Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England [Course Book ed.] 9781400864577

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1. From Singing Boy to Scholar
CHAPTER 2. Remapping the Bounds of Sodomy
CHAPTER 3. “Traitors to Boyes Buttockes”
CHAPTER 4. “The Proofe of Frends”
CHAPTER 5. Epistemologies of the Early Modern Closet
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

CLOSE

EADERS

CLOSE

EADERS HUMANISM SODOMY EARLY

AND IN MODERN

ENGLAND

Alan Stewart

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1997 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalogtng-in-Publication Data Stewart, Alan, 1967Close readers : humanism and sodomy in early modern England / Alan Stewart p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-01165-6 (alk. paper) 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 2. Humanism—England. England.

3. Latin literature, Medieval and modern—Appreciation—

4. Homosexuality and literature—England—History—16th century.

5. Men authors, English—Early modern, 1500-1700—Biography. society—England—History—16th century. History—16th century.

8. Male friendship—England—History—16th century.

9. Education, Humanistic—England. 11. Renaissance—England.

10. Sodomy—England—History.

12. Humanists—England.

I. Title. PR418.H8S74

1997

820.9384—dc20

96-34032

CIP

This book has been composed in Sabon Typeface Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press 10

6. Literature and

7. Authors and patrons—England—

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Andrew

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABBREVIATIONS

ix

xi

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS INTRODUCTION

xiii

XV

CHAPTER 1

From Singing Boy to Scholar: The Deaths, Lives, and Letters of Angelo Poliziano 3 CHAPTER 2

Remapping the Bounds of Sodomy: Humanism and the English Reformation 38 CHAPTER 3

"Traitors to Boyes Buttockes": The Erotics of Humanist Education 84 CHAPTER 4

"The Proofe of Frends": Reading Amicitia in 1548 CHAPTER 5

Epistemologies of the Early Modern Closet BIBLIOGRAPHY 189 INDEX

213

161

122

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

HIS PROJECT started life as a doctoral dissertation at Queen Mary and Westfield College (QMW), University of London in 1990. By chance I stumbled into some of the most exciting and provocative thinking in Renaissance Studies, without which this book would not have been conceivable, let alone written. For their endless support, encouragement, and ideas, and for their example as teachers and scholars, I am deeply and gratefully indebted to Lisa Jardine and Lorna Hutson. I hope to remain in their debt for many years to come. Paul Julian Smith provided a different and challenging approach as a joint supervisor of the dissertation: the meeting of the two is I think evident in the final result. Roy Porter and Alan Sinfield were demanding examiners before becoming welcome supporters. Anthony Grafton suggested I look at Poliziano, and has been an energetic and discerning critic of the results. Bruce Smith and Gregory Bredbeck acted as generous but astute readers: I am also deeply grateful to the third, anonymous reader at Princeton, who in many ways shaped the revision of this work. Bill Sherman was a gracious and patient host and audience in Silver Spring, Maryland during the final stages of this book's composition. Over the five years of researching and rewriting, I have depended on the ideas, reading, work, and gossip of many friends: thanks especially to Julia Blazdell, Richard Bourke, Warren Boutcher, Patricia Brewerton, Jerry Brotton, Susan Cook, Michael Edwards, Markman Ellis, Laura Gowing, Patricia Hamilton, Jen Harvie, Margaret Healy, Tom Healy, Rachel Holmes, Neil Kenny, James Knowles, Willy Maley, Elizabeth Maslen, Catherine Maxwell, Christopher Reid, the late Jim Reilly, Sasha Roberts, Jason Scott-Warren, Morag Shiach, Neill Thew, Nadia Valman, David Vilaseca, Nicholas Ward Lowery, and Sue Wiseman. I am especially grateful to Tracy Hargreaves, Andrew Penman, and Brian Ridgers for their support in a multitude of ways. Much of the work in this book was first aired at the QMW Department of English Postgraduate Seminar Series, while other portions were given at conferences and seminars at the Universities of Cambridge, Lancaster, Liverpool, Lodz, London, Reading, Sussex, and Warwick. The following contributed helpful interventions and comments: Kate Chedgzoy, Jonathan Dollimore, Helen Hackett, Pamela King, Jeremy Maule, Leslie Moran, Lawrence Normand, Diane Purkiss, Jeffrey Richards, Gareth Roberts, Quentin Skinner, Hugo Tucker, Carolyn Williams, and Richard Wilson. I am particularly grateful to Alan Bray, who has been more than generous with his ideas, support, and unparalleled knowledge of the field.

