disguised as another woman, The Winter’s Tale flirts with the idea of a replacement wife when Leontes promises Paulina that he will never marry again unless his new bride is identical to Hermione herself. The endings of the two plays are also strikingly similar in the way they frame the act of resurrection. In both plays, the lost wife is produced only moments before the final speech is spoken, and in each instance onstage witnesses are prevented from reflecting on what has just transpired. The friar’s promise that he will ‘qualify’ the amazement of the spectators by telling them ‘largely of fair Hero’s death’ after the festivities have ended clearly prefigures Leontes’s assertion that the events of those sixteen lost years will be described in a more ‘leysurely’ fashion at a later time (5.4.67, 69; 121B, 5.3.152; 303B). If we look too carefully, these plays suggest, we may begin to question the efficacy of such a neat resolution. Therefore, the friar urges us, ‘[l]et wonder seeme familiar,’ for the resurrection of the dead is both impossible and absolutely central to narratives informed by the Christian tradition (5.4.70; 121B). Like The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing uses the resurrection motif to perform the victory of love over human mortality, but as the plays’ attenuated endings suggest, both are simultaneously shadowed by death and loss. When Hero removes her veil and announces that, ‘[o]ne Hero died defiled, but I do live, / And surely as I live, I am a maid,’ she plants the idea in the audience’s mind that the Hero who ‘died defiled’ can never be fully resurrected (5.4.63-4; 121B). Rather than undermining the play’s impact, however, these darker overtones demonstrate the powerful connection between its fictional reversals and the tragicomic quality of the biblical narrative that stands behind it. Unlike other Shakespearean plays that employ the biblical motif, Pericles does call for a character to physically emerge from her tomb. Traveling in a ship wracked by storms, Pericles is forced to throw his

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wife, whom he believes to be dead, overboard in a rich coffin. It appears he has acted too soon, however, for immediately after she washes up on shore, Thaisa is ‘brought back to life’ by a magician named Cerimon, who narrates her revival for the audience: ‘Nature awakes, a warmth / Breathes out of her. ... See how she ’gins to blow / Into life’s flower again’ (92–4; E4r ). Like Paulina’s speech in 5.3 of The Winter’s Tale, Cerimon’s words are performative, for as he describes her resurrection, the audience sees it unfolding before their eyes. And as in The Winter’s Tale, the meeting between husband and wife is preceded by the meeting between the father and his daughter, a girl who resembles his wife as she looked at the time of her supposed death. Another parallel lies in the setting of these final reunions: Thaisa is eventually discovered in the temple of Diana, a community of vestal virgins that echoes the sanctity of Paulina’s ‘chapel.’ But the entire operation is much more natural, and more believable, than the one in The Winter’s Tale. Cerimon claims no special powers when he returns Thaisa to life, but rather blames those who pronounced her dead too soon. The many resemblances between the two plays suggest that Pericles is the natural precursor of The Winter’s Tale, but it differs fundamentally from the later play in having an ending that is untroubled by the possibility of loss. Pericles leaves no doubt as to how its protagonists have spent their time since they were separated, whereas The Winter’s Tale never fully explains where Hermione has been for the past sixteen years. The means by which Paulina has resurrected her remains something of a mystery, both to the characters and to the audience, whereas Thaisa’s recovery is easily explained by the fact that she was tossed from the ship too hastily. The only characters who die in Pericles are its malefactors, whereas the otherwise happy ending of The Winter’s Tale is clouded by the absence of Mamillius, the innocent son whose death means that he will never be returned to his mother. In other words, The Winter’s Tale challenges the notion that everything that has been lost can be recovered and resists giving its audience full satisfaction. By allowing the moment of resurrection to be tinged with a sense of sadness, both The Winter’s Tale and Much Ado About Nothing tacitly admit that their resurrections do not represent a complete solution to the problems of death and loss. One other element that sets Pericles apart from the plays discussed above is its staging of the resurrection, which is still firmly anchored in the use of the tomb property. By contrast, The Winter’s Tale eschews the stage business of having the actor emerge from her tomb or coffin, and thus escapes the problem of having to make the material technology appear realistic. A coffin-style prop appears not only in Pericles but in a

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series of plays produced by the King’s Men in 1608, 1611, 1618, 1631, and 1637, indicating that the company probably owned one or more. But The Winter’s Tale ingeniously reworks existing conventions without using a tomb property, providing an entirely new solution to the representational challenge of staging a character’s resurrection. Thus it directly and self-consciously references the phenomenon Dawson describes as the strategic translation of religious affect into the secular theater. Throughout act 5, The Winter’s Tale prepares its audience for a dramatic triumph in which Paulina presents a statue of the long-dead Hermione to her grieving husband and daughter. But in contrast to the sense of possibility that characterizes Paulina’s pronouncements in the final scene, her speeches in 5.1 use the trope of resurrection to relate events that can never take place. She describes Perdita’s recovery, for example, as an event, ‘as monstrous to our humane reason, / As my Antigonus to breake his Grave, / And come againe to me’ (5.1.41–3; 298B). Later in the same scene, when the lords are urging Leontes to marry again for the sake of his kingdom, Paulina protests that no woman could fill Hermione’s shoes: ‘one worse, / And better us’d would make her Sainted Spirit / Againe possesse her Corps, and on this Stage / (Where we Offendors now appeare) Soule-vext, / And begin, why to me?” (56–60; 298B). Paulina paints a picture of Hermione’s ghost as a resurrected spirit both insubstantial and corporeal. She goes on to speak further on the ghost’s behalf, telling Leontes that ‘[w]ere I the Ghost that walk’d, Il’d bid you marke / Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in’t / You chose her’ (63–5; 299A). And when a messenger describes Perdita, whose identity has not yet been revealed, as a ‘peerelesse peece of Earth,’ more lovely than any other member of the female sex, Paulina chides him for neglecting to mention the beauty of the dead queen. Lamenting man’s infidelity, she calls on Hermione directly, remarking that her ‘Grave,’ and her memory, have been forced to give way to the superficiality of ‘what’s seene now’ (94, 97–8; 299A). Paulina’s goal is the same as that of Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, to test the fidelity of the would-be husband. Like the earlier play, this one entertains the idea of having Hermione emerge from her tomb but withholds the physical property from the final scene, simultaneously revealing that the absent tomb was empty all along. As Leontes observes, he has ‘said many / A prayer’ at a grave that never had a body in it at all (5.3.140–1; 303B). In establishing the terms under which it will enact Hermione’s resurrection, the play directs audience members to a familiar set of conventions by referencing the trope of the false resurrection, a device that can be traced back to plays such as Romeo and Juliet. The dialogue between the

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gentlemen in 5.2 signals Shakespeare’s knowledge of the existing stage tradition, preparing the playgoer for the spectacle of Hermione’s statue coming to life by providing a tantalizing series of clues about the royal drama being played offstage. The story of Perdita’s return is a kind of resurrection motif in and of itself, and the stories told about her by the gentlemen in 5.2 echo the events of other tragicomedies, especially Pericles. When Pericles is reunited with his daughter, he sees Thaisa in her; similarly, Leontes is immediately attracted to Perdita because of her resemblance to his young bride. The likeness is so striking, in fact, that Paulina is forced to chide the king for having ‘too much youth’ in his eye (224; 300A). But if it is possible to read this scene as a reference to the long-awaited moment of resurrection, it is only because the language of the previous scene is so consumed with grave breaking. Although they are physically absent from the final act, graves are everywhere in the dialogue, and the affective technology associated with the opening of the tomb plays a vital part in the performance of Hermione’s resurrection. In the end, The Winter’s Tale does provide audience members with a reawakening, though it is not the one they have been expecting. As both fictional bystanders and paying customers stand in awe of the image, she tells them, ‘I like your silence, it the more shewes-off / Your wonder’ (5.3.21–2; 302A). No one can be silent, however, when the statue moves and becomes living flesh. The satisfaction audience members experience during this moment is enhanced by the fact that they, like the onstage spectators, have believed Hermione to be dead since the end of act 3. Consequently, they are as surprised as the rest of the characters when the play concludes with a comic ending involving reunions and marriages. At the same time, the play presents a barrier to the audience’s straightforward enjoyment of the performance, as the characters return again and again to the question of whether Paulina’s incantations are ‘lawful’ spells or dangerous works of witchcraft. Thus, the pleasurable tension in the scene is heightened by the suggestion that something not quite lawful might be taking place. The script purposefully calls attention to the unorthodox aspects of the miracle, which might easily have been associated with necromancy and superstition in the charged atmosphere of Jacobean London. The overt references to religion in 5.3 reveal a range of potential problems surrounding the introduction of Hermione’s statue. On the one hand, by making the statue come to life Paulina risks being accused of practicing black magic, and must reassure her audience that her ‘Spell’ is as lawful as Hermione’s ‘holy’ actions (104–5; 302B).37 On the other hand, Hermione’s image has the potential to provoke idolatry even

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before it begins to move. The setting of the play is technically a pagan one, but the statue is housed in what Paulina calls a ‘chapel,’ a term that might have led audience members to see the connection between this object and the statues of saints outlawed by Protestant reformers (86; 302B). The Winter’s Tale admits this possible connection when Hermione’s daughter Perdita kneels to the statue and asks its blessing. But Leontes’s mixed response to his wife’s reawakening is perhaps the best indicator of the characters’ capacity to alternate between delight and caution. When Hermione embraces him, he cries out, ‘[o]h, she’s warme: / If this be Magick, let it be an Art / Lawfull as Eating’ (109–11; 302B–303A). He is both transported with amazement that a stone image has become warm as flesh and anxious about the source of the miracle. Why, then, does the play invite the specter of idolatry by performing the animation of Hermione’s statue, engaging openly with England’s Catholic traditions?38 The answer is that the traditions the play is most interested in are theatrical traditions, not Catholic ones per se. The act of placing a statue in a chapel does connect the scene to specific kinds of worship outlawed by the reformers, but because Hermione’s statue moves it also recalls the set of staging conventions that had already become a vital part of the playing company’s repertory. When we consider that the play is invoking a set of practices that are both religious and theatrical, we can better understand why self-consciousness, anxiety, and wonder go hand in hand in its resolution. The Winter’s Tale anticipates the criticisms of strict Protestants who frowned on any direct visual reference to the Resurrection of Christ, while at the same time appropriating the power of the spectacular dramatic moment in which the one who was ‘lost’ is found again. This moment is even more successful in eliciting an emotional response from its audience precisely because it is never fully explained, and because, like the biblically inspired resurrections depicted in the medieval theater, it provokes both pathos and joy. At the same time, The Winter’s Tale insistently calls attention to the artfulness of the theatrical resurrection, thus distancing the scene from the religious context originally associated with the tomb property. In the words of Stanley Cavell, ‘religion is Shakespeare’s pervasive, hence, invisible business’ – invisible because the play never actually stages a resurrection in which a body rises out of a grave, pervasive because the Catholic theatrical tradition is at the heart of Hermione’s reawakening.39 When the statue is made or revealed to be living flesh, the audience sees a synthesis of artificial and natural forms that is unique to the theater and, the play asserts, superior to all other arts, including the craft of sculpture. Even early references to the sculptor Giulio Romano focus on

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the slippage between the object and its referent: ‘He so neere to Hermione, hath done Hermione, that they / say one would speake to her, and stand in hope of answer’ (5.2.99–100; 301A). Leontes’s first observation is that the statue has his wife’s ‘natural posture,’ and he is immediately compelled to address it directly, affirming that, ‘[t]hou art Hermione’ (23, 25; 302A). When the king observes the wrinkles on the image, Paulina reminds him that the carver has purposefully aged his subject; this is naturalism, she asserts, not idealized beauty. Prompted to ask her blessing, Perdita kneels to kiss the statue’s hand, and Leontes begs a touch from its lips. In both cases, Paulina begs them to refrain, pointing out that the ‘[o]yly Painting’ is still wet on the stone (83; 302B). Like Perdita in act 4, who hopes that Florizel would never worship a painting simply because it looked like her, Paulina is reminding the characters, and the audience, not to treat an object like a person. But the statue is in fact a body, recognizable as God’s creation rather than man’s idolatry. The theater uses human bodies as well as artificial forms, and thus, like grafting, it is ‘an Art Which do’s mend Nature.’ Thus, ‘[t]he Art it selfe, is Nature’ because it uses natural means to represent the natural world (4.4.95–7; 292A). Earlier, in act 2, Paulina presents the infant Perdita to Leontes as a work of art, a copy of the mother. As Robert Egan points out, she credits ‘good goddess Nature’ for the likeness between the two because at this stage of the play art and nature are in harmony (2.3.103; 285A). When she gives Hermione back to him at the end of act 5, however, she must work to make the king believe in ‘nature’s work of art,’ thus restoring his world to ‘its original harmony with the order of nature.’40 In the final scene, the equilibrium has been re-established, and the audience is made aware that Paulina’s natural magic is rooted in the human body itself, the body of a boy actor. By focusing on an art form within the theatrical fiction, The Winter’s Tale draws attention to the materiality of the statue, only to assert that the actor’s body, characterized by its innate potential for movement and transformation, is far more remarkable. The point is not to shock the audience by the sudden appearance of a body – for Hermione has been on stage all along – but rather to reveal the natural body beneath the artificial trappings of the statue. When Paulina at last shows Leontes and Perdita the statue of Hermione, the tomb property is displaced by a new form of theatrical resurrection: the actor, feigning death and then feigning life again, supplies the beginning and the end of the mystery. Thus, while acknowledging its roots in the religious theater, with all its tantalizing references to resurrections – ‘Ile fill your Grave up,’ says Paulina, as she urges Hermione

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to leave death behind (101; 302B) – Shakespeare’s play ultimately discards the physical remnant of the medieval tradition as unnecessary, as if indicating to antitheatricalists that they cannot accuse him of any lingering attachment to Catholicism.41 Forestalling any critique linking Hermione’s statue with idolatry, The Winter’s Tale thus shifts the ground beneath the generic convention, suggesting that the dramatic potential of the actor’s body makes the physical tomb superfluous. The absence of the tomb property ultimately serves to clarify the nature of the play’s investment in medieval dramas of resurrection, an interest that consistently privileges living practices over dead objects.

Notes I am very grateful to the members of the Medieval-Renaissance Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania and to the participants in the Theatrical Properties seminar at the 2004 Shakespeare Association of America conference for their feedback on early versions of this chapter. Jean Howard and Cary Mazer provided invaluable responses to the piece from which the chapter is taken, and Ken Graham’s perspicacious comments helped shape this iteration of the work. 1. The Winter’s Tale (5.2.96). All references to Shakespeare’s works are taken from Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies: A Facsimile of the First Folio, 1623, ed. Doug Moston (New York: Routledge, 1998), and are listed by column. Line numbers are cued to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, 2nd edn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 2. For readings of the play that focus on the statue, see Bruce Smith, ‘Sermons in Stones: Shakespeare and Renaissance Sculpture,’ Shakespeare Studies 17 (1985): 1–23; Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Leonard Barkan, ‘“Living Sculptures”: Ovid, Michelangelo, and The Winter’s Tale,’ ELH 48 (1981): 639–67; Robert Ketterer, ‘Machines for the Suppression of Time: Statues in Suor Anglica, The Winter’s Tale, and Alcestis,’ in Drama and the Classical Heritage: Comparative and Critical Studies, ed. Clifford Davidson, Rand Johnson, and John H. Stroupe (New York: AMS, 1993), 273–94. 3. Leonard Barkan has remarked on the metatheatrical resonance of the term ‘performed,’ noting that Hermione is only ‘performed, in the sense of perfected’ when she becomes an actor, that is, when she moves and speaks; ‘Making Pictures Speak: Renaissance Art, Elizabethan Literature, Modern Scholarship,’ Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 326–51, 343. 4. Alexandra Johnston charts the development of the resurrection play from the liturgy to the guild drama to sixteenth-century Protestant plays by writers such as John Bale. She notes that this tradition constitutes ‘the longest history of any vernacular biblical plays from the medieval and early modern period’; ‘The Emerging Pattern of the Easter Play in England,’ Medieval English Theatre 20 (1998): 3–23, 5. See also Karen Sawyer Marsalek, ‘ “Awake your faith”:

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5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

Resurrection Drama and The Winter’s Tale’ in ‘Bring Furth the Pageants’: Essays in Early English Drama presented to Alexandra F. Johnston, ed. David N. Klausner and Karen Sawyer Marsalek (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 271–91. I am grateful to Dr Marsalek for sharing a manuscript copy of this essay with me. Darryll Grantley, ‘The Winter’s Tale and Early Religious Drama,’ Comparative Drama 20 (1986): 17–37, 18. Grantley anticipates my argument, as well as Michael O’Connell’s arguments about the residual impact of the mystery cycles, by suggesting that Shakespeare ‘invests his spiritual play with something of the theological and mythic power of the earlier scriptural drama without having particularly to depart from the historical specificity of his own characters and narrative’ (29). See Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theatre in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 26. See Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Resonance and Wonder,’ in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1990). Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson, eds, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 232–3. The phrase ‘structure of feeling’ is adapted from Raymond Williams. See Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132–3. Luke 24:4, 24:12. All citations are to the Authorized King James Version. The early liturgical dramas reverse the order of events as described in the biblical account: only after Christ has vanished do his apostles identify their interlocutor. For more on this dramatic ritual, see Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1987). As quoted in David Bevington, Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 27–8. The wording here is from Karl Young’s translation of the original Latin. As quoted in Charles Wriothesley, ed., A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors (Westminster: Camden Society, 1875–77), 2:1. William Lambarde, Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum et Historicum: An Alphabetical Description of the Chief Places in England and Wales (London, 1730), 459–60. Pamela Sheingorn notes that other parishes, including St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, might have had a similar device for presenting ‘the tableau of the resurrection,’ in the liturgical drama that preceded the mystery plays (Easter Sepulchre, 58–60). Peter Meredith and John Tailby, eds, The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages: Texts and Documents in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1983), 97. All subsequent references to the Chester plays are to R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, eds, The Chester Mystery Cycle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). Bevington, Medieval Drama, 628. Quoted in Meredith and Tailby, Religious Drama, 114.

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18. Quoted in Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 243. The passage Gurr cites is from John Melton’s Astrologaster, E4r . 19. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, lines 129–30. The Latin reads: ‘[h]ic subito discedat Christus ab oculis eorum.’ 20. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, lines 186–9, 210–12. 21. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, line 212. 22. The phrase ‘vital cultural practices’ is one O’Connell lifts, and reappropriates, from Steven Mullaney; O’Connell, ‘Vital Cultural Practices: Shakespeare and the Mysteries,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999): 149–68. 23. Clifford Davidson, ‘ “The Devil’s Guts”: Allegations of Superstition and Fraud in Religious Drama and Art during the Reformation,’ in Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljenholm Nichols (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1989), 92–143, 111; Lawrence Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 298. 24. Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game, 298. 25. Clopper, Drama, Play, and Game, 269. 26. The quotation is from Marjorie Garber, as cited in Michael Neill, ‘“Feasts Put Down Funerals”: Death and Ritual in Renaissance Comedy,’ in True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and his Age, ed. Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 47–74, 51. 27. O’Connell, Idolatrous Eye, 164. 28. Quoted in Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 85. 29. Quoted in E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 4:263. The statute referred to is Proclamation 509, issued on 16 May 1559. Alexandra Johnston shows in chapter 3 of the present volume that this was not a ‘blanket prohibition.’ 30. Quoted in Gurr, Playgoing, 230. 31. Quoted in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 4.338. The citation is to 3 Jac I, c. 21. 32. See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), and Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 33. William Prynne, Histrio-Mastix: The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragaedie (London, 1633), 733. 34. Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, ii. 35. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. John Russell Brown (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 25. 36. The stage directions are difficult to interpret, but we do know that at one point Romeo opens the tomb and enters it: the dialogue refers to a ‘mattock and wrenching iron’ (5.3.22; 75A). On the other hand, Juliet’s bier was probably represented by nothing more elaborate than a plinth. 37. See Marion O’Connor, ‘“Imagine Me, Gentle Spectators”: Iconomachy and The Winter’s Tale,’ in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 4:365–88, esp. 376–80.

132 Shakespeare and Religious Change 38. For more on the role of religion in the play, see Huston Diehl, ‘Observing the Lord’s Supper and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men: The Visual Rhetoric of Ritual and Play in Early Modern England,’ Renaissance Drama 22 (1991): 147–74, and O’Connell, Idolatrous Eye. 39. Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 218. 40. Robert Egan, Drama within Drama: Shakespeare’s Sense of his Art in King Lear, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 64–6. 41. For more on the Catholic tendencies in The Winter’s Tale, see Phebe Jensen, ‘Singing Psalms to Horn-Pipes: Festivity, Iconoclasm, and Catholicism in The Winter’s Tale,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 55 (2004): 279–306, 282.

6 Staging Allegiance, Re-membering Trials: King Henry VIII and the Blackfriars Theater Karen Sawyer Marsalek

In Shakespeare and Fletcher’s King Henry VIII, or All is True, the king arranges his upcoming divorce hearing by saying, ‘The most convenient place that I can think of / For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars’ (2.2.136–7).1 Historically, this trial opened on 18 June 1529 in the Parliament Chamber, or Upper Frater, of the Blackfriars complex, the same space that would later become the Blackfriars Theater. In 1613, when Henry VIII entered their repertory, ‘Blackfriars’ would have been a ‘most convenient place’ for the King’s Men as well, since the company had taken over the lease for the indoor playhouse in 1607. After the Globe burned to the ground (during the first documented performance of Henry VIII), the Blackfriars Theater was in fact the only permanent performance space available to the company for nearly a year, and warrants later granted to William Davenant and Thomas Killegrew list the play among others previously staged at that venue.2 Given these circumstances, several scholars of the play have proposed that the King’s Men took advantage of the metadramatic potential of Blackfriars for some performances of Henry VIII.3 Although the divorce hearing was only one of many state and ecclesiastical trials that the chamber had previously accommodated, the implications of the cultural memories of such events for later Blackfriars performances have not been fully explored.4 In his study of Foxean dramas performed in the northern suburbs, Mark Bayer notes the ongoing Catholic associations of the Red Bull’s Clerkenwell neighborhood, and suggests that performances there promoted a Reformation that was incomplete and even threatened.5 Themes already present in the plays gained a new resonance in that suburban performance venue. In a similar vein, the trials for divorce, heresy, and praemunire that had taken place in the Blackfriars Parliament Chamber would create a charged space for 133

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performances of these events in King Henry VIII. The play’s trials raise questions about the competing loyalties of the plaintiff figures, and speak to the distinctions King James was trying to make between his subjects through the Oath of Allegiance in the first decade of his reign. This confluence of staged trials, Jacobean ecclesiastical policy, and historically charged performance venue constructs Henry VIII as a play that works through contemporary concerns about Catholic loyalties by referring to a past whose memory is physically present. Describing theater as a ‘memory machine,’ Marvin Carlson has discussed the ways in which productions are haunted by previous performances through the recycling of various elements of theater – text, actors’ bodies, props, and performance space – in a phenomenon he calls ‘ghosting.’ The location of a performance, he notes, contributes to the work of cultural memory that theater naturally performs: ‘[t]he empty spaces that have been used for centuries for theatrical events are particularly susceptible to semiotization, since they are already invariably public, social spaces already layered with associations before they are used for theatrical performance.’6 In addition to the divorce trial, the Blackfriars space had housed the parliamentary trial of Cardinal Wolsey and other medieval tribunals whose proto-Protestant concerns haunt Henry VIII, particularly the heresy trials of Wycliffite martyrs and the Blackfriars Synod of 1382, which condemned 24 conclusions of Wycliffe himself. Accounts of these events in Holinshed, Stow, and Foxe ensured their preservation in cultural memory. These associations enable topographical mnemonics for three trial episodes in the play: the divorce hearing, King Henry’s examination of Wolsey, and Cranmer’s interrogation on suspicion of ‘heresy.’7 In a performance thus ‘ghosted,’ Henry VIII becomes a palimpsest of trials linking the first part of James’s reign with two historical moments when papal authority was under particular scrutiny in England.8 These signal moments – the emergence of the Wycliffite movement and the Henrician schism with Rome – were also invoked in early Jacobean discourse about the Oath of Allegiance. The circumstances of the oath illuminate Shakespeare and Fletcher’s depictions of Katherine as an admirable Catholic and Wolsey as a despicable one, and also complicate the figure of the Protestant hero Cranmer; the ‘ghosting’ available in Blackfriars would further enrich the play’s interrogation of ‘allegiance.’ The Oath of Allegiance was one aspect of King James’s ‘habitual distinction between radical and moderate papists.’9 Initially prompted by the scandal and shock of the Gunpowder Plot, it was passed into law in 1606, but its most enthusiastic enforcement occurred after 1610.10 The

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oath required Catholics to affirm the king’s rightfulness as ruler; to deny that the pope had any right to depose the king, authorize war against him, or excuse a subject from obedience; to defend the king against any conspiracies and disclose them to him; and to abjure the ‘heretical’ doctrine that subjects could depose or murder an excommunicated ruler. Subjects also had to swear that they had not equivocated in taking the oath.11 Critics such as Cardinal Bellarmine were quick to see this oath as a new version of Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy, so that ‘the authoritie of the head of the Church in England, may be transferred from the successour of S. Peter, to the Successour of K. Henry the eight.’ Loath to be compared with his predecessor, James responded to this criticism and others in his Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance. Ironically, through this authorial participation in theological debate, the king followed the example of Henry, who had published Assertio Septem Sacramentorum contra M. Lutherum in 1521. Nonetheless, reprinting Bellarmine’s accusation in his Apologie, James differentiated his own demands from those of Henry: ‘For, as the Oath of Supremacie was devised for putting a difference between Papists, and them of our profession: so was this Oath, which he would seeme to impugne, ordained for making a difference between the civilly obedient Papists, & the perverse disciples of the powder-Treason.’ While the Oath of Supremacy gave the king ‘absolute power, to be judge over all persons, aswell Civil as Ecclesiastical … this last Oath containeth no such matter, onely medling with the civil obedience of subjects to their Soveraigne, in meere temporal causes.’12 Despite the king’s disingenuous insistence that the oath only demanded obedience in temporal, civil matters, its classification of certain positions as heretical meant that swearers necessarily separated themselves from authorities and doctrines of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the divisions between those who swore the oath and those who refused it did not fall neatly along the lines of ‘civilly obedient’ church papists and ‘perverse’ regicidal radicals that James had framed. The messy conflict that the oath provoked between English Catholics has been carefully outlined by Michael Questier, who argues that the ‘subtle genius of the oath was that it was calculated to erode and dissolve the boundaries that gave some form and resilience to English Romanist dissent in the absence of the normal ecclesiastical structures.’13 In some ways, ‘normal ecclesiastical structures’ are precisely what the play’s Queen Katherine needs in the quandary of the divorce hearing. Her predicament suggests how difficult it might be to identify a ‘meere temporal’ cause for obedience. While insisting on her role as a loyal wife and subject, she also aligns herself with the pope; however, the

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pope’s representative ultimately fails to support her. In defending her obedience to the king she must defy the authority of an ecclesiastical court. As a result, her Catholicism is blurred and diffused. The physical circumstances of a Blackfriars staging and the resonances of other trials held in that space also frame Katherine as a heroic, virtually Protestant martyr. The trial scene creates an atmosphere of public scrutiny and humiliation by virtue of the sheer numbers on stage. Francis Beaumont referred to the Blackfriars as a kind of courtroom where ‘a thousand men in judgement sit,’14 adding in his poetic liberty some four hundred spectators to the playhouse’s capacity. However, the staging of the divorce proceedings in the intimate environment of Blackfriars could invite hyperbole like Beaumont’s. Based on Holinshed, the scene’s unusually detailed stage directions prescribe the number, order, and arrangement of at least 22 characters: two vergers, two scribes, the Archbishop of Canterbury, four other bishops, four gentlemen, a sargeant-at-arms, two priests, cardinals Wolsey and Campeius, two noblemen, and the king and queen (2.4.0.1–11). Some of these characters may have been omitted on the Blackfriars stage, which ‘had a likely breadth of little more than twenty feet and a similar depth.’15 Even with a smaller cast, gallants on stools could swell the number of onstage bodies and further reduce the sense of historical alterity, an effect enhanced by the already eclectic costuming of the King’s Men and the atmosphere of the trial’s original venue. Editor Gordon McMullan suggests that ‘a proportion of the spectacle for which the play is known may well have been incorporated only after an initial run of performances’ at the Blackfriars, which was ‘better suited to intimacy and irony than to pomp and sincerity.’16 However, pomp and sincerity need not be equated. The ‘sincerity’ of a spectacle like the trial scene is ambiguous at best; though Henry has demanded a public hearing of the case, he suggests that a divorce is a foregone conclusion with his claim, ‘I must leave her’ (2.2.142), overrides established ceremony for opening the trial (2.4.2–5), and confidently expects Cranmer to bring him the ‘comfort’ of his desired outcome (2.4.235–7).17 A stage full of participants augments, rather than detracts from, the irony of a predetermined verdict. Furthermore, the claustrophobic and static environment of a crowded stage enlarges the demands placed on Katherine, arguably the most ‘sincere’ participant in the scene. After the procession resolves into a tableau with the queen ‘some distance from the King’ (2.4.0.13), Katherine is the only character to move, making her way to Henry, and then out of the courtroom. Holinshed calls attention to the difficulty of her

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cross – ‘bicause shee could not come to the king directlie, for the distance severed betweene them, shee went about by the court, and came to the king, kneeling downe at his feet.’18 In the stage directions, when summoned Katherine ‘makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes about the court, comes to the King, and kneels at his feet; then speaks’ (2.4.10.1–3). As McMullan notes, Shakespeare and Fletcher’s rephrasing of Holinshed suggests Katherine is slowly and intentionally taking control of the spectacle.19 Negotiating the obstacles of multiple bodies on the Blackfriars stage would emphasize her alienation (she later refers to her status as a ‘stranger’ at 2.4.13) and resolution even further. The queen’s action reflects her recognition of a twofold allegiance to Henry; she demonstrates and expects him to recognize both her marital and her political loyalties. In a direct petition to him as her husband she emphasizes that she is a humble and obedient wife and has, in fact, been blessed with ‘many children’ by Henry (2.4.21, 33–5). She also identifies his authority as king to dispense ‘right and justice’ (11). Analyzing Katherine’s physical control of the stage in the trial, Kim Noling argues that ‘[h]aving literally circumvented the court … [the queen] likewise tries to circumvent the cardinals’ jurisdiction by making a personal appeal to the real seat of power.’20 She has already used this tactic in 1.2, interceding on behalf of subjects taxed too highly by Wolsey, and there the playwrights establish a precedent for her success. Her earlier petition also introduces the issue of allegiance among Henry’s subjects, and warns that it has been threatened by royal disregard for their misery: ‘Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze / Allegiance in them’ (1.2.61–2). Katherine’s attention to this issue should teach Henry to recognize and reward loyalty, but at the trial the king ignores her signs of allegiance and even shames the queen by allowing Wolsey to chastise her. Katherine’s competing allegiance to the Catholic Church emerges belatedly in the scene, and is undercut by remarks by Cardinal Campeius, the onstage papal representative. Campeius allies himself with Wolsey, saying, ‘His grace / Has spoken well and justly’ (2.4.62–3). Only after being rejected by Henry, Wolsey and Campeius does Katherine invoke Rome’s authority: ‘I do refuse you [Wolsey] for my judge; and here / Before you all, appeal unto the Pope, / To bring my whole cause ’fore His Holiness, / And to be judged by him’ (2.4.116–19). This line is the first time Katherine has explicitly referred to the pope as her hoped-for ally, and her agency and dignity thus far minimize its potential alienating effect for Protestants in the audience. Furthermore, the playwrights depart from the trial account in Holinshed to give Campeius additional criticism of Katherine as she departs from the court: ‘The Queen is

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obstinate, / Stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and / Disdainful to be tried by’t. ’Tis not well’ (2.4.119–21). By setting Campeius, the ostensible voice of Rome, against Katherine, even as she asserts her allegiance to the pope, the playwrights fracture any sense of a monolithic Catholic position in the play. The subsequent scene expands significantly on Holinshed to suggest a domestic version of a court, and Katherine as a kind of Protestant martyr. Wolsey and Campeius visit her in her lodgings where they hope to persuade her to go along with the divorce, and find her amongst her women. These attendants are a more sympathetic jury, and Katherine demonstrates her awareness of this benefit by refusing to meet with the cardinals privately: My lords, I care not – so much I am happy Above a number – if my actions Were tried by every tongue, every eye saw ’em, Envy and base opinion set against ’em, I know my life so even. (3.1.33–7) This implicit invitation of a verdict from her women also includes the theater audience in its references to ‘every tongue, every eye.’ While the opening of the scene established a private environment under Katherine’s authority, these lines re-classify the theatrical space as a trial venue once again. Insisting on transparency, the queen also stonewalls the clerics’ attempts to speak in Latin and thus exclude the waiting women. Where Holinshed simply notes that Katherine requested English, here she identifies her skill in that language as a naturalizing quality, a feature that makes her English and accessible, rather than foreign and distant. O, good my lord, no Latin. I am not such a truant since my coming As not to know the language I have lived in. A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious. Pray speak in English. Here are some will thank you, If you speak truth, for their poor mistress’ sake. Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal, The willingest sin I ever yet committed May be absolved in English. (3.1.42–50)

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The ‘Englishing’ of Katherine may reflect a nationalist impulse, as Matthew C. Hansen has argued,21 but we should not overlook its role in constructing her religious image. Her connection of Latin with suspicion and of English with ‘truth’ and forgiveness recalls Protestant emphasis on vernacular scripture and services. In addition, her choice follows the example of dissenters like Wycliffite cleric John Ashton, who appeared before the Blackfriars Synod of 1382. ‘[B]eing often required by the archbishop that he woulde aunswere in the Latine tongue to those questions which were demaunded of him, because of the lay people that stood about him,’ Ashton cried out ‘into the Englishe tongue.’22 Katherine is more dignified than Ashton, who ‘uttered frivolous and approbrious contumelies to move and excite the people against the said Archbishop as it should seem,’ but her criticisms are no less designed to ‘move’ the audience in her favor. She continues to set her humility, virtue, and vernacularity against the deceit and Latinity of Wolsey and Campeius: they appear to represent ‘cardinal virtues’ but are instead ‘cardinal sins’ whose ‘churchmen’s habits’ and ‘angels’ faces’ disguise dishonesty and hollowness (3.1.103–4, 117, 145). These commonplaces of anti-Catholic rhetoric continue to mute Katherine’s own confessional identity. Her final speech has the ring of martyrdom and again emphasizes her allegiance to Henry: ‘Pray do my service to his majesty: / He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers / While I shall have my life’ (3.1.179–81). The trial echoes in this scene set up Katherine’s later vision of herself with a martyr’s crown (4.2.82.2–17). This sympathetic, even paradoxical, portrayal of Katherine exercises many critics. Julia Gasper asks, ‘what could be less apt than for the representatives of Rome to take Henry’s part against Katherine, or for the Catholic queen to attack the bishops of her own church, the church she clung to until death and in which she brought up her daughter? The problem is not that it is fiction – of course it is fiction – but that it is a deeply incoherent fiction.’ She goes on to assess Katherine’s stance as ‘divided and illogical,’ contending that ‘it betrays a fundamental dislocation in the argument of the play.’23 This division may result from the disparities in the play’s source material that Annabel Patterson has noted,24 but it also articulates the dislocation that many Catholics likely felt after 1605, when asked to distinguish their spiritual from their temporal loyalties through the Oath of Allegiance. This awkwardness was exacerbated by the contradictory opinions about the oath offered by Catholic authorities in England. Citing Archpriest George Birkhead’s 1612 assessment of the divisions, Questier notes that the oath ‘divided not just loyalist clergy from outspoken clerical supporters of the papal

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deposing power, but also clerical loyalists among themselves; it broke up the political unity of all the major clerical groupings; it divided not just cleric from cleric but also clerics from laity.’25 Katherine’s distance even from Campeius and Wolsey illustrates this splintering; she has no confidence in them as the pope’s representatives, yet they are undoubtedly allied in the play with papist corruption. Wolsey particularly embodies medieval and early modern stereotypes of immoral Catholic clergy. Buckingham rehearses the insults, familiar from the early Tudor Reformation, that the archbishop is ‘a holy fox / Or wolf, or both,’ a ‘Count-Cardinal,’ more interested in worldly status than the welfare of the nation (1.1.158–9, 172). The playwrights invent an example of his grasping greed at the beginning of 2.2, where a letter reports Wolsey’s appropriation of a nobleman’s fine horses with the rationale that the cardinal ‘would be served before a subject, if not before the King’ (7). While the cardinal prides himself on his papal connections (2.2.54), he ultimately desires the triple crown for himself. His simoniacal intentions emerge in soliloquy: he has ‘drawn together’ his wealth ‘to gain the popedom / And fee [his] friends in Rome’ (3.2.211–13). He exemplifies the excesses that had led John Wycliffe to oppose clerical ownership of temporal possessions, to sanction temporal lords who deprived delinquent churchmen of those possessions, and even to argue against the office of the pope, propositions condemned in the Blackfriars Synod of 1382, but celebrated by Foxe and revived in discussions of the Oath of Allegiance.26 The ‘reformation reputation’ of Wycliffe’s ideas, to use Margaret Aston’s term,27 was based on Foxe’s hagiographical attention to him in the Acts and Monuments, a work that had been established over four decades and through six editions before the composition of Henry VIII. During the early years of James’s reign Wycliffe’s positions gained fresh attention. In 1604, the Jesuit Robert Parsons attacked Foxe’s representation of Wycliffe as the ‘protestants great grandfather,’28 and four years later, Thomas James, keeper of the new Bodleian Library, responded with An Apologie for John Wickliffe Shewing his Conformitie with the Now Church of England; With Answere to such Slaunderous Objections, as Have Beene Lately Urged against Him by Father Parsons, the Apologists, and Others.29 Thomas James also published two other ‘Wycliffite’ tracts in 1608, a digest of Wycliffe’s points in the 1382 synod and a tract on friars’ errors and heresies, probably written as a reply to the synod’s conclusions. Another piece, a treatise on the sacrament of the Eucharist entitled Wycliffe’s Wicket, was reprinted in 1612 by Henry Jackson of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.30 Though these tracts may not all be

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authentic works of Wycliffe, they demonstrate his re-emergence as a significant proto-Protestant in Jacobean discourses. Thomas James’s publications emphasize Wycliffe’s antipathy toward clerical wealth and give it a topical application. One of the propositions condemned at the Blackfriars Synod was that ‘temporal lords may, according to their discretion, take away the temporal goods from churchmen who are habitually delinquent.’31 A king had the right to deprive a cleric or institution in this way, because he was the temporal ruler. In his Apologie, Thomas James used this proposition to highlight Wycliffe’s insistence on a king’s sole authority in his own country. However, the ruler’s freedom from foreign jurisdiction did not translate into authority over his subject’s souls. Wycliffe held that the Kings Majestie, hath power within his Realmes, – to whom the Chiefe government of all Estates of this Realme, whether they be Ecclesiastical, or Civil, in al causes doth appertaine, and is not, nor ought to be subject to any forraine Jurisdiction, according to the 37. Article of Religion; not intending hereby, (as slaunderous Jesuits doe give out) to give the Prince, the ministring of Gods word or Sacraments, or to make and establish what Religion he list, as if we Englishmen had prostituted (so the lewd Jesuit speaketh) both our souls, and bodies unto the King.32 Acknowledgment of the king’s authority need not impinge on one’s spiritual life, argues James, regardless of what the ‘slanderous’ and ‘lewd’ Jesuits might think. The scholar’s deployment of Wycliffe’s reputation at this point supports King James’s attempts to enforce the Oath of Allegiance. In fact, Thomas James specifically cites Wycliffe’s position on such an oath, arguing that Wycliffe ‘held against damnable Aequivocation and lying, & that the Pope nor no man else could absolve them from lying, or wilful perjurie, or breach of their oaths of allegeance’ (emphasis mine).33 For support on these matters, the scholar could point to the first of the Two Short Treatises, in which Wycliffe insists, ‘For the chief Lordshippe in this lond of al Temporalities both of secular men & Religious pertaine to the King of his general governing; for els hee were not King of al England, but of a littel part thereof.’34 By appropriating Wycliffe’s support for a king’s temporal supremacy, Thomas James offers a pedigree for King James’s oath, much as Foxe’s account of Wycliffe and his followers had already provided a history for the Protestant faith in England. At the same time, his publications help to build a

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seventeenth-century afterlife for Wycliffe and the propositions condemned at the Blackfriars Synod. Henry VIII’s trial of Wolsey is illuminated by the afterlife of these propositions, imbricated in the Oath of Allegiance. Shakespeare and Fletcher bring together Wolsey’s acquisition of wealth, his privileging of papal authority, and his equivocation in 3.2. This long, sweeping scene, which collapses events that took place over several months and in several locations, performs a kind of Wycliffite critique of the cardinal, possibly in the same space that saw the official condemnation of Wycliffe’s propositions. This topographical resonance would augment the topicality of Wolsey’s protested allegiance. The playwrights invent a confrontation between the king and cardinal, prompted by the king’s discovery of damning documents, an inventory of Wolsey’s ‘piles of wealth’ (107), and his letters to the pope undermining the divorce negotiations. Henry requires Wolsey, who is ignorant of this discovery, to express his loyalty to the Crown: ‘if you may confess it, say withal / If you are bound to us or no. What say you?’ (3.2.164–5). The cardinal’s elaborate proclamation insists on his absolute dedication to the ‘good of [the king’s] most sacred person and / The profit of the state,’ and, in loaded language, offers ‘allegiant thanks’ and ‘loyalty’ (173–7). While the term ‘allegiant’ signals an allusion to the oath, Henry’s reactions to the fulsome speech demonstrate his awareness that the cardinal is equivocating. Again and again he calls attention to how well Wolsey speaks: ‘You have said well. … ’ Tis well said again / and ’ tis a kind of good deed to say well – / And yet words are no deeds. … Fairly answered: / A loyal and obedient subject is / Therein illustrated. … ’Tis nobly spoken’ (3.2.149, 152–4, 179–81, 199). Despite their apparent praise, the king’s comments reveal his true verdict – that Wolsey’s words offer a mere performance of allegiance. The king’s examination is only part of Wolsey’s ordeal, however. The second phase would also have gained another kind of power in a Blackfriars production, for it dramatizes events in Wolsey’s fall that did in fact take place in the Parliament Chamber. After the king’s departure, Suffolk, Norfolk, Surrey, and the Lord Chamberlain enter and demand the Chancellor’s seal (3.2.228–32). In the playwrights’ expansion of this moment from Holinshed, the nobles also confront the cardinal with nine articles used to indict Wolsey at parliament in November of 1529 and announce the writ of praemunire confiscating his possessions.35 Historically, Wolsey did not attend this parliament, but these actions of the nobles effectively bring the trial to him. While the articles themselves are not delivered to Wolsey, Surrey exclaims, ‘I thank my memory I yet remember / Some of these articles, and out they shall’ (3.2.303–4).

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This invocation of ‘memory’ invites us to recall not only the articles in their trial context, but also the location of the parliamentary hearing. Holinshed’s report refers occasionally to the chamber at Blackfriars, while Stow’s Annales, another source for this scene, locates the entire parliament there.36 A performance in that chamber would create the humiliating illusion that Wolsey attended the trial that was his undoing. In the compressed chronology of 3.2, the cardinal’s fall coincides with Cranmer’s rise, and the latter’s allegiance and purported heresy are central concerns of the last movement of the play. References to Cranmer’s promotion frame Wolsey’s trial scene: at lines 71–4, before Wolsey enters, we hear that Cranmer will gain an archbishopric for his service to the king, and near the end of the scene Cromwell brings Wolsey word that Cranmer is already ‘[i]nstalled lord Archbishop of Canterbury’ (401). In this position of power Cranmer becomes the ‘King’s hand and tongue’ (5.1.38), but his opponents in the play characterize him as an ‘arch heretic; a pestilence / That does infect the land’ (5.1.45–6, see also 3.2.102). His ordeal in act 5 demonstrates the archbishop’s allegiance to Henry VIII, but also grimly foreshadows his trial for heresy and eventual martyrdom under Mary Tudor. The foreboding undertones of these scenes would be magnified in the Blackfriars, as the structure had a long history of heresy examinations. Three well-known Wycliffite martyrs, John Badby, Sir John Oldcastle, and William Taylor, had been tried there before being burned at the stake, and Badby was also imprisoned in the precinct during his trial.37 Two of these heresy cases tried at the Blackfriars had also been marked by royal intervention. Foxe describes Henry V’s attempts to save John Badby just before the execution: he ‘admonished and counsailed [Badby], that having respect unto himselfe, he should spedelie withdraw himselfe out of these dangerous Laberinths of opinions, adding oftentimes threatnings, the which might have daunted anie mans stomacke.’38 Years later, in an effort to shield Oldcastle from the scheming prelates who ‘laid forth most grevous complaints against the sayd Lorde Cobham,’ the same king ‘called’ the accused man to him ‘secretely’ and admonished him.39 In both of these cases, the royal tactics resemble those of Henry VIII in 5.1. Knowing his council’s plans, Henry reveals them to Cranmer, who responds briefly and even helplessly, welcoming the chance to be ‘winnowed’ and trusting in his ‘truth and honesty’ (5.1.110, 122). This simplicity amazes Henry, who questions, ‘What manner of man are you?’ and scolds Cranmer for not taking greater pains in his own defense (117–21, 126–40). Like his royal predecessor, Henry urges his defendant to a more practical response to the heresy accusations that will soon face

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him. In contrast to Wolsey’s effusive proclamations and politic equivocation, Cranmer’s few words and honest weeping assure the king of his loyalty. Henry marvels: ‘I swear he is true-hearted, and a soul / None better in my kingdom. … / … He has strangled / His language in his tears’ (5.1.154–7). The praise offered here creates an ambiguous accompaniment to Cranmer’s exit. Though the words hail the archbishop’s faithfulness, the violent imagery of ‘strangled’ and mute weeping casts a pall over his future. Cranmer’s encounter with the council offers a neat confessional reversal of the Oath of Allegiance, for the reformer’s faith is described as a ‘heretical’ threat to national welfare. Catholics More and Gardiner examine the archbishop, accusing him as a ‘sectary’ (5.2.104) spreading ‘new opinions, / Diverse and dangerous, which are heresies / And, not reformed, may prove pernicious’ (5.2.51–3).40 Ironically, the reformation that Cranmer’s enemies have in mind is a return to a Catholic position. In language borrowed from Foxe, More accuses him of ‘filling / The whole realm’ with these opinions, and Gardiner warns of civil dangers that will follow (5.2.50, 61–5). However, in a speech invented by the dramatists, Cranmer argues that he cannot be charged with supporting rebellion: Nor is there living – I speak it with a single heart, my lords – A man that more detests, more stirs against, Both in his private conscience and his place, Defacers of a public peace than I do. Pray heaven the King may never find a heart With less allegiance in it. (5.2.71–7) The speech picks up on the image of a ‘true’ heart that accompanied Cranmer’s exit in 5.1. By insisting on his ‘single heart’ Cranmer affirms his undivided loyalties; even more explicitly he goes on to boast of his heart’s ‘allegiance.’ Furthermore, he notes the concurrence of his public and private beliefs; because he consistently detests those extremists who would threaten peace, he cannot be accused of equivocation. Cranmer’s defense of his allegiance thus suggests affinities with experiences of some early seventeenth-century Catholics. If Katherine is a Catholic queen who sounds rather like a Protestant martyr, then Cranmer is a Protestant martyr who sounds rather like a recusant. Because Cranmer’s martyrdom takes place outside the historical boundaries of the play, his trial in King Henry VIII offers a victory,

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however temporary, over his accusers and thus rewrites the narratives of heresy trials in the Blackfriars space. Just as he is to be imprisoned in the Tower, the archbishop produces the king’s ring as a signal of Henry’s protection and favor. Only a few lines later Henry himself rebukes those council members who ‘more out of malice than integrity / Would try [Cranmer] to the utmost’ (5.2.179–80). In this respect the scene celebrates the future architect of the English Reformation, vindicated by his king as proto-reformers Badby, Oldcastle, and Taylor were not. However, even at Cranmer’s moment of triumph, the scene anticipates his own eventual martyrdom. At the sight of the king’s ring, Norfolk exclaims in dismay, ‘Do you think, my lords, / The King will suffer but the little finger / Of this man to be vexed?’ And Cromwell blames the other council members for their determination to bring Cranmer down: ‘Ye blew the fire that burns ye’ (5.2.139–141, 147).41 The two comments call attention to Cranmer’s hand as a metonymic site of punishment, and suggest the nature of that punishment; in so doing they foreshadow Cranmer’s dramatic death at the stake, as narrated by Foxe. After recanting in writing, Cranmer abjured his recantation and promised to thrust his hand into the fire first: here I renounce and refuse … things wrytten with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for feare of death, and to save my life if it might be, and that is, all suche billes and papers which I have wrytten or signed with my hand since my degradation: wherein I have wrytten many thinges untrue. And for asmuche as my hand offended, wryting co[n]trary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therfore: for may I come to the fire, it shalbe first burned.42 Through Norfolk and Cromwell’s lines, hints of this memorable end color the archbishop’s vindication among the council in 5.2. The intertextual dialogue lends dramatic irony to Cranmer’s assertions of a ‘single heart’ by reminding audiences of his later writings ‘contrary to [his] heart.’ On the other hand (no pun intended), the lords’ references to fire and fingers emphasize the resolve and heroism that the archbishop finally exhibited at his death. Any frisson created through the text’s prolepsis could be magnified by Blackfriars’ historic associations with other reformist martyrs. In any performance venue, Henry VIII’s audience members could participate in the play’s rehearsal and revision of Protestant England and connect its examination of allegiance with their current religiopolitical

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climate, but the particular topographical mnemonics of the Blackfriars playhouse would add resonance to those recollections. As cultural narratives reminded the audience of events in the space, the performance would re-member the site with bodies of actors and audience. In such a layering of medieval heresy trials, the sixteenth-century ordeals of Katherine, Cranmer, and Wolsey, and the seventeenth-century experience of Catholics faced with the Oath of Allegiance, three stages in the Reformation of the English Church coalesce. However, this process does not lead to a diachronic narrative of ‘godly’ Englishness. The play’s audiences were encouraged to ‘Think ye see / The very persons of our noble story / As they were living’ (Prologue 25–7). The invitation reminded viewers to expand the story unfolding before them with cultural memories of its central figures, but also to interpret those figures’ trials ‘[as if] they were living’ in 1612. As arguments about English Romanist loyalties circulated, the first audiences of King Henry VIII saw different perspectives on this issue worked out on stage. The play revives Wycliffite criticism of clerical wealth and champions the authority of the temporal ruler, dramatizing that position through Wolsey’s fall. Yet it still acknowledges the honor, fidelity, and spiritual virtue of a Catholic queen, even as it carefully circumscribes Rome’s power in England. Cranmer temporarily escapes the trial desired by his conservative opponents in an episode that points backward to Lollard martyrs and forward to his own martyrdom, but Jacobean recusants could also see their own persecution figured in Cranmer’s experience. Rather than simply celebrating or naturalizing a narrative of reform, the play’s palimpsest of trials insists that the interactions between confessional identity and spiritual and temporal loyalties are much more complex than King James’s legislation and rhetoric would acknowledge. Haunted by history, both topographically and dramatically, Blackfriars performances of King Henry VIII could put the very Oath of Allegiance on trial in a true theater of memory.

Notes I am grateful to the scholars who responded to versions of this chapter presented at the Shakespeare Association of America, Philadelphia, April 2006; the Third Blackfriars Conference, Staunton, VA, 2005; and the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 2005. Thanks also to the members of the Northfield Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium, and to Kenneth Graham and Philip Collington for their insights and guidance during later stages of the essay.

King Henry VIII and the Blackfriars Theater 147 1. All quotations will be taken from William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, King Henry VIII (All is True), ed. Gordon McMullan, Arden 3 Shakespeare (London: Thomson Learning, 2000). 2. Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Its Design (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 502–4 (appendix documents 33 and 34). Smith observes that the warrants were drawn up 18 and 26 years after the theater had closed, so one should not rely solely on their evidence when determining the Blackfriars repertoire (211–12). 3. Hugh M. Richmond is the most definite in his phrasing, arguing that ‘some … performances of the play would take place’ at the Blackfriars; see Richmond, Shakespeare in Performance: King Henry VIII (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 21. McMullan feels that it was ‘probably’ staged there, though on a ‘more modest scale’ than the Globe performances; McMullan, Henry VIII, 9–10. Jay M. Halio footnotes the staging’s possibility; Halio, ed., King Henry VIII, or, All is True, Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 122. For earlier arguments, see Muriel Bradbrook, ‘A Craftsman’s Theatre: From Mystery to Chronicle,’ in Shakespeare the Craftsman: The Clark Lectures, 1968 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969), 23–6; and Glynne Wickham, ‘The Dramatic Structure of Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII: An Essay in Rehabilitation,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 70 (1984): 149–66. 4. For an account of the official events conducted within the Parliament Chamber before it was turned into a playhouse, see Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, 10–27. The subject of memory, and its associated phenomenon, forgetting, has enjoyed renewed interest in Shakespeare studies in recent years. Jonathan Baldo works with both in his essay, ‘Necromancing the Past in Henry VIII,’ English Literary Renaissance 34 (2004): 359–86, though he does not address the issue of localized memory which is my interest here. See also the essays in Shakespeare Quarterly 56 (2005), especially Evelyn Tribble, ‘Distributing Cognition in the Globe,’ 135–55, and Lina Perkins Wilder, ‘Toward a Shakespearean “Memory Theater”: Romeo, the Apothecary, and the Performance of Memory,’ 156–75. Important recent work on forgetting includes Christopher Ivic and Grant Williams, eds, Forgetting in Early Modern English Literature and Culture: Lethe’s Legacies (London: Routledge, 2004), and Garrett A. Sullivan, Memory and Forgetting in English Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5. Mark Bayer, ‘Staging Foxe at the Fortune and the Red Bull,’ Renaissance and Reformation 27 (2003): 62, 65–6. 6. Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 133. See Elizabeth Williamson, chapter 5 in this volume, for an application of a similar concept; she argues that tomb properties and other ‘material technologies’ could enable resurrection moments of secular plays to access the affect of Christ’s Resurrection in the earlier biblical drama. 7. R.A. Foakes, the play’s second Arden editor, sees these three scenes and the reported trial of Buckingham in 2.1 as the four structural ‘keystones’ of the play; R.A. Foakes, ed., King Henry VIII, Arden 2 Shakespeare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), li.

148 Shakespeare and Religious Change 8. Gerard Wegemer argues that the play’s sequence of trials effectively creates two others – that of Thomas More, and an audience’s mental trial of Henry’s malice; ‘Henry VIII on Trial: Confronting Malice and Conscience in Shakespeare’s All is True,’ Renascence 52 (2000): 111–30. 9. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I,’ Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 184; see also 185–6. For a discussion of the king’s conciliatory efforts toward Catholics, and their repercussions, see John Watkins, ‘“Out of Her Ashes May a Second Phoenix Rise”: James I and the Legacy of Elizabethan Anti-Catholicism,’ in Catholicism and AntiCatholicism in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Arthur F. Marotti (Basingstoke: Macmillan/St Martin’s, 1999), 116–36. 10. M.C. Questier, ‘Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,’ Historical Journal 40 (1997): 322–5 11. For the wording of the oath, see J.R. Tanner, ed., Constitutional Documents of the Reign of James I, A.D. 1603–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 90–1. W.B. Patterson discusses this chapter in James’s reign at length in King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 75–123. 12. King James I, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (London, 1609), 46–7, see also 63–5. Bellarmine’s letter is reprinted at 36–44, with the reference to Henry VIII appearing on 38. 13. Questier, ‘Loyalty, Religion and State Power,’ 320. 14. Commendatory verses for The Faithful Shepherdess, 1609, qtd in Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 26, 268. 15. Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa, Staging in Shakespeare’s Theaters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 32. Smith more generously estimates a ‘usable acting area’ 22 feet deep and 34 feet wide; Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, 33. Neither of the two modern productions in comparable dimensions, Greg Doran’s 1997 production in Stratford’s Swan and Marina Favila’s 2002 staged reading at the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, Virginia, used the full complement of 22 actors described in the text. 16. McMullan, Henry VIII, 10. 17. Stuart M. Kurland, ‘Henry VIII and James I: Shakespeare and Jacobean Politics,’ Shakespeare Studies 19 (1987): 211. 18. Raphael Holinshed, The Third Volume of Chronicles (London: 1587), 907. 19. McMullan, Henry VIII, 301. 20. Kim H. Noling, ‘Grubbing Up the Stock: Dramatizing Queens in Henry VIII,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 294. 21. Matthew C. Hansen, ‘“And a queen of England, too”: The “Englishing” of Catherine of Aragon in Sixteenth-Century English Literary and Chronicle History,’ in ‘High and Mighty Queens’ of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 92–5. Hansen sees Stow’s Annales of 1605 (see note 36 below) as the likely source for Katherine’s linguistic comments, since his account reports that Katherine could understand Latin, but speak and understand English (90).

King Henry VIII and the Blackfriars Theater 149 22. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583), 5:439, Foxe’s Book of Martyr’s Variorum Edition Online, at http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe/ (accessed April 2007). I have chosen the 1583 edition since it was the last one Foxe was personally involved with. All citations will be taken from this edition and identified by book and page number. 23. Julia Gasper, ‘The Reformation Plays on the Public Stage,’ in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 210. 24. Annabel Patterson, ‘“All is True”: Negotiating the Past in Henry VIII,’ in Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum, ed. R.B. Parker and S.P. Zitner (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), 160–4. 25. Questier, ‘Loyalty, Religion and State Power,’ 317. 26. For his account of the synod, see Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 5:434–40; the propositions, or ‘articles,’ are recorded on 5:435. 27. Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon, 1984), 243–72. 28. R. Parsons, The Third Part of a Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganism to Christian Religion (London, 1604), 194. For discussion of Parsons’s attack, as well as those of Bellarmine and Gretser, who followed his example, see Anthony Kenny, ‘The Accursed Memory: The CounterReformation Reputation of John Wyclif,’ in Wyclif in His Times, ed. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 165–7. 29. Thomas James, An Apologie for John Wickliffe Shewing his Conformitie with the Now Church of England (Oxford, 1608). 30. Two Short Treatises, Against the Orders of the Begging Friars (Oxford, 1608), and Wickliffes Wicket, or A Learned and Godly Treatise of the Sacrament (Oxford, 1612). The latter tract had been printed twice in 1546 and was re-edited by Coverdale and printed twice again in 1548; see Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 257–8. 31. Joseph H. Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 95. 32. James, An Apologie, 37. I have silently expanded abbreviations. 33. James, An Apologie, 37. 34. Wycliffe, A Complaynt of John Wyckliffe to the King and Parliament, in James, Two Short Treatises, 10. 35. For the full list of articles, see Holinshed, Chronicles, 912. 36. John Stow, The Annales of England (London, 1605), 926. Holinshed identifies several parts of the November Parliament as taking place at Blackfriars, and Irwin Smith argues that references to the ‘nether chamber’ of the commons in both Hall and Holinshed refer to a room below the Parliament Chamber, see Holinshed, Chronicles, 910–11, and Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, 21–3, 29 nn. 49–52. For Stow’s Annales as a source for this scene, see Judith Anderson, Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor-Stuart Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 136–7. Anderson refers to the 1592 edition; my decision to use the 1605 text is based on Hansen’s argument in ‘“And a queen of England, too”.’ 37. For the trial and martyrdom of Taylor, see Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 6:658–9; in references to the location of the trials, Foxe refers to the Blackfriars as ‘the

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38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

precinct of the preaching friers in London, in an utter cloister’ (Badby trial, 5:520), or as ‘the Dominicke Friers within Ludgate’ (Oldcastle trial, 5:560). Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 5:522. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 5:558. The latter quotation is paraphrased from Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 11:1866. Norfolk’s line paraphrases a sentence credited to him by Foxe, who may also have had Cranmer’s martyrdom in mind as he recorded the council scene. In the Acts and Monuments, Norfolk asks, ‘Do you thinke that the king will suffer this mans finger to ake?’ (11:1867). Shakespeare and Fletcher’s revision emphasizes Cranmer (figured by his finger) as a victim of others’ actions. Their new verb might also derive from Foxe’s account of Cranmer’s death, since the same two pages that describe his martyrdom also twice describe him as ‘vexed’ (11:1887–8). The playwrights’ invention of Cromwell’s reference to burning heightens the dramatic irony suggested in Norfolk’s language. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 11:1887.

Part III Religious Identities

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7 ‘Mirth in Heaven’: Religion and Festivity in As You Like It Phebe Jensen

In a 1549 sermon attacking ‘unpreaching prelates,’ Bishop Hugh Latimer described an occasion on which he ‘was fain there to give place to Robin Hood.’1 While traveling from London to Worcester, the bishop sent word ahead he would preach the next day at a parish church, but on his arrival found the church locked and deserted: At last the key was found, and one of the parish comes to me and says, ‘Sir, this is a busy day with us. We cannot hear you; it is Robin Hood’s day. The parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood. I pray you let them not.’ Latimer does not object to all ‘recreation’ in this sermon; what he does attack is playing that competes with preaching, and he laments the locals who ‘prefer Robin Hood before the ministration of God’s word.’ But those not fully reformed parishioners might not have accepted the opposition Latimer constructs between Robin Hood games and holiness. As Paul Whitfield White, Alexandra F. Johnston, and James Stokes have shown, the guilds that put on Robin Hood shows on the eve of reform did so partly as an expression of religious piety.2 Robin Hood was not for these celebrants ‘a traitor and a thief,’ though his outlaw status may have contributed to the civic disorder sometimes associated with the games.3 Instead, he was a ‘religious hero’ who, as White has argued, ‘embodied both the festive spirit and the reverence for church ceremony and teaching that were celebrated on Whitsun and other holy days featuring parish games.’4 Latimer did eventually (though posthumously) win the debate implied in this anecdote. In the fifty years after the bishop ‘was fain … to give place to Robin Hood’ such pastimes, along with church wakes, 153

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church ales, and other calendrical celebrations of the late medieval Catholic Church, all but vanished. But recent work has shown us that the Reformation was not only an event, but also a process that continued long after the intense legislative and ecclesiastical activity of the Henrician, Edwardian, and early Elizabethan reigns.5 The dispute over festivity’s devotional meaning expressed in the confrontation between Latimer and these provincial parishioners was not fully resolved at the Reformation, and it continued to color both customary celebrations and their representation well into the seventeenth century. Festivity was indeed increasingly secularized, suppressed on the one hand, and detached from proximity to worship on the other – often by being reattached, as David Cressy has shown, to nationalistic celebrations.6 But as Ronald Hutton has demonstrated, that process of suppression and secularization was still under way at the time that Shakespeare was writing the ‘festive’ comedies of the late 1590s and early 1600s.7 Reformation controversies surrounding festivity can add a religious dimension to the largely secular analysis provided in foundational work on this topic by C.L. Barber, Leah Marcus, Michael Bristol, and François Laroque.8 Shakespeare’s plays do not simply reflect a culture in which festivity is already entirely secularized; rather, they participate in debates about that ongoing process. In As You Like It, Reformed efforts to secularize festivity are challenged when the play explicitly links ‘mirth’ and ‘heaven,’ providing a version of ‘the old Robin Hood of England’ (1.1.110–11) that reflects attitudes toward festivity shared by Latimer’s errant parishioners, as well as recusants in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.9 This challenge is generic as well as thematic: by welcoming traditional festivity into a pastoral literary world, Shakespeare defies the efforts of reformist pastoralists, especially Edmund Spenser, to banish festivity from properly Protestant pastoral gardens. Finally, in its closing acts, As You Like It parallels the ‘sports’ that have comprised most of the play’s action with religious ritual, suggesting a link between ‘mirth’ and ‘heaven’ that expresses a festive aesthetics associated with religious traditionalism. That is not to claim that As You Like It is a Catholic play. Such an assertion would in any case be categorically naive in light of recent scholarship that has forced us to recognize the complexities of devotional identity in the early modern period. Juliet Dusinberre has written that ‘Catholic and Protestant beliefs coexist comfortably in Arden,’ and recent scholarship has shown us that they also coexisted within texts, creeds, and individuals in the wider culture.10 As Alexandra Walsham, Anthony Milton, Michael Questier, Alison Shell, and others have argued,

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despite the continued persecution of Catholics and widespread, often almost hysterical anti-Catholic cultural rhetoric of early modern England, Catholics and Protestants coexisted in relative comfort in many venues – including, as Jeffrey Knapp has argued both in Shakespeare’s Tribe and in chapter 10 of the present volume, theatrical ones.11 Only by reconstructing the Catholic ideas, beliefs, and images that continued to influence literature and culture in the post-Reformation period can we fully understand mainstream Protestantism, and begin more accurately to map the complex religious topography of both early modern England and Shakespeare’s plays. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Reformation disagreements about mirth and worship were reflected in Church of England visitations, Sabbatarian and antitheatricalist writings, and provincial disputes over festivity. Reformers objected to mirth that was temporally, physically, or ideologically proximate to worship. A standard question in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Carolinian visitation articles was whether ‘plaies, feasts, banquets, Churche ales, drinkinges, or any other prophane usages’ were allowed in the ‘church, chappell or church-yarde,’ especially during divine service.12 Such concern with keeping festivity away from religion is expressed with particular outrage in Philip Stubbes’s account of the ‘Lord of Misrule in Ailgna,’ which reaches a rhetorical height as it describes revelers who ‘go to the Church (I say) & into the Church (though the Minister be at praier or preaching) dancing & swinging their handkercheifs over their heds, in the Church, like devils incarnate.’13 Though Sabbatarians held a range of opinions about Sunday sports, those writers were united in arguing for an end to all activities – including pastimes – that competed with religion.14 Provincial reformers were particularly incensed about festive practices that took place on the Sabbath, including plays put on by traveling performers; while reformers sought to ban plays on Sundays altogether, those who would allow them were often accused of being – and in some cases actually were – recusants.15 There was, of course, a long tradition of official unease with the potential impiety of extra-liturgical pastimes within the Catholic Church; like so much of what happened at the Reformation, the reform of the ritual year was partly an intensification of a long-standing internal Church critique. But that did not stop some Sabbatarian and antitheatrical writers of the 1570s and 1580s who went further to claim that May games, Whitsuntide celebrations, church ales, wakes, bear baitings, and plays were themselves inherently idolatrous and popish.16 For example, the speaker Age in John Northbrooke’s dialogue against Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine Plaies or Enterludes with Other Idle Pastimes reminds Youth ‘that holy

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dayes (as they are termed) were invented in old time for pastimes. … For the Pope appointed them (and not God in his worde) and that onely to traine up the people in ignorance and idleness.’17 In Albion’s England ‘a simple Northerne-man, no friend to Monke, or Frier’ satirizes prelates who, more concerned with ‘japes’ than ‘mend[ing] of our sinne,’ organized the year around extra-liturgical games including those of Robin Hood: ‘At Paske begun our Morrise: and ere Penticost our May: / Tho Roben hood liell Iohn, Frier Tucke, and Marian deftly play.’18 Other writers, such as William Kethe, stressed not only a historical link between popery and pastimes, but a formal one, attacking ‘brybing Papistes,’ who gave to God ‘your candles at Candlemasse, your Popishe penaunce on Ashewensday, your egges, and bacon on Goodfriday, your Gospelles at superstitious crosses, decked lyke Idols, your fires at Midsommer, & your ringyng at Allhallountide for all Christian soules.’19 Maypoles often became the targets of iconoclastic rages that replicated the smashing of church windows and statues at the Reformation. As I have argued more elsewhere, these disputes remained current long after the Reformation partly because recusants at times embraced the association between Catholicism and festivity, participating in traditional pastimes as a way of asserting their religious identity, and seeing themselves as the guardians of what were to them religious traditions.20 As the passage from Albion’s England attests, Robin Hood appears repeatedly in these cultural debates as an important symbol of popish parish pastimes. In the Marprelate tract Hay Any Work for Cooper, for example, the temporal, physical, and ideological proximity of mirth to worship is entertainingly satirized with Robin Hood once again (as in Latimer’s anecdote) being preferred to preaching, but this time by the prelate himself: … an honest priest / who was sometimes … a vice in a playe for want of a better /… [o]n a time / I think it was the last Maie / he went up [to the pulpit] with a full resolution / to do his businesse with great commendations. But see the fortune of it. A boy in the Church / hearing either the sommer Lord with his Maie game / or Robin hood with his Morrice daunce going by the Church / out goes the boy. [The priest] / though he were in the pulpit / yet had a minde to his olde companions abroad (a company of merrie grigs you must think them to be / as merry as a vice on a stage) seeing the boy going out / finished his matter presently with John of Londons Amen, … & so came down and among them hee goes.21

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Just as in the Latimer incident, festivity itself is not attacked in this passage; as Kristen Poole has shown, the Marprelate tracts rhetorically deployed festivity, and puritans participated in festive libeling with great relish in provincial attacks on their less Reformed neighbors.22 The problem with festivity for these writers was, again, that it interfered with worship. And though the attack here is clearly on lax Church of England prelates, the image of the jolly cleric recalls anti-Catholic satire, particularly associated in the late Elizabethan period with the jolly, lecherous, festive Friar Tuck. Reformers, then, objected to festivity conducted in proximity to the church or with clerical sanction, and some saw festive activities as inherently popish and idolatrous. This reformist dislike of mirth linked to worship registered in English pastoral. As Hutton has noted, although the countryside in Elizabethan pastoral was ‘often recognizably that of England … [v]irtually all Elizabethan pastoral verse almost ostentatiously avoids incorporating any of the traditional country festivities into its evocation of a timeless rural dreamland.’23 This is unsurprising given that the reformist dislike of festivity was explicitly argued for in the work that ‘inaugurated Elizabethan pastoral,’ Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender.24 There, the traditionally merry month of May becomes the site of a critique of church-associated festivity in a dispute between Piers and Palinode, described in the ‘Argument’ as a debate between ‘the protestant and the Catholique.’25 Although critics have disputed E.K.’s characterization, arguing that the pastors Piers and Palinode in the May eclogue actually represent ‘two forms of Protestants,’ in fact the eclogue almost exactly repeats contemporary reformist complaints against ‘popish’ festivity.26 The ‘Catholique’ Palinode defends festivity that ‘holy Saints doth queme’ and that is identified directly with the church when May revelers bring back greenery from the woods to deck ‘all the Kirke pillours eare day light’ (lines 15, 12). But ‘the protestant’ Piers excoriates the ‘schole of shepeheards’ who follow the ‘lusty Tabrere’ and ‘Horne pype’ into the ‘grene Wood’ (lines 22, 23, 27) as pastors who are ‘playen, while their flockes be unfedde’ (line 44). The parable of Kiddie reiterates Piers’s attack on festivity; when his mother abandons him just as the reveling shepherds abandon their flock, he becomes vulnerable to the idolatrous appeal of the ‘bells, and babes, and glasses’ (line 240) in the fox’s pack, glossed by E.K. as ‘the reliques and ragges of popish superstition, which put no smal religion in Belles: and Babies .s. Idoles: and glasses .s. Paxes, and such lyke trumperies’ (line 104). Though it is true that Piers ‘does not attack maygames … as such,’ and though E.K.’s glosses may parody anti-Catholicism even

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as they endorse it, the eclogue links those festivities to the visually, erotically, and sensually dangerous trifles of ‘popish superstition.’27 Moreover, while May becomes the site of a critique of ‘popish’ festivity, lawful rustic celebrations are moved to April, Saint George’s month, and associated instead with secular, nationalistic celebrations. Those April revelries delineate the kind of festivity allowed in Protestant pastoral: courtly, classicized celebrations denuded of younkers, tabors, horn pipes, and sexual desire, and completely detached from the ‘holy saints’ and church decorations of May. In this way, Spenser’s representation of festivity reflects what Alison Chapman has suggested about the structure of the Calender as a whole: that it is an effort to disrupt calendrical traditions of the Catholic liturgical year, and replace them with a new, Protestant calendar.28 It is certainly the case that generic considerations also kept traditional pastimes out of pastoral. The standard omission of obviously English rustic details is partly attributable to a refined dislike of generic mixing, expressed most influentially by Philip Sidney in The Defense of Poesy, and to pastoral’s aspirations to courtliness in general. Keeping the indecorous details of (potentially raucous) country ‘sports’ out of pastoral preserved a work’s courtliness and its Italianate purity, and as many critics have shown, the representational ontology of pastoral always remains in the court, despite the country setting.29 But given contemporary religious conflicts over festivity, religious ideology should be added to literary or courtly motives to explain festivity’s absence from most Elizabethan pastoral gardens. The Elizabethan pastoral dramas of John Lyly and George Peele, deriving as they did from Italian examples, are uninterested in English landscapes in general or rural pastimes in particular.30 The shepherds dance and sing in the eclogues of Sidney’s Arcadia, but there are few specific references to an identifiably English rural life or traditional pastimes, and those that exist are decorative flourishes, such as the stray maypole alluded to in the story of the marriage of Lalus and Kala in the third eclogues of the Old Arcadia.31 The prose pastoral romances of Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge, taking after Sidney’s Arcadia, do not represent rustic pastimes extensively either. Among pastoral poetry of the 1590s that takes Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender as a model, the most extensive description of rustic celebrations appears in the May queen celebration in Barnabe Barnes’s Parthenophil and Parthenophe; there is also a maypole and horn-dance in Richard Barnfield’s The Affectionate Shepheard.32 But this material is modeled on the ritualized, classicized celebrations of the April eclogue, and is not designed to create realistic depictions of actual rural festivities. Mucedorus, a play that fully

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merges native English festive traditions into a pastoral landscape, is an important exception, but even there Mouse’s role, and the degree of traditional rustic clowning, increases with the subsequent printings of the play into the early seventeenth century.33 In this context, Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender may have been influential in banishing from the pastoral garden the kind of mirth once associated with the English Catholic Church. In the last decades of the Elizabethan period, pastoral was often Protestant not only in its political and religious agendas (as critics have long noted), but also in its effort to endorse a reformist agenda by purging traditional, potentially idolatrous pastimes from the pastoral garden.34 The generic tension between pastoral and pastimes merges with the Protestant reform of Robin Hood in two plays performed just before As You Like It: the Lord Admiral’s Men’s The Downfall and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and published in 1598 and 1599. These plays simultaneously pastoralize and Protestantize Robin Hood, explicitly rejecting the Robin Hood of festive, pre-Reformation England in transforming him into an aristocrat and a proto-Protestant.35 In The Downfall, the actor playing Little John steps out of character to ask Friar Tuck – a role played fictionally by John Skelton – why the play includes ‘no jeasts of Robin Hoode, / No merry Morices of Frier Tuck, / No pleasant skippings up and downe the wodde, / No hunting songs, no coursing of the Bucke’ (2210–13).36 Skelton’s answer is that the play instead ‘expresses noble Roberts wrong, / His milde forgetting treacherous injurie: / The Abbots malice, rak’t in cinders long’ (2226–8). In order to represent the ‘honorable life’ of Robin Hood, the play must denounce the legend’s links to Catholic holy day celebrations; at the same time, the legend’s anticlericalism is transformed into anti-Catholicism, and Robin’s elevated social status reconfigures the greenwood retreat as a quasi-pastoral one. As Lois Potter has suggested, by ‘pastoralizing’ Robin Hood and downplaying the May game aspects of the legend, the story is redeployed to ‘to support a post-Reformation view of the church.’37 The recuperation of Robin Hood for a Reformed drama involves rescuing him from May games and inserting him in a more properly Protestant pastoral. In contrast, the Robin Hood invoked in As You Like It, first when Charles the Wrestler tells Duke Frederick that Duke Senior ‘is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England’ (1.1.109–11), but in more subtle ways throughout the play, is aligned with the Robin Hood of traditional parish festivity. Indeed, Shakespeare’s play takes the Robin

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Hood legend in the opposite devotional direction from the Admiral’s Men’s plays, partly by giving Duke Senior’s retreat specifically Catholic devotional overtones. Though Duke Senior does not rob from the rich to give to the poor, attack the church establishment, or protect maidenly virtue, he does use his retreat, as Michael Hattaway puts it, ‘as a time for exploring his vocation, a saintly refashioning of his self that anticipates the conversions at the end of the play.’38 The men in the forest do ‘fleet the time carelessly’ (1.1.112–13), but they also find ‘books in the running brook / Sermons in stones, and good in everything’ (2.1.16–17). Further, the duke’s behavior reflects the penitential structure of the Roman – not the Reformed – church, in the hospitality he offers Orlando in the forest. In As You Like It, the abrogation of hospitality is established early in the play as one of the moral problems besetting the world outside Arden. Duke Frederick had thrown Orlando out after the wrestling match, when custom dictated the champion should have been feasted; he also banished his niece Rosalind, and ordered his men to ‘push … out of doors’ Orlando and seize ‘his house and lands’ (3.1.15, 17). Oliver too had planned ‘to burn the lodging’ (2.3.23) of Orlando, who fears ‘the malice / Of a diverted blood and bloody brother’ would force him to become a vagrant, a beggar, and a thief (2.3.36–7). Within the forest, the violation of the laws of hospitality is defined in specifically religious terms by Corin, who links his own master’s inhospitality to the denial of a Catholic theology of works: ‘My master is of churlish disposition / And little recks to find the way to heaven / By doing deeds of hospitality’ (2.4.79–81). Though hospitality was not rejected by reformers, it was certainly not seen as part of a theology of works, but rather, as Robert Allen wrote in 1600, as the ‘fruit of faith, that justly doth … confirm the faith of others to expect mercy from God upon them that exercise the same.’39 Given his previous treatment by Oliver and Duke Frederick, it is perhaps understandable that Orlando plans to enforce his request for hospitality from the duke with the sword. When he is welcomed ‘gently,’ though, he asks the duke and his men to help him: If ever you have looked on better days, If ever been where bells have knolled to church, If ever sat at any goodman’s feast, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, And know what ’tis to pity and be pitied. … (2.7.114–18)

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The significance of this moment is marked by the duke’s almost incantatory repetition of Orlando’s words: True is it that we have seen better days, And have with holy bell been knolled to church, And sat at goodmen’s feasts, and wiped our eyes Of drops that sacred pity hath engendered: And therefore sit you down in gentleness And take upon command what help we have That to your wanting may be ministered. … (2.7.120–6) The spiritual potential of the Robin Hood retreat into the forest is suggested by the quasi-liturgical language here, and the changes the duke makes to Orlando’s speech as he repeats it add a Catholic devotional dimension.40 Orlando’s ‘bells’ become, in the duke’s response, ‘holy’ or consecrated, a practice decried by reformers as part of the sacramental system of worship that, as Michael O’Connell puts it, ‘tended strongly toward physical manifestation.’41 Prohibitions against excessive bell ringing were also a consistent item in visitation articles, and often raised in concert with concerns about traditional pastimes. In modifying ‘bells’ with ‘holy,’ the duke underscores the value of physical and performative ritual, endorsing what some reformers attacked as ‘the reliques and ragges of popish superstition.’42 The connection embraced by English Catholicism between liturgical and festive practices is further suggested when the duke indicates he has felt ‘pity’ at ‘goodman’s feasts’ – pity that is now, significantly, ‘sacred pity.’ By connecting sacred pity with the rituals of feasting – something Orlando did not do – the duke’s revision suggests the religious efficaciousness of feasts, celebrations linked etymologically as well as historically to traditional festivity. The spiritual value of feasting is also suggested by the duke’s assertion that Orlando’s physical hunger (his ‘wanting’) will be ‘ministered.’ Though like the Munday/Chettle Robin Hood plays As You Like It elevates the class status of Robin Hood by associating his legend with the activities of a duke, it does not participate in the Protestantizing of the legend. Instead, the Catholic devotional overtones of the duke’s retreat suggest the religious values of the older, late medieval Robin Hood, well known even in the post-Reformation era as the pious devotee of the Virgin.43 The parish entertainments associated with Robin are further suggested through the play’s exuberant generic heterogeneity, and

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particularly in its use (and festive abuse) of the pastoral tradition. As critics have universally noted, As You Like It ironizes pastoral, partly ‘by taking its conventions literally’; as Sukanta Chaudhuri notes, in this play ‘courtly, pastoral, and realistic elements mingle in complete topsyturveydom.’44 But in overlaying the world of ‘country bumpkins’ on the pastoral garden, Shakespeare is also including in pastoral what Spenser had banished from the world of Colin Clout: traditional festivity, especially activities associated with the May games of Robin Hood.45 This generic maneuver is partially enabled by the similarities between pastoral and pastimes, and especially by Robin Hood games. Both involve a retreat from the ‘working-day’ world: in pastoral, from the court to the sheep-herding countryside; in Robin Hood legends, to Sherwood forest; in parish entertainments, to the symbolic space of the green world invoked either symbolically by the Kendal Green of the participants’ costumes, or perhaps literally as participants resorted to village green or woodland bower.46 The youth cavorting in the woods without parental supervision – ‘what talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?’ (3.4.34–5) – is a pastoral convention, but it also repeats the standard movement of May celebrations when, as Stubbes puts it, ‘yung men and maides … run godding over night to the woods.’47 Cross-dressing is important to English pastoral (especially in Sidney’s Arcadia), but Rosalind’s disguise arguably – as Richard Wilson has suggested – links the play to the festive world of carnival and the tradition of the cross-dressed Maid Marian.48 The play’s episodic structure also seems to reflect the mixture of activities that comprised traditional festivity; as Janette Dillon writes, by presenting ‘a range of miscellaneous and, generically speaking, incompatible stage traditions,’ the play ‘remains true to the traditions of English popular form by refusing classical or generic unity.’49 More specifically, although there are no maypoles or morris dancers in Arden, the characters’ activities are associated with pastimes as much as, and indeed often more than, with pastoral. This is true both within and without Arden. Wrestling, though often undertaken in pastoral contexts, was not a central convention of the genre. Sir Calidore does ‘challenge Calidore to a wrestling game’ in Book Six of The Faerie Queene, but there is little or no wrestling in Sidney’s Arcadia. The sport is tangential to William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals, and it is only briefly mentioned – and not performed on stage – in Il Pastor Fido and The Faithful Shepheardess as well as the Munday/Chettle Robin Hood plays. As Cynthia Marshall notes, wrestling was recommended as martial exercise for young gentlemen by Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier, by Sir Thomas Elyot

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in The Castle of Health and The Boke Named the Governour, and by King James in Basilikon Doron. But it was more strongly identified with traditional pastimes, rustics, and lower-class status participants than with English gentlemen.50 In The Anatomie of Melancholy Robert Burton terms wrestling one of ‘the common recreations of the country folks’; Stowe describes ‘the casual activities of London youths, who ‘in the Holy dayes in Sommer … exercised themselves, in leaping, dauncing, shooting, wrestling, casting of the stone or ball’; and Paul Hentzner reported how members of ‘the mob’ presented themselves as wrestling combatants before the mayor at Elizabethan St Bartholomew’s Day ceremonies.51 The connection between wrestling and lower-class status inheres in Shakespeare’s source, Rosalynde, where Rosader first competes in the chivalric tournament jousting with ‘Launce[,] … Sword, and … Horse’ (168), and only belatedly challenges the king’s wrestler. The spectators of the match register the inappropriateness of a gentleman participant in this sport, as they ‘grieved that so goodly a young man should venture in so base an action.’52 As You Like It reflects the class ambivalence surrounding wrestling in both Rosalynde and early modern practice. Orlando’s participation is a symptom of Oliver’s particularly class-based form of abuse; he has treated his brother ‘like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentlemanlike qualities’ (1.1.64–6), keeping his brother ‘rustically at home,’ treating him less well than his horses: ‘for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox?’ (1.1.7–10). As Orlando wrestles with Oliver during the play’s first, spontaneous match, the claim that he is ‘no villein’ registers the debasement of his status. Orlando goes disguised to the wrestling because ‘[i]t was not becoming for a gentleman to fight with a common wrestler.’53 Wrestling, then, though not antithetical to pastoral or to aristocratic behavior, was more closely aligned in early modern England, in Rosalynde, and in As You Like It with lower-class status, and indeed it was a central element in rustic pastimes, especially Robin Hood games. In the 1475 dramatic fragment of an early Robin Hood game, Robin and a challenger compete at wrestling; the fights between Friar Tuck and Robin in ‘The Play of Robin Hood, very proper to be played in May-games’ appended to The Merrie Jest in 1560 and 1590, imply a wrestling match.54 Laroque describes As You Like It’s wrestling match as ‘a kind of popular tournament, a ritual spectacle associated with the ballads of Robin Hood’; in defeating Charles, Orlando ‘becomes the rightful champion of the festival’ by becoming ‘victor in the match that was a traditional feature of … the games of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.’55

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What is true of wrestling is also true of hunting in Arden. As Edward Berry has argued, ‘attitudes towards the hunt are generically marked,’ and hunting generally coexists uneasily with the pastoral ethos of a nonviolent sojourn in the country. In the Old Arcadia the beast fable sung by Philisides, ‘On Ister Bank,’ critiques hunting, and the work does not include a hunt. According to Berry, the addition of a hunting episode in revision signaled the book’s generic transformation: ‘In the pastoral Arcadia, hunting is either ignored or condemned outright as a mark of tyranny; in the heroic revisions, hunting is accepted as a lively, if slightly disturbing, aristocratic entertainment.’56 By including hunting in Arden, Shakespeare mingles with pastoral an element important in all versions of the Robin Hood legend, but especially to the parish Robin Hood. As David Wiles has shown, Tudor towns and villages organized Robin Hood games for the express purpose of training locals with bows and arrows; archery is also part of Robin Hood combat games described in the Merry Jest.57 Though the Munday/Chettle plays include archery, and Friar Tuck even at one point enters ‘carrying a stag’s head, dancing,’ the play explicitly rejects ‘hunting songs’ and ‘coursing of the buck,’ and there is no hunting in the briefer Robin Hood episodes in other professional London plays.58 In contrast, As You Like It greatly expands the connection between hunting and traditional English pastimes through the remarkable masquing song of 4.1. This festive procession apparently replicates customary ceremonies marking the return from a successful hunt, but particular elements of it – the focus on horns, the leather coat of the deer – also invoke folk traditions ‘such as the Horn Dance of Abbots Bromley, or the festive procession led by a buck’s head to honor the feast of St Paul at St Paul’s Cathedral.’59 The play’s main ‘sport,’ of course, is love, and amorous activities are identified with traditional pastimes throughout the play. When in the second scene Celia twice enjoins her cousin to ‘be merry’ (1.2.1, 22–3) she uses a code word for festive mirth, encouraging Rosalind to enter the spirit of ‘holiday foolery’ (1.3.14) later identified with love. Capitulating to her cousin, Rosalind reaffirms the association between merriment and love: ‘From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see: what think you of falling in love?’ (1.2.24–5). Celia adds to the connotations of the word ‘sport’ by associating it with sexual play (‘I prithee do, to make sport withal’ [26]), but the ‘sport’ the two finally arrive at is yet another kind of game: witty philosophical wordplay, as the two ‘mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel’ (31–2). This linguistic ‘sport’ will, of course, be continued in the love prattle of the forest, and endlessly practiced by the fool in motley, Touchstone, who not only immediately