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In Washington, DC, Kent Cartwright and Jesse Lander suggested some new perspectives. Eli Gutwirth shared with me his work on the estudio. John Considine, Juliet Fleming, Andrew Hadfield, Marc Hantscher, Cynthia Herrup, Alan Nelson, and Simon Shepherd kindly allowed me to read their unpublished research. To Craig Patterson, who suggested John Bale to me one night in the Market Tavern, I owe my second chapter. At Princeton, my path has been considerably smoothed by Lauren Osborne's initial confidence in the project; and by Brigitta van Rheinberg, Heidi Sheehan, Sara Mullen, Alessandra Phillips, and Robert E. Brown, who saw it through to the end. My thanks go also to the staff of the following institutions: the North Library and the Western Manuscripts Department at the British Library, the Warburg Institute, the Institute of Historical Research, the Public Record Office, QMW library, the Institute of Education, Birkbeck College library, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Cambridge University Library; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; the Pierpont Morgan Library and the New York Public Library, New York; and the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library, Princeton University. Earlier versions of parts of chapters 2 and 5 were published in, respectively, Medieval English Theatre and Representations: I am grateful for their editors' permission to republish. I should also like to thank the marquis of Salisbury for kindly allowing me to quote from the Cecil papers at Hatfield House, which I viewed on microfilm at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The British Academy provided the funding for the entire project—in the form of a Major State Studentship, a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and a Small Personal Research Grant enabling me to visit the US in autumn 1994. I am also indebted to the Modern Humanities Research Association for awarding me a Research Associateship during 1992/93; to the Oxford Francis Bacon Project in the form of Graham Rees for allowing me time off to develop this work just when I needed it; and to my parents, Jane and Colin Stewart, for all their support over the years. Finally, I want to thank the Department of English at Birkbeck College for welcoming me just as this project reached its conclusion, and for their confidence in me. This book is dedicated to Andrew Penman, against his express wishes.

ABBREVIATIONS

AEV Allen

APE

ASD

BL Bodl. CSFD CWE

Del Lungo

DNB

FSL Grant L]

LP

John Bale, The Actes of Englysh votaryes (Zurich, 1541) Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Opus epistolarum . . . denuo recognitum et auctum, ed. P. S. Allen, 12 vols. (Oxford, 1906-58) John Bale, An answere to a papystycall exhortacyon, pretendynge to avoyde false doctryne, under that color to maynteyne the same (Antwerp, 1548) Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Opera Omnia . . . Recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata (Amsterdam, 1969 and continuing) British Library, London Bodleian Library, Oxford Calendar of State Papers, domestic series Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Collected Works of Erasmus, trans, and ed. R. J. Schoeck, B. M. Corrigan, R.A.B. Mynors, D.F.S. Thomson, Wallace K. Ferguson, and James Kelsey McConica (Toronto, 1974 and continuing) Angelo Poliziano, Prose volgari inedite e poesie, latine e greche edite e inedite, ed. Isidore Del Lungo (Florence, 1867) Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 63 vols. (London, 1885-1900) Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC Roger Ascham, Familiarum epistolarum libri tres, ed. Edward Grant (London, 1576) John Leland, The laboryouse Journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes Antiquitees, ed. John Bale (London, 1549) Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, R. H. Brodie, et al., 21 vols, and Addenda (London, 1862-1932)

XIl

ABBREVIATIONS

Manley & Sylvester

MI

OED

PRO Ross

SP STC

TL

Vos

Watson

Richard Pace, The Benefit of a Liberal Education, trans. Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester (New York, 1967) John Bale, A mysterye of inyquyte contayned within the heretycall Genealogye of Ponce Pontolabus . . . here both dysclosed & confuted (Geneva, 1545) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., ed. J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, 20 vols. (Oxford, 1989) Public Record Office, London Janet Ross, trans, and ed., Lives of the Early Medici as Told in Their Correspondence (London, 1910) State Papers A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, eds., A ShortTitle Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1560, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, Katharine F. Pantzer, and Philip K. Rider, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1976-91) John Bale, A Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of Nature, Moses, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees & papystes most wycked (Wesel, 1548) Roger Ascham, Letters of Roger Ascham, trans. Maurice Hatch and Alvin Vos, ed. Alvin Vos (New York, 1989) Juan Luis Vives, Tudor School-Boy Life, trans. Foster Watson (London, 1908)

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

I have used existing translations where available, and references are given in the notes. Occasionally, I have silently amended a translation to make a particular point: in these cases, my aim was for a literal rather than an elegant rendering.