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appears and participates in this mocking, but is later praised by Jaques because he so wittily ‘railed on Lady Fortune in good terms’ (2.7.16). Finally, the word ‘sport’ reverts to its most obvious meaning when Le Beau enters to tell the princesses about the wrestling – a sport that, to further solidify the connection between love and play, itself becomes a love game when through his performance Orlando overthrows ‘More than [his] enemies’ (1.2.243). In its overall episodic structure, in its representation of wrestling and hunting, in the central connection between love and ‘sport,’ and especially when read in the context of the Munday/Chettle Robin Hood plays and of Spenser’s reformist pastoral, As You Like It’s thematic, linguistic, and theatrical inclusion of festivity in pastoral violates the expulsion of festivity from the pastoral garden followed in explicitly Protestant works. The play’s realistic deflations of pastoral have been seen as significant both as literary experiment, and as a sign of the play’s engagement with contemporary political issues including enclosure, primogeniture, and more recently, the fortunes of the Earl of Essex.60 But by making this pastoral playground clearly English, As You Like It also situates the play within contemporary religious controversies over traditional festivity. The relevance of these disputes to As You Like It is confirmed when we find within the forest not only the English rustics Audrey and William, but also a ‘hedge-priest’ who introduces contemporary debates about festivity, theater, and reform. As Juliet Dusinberre has argued, Shakespeare brings the Marprelate controversy into Arden not only through Oliver Martext’s name, but also through the wordplay that reiterates particular passages from the pamphlets.61 Though festivity was not the Martinists’ major target, and though the pamphlets themselves deployed festive irreverence as a main rhetorical tool, they also, as we have seen, attacked festivity that lured weak priests from their duties. More importantly, the Marprelate writers were constructed as enemies of the theater – whether they truly were or not – by the Elizabethan ecclesiastical establishment that turned to the theatrical world for help in refuting their pamphlets. Not only did John Lyly and (possibly) Thomas Nashe write for the government’s side, but players and playwrights contributed ‘skits, satires, jigs and interludes making fun of the Martinists.’62 Touchstone mocks Martext with a song, ‘O sweet Oliver,’ in what was certainly an alehouse ballad, and may also have been a contemporary jig.63 Martext is subjected to ritual humiliation just as the Marprelate writers were, and with exactly the same dubious effect: there is no evidence that the theatrical attack on Marprelate, joined by (among others) Will Kemp, fully contained the effects of the Marprelate attacks, and Martext,

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alone on stage after the departure of his detractors, defiantly asserts that ‘Ne’er a fantastical knave of them all / Shall flout me out of my calling’ (3.4.99–100). In As You Like It, then, festivity is folded into pastoral in opposition to reformist versions of the genre, and religiously motivated attacks on both festivity and theater enter into the play directly through the character of Martext, punished by a jig performed by a fool in motley. Further, though most of the different ludic and mimetic activities represented in the play are secular, they are generically and dramatically paralleled to the rituals of marriage that end the play. This process begins in the ‘marriage’ of Rosalind and Orlando in act 4, in which the theatrical ‘sport’ of the lovers overlaps with, and indeed becomes, a quasi-religious ceremony. Near the start of the scene Rosalind identifies courtship with festivity when she tells Orlando to ‘woo me, woo me – for now I am in a holiday humour and like enough to consent’ (4.1.62–3), and as the scene continues she assigns roles and lines to Celia and Orlando. The ceremony theatrically enacted here in many ways recreates ‘the ritual performance of contracting’ widespread in early modern England, in which couples officially turned a stated intent to marry ‘into a solemn matrimonial bond.’64 Celia acknowledges the transgressive charge of the replication of ritual when she voices discomfort at her assigned role as priest, protesting, ‘I cannot say the words,’ and ‘Go to’ (118, 120). Here, as in betrothal ceremonies, the words spoken reflect, without directly replicating, the marriage ceremony in the Prayer Book, in which a future-tense statement of intent to marry is followed by a present-tense enactment of the marriage.65 There, the bridegroom and bride are first asked, ‘Wilte thou have this woman to thy wedded wyfe’ and ‘Wilte thou have this man to thy wedded housbande,’ to which they reply, ‘I will’; later in the ceremony they make present tense declarations that actually enact the matrimonial bond: ‘I N. take thee N. to my wedded wyfe’ or ‘husbande.’ Rosalind makes the ceremony follow the Prayer Book when she insists Orlando correct his future tense declaration to the present tense: CELIA:

Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind? I will ROSALIND: Aye, but when? ORLANDO: Why now, as fast as she can marry us ROSALIND: Then you must say, ‘I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.’ ORLANDO: I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. (4.1.104–9) ORLANDO:

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Not only has Rosalind reiterated the structure of the Church of England marriage ceremony, but in the terms Cressy uses to describe pre-contracts she has forced a shift from a contract verba de futuro into one verba de presenti, thereby increasing the binding nature of the ritual, and inflecting this moment with all the uncertainties, later extensively explored by Shakespeare in Measure for Measure, surrounding pre-contracts.66 Especially given the ambiguities surrounding early modern betrothal ceremonies, this ‘sport’ can approach the seriousness of an actual, bonding ritual when performed on stage, as at this moment holiday playing and theatricality merge.67 At the same time as it gives theatrical power to a ritual performed not only outside the physical church but also in the absence of ecclesiastical officials, As You Like It also ridicules the Church of England ceremony authorized by Martext, who insists that the proposed marriage between Touchstone and Audrey must fulfill the Prayer-Book requirement that the minister ‘receives the woman at her father or friend’s hands’: ‘Truly she must be given away, or the marriage is not legal’ (3.4.65–6).68 Touchstone is hopeful that Martext ‘is not like to marry me well,’ and Jaques urges him not to be married ‘under a bush like a beggar,’ but to ‘Get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot’ (3.4.77–9). The validity of Martext’s proposed rituals, performed by ‘the vicar of the next village’ (3.4.39) and so officially sanctioned, is questioned by everyone except Audrey, whose endorsement – ‘the priest was good enough, for all the old gentleman’s saying’ (5.1.3–4) – further undermines Martext’s ceremony. In theatrically supporting a private hand-fasting linked to festive and theatrical invention, and in mocking a union proposed by a scrupulous ecclesiastical official, As You Like It playfully suggests the superior ritualistic power of theater and play over sanctioned ceremonies. The relationship created in these scenes between ritual, festivity, and theatricality culminates in the final masque-weddings. Despite the artificiality of the masque form – underscored here by its jarring generic intrusion into a pastoral world – this performance actually does (fictionally) join these couples in matrimony. The events parallel the traditional order of ceremony for early modern weddings, with important comic twists. In a humorous rejoinder to Martext’s earlier quibbling, the bride is indeed given away – though in this case, by herself: ‘To you I give myself, for I am yours. / To you I give myself, for I am yours’ (5.4.114–15). The repetition here underscores the ritualistic power of the moment, as Rosalind simultaneously fulfills and violates the requirements of official Church of England weddings. When Hymen’s ceremony is finished, Duke Senior

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initiates the ‘rustic revelry’ that followed wedding ceremonies in the sixteenth century, calling for ‘brides and bridegrooms all / With measure heaped in joy to th’ measures fall’ (5.4.176–7). When Duke Senior ends the play by saying that the company ‘will begin these rites / As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights’ (5.4.195–6), the word ‘rites’ refers to the ‘dancing measures,’ not to another wedding ceremony: there is no priest or friar waiting in the wings to join the couple, because Hymen’s masque has already married them. In that sense, ‘pastime’ – including dancing, masque, and other ‘rustic revelry’ – has become ritual. Hymen further confirms the link between ‘mirth’ and religion when she says, ‘Then there is mirth in heaven / When earthly things made even / Atone together’ (5.4.106–8). The words ‘atone together’ suggest human reconciliation, but in this context they also resonate with the other, more clearly religious ‘atonements’ of Oliver, whose conversion has enabled these marriages; of Duke Frederick, whose conversion is about to become an ‘offering’ to the weddings; and possibly of Duke Senior, who may have learned something from ‘sermons in stones’ in the forest.69 Hymen’s ceremony, then, both replicates and replaces religious ritual in a clearly artificial form, enforcing the link between drama, festivity and ritual as she joins both the couples and the community in what is the only actual wedding ceremony on stage in the Shakespearean canon. Of course, not everyone ‘atone[s] together’: Jaques will not be reconciled, refusing either to become one in the parade of ‘couples … coming to the ark’ (5.4.36), or to join the ‘rites’ of revelry that end As You Like It. Duke Senior acknowledges Jaques’s inherent resistance to the festive ethos when he jokes that ‘If he, compact of jars, grows musical, / We shall have shortly discord in the spheres’ (2.7.5–6). But in the final scene, as throughout the play, Jaques participates in festive and ritualistic activities even though they do not ‘please’ him (2.5.14). As many critics have noted, through the scatological associations of his name and his misanthropic railing, Jaques is associated with the ‘satirical credo’ of turn of the century London.70 As You Like It playfully rejects that satirical aesthetic in favor of a festive one, partly by forcing Jaques to become a participant in the festive ceremonies of the forest that he simultaneously – though ineffectually – denounces. Jaques resists inclusion in the duke’s merry band; the first thing we learn about him is that the duke cannot find him, and he later tells Amiens that he ‘has been all this day to avoid him’ (2.5.29). But he not only listens to Amiens sing the Robin Hood ballad ‘Under the greenwood tree,’ and is reportedly ‘merry’ at the song (2.7.4), he also has written ‘a verse to this note … in despite of my invention’ (2.5.40–1). When Jaques’s song is sung onstage, the ‘traditional staging’

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is to have the lords ‘rise and gather in a semi-circle’ to puzzle out the meaning of the word ‘Ducdame,’ only to be ridiculed by Jaques as he defines it, ‘’Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle’ (2.5.52).71 Though with the same level of ironic distance of Orlando’s wooing of Rosalind, Jaques here replicates the central aim of festive and ritualistic behavior in this play: to bring people – fools and all – back into a circle or community, just as Orlando is brought into the circle of the duke’s men. When in the same scene Jaques says he will ‘rail against the first-born of Egypt’ (2.5.53–4), he aligns his satiric persona to the theatrical traditions of the old morality plays and its central railer, Herod, twisting the usual association of satirical ‘railing’ to identify it with the plays of an older, festive, Catholic world. Jaques is similarly inserted in traditional festive practices ‘in despite’ of himself when he not only joins, but actually engineers the festive processional celebrating a successful hunt in act 4. It is the non-hunter Jaques, who, like a true pastoralist, had eloquently lamented the wounding of the deer, who now proposes presenting the deer to the duke ‘like a Roman conquerer’; Jaques who suggests they ‘set the deer’s horns upon his head for a branch of victory’; Jaques who asks the forester if he has ‘a song, for this purpose’ (4.2.3–6). In the play’s final scene, though Jaques insists he ‘is for other than for dancing measures’ (5.4.191) and will ‘see no pastime’ (193), he still participates in the rituals ending the play in a speech addressing Duke Senior, Orlando, Oliver, Silvius, and Touchstone: You to your former honour I bequeath: Your patience and your virtue well deserves it. You to a love that your true faith doth merit; You to your land and love and great allies; You to a long and well-deserved bed; And you to wrangling, for thy loving voyage Is but for two months victualled. (5.4.183–90) Not only is Jaques’s characteristic cynicism absent from all but the final ‘bequest’ to Touchstone, but he here repeats the linguistic patterns of Hymen’s wedding ceremony, adding the duke to the list of addressees but otherwise speaking to the men in the same order in which Hymen addressed the couples (Orlando, Oliver, Silvius, Touchstone). In ‘bequeath[ing]’ to these couples in the present tense, Jaques provides his own ritual enactment, this one linked not to marriage, but will-making. Again, Jaques becomes involved in ceremonial activities from which he

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simultaneously distances himself. Further, though he escapes from ‘pastime,’ Jaques proposes practicing in another venue the same ‘pastime’ he has practiced in Arden: playing the gadfly to a duke on a retreat, this one explicitly religious, now that Duke Frederick ‘hath put on a religious life’ (5.4.179). Jaques will follow him because ‘out of these convertites / There is much matter to be heard and learned’ (5.4.182–3), echoing language the duke had used earlier about Jaques: ‘I love to cope him in his sullen fits, / For then he’s full of matter’ (2.1.67–8). Jaques also applied the term ‘matter’ to describe the duke, complaining to Amiens, ‘he is too disputable for my company: I think of as many matters as he, but I give heaven thanks and make no boast of them’ (2.5.29–32). In pursuing Duke Frederick, then, Jaques is not necessarily embracing the philosophical contemplations he had previously rejected, but actually pursuing, as Fabian phrases it elsewhere in Shakespeare, ‘more matter for a May morning.’72 With a generic playfulness that rivals the play’s exuberant deflations of pastoral, As You Like It forces the satiric Jaques to participate in its forest ceremonies, thereby both appropriating satirical theatrical energies and firmly subordinating them to its own festive aesthetic. That aesthetic endorses the spiritual usefulness of mirth, theater, and play, registering none of the anxieties about images, ritual, and theater that troubled much Protestant theatricality.73 When As You Like It’s spectacles become sacramental, they harness an old-fashioned belief in the salvific function of festivity, fun, and feasting to the service of the early modern stage, a process similar to that which Anthony Dawson describes in the final chapter of this volume as the mechanism through which ‘religious thinking and sacramental allusion’ are ‘suited to and subsumed by the theatrical domain.’ Dawson and others have called that appropriation ‘secularizing,’ and that definition is appropriate for many plays of the early modern theater. But As You Like It calls attention to the religious meaning that inheres in theatrical forms themselves – the feasting, dancing, processing, wrestling, and other ‘sports’ associated intermittently here with the values of traditional religion. Festive play, once part of a Catholic culture that did not so rigidly oppose religion and performance as Protestantism, could be (indeed often was) secularized in early modern England. But that secularization could be resisted as well as embraced in a culture still sorting through the repercussions of the Reformation. As You Like It may indeed participate in the secularizing of post-Reformation culture, but it also, by replicating theatrical mirth linked both to traditional forms of playing and to the old religion, surely resists that process.

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Notes This chapter appears in expanded form in chapters two and three of my Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare’s Festive World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), reprinted here with kind permission of the press. 1. Alan G. Chester, ed., Selected Sermons of Hugh Latimer (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1968), 105. 2. Paul Whitfield White, ‘Holy Robin Hood! Carnival, Parish Guilds, and the Outlaw Tradition,’ in Tudor Drama before Shakespeare, 1485–1590, ed. Lloyd Edward Kermode, Jason Scott-Warren, and Martine van Elk (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 67–90; Alexandra Johnston, ‘The Robin Hood of the Records,’ in Lois Potter, ed., Playing Robin Hood: The Legend as Performance in Five Centuries (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 27–44; James Stokes, ‘Robin Hood and the Churchwardens in Yeovil,’ Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 3 (1986): 1–25. 3. On disorder associated with Robin Hood, see Peter Stallybrass, ‘ “Drunk with the Cup of Liberty”: Robin Hood, the Carnivalesque and the Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern England,’ in Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism, ed. Stephen Knight (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 297–327; and Richard Wilson, ‘ “Like the Old Robin Hood”: As You Like It and the Enclosure Riots,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (1992): 1–19. 4. White, ‘Robin Hood,’69. 5. See Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). For an analysis of these works in the context of recent Reformation studies, see Ethan Shagan’s Introduction to Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England, ed. Ethan Shagan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 1–22. 6. David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 7. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 8. C.L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959); Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater: Plebian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (New York: Methuen, 1985); François Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Leah Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 9. Citations from the play are from Juliet Dusinberre, ed., As You Like It, Arden 3 Shakespeare (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). 10. Juliet Dusinberre, ‘Rival Poets in the Forest of Arden,’ Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 139 (2003): 71–83, esp. 76 11. Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1993); Anthony

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12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580– 1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). These are Archbishop Richard Bancroft’s articles of 1605, printed in James Stokes, ed., Somerset, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 424. Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1583), M2v . Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). David Underdown, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 27–60. The case is printed in Rosalind Conklin Hays and C.E. McGee, eds, Dorset, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 173–90. On puritan objections to festivity and theater, see also Jeremy Goring, Godly Exercises or the Devil’s Dance? Puritanism and Popular Culture in Pre-Civil War England (London: Dr Williams Trust, 1983), and Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation (Reading: University of Reading, 1986). On attacks on the theater as idolatrous, see Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), especially chap. 1, ‘Theater and the Devil’s Teats,’ 14–35; and Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), esp. 67–73. On the identification of idolatry with Catholicism, see Shell, Catholicism, 23–55. John Northbrooke, A Treatise wherein Dicing, Dau[n]cing, Vaine Plaies or Enterludes … Are Reprooved (London, 1579), 12r . William Warner, Albions England a Continued Historie of the Same Kingdom (London, 1597), 121. William Kethe, A Sermon Preached at Blandford Forum (London, 1571), 20r . Jensen, Religion and Revelry, chap. 1. Anon., Hay Any Worke for Cooper (London, 1642), 4. Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 21–32. Hutton, Merry England, 134. Patrick Cheney, ‘Spenser’s Pastorals: The Shepheardes Calender and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Spenser, ed. Andrew Hadfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 124–42. William A. Oram et al., eds, The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 87; all quotations are from this edition. On Spenser’s rejection of festivity, see also Hutton, Merry England, 130–1. Cheney, ‘Spenser’s Pastorals,’ 90; Oram, Shorter Poems, 85.

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27. Oram, Shorter Poems, 85. 28. Alison Chapman, ‘The Politics of Time in Edmund Spenser’s English Calender,’ Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 42 (2002): 1–24. On Spenserian pastoral and the April eclogue in particular, see also Louis Montrose, ‘ “Eliza, Queene of shepheardes,” and the Pastoral of Power,’ English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 153–82. 29. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral and its English Developments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 1–6. 30. See W.W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (New York: Russell & Russell, 1959), 216–63. On pastoral pageants and entertainments, see Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral, 39–47; on plays, see Chaudhuri, 348–85. 31. Jean Robertson, ed., The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The Old Arcadia) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 244. 32. Richard Barnfield, The Affectionate Shepheard (London, 1594), F2r−v ; Barnabe Barnes, Parthenophil and Parthenophe (London, 1593), 118–20. 33. On the different editions of Mucedorus, see Leo Kirschbaum, ‘The Texts of Mucedorus,’ Modern Language Review 50 (1955), 1–5. 34. Epithalamion provides a different view of festivity, as does the later work of the neo-Spenserians. See the extended discussion of these issues in my Religion and Revelry, especially chapters 2 and 5. 35. On the representation of Robin Hood in the theater of the 1590s, see Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 115–34; and Edwin Davenport, ‘The Representation of Robin Hood in Elizabethan Drama: George a Greene and Edward I,’ in Potter, Playing Robin Hood, 45–63. On the Munday/Chettle plays, see M.A. Nelson, ‘The Earl of Huntington: The Renaissance Plays,’ in Knight, Robin Hood: An Anthology, 99–122; and Jeffrey L. Singman, ‘Munday’s Unruly Earl,’ in Potter, Playing Robin Hood, 63–76. 36. John Carney Meagher, ed., The Huntingdon Plays: A Critical Edition of The Downfall and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (New York: Garland, 1980). 37. Potter, Playing Robin Hood, Introduction, 21–5, esp. 22 and 24. As Potter and others point out, one strand of the legend was partially pastoralized in the French pastourelle, and folded into romance in the Tale of Gamelyn that provided a source for Shakespeare’s source, Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, if not for Shakespeare himself. 38. Michael Hattaway, Introduction to As You Like It, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 29. 39. Robert Allen, A Treatise of Christian Beneficence (London, 1600). Qtd in Felicity Heal, ‘The Idea of Hospitality in Early Modern England,’ Past and Present 102 (1984): 66–93. See also Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 40. Hattaway, ed., As You Like It, 122 n. 41. O’Connell, Idolatrous Eye, 46. 42. See E.K.’s gloss on the baubles admired by Kiddie in the May eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender, 104. 43. See A Merry Jest of Robin Hood and of his Life (1560; rpt. London, 1590). For a different interpretation of the Catholicism of As You Like It, see Carol Enos, ‘Catholic Exiles in Flanders and As You Like It, or, What If You Don’t Like It at

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44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61.

All?,’ in Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 130–42. Michael Bristol, ‘Shamelessness in Arden: Early Modern Theater and the Obsolescence of Popular Theatricality,’ in Print, Manuscript, Performance: The Changing Relations of the Media in Early Modern England, ed. Arthur Marotti and Michael Bristol (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 279–306, esp. 298; Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral, 358. Bristol, ‘Shamelessness,’ 298. On Robin Hood games, see David Wiles, Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1981), though see also Johnston’s argument that the records do not support Wiles’s claim that Robin Hood was a ‘summer lord’ (‘Robin Hood,’ 29–30). See also Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study, 98–114, and especially Robert Leach, who argues, contra Knight, that As You Like It is structured as a Robin Hood game; ‘As You Like It – A “Robin Hood” Play,’ English Studies 82 (2001): 393–400. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, M3v . Wilson, ‘Enclosure Riots,’ 10–11. Janette Dillon, ‘Shakespeare and the Traditions of English Stage Comedy,’ in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume III: The Comedies, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 4–22, esp. 10. See also on the play’s generic mixing Keir Elam, ‘As They Did in the Golden World: Romantic Rapture and Semantic Rupture in As You Like It,’ in Reading the Renaissance: Culture, Poetics, and Drama, ed. Jonathan Hart (New York: Garland, 1996), 163–76. Cynthia Marshall, ‘Wrestling as Play and Game in As You Like It,’ Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 33 (1993): 265–87, 273–4. All qtd in Marshall, ‘Wrestling,’ 273–5. Thomas Lodge, ‘Rosalynde’, in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 2:171. Hattaway, ed., As You Like It, 78 n. Both are reprinted in Wiles, Early Plays, 71–9. Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World, 233. Edward Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 161. Wiles, Early Plays, 32–3; see also the archery competition between Little John and the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Merry Jest, C1r –C2v . Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, in Meagher, ed., The Huntington Plays, 333–4. These episodes, from George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (London, 1593), and George Peele, Edward I (London 1593), are reprinted in Wiles, Early Plays, 80–90. Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt, 184; Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World, 234. Wilson, ‘Enclosure Riots,’ passim; Louis Montrose, ‘ “The Place of a Brother” in As You Like It: Social Process and Comic Form,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 32 (1981): 28–54; and Juliet Dusinberre, ‘As You Like It,’ in Dutton and Howard, Companion, 411–28. Juliet Dusinberre, ‘Topical Forest: Kemp and Mar-Text in Arden,’ in In Arden: Editing Shakespeare, ed. Ann Thompson and Gordon McMullan (London: Arden, 2003), 239–51, esp. 242–4.

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62. Dusinberre, ‘Topical Forest,’ 241. 63. Dusinberre, ‘Topical Forest,’ 245–7. 64. David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 266–81, esp. 266. 65. The Booke of Common Praier (London, 1559), Dv*. 66. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 266. 67. See the descriptions of stagings of this scene in Cynthia Marshall, ed., As You Like It: Shakespeare in Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 208–9 68. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 292. 69. See Debora Shuger’s discussion of sixteenth-century religious meanings of ‘atonement’ in chapter 2 of this volume, note 19. 70. See David Bednarz, who gives an overview of critical associations between Jaques and satire in Shakespeare and the Poet’s War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 108–11. See also Dale G. Priest, ‘Oratio and Negotium: Manipulative Modes in As You Like It,’ Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 28 (1988): 273–86, esp. 273–5. 71. Marshall, ed., As You Like It, 156 n. 72. Roger Warren and Stanley Wells, eds, Twelfth Night, Oxford Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3.4.144. 73. On the relationship ‘between Protestant hostility toward the imagination and the remarkable flowering of the theater in late Elizabethan London,’ see Diehl, Staging Reform, esp. 66–93.

8 Speaking Daggers: Shakespeare’s Troubled Ministers Glenn Clark

On 1 August 1637 Richard Gammon, Rector of Barford, Warwickshire, dutifully wrote a report on the sad conclusion to the tale of another minister, Francis Briggs. Gammon had that morning attended Briggs before and during his execution for the murder of a local woman, Rebecca Hunt. Briggs and Hunt had allegedly had an affair which had gone terribly wrong. Gammon’s epistolary ‘certificate,’ as he calls his report, witnesses to Briggs’s complete confession and repentance ‘both of the murther, and the fornication,’ and his ‘good hope of his reconciliation to God’ in the hours before his death.1 The letter itself, however, is less remarkable than the endorsement on its outer side, an endorsement which confesses what for Gammon is the most important and memorable part of the story. Gammon writes: Certificate concerninge the manner of dying of F. Briggs. condemned for Murther of a woman with whom he had often committed Fornication. Briggs was a Clergiman and a preacher and as I remember had the cord with which he strangled her in his pocket when he preached the day he did the fact. What has pressed itself into Gammon’s memory is not merely the ‘fact’ that a clergyman has been condemned for fornication and executed for murder, but that a preaching minister carried with him, in secret, the instrument of murder while he preached. The horrifying effect of Gammon’s last sentence is predicated on two important elements. The first is that Briggs was not merely a clergyman, but a regular preacher, a preacher by vocation, whose words and presence ought to have been especially trustworthy. The second element is the shocking simultaneity 176

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of the holy act of preaching with dreadful thoughts of sex and murder. The monosyllabic repetitiousness of the final clause – ‘the day he did the fact’ – testifies to what is apparently a painfully blunt and irreducible reality: preaching concealed sin during Briggs’s final hours of liberty. Briggs has triggered a long-standing fear among the clergy of being charged with fraudulence, with being seen in the light of Marlowe’s Faustus, a ‘divine in show,’ or of Jonson’s puritan hypocrites.2 The concealed rope is a synecdoche which testifies to the suspect performativity of preaching. It is not surprising, then, that the details of the ‘manner’ of Briggs’s death are so important to Gammon and to whoever ‘requested’ this ‘certificate of the life and death’ of the once-reverend Briggs. Briggs’s near-death humility and honesty might perhaps be witnessed and certified so as to compensate for the public discredit he has brought to ministering and preaching. The performative ‘fact’ might somehow be undone or at least diminished. At the same time, as Gammon’s choice of topic for his letter’s endorsement demonstrates, this particular ‘fact’ is not only anxiety-inducing, but also intriguing. Perhaps Gammon wondered just how much effort it might have taken Briggs to perform his duty to care for the souls of his congregants while his own soul was filled with lust and anger. What, Gammon may have wondered, was really the more powerful emotion in Briggs: lust, hate or love? In the form of Gammon’s semi-public epistolary endorsement, the ‘fact’ of Briggs’s sin becomes far richer and stranger. Shakespeare had died more than twenty years before the execution of Francis Briggs, but the anxieties disclosed in Gammon’s endorsement and by the desire for a certification of Briggs’s dying ‘manner’ were not absent from Shakespeare’s religious milieu. Vexed questions about the relationship between ministerial interiority and behavior had since the Reformation accompanied what Rosemary O’Day calls the professionalization of the English Protestant ministry.3 The religious establishment as well as more radical Protestant voices were especially concerned about the problem of ministerial authority. How, thoughtful Protestants wondered, could a ministry devoted to preaching the authoritative Word authorize itself, and maintain that authority, in the relative absence of ritual, sacrament, and the traditional distinction between priest and layman? During the century after Luther’s declaration of the priesthood of all believers, Protestants had become increasingly convinced that the ministry could justify itself only through a combination of persuasive and compelling preaching and extremely high standards of disciplined and loving behavior.4 Consistent propriety and charity would show the

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word and heart of the minister to be one, and sustain faith in the Word. Jeffrey Knapp’s recent rehabilitation of Shakespeare as a ‘purposively’ but mildly reformist dramatist makes of his drama ‘a kind of ministry’ that accommodates the spiritual needs of its audience by ‘cozening’ it into good fellowship.5 Knapp is right to link Shakespearean ministering and a sense of fraudulent performance, but his Erasmian and theatrical reformism is hard to accept as something wholeheartedly Protestant. I would like to suggest that Shakespeare’s drama is at times more recognizably Reformed in the thematic significance it gives to the internal struggles and spiritual and professional failures of pastors who have no choice but to confront and challenge persistent depravity.6 For Hamlet and Measure for Measure’s Duke Vincentio, such confrontations necessitate the performance of ministering. But part of what troubles these ambiguously heroic and disturbing characters is that their pastoral roles are compromised by their own passions, passions which are entirely unsurprising given the profundity of the corruption they confront. The plays adumbrate the sad and deeply Protestant paradox of a pastoral art of love which cannot convincingly escape its own worldly insufficiency.7 Not, at least, without help.

I The pastoral duties of the Protestant ministry are described in a wide variety of sermons and pastoral texts from throughout the Tudor and Stuart periods. Preaching the joyful Word was at the centre of all Protestant pastoral activity until Arminianism came to dominate the Church hierarchy in the 1630s. Reformation theologians described a variety of types of sermons; for the most part, these types fit into larger categories of doctrinal teaching, behavioral correction, or consolation.8 In 1608, George Downame analyzed the minister’s many responsibilities and rhetorical modes. Pastors, he writes, are responsible ‘to instruct the ignorant, to reduce the erroneous, to heale the diseased, to seek the lost, to admonish the disorderlie, to comfort the distressed, to support the weake, to be patient towards all.’9 Downame’s verbs for persuasive preaching and counsel may be divided into three abstract categories: teaching, correction, and consolation. But the syntax here reveals less a sense of rhetorical organization than a need for emotional transformation and adaptability as well as intellectual effort. The accumulation of verb phrases helps make Downame’s point that ministers should be commended for their tremendous efforts. Ministers must reduce and

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admonish while at the same time they must remain prepared to heal, comfort, and support. Much effort goes into the pastor’s assessment of what his flock needs to hear at a particular time. Even patience takes effort in a congregation of sinners. This accumulation of verbs also betrays a potential problem. The list suggests that ministers may feel that they have to move very quickly from one mode, and one emotion, to another. It is hard to be sure any preacher could fully isolate the emotions appropriate to reduction and admonishment from those appropriate to support and patience. The problem for the ministry of the adjacency of conflicting emotions is also visible in discussions of the purpose of preaching. Rebuke and comfort, pastoral anger and spiritual love, are in constant and troubling proximity in idealized descriptions of the preacher’s rhetorical effect. The minister’s primary goal is to persuade his charges to acknowledge their consciences and become aware of sinfulness. They must mollify their hearts, and open themselves to grace. In 1601, Richard Greenham insists that It is necessarie that the Minister of God, doe very sharply rebuke the people for their sinnes, and that he lay before them Gods grievous judgements against sinners; for so the Apostle commaundeth: Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. And againe, it is needfull for the people that they have their consciences touched, and their harts made knowne unto them, that so they may come out of their sinnes, and prevent the heavie judgement of God.10 Charles Richardson similarly writes that the minister ‘must labour to pierce even into the hearts of men, and to speake to their soules and consciences.’11 To be effective, the minister must harshly rebuke sinners so as to penetrate their hearts. The minister must, at times, allow anger to guide painful rhetoric.12 The violent imagery of piercing the heart, given a clear moral dimension in Greenham’s emphasis on sharp rebuke, is especially marked in the discourse of pastoral rhetoric.13 While this is a vivid metaphor for spiritual change, it is also a potentially frightening image. Elizabethan ministers did worry that they were on the verge of injuring their auditories through verbal but nonetheless spiritually real violence. It is precisely this issue that is taken up by John Donne in his 1618 sermon preached at Lincoln’s Inn. Donne’s text is Psalm 38:2, ‘For Thine Arrowes Stick Fast in Me, and Thy Hand Presseth Me Sore.’ Donne’s

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scholarly parsing of the psalm allows him to imagine, through the lamentation of the biblical Jeremy (or Jeremiah), the pains and anxieties that many English ministers must have felt in the post-Reformation century when what would come to be called the ‘jeremiad’ was the epitome of the sermon, rather than an extreme or marginal form. Jeremy, Donne writes, ‘preached heavy Doctrin, and therefore his Auditory hated him. … [Jeremy cries] I preach but the sense of Gods indignation upon mine own soul, in a conscience of mine own sins, I impute nothing to another, that I confesse not of my selfe.’ Jeremy admits that awareness of his own sins makes him ‘a contentious man … a worm, and a burthen to every tender conscience. … I am a bitter, and satyrical preacher.’ Donne’s Jeremy uses his own self-scrutiny to challenge his listeners to search their own hearts, and he knows that they do not like it. The sermon reflects the particularly Protestant ministerial awareness that strong preaching mollifies through pain, and this awareness, in turn, generates ministerial anxiety about both the response to heart-rending preaching and the emotions or motives behind such preaching. The minister may be ‘a bitter, and satyrical preacher.’ Though the sermon tries to calm the ministerial imagination by emphasizing that the preacher shoots ‘Gods arrows,’ it cannot resolve the anxiety generated by self-scrutiny.14 Such a fear testifies to the intensity of the self-doubt generated by the pastoral requirement to pierce hearts and rebuke sharply. The disconcerting recognition that discipline often transforms the heart through painful instruction and correction is accompanied by a compensating emphasis on the need to offer comfort.15 Pauline Christianity takes special care to emphasize that discipline must first reveal depravity, but that as the spirit fulfills the Law, so consolation should follow discipline. According to Tyndale, the spirit must first come and wake him out of his sleep and with the thunder of the law fear him, and show him his miserable estate and wretchedness, and make him abhor, and hate himself and to desire help, and then comfort him again with the pleasant rain of the gospel, that is to say, with the sweet promises of God in Christ, and stir up faith in him to believe the promises.16 The minister must not leave his congregation, or the individual sinner, under the threat of damnation. For Tyndale, as for Downame, comfort and discipline are adjacent. However, Tyndale does not make absolutely clear when comfort should come to the sinner. That ambiguity would

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put a great deal of pressure on the minister. Moreover, after the heartrending and terrifying process of discipline, the offering of comfort is itself challenging. Charles Richardson movingly reports that the minister must ‘know to minister a word in time to him that is wearie: that is, [to] comfort an afflicted conscience, which Luther saith, is harder to do, than to raise the dead.’17 The minister must take care to offer the comforts of the Gospel ‘in time,’ before despair sets in. Richardson’s allusion to Luther’s epigrammatic lamentation for comfort tells us just how deep the ‘wretched’ and helpless feeling of total depravity could run in the sinner. And perhaps the emotions resisting comfort are felt not only by the ‘afflicted conscience,’ but by the minister as well. The intensity of the rhetoric of discipline and comfort accompanied and sustained an equally intense drive to pastoral self-scrutiny. Even more than lay Protestants, post-Reformation pastors were inundated with the message that they must make the effort to examine their own hearts and consciences. Richardson insists that ‘the minde of a Minister distracted with worldly businesse, cannot be carried to the discharge of his dutie, with that livelyhood and cheerfulnesse that is requisite.’18 Greenham expects that neither he nor his fellow pastors should enter the profession before we have set downe, and as it were kept streight audit with ourselves, and cast all our reckonings over and over againe. … And therefore sift your selves narrowly ye that purpose this worke, gage the bottome of your thoughts, and be sure that it is the shepheards voice that calleth you in, be sure that your gifts are answerable.19 The shepherd’s voice is that which feeds the flock in love, and the shepherd must be willing and able to offer a great deal of spiritual nourishment. Both rebuke and comfort must be grounded in love, and for the pastoral calling to be recognizable as a true vocation, that love must be complete. It must reach to the ‘bottome’ of the pastor’s heart. It must come naturally. In 1608, Richard Kilby demands that prospective ministers ‘examine your heart according to your conscience in the sight of God; what mooveth you to be a minister? And what [do] you principally desire and intend? For looke what you minde, that you will follow, and to compasse the same, neglect all other things.’20 What the minister ‘minds’ leads directly to what the minister does. If pastoral activity is not founded in love, the decorum of pastoral practice, the precise timing of rebuke and comfort, may be compromised. Indeed, the one activity might contaminate and render ineffective the other. Implicitly, then, rebuke and

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comfort will be adjusted by love, and consequently if that decorum goes awry, or if sustaining it feels unnatural or forced, the ‘bottome’ of the pastor’s thoughts and heart is brought into question. For ministers, if effort is necessary, it might well feel disconcertingly unnatural. Some ministers, at least, allowed the tension between the need to feel natural love and the effort of regulating their pastoral practice to unsettle their consciences. For example, in a letter from Robert Grebbey, the chaplain of New College, Oxford, in 1652, to Thomas Smith, the apparently self-doubting vicar of Caldecote, Grebbey says that Smith can sustain faith in his vocation ‘by being all you would be thought to be, and nothing which you would not be thought to be, or as your own heart sayes you should be, for yet you are not condemned by it of any thing.’21 This is a touching reply, but also an ambiguous one. The letter calls for what could appear to be a paradoxically performed sincerity. Smith must follow what his heart says he ‘should be.’ This may have more to do with pastoral decorum – what he ‘would be thought to be’ – than with what his heart really feels. Such a pretense remains possible because his heart is only ‘yet’ not condemning him. Self-condemnation for having to perform pastoral duties seems nearly inevitable. English Protestant pastors faced a dilemma. They needed to ‘follow’ their hearts, but they also needed hearts that would be both loving and comforting and angry and rebuking in quick succession. They needed to found pastoral anger in pastoral love. In order to stabilize the words and actions issuing from those proximate but very different emotions, they must have, at times, felt the need to perform their roles in opposition to their affective states. Yet self-condemnation for an insincere response to depravity, and for obscuring necessary passion, had the potential to destabilize those same, saving, roles.

II While Hamlet has been a student at Wittenberg, he has not graduated or yet taken religious orders. Strange as it seems, Shakespeare’s medieval and Catholic Hamlet has learned his Reformation theology and his pastoral duty. When he confronts Gertrude, he becomes, at least for a moment, a minister in practice.22 His goal is to admonish his mother and then comfort her, to persuade her to look inside herself and recognize her sin, but then to offer, as Richardson says, ‘a word in time’ of support and hope. He is determined to ‘set you up a glass’ whereby she will see ‘the inmost part’ of herself.23 Hamlet is convinced of the moral priority of

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the interior life of faith, so he is forthright with his mother regarding his goal: And let me wring your heart, for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff, If damned custom have not brazed it so That it be proof and bulwark against sense. (3.4.36–9) Hamlet’s goal is to pierce and mollify his mother’s heart. Even as he imagines wringing that hopefully ‘penetrable’ heart, the admonishment is designed to induce her self-scrutiny and guilt. His conditional phrasing, the ‘if’ clauses in succeeding lines, serves to emphasize the possibility that Gertrude’s life has recently been little more than ‘damned custom’ that will surely be difficult to overcome. To illustrate this difficulty Hamlet then breaks into a 36-line speech on the horrors of his mother’s lust for Claudius, the ‘Rebellious’ and hellish ‘mutine’ from natural love for which she should blush in shame. Gail Kern Paster has recently considered the play’s insistent language of penetration in terms of psychophysiological and political strategies rooted in the pneumatic materiality of sixteenth-century psychology.24 But Hamlet’s language is also the language of ministerial admonishment. His painful counsel does exactly what post-Reformation preaching is meant to do. Gertrude feels her internal sin, and exhibits contrition, saying that ‘Thou turns’t mine eyes into my very soul, / And there I see such black and grained spots / As will not leave their tinct’ (3.4.91–3). Shakespeare reintroduces the piercing metaphor when Gertrude begs Hamlet to cease admonishing her: ‘Oh, speak to me no more! / These words like daggers enter in my ears. / No more, sweet Hamlet!’ (3.4.96–8). This is no performance on Gertrude’s part. She is genuinely contrite. Hamlet has, she says a few moments later, ‘cleft [her] heart in twain’ (3.4.163). Her pain lasts for some time. Several scenes later she complains in soliloquy of her ‘sick soul’ and ‘guilt’ (4.5.17, 19). Her heart eventually appears to close again, since she defends her husband from the murderously infuriated Laertes, and certainly she seems to be at peace with Claudius by the end of the play. But Hamlet has, at least, generated a degree of self-scrutiny on his mother’s part, and no pastor would have expected complete mollification to be easy or immediate. While Hamlet has, as Tyndale might say, terrified Gertrude with the wretchedness of her estate, he does not fail to offer comfort. Like a good Protestant, he tells her that she must ‘Confess [herself] to heaven’

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(3.4.156). He does not tell her that she must confess to a priest or perform works of penance. Then he offers hope grounded in the idea that what at first feels artificial can come to feel ‘more easy’: Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence; the next more easy. (3.4.167–74) Hamlet here tries to transform the effect of his earlier reproval of ‘damned custom’ so that a painfully wrung heart will be put at ease by ‘actions fair and good.’ Devilish custom, he argues, can become angelic. Time spent in good custom will substitute pious desire for sinful desire. What at first feels difficult and artificial will become easier and more natural. Hamlet then optimistically says that when Gertrude is ‘desirous to be blest’ he shall ‘blessing beg of [her]’ (3.4.178–9). That is, he tells Gertrude that she shall receive grace, and be worthy the begging of a blessing, when her efforts to act well have opened her heart to grace. Of course, Hamlet’s desire to ‘beg a blessing,’ followed as it is by a rhetorical gesture to Polonius’s corpse, suggests that Hamlet feels that he too lacks blessedness. Indeed, the soundness of Hamlet’s heart is in question long before he kills Polonius. Hamlet anticipates his advice to Gertrude to artificially ‘assume a virtue’ when he realizes that he must challenge his own depraved appetite. In the midst of the soliloquy in which he imagines the terrifying ‘bitter’ ‘business’ of violent revenge, Hamlet becomes aware that he must change his mood: Soft, now to my mother. O heart, lose not thy nature! Let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom. Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none. My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites: How in my words somever she be shent, To give them seals never my soul consent! (3.2.391–8)

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This is a moment of pastoral self-scrutiny. Hamlet reveals to himself a psychic struggle in which his natural love for Gertrude is threatened and very nearly overwhelmed by his equally natural anger. His desperate apostrophe to his heart reveals that he is actually on the verge of allowing his love to be contaminated by violent and depraved rage, ‘the soul of Nero.’ He tries to isolate the raging first half of the soliloquy and its acknowledgement that he wishes to ‘drink hot blood’ from the pastoral second half by calling on the ‘softness’ of which he still believes, or hopes, he is capable. The apostrophe itself rhetorically distinguishes a ‘natural’ heart from anger, and makes it possible for him to believe that his heart can ‘Let’ him merely ‘speak daggers’ of rebuke to Gertrude. Hamlet’s rhetorical struggle has much to do with splitting an unmanageable passion composed of a blend of love and anger into distinct and manageable components in which the anger resides in his ‘soul’ and the love remains in the controlling heart. He hopes that his heart will control his ministerial ‘tongue’ and suppress the anger in his soul. But the instability of this merely expedient distinction is evident in the fact that the final line gives controlling agency to the soul, previously the seat of his fury. The failure to maintain rhetorical distinctions threatens an inability to manage his passion. Hamlet’s self-scrutiny reveals the frightening adjacency of love and depravity, of ‘sharp rebuke’ and murder. What Hamlet may do when he meets his mother moments later is left very uncertain at this point. The ambivalence and instability of Hamlet’s desire to lovingly offer pastoral admonishment rather than to satisfy a violent and controlling appetite is also registered by his use of the term ‘hypocrisy’ to describe the role he plans to play. If he merely rebukes, he thinks, his words will not correspond to his soul, and his exterior performance will not correspond to his natural anger. The term ‘hypocrisy’ acknowledges Hamlet’s feeling of interior division, the feeling that his anger is just as natural as his love. Only a few minutes earlier, Hamlet had insisted that a performance should reflect nature. He told the visiting players to ‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. … [H]old as ’twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’ (3.2.17-24). Here, a decorous and persuasive performance would be a natural performance. To the possibility of a performance that only ‘indifferently’ excises unnaturalness, he tellingly says ‘Oh, reform it altogether’ (3.2.36, 38).25 But now, under the pressure of his anger at corruption, Hamlet has trouble believing that his own decorous and persuasive pastoral performance can

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be ‘altogether’ reformed of unnatural artifice. He must act lovingly, but such an act will obscure his anger. Hamlet is not happy about denying his appetite for ‘hot blood’ through a performance of merely spoken ‘daggers.’26 The apostrophe to his heart thus has further significance as an apostrophe in suggesting that Hamlet feels he must call out for help, even pray for help, to a greater and somehow distinct power. That Hamlet makes the effort to engage in this painful self-scrutiny is important in itself. Hamlet does what Protestant pastors were encouraged to do. He scrutinizes ‘the bottome of his thoughts’ in order to be sure that his pastoral conversation is founded in love. But Hamlet faces the dilemma that is obliquely revealed in Robert Grebbey’s letter to Thomas Smith. Hamlet should follow his pastoral passions, but he discovers that he cannot come to Gertrude with love alone in his heart. Therefore he chooses the difficult option of facing his own self-condemnation for the fraudulent performance of a love drained of fury. Hamlet will try to do what he knows he ‘should do,’ as Grebbey told Smith, and he can only hope that this performance will come to feel natural and easy. Hamlet’s performance of the rebuking and comforting pastor to Gertrude in the face of his almost overwhelming anger may well be his best moment. But as Richard Kilby might have guessed, Hamlet does ‘follow’ the promptings of his heart, and that heart is compromised by its anger. Hamlet’s difficulty sustaining unworldly love in a depraved world reveals the pressures within the Protestant pastoral tradition, itself angrily aware of depravity. While Hamlet promises himself that he will ‘speak daggers to [Gertrude], but use none’ and that she shall be ‘shent’ with words alone, he certainly does more than speak daggers to Polonius. At the moment of the murder, his pastoral performance is revealed in all its instability. The irony of his consideration for the ‘penetrable stuff’ of his mother’s heart, only moments after mortally penetrating Polonius’s body, horrifyingly insists upon the adjacency or coterminous emotional space of gracious pastoral love and depraved anger. R. Chris Hassel Jr has argued that Hamlet’s ‘truest and most persistent vocation, [is] speaking daggers rather than using them.’27 But Hamlet’s loving speech is no more ‘true’ or authentically representative of his feelings than his violence. R.A. Foakes, by contrast, has recently analyzed the murder of Polonius in terms of Shakespeare’s exploration of cultural ambivalence regarding ‘the control or release of instinctual drives to violence.’28 Foakes argues that Hamlet’s self-identification as ‘scourge and minister’ (3.4.182) is little more than an unconvincing ‘rationalization’ of his otherwise ‘inexplicable’ violence.29 Fredson Bowers also interpreted Hamlet’s claim to be ‘scourge and minister’ almost solely

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in terms of the ‘difference between a scourge and a minister.’30 Bowers and Foakes underestimate, I think, both Hamlet’s understanding of his complex and troubling ‘ministering’ and that understanding’s resonance with a deeply vexed Protestant pastoral discourse. Elizabethan pastoral discourse registers the worry that minister and scourge are not distinct. Hamlet’s violence is perfectly explicable and has profound meaning in Shakespeare’s culture precisely because it is the ‘instinctual’ or natural behavior of a pastor. Natural depravity, it suggests, is everywhere, including in the heart of the minister. It is precisely this unavoidable ministerial depravity that necessitates what Hamlet and Robert Grebbey offer as the most important pastoral effort, that of performance. In the late Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic worlds of tragedy and satire, and in the professional discourses in which those plays are partly founded, the performance of pastoral love is necessary, potentially heroic, and always suspect.31 Like Hamlet, Measure for Measure’s Duke Vincentio performs a pastoral role which appears to be compromised by his unregenerate nature. Both Hamlet and the duke prompt their audiences to ask of clerics in particular: ‘What may man within him hide’? (Measure 3.2.264). But Vincentio offers a significant contrast to Hamlet. While Hamlet struggles with his role, scrutinizes himself and regrets – mourns might be better – his ‘hypocrisy’ and his likeness to a ‘scourge,’ Vincentio takes on his role with no apparent struggle and with resistance to external scrutiny rather than painful introspection. The contrast with Vincentio allows us to appreciate more deeply the value of Hamlet’s pastoral struggle. Critics have long distrusted Measure for Measure’s elevation of the duke as a romance hero of atonement and regeneration. Critics, we might say, often feel compelled to provide the scrutiny and condemnation refused by the duke. Anthony Dawson, for example, likens Vincentio to Angelo and thinks that the play’s superficially joyful romance closure is ‘more hoax than reaffirmation.’ Dawson argues, importantly, that the play makes this hoax, and thus the artifices of power and authority, visible.32 I would argue that the audience is prepared to recognize the artificiality of the romantic conclusion by the play’s insistence on the duke’s subtly hypocritical pastoral performance. While Hamlet is made to seem like a character who may indeed have a pastoral vocation, Measure for Measure forces us to suspect that Duke Vincentio, at least as a cleric, is a disappointing fraud. Vincentio generates uncertainty as soon as he says that he plans to take on a pastoral role. This occurs during his dialogue with Friar Thomas, when he asks Thomas to teach him how he can ‘formally in person bear / Like a true friar’ (1.3.47–8). The duke’s explanation as to why

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he wants to take on the ‘form’ of a friar is inconclusive and unsatisfying. He tells Thomas ‘More reasons for this action / At our more leisure shall I render you’ (1.3.48–9). Hamlet’s equivalent moment, during which he acknowledges to himself and to the audience his plan to take on a pastoral role, is one of profound and painful honesty. But the duke engages in nothing like the intense self-scrutiny Richard Greenham and others insist ministers conduct before entering a pastoral career. He does not appear to know or care that English post-Reformation pastoral culture is one that comes to ask of the new minister, with Richard Kilby, ‘what mooveth you to be a minister?’ The duke’s turbulent interiority is partly revealed in this dialogue, but not to or by Vincentio himself. Vincentio does not assess how his emotions may affect his pastoral ‘form.’ We know that he has temporarily transferred power to Angelo because he feels that his personal reputation, his ‘nature,’ would be tainted as tyrannical if he tried to reinforce the laws he has allowed to slip.33 His performance as friar is at least partly compromised by his desire to shield himself from the personal consequences of political irresponsibility. An audience familiar with English pastoral discourse might well object, with Charles Richardson, that such ‘worldly businesse’ should not even ‘distract’ a pastor. Yet it is part of the duke’s motivation. More importantly, Vincentio’s first words to Thomas betray an unscrutinized pride that ironically links the duke to Angelo. Vincentio responds to Thomas’s offstage question as to whether he is trying to arrange an assignation by demanding that Thomas not believe that ‘the dribbling dart of love / Can pierce a complete bosom’ (1.3.2–3). The contemptuousness of the reference to secular love, combined with the obscure claim to some kind of perfection, makes the duke’s words memorable and prompts audience suspicions. Those suspicions are deepened only a few minutes later when the duke impugns Angelo as a ‘seemer’ because he ‘scarce confesses’ to have blood or appetite (1.3.51–4). Like Angelo, the duke refuses to acknowledge his own humanity, and is contemptuous of the bodily weaknesses of others. Such arrogance was exactly what pastoral self-scrutiny, the casting of ‘all … reckonings over and over,’ was intended to reveal. If Vincentio doubts Angelo’s ability to perform the role he has been given, the audience is prompted by the irony to question the duke’s ability to perform his role as well.34 It is not surprising, then, that after this troubling introduction to Vincentio’s role as a ‘true friar,’ his performance of the role takes on special significance. The duke holds a series of pastoral conversations with the various ‘afflicted spirits’ in Vienna’s prison (2.3.4). While he has

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positioned Angelo to enforce harsh discipline in the state, the duke as friar encourages harsh spiritual discipline. The problems with his pastoral approach are first revealed as he confesses Juliet. He tells her he will teach her to ‘arraign [her] conscience, / And try [her] penitence, if it be sound’ (2.3.21–2). He is at his best when he encourages her to repent for love of heaven rather than for fear of God (2.3.34–5). The duke seems to be on the right track, especially for a Protestant audience, when he initially prompts her to acknowledge that she committed the sin in love and that it was ‘mutually committed’ (2.3.28). Indeed, the duke’s stress on the importance of mutual love almost ironizes his description of the extrajudicial relationship and pregnancy as an ‘offenseful act’ (2.3.27). It is tempting to think that he denies the seriousness and sinfulness of the act altogether when he appears to offer her a joke about her pregnancy as an admonishment: ‘Then was your sin of heavier kind than his’ (2.3.29). But nothing from this point on suggests that either the duke or Juliet think that this pun, or the double standard informing it, is any kind of joke at all. Juliet’s pregnant body enters Vincentio’s vision only as proof of severe sin and of the need for rebuke alone. I would suggest that Shakespeare allows Vincentio to reveal his vision of the sinful body as a way of reminding the audience of his icily ascetic contempt for the body and sexuality. The asceticism then becomes the dramatic context of, and the implicit condition for, his failure to minister appropriately to Juliet. His contempt for what he earlier called ‘the dribbling dart of love’ here prevents him from being able ‘to minister a word in time to him that is wearie: that is, [to] comfort an afflicted conscience,’ as Charles Richardson wrote of the capacity of good pastors. At the very moment that the duke has found good reason to offer merciful comfort, he fails to do so. He abandons Juliet immediately after telling her that Claudio will be executed the next day. She is left without the crucial comfort she needs to deal adequately with Claudio’s looming execution. Her response to hearing that her beloved will die is startling: ‘Must die tomorrow? O injurious love, / That respites me a life, whose very comfort / Is still a dying horror!’ (2.3.41–3). These lines serve as a painful repudiation of the duke’s pastoral performance. Juliet does not merely lament lost comfort; she has lost faith in the possibility of comfort in her lifetime. The mercy which pardons her life and her child’s has become a ‘horror,’ and Claudio’s love has become an injury. Vincentio has taught her that love deserves punishment. At this point in the play we have no reason to think that Vincentio plans either to save Claudio or to return to Juliet. He has left her, ironically, to ‘rest’ very near the despair from which ministers were called

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to protect their charges (2.3.37). He insists that she repent for love of heaven rather than fear of it, but he leaves her with nothing but fear. Given the duke’s desire to act the ‘true friar’ and to ‘minister’ to Juliet, Vincentio’s performance is not off to a good start. He has tried to help Juliet examine the sincerity of her conscience, but he has done little to ‘sound’ the distracting contempt and the ‘injurious love’ in his own heart. If the duke’s performance with Juliet offers little more than a hint of pastoral skill, his interview with Claudio borders on the disastrous. At first, the scene appears to display the duke’s success in using a homily drawn from classical Stoic and traditional Christian contemptus mundi and ars moriendi themes to console the soon-to-die Claudio.35 Claudio seems comforted when he echoes the Gospel of Matthew: ‘To sue to live, I find I seek to die. / And, seeking death, find life. Let it come on’ (3.1.42–3). But Claudio is perhaps unaware of the ambiguity of the antecedent of his pronoun ‘it.’ Indeed, we shortly find out that Claudio has been much better prepared to seek life than to accept death. As soon as Isabella offers him the chance of life, he clings to it. For Claudio, ‘Death is a fearful thing’ because it leads only to ‘cold obstruction’ or the pagan terror in which ‘the delighted spirit’ is ironically left ‘To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside / In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice, / To be imprisoned in the viewless winds / And blown with restless violence round about’ (3.1.118–26). In short, Duke Vincentio has left him with ‘fear of death’ (3.1.133). Most of Shakespeare’s original audience would agree with Isabella that her brother is now ‘faithless’ (3.1.139). The structure of the scene suggests that much responsibility for Claudio’s faithlessness lies with the duke, whose homily to Claudio appears intended to deny ‘hope to live,’ yet utterly fails to offer any Christian hope of divine mercy and grace. The duke’s own materialism becomes increasingly evident throughout the speech, which begins with the Stoic claim that Claudio, like any man, is merely a breath ‘Servile to all the skyey influences’ (3.1.9). Vincentio himself seems completely unaware of the Christian – particularly the Reformed – critique of the Stoic influence on Christianity.36 The duke’s argument displaces the Christian God and grace in favor of an indifferent Fate and pagan deities. But even this theology is shortly forgotten in favor of a Lucretian materialism through which the duke describes Claudio as nothing more than ‘a thousand grains / That issue out of dust’ (3.1.20–1). This implicit denial of the existence of the soul likely triggers Claudio’s fear of death as ‘cold obstruction,’ while the Stoicism seems to produce the even more terrifying fear of a merciless pagan afterlife. If Shakespeare’s audience was

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willing to accept a disguised duke as a potentially successful comic agent because of the established conventions of the disguised-duke play, the duke’s stunning failure to offer Claudio any lasting comfort or hope at least partly disables that acceptance.37 Like his beloved Juliet, Claudio receives fear rather than lasting comfort from Vincentio’s ministering. Indeed, it becomes hard not to suspect, as had been the case during the duke’s interview with Juliet, that Vincentio’s contempt for the body in the world prevents him from fulfilling his role appropriately. The two scenes together adumbrate the Reformation critique of those elements in the Christian tradition that have not fully expelled classical paganism and materialism. In a culture habituated to the surveillance of pastoral practices for signs of worldly interest, Measure for Measure generates suspicion of a pastoral role compromised by a paradoxically worldly pride in unworldliness.38 It is precisely such suspicion that Protestant pastoral discourse – indeed, the entire set of discourses and disciplines which we call ministerial professionalization – sought to remove. And it is suspicion, as well, that Richard Gammon sought to diminish as he wrote his endorsement on the outer side of the epistolary report on the life and death of Francis Briggs. The dramatically realized anxiety that I believe most profoundly draws Hamlet and Measure for Measure together is not so much about sectarian orientation as about pastoral integrity. In late Tudor and early Stuart England, that anxiety finds its home in the discourse of Protestant ministerial professionalization rather than in anti-Catholic invective. It is in this Protestant discourse that the problem of the minister’s ambiguous interiority and motivation, of the paradoxically debasing and elevating conflict between naturalness and performativity, is most pronounced. Protestant ministers must bear the strain of maintaining near-perfect ‘conversation’ while preaching a theology of depravity and humility as well as joy, and can only pray for grace rather than depend on what they would have understood as fraudulent priestly privilege. Duke Vincentio does nothing, after all, to merit the ‘accident that heaven provides’ which allows him at least to sketch ‘heavenly comforts of despair’ (4.3.77, 110). Shakespeare’s engagement with the ministry may have roots in the long tradition of anticlerical satire, and it is not entirely alien to the Jonsonian satire of hypocritical puritans. Shakespearean tragedy and problem comedy are, after all, part of the same cultural milieu as Jacobean satire, and critics have long understood the generic affinity of early modern tragedy, tragicomedy, and satire.39 Both Shakespeare and Jonson, like Marlowe before them, cast doubt on the credibility of

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worldly and appetitive clerical figures. But Shakespeare’s problematic ministers – unlike some of his bishops or Jonson’s puritans – are not engaged in intentional or wholly self-serving fraud. Shakespeare does not actively and unambiguously diminish his pastoral characters. Rather, he tries them, generating conditions in which they perform their roles ambiguously or insufficiently. Dramatic conventions of revenge and disguise provide him with a framework within which he can explore the troubled interiority of the newly professional ministry. While these trials disclose the weaknesses and limitations of pastors’ hearts and even of violent pastoral discourse, they also gesture to the necessity, even the inevitability, of ministering as a performance. The plays suggest that such performances are best when undertaken in full self-awareness. To reverse the terms, the uncertain performances of the historical English ministry help provide tragic and troubled plots for Shakespeare’s dramas of endurance and, as many in Shakespeare’s original audience may have thought, persistence. Examining the troubles of these pastoral figures allows us to see that Shakespeare engages with Protestant theology and pastoral discourse more deeply and directly than Knapp concedes. Attention to these characters reminds us, with Arthur Marotti, that love at times may be something else disguised, but such attention also reveals a Shakespeare interested in a more sincere, complex, and multi-faceted Reformation than we usually imagine.40

Notes Research contributing to this paper was generously funded by the University of Manitoba Research Grants program. 1. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3263, 104. The original recipient of the letter is unknown. 2. Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus, ed. Roma Gill, New Mermaids, 2nd edn (London: A&C Black, 1989), scene 1, line 3. 3. Rosemary O’Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession, 1558–1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979). 4. For the moral and psychological pressure on the early English Protestant ministry, see Neal Enssle, ‘Patterns of Godly Life: The Ideal Parish Minister in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Thought,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997): 3–28; see also Patrick Collinson, ‘Shepherds, Sheepdogs, and Hirelings: The Pastoral Ministry in Post-Reformation England,’ in The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, ed. W.J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 185–220. 5. Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 9, 38, 53.

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6. Stephen Greenblatt has described the anxiety suffered by disciplinary authorities such as Duke Vincentio and Prospero, but for Greenblatt, these characters and their anxieties remain ‘emblematic’ of ‘the dominant religious, aesthetic, or political institution’ as a whole. Greenblatt’s formulation gestures to the broad significance of the plays, but cannot fully capture the way in which dramatic energy is created by the resonance of dramatic situation with Elizabethan pastoral discourse and practice. See Greenblatt, ‘Martial Law in the Land of Cockaigne,’ in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 146. 7. See the chapters in the present volume by Jeffrey Knapp and Phebe Jensen for examples of Shakespeare’s optimism about joyful and spiritually efficacious performance and festive play. The difference between Knapp’s and Jensen’s readings and my own should remind us that Shakespeare’s comedies and histories are much more sanguine about art and performance than the tragedies or problem comedies. 8. Jameela Lares offers an extended discussion of the types of sermons, giving priority of influence to the five categories described by Andreas Hyperius. Lares argues that the artes praedicandi, especially the traditions of the corrective and consolatory sermons, offer a poetic resource for John Milton; Milton and the Preaching Arts (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 48–95. 9. George Downame, Two Sermons, The One Commending the Ministerie in Generall: The Other Defending the Office of Bishops in Particular (London, 1608), 16. 10. Richard Greenham, The Workes of the Reverend and Faithfull Servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, Minister and Preacher of the Word of God (London, 1601), 368. 11. Charles Richardson, A Workeman that Needeth Not to be Ashamed: Or the Faithfull Steward of Gods House. A Sermon Describing the Duety of a Godly Minister, Both in his Doctrine and in his Life (London, 1616), 71. 12. The need for pastoral anger is likely one reason for the Reformation’s resistance to discourses condemning anger. This resistance is described by Richard Strier in ‘Against the Rule of Reason: Praise of Passion from Petrarch to Luther to Shakespeare to Herbert,’ in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, ed. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 29–30. 13. Wayne Rebhorn describes the humanist defense of secular rhetoric which stresses ‘the violence of the orator’s penetration into the intimate interior of his listener’s soul … whose fundamental goal is the transformation of the auditor’; The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 148–9, and passim. 14. The Sermons of John Donne, ed. Theodore Gill (New York: Meridian, 1958), 39, 59. 15. Lares notes that all English artes praedicandi, following Andreas Hyperius, emphasize the significance of consolatory preaching and its scriptural warrant in Romans 15:4; Preaching Arts, 80. 16. ‘Prologue to Romans,’ Tyndale’s New Testament, ed. David Daniell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 216. 17. Richardson, Workeman, 24.

194 Shakespeare and Religious Change 18. Richardson, Workeman, 16. 19. Greenham, Workes, 369. 20. Richard Kilby, The Burthen of a Loaden Conscience: Set Forth by the Confession of a Miserable Sinner (Cambridge, 1608), 88. 21. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2550, 24. 22. I am not arguing that Hamlet is an allegorical representation of a Protestant minister. I would suggest that his language and his situation resonate with and intensify the tensions within pastoral discourse. The conditions of possibility for Hamlet include Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, and perhaps the visibility of lay pastors within English Protestant culture. On lay pastors as objects of satire, see Jeanette Ferreira-Ross, ‘Religion and the Law in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair,’ Renaissance and Reformation 18 (1994): 45–66, esp. 48–9. 23. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 3.4.20–1. All quotations from Shakespeare will be from David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 5th edn (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004). 24. Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), esp. 50–60. 25. R. Chris Hassel Jr has heard in this line a puritanical desire for total ecclesiastical reformation; ‘The Accent and Gait of Christians: Hamlet’s Puritan Style,’ in Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, ed. Dennis Taylor and David Beauregard (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 294. 26. To the extent that Hamlet feels that hypocritical performance is necessary, this moment is consistent with Shakespeare’s larger tolerance for hypocrisy. In chapter 10 of this volume, Jeffrey Knapp concludes that ‘for Shakespeare, not even the blatant hypocrite can be cleanly separated from the ranks of the religious, no matter how comforting the thought of that separation might be.’ 27. Hassel Jr, ‘Accent and Gait of Christians,’ 300. 28. R.A. Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 130. 29. Foakes, Shakespeare and Violence, 128–9. 30. Fredson Bowers, ‘Hamlet as Minister and Scourge,’ PMLA 70 (1955): 740. 31. The difference between Hamlet and As You Like It as read by Phebe Jensen in chapter 7 of this volume is instructive. For Jensen, As You Like It subordinates ‘satirical theatrical energies … to its own festive aesthetic.’ Hamlet, unlike Jaques, cannot be forced to ‘participate’ in a festive world which makes only painfully ironic appearances at Elsinore. 32. Anthony Dawson, ‘Measure for Measure, New Historicism, and Theatrical Power,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 341. Many feminist critics have felt similar suspicions. Marcia Riefer argues that the duke is ‘setting up Angelo for a fall while protecting himself’; ‘“The Instruments of Some More Mightier Member”: The Constriction of Female Power in Measure for Measure,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 35 (1984): 160. 33. I follow Bevington’s footnote gloss of line 42’s ‘nature’ as ‘personal identity (as distinguished from my official capacity).’ 34. To my mind Katherine Eisaman Maus’s argument that as a secular ruler the duke cannot have access to an inwardness that always recedes into unknowability does not account well for this moment. Maus’s insistence on the

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36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

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significance of unknowable interiority would seem to take the duke off a hook that the play is at pains to put him on. To argue that he is bound to fail to find and change psychic interiors obscures the dramatic significance of his failures to do exactly that. See Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 178–81. J.W. Lever provides a concise review of the generic origins of the duke’s homily to Claudio, and correctly argues that the duke’s position distorts the Christian themes of his sources through his overt materialism. I disagree, however, with Lever’s claim that an audience’s interest is not ‘centered … on the validity of the Duke’s homily or of Claudio’s reflections’; Introduction to Measure for Measure, Arden Shakespeare (London: Thomson, 1965), lxxxvii–viii. For the Reformation rejection of the need for Stoic or ascetic ‘renunciation of the world,’ see Strier, ‘Against the Rule of Reason,’ 29–30. Jessica Slights and Michael Morgan Holmes make note of ‘the temporary success of the Duke’s plan’ to improve Claudio by ‘an appropriation of religion.’ Their argument for the significance of Isabella’s resistance to Vincentio’s strategies would, however, be altered by a recognition that the provisionality of the duke’s success is tantamount to failure. Isabella is not made heroic in her resistance to any compelling version of Protestant pastoral practice; ‘Isabella’s Order: Religious Acts and Personal Desires in Measure for Measure,’ Studies in Philology 95 (1998): 273. My critique of the duke’s unusual worldliness seems to me to be in sharp contrast to Debora Shuger’s celebration of the duke as an image of the merciful, Anglican sacerdotal king. Shuger’s book renders the duke and the play as relatively untroubled; if the duke embodies ‘the dominant understanding of monarchy circa 1600’ then that understanding of sacerdotal monarchy was dangerously unstable. Measure for Measure is more Reformed in its distrust of the worldly and political pastor – royal or not – than Shuger recognizes. See Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 71. See, for example, Alvin B. Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 219–21; R.A. Foakes, ‘Tragicomedy and Comic Form,’ in Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan: Change and Continuity in the English and European Dramatic Tradition, ed. A.R. Braunmuller and J.C. Bulman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986); and Albert H. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, 1603–1642 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), 110–20. Arthur Marotti, ‘“Love is Not Love”: Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Social Order,’ ELH 49 (1982): 396–428.

9 Othello in the Wilderness: How did Shakespeare Use his Bible? Tom Bishop

Whatever else it may have been, the religious movement of early modern Europe now generally known as ‘the Reformation’ was certainly a crisis of reading. From Luther’s early wrestling with the significance of St Paul’s phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ (Romans 1:17) to Milton’s late and monumental effort to rewrite Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana, there is no aspect of Reformation political and religious culture that does not involve an appeal to how the Christian scriptures are to be read. What were the characteristics of the divine text? Did the category extend outside the canon of the Bible (or even everywhere within it, given Luther’s reservations about James)? Who ought to read these writings? How might a reader best access their peculiar authority? Between Luther and Erasmus on free will in the 1520s, between Whitaker and Bellarmine on the authority of tradition in the 1590s, and almost everywhere in the 1640s, controversialists throughout the period sought to tap the sacral character and transformative force of biblical language. And the issues were joined at the popular as well as the professional level. In 1599, for instance, perhaps aware that the matter had proved deeper than anticipated, the printers of the Geneva Bible included for the first time two items to assist the reader: a prefatory diagram of ‘How to take profite in reading of the holy Scriptures,’ and a poem, itself a web of redacted readings, that offers advice on how to read ‘with a single eye.’1 By 1600, reading the Bible, even for the simplest of the lay literate, had become a matter of some figurative complexity. Modern critical attention to this ferment has occasioned rich studies of poets such as Spenser, Milton, and Herbert as claimants to a ‘poetic authority’ variously related to that of Scripture. But investigations of ‘Shakespeare and the Bible’ have often tended either empirically to catalogue specific verbal borrowings – as Naseeb Shaheen monumentally 196

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does in Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (1999) – or to advance typological discussions of whole plays and books, as does Stephen Marx in his Shakespeare and the Bible (2000).2 Neither of these approaches, useful as they are, asks about the complexities of conversation and struggle going on between sacred and secular texts, or between sacralizing and secularizing impulses within texts. Studies of the religious contexts of Shakespeare’s writing have tended to look to other aspects of sacred experience or tradition that continued to manifest themselves in the Elizabethan theater. Michael O’Connell, for instance, has fruitfully revisited the question of the demise of older forms of religious drama – and the modes of their survival. Tony Dawson has offered rich and suggestive accounts of the refunctioning of religious concepts such as ‘participation,’ an account of ‘the secular theater’ he extends and deepens later in this volume. Stephen Greenblatt deftly explores the complex implication of canonical and novel texts, but, despite some suggestive remarks on the relation of Hamlet to residues of the sacred, the impact of the Bible’s authority is not his focus.3 Harold Fisch, meanwhile, in an aside in The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton and Blake, points the way to a key question motivating the present chapter. ‘If Shakespeare,’ says Fisch, ‘has appropriated the power of a Biblical paradigm, he has also discarded it.’ Fisch sees Shakespeare as claiming ‘total freedom of action,’ for which his synonym is ‘irresponsibility’ – a remarkable declaration of independence at a time when blood could flow from the reading of a single biblical word.4 Was such daring really Shakespeare’s typical strategy, and if so how did it function? Answering such a question might allow us to chart how, in this admittedly exceptional case, the central religious gesture of the Reformation – the recourse to ‘the Bible only’ – affected the delicate network of words orchestrated outside the texts of the biblical canon.5 In this chapter, I want to examine some instances of allusion, or of some other form of associative recall, in Othello, and to argue for a consistent preoccupation in the play with the Exodus narrative and related texts of exile and prophecy, a preoccupation that illuminates central dramatic concerns such as conversion, alienation, and displacement. Three local instances will furnish starting points, each opening out into a larger network of allusive relations and cross-references.

9.1 Of locusts and coloquintida In act 1, scene 3, as he attempts to convince Roderigo that Desdemona’s marriage will not last, Iago comments of Othello that ‘the food that

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to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as the coloquintida’ (1.3.347–9).6 These are, by any measure, peculiar kinds of food to pick to make this point, and both items routinely get editorial notes. The Riverside Shakespeare, like most other editions of the play, glosses ‘locusts’ as ‘the sweet fruit of the carob tree.’ This follows the notation of the OED that: The Greek name akrís, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in form; and from very early times it has been believed by many that the ‘locusts’ eaten by John the Baptist were these pods.7 Honigmann’s recent Arden 3 edition of the play follows Ridley, his predecessor, in citing John Gerard’s 1597 Herball to the same effect, as does Michael Neill’s Oxford edition.8 But is this what listeners who were not herbalists would have heard at this point? The primary sense of ‘locust’ in both Greek and English denotes a grasshopper. Given this, we may ask why so many should have insisted ‘from very early times’ that the Gospels record John the Baptist as eating fruit. One answer might be that the alternative, the picture of a revered saint feeding himself on insects, is too revolting. Has a similar disinclination to imagine akridophagy led editors to prefer not to see Iago imagining Othello eating and enjoying ‘luscious’ insects here? This would be unusual tact for Iago, who is normally quite happy to speak of Othello in disgusting terms: he is about to call him ‘an erring barbarian,’ and what more erring and barbaric to an Italian observer than a man with a taste for bugs? Support for the notion that insects were the usual referent is at hand in the biblical text itself. The Geneva Bible, hardly a squeamish book, specifically annotates the Baptist’s ‘locustes’ (Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6) as ‘grashoppers’ and refers readers to Leviticus 11:22, where the eating of certain insects is pronounced lawful.9 Among biblical scholars of the period, it would seem, the arthropod was the standard gloss, and general acquaintance with the Geneva text, the most widely read in the period, makes it likely that the primary meaning of ‘locust’ for Iago’s Jacobean listeners, as for today’s, identifies Othello eating insects. So much for luscious locusts. At the other extreme of the palate lies Iago’s ‘bitter … coloquintida.’ Here editors have had to wrestle not so much with disgust as obscurity. The Riverside Shakespeare, again, glosses it as ‘the colocynth, or bitter-apple, used as a purgative,’ which is quite correct.10 But no editor to my knowledge has cited the place an ordinary English reader was most likely to come across reference to this unusual

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fruit – not in a herbal but, once again, in the Geneva Bible, in 2 Kings 4:38–9, the story of Elisha and the bitter pottage: Afterwarde Elisha returned to Gilgál, and a famine was in the land, and the children of the Prophetes dwelt with him. And he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the children of the Prophetes. And one went out into the field, to gather herbes, and founde, as it were, a wilde vine, and gathered thereof wilde gourdes his garment ful, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage: for they knew it not. The Geneva gloss on ‘wilde gourdes’ is clear: ‘Which the Apoticaries call colloquintida, and is most vehement and dangerous in purging.’ The gloss thus scrupulously records the identification made in the Vulgate text: ‘et collegit ex ea colocynthidas agri.’ The eaters of this brew, the next gloss tells us, ‘feared that they were poisoned, because of the bitterness.’ Elisha, however, is apparently acquainted with such ‘wild’ food, and makes the appalling pottage potable, saving the ‘children of the Prophets’ from starvation. Desert dwellers know how to eat the inedible. It seems to me not unlikely that Shakespeare imported both of these unusual foodstuffs into Iago’s picture of Othello’s tastes from the same source – the Geneva Bible, where they both appear associated with the geographical and spiritual location of the prophetic wilderness. Both locusts and coloquintida in the Bible are liminal food, food of the borderlands. They are licit, certainly, but, as it were, set apart to those who are themselves sequestered by choice or calling. They are foods of the outcast places, as the lawfulness of eating insects itself is first confirmed to Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness in Leviticus 11. We may doubt that Iago himself intends so specific an association; we may doubt that an audience is supposed to make the link directly the words appear; but something in the play’s ‘undersong,’ or register of composition, seems to want to make it. An association of Othello with wildness and wilderness will surprise no one. He himself makes it in the epitome of his life he gives the Venetian Senate, speaking of ‘antres vast and deserts idle, / Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven’ (1.3.140–1) as well as of various kinds of wild men who live there – and their odd eating habits, such as anthropophagy. Both Brabantio and Iago try to turn this aspect of his biography against him, painting him variously as occult, bestial, and irreparably strange. What interests me here is the tendency of these

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associations to gravitate towards a specific wild place: the transitional desert of the exilic-prophetic, especially of the Old Testament, extended by figurative antitype to Jesus’ forty days in the desert in the synoptic gospels. The wilderness, in all these, is a ‘space’ between captivity and fulfillment, Egypt and Canaan, darkness and revelation, harboring an experience precisely of redefinition and conversion. Othello’s narrative of himself positions his desert sojourn in just such a sequence, so that ‘being taken by the insolent foe / And sold to slavery’ precedes ‘redemption thence’ (137–8), leading to ‘deserts idle’ with their great, Sinai-like ‘hills whose heads touch heaven.’ First captivity, then the desert, and then…? Such a pattern seems to beg the question whether Venice is to be seen by us or by Othello as Canaan-like, a land of settlement, of milk and of ‘honey’ – as Othello, alone of Shakespeare’s lovers, calls his beloved.11 How and when, we might ask by way of these allusions, does one discover that one has reached ‘the Promised Land’? What marks it as fulfillment? Will Venice do, or is it merely another barbarian port of call, a wandering island – even another Egypt of captivity masking as the journey’s end? For Othello (and Desdemona) much depends on how that question is posed and answered.12 An allusive association of Venice with the Exodus narrative thus immediately raises questions that are central to the play: questions of displacement, outsiderhood, homecoming, and so on. For, as Michael Neill has put it: ‘Othello is a tragedy of displacement. … As its very subtitle suggests, it is concerned with belonging and estrangement, with occupation and dispossession.’13 No narrative available to Shakespeare could have embodied those issues as urgently as the Mosaic one. Further hints of Egypt are not hard to find in the play. Early and loudly, urging Roderigo to ‘call up’ Brabantio about his daughter’s flight, Iago exhorts, ‘And though he in a fertile climate dwell, / Plague him with flies’ (1.1.70–1), an unmistakable allusion. But if Brabantio is Pharaoh, is Othello (or Desdemona?) an Israelite guest/captive, their flight an erotic Exodus? If Venice is Egypt, the voyage to Cyprus – through an ‘enchafed flood’ that devastates a pursuing enemy – may begin to look like the passage of the Red Sea, with Cyprus a pagan wilderness populated by ‘goats and monkeys.’ And so on. Such hints of analogy seem to be present, but a close typology of the play’s action with the biblical narrative is strained. Venice is, on the one hand, Egypt, on the other, Canaan. An overlap of echoes brings us back to the same pattern without mapping it precisely. In addition to the flies with which Iago wants to plague Brabantio, other images not unlike the plagues of Egypt buzz here and there about the play – we

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have a fierce knot of toads, a violent storm, a rain of sores, a river of bloody thoughts, the already-mentioned locusts, and several evocations of ‘black darkness.’ The play spreads these out across a range of locations: Cyprus, Desdemona’s body, Othello’s heart, Iago’s imagination. ‘Egypt’ may be a marker for captivity in general, in many guises and registers, political, military, and especially erotic. The dangerous handkerchief, ‘dy’d in mummy’ (3.4.74), is, in Othello’s first account, given to his mother by ‘an Egyptian’ (56) with instructions on how to use it to ‘subdue my father’ (59), his father here standing in for himself in his now-repudiated subjection to Desdemona.14 Egyptians were notorious magicians in Exodus too, of course. But in a later version, his father gave the ‘antique token’ (5.2.216) to his mother. It may not even have been Egyptian. As with the shifting play of charged words, like ‘locust,’ a precise location of origins is elusive. In this regard, the language of bondage, captivity, and redemption that has rightly pointed recent commentators towards the slave trades of early modern Europe, assumes a somewhat different import, and suggests an alternative account of the play’s languages of race and nation. For the biblical narrative of captivity and redemption is intimately bound up with its narratives and ceremonies marking ethnic and religious identification. The passage out of captivity demands the establishment of definite ritual and legal practices, governing in particular food, sexual conduct, and national gods. And Exodus designates the wilderness as the site for these acts of transition and delineation. That references to loci of captivity, wandering, and rest in Othello overlap and interfere with one another, blurring a straightforward typology, suggests a difficulty in ordering stable patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and affiliation. Who belongs where, who is subject to whom, who is captive and who free, who is at home and who displaced, are questions that the allusions I am tracing circulate without resolving. To return only to the question of foodstuffs, we should note how widespread are the languages of eating, hunger, and appetite in the play, and how often these languages articulate social and sexual relations. Comment on who eats what, when, and how, whether such eating is normal or perverse, sanctioned or illicit, dangerous or disorderly, is almost everywhere. Othello laments that ‘we can call these delicate creatures ours, / And not their appetites’ (3.3.269–70); Emilia complains that men ‘are all but stomachs, and we all but food’ (3.4.104); jealousy ‘doth mock / The meat it feeds on’ (3.3.166–7); Othello denies that he wants Desdemona’s company ‘to please the palate of my appetite’ (1.3.262); and Iago, who thinks virtue ‘a fig’ (1.3.319), and that Desdemona’s wine ‘is

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made of grapes’ (2.1.251–2), explicitly designates Othello’s love a religious covenant that he may apostatize from, ‘even as her appetite shall play the god’ (2.3.347). The Anthropophagi are, from this point of view, merely an unusual case of deciding what is lawful food. It is not that, in Othello, you are what you eat, but that choices about eating can disclose much about your relation to the social order. How one speaks the language of diet is bound up with how one recognizes oneself, and others. And the biblical wilderness, of course, is the ancient site for tales of all kinds of eating, both licit and illicit, in a way intimately related to its character as a space of social and ethnic dislocation, of extravagant erring and of conversion to or back to one’s god. When Iago speaks of Othello’s tastes in food, then, he is also locating a powerful set of religious and cultural discourses whose major allusive register for the play is biblical and Exodic.

9.2 ‘Fountains and cisterns’ A second example of how networks of biblical language are deployed in the play takes up one particularly charged passage, starting with some unambiguous allusions and working towards more speculative possibilities. In act 4, scene 2, confronting Desdemona in some sort of private room, Othello describes his condition: Had it pleas’d heaven To try me with affliction, had they rain’d All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head, Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips, Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes, I should have found in some place of my soul A drop of patience: but, alas, to make me The fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at! Yet could I bear that too, well, very well; But there, where I have garner’d up my heart, Where either I must live or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs Or else dries up: to be discarded thence! Or keep it as a cestern for foul toads To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there, Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin – Ay, here look grim as hell! (4.2.47–64)

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There are three successive locations of himself here: the ‘trial of affliction,’ the ‘fixed figure,’ and the ‘fountain/cestern.’ The first two are developed and then cancelled as Othello seeks to discover and speak of what he finds truly unbearable in his current predicament. The last, when he hits on it, is an image at first rather airily metaphoric, which, without losing a certain reserve, gradually tends to concretize as Desdemona’s body, and more particularly her genitals, at which he seems at last to gesture with a vehement sort of semi-coherence. As it happens, each of these three pictures is also keyed to a particular biblical passage: the first to Job, the second to the ‘man full of sorrows’ of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 (though the particular image of the ‘slow unmoving finger’ is elusive), the last to the husband warned off adultery in Proverbs 5. Indeed, it is the allusive context of the latter that provides the sexual specificity occluded – either unrecognized or avoided – at the surface of the text. Given this complexity in the layering of occasion and allusion, it may be worth pursuing the resonance in more detail. The collocation of fountain and cistern draws directly on Proverbs 5:15–18, as commentators have pointed out.15 The Geneva text is: 15. Drink the water of thy cistern, and of the rivers out of the midst of thine own well. 16. Let thy fountains flow forth, and the rivers of waters in the street. 17. But let them be thine, even thine only, and not the stranger’s with thee. 18. Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Honigmann, for instance, rightly cites these verses as illuminating Othello’s train of thought: the admonition is against adultery, and, in particular, against a husband’s pursuit of prostitutes, as the Geneva headnote ‘Whoredom forbidden’ instructs. In Othello, the language is turned about to refer to the adultery of a wife, or rather to mark the transformation of the faithful wife (‘the fountain’) into the unfaithful whore (‘a cistern’), thereby also opening the question of how a husband might ‘bewhore’ his wife, as Emilia puts it. The Proverbs verses, however, do not so oppose the two water-sources: cisterns, rivers, and fountains are all images of the good and healthful (a water-source of any kind being a blessing to the Israelites). Where the opposition comes from we shall consider in a minute. But it is verse 17, which Honigmann does not cite, that is especially interesting. For in the course of inveighing against whoredom, Proverbs 5 assimilates, as the Old Testament so often does,

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the whore or adulterer to the stranger or outsider. Earlier verses of the same chapter, picked up in verse 17, make this move clear: For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is more soft than oil. But the end of her is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, and her steps take hold on hell. She weigheth not the way of life: her paths are moveable: thou canst not know them. … Keep thy way far from her, and come not near the door of her house, lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years to the cruel; Lest the stranger should be filled with thy strength, and thy labors be in the house of a stranger. … (Prov 5:3–6; 8–10)16 In the context of Othello’s predicament as an ethnic outsider married to the daughter of a Venetian senator, these verses ring with terrible ironies. He, ‘the extravagant and wheeling stranger,’ now finds himself, as he thinks or as his language thinks for him, linked to a woman he has come to see as the seductive and vampire-like ‘stranger’ of Proverbs.17 Yet it is he who is confirmed by this very citation as the outcast (‘discarded thence’), an object of disgust and insider mockery, laboring without rest or dignity in ‘the house of a stranger’ – the chambers, tents, and Senatehouse of his contemptuous ‘good masters.’ Even as he rails against his ‘captivity’ by Desdemona, becoming increasingly vehement in pointing at her body, allusion reframes his predicament in a complicating way, placing him as a figure of displacement, himself pointed at in the street as the alien who tried to go native. Struggling for self-possession in his adoptive language, he is dispossessed by a strangerhood it already contains, and which contains him.18 Much of Proverbs 5, and the related chapter 7, seem to resonate in this scene, in specific images (such as the reference to ‘the door of her house’ and its nearness to ‘hell’), in the evocation of sensual sweetness suddenly turned bitter, and in a general feeling for the degradation of sexual bondage. But the scene also draws on a network of biblical language from beyond Proverbs, as a cluster of terms and topics surfaces, a cluster that relates whoredom, servitude, strangers, betrayal, and punishment. For instance, as noted before, the opposition between a fountain and a cistern for two sorts of women Desdemona might be is not borrowed from Proverbs. It may be that Shakespeare himself recast the passage in this way. Yet it also resembles what seems a closely related passage in Jeremiah 2:13, denouncing the idolatrous defection of Israel, the bride of God, into the spiritual whoredom of idolatry: ‘my people … have forsaken

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me, the fountain of living waters, to dig them pits, even broken pits that can hold no water.’ The Vulgate text of this (to be echoed by the King James) connects Jeremiah to Proverbs by giving ‘fons’ (a fountain) and ‘cisterna’ (a cistern) in both.19 Shakespeare may have combined the two passages, casting the ‘fountain’ as fidelity and the ‘cistern’ as betrayal, with the term mediating the religious and sexual registers being, as so often, ‘idolatry’ – after the famous phrase, ‘whoring after strange gods’ (Deuteronomy 31:16). So too the immediately following verse, Jeremiah 2:14, asks pointedly ‘Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave?’ It is as though the network of allusions continues to insist on the question of whether Othello is captive or free, so that, again, the issue of slavery or slaveries in the play ramifies through its biblical register. There is yet a further twist: the same nexus of concerns (whoredom, servitude, strangers, betrayal, and punishment) also surrounds what must be the passage in the Bible most obviously relevant to Othello, the famous verse in Jeremiah 13 frequently cited in contemporary criticism without its context. I quote from verse 22, in the Geneva version: 22. And if thou say in thine heart, ‘Wherefore come these things upon me?’ For the multitude of thine iniquities are thy skirts discovered and thy heels made bare. 23. Can the blacke More change his skin? or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. … 27. I have seen thy adulteries, and thy neighings, the filthiness of thy whoredome on the hilles in the fields, and thine abominations. Woe unto thee, o Jerusalem, wilt though not be made clean? when shall it once be? This is a striking collocation of concerns near to the play’s heart, including a direct reference to ‘the black More,’ a phrase that also provides the headnote in large type to the Geneva page.20 The inveterate whoredom of Israel’s idolatry and the indelible blackness of the Moor are specifically analogues for one another, a merging that haunts Othello, who works violently all throughout the latter part of the play to rescue the dignity of his blackness from what he sees as Desdemona’s sullying and his own disastrous idolatry.21 The particular density of the biblical intertexts cited here may earn only skepticism, but it does help to explain the otherwise rather sudden leap Othello will soon make to describe Desdemona’s body – or her character, or both – as ‘this fair paper, this most goodly book, / Made to write “whore” upon’ (4.2.71–2), a move that seems oddly abstracted for so emotionally fevered a scene. What ‘goodly book’ is in question may

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now be clear, and that it is as much written from as written on, providing at once the script for Othello’s rages and the gloss on them. One additional aspect of Jeremiah may also be included. The link between idolatry and adultery, which provides so strong a motive and a rhetoric for Othello’s denunciations, raises the question of the occasion or act establishing the covenant that is here being so degradingly sexualized. Jeremiah 2:2 provides the answer: ‘I remember thee with the kindness of thy youth and the love of thy marriage when thou wentest after me in the wilderness in a land that was not sown.’ The covenant in the Sinai desert between God and the Israelites is persistently spoken of in terms of a marriage, one the female party seems ever destined to betray. While providing a current of language for whoredom and estrangement, therefore, the drift of the play’s allusions towards Jeremiah also draws us back to themes that center on the prophetic wilderness. Aspects of this predicament may carry over into adjacent scenes in ways that are no more than overtones, but that yet mark the development of a certain atmosphere for the play. Even Desdemona’s plangent erotic lament may shadow its refrain of ‘willow, willow’ with the longing of the exile for lost homelands in Psalm 137, a longing fueling, in both texts, a terrible rage.