INTRODUCTION Within the bownes of Sodomye Doth dwell the spirytuall clergye.

W

HEN JOHN BALE wrote these lines in the late 1530s, he was merely reiterating what had become a commonplace and perhaps innocuous association between sodomy and the "spiritual clergy," the clerics in holy orders. 1 For centuries they had provided a convenient target for accusations of sodomitical practices: the closed monastic houses, the vows of chastity, the segregation of the sexes, and the communal sleeping arrangements were all easy prey for anyone wishing to mock or to attack the church's institutions. By the same token, sodomy was neatly contained, within the bounds of the spiritual clergy. By the early seventeenth century, however, Thomas Wilson could write: "Sodomy the most detestable and unnatural Sin, if it be used by any as the Italians say it is (occupe dal principe) it doth much wrong to those that most hate it & neuer use it; for when it is said that such a thing there be, snipherous [?] & jealous women most and some men also wilbe apt to think that any man useth it that hath but a boy or a yong man to serve him or that he useth his servants in his chambre." 2 Far from dwelling within the boundaries of the monastery walls, sodomy is now dwelling within the bonds of the most innocent household relationships—or at least in the minds of jealous women. Thomas Wilson's single sentence encapsulates several complex issues facing early modern English society, which sodomy brings sharply and dangerously into focus. Although he may be referring to a specific scandal, Wilson's lament illustrates several general principles. Sodomy is, in line with the rhetoric of the church and the law, "the most detestable and unnatural Sin." The extent of its prevalence is uncertain, but the Italians say it is common: or, put another way, in Italy it's considered common. Whatever one's personal antipathy toward the notion of sodomy, any man who has "a boy or a yong man to serve him" or anyone who shares a bedchamber with servants—a common, if not universal, occurrence in early modern society—is vulnerable to the accusation of sodomy. This 1 John Bale, A Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of Nature, Moses, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees & papystes most tvycked, sig. C.iv. 2 Bodleian Library, Oxford [Bodl.] ms Rawlinson D 1035, fol. 7b (paginated from back of volume). This volume contains abstracts, notes, copies of letters, drafts of treatises, journal entries, and records correspondence, apparently emanating from the Paper Office, and used at various times by Sir Thomas Wilson, Isaac Dorislaus, and Thomas Raymond.

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INTRODUCTION

accusation arises generally through women, although occasionally through men, and the use of "jealous" to describe these women carries the acknowledgment that there might be cause for such jealousy, that male servants might in some way be in competition with women. Here we have an accusation of sodomy, an accepted but nonetheless problematic intimacy between men and their male servants, and a hostility toward these arrangements evinced by women—all specifically without any evidence of actual sodomy. Moreover, the man faced with this accusation has no defense: the basis for the accusation lies in the very fabric of his daily life. Finally, the situation is one that is of sufficient concern to Thomas Wilson, a humanist scholar and bureaucrat, that he feels compelled to enter it in his notebook. We are operating here not within empirical history—the point is not to tie this note down to an accusation against Wilson, or against anyone else—but in the realm of powerful cultural fantasies and anxieties which, nonetheless, as we shall see, can come to affect what we accept as empirical history. Wilson's fears were by no means farfetched. Although prosecutions for sodomy were relatively rare, extant records show a remarkable consistency in the type of relationships that were open to accusation. Sexual activity between men appears to have occurred within already existing social relationships, rather than between strangers, and usually within the same household: between masters and their live-in servants, between tutors and students, between artisans and their apprentices. It was for buggery with male servants that Walter Lord Hungerford in 1540 and the earl of Castlehaven in 1631 were arraigned. Nicholas Udall, the headmaster of Eton, admitted buggery with a student. Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford, Anthony Bacon and Francis Bacon were accused of sodomizing their young servants—a cook in Oxford's case, a page in Anthony Bacon's. 3 This particular scenario of masters being sexually involved with their male servants was popularly dramatized in the myth of Ganymede, 3 See Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, 33-57, which deals with several of these scandals. All of these cases require further work. For Hungerford see Alan Stewart, "The Bounds of Sodomy: Textual Relations in Early Modern England," University of London PhD dissertation 1993, 196-98. For Oxford see A. L. Rowse, Eminent Elizabethans, 88-89. For Anthony Bacon see Daphne DuMaurier, Golden Lads, 67-69. The Castlehaven case was published several times from 1642, and survives in multiple manuscript copies: the fullest printed account of the Castlehaven trial is in Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and proceedings for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors from the earliest period to the present time, cols. 402-26. The events are covered in Caroline Bingham, "Seventeenth-Century Attitudes toward Deviant Sex," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 (1971): 447-68; for an important reevaluation see Cynthia Herrup, "The Patriarch at Home: The Trial of the Second Earl of Castlehaven for Rape and Sodomy," History Workshop Journal 41 (1996): 1-18. For Udall see infra, Chap. 3. I am grateful to Alan Nelson and Cynthia Herrup for sharing with me their unpublished findings on, respectively, Oxford and Castlehaven.