9.3 The perfect chrysolite The last passage I want to unpack is Othello’s reference in the final scene to ‘chrysolite.’ Othello speaks of this gem in the agonized minutes after killing Desdemona in ‘a murder which [he] thought a sacrifice’: had she been true, If heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I’d not have sold her for it. (5.2.143–6) The image of a Desdemona statue, or perhaps of some sort of globe, made out of a single crystalline gemstone relates to several instances of stoniness in the play: the ‘marble heaven’ (3.3.460) Othello swears by, the ‘monumental alablaster’ (5.2.5) he compares Desdemona to in her bed, and the ‘stone’ (5.2.63) he says she makes of his heart by her denials. ‘Chrysolite,’ however, has its own particular history that takes us close to the heart of this final scene. As Lynda Boose has noted, ‘chrysolite’ is a stone of visionary Eros. It occurs in the Geneva Bible adorning both the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 – where chrysolite provides the gem

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of the city’s seventh foundation – and the beloved in Song of Solomon 5, which speaks of the bridegroom’s hands as ‘rings of golde set with the chrysolite.’ Boose argues that the appearance of ‘chrysolite’ in Othello suggests how Shakespeare was turning the erotic and epithalamic tradition in a murderously ironic direction – here the bridegroom has come not to love but to kill.22 Yet the gem’s role in the intratextual network of the Geneva Bible is more complicated, and its appearance in the Song of Solomon is already an allusive figure. Returning to the word’s occurrence in Revelation, we should note that the twelve bejeweled foundations of the New Jerusalem derive not only from ‘the bride, the Lambe’s wife’ of Songs, but more strongly from the passage in Exodus 28 which institutes the ritual garments of the High Priest. Specifically, Moses is instructed to make ‘the brest plate of judgment’ for Aaron to wear on the ephod, the outermost of the three priestly garments. On this breastplate, to be hung from two shoulder bosses of onyx by fine gold chains, Moses is to set twelve gems ‘even four rows of stones: the ordre shal be this: … and in the fourte rowe a chrysolite, an onix, and a jasper’ (Exodus 28:17, 20). The purpose of these stones, besides ornamentation, is specifically symbolic and mnemonic: And the stones shal be according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names. … So Aaron shal bear the names of the children of Israel in the brest plate of judgement upon his heart when he goeth into the holy place, for a remembrance continually before the Lord. (Exodus 28:21, 29)23 In this context, the ‘sacrifice’ Othello speaks of himself as meaning to perform appears rather more specific than it has sometimes been taken to be. The light he carries, his concern with blood and the ritual expiation of sin, his rather odd sense that he acts on behalf of ‘more men,’ the bed as an altar, even, perhaps, the bed-curtains on the Jacobean stage not unlike the tapestries veiling the tabernacle, all spring into a sharper focus when read against the image of the Mosaic high priest entering the curtained holy of holies with the mystical Urim and Thumim in the ‘brest plate’ of judgment ‘upon his heart before the Lord continually.’24 The language of the Geneva marginal gloss on this passage likewise resonates with Othello’s sense of the purity, clarity, and justice of his mission: Urim signifieth light and Thumim perfection: declaring that the stones of the brest plate were most cleare and of perfect beautie: by

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Urim also is meant knowledge, and Thumim holiness, shewing what vertues are required in the Priests. (Marginal gloss on Exodus 28:30) Othello’s ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite’ seems fairly involved with this. The Mosaic breastplate of judgment, with its chrysolite, takes up issues of expiation and sacrifice, of the sacrificer’s possession at once of ‘knowledge’ and ‘holiness’ (certainly traits Othello wishes to see himself as bringing into the dark space of Desdemona’s bedchamber), of honor given to God, and of justice executed on the ritual victim.25 To Boose’s ironic ‘entry of the bridegroom,’ then, we need to add an ironic ‘entry of the priest to sacrifice,’ at once sharpening and demystifying the epithalamion. Othello’s allusion, if that is what it is, seeks both to make visible and to atone for the underlying violence of mutual offering and surrender within the epithalamic, replacing the beguiling idols of erotic entanglement with an unmediated vision of Justice herself. The marriage bed will become once more, and truly, the altar of a sacrifice. Of course, we are not to suppose that Othello entering the marriage tabernacle is following any established ritual, even in his own mind. He is, rather, deliberately improvising his own terrible ceremony, but to picture him doing so here, the play calls upon the central and defining rite of expiation laid down for the Israelites in the wilderness. Once again, the wilderness as a site of ethnic identification and institution haunts the play’s figurative register. The expiatory and transferential character of the sacrifice as given in Exodus, by which the high priest bears before God the sins of the people, may also illuminate another latent allusion to the Mosaic law in the scene.26 Responding to Desdemona’s denials of wrongdoing, Othello cries, ‘O perjur’d woman, thou dost stone my heart’ (5.2.63). He clearly means to indicate that her perjury, as he thinks it, has called forth in him a rage and callousness to replace his perversely tender solicitude of before. The stoniness of his heart recalls the Mosaic penalty for adultery, death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:24): he will, as it were, make a stone of his heart to kill Desdemona with.27 Yet the active sense of the verb also lurks in the background in which ‘thou dost stone [to death] my heart’ is an index of his sense of himself as likewise suffering for, and expiating, sins of sexual transgression (‘the slime that sticks on filthy deeds’) and idolatry (‘smooth as monumental alablaster’), for which the penalty was also stoning (Deuteronomy17:5). The urgent danger in which the high priest stood in going into the sanctuary to treat with God of the people’s sins – danger from which the breastplate, along with other ornaments, served to defend him – appears in Othello’s sense

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of himself as intimately involved in Desdemona’s sin and vulnerable to a similar punishment. The complex surrogacies in play here, expanding on Othello’s tendency to seek ‘lieutenants’ for himself throughout the play, are inflected through the deployment of Exodus and Deuteronomy as allusive elements in the scene’s texture. The figurative resonance of the alluded text is turned both towards and against the speaker, as was the earlier reference to the stranger/adulterer from Proverbs. Aaron’s garments and the ceremony of the tabernacle are part of the same sequence in Exodus that includes the Ten Commandments and the worshipping of the Golden Calf. These allusive locales, along with John the Baptist and Elisha in the desert, and Jeremiah railing against the whoredom and idolaters of the Babylonian captivity, all contribute small markers, sometimes no more than individual words, to shaping the allusive network of Othello. All are figures of a dangerous transition between one location or state and another, and of a call to turn or return to a true or truer identity. Moses is the original type: flight from bondage leads to a moment of unmediated vision that defines and covenants self by disclosing for it a cultural order and definite place. Yet no sooner is that order articulated than it is challenged and disrupted. No sooner is one set of identifications sealed, than the anxious cycle of idolatry and repudiation – the cycle of the Golden Calf – begins again, leading inexorably to counter-rituals of violent purgation, the tablets of the Law engraved only for smashing. For Othello, the wilderness in the play remains less a specific place from which he has escaped than an ‘unhoused free condition’ that may reappear anywhere, offering both vertiginous liberty and dangerous indefinition. Covenant, idolatry, and iconoclasm as versions of his condition overlap and mock one another. In the final ritual he invents for himself, his suicide, Othello acknowledges this recurrent borderland status by inscribing himself both within and without the law of Venice, at once state servant and ‘circumcised dog,’ as many have noted. And just here, one last time, the Exodus narrative of ethnic vocation seems to provide an ambivalent but telling substrate. Othello’s final account of himself climaxes by recollecting an incident where he once showed his loyalty, a loyalty he proposes to display again by now repeating the scenario as both agent and victim: And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state, I took by th’throat the circumcised dog, And smote him – thus. (5.2.350–4)

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Compare this with a moment in another famous tale of ethnic loyalties tested and revealed: And in those dayes, when Moses was growen, he went forthe unto his brethren, and loked on their burdens: also he sawe an Egyptian smiting an Ebrewe one of his brethren. And he loked round about, and when he saw no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. (Exodus 2:11–12, Geneva text) Moses’ story marks the violent origin of a personal and national narrative of self-definition; Othello’s attempts to fix in place an ending in the same terms. Commentators usually assume that Othello in Aleppo was acting not only on behalf of, but also as the representative of the Venetian state. But this is not explicit in the account. The possibility of a Mosaic intertext suggests that the anecdote may describe not the enactment but the announcement, perhaps even the discovery, of an allegiance. Is Othello a state official in Aleppo? It was not part of the Venetian empire. What was he doing there? Was he a Christian at the time? Or does his act against the Turk – possibly circumcised like himself28 – mark his own crossing of a boundary, a blood sacrifice that articulates for him the discovery of a promise? In retelling the final tale of himself, Othello is not only positioned in both roles, but looks in both directions – inside out and outside in – executing himself at the point where the two glances cross. And as if confirming the play’s inevitable return of Othello to such crossings – pointed at typologically by consistent recollection of the wilderness and especially the Exodus narrative – his last utterance offers the scheme of chiasmus as a summative figure for him in the play: ‘I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee. No way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss’ (5.2.358–9). This figure of chiastic crossing, the place of Othello’s final destiny in the play, can also be taken as an image of the relation between the sacred languages of the Bible and the uses to which they are put in the drama, the question with which I began. Is Othello’s entrance in the final scene a moment of sacred or secular energy? Or of each reaching out to entangle the other? Are biblical allusions such as I have argued for in the texture of the play somehow ‘purged’ or ‘shorn’ (tropes that themselves bear on the context of conversion) of their authority? Or does that authority, by contrast, wrest the attentions of both those who speak and those who hear them in powerful and disconcerting ways? To call such encounters ‘secular’ seems to me only an approximate, if useful, statement. It might be better, following Giorgio Agamben’s lead, to describe them as ‘profane,’

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or, more actively, as ‘profanation.’29 Moreover, it is a profanation not complete but repeated disturbingly every time the play is performed. The play, at least in this respect, is an ongoing act of profanation, is still caught in the process of profaning, though its original intensity may now have been blunted by, among other things, familiarity. The encounter between sacred and dramatic language, ‘before the temple’ like Othello beginning his ritual, thus obeys the figural logic of chiasmus: both categories are discovered on both sides of a vexed transition, each the other’s double and counterpart.30 The willingness to allow this crossing to happen – a willingness that seems to me deeply related to the nature of tragedy – may be what Fisch called Shakespeare’s ‘irresponsibility,’ and demonstrates how Shakespeare, for all his credal inscrutability, could put his knowledge of the Bible to dangerous use.

Notes 1. The marginal reference is to Matthew 6:22. 2. Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999); Stephen Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 3. Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theatre in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Dawson in Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 4. Harold Fisch, The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton and Blake: A Comparative Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 153. 5. The reference is to William Chillingworth’s later famous pronouncement that ‘The BIBLE, I say, the BIBLE only is the Religion of Protestants’, in his The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation, first published Oxford, 1637; qtd from 2nd edn, 1638, 375. 6. This is the Folio text; the Quarto gives ‘acerb’ for ‘bitter,’ as does Riverside. Quotations from Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, 2nd edn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 7. See OED under ‘locust,’ definition 4a. 8. See E.A.J. Honigmann, ed., Othello, Arden 3 Shakespeare (Waltham on Thames, Surrey: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 157; Michael Neill, ed., Othello, Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 237. Frank Kermode also prefers this gloss in his Shakespeare’s Language (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2000), 170. 9. See The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). The insects are ‘the grashopper …, the solean …, the hargol …, and the hagab,’ which Geneva notes (50) ‘were certeine kindes of grashoppers, which are not now proprely knowen.’ The bolder King James

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10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

Version gives them as ‘the locust …, the bald locust …, the beetle …, and the grasshopper.’ Indeed, the gloss itself has an extended history: see H.H. Furness, ed., Othello. A New Variorum Edition (1886; reprinted New York: Dover, 1963), 86. Othello 2.1.204. The epithet also, of course, recalls John the Baptist with his diet of ‘wild honey,’ an image which seems highly evocative of the erotic register of the play. It is worth noting here another association between Venice and narratives of Egypt and Exodus in Shakespeare’s work. Part of the structural complexity of The Merchant of Venice lies in whether or not the opposition of Venice to Belmont is analogous to that of Egypt to Canaan. The relevance of such images to the portrayal of Shylock is obvious enough, but they surface in odd ways, as though they had to be hinted at rather than presented directly. ‘I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys’ (MV 3.1.122, emphasis added), says Shylock of the ring he had of Leah ‘when I was a bachelor’ – linking him with Jacob, but also typing Jessica’s flight as a sort of Exodus. Later Lorenzo says of Portia’s gift of an inheritance, ‘Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way / Of starved people’ (5.1.294–5, emphasis added), confirming that he and Jessica are in their own private Sinai. In Othello, Judaism is not directly at issue, but Islam certainly is, along with various questions of ‘conversion.’ And Judaism and Islam, as Julia Lupton has argued, were complexly linked in the period through arguments over the Pauline ‘discourse of nations’ that are relevant here. See Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), chap. 4; Virginia Mason Vaughan, Othello: A Contextual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Julia Reinhard Lupton, ‘Othello Circumcised: Shakespeare and the Pauline Discourse of Nations,’ Representations 57 (1997): 73–89. Michael Neill, ‘Changing Places in Othello,’ in Putting History to the Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 208. ‘Mummy’ was not so specifically Egyptian in 1600 as it is today, though the association was still prominent. See Richmond Noble, Shakespeare’s Biblical Knowledge and use of the Book of Common Prayer (1935; rpt. New York: Octagon, 1970), 67–8; Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 594; and Honigmann, Othello, 339. Shaheen points out that only the Geneva version has ‘cisterne’ and ‘fountaine.’ It is not certain that we are to read ‘a strange woman’ as ‘a foreign woman’ rather than simply ‘an unfamiliar woman’ here, though ‘stranger’ in Elizabethan English regularly had ‘foreigner’ as a primary meaning. See OED under ‘strange’ and ‘Stranger’ and the discussion of the terms in Jeffrey Masten, ‘More or Less: Editing the Collaborative,’ Shakespeare Studies 29 (2001): 109–31, esp. 124 ff. See also Proverbs 7, where similar language is present, in this case specifically of a woman with a young man for a lover. The passage and especially the dinner invitation in the street may recall Bianca’s to Cassio of 4.1, though the tone there is angry rather than seductive.

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18. The point is brought out in particular by the performance of John Kani in the 1987 Market Theater production in Johannesburg. The whole question of ‘the Othello music’ might be revisited in these terms. 19. Proverbs 5:15–16: ‘bibe aquam de cisterna tua et fluenta putei tui/deriventur fontes tui foras et in plateis aquas tuas divide’; Jeremiah 2:13: ‘… me dereliquerunt fontem aquae vivae ut foderent sibi cisternas cisternas dissipatas quae continere non valent aquas.’ 20. The headnote is on 312 or Hhh2r in the 1560 edition. The King James Version usually quoted in discussing this passage gives, of course, ‘the Ethiopian.’ For an extended discussion of the biblical intertexts around ‘the black More,’ see the note on the notorious ‘Indian/Judean’ crux in the final scene in Neill, Othello, 464–5. I have benefited also from discussion with Ken Larsen on this point. 21. The Bible’s rage against iconophiles and their filthiness may also inform the play’s last scene, with its image of Desdemona turned into a living ‘alablaster.’ 22. Lynda E. Boose, ‘Othello’s “Chrysolite” and the Song of Songs Tradition,’ Philological Quarterly 60 (1981): 427–37. 23. The Geneva Bible illustrates the high priest’s garments on 38. 24. On the curtained tabernacle, see the contemporary illustrations in the Geneva text, 36, 37. Michael Neill has drawn attention to the centrality in the play of evocations of the bed and what happens in it. The question of how and when the curtains around it are opened has been an important one in the history of the play’s staging, as he points out. The possibility of bringing to this ambience a sense of the bed as a version of the veiled ‘Tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all’ (Hebrews 9:3) would compound this sense of dangerous and unutterable mystery. Compare also Hebrews 9:7, ‘But into the second [tabernacle] went the hie Priest alone, once every yere, not without blood which hee offered for himselfe, and for the ignorances of the people.’ See Neill, ‘Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery and the Hideous in Othello,’ in Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics and Society in English Renaissance Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 236–67. 25. On the high priest’s panoply, see also Exodus 39:10–13, and then, parodically, Ezekiel 28:13. In each case, the ephod endows the wearer with a magical righteousness which makes him recognizable to God as his lawful priest, and not some unholy trespasser. 26. Might the notion of vicarious expiation and the logic of the scapegoat also lie behind Othello’s odd invitation to Iago to ‘exchange me for a goat’ (3.3.180)? The notion seems slightly ludicrous, yet returns to haunt the end of the play. 27. The ‘stonie harte,’ as it is called in Cranmer’s Article X, ‘Of Grace,’ in what became the Thirty-Nine Articles, was a common image of the unregenerate in contemporary thought. It was often contrasted with the ‘drops’ of grace that might melt it into (again, in Cranmer’s phrase) ‘an harte of fleshe’ (compare Desdemona’s tears). One might add the detail from earlier in Exodus of God’s hardening of Pharoah’s heart in the face of Moses’ appeals. 28. But see the comments in Lupton, ‘Othello Circumcised,’ 73–89. 29. ‘The passage from the sacred to the profane can, in fact, also come about by means of an entirely inappropriate use (or, rather, re-use) of the sacred: namely, play.’ See Giorgio Agamben, ‘In Praise of Profanation,’ in

214 Shakespeare and Religious Change Profanations (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 75. I am grateful to Kevin Attell for sending me a copy of his translation before publication. 30. Othello entering in the final scene to initiate his terrible ritual seems to be thought of as appearing ‘pro fanum.’ In particular I note how his concern with not speaking impure or sullying words (‘Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars’ [5.2.2]) resumes the classical priest’s call to ‘favete linguis,’ that is, to avoid words of ill omen (for example, Horace, Odes 3.1, line 2, but the phrase is formulaic). The pro-fane character of this scene is thus on display in its procedures from the outset.

Part IV Shakespeare and the Changing Theater: Religion or the Secular

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10 Author, King, and Christ in Shakespeare’s Histories Jeffrey Knapp

Why then begin, great King! ascend Thy Throne, And thence proceed, to act Thy Passion. (Robert Herrick, ‘Good Friday: Rex Tragicus, or Christ going to his Cross,’ 1647) By the time he completed Henry V in 1599, Shakespeare had written or co-written two four-part sequences of English history plays. Taken together, these two tetralogies formed a coherent historical narrative, a cycle. No other dramatist for the Elizabethan public theaters had ever attempted such a cycle; none had even written more than a twopart sequence of plays. The only significant analogue to Shakespeare’s achievement were the miracle plays that in earlier times had been performed in towns such as York and Chester during the festival of Corpus Christi. These cycles, dozens of plays apiece, were religious drama, telling the history of the world from the Creation to the Last Judgment. They were also Catholic drama, and the Protestant Church eventually shut them down. But the Corpus Christi cycles lasted long enough for Shakespeare, his fellow actors, and members of his audience to have been able to witness them.1 Why did Shakespeare take the unprecedented step of imitating or emulating these old religious plays with a commercial theatrical cycle of his own?2 Over the past 40 years, theater scholars have largely accepted the answer formulated, in different ways, by C.L. Barber, Alvin Kernan, Louis Montrose, and Stephen Greenblatt: that Shakespeare aimed to present a secular alternative to the miracle plays.3 Intensely skeptical himself, and believing that the Reformation had seriously weakened the hold of Christianity on the rest of English society, Shakespeare (these critics argue) assumed that his audiences were just as anxious as he was to embrace a 217

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more realistic, desacralized vision of the world. But Shakespeare also realized that his theater could do more than confirm his audience’s doubts about the old religion: it could also help satisfy what Barber called a ‘famished, insatiable spiritual hunger’ for Catholic ‘ritual’ in Elizabethan England by offering audiences the compensatory mystique of its own spectacles.4 Writing in praise of a history play that was most likely the first installment in Shakespeare’s cycle – the first part of Henry VI – the Elizabethan playwright Thomas Nashe exclaimed, How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lien two hundred years in his Tomb, he should triumph again on the Stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding. In Barber’s view, Elizabethan theater scenes such as Talbot’s bleeding both recalled and redefined the central element of the Corpus Christi plays: the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. ‘Can the need that tragedy meets in the [Elizabethan] theater,’ Barber asked, ‘be unrelated to the elimination, in the church, of the image of a supreme voluntary sacrifice, and the elimination of the Mass understood as an actual, present reenactment of that sacrifice?’ From the perspective of Barber and his followers, Talbot bleeds, but not for God: Shakespeare’s history cycle appropriated the spiritual ‘energy’ of the miracle plays by fashioning a secular religion of the nation.5 In my book Shakespeare’s Tribe, I tried to underscore several problems with this widely accepted account of secularization in the Elizabethan theater. First, I argued, neither Shakespeare’s histories nor those of his playwriting contemporaries were ever so zealously devoted to a nationalist celebration of England as modern critics maintain. Second, Barber could characterize the Shakespearean theater as ‘post-Christian’ only because he reductively equated Christianity with Catholicism, dismissing the fact that the Reformation generated new popular forms of Christianity and that these new religions appropriated the spiritual energies of Catholic worship far more directly than the commercial theater ever could. Third, I maintained, Barber and his followers approach Renaissance theater history with a surprisingly antitheatrical as well as Catholic bias: just as they implicitly deny the status of a genuine religion to any Christianity besides Catholicism, so they implicitly deny the status of a genuine Christian to anyone who worked in the Elizabethan

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theater. Yet throughout the English Renaissance, as I showed in Shakespeare’s Tribe, theater people and their audiences repeatedly asserted that ‘there might be as much good many times done by a man in hearing a play, as in hearing a sermon.’ Such contemporaneous defenses of the theater suggest the possibility that Shakespeare modeled his history cycle on the miracle cycles so as to underscore his religious purpose in dramatizing Lancastrian realpolitik.6 Claims of the spiritual value in plays were, it is true, severely discountenanced at the time, so much so that they were recorded only in antitheatrical diatribes or in court cases against those who voiced them. I have just quoted from one such court case, in which the statement that plays might do people good is entered as evidence of a witness’s unusually bad character. It is also alleged against the witness in question, one James Smith in 1633, that it is ‘usual’ for him ‘to swear and Curse bitterly and fearfully’; that ‘for money and reward, [he] may be drawn to swear any thing whether true or false’; that ‘for these 4 years last past [he] hath been a poor and needy person living by Cozenage and Cheating’; that he is ‘much given to excessive drinking,’ and spends ‘whole night[s] and days abroad drinking and keeping of ill Company’; and finally that this Falstaffian ‘frequenter of alehouses[,] playhouses[,] and bowling alleys’ has kept ‘Company’ with ‘players.’7 So dubious was the social status of theater people in Renaissance England, I noted in Shakespeare’s Tribe, that attempts to praise them generally required some acknowledgment of their ill repute. Even the most aggressive defenses of the religious potentiality in plays admitted that theater people consorted with lowlifes, although protheatricalists insisted that this familiarity with roguish ‘good fellows’ enabled theater people to encourage true Christian fellowship in the profane better than churchmen ever could. Smith’s balancing of plays against sermons in particular suggests a further standard element in the praise of theatrical religiosity. Unlike puritans, it was said, who used their preaching to promote sectarian divisiveness, theater people avoided doctrinal controversies: on Nashe’s imagined stage, the most divisive issue in Christianity – the contemplation of a bleeding body – becomes the occasion for unity among thousands of spectators at a time. Singling out puritanical exclusivism as the primary source of sectarian disunity in English society also enabled the theater’s defenders to distinguish the theater’s inclusivist approach to religion from any adversarial stance toward the church per se. The player-lover James Smith was no mere roisterer: a drunkard, a liar, and a cheat, if we take the word of the witnesses against him, he was also a clergyman – or an ex-clergyman: ‘within

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these twelve months,’ one of his opponents claimed, he had been ‘turned out of his Cure or lecture in St. Botolph’s Billingsgate for keeping excessive Company with players.’ Smith’s counter-witnesses may have seen nothing but apostasy in his ties to theater people: Smith and the players, they claimed, ‘styled themselves of the Order of the Fancy,’ a mocksodality whose ‘practice’ was not to study scripture or perform charitable works but ‘to drink excessively, and to speak nonsense.’ Yet shortly after his court case, Smith resumed his clerical career, and three decades later he ended his days as the rector of Alphington and Exminster and the precentor of Exeter Cathedral.8 What’s more, even as the court records confirm the picture of Smith’s libertinism, they highlight his commitment to a religious theory of plays that he had little practical reason to endorse: Smith had been heard to ‘extol the society of players and their faculties, and said that he loved the Company of players above all, and that he thought there might be as much good many times done by a man in hearing a play, as in hearing a sermon, and that he thought it a Credit to keep them Company.’ Smith’s example underscores the limitations of a scholarship that posits as strict a division between the sacred and the profane as Smith’s detractors did. But a secularist bias is not the only feature of current criticism that makes it hard for scholars to think of Shakespeare’s history cycle as a possible vehicle for religious inclusivism. While the old Corpus Christi plays – the communal endeavor of guilds and townships generally – were anonymous productions, the final two plays in Shakespeare’s Lancastrian cycle both end with references to their ‘Author.’ These are the earliest surviving plays of Shakespeare to do so, seeming to capitalize on Shakespeare’s unparalleled success at writing and completing his cycle. In the eyes of recent scholars, such special attention to the author was a new phenomenon in Renaissance drama generally, and it spelled doom for ‘the communal enterprise of the public stage,’ as indeed the authorial references in Shakespeare’s histories might seem to indicate.9 The epilogue to the second part of Henry IV portrays the ‘author’ as willing to ‘continue’ a ‘story’ whose plot is a secret he has yet to share with the players: in the next installment of the cycle, declares the actor of the epilogue, ‘Falstaff shall die of a sweat,’ ‘for anything I know.’10 This next play, Henry V, ends with a still more striking articulation of the author. In the epilogue to that play, the climactic statement on Shakespeare’s history cycle as a whole, the story is said to have been ‘pursu’d’ not by the actors on the stage but by the author ‘bending’ over his ‘pen’ (HV epil. 1–2). The only other figures of comparable singularity in the epilogue are kings. How can Shakespeare have intended his cycle

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as the medium for an inclusive religious fellowship when he ends the cycle by distinguishing himself even from his professional colleagues? In this chapter I’ll try to show how Shakespeare’s emphasis on his authorship of the history cycle is not only compatible with the religious inclusivism habitually espoused by Renaissance theater people but also strongly suggestive of that inclusivism on Shakespeare’s part. As I have argued elsewhere, the notion of a single author did not suddenly thrust its way onto the stage in the seventeenth century but was instead generally accepted at the time as the standard, received model for understanding how scripts got written.11 This notion was essentially literary, however: it was not equipped to treat the playwright’s engagement with other artistic forces in the theater as anything but a struggle for authority. Although Shakespeare did not invent authorship in his plays, he did help theatricalize the concept by acknowledging the formative power of actors and audience on his playwriting. Yet so dominant was the literary model of authorship that Shakespeare could not entirely dispel its bias against collaborative mass entertainment. Instead, embracing the thought that an author writing plays for the commercial stage must suffer a loss of sovereign authority as well as respectability, Shakespeare idealized that loss. In the epilogues to the last plays in his history cycle, he conceptualized the author as both a king and a martyr – two seemingly disparate identities that Christ made one on the cross. I begin the rest of my chapter by examining the Elizabethan poet John Weever’s preoccupation with Shakespeare, which I take as evidence supporting three related claims about Shakespeare and authorship: first, that Shakespeare’s contemporaries were fully capable of seeing him as an author; second, that Weever’s literary conception of authorship differed from the theatrical conception Shakespeare dramatized in his plays; and third, that this difference hinged in part on Shakespeare’s ability to treat authorship as sacrifice. In the middle portions of the chapter, I will show how even the theater’s detractors at the time acknowledged the power of the stage to evoke Christ’s sacrifice, although they tried, like Barber and his followers, to dismiss this power as sacrilegious. Throughout his later histories, Shakespeare seems to concede these antitheatrical claims by repeatedly dramatizing the hypocrisy of characters who allude to the Passion, especially kings who play on their ‘anointed’ role as ‘God’s substitute’ for their personal gain (RII 1.2.37–8). Yet for Shakespeare, I’ll show, these characters ultimately testify to the power of Christ’s sacrifice in ways they do not intend; even the outright profanations of Falstaff the counter-king illuminate the potential spirituality of the stage. I will end the essay by focusing on the sacrificial implications of the epilogue to

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Henry V, where, in one of the most extraordinary passages in English literary history, Shakespeare alludes to the entirety of the history cycle he has authored at the very moment that he overturns its triumphalist narrative of conquest and summons his audience instead to the contemplation of bleeding.

10.1 Authorship and sacrifice In the years immediately following the completion of Shakespeare’s history cycle, the poet John Weever was fairly obsessed with him. As Ernst Honigmann notes, ‘four of Weever’s five … publications’ during this period allude to Shakespeare. A sonnet entitled ‘Ad Gulielmum Shakespear’ in Weever’s 1599 Epigrammes constitutes ‘the first extant poem addressed to the dramatist.’12 Weever’s epyllion Faunus and Melliflora, published in 1600, recalls Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis; it even picks up and revises the story of Shakespeare’s poem. The next year, Weever’s The Whipping of the Satyre invoked two characters from Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, Falstaff and John of Gaunt, while the most notable of Weever’s homages to Shakespeare, The Mirror of Martyrs, or The Life and Death of … Sir John Old-castle Knight, also published in 1601, implicitly attacked Shakespeare for portraying Falstaff as a libertine.13 In Shakespeare’s history cycle, Falstaff was originally named Sir John Oldcastle, a historical contemporary of Henry V whom many Protestants, particularly his puritan Elizabethan descendant Lord Cobham, revered as an early martyr to the cause of religious reform. In part, the epilogue to the second Henry IV play mentions the author so that he can make his ‘humble’ amends for any offence the Oldcastle references had caused: ‘Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already ’a be kill’d with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died Martyr, and this is not the man’ (epil. 27–32). When Weever calls the subject of his Mirror of Martyrs the ‘first true Oldcastle,’ he means to exploit the vulnerability of Shakespeare to sectarian critique as a way not simply to imitate Shakespeare but to rival and outdo him.14 What Weever never attempted in his publications was any competition with Shakespeare as a dramatist. And yet, by the evidence of the Mirror of Martyrs, it was Shakespeare’s theater work that Weever envied most. Early in the Mirror, Weever’s Oldcastle marvels at the drawing power of plays and then claims that his own saintly story will, or at least should, command a far greater audience: ‘If thousands flock to hear a Poet’s pen,’ he declares, ‘To hear a god, how many millions then.’ The rivalry with

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one poet-dramatist in particular becomes more explicit in Oldcastle’s very next lines, which turn the thought of thousands flocking to the theater into a bitterly strife-torn scene from another Shakespeare play of 1599 besides Henry V, Julius Caesar: The many-headed multitude were drawn By Brutus’ speech, that Caesar was ambitious; When eloquent Mark Antony had shown His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious: Man’s memory with new forgets the old, One tale is good until another’s told. Weever wants to tell a new literary tale about Oldcastle that will make his readers forget Shakespeare’s theatrical version. Yet Shakespeare is such a commanding figure for Weever that Shakespeare’s recent plays – not only the two parts of Henry IV but also Julius Caesar – define the terms of Weever’s ‘ambitious’ rivalry with him.15 In fact, Weever sees Julius Caesar as so mightily expressive of his own competitiveness that the play appears to him to exemplify three different modes of rivalry at once, each as it were in rivalry with the others. The first is an imperial mode, where power resides successively in one lone figure after another: after Caesar comes Brutus, after Brutus comes Antony, just as Weever hopes to supplant Shakespeare as the popular ‘Poet.’ The second mode of rivalry is less adaptable to Weever’s purposes: in this republican mode, power resides in the ‘multitude’ who support one figure after another and who prefigure the multiplicity of possible leaders by their own ‘many-headed[ness].’ Weever’s anxiety about his ability to sway a popular audience underscores a third mode of rivalry in the passage, between the ‘pen’ of the poet and the ‘speech’ of the actor. Weever’s metonymic formulation of the theatrical experience as the hearing of a poet’s pen grants a singular imperial power to the poet by erasing actors from the scene of communication between playwright and audience. Yet the archetypical imperial figure in the Julius Caesar stanza is a dead man, whose ability to sway the multitude now belongs to the eloquence of others – though Weever softens this blow to authorship by presenting his speakers in the author’s image, only one at a time. In short, Weever’s literary imagination converts the mass entertainment of a Shakespearean play into three authorial plots that either compete for pre-eminence with one another or else are superimposed upon one another as if they were one indeed: single author against single author; single author against many-headed multitude; and single author against single actor. What these authorial

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plots do not allow the theatrical experience to mean for Weever is the enactment of any fellowship. For all his reductive fixation on the poet’s pen, Weever strangely omits the one element from the Shakespearean scene in Julius Caesar that concerns authorship most directly. He omits the will of Caesar, with its bequests to the common people, that Antony reads to the multitude. What’s more, because Weever’s fantasy of the stage as an authorial space limits its occupancy to only one person at a time, Weever omits Caesar himself. For in Shakespeare’s scene Caesar is not simply dead and gone; Antony presents Caesar’s corpse to the multitude, and he calls that corpse an author. ‘Let me show you him that made the will,’ Antony cries. Only after he has displayed the body, with bloody wounds he depicts as ‘dumb mouths,’ does Antony begin to read the will aloud. ‘Let but the commons hear this testament,’ he had exclaimed when he first mentioned the will, ‘And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds, / And dip their napkins in his sacred blood’ (JC 3.2.159, 225, 130–3). This rhetorical association of Caesar’s will with bloody cloth helps Antony equate Caesar’s bequests, even the very writing of those bequests, with Caesar’s bleeding. A testament in sacred blood: the scene as Shakespeare wrote it almost demands reference to another JC. But Weever ignores the Christological resonance of Shakespeare’s play because it fails to suit the literary notion of authorship he defines in competition with Shakespeare the playwright. After all, it must in part have been the pagan setting of Julius Caesar that recommended the play to Weever as emblematic of the profane theater in which Shakespeare would think to mock the martyr Oldcastle. The only Elizabethan work of Weever’s that does not invoke Shakespeare is Weever’s Agnus Dei, published the same year as the Mirror for Martyrs, a miniature life of Christ in verse that figures Christ’s ‘wounds’ on the cross as possessing more drawing power than any stage scene ever could: ‘Who would not stand and view that dropping gore.’ Yet the Agnus Dei is no more interested in representing the Crucifixion as a mass spectacle than the Mirror for Martyrs was interested in representing the murdered Caesar as a sacrifice to the people. While ‘th’unconstant multitude’ thirst for Christ’s ‘sacred blood’ in the Agnus Dei and jeer him on his way to the cross, they do not follow him there; only Mary, in Weever’s account, ‘beholds her Son, and weeping stood, / Whilst nailèd to the Cross he streamèd blood.’16 Like Shakespeare, Weever links exposure to the multitude with bleeding, but his contempt for the multitude prevents him from conceiving of an author who bleeds for the sake of his audience.17

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10.2 Staging the Passion Nothing drew the ire of Renaissance theater haters so dependably as that chief spectacle in the Corpus Christi plays, the staging of the Passion. To prove that God could ‘endure nothing less than such profane and ridiculous handling of so serious and heavenly matters,’ Thomas Beard in his 1597 Theatre of Gods Judgements recounted how in a certain place there was acted a tragedy of the death and passion of Christ in show, but indeed of [the actors] themselves, for he that played Christ’s part hanging upon the cross was wounded to death by him that should have thrust his sword into a bladder full of blood tied to his side; who with his fall slew another that played one of the women’s part that lamented under the cross; his brother that was first slain seeing this, slew the murderer, and was himself by order of justice hanged therefore. Beard mentions no other irreverence in the actors’ ‘handling’ of the Passion than the mere pretense of Christ’s bleeding, ‘the death and passion of Christ in show.’ But for Beard, faking the Passion counts as profanity enough to justify capital punishment, and the punishment has the added benefit of clarifying the crime: ‘this tragedy’ of Christ, he writes, ‘was concluded with four true, not counterfeit deaths.’18 A 1613 poem on Christes Bloodie Sweat, or the Sonne of God in his Agonie takes Beard’s antitheatricalism one step further and opposes Christ’s sacrifice to any play-acted tragedy. The author, one I.F., says of Christ on the cross, He died indeed not as an actor dies To die today, and live again tomorrow, In show to please the audience, or disguise The idle habit of inforcèd sorrow: The Cross his stage was, and he play’d the part Of one that for his friend did pawn his heart. Again the target of antitheatrical hostility is the notion of Christ’s dying ‘in show,’ but I.F. is more explicit than Beard in supposing that the counterfeit deaths of actors undermine the reality not just of Christ’s suffering but of his resurrection too. There are those, I.F. declares, who have ‘esteem’d’ Christ’s sacrifice ‘a fancy or a fable,’ and the actor who dies today to live again tomorrow only confirms such doubters in their worldliness.19

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But I.F. does not simply condemn the analogy between players and Christ. The cross, he writes, was Christ’s stage, and Christ played a part. According to The Shakspere Allusion-Book, the final couplet in I.F.’s stanza even has a specific part in mind, Antonio’s in The Merchant of Venice: ‘Repent but you that you shall lose your friend,’ Antonio assures Bassanio, ‘And he repents not that he pays your debt; / For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, / I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.’20 The very lines in which I.F. insists on the difference between real and enacted death are themselves a reworking of a famous passage from The Spanish Tragedy (acted c. 1587), at the point in the tragedy when Hieronimo begins explaining to his royal audience that the corpses on his stage bleed ‘in earnest’: Haply you think, but bootless are your thoughts, That this is fabulously counterfeit, And that we do as all tragedians do: To die today, for (fashioning our scene) The death of Ajax, or some Roman peer, And in a minute starting up again, Revive to please tomorrow’s audience.21 Something about the theater shapes I.F.’s thinking about Christ’s sacrifice even as he opposes the theater to that sacrifice. The explanation seems to lie in two elements that are common to both: not only life after death, but also a resurrection ‘for’ the audience. I.F.’s uncertainty whether to see play-acting as a sympathetic or antipathetic imitation of Christ’s sacrifice may have been resolved to some degree in his later authorial career: modern scholars have identified him as the future dramatist John Ford. At the time Ford published Christes Bloodie Sweat, writes Brian Vickers, he ‘seemed to be setting out on the career of a Christian moralist and essayist,’ yet a few years later Ford ‘switched careers’ and chose playwriting instead.22 But Ford did not have to abandon his first aims to pursue his second, as Vickers implies he did. Consider the parallel though reverse career of Ford’s contemporary Thomas Goffe. In the final act of Goffe’s tragicomedy The Careless Shepherdess (c. 1618), two women fake their deaths, but when they hear their lovers and fathers weeping for them at their graveside, they decide to ‘live again.’ ‘They open the[ir] Coffins,’ the stage direction reads, ‘and rise from them.’ What could have appeared more pagan, in Beard’s eyes, than these counterfeit deaths and resurrections – presided over in the play, what is worse, by the heathen god Apollo? Yet shortly after writing

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The Careless Shepherdess, Goffe took holy orders; and the first of his works to be published in English was a 1627 sermon entitled Deliverance from the Grave.23

10.3 The Passion in Shakespeare’s histories Of the 44 references to Christ’s name in Shakespeare’s plays, 39 occur in the Lancastrian history cycle. So do two-thirds of Shakespeare’s direct references to the Mass, as well as eight of his nine references to the word ‘sacrament.’ In the second tetralogy or Henriad, bleeding and sacrifice are linked from the opening scene: at the start of Richard II, the future Henry IV likens the ‘blood’ of the murdered Gloucester to ‘sacrificing Abel’s’ (1.1.103–4). Shakespeare’s only direct reference to Christ on the cross appears in the first scene of the next play, the first part of Henry IV, when King Henry announces his crusading purpose ‘to chase these pagans in those holy fields, / Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet / Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d / For our advantage on the bitter cross’ (1.1.24–7). The next most explicit reference to the Passion occurs a few scenes earlier in the Henriad, when the fallen Richard speaks of the ‘Pilates’ who have ‘deliver’d me to my sour cross’ (RII 4.1.240–1). Richard is a thief and a murderer, so his imitation of Christ cannot help but sound self-servingly appropriative, as modern scholars have claimed about Shakespeare and religion generally. Henry has his own tainted reasons for invoking Christ. In the second part of Henry IV, he confides to his son Hal that his intended crusades were merely a diversionary tactic, ‘to lead out many to the Holy Land, / Lest rest and lying still might make them look / Too near unto my state’ (4.5.210–12). At the end of Richard II, Henry had been even more specific about his personal reasons for crusading: after Exton brought him Richard’s corpse, Henry said that he planned to voyage ‘to the Holy Land’ so that he could ‘wash’ Richard’s ‘blood off from my guilty hand’ (5.6.49– 50). The switch from Richard’s bloody corpse to Christ’s at the start of 1 Henry IV obscures the ‘advantage’ that Henry gained from Richard’s murder by piously universalizing both the guilt and the profit. As hypocrites who vest themselves in religious discourse, neither Richard nor Henry can compete, of course, with Falstaff. ‘Well, and the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be mov’d’ (1HIV 2.4.383–4), Falstaff declares to the company about to witness his acting the part of the king. Shakespeare associates Falstaff with a travesty of the Passion in Falstaff’s very first scene: Poins jokes that Falstaff sold his soul

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to the devil ‘on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon leg’ (1.2.114–16). The play that begins with Henry’s sanctimonious reference to the Crucifixion ends with Falstaff’s spurious resurrection: after Hal sees him ‘dead, / Breathless and bleeding’ (5.4.133–4), ‘Falstaff,’ the stage direction notes, ‘riseth up’ (110 s.d.). It is the player’s resurrection that had so outraged Beard and worried Ford, a resurrection made possible by a counterfeit death that Falstaff defends in the worldliest of terms: ‘To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be not counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed’ (115–19). In short, Shakespeare makes the notion that a person might pretend to religion, and trade on the spiritual power of Christ’s death and resurrection in particular, a conspicuous feature of his history cycle. If Shakespeare is a similar pretender, as Barber and his followers have claimed, why would he continually expose such appropriations in his cycle? To write off Henry or Falstaff as mere hypocrites is in any case a drastic simplification of both characters. Although Henry’s reference to the advantage he gained from Christ’s sacrifice may mystify the advantage he gained from Richard’s murder, it also gives new life to Richard’s Christological characterization of himself, while acknowledging the guilt that Henry seems to feel in relation to Christ as well as Richard: ‘my soul is full of woe,’ he declared at the end of Richard II, ‘That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow’ (5.6.45–6). No religious pose comes more naturally to Falstaff than that of the penitent: ‘Monsieur Remorse,’ Poins calls the man who repeatedly tells whoever will listen to him that ‘I must give over this life, and I will give it over’ (1HIV 1.2.113, 95–6). Yet the last play of Shakespeare’s history cycle suggests that Falstaff may well have died in real anguish over the state of his soul. Hostess Quickly reports that on his deathbed he ‘cried out, “God, God, God!” three or four times.’ ‘To comfort him,’ Nell adds, ‘[I] bid him ’a should not think of God; I hop’d there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet’ (HV 2.3.18–22). But for Shakespeare, not even the blatant hypocrite can be cleanly separated from the ranks of the religious, no matter how comforting the thought of that separation might be. Falstaff – originally Oldcastle, the Protestant and especially puritan hero – mocks the desire for such separation in himself as well as others. ‘Company’ is a favorite word of his, and the claim that ‘company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me’ a favorite penitent refrain (1HIV 3.3.9–10). Because they treat the Reformation and the consequent dispersion of Christianity into a multitude of sects as a process of secularization

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rather than of religious pluralization, secularizing critics such as Barber fail to see how Falstaff’s role as a satirist of puritan cant avant la lettre opens a possible space of religious moderation, rather than atheism, for Shakespeare to occupy. By the same token, Barber and his followers cannot allow the possibility that Shakespeare’s depiction of King Henry’s spiritual hypocrisy amounts to a moderate Protestant critique of Henry’s Catholicism. Yet Protestant polemicists often claimed that Catholics who linked penitence with pilgrimage had made the carnal mistake of believing that Christ was to be found more in one place than in another. A similar carnality seems to be manifested in Henry’s oddly literal emphasis on the ‘fields’ where Christ walked and the ‘feet’ he walked with. Considered in light of the history cycle as a whole, however, Henry’s evocation of the Passion has a spiritual resonance that exceeds the boundaries a sectarian spectator might try to draw around it. The next time in the cycle that Shakespeare mentions ‘fields’ and ‘feet’ together is in Hostess Quickly’s report of Falstaff’s death: ‘ ’a babbl’d of green fields,’ she says; ‘ ’a bade me lay more clothes on his feet’ (HV 2.3.16–23). Neither Falstaff nor the Hostess can intend a connection to a speech about the Passion that neither of them heard. Only for the audience of Shakespeare’s history cycle could the Hostess’s words link a once-counterfeit and now (as it were) real dead man to an image of Christ on the cross.

10.4 Authorship and sacrifice in Henry V In the final installments of Shakespeare’s history cycle, the character who plays the religious part most effectively is not Richard or Henry or Falstaff but Prince Hal, or King Henry V. ‘The King is full of grace and high regard,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury observes in the first scene of Henry V ; ‘and a true lover of the holy Church,’ adds the Bishop of Ely (1.1.21–2). This godliness astonishes both men, since Hal had seemed no better than a libertine before his accession to the throne. But the audience who have witnessed Hal in rehearsal with his old teacher ‘Monsieur Remorse’ know that Henry’s ostensibly ‘sudden’ ‘reformation’ (32–3) had been in the works for some time. Once Hal reforms himself, his dubious connection with Falstaff, it would seem, must fade from memory; Falstaff must die a martyr to the cause of Henry’s succeeding in his part. Yet, for Canterbury, the ‘wonder’ (53) of Hal’s reformation depends on the knowledge of the villainous company he used to keep. What others might view as evidence of Henry’s inauthenticity the archbishop takes as proof of a nearly miraculous change in him.

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Since William Hazlitt’s time at least, commentators have seen Hal’s career path from libertinism to godliness as a kind of autobiographical fantasy for Shakespeare. Shakespeare too, critics have felt, wished that he could rise from ‘courses vain’ and ‘companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow’ (54–5) to the high regard that Henry comes to enjoy. And the second tetralogy would seem not only to dramatize that ambition but also to effectuate it, insofar as the astonishing tale of Henry’s reformation demonstrates powers in Shakespeare that he, like Prince Hal, had hidden ‘under the veil of wildness’ (64).24 Although critics rarely say so, it also follows from this account of the authorial plot built into the Henriad’s royal story that Shakespeare imagined the later plays of the cycle as vindicating his own claims to piety and religious purpose. Yet the second tetralogy exposes Hal’s capacity for hypocrisy as much as for piety: does Shakespeare identify with Hal’s humble ‘penitence’ (4.1.304) before God in Henry V or with his pretense of such humility? The comparison between the king and the playwright becomes most explicit in the final speech of the play, of the tetralogy, and of the cycle as a whole. Thus far with rough, and all-unable Pen, Our bending Author hath pursu’d the Story, In little room confining mighty men, Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. Small time: but in that small, most greatly lived This Star of England. Fortune made his Sword; By which, the World’s best Garden he achieved: And of it left his Son Imperial Lord. (epil. 1–8) In its opening lines, the epilogue analogizes Shakespeare and Henry by singling them out together, the author with his pen, the emperor with his sword. At first, indeed, the ‘author’ might almost be taken for that ‘Star of England,’ having ‘greatly lived’ in the ‘small time’ of his play. When Weever depicted the author in such an imperial mode, he envisioned a play as a direct communication between pen and audience that obviated the need for actors; Shakespeare’s epilogue similarly begins by focusing on the author to the exclusion of the rest of his theater company. The very sonnet form of the epilogue suggests Shakespeare’s stake in imagining the primacy of the author’s page over the actors’ stage. This is not to say that the imperial conception of authorship goes unchallenged in the epilogue. Even Weever had acknowledged the rival

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forces of actors and mass audience, but so unwilling was he to think of these forces positively that, when he did visualize them, he saw nothing but the author’s death and the specter of civil war. In Henry V, the epilogue similarly links any expansion of focus beyond a single imperial lord with disaster: Henry the Sixt, in Infant Bands crown’d King Of France and England, did this King succeed: Whose State so many had the managing, That they lost France, and made his England bleed. (epil. 9–12) ‘Which oft our Stage hath shown’ (13; emphasis added): once the royal tragedy has been evoked, the author as well as the king surrenders his exclusive hold on power. Just as proxy managers ‘succeed’ Henry V, so the author at his desk is supplanted by the actors on the stage – and, according to the epilogue, to replace the ‘one’ with the ‘many’ is to suffer loss and bleeding. Yet both the author and the king had already been threatened with usurpation in the opening lines of the epilogue, by an analogy between them that constituted a rivalry as much as an equation. The differences between Henry and Shakespeare are after all more salient than their similarities. For a start, the author is no ‘conqu’ring Caesar’; in the epilogue, he is ‘bending’ submissively, as Henry had promised to ‘bend’ France ‘to our awe,’ and his pen has none of the sword’s actual power to ‘mangle’ (5 chor. 28, 1.2.224).25 Nor was Shakespeare born a prince as Hal was, nor can he leave a title to his son as Hal does. Finally, King Henry V lost his power only when he died, but the author in Shakespeare’s epilogue – ‘all-unable’ to begin with – is simply cast aside as the epilogue proceeds. Falstaff might reply that the real loser is always the dead man, not the living one. Henry dies, but the mirroring eclipse of the author in the epilogue is a counterfeit death like all the other instances of ‘bleeding’ the stage is said to have ‘shown’ throughout Shakespeare’s cycle. It is worth pausing for a moment over the final lines of the epilogue to consider how double- and triple-edged they render the relationship between historical and theatrical death: Henry the Sixt, in Infant Bands crown’d King Of France and England, did this King succeed: Whose State so many had the managing,

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That they lost France, and made his England bleed: Which oft our Stage hath shown; and for their sake, In your fair minds let this acceptance take. (epil. 9–14) Only with the mention of England’s bleeding – ‘his’ England, as if it were Henry’s body – does the epilogue allude to the cycle of plays it brings to a close. Or to be more precise, the epilogue makes the thought of England’s bleeding the occasion to bring the cycle to life again in the imagination of the audience, just as the cycle appears to be ending: ‘which oft our Stage hath shown.’ This emphasis on previous plays seems to mark a victory for the author over his kingly rival, insofar as Henry’s ‘small time’ is lengthened into a durative triumph for Shakespeare. The further implication of repeat performances marks a certain moral advantage for the author over the king as well. No matter how hypocritically humble Shakespeare may be in touting his stage successes or hypocritically penitent in regretting the mighty men he mangles with his pen, the actors who die on his stage revive again to please tomorrow’s audience. Shakespeare faces no such ‘heavy reckoning’ for his sins as the common soldier Williams says King Henry must face ‘when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day’ and the dead shall rise to bear witness against him (4.1.135–7). ‘God fought for us’ (4.8.120), the pious Henry claims after Agincourt, and the epilogue does credit him with having ‘achieved’ a kind of second Eden – by the sword, however, and with pagan ‘Fortune’ standing in the place of God as Henry’s patron. Throughout his history plays, Shakespeare regularly depicts ‘the purple testament of bleeding war’ as a demonic inversion of Christianity (RII 3.3.94). The epilogue’s surprising shift from bleeding to the repeated enactment of bleeding (‘which oft our Stage hath shown’) distances Shakespeare’s theater from Henry’s sanctifications of violence by suggesting, in the spirit of Falstaff, that those who pretend to die gain rather than lose. They have a life after death. Yet Shakespeare is not content to offer the theater as merely a harmless counterfeit of war or a profane rather than devilish imitation of religion. Unlike the ‘bleeding sword’ that the French king pits against ‘Christianlike accord’ a few lines before the epilogue (HV 5.2.353–5), the author’s pen generates unbloody versions of sacrifice, and unbloody is how both Catholics and Protestants described the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice in communion. Protestant polemicists claimed that Catholics were disingenuous on this score: if, in Barber’s words, Catholics understood

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the Mass ‘as an actual, present reenactment’ of Christ’s sacrifice, then (according to Protestants) Catholics would also have to believe that the officiating priest makes Christ bleed anew. For Protestants, the Eucharist was instead a remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, and Shakespeare’s distinction between actual and theatrical bleeding better accords with this sacramental theory than with the Catholic view. Whatever form of sacrifice Shakespeare’s theater dramatized, of course, it could never count as an authorized religious ceremony, but in Shakespeare’s cycle the clergymen who are authorized to perform such ceremonies prove to be deeply corrupt. At the start of Henry V, for instance, the bishop and archbishop who marvel at Henry’s godliness are engaged in a sordid conspiracy: they have decided that ‘the clergy’ will ‘part’ with an enormous ‘sum’ (1.1.79–81) to fund Henry’s war efforts in exchange for his blocking a bill that would ‘strip’ the Church of all its ‘temporal lands’ – ‘the better half of our possession,’ Canterbury observes (1–11). These venal and ultimately warmongering church officials are Catholics; at no point in Shakespeare’s cycle do we see a Protestant cleric who conceives of the Church in such nakedly anti-sacramental terms, as a ‘cup’ (20) he does not want ‘the commons’ (71) to drink. But then neither do we see any Protestant clergyman who sponsors Christian unity. In the historical time that Shakespeare depicts, no Protestants have yet arrived on the scene; the only possible alternatives to Catholics on stage are the admittedly ‘flat unraisèd spirits’ who impersonate them (prol. 9). For Shakespeare, this theatrical version of ministry may not have been enough, but at least it was a beginning. By taking the place of the Corpus Christi plays, which had themselves shifted the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice from the altar to the open air, Shakespeare’s Lancastrian cycle, as he seems to have understood it, helped liberate Communion from the Catholic monopoly on it so that the impact of Christ’s sacrifice could be seen to pervade everywhere – not only in the sincere religion of other Christian sects but in hypocritical pieties too, even in open profanities such as Falstaff’s ‘cup of Madeira’ and ‘cold capon leg’ on Good Friday, or in unintentional allusions such as the Hostess’s on Falstaff’s death. ‘Any manner of way’ that Christ is ‘preached,’ ‘whether it be by pretense, or by truth,’ writes Paul in his letter to the Philippians, ‘I joy therein, and will joy.’26 So persistently does the mass entertainment of the theater suggest the communal partaking of Christ’s body and blood to Shakespeare that he ends the epilogue of Henry V by asking the audience to think of itself Christologically, as acting ‘for’ the ‘sake’ of others. But this happens after he has first performed a similar sacrifice. Having begun the epilogue like Weever’s poet, diverting attention away from the stage to the study

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where he can take sole imperial credit for the cycle he has just completed, the author in Henry V proves to be a king and no king, who yields his sovereign power without struggle to the theater’s ‘many’ and to the image of a body bleeding that they have repeatedly enacted and beheld.

Notes An earlier version of this chapter appeared as ‘Religious Pluralization and Single Authorship,’ in Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andreas Höfele, Stephan Lacqué, Enno Ruge, and Gabriela Schmidt (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), 153–73. 1. For a useful collection of documents on the suppression of the cycles, see Glynne Wickham et al., eds, English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 64–9. 2. Shakespeare was not the first English playwright to attempt a radical revision of the Corpus Christi plays. In the 1530s, John Bale wrote a now-lost cycle of Protestant plays on the life of Christ, although it is unclear whether this cycle was ever presented commercially; see Peter Happé, John Bale (New York: Twayne, 1996), 5–6. Bale was also the author of the early English history play King Johan. 3. See, for example, C.L. Barber, ‘The Family in Shakespeare’s Development: Tragedy and Sacredness,’ in The Whole Journey: Shakespeare’s Powers of Development, ed. C.L. Barber and Richard Wheeler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1–38; Alvin Kernan, ‘The Henriad: Shakespeare’s Major History Plays,’ in The Revels History of English Drama, ed. J. Leeds Barroll et al. (1969; rpt London: Methuen, 1975), 3:262–99; Louis Montrose, ‘The Purpose of Playing: Reflections on a Shakespearean Anthropology,’ Helios 7 (1980): 51–74; and Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 4. Barber, ‘Family,’ 29. For these critics, religion is always already secularized, which is why they call it ‘ritual.’ Kernan describes secularization in the history cycle as ‘a movement from ceremony and ritual to history’ (‘Henriad,’ 270), while Barber characterizes the Renaissance theater generally as ‘an agency in the historical shift of the Renaissance and Reformation from a ritual and ceremonial view of life … toward a psychological and historical view’ (‘Family,’ 19). 5. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R.B. McKerrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903– 10), 1:212; Barber, ‘Family,’ 24. In Shakespearean Negotiations, Greenblatt famously speaks of the ‘exchange of social energy’ (94) between church and theater. 6. See Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Barber, ‘Family,’ 38. It is important to stress that the English Church insisted on the internalization of that image through a contemplation inspired by communion as

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

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well as by preaching. When, for example, Thomas Becon (1564) tells communicants that they should worship Christ ‘in mind,’ he means that they ‘should not too much fix and set their minds or eyes upon the bread and cup, that is set upon the holy table, but rather they should lift up their minds and hearts, and consider, behold, honor, and worship Christ … which … sitteth on the right hand of the heavenly Father’; A Comparison Betwene the Lordes Supper, and the Popes Masse, in The Works of Thomas Becon, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1844), 3:360. As Becon’s exhortation demonstrates, the established Church regarded the Eucharist as effectively an image of an image, a limited version of the fuller picture that a worshipper should ‘behold’ internally. For Smith and the lawsuit in which he appears, see PRO, SP 2 Charles I, vol. 240 (25), 58–75; and Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of the Fancy (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 59–65. Raylor transcribes some of the court case, but I quote from a fuller transcription that Alan Nelson has generously provided. See Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture. Like so many clerical theater lovers during the English Renaissance, Smith was an Oxford graduate and a Christ Church man. Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 76. 2HIV epil. 27–30. All quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are taken from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, 2nd edn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). See Jeffrey Knapp, ‘What is a Co-Author?’, Representations 89 (2005): 1–29. E.A.J. Honigmann, John Weever: A Biography of a Literary Associate of Shakespeare and Jonson, Together With a Photographic Facsimile of Weever’s ‘Epigrammes’ (1599) (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), 33, 90. Here is the relevant passage from The Whipping of the Satyre: I dare here speak it, and my speech maintain, That Sir John Falstaff was not any way More gross in body, than you are in brain. But whether should I (help me now, I pray) For your gross brain, you like J. Falstaff graunt, Or for small wit, suppose you John of Gaunt?

I[ohn] W[eever], The Whipping of the Satyre, in The Whipper Pamphlets, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1951), D3r . 14. [John Weever], The Mirror of Martyrs, or The Life and Death of that Thrice Valiant Capitaine, and Most Godly Martyre Sir John Old-castle Knight, Lord Cobham (London, 1601), A2r . 15. Weever, Mirror, A3v . How do we know that Weever had Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar specifically in mind? As F.J. Furnivall noted long ago, ‘there is no speech by Brutus on Caesar’s ambition’ in Plutarch; see C.M. Ingleby et al., eds, The Shakspere Allusion-Book (1874–1909; rpt London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1:94. 16. [John Weever], An Agnus Dei (London, 1601), O1r , L8v , M2v , N1r . By contrast, the Corpus Christi plays insist that the Crucifixion is a mass spectacle: ‘I pray you pepyll that passe me by,’ exclaims Jesus on the cross in the

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17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

Towneley Crucifixion play, while in the York version he speaks to ‘al men that walkis by waye or strete’; see Martin Stevens and A.C. Cawley, eds, The Towneley Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 1:23.233; and Richard Beadle, ed., The York Plays (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 35.253. In this light, it is revealing to compare Weever’s Agnus Dei to the Passion poem of another Shakespeare admirer, John Davies of Hereford. Davies’s poem, The Holy Roode (London, 1609), called a ‘Speaking Picture’ on its title page, manifests none of Weever’s competitive edge toward playwrights. On the contrary, The Holy Roode narrows the gap between theatrical and literary art by insisting on the visuality of the reading experience. Like the Chorus in Henry V, Davies continually exhorts his readers to ‘look’ and ‘see’: for example, ‘Now think, O think, thou seest’ (B2r ), ‘Now, Eye of Sp’rite, behold this Spectacle’ (D4v ), ‘Now let a sacred Trance transport thy Spirit / O Man, to that unholy-holy Mount’ (E2r ). In Davies’s account, Christ’s Passion was a spectacle for the masses – he lay ‘nail’d amidst the Throng’ (E3v ) – and Christ himself had insisted on the visuality of his suffering: ‘You that pass by this place, behold me’ (F2r ). For Davies, in fact, Christ crucified remains an image as a ‘Book’: ‘when we read him over, see we shall / His Head with Thorns, his Ears with Blasphemies; / His Eyes, with Tears; his honied Mouth with Gall; / With Wounds his Flesh; his Bones with Agonies / All full’ (G1r ). Indeed, Davies begins his poem by asking Christ to allow a kind of transubstantiation of his Passion into Davies’s poetry: ‘Vouchsafe, sweet Christ, my Paper, be thy Cross: / My Pen, that Nail, that Nail’d thine holy Hand: / Mine Ink, thy Blood’ (A4r ). But Davies thinks that the gap between reading and beholding can be narrowed only if he offers himself as a sacrifice too, with a ‘Heart’ able to ‘bleed’ ‘through my Pen’ (A3v ). Thomas Beard, The Theatre of Gods Judgements. … Translated out of French [Histoires Mémorables by Jean Chassanion (1581)] and Augmented by More Than Three Hundred Examples (London, 1587), 192. I[ohn]. F[ord]., Christes Bloodie Sweat, or the Sonne of God in his Agonie, in The Nondramatic Works of John Ford, ed. L.E. Stock et al. (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991), 889–94, 985–6. Ingleby et al., Shakspere Allusion-Book, 1:237; MV 4.1.278–81. Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards (1959; rpt Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 4.4.76–82; I retain the parentheses of the 1592 text. Brian Vickers, ‘Counterfeiting’ Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship, and John Ford’s Funerall Elegye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 276. To my mind, Vickers definitively settles the question of Ford’s authorship. T[homas?]. G[offe?]., The Careless Shepherdess (London, 1656), 72–3; Goffe, Deliverance from the Grave (London, 1627). During his lifetime, Goffe also published two pious Latin eulogies that he delivered while a student at Oxford. For doubts about Goffe’s authorship of The Careless Shepherdess, see G.E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941– 68), 4:501–5. No such questions surround Goffe’s tragedies, which were published posthumously. All of them end with dead bodies on the stage: ‘murd’red Trunks,’ as the final speaker of Orestes puts it; The Tragedy of Orestes (London, 1633), I3v . But even one of these tragedies resists the finality of death, if only to envision more bleeding. In The Raging Turk (London, 1631),

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the emperor Soliman refuses to bury his father, whose ‘corpse’ he mentions three times in his closing speech. Rather than let ‘Religion … cloak’ his loss, Soliman vows to make the ‘world’ his father’s ‘tomb,’ particularly at the cost of ‘Christians’: ‘thy Epitaph I’ll carve / In Funerals, destruction is the book / In which we’ll write thy annals, blood’s the Ink, / Our sword the Pen’ (O2r-v ). 24. In his 1817 Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), William Hazlitt writes, ‘It has sometimes occurred to us that Shakespeare, in describing “the reformation” of the Prince, might have had an eye to himself’ (171). 25. Shakespeare’s reference to his ‘mangling’ pen recalls Pistol’s threat to a French soldier that ‘mangled shalt thou be by this my sword’ (HV 4.4.39; compare 2.4.60 and 5.2.34). 26. Philippians 1:18. I quote the Bishops’ Bible (London, 1568); the 1587 edition of the Geneva Bible reads, ‘Christ is preached all manner ways, whether it be under a pretence, or sincerely: and I therein joy: yea and will joy.’ In his Commentarie … Uppon the Epistle to the Philippians, trans. W[illiam]. B[ecket]. (London, 1584), Calvin observes, ‘they promoted the Gospel notwithstanding, whatsoever their intent was: for God by evil and wicked instruments sometime bringeth to pass an excellent work.’ Calvin is careful to add, however, that we should not therefore ordain ‘the ungodly’ as ‘lawful ministers of Christ’ (17).

11 The Secular Theater Anthony B. Dawson

I In the past ten years or so, religion has made significant inroads into our discussions of early modern theater; this ‘religious turn’1 has clarified how religious ways of thinking and feeling saturated the whole period. The question prompted by this is how we should define the relations between religion and theater – is, as some have recently claimed, theater infused with religious content, or does it remain a primarily secular domain? If the latter, in what ways does religion nevertheless enter into theatrical discourse? In the heyday of new historicism, with its emphasis on secular power, any affiliations between theater and religious culture fell under the shadow of hermeneutic suspicion, with the result that religion was typically represented as a screen masking the operations of the more serious negotiations of a diffused but highly charged Power. While the recognition that Elizabethan society was permeated with religion is clearly a gain, in that a certain light has replaced a critical blindness, it may be time for a reassessment of the turn that has been taken. If religion is now everywhere in the critical arena, as it also seems to be in the world we inhabit and read about in the newspapers every day, does that entail the possibility of a new short-sightedness? Certainly, the renewed interest in, for example, whether Shakespeare was a Catholic, and the increasingly confident claims made about the sectarian direction of his writing, can have its problems. When a brilliant and influential historian such as Eamon Duffy can almost willfully misread Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 on the basis of one elusive and perhaps nostalgic metaphor of ruined church buildings, then I’m inclined to wonder whether we haven’t gone too far.2 There are, of course, always excesses when a new bandwagon gets under way; a more extreme example is provided by an essay by Sonya 238

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Fielitz in the same Theatre and Religion volume as Duffy’s piece, where she claims, on the basis of suspiciously tendentious ‘evidence,’ that Timon of Athens is based on a Jesuit play produced in the 1580s in Fribourg, and that Shakespeare might have heard about it directly from Edmund Campion while the two of them, as Stephen Greenblatt would have us believe, sat together in Lancashire, the eager, teenaged Shakespeare (going under the name of Shakeshafte) at the dynamic priest’s feet. As Fielitz tells it, Campion may have stopped in Fribourg on his way from Prague to England, seen the play there, and told the story to young Will, who then apparently waited 25 years before turning it into his own drama.3 Greenblatt, for his part, conjures an evocative picture of the two charismatic figures: ‘Shakespeare,’ he says, ‘would have found Campion fascinating … and might even have recognized in him something of a kindred spirit’; indeed, he claims, ‘if the adolescent [Shakespeare] knelt before Campion, he would have been looking at’ a man who was ‘witty, imaginative, and brilliantly adept at improvisation … a distorted image of himself.’4 My point here is not to question the accuracy of Greenblatt’s imaginative biography (he does that himself, with all those ‘ifs’ and ‘mights’), but rather to reflect on how the resurgence of religion in our thinking about the Elizabethan theater has enabled this kind of fancy. Another gauge of the temperature of the times is the recent success of Ernst Honigmann’s careful but also highly speculative book on Shakespeare’s ‘lost years,’ originally published in 1986 and reissued in 1998. His extraordinary researches have made it plausible, or at least possible, that Shakespeare spent time in Lancashire, and may very well have found his way into Lord Strange’s theater company by the mid1580s. Honigmann treats Shakespeare’s putative Catholicism with his characteristic (and paradoxical) blend of caution and speculation, making no claims for an insistently doctrinaire playwright, but seeing him as someone who no doubt was raised a Catholic, gave that up when he was a member of Strange’s men, and then turned occasionally, as in King John, to anti-Catholic diatribe; but he also occasionally, as in Hamlet and Measure for Measure, ‘lapsed’ into Catholic ways of thinking. Measure for Measure, says Honigmann, both ‘activates latent anti-Catholic feeling’ and ‘manages to present a Catholic point of view persuasively from the inside.’5 Leaving aside the validity of such an interpretation, what I again want to note is how the resurgence of the book’s popularity in the wake of renewed interest in religion more generally, has led not only to its claims hardening into fact, but also to a critical effulgence hardly justified by the book’s conclusions. Probably the most extreme example is a

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recent book by Claire Asquith, which claims that Shakespeare’s plays are coded Catholic messages, but essays like those of Duffy and Fielitz also bear witness to the trend.6 Sometimes those on the Protestant side, like their Catholic confrères, can also go overboard. I’ll cite one example. In an article entitled ‘Othello as Protestant Propaganda,’ Robert Watson argues tendentiously that the play propounds a specifically Protestant view of the ‘necessity of faith,’ that is, that it takes an identifiable doctrinal position on one of the most controversial theological issues of the period, whether faith alone (as distinct from good works) is sufficient for justification and salvation. In this reading, Othello’s presumed lack of faith in Desdemona and infidelity in love are an allegory of lack of Christian faith more generally, and Desdemona becomes a Christ figure, she in whom it is required to believe. Citing many different passages from the play, Watson persistently reads them in allegorical ways that cut against or twist their primary dramatic meaning.7 The end result seems untenable to me, but that isn’t really the point; more important is the way it misrepresents the relation between religion and the early modern theater. That relation is typically indirect and diffuse, rather than allegorical, a matter of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘orchestration,’ rather than propaganda.8 There are, of course, more moderate and nuanced voices on the Protestant side, but even those, I often think, tend to overestimate the theater’s investment in religious doctrine. In this category I would include Huston Diehl’s groundbreaking work on what she sees as the Reformed ideology of the Elizabethan theater; Jeffrey Knapp’s extensively researched and insightful book, Shakespeare’s Tribe, which details what for him is the nonsectarian bias of a theater less interested in doctrine than in community, though nevertheless, he says, Shakespeare and his contemporaries could envisage the theater as a ‘kind of ministry’; and Debora Shuger’s argument that Measure for Measure should be read as espousing a certain kind of political theology, according to which God’s law is immanent in ‘sacral kingship’ and the role of the state is to make men good. The play, she argues, is ‘about’ an ‘ideal of Christian community’ and offers ‘a visionary theocracy premised on a radical denial of secular order.’9 Despite my admiration for such work, I find it unpersuasive. For me, the theater is a secular, and secularizing, institution. Indeed, the Elizabethan state helped move it in that direction through the proclamation of 1559 specifically forbidding the theater to meddle in ‘matters of religion,’ the underlying assumption being that in general theatrical entertainment

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ought to be secular.10 This does not mean that religious ways of thinking and feeling do not enter in to plays and playing. On the contrary, as I’ve argued elsewhere in relation to notions of Eucharistic presence, I think that many of the ways in which Elizabethan theatrical performance achieves its effects have religious analogues, maybe even origins, and produce responses akin to religious feelings, but at the same time these undergo a transfer when they shift into the theatrical sphere.11 They become part of a dominantly aesthetic and affective domain, so that complex and abstract issues such as sacral monarchy and divine justice are suspended – they are up for grabs as it were, with the effect that a play like Measure for Measure confers on the ideas it circulates quite a different coloration once they are released onto the stage; the play could, for example, quite plausibly be said to parody the position that Shuger puts about it, rather than endorse it. Reading the play as parody would emphasize the uncertainties and failures, rather than the successes, of the duke’s scheme, elements that have been widely pursued in criticism over the past 40 years or more; so I won’t linger over them here nor pause to rehearse the pervasive skepticism that so many have seen in the play. But I would suggest that such a problematic awareness is as much a part of the play’s aesthetic fabric as its meditations on what constitutes justice or how the state may or may not be justified in its regulation of sexuality. That is to say, part of the entertainment value of theater is its capacity to engage thought as well as feeling, to give life to the play of ideas. One way of conceptualizing how this intermingling of diverse and contradictory voices might work would be to invoke Bakhtin’s notion of authoritative discourse, which by its nature cannot be ‘dialogized,’ or rendered ‘heteroglossic’ (to use his formulation); that is, such language speaks with cultural authority, it expresses or reaches for something like social certainty, and makes implicit claims for its own truth-value.12 When, however, it gets into the novel (or, I would add, early modern drama), such discourse is typically given a double voice by being incorporated within a dialogue with multiple other discourses and genres, thus promoting a critical perspective. These discourses do not entirely lose their character or force, but they are subsumed under a more wideranging kind of intentionality. A different way of saying this might be to claim that the aesthetic pushes against the limitations of authoritative discourse. In the case of a text like Measure for Measure, such activation of multiple possibilities is strongly in play; thus the authoritative discourse of sacral monarchy, for example, is put into dialogue

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with other, competing discourses, and the resulting interplay can make it look like parody. The role of Pompey in the play serves such a purpose, while the text as a whole orchestrates his and other voices (Barnardine’s refusals, the duke’s sententiousness, Isabella’s ‘ministerial’ rhetoric, Angelo’s ‘puritan’ strictness and hypocrisy, and so on), creating a complex web of ironies and affirmations. Thus the play imitates how languages work in the social world, in dialogue with each other and tending toward multiplicity and contradiction. Bakhtin’s formulation tends to set up too rigid a polarity – religious language, for example, is itself often ‘orchestrated,’ made up of other contrasting, or even potentially contradictory, elements. While Christianity was, in early modern England, certainly ‘authoritative,’ it was hardly a monologic discourse. It is this dimension that Peter Lake is alert to in his extensive analysis of the way cultural conflicts are woven into the play’s fabric, though even he regards it as taking a ‘militantly antipuritan’ and thus implicitly moderate Reformed position. In doing so, he tends to downplay, or at least not attend to, what is distinctly theatrical about the play. While much of what he says about the play’s ironies is familiar to Shakespeareans (we hardly need to be told, for example, that attempts to ‘tame the carnivalesque body’ are apt to ‘end in disaster’) he is brilliantly successful in showing how the multivalent discourses that run through the text and give it its distinctive ironic cast derive from the conflicts and uncertainty within religious circles of the time. As he demonstrates, the conflicting voices crowding the religious scene in early seventeenth-century England – Calvinist, anti-Calvinist, Catholic – can all be heard in the play. ‘Out of the ideological, theological, and moral materials lying around post-reformation England,’ he says, the play constructs a separate and, I would add, theater-specific position.13 Indeed, his phrase, ‘lying around,’ perhaps inadvertently suggests something about what happens when such issues are made part of a dramatic text with its own imperatives. As I have argued elsewhere, the Elizabethan theater acted as ‘a repository of memory, a kind of midden in which the rags and bones of culture [could] be taken up and examined.’14 It picked up cultural remnants as it constructed its own separate domain; and that very separateness, I want now to argue, contributes to the process of secularization in the society as a whole. John Sommerville maintains that one ironic effect of the Reformation was that it hastened the transformation ‘from religious culture to religious faith,’ that is, from a society imbued with the supernatural to one in which faith is (ideally at least) a reasoned personal choice. Protestantism, he says, is a ‘secularizing religion’ in that it seeks to separate the

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religious from other aspects of life in order to purify it. As a result of the Reformation, a ‘differentiation of religious symbols and institutions from all areas of English society’ developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and I think it fair to say that the public theater both reflected and abetted that development.15 It did so through what Bakhtin calls ‘disassociation’ – a ‘destruction of any absolute bonding of ideological meaning to language.’16 Which is to say, by orchestrating different languages and voices, Shakespeare’s theater helped to separate religious language from its ideological center, appropriating it for different uses; in doing so it reinforced the secular foundation on which it is built – its separateness from religious culture. Thus the present chapter might be aptly re-titled ‘The Secularizing Theater,’ since that expresses the process in which it was (perhaps unwittingly) engaged. Somerville comments that ‘as social relations were secularized the sanctity of society [that is, the community] was replaced by the sacredness of the individual.’17 And here too the theater, with its powerful representations of unique persons, had a crucial role to play. Sommerville’s ‘secularization’ thesis may require some modification, but its overall contour seems right to me. He tends to foreshorten the process, which wasn’t complete till well into the eighteenth century, if then. So if the early modern theater remains to some extent rooted in religious culture, that shouldn’t surprise us; after all, it occurs near the beginning of a transformation that takes a long time to complete. It may, I think, best be seen as heralding an emergent secularity, bearing witness to a cultural process just under way and moving it on. At the same time, it is full of the residual marks of older ways of seeing and feeling, as indicated by its dynamic appropriation of religious discourses. It occupies a vexed middle ground, one hallmark of which is the use of, and simultaneous disassociation from, religious language and ideas. Various social languages are typically, in Shakespeare and his fellows, embedded in character, in personhood. And character tends to be elusive, partly because of Shakespeare’s characteristic doubleness, partly because it is always performed and performative. That Measure for Measure is open to deeply skeptical performance, as, for example, in the Complicité production at London’s National Theatre in 2004, suggests something about its slipperiness and that of its characters, their essentially theatrical refusal to be pinned down. Viewed from this perspective, ideas about the ethical quandary of the guilty judge, or the state’s responsibility to regulate individual desire, are rife in the language of the play because they help constitute its persons and put us into contact with them. That

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seems to me a fundamental mission of the theater, why it took hold and thrived in the emerging public sphere. That the theater appropriates and redeploys the language of religion, as it does a host of other languages and practices, allows it to tap into the social capital that such languages give access to. The value and meaning that religious discourse has in the world don’t lose their cultural weight, but that weight is shifted and transformed. The theater retains some of the cultural power attached to religious styles of action and understanding, giving extra clout to dramatic performance, allowing the theater to extend the range of its reference and hence assert its validity as an independent social practice. Disassociation, that is, does not entail an ‘emptying out’ (to employ Greenblatt’s term). Indeed, for Shakespeare and some at least of his fellows, appropriation of religious ways of thinking and feeling allowed for a different kind of devotion – or at least I would propose (only partly tongue in cheek) that for them theater was itself a kind of religion. And such a commitment, if that is what they felt, would only be possible within a secularizing society. This might be one reason why critics disagree about the confessional position that Shakespeare occupied – maybe he’s neither Catholic nor Protestant because his fidelity is to the sweaty transcendence offered by the theater. This in itself gives access to a kind of sacramentalism. If he complains about the stains bred by ‘public means’ which subdue his nature ‘To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand’ (sonnet 111), he also is alert to the communal pull of theatrical experience, its way of washing through a heterogeneous crowd and temporarily transforming them. The kinds of ecstatic triumph associated with theatrical ritual as it is enacted at the end of Antony and Cleopatra or Winter’s Tale or Tempest, or indeed the sorts of communal experience celebrated by Thomas Nashe in his remarks about the tragedian who ‘represents [the] person’ of ‘brave Talbot’ bringing the audience together in shared tears18 – all these moments blend the religious with the secular through performance. It is precisely the material imperfections of performance, its reliance on actors’ bodies and movements, with whatever heaviness and hesitation the actors bring with them, that ground and enable the strange kind of transcendence that theater aims at and occasionally delivers. Of course any such uplift was temporary and provisional; triggered by connection to fictional persons, it allowed a brief breaking away from the everyday towards something that felt bigger or more important, though that larger sense was grounded in, and inseparable from, the profane everyday. This, I imagine, is why Shakespeare stayed with it as long as he did, and why Ben Jonson, for all his ambivalence and disdain, did too.