INTRODUCTION

XVIl

the beautiful Trojan boy who became cupbearer to the gods, a shepherd boy who was literally swept off his feet to Heaven (in this case Olympus) by a God (Jupiter), disguised as an eagle. Studies by James M. Saslow, Leonard Barkan, and Robert Aldrich have pointed to a Renaissance enthusiasm for this myth that produced nearly two hundred works of visual art which have survived or are recorded from the Renaissance and early Baroque, and Bruce Smith has argued that the myth of Jupiter and Ganymede was "the best known myth of homoerotic desire in early modern England" because "for men living in that society at that historical moment, . . . it articulated the social and political dynamics that complicated male-male desire in the cultural context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England." As Gregory Woods points out, however, the Ganymede myth has also provided a way of talking about cross-rank male relationships, and the possibilities for social mobility: "It makes a shepherd of a prince, a domestic servant of the shepherd, and demigod of all three, thereby granting that the boy one picks up (literally, in this case), even if he be a mere mudlark, can make the social leap, up or down, to his lover's level."4 But there is a third character in this socially mobile masterservant scenario, often only hinted at but essential nevertheless—Jupiter's wife, Juno, the jealous woman of Thomas Wilson's note. Indeed, the jealousy of the wife for her husband's male servants was almost proverbial. As Benedict Burgh's translation of Cato's Disticha de moribus puts it: "The wyf wol hate and cause to smerte I Often hym that her husbonde loueth in serte [service]."5 The Ganymede myth, however, eroticized this jealousy and added an important material dimension. In Ben Jonson's Poetaster, first acted in 1601 "by the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell," a boy is advised on how to play Ganymede: "You should . . .ha' steept your lips in wine, til you made 'hem so plump, that IVNO might haue beene iealous of 'hem." Juno's jealousy of Ganymede is also the key confrontation explored in Christopher Marlowe's 1587 play Dido Queen of Carthage, where the play's remarkable opening discovers "Jupiter dandling Ganymede on his knee," and assuaging him: "Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me; I I love thee well, say Juno what she will." With these first two lines, not only is the easy relationship between Ganymede and Jupiter presented, but equally a tension is suggested between Juno and Ganymede, which is immediately reinforced by Ganymede's retort, which complains that Jupiter's "worthless love" is of no avail in the face of Juno's "shrewish blows": 4

James M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance; Leonard Barkan, Transuming Passions; Bruce R. Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England, 192; Gregory Woods, Articulate Flesh, 23. 5 Benedict Burgh, trans., [Disticha de moribus] [incipit: Hie incipit paruus Chato], sig. a.iiijv.