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II How, in practice, do ‘disassociation’ and ‘orchestration’ work? How are they linked to character? Where and how do we detect the language of religion being taken over for purely theatrical purposes? To begin answering such questions, let me turn first to a couple of very familiar Shakespearean examples of the theatrical reuse of biblical language and then move on to a considerably less familiar Jacobean play. My aim is to watch as elements of religious discourse become theater without losing their original significance. To begin with the most well known: as he nears his end, Hamlet famously ruminates about ‘a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (5.2.219–20),19 in order to assert that everything is under the benevolent control of a providential God. He alludes directly to Matthew 10:29 (‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father?’)20 and indirectly to Calvinist theology (the Christian ‘will have no doubt that a special providence is awake for his preservation, and will not suffer anything to happen that will not turn to his good and safety’21 ). Does this mean that Shakespeare is espousing a ‘perfect Protestant’ theological perspective?22 Few commentators have said so, though many have seen this speech, and the other two similar ones in the final scene, as evidence of a new readiness and religious calm in Hamlet; for them the lines mark an internal change preliminary to and necessary for the tragic denouement. They thus ascribe to Shakespeare a view consistent with, if not identical to, Hamlet’s theology. In doing so, they miss a key point: that what is most significant here is not so much Hamlet’s character or his ideas in themselves, but rather how they fit into the unfolding drama. There is first of all the matter of the audience’s connection with the tragic hero. The lines invoke a certain quasi-religious response in the audience which is designed to bring them into tune, not with any particular doctrine, but with the performance itself and the actor who speaks. That is, being told about a special providence at this juncture ties people together as audience to this act, linking spiritual attunement with theatrical expectation. Allowing for providence to do its work thus becomes analogous to allowing the fatal design of the play to take its course, and consequently the feelings associated with Hamlet to run deeper. In this way, Shakespeare makes the religious serve the profane in order to further his aesthetic intentions. What emerges does have a religious, or perhaps better, a numinous dimension, but one that is suited to and subsumed by the theatrical domain. Tom Bishop, in his illuminating essay earlier in this volume, calls this kind of encounter an instance of ‘profanation’ which,

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in the words of Giorgio Agamben, ‘come[s] about by means of an entirely inappropriate use (or, rather, re-use) of the sacred: namely, play.’23 In the specific case of Hamlet, it is indeed the play that has a ‘special’ design, and we, the listening and watching audience, are all implicated in its unfolding. As a purely religious claim, and one that Protestant thinking particularly emphasized, the assertion of a special providence at this moment produces a complex effect. The passage in Matthew to which Hamlet refers does not, for one thing, say exactly what Hamlet says it does.24 Hamlet universalizes what in Matthew is more about differentiation than it is about community. What follows the point about sparrows is a statement emphasizing God’s judgment, his discrimination between believers and unbelievers: ‘whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven’ (Matthew 10:32–3). Hamlet ignores this sequel, preferring a move to pagan, Stoic territory; he shifts from a declaration about providence to a meditation on the inevitability of death and the need for readiness in the face of it. While his failure to acknowledge God’s judgment might be bad theology, especially from a Calvinist point of view, it is good theater, because the appeal to the universal (‘if it be not now yet it will come’ [5.2.221–2]) brings the audience together under the idea of a special design that affects us all equally. Paul Yachnin refers to the kind of meaning generated here as ‘secular consecration,’ which he applies to the way Shakespeare gives a numinous character to what is a mainly secular transaction – a move to establish ‘the authority of personal experience.’25 One last point about the complex orchestrations which this speech illustrates. If we approach it in the wider context of the final scene in which it occurs, it becomes even more bedeviled. That is because it is spoken in counterpoint with a number of other, conflicting discourses, such as the language of realpolitik in Hamlet’s dismissal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (‘they are not near my conscience’ [5.2.58]), his parody of courtly speech in his mockery of Osric, his apparently sincere deployment of courtly speech in his apology to Laertes, Horatio’s promise of a compelling narrative, and so on. And of course the ultimate achievement of his revenge, while it fulfills both his and our need for a shape to the events he is involved in and we are witnessing, generates a sense closer to arbitrary chance than clear design. This is not to say that the religious overtones of Hamlet’s invocation of the fall of a sparrow are not relevant; but it is to suggest that those overtones are part of a larger

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dramatic pattern, one that orchestrates a number of different voices. It is a pattern that, with Fortinbras’s assumption of his ‘rights of memory’ and Horatio’s prayer that an angelic chorus accompany Hamlet’s final journey, combines the political and the religious, but it culminates in a final gesture of theatrical memorialization: ‘Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage’ (5.2.389, 396). That stage is the ultimate space of meaning, the place where the competing discourses meet and are organized into significance. To turn now to my second example: when Bottom invokes St Paul after waking from his dream, we are treated to a different strategy for giving religious language theatrical life: ‘the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was’ (MND 4.1.211–14). This of course parodies a passage from 1 Corinthians (‘But as it is written, the things which eye hath not seen, neither ear hath heard, neither came into man’s heart, are, which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God’ [1 Cor. 2:9–10]). The verses are drawn from a chapter extolling the mystery of God’s spirit and emphasizing the distance between the things of this world and those of God; ‘the natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,’ says the Apostle (verse 14), and here is Bottom, a natural man if ever there was one, bumbling his way toward the spirit. As Shakespeare was probably aware, the very name ‘Bottom’ had its Pauline resonances: in Tyndale’s translation, in the Great Bible, and in the first edition of the Geneva New Testament (1557), the last phrase (‘the deep things of God’) is rendered ‘the bottom of God’s secrets.’26 Since the name also conveys a strong sense of the character’s gross materiality, the allusions neatly register the mixed nature of theatrical sacrality. It seems plausible that an Elizabethan audience might well have interpreted Bottom’s otherworldly encounter and his reflections upon it within a Pauline frame – the primacy of spirit, the inexpressibility of sublime experience, the value of lowliness and worldly folly (‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, … And vile things of the world … hath God chosen’ [1 Cor. 1:27–8]).27 But at the same time, the spirit, the visionary meaning which hovers at the edge of consciousness, is identified with theatrical performance (‘I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet of this dream … and I will sing it at the latter end of a play, before the Duke’ [214–17]). Indeed, the erotic mixing with the queen of the fairies, which is after all the content of the mysterious dream, leads subtly into the erotic mishaps of the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the whole

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of that reflects on the lovers’ adventures in the wood and the comic resolution in the palace. So what is the overall performative effect of the biblical allusion? Laughter first of all, amusement at Bottom’s inability to get to the bottom of his experience. And an intimation that the Pauline passage is indeed relevant in that it expresses something about the inexpressible; but also a strong sense that the mystery is one of theatrical metamorphosis. So if an Elizabethan playgoer brings with him an understanding informed by Paul’s letters, it is both confirmed and disrupted by the encounter with Bottom’s bottomless dream. Here we have a clear example of the theater cannibalizing and carnivalizing religious discourse and the authority that goes with it. Paul’s foundational distinction between the natural man and the man of the spirit collapses under the pressure of parody, replaced by an intermixing of natural and spiritual embodied in the actor playing Bottom. And it is precisely this sort of ‘secular consecration’ that the theater is positioned to deliver.

III Since my subject extends beyond Shakespeare to the early modern theater more generally, I want to remove myself from his seductive sway, and turn to a very unShakespearean sort of play, The Virgin Martyr by Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger (written in 1620).28 One of the small number of plays in the period with overtly religious subject matter, it is something of an oddity for the early modern public theater: a saint’s play based on the miraculous life of St Dorothea as filtered through the Golden Legend. It exalts spiritual purity but ties it closely to sensuous erotic yearning; like many plays of the period, it revels in sensational violence, and, for good measure, throws in dollops of allegory and low comedy, together with instant conversions, an active devil and angel, a militant virgin – and much else. At times dramaturgically crude, it has moments of sweetness and even sublimity, much admired by the likes of Coleridge and Swinburne. Coleridge wrote of the first act that it ‘is as fine an act as I remember in any play’ and Swinburne praised the delicacy and reserved effusion of certain scenes. Cyrus Hoy speaks of the play’s ‘baroque minglings of the sacred and the profane,’ and perhaps ‘baroque’ is the best word for it.29 It certainly has a Counter-Reformation flavor, and has been linked with certain Italian sacred dramas of the late sixteenth century. But this of course raises the question as to why it might have been thought appropriate for the public theater (it was first acted at the Red Bull, a venue associated with middle-of-the-road, patriotic, ‘bourgeois’ values) and even why it was written at all. Massinger, who

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had Catholic sympathies, probably initiated the project, and recruited Dekker (who had just spent several years in prison for debt) to help with some of the more robustious as well as some of the sweeter and more pious moments. Set during the reign of Diocletian toward the end of the third century AD, the play depicts the emperor, who was notorious for his persecution of Christians, in a relatively favorable (and reasonably accurate) way.30 Dekker and Massinger’s Diocletian acknowledges with some prescience at the end that ‘the centre of the earth [is] crackt’ due to the mysterious events surrounding the martyrdom of the militant virgin Dorothea; but he resolves to ‘stand unmov’d’ (5.2.239–40) nevertheless, promising to continue the persecution despite his misgivings. In context, this suggests courageous determination as much as unholy stubbornness, so that there remains something ambivalently admirable about Diocletian, whose other actions in the play are generally humane and sensible. Most of the violent persecution is initiated and managed by Theophilus, a figure who recalls Richard Topcliffe, the powerful and obsessive persecutor of Catholics during Elizabeth’s reign. At the same time, the play’s allegory seems to invite an identification of Roman idolatry with Roman Catholic worship, so that we would expect the ironically named Theophilus to have affinities with Catholicism. And in his inquisitorial fanaticism, he sometimes does; but the language that characterizes him is laced with words like ‘zeal’ (Diocletian calls him ‘my carefull, zealous provost’ [5.2.92]) that link him also to puritanism and the satire that in the theater often accompanies such portrayals. He is so zealous that he feels no compunction about murdering his two daughters, who have been converted to Christianity by the eponymous heroine. He does so directly, on stage, outraged not only by their conversion but by their desecration of the image of Jupiter that had been carried in before them; since he had been expecting his daughters to convert Dorothea rather than the other way round, his anger is tied to embarrassment and frustration. So the comic reversal of expectation when the ladies spit on the image is in turn reversed by the tragic violence of a loving father (for so he is portrayed) destroying his pious daughters. Like Othello, he sees his action as priestly and sacrificial, an act of divine justice; he calls on Jupiter to favor ‘The Sacrifice … / Which I will offer to thee, and be pleasde / (My fierie zeale inciting me to act it) / To call that justice, others may stile murther’ (3.2.106–10). Recall Othello’s ‘thou … mak’st me call what I intend to do / A murther, which I thought a sacrifice’ (Oth 5.2.63–5). There may also be an echo of Julius Caesar, the moment when Brutus urges the conspirators to be ‘sacrificers, not

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butchers,’ ‘purgers’ of the commonwealth, not ‘murderers’ (JC 2.1.166, 180). Like both Othello and Brutus, Theophilus is aware of other ways of interpreting his action (as he says, others may style it murder), but holds, under pressure, to his own divinely sanctioned view of the matter – his is an act of justice, a necessary sacrifice to justify heaven. The echoes are instructive, not only in that they register theatrical continuity and allusion, but in the way they help to place and characterize Theophilus, who turns out, unexpectedly, to be the closest thing to a tragic hero that the play provides. (In the sources, he is a minor figure who confirms Dorothea’s sacred power.) Dorothea, the bride of Christ, stands by her religion, refusing the love of the heroic Roman soldier, Antoninus, and is duly sent to the block in the fourth act, her head dramatically ‘strucke off ’ (4.3.179 s.d.) before our eyes. But, while heroic, she is not the figure of central dramatic interest; rather, she seems mainly an unchanging beacon, an ideal after which some of the others reach. The man who loves her, Antoninus, who has refused the emperor’s daughter on Dorothea’s behalf, and whose erotic languor renders him even more passive than his namesake in Antony and Cleopatra, is happy enough to die immediately after his beloved, converted by her saintliness to the new religion, having up till that point been a devotee more of her beauty than her piety. Despite this, how we are meant to react to Dorothea’s militant virginity, especially within a Protestant culture that favors marriage over lifelong chastity, is not exactly certain. She is not above theatrical trickery – as when she sets up the expectation that she has been converted by Theophilus’s daughters, and then dashes it. She also seems a trifle too eager for martyrdom, and takes a certain amount of pride in her own humility. At one point, she is subjected to onstage torture, but the scene deftly combines the sinister with the comic; the torture is carried out by her former servants, the low comedians (one a lecher, the other a drunk), who are transformed to executioners by the demon who serves Theophilus. For most of the play these two seem harmlessly foolish in the manner of Dekker’s clowns, but a threatening dimension of the comedy emerges when they promise that ‘her ribs shall be basted’: ‘Ile come upon her with rounce, robble-hobble, and thwicke thwacke thirlery bouncing’ (4.2.59–61).31 The comically excessive language sits uneasily with the edge of real malice. Dorothea upbraids them for betraying her (she has previously saved them from execution): ‘You two! whom I like fosterd children fed … you two my tormentors.’ And they answer simply ‘Yes, we’ (4.2.83–4). The exchange catches the dark side of folly, when what seemed like harmless self-indulgence and weakness turns nasty. They buffet her with clubs to

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no avail – she has angelic protection – and then the clubs are turned on them and they are beaten to the gallows. But this simply postpones the inevitable. Her execution climaxes the fourth act, and the final act is devoted to Theophilus’s conversion and death. Before turning to that sequence, I’d like to pause over the question of the religious position-taking of this play. As I indicated, it is difficult to pin down as either Protestant or Catholic. And in many ways it simply doesn’t matter. The conversions that mark the dramatic turning points are what counts. And the question is how these conversions function within the drama. How did the authors imagine that the Red Bull audience would react, what effects did they expect? They could no doubt bank on a certain amount of automatic support for dramatized conversions to Christianity – a kind of boosterism, the sort of loyalty that you see when a city sports team gets into the finals. So when various characters reject paganism for Christianity, a partisan cheer would not have seemed out of place. The authors might also have anticipated that their audience would have recognized a relation between the persecution in the play and that visited on Protestants during Mary Tudor’s reign. Foxe’s martyrology was still actively present in religious consciousness and part of its cultural purpose was to keep old memories alive. But the authors would also have been aware of the distance between their present and these events, now seventy years in the past, long enough for two generations to grow up and forget. The play implicitly recalls Foxe’s work, but changes its valence as well, by setting persecution in the distant past and by foregrounding the spectatorial consciousness already present in Foxe and making that central to the entertaining theatrical spectacle. More directly pressing on audience response than events from Mary’s reign would have been the situation of religious controversy in the early 1620s. London was abuzz with the news of the possible Spanish match, and there were repeated incidents of anti-Catholic behavior, royal attempts to silence parliamentary opponents, and the like. At the same time, theological controversy had, as Gary Taylor has argued, lost much of its life-or-death urgency. Taylor describes reaction to a 1621 debate between Jesuit George Muschet and Calvinist Daniel Featley, as recorded by the publisher of the 1623 Shakespeare Folio, Edward Blount. Blount’s position, he shows, is that of ‘a spectator,’ his interest a matter of intellectual curiosity rather than a crisis of faith.32 The situation was a far cry from what it had been forty years before, when Edmund Campion was forced before his execution to debate ex tempore well-prepared Protestant divines and apparently, even after torture, bested them.33 Blount, says Taylor, was absorbed by ‘the scene, the actors, the narrative of their

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interaction,’ not the theological content. Blount was an intellectual, and it would be inaccurate to read the entire culture through his eyes. The patrons of the Red Bull might well have thought differently. But the play itself nudges them toward a similar position. It hooks them in through such immediately relevant themes as marriage to an emperor’s daughter, devotion to a religious ideal, conversion, confessional difference, and devils in the streets, all of which resonate with the social dismay surrounding the proposed alliance with Spain and the unwillingness of King James to come to the aid of his son-in-law, the Protestant Elector, in his troubles with the emperor. But the play not only avoids taking a clear position on these matters, it doesn’t even refer to them in any direct way. Rather, it carries them over, along with the doctrinal issues they raise, into the theatrical field. Hence it, and by extension the public theater more broadly, not only reflects but actively forwards the momentum of what Taylor describes as ‘the dominant paradigm of a new secular culture.’34 Perhaps the sectarian ambiguities of the play, its cross-border representation of both Catholic and Protestant ways of seeing, can be read as a deliberate policy, a theatrical braiding of antithetical languages. And behind that policy, as Jeffrey Knapp’s chapter might remind us, stands a historical awareness of the cultural pain associated with shifts in religious allegiance and the consequent need for fellowship. The play works to place the pain squarely in the past. As I said, one of the salient features of the ending is the sense that change is in the air, that the Roman adherence to an old religion is doomed. This again harks back to the advent of the Reformation and the strong sense among certain people of the inevitability of change – and the equally strong sense of resistance. The play merely registers this as a feeling (‘I thinke the centre of the earth be crackt’) and, while it is easy to identify Roman paganism with Roman popery given the conflict over the veneration of images and the violence of persecution of unbelievers, the play gives us reason to distrust that identification. Its sense of multiple identifications and conflicting discourses is embedded in the process of making theater, of turning theological controversy into what Taylor calls ‘a spectator sport.’ The feelings linked to the traumatic past, the violent intrusion of the state into mind and body, the wrenching of belief from one mold to another, the worrying uncertainty about the stability of the position one is forced to adopt, all of which were associated with the Reformation and Marian persecution, are here being transformed into theatrical memory. Indeed, by dramatizing a displaced version of a past in which religion was a matter of life and death, the play creates a space where the anxieties tied to

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that past, and perhaps threatening to recur in contemporary London, are dispersed – raised, but laid to rest. The final part of the play illustrates a related theatrical transformation, one that helps reveal how this distancing effect, which is central to the process of secularization, can work. When Dorothea finally goes to execution, she is mocked by Theophilus who, in accord with the most famous part of the legend, calls on her to send him from the other side a ‘Small pittance of that curious fruit’ she had boasted about a moment before, when she painted a most un-Protestant picture of a heaven of eternal youth and spring, full of delicious fruit and other material delights. So she asks her angel to accommodate Theophilus who, she says, ‘in scorne desir’d / To tast of that most sacred fruite I go to, / After my death as sent from me, be pleasd / To give him of it’ (4.3.156–9). The Eucharistic metaphor is literalized moments later when Theophilus, in his study surrounded by books like Faustus, and meditating on his success as a killer of Christians, is interrupted by heavenly music and the appearance of Angelo, Dorothea’s good angel, with a basket of fruit and flowers. The rest of the scene reverses Faustus’s final moments. The delightful fruit (which he keeps munching), the delicate looks of the young angel, the heavenly music, all bespeak for Theophilus some ‘power divine’ (5.1.115), which gives him strength to resist Harpax, the devil-servant-crony who has advised him throughout. Harpax enters ‘in fearefull shape, fire flashing out of the study’ (5.1.122 s.d.) and tries to force Theophilus to vomit up the fruit, spit it to the ground and tread on it. He threatens to tear him apart, but the now emboldened Theophilus, unlike Faustus, wrestles his personal Mephistopheles into submission, finally overcoming him with a cross of flowers. Harpax ‘sinkes a little’ (152 s.d.) and, with the reappearance of Angelo, disappears altogether. Angelo promises more of the heavenly fruit and Theophilus is converted and saved. Let us take stock of the stage life of that fruit. It is, first of all, a theatrical prop. As I have suggested elsewhere, the power such a prop can wield derives from a mix of circumstances.35 All onstage objects are in essence signs of themselves with the potential for a heightened meaningfulness, and this effect, which is a defining feature of theater, is enhanced on the Elizabethan stage by the relative scarcity of props (in comparison with, say, nineteenth-century theaters), and the deeply ambivalent attitude toward images, which carried over from the iconoclastic controversy of the previous two generations. In the particular instance of the fruit there is an additional semiotic highlight, derived from its Eucharistic associations, ambiguous as those are. It doesn’t really matter what the doctrinal component of those associations might

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be, what counts is the simultaneously real and thoroughly mediated presence of the thing itself – the miraculous fruit which is, for both characters and audience, though in different ways, both symbolic and actual. This is an effect engineered by theatrical representation, analogous, I might add, to the resurrection motifs so adroitly explored by Elizabeth Williamson earlier in this volume. Its resonance and emotional weight depend on an appropriation of the sacramental charge, so that, in a move that illustrates what Williamson calls ‘affective technology,’ the religious associations and feelings are subsumed under, or transformed into, theatrical pleasure. That is, audience members are encouraged to recognize a Eucharistic connection and make it part of their response to the theatrical unfolding, while at the same time disassociating it from any doctrinal position-taking. This doesn’t stop the scene from being potentially comic as well – Theophilus’s greed for the fruit’s ‘dainty rellish’ (5.1.120) is faintly absurd: ‘If so toothfull, I will be banqueted’ (122). But the comedy only gives it more force as theater. In a sense, it highlights the process of theatrical appropriation through irony. The scene as a whole is pointedly metatheatrical, and calls attention to its own effects. Theophilus is both audience and actor: overtaken by wonder at the spectacle played before him, he also seizes the chance to play a part in it. Dazzled by Angelo’s appearance and vanishing, by the magical basket and the music, he is converted, even subjected, by theatrical display. Theophilus thus comes to represent the larger theater audience’s response. His greedy eating of the fruit is a sign of his and their participation. Participation is both active and activating, leading directly to his defeat of Harpax in another metatheatrical display (with echoes of both Hamlet 36 and Dr Faustus), and his own repentance. Thus his former greed for persecution is replayed as (divine) comedy. A further dimension of the comedy arises through the self-consciously staged reversals that mark this and the final scene, which follows immediately. That scene opens with the Roman lords anticipating that Theophilus will extend his persecution, and mock the death of Dorothea, but he does neither. He releases a bunch of imprisoned Christians to freedom ships and, when asked by the Roman authorities to describe Dorothea’s martyrdom in scoffing terms, he instead sings the praises of the heavenly virgin. His failure to satisfy their expectations does not go over well, and he is put to the rack, his body cut and hooked in one last display of state power, the most sensational of the many torture scenes in the play; but this is offset by a tableau of the sainted

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Dorothea all in white, flanked by the other martyred Christian characters, which thus confirms Theophilus’s ecstatic triumph. His constancy amazes the Romans and clearly affects Diocletian, though, as I said above, the play ends with the latter’s somber resolution to keep up the persecution. At the same time, we are aware of a change in the offing, as though a bridge had been crossed, represented by the conversion of the now appropriately named Theophilus. So the play testifies to the imminence and potential trauma of cultural shift, without actually dramatizing them. In doing so, it places them firmly in the past and, in conflating several historical periods – late Roman empire, midsixteenth century England and the active present or near future – it both acknowledges certain social anxieties and suggests something about the theater’s role in assuaging them. One way to do that is to find them entertaining rather than life threatening, to adopt the role of spectator towards them. The Eucharistic echoes in the final act of the play, together with the metatheatrical tableaux, reveal how the theater can cannibalize other discourses, and in the case of religious discourses, secularize them through disassociation from their authoritative sources. The play’s blatant blending of sensual and spiritual, with its suggestions of the baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, may at first seem out of place on the stage of the Red Bull, but what is actually going on is a redeployment of a long-standing strategy. As with Bottom’s garbling of spiritual and natural, which leads to theatrical ways of representing and understanding transformation, the linking of sensual and spiritual, comic and religious, in a scene such as that of Theophilus’s conversion opens up a way for us to understand how the theater can appropriate religious affect while remaining in itself secular. This is not so very different from how it had been operating all along. From very early on, antitheatricalists had attacked theater’s sensuous appeal, insisting that it was idolatrous to set up images and spectacle as a substitute for truth and virtue – that theater was, in effect, an anti-religion. And the playwrights’ response was not only to keep on producing idolatrous images and reveling in them, but occasionally to draw attention to the ways that iconic spectacle can draw on specifically religious images to hint at a mediated identity, made accessible by theatrical representation and the physical presence of the actor, between inner and outer, image and truth. This may be why there is so much focus in Virgin Martyr on torture and transcendence. The theatrical display of the suffering body both recalls real martyrdom and its evocation in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and

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displaces it, stressing its fictionality and turning its effects into dramatic spectacle. Thinking about theatrical effects in this way brings us back to Shakespeare and I’d like to close by glancing at another tableau of impeccable virtue on trial – Hermione before the court of Sicilia. A theatrical icon of faith and uprightness, she occupies a position something akin to that of Dorothea before the Romans, standing for justice in the face of blatant injustice, and her words, as well as her demeanor, have religious resonance: ‘I appeal / To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes / Came to your court, how I was in your grace, / How merited to be so’ (WT 3.2.45–8). The question of her merit is at the centre of her claim. She deserves grace. Both ‘merit’ and ‘grace’ carry a huge amount of cultural weight, but she handles the issue lightly, recalling quite deliberately her playful variations on the theme earlier in the play: ‘Grace to boot,’ ‘O, would her name were Grace,’ ‘’Tis Grace indeed,’ all spoken in act one, all concerned with how she won Leontes’s ‘grace’ (1.2.80, 99, 105). Now, on trial, she speaks the word in a different key. It is a charged moment, with character and actor both simultaneously feeling the connection. It is impossible to separate actor and character here – it is the person who remembers and speaks, picking up on the resonance of the word from the dramatic and the personal past. I’m talking about actorly technique here, and the power of actorly presence to engage an audience. It’s not by mere chance that the effect springs from one of the most contested issues in contemporary theological debate, the question of free grace and the value of good works. There is a nexus of ideas and powerful feeling here which it is the theater’s privilege to tap. Since just about every audience member has a core of belief and a residue of emotion linked to the issue, Hermione’s putting her call for Leontes to remember in these terms gives it an extra cogency while at the same time moving it away from the religious context where it originates. The explicitly theatrical nature of her merit is implied a moment later when she compares her grief to what may be played: it is, she says, ‘more / Than history can pattern, though devis’d / and play’d to take spectators’ (3.2.35–7). Of course, her own self-presentation is itself devised to take spectators, and the conflation of history and the theatrical representation of history points to the process I have been attempting to describe throughout this chapter. The theater devises ways to re-present the patterns of history, taking over its languages and disassociating them for its own aesthetic purposes, namely, to transport (‘take’) spectators out of themselves, from one cultural field (history or religion) to another (theater).

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The vital figure in all this is the actor, and a key component of the effect, as Hermione makes abundantly clear, is memory. Memory and grace go together, as Perdita reminds us when she proffers rosemary and rue to the two old men who have come to the sheep-shearing with the words ‘Grace and remembrance be to you both’ (4.4.76). Like grace, remembrance is a charged term in contemporary theological controversy, referring as it can to the status of the Lord’s Supper, and the question of Christ’s presence therein. The crucial passage is Luke 22:19: ‘And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you: do this in the remembrance of me.’ As with the issue of faith versus works and the nature of grace, Protestants and Catholics were divided over precisely what remembrance entailed – was the Supper only a symbolic replay, or was there a sacramental presence generated by the words of consecration? And if the latter, where was that presence to be located? Once again we see matters of religious significance made part of a different kind of story, one that ends with a scene in which Leontes’s active remembering brings Hermione back to life. Forgetting is a kind of secular sin in the play, while healing is expressed in terms of remembrance: ‘Remember,’ pleads Florizel to Leontes on the brink of disaster, ‘since you ow’d no more to time / Than I do now’ (5.1.219–20), and of course Leontes does. Acknowledging his links to Florizel transports him to the ensuing scene of memorial reconstruction: ‘O, thus she stood, / Even with such life of majesty … / when first I woo’d her. … / There’s magic in thy majesty, which has / My evils conjured to remembrance’ (5.3.34–40). ‘Thus she stood’; the phrase conjures up the trial scene (‘Behold me … here standing / To prate and talk for life and honor’ [3.2.37–41]) as well as the earlier moments of their courtship that Hermione herself conjures up with her mention of grace during her trial. Again, whatever an audience member might believe about the nature of sacramental remembrance and its role in bringing life to dead matter, the point is to wrest that belief from its religious moorings and give it a different emotional ‘life of majesty’ in its new, theatrical context. Thanks to the kind of work that has been done in the last decade or so, it is hard to miss the religious reverberations of scenes like Hermione’s trial and her subsequent awakening, but it is also important, I would argue, to recognize how different the religious content appears when it is transported onto the public stage. Brimful of religious thinking and sacramental allusion, the theater gains its effects by secularizing them, finding a new language to give them an authoritative life on the stage.

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Notes 1. See Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti, ‘The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies,’ Criticism 46 (2004): 167-90. 2. Eamon Duffy, ‘“Bare ruined choirs”: Remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare’s England,’ in Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 40–57. Duffy argues that the poem illustrates Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies, his decidedly ‘unProtestant leanings,’ and his dismay at the ‘late’ loss of monastic institutions. He doesn’t cite the passage from Titus Andronicus (one that might have proved an obstacle to his argument) that depicts a Goth tourist poking around a ‘ruinous monastery’ (TA 5.1.21), though he does refer briefly to that in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi where the decay of church buildings is folded into a generalized sense of loss unconnected to any sectarian perspective: ‘I do love these ancient ruins: / We never tread upon them, but we set / Our foot upon some reverend history’; Duchess of Malfi, ed. Elizabeth Brennan (London: New Mermaid, 1964), 5.3.9–11. 3. See Sonja Fielitz, ‘Learned Pate and Golden Fool: A Jesuit Source for Timon of Athens,’ in Dutton et al., Theatre and Religion, 179–96. 4. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004), 108–9. 5. See E.A.J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years,’ 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 123. 6. Claire Asquith, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (New York: Public Affairs, 2005). 7. Robert N. Watson, ‘Othello as Protestant Propaganda,’ in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 234–57. 8. See M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). Different languages get into the novel, argues Bakhtin, because of its inherent heteroglossia (that is, ‘another’s speech in another’s language’ that expresses authorial intention in a refracted way [324]). For Bakhtin, the novel multiplies discourses and sets them into opposition, or at least creates a situation where one kind of language is undermined or ironized by another or by our understanding of what the author’s actual intention is. More generally, he sees the novel as orchestrating many different social languages, many different genres, forms and levels of speech all in play at the same time. For Bakhtin, language is continually in motion if it is living and the novel is the genre that celebrates this fact. He doesn’t think this is so in drama, which he links with poetic or single voiced forms of discourse, but in Shakespeare there are many instances of such heteroglossia – indeed in early modern drama generally. 9. Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 9; Debora Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for

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10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

Measure (London: Palgrave, 2001), 130–1. Knapp continues the mode of thinking of Shakespeare’s Tribe in his chapter in the present book, with which mine has been provocatively paired. In her contribution to this book Alexandra Johnston observes that the proclamation was not a blanket prohibition, but left room for ‘menne of auctoritie’ to treat of matters of religion and governance for audiences of ‘grave and discreete persons’; but of course the public theater could hardly lay claim to such authority or discretion. Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chap. 1. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 342–4. Peter Lake (with Michael Questier), The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 650, 676 (emphasis added). Lake asserts a number of times in his chapter on Measure for Measure that he is not addressing the play’s ‘aesthetic or literary’ properties; rather, his aim is ‘to use the play as a way of examining … issues central to the traditional historiography of the period’ – namely, antiCalvinism, the relation between ministers and magistrates, and so on (689, emphasis added). Dawson and Yachnin, Culture of Playgoing, 175. C. John Sommerville, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8, 11. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 369. Sommerville, Secularization of Early Modern England, 143. See Pierce Pennilesse, His Supplication to the Divell, ed. G.B. Harrison (London: Bodley Head, 1924), 87. I discuss Nashe’s comments in The Culture of Playgoing, 14–16. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G.B. Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). All biblical references are to the Geneva Bible, spelling modernized. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (London: J. Clarke, 1953), 1.17.6. The phrase ‘perfect Protestant’ is used by Peter Lake throughout The AntiChrist’s Lewd Hat to designate a pure English Calvinist position (justification by faith, predestination, emphasis on providence) in the religious debates circulating in post-Reformation England. Quoted from Bishop’s note 29; the only thing I would want to question is the word ‘inappropriate’ – the move seems to me entirely fitting, given the aims of theater. Paul Yachnin points this out in ‘Millenarian Ghosts: Hamlet and Nationhood,’ in The Elizabethan Theatre XV, ed. C.E. McGee and A.L. Magnusson (Toronto: Meany, 2002), 258. Yachnin, ‘Millenarian Ghosts,’ 258. See Jan Kott, The Bottom Translation: Marlowe and Shakespeare and the Carnival Tradition (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987), 31. By 1560, the Geneva translation had been amended. Compare: ‘Wake when some vile thing is near’ and ‘Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity’ (MND 2.2.34,

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28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

and 1.2.232–3). I am indebted to an unpublished master’s thesis by a former student, Katryna Scott, ‘“The Bottome of Goddes Secrets”: Paul’s Corinthian Letters and the Playgoer’s Spiritual Experience in the Elizabethan Theatre’ (University of British Columbia, 2004), for extending my thinking on this issue of Corinthians and Dream. All quotations from the play are taken from Fredson Bowers, ed., The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). Cyrus Hoy, Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in ‘The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 3:194. The historical Diocletian’s commitment to traditional Roman religion was linked both to his personal piety and to his desire to keep the ragged empire united, so that his attacks on Christianity late in his reign, which were in any event carried out more on his lieutenants’ initiative than his own, may be understood in that light. Hoy shows that this language is a parody of George Stanyhurst’s translation of Virgil, and may be indebted to Thomas Nashe; Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries. Gary Taylor, ‘The Cultural Politics of Maybe,’ in Dutton et al., Theatre and Religion, 252. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 115. Taylor, ‘Cultural Politics of Maybe,’ 252, 258. In that this play seems an extreme case, we might say that a fortiori it reveals the secularizing tendency in the theater as a whole. Dawson and Yachnin, Culture of Playgoing, 131–42. The reference is to the shifting voice of the ghost under the stage, which is imitated by Harpax.

Index In this index Shakespeare’s plays are entered under their titles, as are anonymous works. All other publications are entered under their authors. Act of the Six Articles, 1539 68, 69, 71, 72 Acte to Restraine Abuses of Players, 1606 119 adultery see sexual fidelity/infidelity affective technologies 111, 112–13, 114, 116–17, 118, 120, 121, 125, 127 see also audiences/audience reaction; material technologies Agamben, Giorgio 210–11, 246 Allen, Robert: A Treatise of Christian Beneficence 160 Anderson, Judith 149n36 anger/violence in Hamlet 182, 183, 185–7 in Reformation discourse 179–80, 192, 193n12 antitheatrical writings 119, 120, 153–4, 155–6, 170, 219, 255 against Corpus Christi plays 225–6 Marprelate texts as 165–6 Antony and Cleopatra 244, 250 apocalyptic visions 67 Appleyard, Sir John, his pro-Catholic uprising, 1570 96–7, 107n28 Arianism 97 aristocracy 4, 5 in Shakespeare’s plays 17 aristocratic honor culture 20, 40–1 in adversity 44–7, 50, 51, 52 Richard Barckley on 38–9 Christianity and 4–5, 42–3, 44–7, 49–50, 52–4, 55–6 as competitive 38, 56 compromise in 38–40 Earl of Essex and 51–4 Mervyn James on 4, 33n7, 38, 55–6

in Richard II 4–5, 39–41, 42, 43–7, 49–50, 55–6 Arminianism 178 As You Like It Catholic themes 7, 154–5, 160, 161–2, 173n43 festivals/festivity in 7, 154, 162, 164–5, 168–9, 194n31 hospitality depicted in 160–1 hunting depicted in 164, 165 marriage depicted in 166–7 as a pastoral 162–3, 165, 166, 169, 170 religious debate in 165–6 sources: Thomas Lodge: Rosalynde 163, 173n37; Robin Hood plays/games 159–60, 161–2, 164 subject matter/themes 7, 159–62, 164–70 wrestling depicted in 160, 162, 165 Ascham, Roger 64, 70, 75 Ashton, Abdy 53–4 Ashton, John 139 Ashton, Margaret 140 Asquith, Claire 11n9, 239–40 atheism 229 atonement 5, 42, 43, 44–5, 54, 57n19, 168, 175n69 see also repentance/redemption audiences/audience reaction 9–10, 88, 120, 219, 222–3, 241 for biblical drama 114, 118, 119 for The Comedy of Errors 32–3 as consumers 119 for King Henry VIII 145–6 for Measure for Measure 187, 188, 190, 241 for A Midsummer’s Night Dream 247, 248 261

262 Index audiences/audience reaction – continued for Othello 199 for sermons 100, 102–5, 219 for The Winter’s Tale 126, 256 Augmentation, Court of 69 Augsburg Confession, 1530 76 authorship 9–10, 221 competitive 9, 221, 222–4, 230–31, 233 Shakespeare’s 9, 220–24, 230–34 John Weever on 221, 222–4, 230–31, 233 Bacon, Anne (née Cooke) (Mrs Nicholas Bacon) 26 Bacon, Sir Francis 38, 52, 64 ‘Of Adversity’ 44 Bacon, Nicholas (father of Francis Bacon) 64, 69 Badby, John 143, 145 Bakhtin, M. M. authoritative discourse concept 10, 241–2, 258n disassociation concept 243, 244, 245 orchestration concept 240, 245, 258n8 Bale, John 5, 64, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 129n4 Thomas Cromwell and 68, 69 King Johan 234n2 plays by 68, 234n2 Bancroft, Archbishop Richard 172n12 baptism 31–2 Barber, C. L. 9, 13n16, 154, 217–18, 221, 228, 229, 232–3, 234n4 Barckley, Richard, on honor 38–9 Barkan, Leonard 129n3 Barlowe, Bishop of St David’s 115 Bate, Jonathan 36n38 Bayly, Bishop Lewis: The Practice of Pietie 45 Beard, Thomas: Theatre of God’s Judgements 225 Beaumont, Francis 136 Beauregard, David N. 12n11

B[ecket], W[illiam] (W. B.): Commentarie … Uppon the Epistle to the Philippians 237n26 Beckingsale, B. W. 74 Beckwith, Sarah 12n10 Becon, Thomas 64, 72 A Comparison Betwene the Lordes Supper and the Popes Masse 235n6 A New Dialog between Thangell of God & the Sheperdes in the Felde 72–3 Bednarz, David 175n70 beds/bed-curtains, as an altar/tabernacle 207, 208, 213n24 Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert 135, 149n28, 196 Bentley, G.E. 236n23 Berry, Edward, on hunting 164 Bevington, David 116, 194n33 Bible Bishop’s Bible 237n26 content 196 Coverdale’s translation 57n19, 67, 149n30 Geneva Bible, 1560 57n19, 196, 199, 203, 205, 206–8, 211n9, 213n20, 237n26, 247, 259n26 Great Bible 247 King James Bible 57n19, 205, 211n9, 213n20 reading(s) of 196–7 Shakespeare’s use of 196, 197; in Othello 197–8, 199–203, 204, 205–6, 207, 208, 209–11 Tyndale’s translation 44, 57n19, 180–81, 247 Bible: Old Testament 8 Deuteronomy 208, 209 exile/return narratives 8, 197, 200–1, 206, 209–10, 212n12 Exodus 197, 200, 201, 202, 207–8, 209 Isaiah: the man of sorrows in 203 Jeremiah 204–5, 206, 209, 213n19 Job 203

Index prophetic wilderness in 199–200, 201, 202 Proverbs 203–5, 208, 212n17, 213n19 Psalms 203, 206 Song of Solomon 207 Bible: New Testament Erasmus’s paraphrase of 69, 70 Philippians 233, 237n26 Resurrection story 113–14, 121 Revelation 206–7 biblical/religious drama 3, 5, 66, 81, 111–12, 217 affective power of 112–13, 114, 116–17, 118, 125 audiences/audience reaction 114, 118, 119 as Catholic 119 Chester Cycle 77, 81, 116–18, 130n15 Corpus Christi see Corpus Christi plays Italian 248 Mons play 116 as moral lessons 66 mystery plays 111, 113, 114, 118–19, 130n5, 130n10 Paris play 115–16 post-Reformation 117–18 as profane 225–6 resurrection plays as 113–16, 121, 127, 130n10; see also Corpus Christi plays Shakespeare’s history plays as 221–2 suppression/control of 81, 117–20, 197, 217 survival of 5, 118, 197 Towneley Crucifixion play 235n16 the Trinity, representation of 118–19 Wakefield Cycle 118–19 York Cycle 81, 217, 236n16 Birkhead, George 139 Bishop, Tom 8, 245–6 Blackfriars, Parliament Chamber 133–4, 136, 142, 143, 145–6, 147n4

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heresy trials at 143, 144–5, 149n37 Blackfriars Synod, 1382 134, 139, 140, 141, 142 Blackfriars Theater 111, 148n15, 149n36 King Henry VIII performed at 7, 133, 134, 136, 142, 145–6 the King’s Men at 133, 136 Blount, Edward 251–2 Book of Common Prayer 43, 45 conformity to 98, 104 introduction of 65 marriage ceremony in 167 Book of Homilies 26, 44 Book of Martyrs see Foxe, John: Acts and Monuments Boose, Lynda E. 206–7, 208 bourgeoisie business transactions among 19–20 characteristics 17 in The Comedy of Errors 4, 5, 17–36 as honest 20 in The Merry Wives of Windsor 17 reputation, importance of 20, 23 in The Taming of the Shrew 17 Bowers, Fredson 186–7 Brandon, Catherine, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk 65, 71, 74, 75 as a patron 79, 80 Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk 79 Briggs, Revd Francis 176–7 Bristol, Michael 154 Brown, John Russell, on The Duchess of Malfi 120 Browne, Robert 100, 101 Browne, William: Britannia’s Pastorals 162 Brownists (congregationalists) 100–1 Bucer, Martin 67 De Honestis Ludis 66 Burghley, first Lord see Cecil, William Burton, Robert: The Anatomie of Melancholy 163 Burton, William 99, 100, 108n38 on Francis Kett 97, 99

264 Index Burton, William – continued Norwich Cathedral sermon, December 1589 6, 99–105, 108n46; impact of 100, 102–3, 104; subject matter 100–102 preaching style 99 calendars 158 Calvin, John 237n26 Institutes of the Christian Religion 245 Calvinism see Protestantism Cambridge University/Colleges William Cecil at 63, 64, 65, 80 drama at (academic plays) 65–7, 68, 71 English Protestant humanism centred on 63–4, 65, 67, 70, 72, 81 Camden, William, on the Essex rebellion, 1601 52–3 Campion, Edmund 251 Shakespeare and 239 Candido, Joseph 33n3 Carlson, Marvin, on theater of memory 134 carnival see festivals/festivity Castiglione, Count Baldassare 64 The Book of the Courtier 162 Catherine Parr, Queen 64, 69, 81 Henry VIII, marriage to 69–70 Lamentation, or Complaint of a Sinner, William Cecil’s preface to 71–2 as a patron 69, 70, 71, 79 Thomas Seymour, marriage to 72 Richard Udall and 70 Catholicism anti-papal drama/publications 66–7, 68, 72 in As You Like It 7, 154–5, 160, 161–2, 173n43 in The Comedy of Errors 27–31 crypto-Catholicism 2, 3, 11n9 drama and 2, 3, 6–7, 8, 11n6, 32, 68, 81, 119, 126–7, 129, 217, 218–19, 232–3, 239 equated with Christianity 218–19

Jesuits 63, 140, 149n28, 239, 251 the Mass, Real Presence doctrine 69, 77, 232–3, 257 persecution of 249, 251 purgatory, belief in 31 repentance/penance and 30, 31, 189–90, 208, 213n26, 229 Shakespeare’s possible Catholicism 2, 11n10, 238–9, 258n2 in Shakespearian studies 2, 3, 11n6, 238 the Virgin, devotion to 161 see also Christianity; recusants Cavell, Stanley 127 Cecil, Mary (née Cheke) (Mrs William Cecil I) 64 Cecil, Mildred (née Cooke) (Mrs William Cecil II) 64 Cecil, Richard (father of William Cecil) 69 Cecil, Sir Robert (son of William Cecil) 51, 53, 54 Cecil, Thomas, second Lord Burghley (son of William Cecil) 64 Cecil, William, first Lord Burghley 63, 71 at Cambridge University 63, 64, 65, 68, 80 career 63–5, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74–5, 80–1 Catherine Parr: Lamentation …, his preface to 71–2 Elizabeth I and 75, 76, 81, 98 at Gray’s Inn 68–9 marriages 64 as member of parliament 71 propaganda, use of drama for 5, 63, 75–87 as a Protestant 65, 71–2, 73, 75 Thomas Smith as his secretary 64 censorship 73, 73, 79 of the theater see theater censorship/control see also printing/publishing Chamberlain, John 53 Chambers, E.K. 1 Chapman, Alison 158 Charles I 120 Chaudhuri, Sukanta 162

Index Cheke, John 64, 70, 74, 75 Cheke, Mary see Cecil, Mary Chettle, Henry see Munday, Anthony and Henry Chettle Cheyne, Thomas 69 Chillingworth, William: The Religion of the Protestants … 211n5 Christianity in adversity 44–7, 50, 51, 52 aristocratic honor culture and 4–5, 42–3, 44–7, 49–50, 52–4, 55–6 atonement and 5, 42, 43, 44–5, 54, 57n19, 168, 175n69 Diocletian persecutions 245, 260n30 equated with Catholicism 218–19 good/meritorious works 256, 257 grace, as God’s gift 256, 257 Machiavelli on 56 nativity/baptism and 31–2 patience as a Christian virtue 44, 45, 47, 52, 53 political power and 55–6 religious outsiders and 9, 203–4, 205, 208, 209, 210, 212n16 in Richard II 41, 42, 43–7, 49, 50 see also Catholicism; Protestantism; religion Church of England marriage ceremony 167 Thirty-Nine Articles 213n26 visitations 155 see also Protestantism Cicero: De Officiis 35n30 Clark, Glenn 7–8 clergymen/ministers 6, 7 anticlerical satire 191, 192 authority/behavior 177–8 as celibate 69, 71 crimes committed by 176–7, 219–20 lay attitude to 177 lay pastors 194n22 pastoral duties 7–8, 177, 178–82; depicted in Hamlet 8, 178, 182–7, 191, 194n22; depicted in Measure for Measure 8, 178, 187–91

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professionalization of 177, 191 self-examination by 181–2, 184–6, 188, 190 in Shakespeare’s plays 178, 191–2, 193nn6–7, 233 struggles/failures experienced by 178, 180–1, 182, 186, 187, 191, 192, 193n6 see also preachers/preaching Clopper, Lawrence 117–18 Coke, Edward 55 speech to Norwich assizes, 1606 42–3 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 248 Collinson, Patrick 11n5, 88, 102 on nonconformity 97 comedy/comedies Roman 17 by Shakespeare 2, 7, 154; see also individual titles The Comedy of Errors 4, 5, 17–36 audience response to 32–3 bourgeois life depicted in 4, 5, 17–36 business transactions in 19–20 Catholic themes/characters 27–31 holiness concept in 4; inner-worldly holiness (Max Weber) 4, 5, 17, 27–30 marriage depicted in 21–6, 27–9, 30–1, 32–3 patience/endurance depicted in 24, 28 Plautus: Menaechmi as source for 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 34n18 as a Protestant play 26–7 published editions of 36n38 servants depicted in 26 as an urban pastoral 19 Common Pleas, Court of 69 communion, sacrament of see Eucharist Cooke, Anne (daughter of Anthony Cooke) see Bacon, Anne Cooke, Anthony 64, 70, 74, 75 Cooke, Elizabeth (daughter of Anthony Cooke) (wife of I: Thomas Holby and II: John, Lord Russell) 64

266 Index Cooke, Mildred (daughter of Anthony Cooke) see Cecil, Mildred Coriolanus 19 Corpus Christi plays 9, 217, 218, 220, 224, 225–7, 234n2, 235n16 as profane 225–6 Shakespeare’s history plays as 221–1, 227–9, 233 see also biblical/religious drama; resurrection plays Counter-Reformation see Catholicism cowardice 44, 53 Cox, John D. 5, 10n3, 12n10 Cranmer, Thomas 57n19, 64, 66, 72 depicted in King Henry VIII 134, 136, 143–5, 146 his Thirty-Nine Articles 213n27 Crashaw, William 119 Cressy, David 154, 167 Cromwell, Thomas 67 propaganda, use of theater for 6, 63, 67–9, 77, 80 execution 69 cross-dressing 162 the crusades 227 Cuffe, Henry 53 Cyprus 200, 201 Daniel, Samuel: Civil Wars (The First Fowre Bookes of the Civile Wars …) 40–1, 57n14 Davenant, William 133 Davidson, Clifford 117 Davies, John 236n17 The Holy Roode 236n17 Dawson, Anthony (Tony) 9–10, 111, 112, 125, 170, 197 on Measure for Measure 187 Day, George, Bishop of Chichester 64, 70 Day, John: Law Tricks 120–21 de Vere, John, sixteenth Earl of Oxford (Great Chamberlain of England) 76 death fear of 190, 191 as good 50, 51 Hamlet’s meditation on 245–6

historical 231–2 as noble 50–1, 53 theatrical 231–2 debt/debtors 19–20, 22, 249 sanctuary, debtors use of 32 Dekker, Thomas and Philip Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 9, 248–56 audience response to 251 comedy in 250, 254–5 Eucharist in 253–4, 255 religious conversion in 250, 251, 254, 255 religious language in 249–56 subject matter/themes 248, 250, 251, 253–4, 255 deserts see wilderness Dickens, A.G. 1 Diehl, Huston: Staging Reform … 1–2, 240 Dillon, Janette 162 Diocletian 249, 260n30 divine right of kings 41, 42, 44, 45 domestic life see marriage Donne, John 34n10 Lincoln’s Inn sermon, 1618 179–80 Doran, Greg 148n15 Dormer, Jane (wife of Count of Feria) 63 Downame, George: Two Sermons… 178–9 drama see biblical drama; individual plays; theater Dudley, Ambrose see Warwick, Ambrose Dudley Dudley, Robert (son of the Earl of Warwick) 79 Duffy, Eamon 2, 119 on Sonnet 73 238, 240, 258n2 Dusinberre, Juliet, on As You Like It 154, 165 Edward VI 64, 65, 69, 71, 73, 74, 78 court performances under 77 death 75 Eucharist, debate over, November 1551 64, 65, 67

Index as Prince Edward 70, 72 proclamation against plays, 1551 79 Egan, Robert 128 Egypt 200, 201, 212n12 plagues of 200–201 Egyptian mummies 201, 212n14 Elam, Keir, on As You Like It 174n49 Elisha (the prophet) 199, 209 Elizabeth I 51, 63, 69, 71, 75, 94 William Cecil and 75, 76, 81, 98 her favorites 51 foreign policy 90, 91, 94, 106n15, 106n18 her godly authority 6, 95, 98–9, 102, 103 the Golden Speech 94 in Norwich, 1578 6, 89, 95–9, 103–5; entertainment for 6, 95, 96, 98, 107n26 Philip II of Spain and 75–6 preaching, her attitude to 99–100 as Princess Elizabeth 64, 70, 75 her progresses 6, 88; purpose of 95, 96; see also Norwich above The Queen’s Men founded by 88, 94 religious policy 97, 98, 99, 103, 109n50 theater censorship/control under 76–7, 81, 88–9, 104, 117–19, 240–1, 259n10 Elyot, Sir Thomas The Boke Named the Governor 163 The Castle of Health 162–3 Enos, Carol 173n43 Enssle, Neal 192n4 epithalamic tradition 207, 208 Edmund Spenser: Epithalamion 173n34 Erasmus, Desiderius 69, 196 Paraphrases upon the New Testament, English translation 69, 70 Essex, Robert Devereux, second Earl of 165

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aristocratic honor culture and 51–4 character 4, 51–2 death 53–4 his rebellion, 1601 38, 51, 52–3 St Ethelwold: Regularis Concordia 115 Eton school 68, 69 Eucharist 43, 140, 232–3, 234n6 debate over, under Edward VI, November 1551 64, 65, 67 in Dekker and Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 253–4, 255 Real Presence doctrine 69, 77, 232–3, 257 as remembrance 9, 233, 257 in Shakespeare’s plays 227 evangelical Protestantism 64, 67, 68, 72, 73, 88, 97, 98 Evans, Bertrand 35n32 executions 69 depicted in Measure for Measure 189, 190 religiously motivated 97–8, 101, 143, 251 by stoning 208 see also martyrs/martyrdom exorcism 27, 29 Favila, Marina 148n15 Featley, Daniel 251 Feltham, Owen: Resolves … 55 Feria, Count of (Spanish Ambassador to England) 63, 75–6, 78, 80 marriage to Jane Dormer 63 in Norwich with Elizabeth’s progress, 1578 98 Ferreira-Ross, Jeanette 194n22 festivals/festivity 7, 74 in As You Like It 7, 154, 162, 164–5, 168–9, 194n31 St Bartholomew’s Day 163 bells/bell ringing 161 in The Comedy of Errors 31–2 Corpus Christi 9, 217; see also Corpus Christi plays as idolatrous 155–6, 157, 172n16 May Day 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163

268 Index festivals/festivity – continued Midsummer 73, 74 pastoral conventions and 7, 154, 157–8, 165, 166 religion and 3, 7, 153–4, 155–8, 161, 165–6 Robin Hood plays/games see Robin Hood … secularization of 154 suppression of 153–4 fidelity see sexual fidelity/infidelity Fielitz, Sonya, on Timon of Athens 238–9, 240 Fisch, Harold 211 The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare … 197 Fletcher, John The Faithful Shepheardess 162 see also Shakespeare, William and John Fletcher Foakes, R.A. The Comedy of Errors (ed.) 32, 33n6, 34n12, 36n38 on Hamlet 186, 187 on King Henry VIII 147n7 food/eating 198–9, 201–2 dinner (midday meal) 18 of insects/locusts 198, 199 F[ord], I[ohn] (I. F.) 226 Christes Bloodie Sweat … 225–6 Forker, Charles (ed.): King Richard II 57n17 Foxe, John 70–71, 89–90 Acts and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) 71, 124, 140, 143, 149n22, 149n37, 150nn40–41, 251, 255–6; see also martyrs/martyrdom on Blackfriars Synod, 1382 140, 148n26 Christus Triumphans 71 as an evangelical 71 Titus et Geseppus 71 as a tutor 71 on John Wycliffe 140 France the pastourelle 173n37 resurrection plays 115–16, 117 Freke, Edmund, Bishop of Norwich 95, 97, 98

Frye, Susan 89 Fuller, Mary 2 Furness, H. H. (ed.): Othello. A New Variorum Edition 212n10 Furnivall, F. J. 235n15 Gammon, Revd Richard 176–7 Garber, Marjorie 118 Gardiner, George, Dean of Norwich Cathedral 99 Gardiner, Bishop Stephen 55, 72 Gascoigne, George: ‘The Steele Glas’ 47–9 Gasper, Julia, on King Henry VIII 139 Gerard, John: Herball 198 ghosting concept see memory, theater of Globe theater 133 Goffe, Thomas 226, 227, 236n23 The Careless Shepherdess 226, 236n23 Deliverance from the Grave (sermon) 227, 236n23 The Raging Turk 236n23 The Tragedy of Orestes 236n23 Golden Calf, worshipping of 209 Goodman, Christopher 77 Grantley, Darryll, on religious drama 111, 130n5 Gray’s Inn 68–9 theatrical performances at 32 Grebbey, Robert 182, 186, 187 Greenblatt, Stephen 2, 13n16, 22, 30, 34n16, 112, 193n6, 197, 217–18, 234n5, 244 on Edmund Campion 239 Greene, Robert Pandosto 110 The Repentance of Robert Greene … 104–5, 106n11, 109n54 Selimus 89, 106n5, 106n11, 108n38; Norwich, performance in 6, 89–95, 100, 103–5; religious conversion depicted in 91, 92, 100, 103, 107n18; subject matter/themes 6, 90, 91, 92–4, 99, 100, 103, 104; Turks depicted in 6, 90, 91–4, 103 Greenham, Richard 179, 181, 188

Index Gretser, Jacob 149 Grey, Henry (father of Lady Jane Grey) 75 Grey, Lady Jane 75 Grimald, Nicholas 64 Grindal, Edmund 64, 65, 71, 81, 99, 102 Guarini, Giovanni Battista: Il Pastor Fido 162 Haigh, Christopher 2 Halio, Jay M., on King Henry VIII 147n3 Hamlet 18, 77, 197, 254 anger/violence in 182, 183, 185–7 Catholic themes in 239 Hamlet’s meditation on death 245–6 Hamlet’s pastoral role in 8, 178, 182–7, 191, 194n22 psychological analysis of 183 religious language in 245–7 self-examination in 184–6 the visiting players in 185 Hamont, Matthew 97 Hanmer, Sir Thomas 36n38 Hansen, Matthew C. 139 Harborne, William 91 Hardison, O.B. 10n3 Harington, Sir John 52 Harrison, Robert 100, 101 Harsnett, Samuel 35n7 Hassel, R. Chris (Jr), on Hamlet 186, 194n25 Hastings, Henry, Earl of Huntingdon (Lord President of the North) 77, 81 Hattaway, Michael 160 Hay Any Work for Cooper 156–7 Hayward, Sir John on the Essex rebellion, 1601 51 Henry IIII (The First Part of the Life and Reigne of King Henrie IIII) 40, 41 Hazlitt, William 230 Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays 237n24 Hennings, Thomas P. 26, 33n9

269

Henry IV Part 1 38, 56, 223 subject matter/themes 227–8 Henry IV Part 2 223 epilogue 220, 222 Henry V 143, 222 Henry V 55, 217, 223, 229 chorus 236n17 epilogue 220, 221–2, 230, 231–2, 233–4 subject matter/themes 229, 233 Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 50, 55 Part 1 218 Henry VIII 65, 69, 71 Assertio Septem Sacramentorum … 135 Catherine Parr, marriage to 69–70 his Oath of Supremacy, 1534 135 death 72 see also Shakespeare, William and John Fletcher: King Henry VIII Hentzner, Paul 163 Herbert, George 196 ‘The Thanksgiving’ 58n29 ‘To All Angels and Saints’ 34n27 heresy/heresy trials 97, 134, 135, 143 at Blackfriars 143, 144–5 Heywood, Thomas 111 How a Man May Choose a Good Wife … 111, 120–1 High Priest (biblical) 207, 208, 209, 213n25 Hoby, Thomas 64 holiness 29 definition 4 inner-worldly (Max Weber) 5; in The Comedy of Errors 4, 5, 17, 27–30 Protestant concept of 4, 31 Holinshed, Raphael: Chronicles 134 on Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon 136–7, 138 on Kett’s rebellion, 1549 73 on Richard II 40, 41, 43, 50 on theater censorship 86n30 on Wolsey’s trial 142, 143 Holland see Netherlands Holmes, Michael Morgan 195n37

270 Index Homer: Iliad 37–8 Honigmann, Ernst A. J. 198, 203 Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years’ 239 on John Weever 222 honor culture see aristocratic honor culture Hooper, John 71 Horne, Robert 64, 65 hospitality 7, 8, 18, 160–61 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey (brother of Mary Howard) 71 Howard, Mary, Duchess of Richmond 71 Hoy, Cyrus 248, 260n31 humanism 18 Protestant 63–4, 65, 67, 70, 72, 81 Hunt, Maurice 12n14 Hunt, Rebecca 176 hunting 164, 165 Hutton, Matthew 81 Hutton, Ronald 154, 157 Hyperius, Andreas 193n8, 193n15 hypocrisy, in Shakespeare’s plays 187–8, 194n26, 194n31, 227–8, 229, 230, 232 idolatry 115, 126–7, 205, 208, 253 adultery and 206 biblical condemnation of 213n21 festivals as 155–6, 157, 172n16 theater as idolatrous 126–7, 172n16, 255 infidelity see sexual fidelity/infidelity Ingleby, C.M. see The Shakspere Allusion-Book Irish wars, depicted in Richard II 41, 45 Islam Christianity and 8 drama and 2, 3–4, 6, 8 in Othello 210, 212n12 see also Turks Italian sacred dramas 248 Jackson, Henry 140, 149n30 Jackson, Ken 10nn1–2 James I 120, 134 Basilikon Doron 163

his Oath of Allegiance, 1606 134–5, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146; his Apologie for … 135 religious policy 134–5, 141, 142, 145–6, 252 James, Mervyn, on aristocratic honor culture 4, 33n7, 38, 55–6 James, Susan E., on Catherine Parr 70, 85n16 James, Thomas 140, 141–2 An Apologie for John Wickliffe … 140, 141 Two Short Treatises 141 Jane Seymour, Queen 72 Jensen, Phebe 7, 8, 12n16, 193n7, 194n31 Jesuits 63, 140, 149n28, 239, 251 Job (the prophet) 203 John the Baptist 198, 209, 212n11 Johnson, Dr Samuel 36n38 Johnston, Alexandra F. 5, 88, 131n29, 153 on resurrection plays 129n9, 259n10 on Robin Hood plays 174n46 Jonson, Ben 18, 177, 244 anticlerical satire 191, 192 Judaism Christianity and 8 depicted in The Merchant of Venice 212n12 drama and 2, 3–4, 8, 212n12 exile/return in Hebrew Bible 8, 197, 200–201, 209 Julius Caesar 233–4, 235n15, 249–50 justice/jurisdiction 29, 30, 42–3, 208 Kani, John 213n18 Katherine of Aragon, Queen 136 depicted in King Henry VIII 136–8 Kempe, Will 165 Kenny, Anthony 149n28 Kermode, Frank 211n8 Kernan, Alvin 217–18, 234n4 Kethe, William 156 Kett, Francis (nephew of Robert Kett) 97, 99, 108n34 Kett’s Rebellion, 1549 (Robert Kett) 73, 97, 107n28

Index Kilby, Richard: The Burthen of a Loaden Conscience … 181, 186, 188 Killigrew, Thomas 133 King, John 72–3 King, Ros 27 King John 239 King Lear 46 the King’s Men 125, 133 at Blackfriars Theater 133, 136 at the Globe 133 kingship see sacral kingship Kinney, Arthur 35n28 kinship 42–3, 44, 63 Kirchmayer, Thomas: Pammachius 66–7, 68 Knapp, Jeffrey 9–10, 12n14, 155, 178, 192, 193n7, 194n26, 240 on secular theater 218–19 Kott, Jan 259n26 Kyd, Thomas: The Spanish Tragedy 226 Lake, Peter on Measure for Measure 242, 259n13 on the ‘perfect Protestant’ 259n22 Lambarde, William, on resurrection plays 115 Landau, Aaron 35n27, 35n29, 35n33 Langston, Beach 59n45 language M.M. Bakhtin on 243, 258n8; his authoritative discourse concept 10, 241–2, 258n8 Latin as the lingua franca 65, 66, 71, 138, 139; Latin as foreign tongue 138–9 religious 242, 244; in Dekker and Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 248–57; in Shakespeare 245–8 vernacular 68, 80, 81, 138–9 Lares, Jameela, on sermons 193n8, 193n15 Laroque, François 154 Larsen, Ken 205 Latimer, Hugh 44, 64, 71, 72 on festivals/festivity 153, 154 lay pastors 194n22

271

see also clergymen/ministers Leach, Robert, on As You Like It 174n46 Leahy, William 89 Leicester’s Men 79 Lever, J.W., on Measure for Measure 195n35 literacy/illiteracy 89 Lodge, Thomas: Rosalynde as source of As You Like It 163, 173n37 Lollard martyrs 146 Lord Admiral’s Men 90, 159, 160 Lord Strange’s Men 239 Lord’s Supper see Eucharist love see secular love Low Countries see Netherlands Lucy, Sir William 71 Lupton, Julia Reinhard 212n12, 213n28 Luther, Martin 31, 181, 196 priesthood of all believers doctrine 177, 194n22 Lyly, John 165 Lymbert, Stephen 98, 100–1, 108n38 Machiavelli, Niccolò, on Christianity 46 MacLean, Sally-Beth, on the Queen’s Men 88–9 madness 27–9 Maguire, Laurie 34n19 Marcus, Leah 154 Marlowe, Christopher 89 Dr Faustus 177, 253, 254 Tamburlaine 90, 84 Marotti, Arthur 2, 10nn1–2, 192 Marprelate tracts 156–7 in As You Like It 165–6 marriage 7, 167 in As You Like It 166–8 chastity in 25, 26; see also sexual fidelity/infidelity below Church of England marriage ceremony 167 in The Comedy of Errors 21–6, 27–9, 30–1, 32–3 as companionate/affectionate 22–6

272 Index marriage – continued between God and the Israelites 206 ‘An Homilie of the State of Matrimonie’ 26 in King Henry VIII 137, 146 male possessiveness in 25 as a masque 167–8 in Measure for Measure 167 for Protestant clergy 69 as a relationship 24, 25 sexual fidelity/infidelity in 20–1, 22, 23–4, 25 as a social arrangement 23 of souls (soul-mates) 26 Marsalek, Karen Sawyer 7, 111, 129n4 Marshall, Cynthia, on wrestling 162–3 Marshalsea prison, London 69 Martial 18 martyrs/martyrdom 9, 97–8, 101, 144, 125, 251, 255–6 in Dekker and Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 249–56 the Lollards 146 John Wycliffe 134, 139, 143 see also Foxe, John: Acts and Monuments Marvell, Andrew 31–2 ‘Upon Appleton House …’ 33 Marx, Stephen: Shakespeare and the Bible 187 Mary I (Mary Tudor) 63, 64, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 143, 251 as Princess Mary 69–70, 75 religious persecution under 251 Nicholas Udall and 70 Mason, John: The Turk 121 masques 167–8 Massinger, Philip see Dekker, Thomas and Philip Massinger Masten, Jeffrey 212n16 material technologies 112, 113, 114 tomb properties 6, 110–11, 112, 114, 120, 121–2 see also affective technologies materialism 18, 190, 191, 195n35, 195n38

Maus, Katherine Eisaman, on Measure for Measure 194n24 Mayer, Jean-Christophe 3 McClendon, Muriel C. 108n31 McConica, James, on Catherine Parr’s court 70 McCoy, Richard, on sacral kingship 59n63 McMillin, Scott, on the Queen’s Men 88–9 McMullan, Gordon, on King Henry VIII 136, 137, 147n3 Measure for Measure 55 audience response to 187, 188, 190, 241 critical analyses of 187, 240, 241–2, 259n13; feminist 194n32 Duke Vincentio’s pastoral role in 8, 178, 187–91 execution/death in 189, 190 hypocrisy in 187–8 inwardness/interiority in 188, 192, 194n34 marriage depicted in 167 modern productions 243 as a parody 241, 242 religious themes in 242; Catholic 239 as skeptical 243–4 subject matter/themes 187, 188–9, 239, 241–2 Medwall, Henry 73 memory, theater of 9, 134, 142–3, 145–6, 242, 252, 252–3, 256, 257 The Merchant of Venice 212n12, 226 Meres, Francis: Palladis Tamia 37 The Merry Wives of Windsor 17, 21 middle class 26–7 see also bourgeoisie Middleton, Thomas: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside 121 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 247–8 Milton, Anthony 154–5 Milton, John 193n8, 196 ministers see clergymen/ministers miracle plays see biblical/religious drama miracles 27

Index mirth see festivals/festivity monastic houses 29–30, 31 dissolution of 32, 33, 67 Montaigne, Michel de 35n29 Montrose, Louis 13n16, 173n28, 217–18 More, John (the Apostle of Norwich) 98, 104–5 More, Sir Thomas 148n8 Morison, Sir Richard 65, 67–8, 75, 80, 81 A Discourse …the Reformation of the Lawes of England 67 Moses (the prophet) 207, 209, 210 Mountjoy, Charles Blount, Lord 54 Much Ado About Nothing 121, 122–3, 124, 125 Mullaney, Steven 131n22 Munday, Anthony and Henry Chettle The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165 The Downfall 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165 Muschet, George, SJ 251 Muslims see Islam; Turks mystery plays 111, 113, 114, 118–19, 130n5 Wakefield plays 118–19 see also biblical/religious drama Nashe, Thomas 165, 219, 259n31 on Henry VI Part 1 218 Pierce Penilesse … 234n5, 244 National Theatre, London 243 Neill, Michael 118, 198 on Othello 200, 213n20, 213n24 Nelson, Alan H. 65, 235n7 Netherlands 96–7, 100 Noling, Kim H., on King Henry VIII 137 Northbrooke, John: A Treatise wherein Dicing, Dau[n]cing …Are Reproved 155–6 Northumberland, Duke of see Warwick, Ambrose Dudley Norton, Thomas 64

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Norwich Dutch exiles in 96–7, 100; their church 109n52 Elizabeth I in, 1578 89, 95–9, 103–5; entertainment for 6, 95, 96, 98, 107n26 executions in 97–8 Robert Greene: Selimus performed in 6, 89–95, 100, 103–5 importance of 90 the Queen’s Men in 6, 89–90, 91–5, 100 religious divisions/unrest 6, 89, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97–9, 100–1, 103–5, 108n31 Norwich assizes, Edward Coke’s speech to, 1606 42–3 Norwich Cathedral 89, 91, 95, 99 William Burton’s sermon, December 1589 6, 99–105, 108n46 Nottingham, Charles Howard, first Earl of 54 numerology 31 Nuttall, A. D. 10n2 O’Connell, Michael 117–18, 130n5, 161, 197 O’Day, Rosemary: The English Clergy 177 Oath of Allegiance, 1606 134–5, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146 James I: Apologie for the Oath … 135 Oath of Supremacy, 1534 135 Office of Revels 119 Oldcastle, Sir John 143, 145 depicted in Shakespeare’s plays 222, 224, 228 Othello 249 audience response to 199 the bed, symbolism of 207, 208, 213n24 the Bible used in 197–8, 199–203, 204, 205–6, 207, 208, 209–11, 212n12 chrysolite mentioned in 206–8 coloquintida (bitter apple) mentioned in 198–9, 212n10

274 Index Othello – continued exile/return narratives in 8, 197, 200–201, 206; from Exodus 197, 200, 201, 202, 209–10, 212n12 locusts mentioned in 198, 199, 201 published editions of 198, 212n10 modern performances 213n18 as Protestant propaganda 240 religious identity in 8, 201, 210, 212n12 sexuality/sexual relations in 200, 201, 203, 204–5, 206, 208, 209 suicide in 210, 214n30 water as a theme in 202–4 the wilderness in 199–200, 201, 202, 209, 209 Ottomans see Turks Oxford University/Colleges 67 Bodleian Library 140 Christ Church 235n8 Corpus Christi 140 drama at 71 Magdalen 71 New College 182 Padua University 67 paganism 190, 191, 246, 252 Parker, Matthew 64 Parr, Catherine see Catherine Parr, Queen Parr, William, Marquis of Northampton (brother of Catherine Parr) 79, 85n16 Parsons, Robert, SJ 140, 149n4 Passion plays see Corpus Christi plays; resurrection plays Paster, Gail Kern, on Hamlet 183 pastoral conventions in As You Like It 162–3, 165, 166, 169, 170 festivals/festivity and 7, 154, 157–8, 165, 166 in France 173n37 in urban life 19 wrestling in 162, 165 patience/endurance as a Christian virtue 44, 45, 47, 52, 53

depicted in The Comedy of Errors 24, 28 patrons/patronage 67, 71, 72 Catherine Brandon as 79 Catherine Parr as 69, 70, 71, 79 Privy Counselors as 78–80, 82 royalty as 78, 81 of theater companies 77–8, 79, 81–4, 90, 159, 160; see also the Queen’s Men Patterson, Annabel 139 Patterson, W. B., on James I 148n11 St Paul 180–81, 196, 247, 248 Pauline discourse of nations 212n12 penance, sacrament of 31 penitence see repentance performance practices/properties 9, 77–8, 253–4, 256–7 affective technologies 111, 112–13, 114, 116–17, 118, 120, 121, 125, 127, 241, 254, 256 in France 117 material technologies 112, 113, 114; see also tomb properties below performance as ritual/spectacle 218, 234n4 performance as transcendent 244 puppets, use of 115 in resurrection plays 110–11, 112–20; see also tomb properties below tomb properties 6, 110–11, 112, 114, 120, 121–2, 124–5, 127, 128, 129 see also theater performance space(s) 89, 133–4, 142, 146, 148n15, 247 see also theater; individual locations/theaters Pericles 121, 123–4, 126 as precursor to The Winter’s Tale 124 Perkins, William 44 Petre, William 74 Philip II of Spain 63 Elizabeth I and 75–6 depicted in Elizabethan drama 76 pilgrimage 229

Index Plautus Amphitryo 25, 26, 34n18 Menaechmi as source for The Comedy of Errors 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 34n18 poetry see religious poetry politics foreign policy 90, 91, 94, 106n15, 106n18 religious policy 55, 139–40; under Elizabeth I 97, 98, 99, 103, 109n50; under James I 134–5, 141, 142, 145–6, 252 Poole, Kristen 157 Potter, Lois, on Robin Hood plays 159, 173n37 Prayer Book see Book of Common Prayer preachers/preaching 6, 8, 176–7, 227 anger/violence in 179–80, 182, 192, 193n12 antitheatrical 119, 153–4 William Burton in Norwich, December, 1589 6, 99–103 Elizabeth I’s attitude towards 99–100 importance/centrality of 178 as performance 187, 192 as a political act 99 printed sermons 99, 178 as prophesying 99, 102, 197 purpose/types of 178–80, 183, 193n8 reaction to/impact of 100, 102–5, 109nn52–3, 177, 179–80, 219 style/delivery 179–80, 193nn12–13 see also clergymen/ministers ‘the prince’s players’ 79–80 printing/publishing 140 censorship/control of 72, 73, 79 of drama texts 77, 78, 197; as unreliable 77 of sermons 99, 178 of Shakespeare’s plays 36n38, 197 Privy Council 72, 74, 75, 76, 88 Counselors as patrons of theater companies 78–80, 82

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profanation 210–11, 213n29, 214n30 propaganda, drama as 5–6, 63, 65–87, 88–9, 94, 99 academic drama 65–7, 68, 71 under William Cecil 5, 63, 75–87 under Thomas Cromwell 5, 63, 67–9, 77, 80 prophecy 99, 102, 197 see also preachers/preaching prophetic wilderness see wilderness Protestant ministry see clergymen/ministers Protestantism 2, 9, 55–6, 69, 134, 219 Brownists (congregationalists) 100–1 Catholicism, coexistence with 88–9, 90, 96, 100, 118, 134, 139–40, 154–5 William Cecil’s support for 65 in The Comedy of Errors 26–7 conservative 69 drama and 1–2, 3, 4, 5–8, 12n14, 63–150, 218–37 Eucharist 234n6 evangelical 64, 67, 68, 72, 73, 88, 97, 98 holiness, concept of 4, 31 as humanist 63–4, 65, 70; Cambridge University as center of 63–4, 67, 70, 72, 81 impact of 196–7 moderate 64–5, 88, 97, 98, 99, 103 in Netherlands 96–7 nonconformity 92, 97, 104 the ‘perfect Protestant’ 245, 259n22 persecution of 251 radical see evangelical above sacral kingship and 54–5 as secularizing 242–3 in Shakespearean studies 240–41, 242–3 as skeptical 27, 35n29 see also Christianity; puritans Prynne, William: Histrio-Mastix 120

276 Index public disorder 153, 171n3 murder 176–7 public theater see secular theater purgatory, belief in 31 puritans/puritanism 26, 219 the Queen’s Men 105, 107n25 Elizabeth I’s founding of 88, 94 function/purpose 88–9 in Norwich 90; Robert Greene: Selimus performed in 6, 89–90, 91–5, 100, 103–5, 106n5 plays performed by 90, 106n10; see also in Norwich above Questier, Michael C. 135, 139–40, 154–5 Raleigh, Sir Walter 37 Rasmussen, Eric 36n38 Raylor, Timothy 235nn7–8 rebellions 73 Sir John Appleyard’s, 1570 96–7, 107n28 Earl of Essex’s, 1601 38, 51, 52–3 Kett’s, 1549 73, 107n28 Northern Earls’, 1569 81 see also warfare Rebhorn, Wayne 193n13 Records of Early English Drama (REED) project 2–3, 77–8, 80 statistical analysis of 81–5 recusants 146, 154, 155, 156, 249 see also Catholicism Red Bull theater 248, 252, 255 Reformation see Protestantism religion biblical/religious drama see biblical/religious drama definition/concept of 9–10 drama and 1–13, 41, 90, 91–4, 111–12, 170, 219, 238–44 festivals/festivity and 3, 7, 153–4, 155–8, 161, 163–6 politics and 55, 139–40; under Elizabeth I 97, 98, 99, 103, 109n50; under James I 134–5, 141, 142, 145–6 regional variations in 3, 6 Shakespeare on 55–6

Shakespearean studies and 1–13, 238–41 as a stabilizing/destabilizing force 3, 6, 103–5 the state and 64; separation from 9; see also secularization see also Christianity; clergymen/ministers; individual faiths; preachers/preaching religious authority 101–2, 104–5 monarch as head of the Church 6, 32, 43, 95, 98–9, 102, 103 resistance theory and 102, 109n50 religious ceremony/ritual 8, 218 religious conversion 91, 92, 100, 103, 107n18 in Dekker and Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 250, 251, 254, 255 religious drama see biblical/religious drama religious language 242, 244 in Dekker and Massinger: The Virgin Martyr 249–56 in Shakespeare’s plays 245–8, 256–7 religious outsiders 3–4, 8, 97, 201 Christianity and 9, 203–4, 205, 208, 209, 210, 212n16 see also Islam; Judaism; Turks religious poetry John Davies: The Holy Roode 236n17 by John Weever 222 religious understanding/unity 4, 6, 233 religious wars 90 the crusades 227 repentance/redemption 30, 31, 189–90, 208, 213n26, 229 see also atonement republicanism 223 resurrection plays 6–7, 110–32, 254 absence/presence in 113–14, 115, 116–17 affective power of 111, 113, 114, 116–17, 118, 121 as biblical/religious drama 113–16, 121, 127, 130n10 development of 111, 129n4

Index false resurrections 125–6 in France 115–16, 117 medieval (Corpus Christi plays) 9, 217, 218, 220, 224, 225–7, 234n2, 235n16 performance practices/properties 110–11, 112–20 Shakespeare’s 120–21; see also The Winter’s Tale below tomb properties in 6, 110–11, 112, 114, 120, 121 as tragicomedies 120–21, 122, 123, 126 visitatio sepulchri in 115 The Winter’s Tale as 7, 110–11, 121, 123, 124–8 retreats 160, 161, 162, 170 revels see festivals/festivity Reynolds, Matthew 108n31 Richard II aristocratic honor culture in 4–5, 39–41, 42, 43–7, 49–50, 55–6 Christian allusions in 41, 42, 43–7, 49, 50 Essex rebellion, 1601, association with 38, 51, 52–3 as Machiavellian 56 the mirror scene 47–50 sources of 40–1, 43, 47–8, 50, 57n17 subject matter/themes 40, 41–51, 54–6, 227, 228, 232 Richardson, Charles: A Workman that Needeth Not to be Ashamed … 179, 181, 182, 188, 189 Richmond, Hugh M., on King Henry VIII 147n3 Ridley, Nicholas 64, 71, 72 Riefer, Marcia 194n32 Robin Hood plays/games 7, 153–4, 156–7, 159–60, 161–2, 173n43, 174n46 As You Like It and 159–60, 161–2, 164 Protestantization of 159, 160, 161, 173n35 public disorder and 153, 171n3 wrestling in 163

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Roman Catholicism see Catholicism Roman comedy/comedies 17 Romano, Giulio 110, 127–8 Romeo and Juliet 121–2, 125 Russell, Francis, second Earl of Bedford 64 Russell, Lord John (son of Francis Russell) 64 Sabbatarians 155 sacral kingship 54–6, 146, 240 divine right of kings 41, 42, 43, 45 Thomas James on 141 monarch as head of the Church 6, 32, 43, 95, 98–9, 102, 103 sanctuary 28, 32 debtors use of 32 satire 168, 170, 175n70 anticlerical 191, 192 Scodel, Joshua 33n7 science 72 Scot, Reginald 35n29 Scott, Katryna 260n27 sectarianism 219, 238, 252 secular love 188, 189, 192, 202 see also sexual relations/sexuality secular theater 1, 2, 3, 4–5, 9–10, 81, 118–19, 120, 170, 197, 248–57 development of 243 see also theater secularization 9–10, 217–18, 234n4 of festivals/festivity 154 process of 4, 5, 9–10, 154 religion and state, separation of 9 sermons see preachers/preaching servants, in The Comedy of Errors 26 sexual abuse 69 sexual fidelity/infidelity 20–21, 22, 23–4, 25–6, 34n19 adultery and 206 chastity in marriage 25, 26 double standards in 26 in Othello 203, 206, 208, 209 sexuality/sexual relations 188, 189, 191 in Othello 200, 201, 203, 204–5 see also secular love

278 Index Seymour, Edward, Duke of Somerset (Lord Protector) 72, 73, 74, 86n30 as a patron 79 Seymour, Jane see Jane Seymour, Queen Shagan, Ethan 171n5 Shaheen, Naseeb: Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays 196–7, 212n15 Shakespeare, William authorship 9, 220–24, 230–34 Bible, use of 196, 197; in Othello 197–8, 199–203, 204, 205–6, 207, 208, 209–11 comedies 2, 7, 154; see also individual titles Corpus Christi plays and 218, 221–2, 224, 234n2 dramatic inheritance 6–7, 110–50 history plays 9–10, 38, 217–18, 220, 221–34; as Passion plays 221–2, 227–9, 233; see also individual titles hypocrisy, his use of 194n26, 194n31, 227–8, 229, 230, 232 life/career 230 ministers/clergymen depicted by 178, 191–2, 193nn6–7, 233 printing/publishing of 36n38, 197 purpose/motivation for writing 217–18, 220–1 his religion 11n10, 178, 219, 228, 230, 244; as possibly a Catholic 2, 11n10 on religion 55–6 religious language, use of 245–8, 256–7 his resurrection plays 121–2; see also individual titles Shakespeare, William and John Fletcher: King Henry VIII (All is True) audience response to 145–6 Blackfriars Theater performances 7, 133, 134, 136, 142, 145–6 Catholic themes 134, 135–8, 146 Katherine of Aragon depicted in 135–8

marriage depicted in 137, 146 performances of 133; modern productions 148n15 sources of 139 subject matter/themes 133, 134, 135–8, 142–5, 146 trial scenes 135–8, 142–5 Shakespearean studies 4, 217–18, 234n4 feminist 194n32 of the historical plays 220 of Measure for Measure 187, 194n32, 240, 241–2, 259n13 religion and 1–3, 238–41; Catholicism 2, 3, 11n6, 238; Protestantism 240–41, 242–3 The Shakspere Allusion-Book, ed. C. M. Ingleby et al. 226 Shapiro, James 2 Sheingorn, Pamela 130n14 Shell, Alison 154–5 Shuger, Debora Kuller 1, 4–5, 175n69 on Measure for Measure 195n38, 240, 241 Sidney, Sir Philip An Apology for Poetry 37 The Arcadia 55, 162 Skelton, John 73 slavery/slave trade 201, 205 Slights, Jessica 195n37 Slights, William W. E. 11n10 Smith, Irwin, on Blackfriars Theater 147n2, 148n15, 149n36 Smith, James (in 1633 law suit) 219–20, 235nn7–8 Smith, Lacey Baldwin, on Earl of Essex 51 Smith, Thomas (secretary to William Cecil) 64, 73 Smith, Revd Thomas (vicar of Caldecote) 182, 186 Sommerville, C. John, on secularization 242–3 Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of 52, 53 Spain 90, 96, 103 see also Philip II

Index Spenser, Edmund 33n10, 154, 173n28, 196 Epithalamion 173n34 The Faerie Queene 37, 55, 162 Sir Walter Raleigh and 37 Shepheardes Calendar 157–8, 162, 165 sports/pastimes 7, 154, 162 on Sundays 155 wrestling 160, 162–3, 165 Stanyhurst, George 260n31 statues, in drama 110, 111, 129n2 as idolatry 126–7 in The Winter’s Tale 110, 125, 126–8 Stegle, Matt 33n6, 36n43 Stirk, Nigel 36n43 Stoicism 190, 246 Stokes, James 153 Stow, John: Annales … 134, 143, 148n2, 149n36, 163 strangers see religious outsiders Strier, Richard 4, 5, 9, 33, 33n2, 34n15, 193n12, 195n36 Stubbes, Philip: The Anatomie of Abuses 155, 162 Suffolk, Dowager Duchess of see Brandon, Catherine Sunday observances see Sabbatarians the supernatural 27 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 248 The Taming of the Shrew 17 Taverner, Richard 55 Taylor, Gary 251–2 Taylor, William 143, 135, 149n37 The Tempest 55, 244 theater at Cambridge University 65–7, 68 Catholic attitude to 32 court performances 77, 88 the devil depicted in 5 as idolatrous 126–7, 172n16, 255 licensing of 76–7 in London 5, 6–7, 133; see also Blackfriars Theater; Red Bull theater in Norwich see Norwich

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at Oxford University 71 patrons of 77–8; Privy Counselors as 78–80, 82 plays as propaganda 5–6, 63, 65–87, 88–9, 94, 99 preaching as performance 187, 192 Protestantism and 1–2, 3, 4, 5–7, 12n14, 63–150, 218–37 secularization of see secular theater social status and 219–20 spiritual value of 219, 233–4 traveling players 73–4, 78–80, 155; in Hamlet 185; payment of 79, 80, 85; see also individual companies see also antitheatrical writings; audiences/audience reaction; biblical/religious drama; performance practices; performance space(s); secular theater; resurrection plays theater censorship/control 73–4, 80 of biblical drama 81, 117–20, 197, 217 of festival plays 153–4 unauthorized performances 80 under Edward VI 79 under Elizabeth I 5, 76–7, 81, 88–9, 104, 117–19, 240–1, 259n10 theater of memory see memory, theater of Theobald, Lewis 31, 34n12 Thirty-Nine Articles 213n27 Thomas, Keith 26 Timon of Athens 239 Titus Andronicus 258n2 tomb properties 6, 110–11, 112, 114, 120, 121 Shakespeare’s use of 121–2, 124–5, 127, 128, 129 see also resurrection plays Topcliffe, Richard 249 torture see martyrs/martyrdom Troilus and Cressida 38 Turkey 90, 91, 106n13, 106n15 Turks 210 depicted in Thomas Goffe: The Raging Turk 236n23

280 Index Turks – continued depicted in Robert Greene: Selimus 6, 90, 91–4, 103 see also Islam Turner, William 72 The Huntyng and Fyndyng out of the Romanishe Fox 72 Twelfth Night 27 Tyndale, William the Bible, translation of 44, 57n19, 180–81, 247 on consolation 180–81 Udall, Nicholas 68, 69, 70, 73 Apophthegmes 69 Ralph Roister Doister 70 uniformity, articles of 119–20 Ure, Peter 57n13, 58n30 vernacular language 68, 80, 81, 138–9 Vickers, Brian, on John Ford 226, 236n22 Virgil, George Stanyhurst’s translation of 260n31 the Virgin, devotion to 161 Vitkus, Daniel 11n6, 106n11, 106n14 on Robert Greene: Selimus 91–2 Wabuda, Susan 99, 109n52 Walsham, Alexandra 154–5 warfare 39 Irish wars 41 religious wars 90; the crusades 227 see also rebellions Warner, William: Albion’s England … 156 Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, twenty-first Earl of Warwick (Duke of Northumberland) 74–5, 79 as a patron 79 Watkins, John 148n9 Watson, Robert, on Othello 240 Weber, Max 26–7

inner-worldly holiness concept 4; in The Comedy of Errors 4, 5, 17, 27–30 Webster, John: The Duchess of Malfi 111, 120, 258n2 weddings see marriage Weever, John 222 ‘Ad Gulielmum Shakespear’ 222 Agnus Dei 224, 236n17 Faunus 222 The Mirror of Martyrs … 222, 224, 235nn14–15 on Shakespeare’s authorship 221, 222–4, 230–31, 233 The Whipping of Satyre 222, 235n13 Wegemer, Gerard, on King Henry VIII 148n8 Wentworth, Thomas, first Baron of Nettlestead 68, 72 Whitaker, William 196 White, Paul Whitfield 73, 153 Whitehead, David 65 Whitgift, Archbishop John 101 Wickham, Glynne 234n1 wilderness 199–200, 201, 202, 208, 209 Wiles, David, on Robin Hood plays/games 164, 174n46 Williams, Raymond 130n9 Williamson, Elizabeth 6–7, 147n6, 254 Wilson, Richard 2, 162 The Winter’s Tale 244 absence/presence in 114 audience reaction to 126, 256 Catholic themes 126–7, 129 as a resurrection play 7, 110–11, 121, 123, 124–8 sources of 110; Pericles as precursor 124 the statue in 110, 125, 126–8 subject matter/themes 110, 123, 124, 125, 126–7, 256–7 trial scene 256–7 witchcraft 27, 126 Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas 67, 134, 142

Index depicted in King Henry VIII 134, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142–3, 144, 146 Wood, Robert, Mayor of Norwich 97 Wotton, Henry 58n38 wrestling in As You Like It 160, 165 as a gentleman’s sport 162–3 as a pastoral pastime 162, 163 in Robin Hood plays/games 163 Wycliffe, John 134, 140, 141–2, 146 A Complaynt of John Wyckliffe … 141, 149n34 John Foxe on 140 publications/tracts on 140–1

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Wycliffe’s Wicket, reprinted 1612 by Henry Jackson 140, 149n30 Wycliffite movement 134, 139, 143 Xenophon: Cyropaedia 37–40 importance/popularity 4, 37, 39 as model for Spenser: Faerie Queene 37 Yachnin, Paul 246, 259n24 Young, Karl 130n12 zero-sum logic 37–9, 40, 42, 44, 45, 47–8, 54, 56