XVlIl

INTRODUCTION

To day, whenas I fill'd into your cups, And held the cloth of pleasance whiles you drank, She reach'd me such a rap for that I spill'd, As made the blood run down about mine ears. It becomes clear that Juno's antipathy for what she later refers to as "that female wanton boy" is more than personal dislike: her husband is giving him things, culminating in a necklace: Hold here, my little love; these linked gems My Juno ware upon her marriage-day, Put thou about thy neck, my own sweet heart, And trick thy arms and shoulders with my theft. In this final gift, Jupiter hands over the (stolen) necklace that Juno wore on her wedding day: symbolically, if not literally, her dowry, which should pass from bride's father to bridegroom, in this situation passes from bridegroom to his male servant, with whom he is clearly physically infatuated.6 As we shall see, this notion of lineage relations being threatened or interrupted by sodomitical relationships is one of the key fantasies played on in both early modern humanist writings and in accusations of sodomy. The writings that have come down to us from sixteenth-century England are replete with stories, histories, allusions, jokes, insults, satires, polemics, and euphemisms that in some way depend for their effect upon an acknowledged anxiety concerning sodomy. This is the case not only in that body of dramatic, poetic, and prose writings which we today privilege as "literature," but also in a wealth of other writings—political discourses, educational treatises, schoolboys' grammar books, commonplace books, published and unpublished letters, historical analyses, secretarial manuals—the study of which has to date been more limited. If this book focuses on the latter group of writings apparently at the expense of the former it is for two reasons. First, because the representation and negotiation of sodomy in "literary" texts is already an established and thriving field: in the five years during which this book was researched and written, no fewer than three major studies of "homosexuality" or "homosexual desire" or "sodomy" in Renaissance England (by Bruce Smith, Gregory Bredbeck, and Jonathan Goldberg), and two further collections of essays, were issued by major US presses.7 Second, because, without the enticing and anachronistic notion of "literature" to 6

Ben Jonson, Poetaster, or The Arraignment, sig. E.iiiv; Christopher Marlowe, The tragedte of Dido Queene of Carthage, sig. A.iiv. 7 Smith, Homosexual Desire; Gregory R. Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation; Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries; Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England, ed. Claude Summers; Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg.

INTRODUCTION

XlX

divert us, it is clearer how these "nonliterary" works functioned in early modern society in ways that go beyond the implications of their texts.8 Building on this, I shall suggest that we can also see how the extratextual relations become implicated in the texts themselves. In this respect, the present study shares common ground with Wendy Wall's recent work: as she writes, "If the text's 'objectness' is vital to an understanding of its literary representations, its discursive features are equally important in making sense of its historical functions."9 SODOMY AND HUMANISM: SOME DEFINITIONS

It is my aim in this book to explore the shift in Bale's "bounds of sodomy" from the clear demarcation of sodomy within the monastery walls to the confused ubiquity of sodomy within humanistically informed patronage relationships. My understanding of a humanist program needs to be carefully distanced from a program of what is now widely accepted as humanism per se. Recent studies, by Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine on continental humanism and by David R. Carlson on early English humanist books, have presented humanism as less a simple commitment to a style of philology or to classical recovery—others could do the same work as the humanists did—but to certain socially enabling topoi and metaphors. Grafton and Jardine argue that a humanistic literary education displaced scholasticism not through any intrinsic worth but because it "fitted the needs of the new Europe that was taking shape." Carlson lays particular stress on the humanist "discovery" and use of the figure of Maecenas, the great patron of Augustan Rome, whose clients included Virgil, Horace, and Propertius, arguing that "The invention of contemporaries willing to imitate Maecenas was crucial to the humanists' ability to imitate Maecenas' ancient clients; for without Maecenas-like patrons, humanists could not have survived and the movement could not have flourished." Humanists functioned as propagandists for their patrons, promoting their points of view and advertising their general qualities, 8 Roger Chartier has shown that "To consider reading to be a concrete act requires holding any process of the construction of meaning (hence, of interpretation) as situated at the crossroads between readers endowed with specific competences, identified by their positions and their dispositions and characterized by their practice of reading, and texts whose meaning is always dependent on their particular discursive and formal mechanisms." Once aware of this, Chartier continues, we can reconstruct what he terms "a working space" of a text that "identifies the production of meaning—the 'application' of the text to the reader—as a mobile and differentiated relation dependent on variations (simultaneous or separate) in the text itself, on the varying ways that the printed text is presented and on how it is read." Cultural History, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, 12-13. 9 Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender, 6.

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INTRODUCTION

through the conspicuous consumption and exercise of judgment required of artistic and literary patronage. Since patronage depended upon and in turn fostered social inequity, and humanism relied on a deference to au­ thority, humanism was fundamentally (and problematically) conserva­ tive, its appeal to its patrons fundamentally voguish, and it did nothing to alter the foundations of class politics and individual self-promotion on which that system was erected. 10 With this pragmatic model in mind, what could humanism be said to achieve? In their important chapter "Women Humanists: Education for What?" Jardine and Grafton confront directly this anxiety, which lies at the root of much modern critical writing on humanism, in an analysis of two humanistically educated women in quattrocento Florence. By trans­ ferring the "skills" and "achievements" of humanistic learning onto a social constituency other than that which for which it claimed success— onto women rather than men—and thereby divorcing humanism from its usual social context, Jardine and Grafton show that, far from possessing any intrinsic value, humanistic learning was no more than "the male equivalent of fine needlepoint or musical skill," providing a "fictional identity of rank and worth." The implication of this—although they do not go on to make it explicitly—is that the achievement of humanism lies precisely in the social relations that it facilitates, maintains and trans­ forms. Evidently these social relations do not readily include women (al­ though, on occasion, they are required to). They are essentially relations between men.λ λ The aim of humanism, then, was to establish itself as a required profes­ sion by deliberately juxtaposing itself to what it presented as a flawed dominant order, whose lacks it could supply. Drawing on familiar 10 Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, at xni-xiv; David R. Carlson, English Humanist Books, at 5-9. 11 Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, 29-57 at 57. Today, the phrase "between men" cannot be uttered without the invocation, conscious or unconscious, of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's influential study of that title, published in 1985. Sedgwick argues that "in any male-dominated society, there is a special relationship between male homosocial (including homosexual) desire and the structures for maintaining and transmit­ ting patriarchal power," and that homosocial desire reveals itself "in the form of a desire to consolidate partnership with authoritative males in and through the bodies of women." Humanism, as I have defined it, existing only within social relations between men, clearly lends itself to theories of the homosocial. And yet the notion of the homosocial as suggested by Sedgwick in a study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary texts does not hold up as a description of sixteenth-century English humanism. For the social relations between these humanists do not, as a rule, involve the exchange of women, but rather the transmis­ sion of texts. Indeed, as I shall go on to show, humanist rhetoric presents itself as implaca­ bly opposed to what Gayle Rubin famously described as the "traffic in women" system of social perpetuation. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men, 25, 38; Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex," in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter, 157-210.

INTRODUCTION

XXl

images—the hearty hunting, hawking nobleman with a taste for drink and an antipathy toward learning, and the solitary knowledge-driven scholar—the humanist aimed to enter the service of the noble patron by utilizing his textual and linguistic skills to provide a service that the patron could not provide for himself. As this pattern of patronage took hold in the sixteenth century, the humanists wrote discourses and books which recorded the shift in their social position, shifts which eventually became inscribed as English history. "Sodomy" also requires a context. I do not here use "sodomy" as an authentically early modern sounding synonym for "homosexuality," or in Michel Foucault's words as "a category of forbidden acts," the physical acts which were prosecuted in England as "buggery." 12 A great deal of work has been done on establishing both the details of the statute against buggery that passed through Parliament in 1533/34, and the subsequent negotiation of the statute in legal commentaries and trial situations. 13 But the scriptural narrative that gives us the word "sodomy" is at once vaguer and yet more precise than any of those anachronistic renderings, and it is this narrative which early modern "sodomy" follows. While generations of theological commentators have argued over what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah might be, the scriptural episode is framed by and explained by a concern about judgment and discipline, which, as Michael Warner has argued, was the predominant narrative of Sodom in early modern Christendom: 14 20 And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodome and Gomorrah is great, and because their sinne is very grieuous: 21 I will goe downe now, and see whether they haue done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come vnto me: and if not, I will know.15 God reacts to a "cry," which is also "their sinne"; he goes down to investigate the truthfulness of this cry, and then, finding it to be justified, de12 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 43. The bill is described throughout in the Journals of the House of Lords as a bill against "sodomiam" rather than against "buggery," as the statute reads. Perhaps this would account for what Geoffrey Elton notes as "a curious correction in the parliament bill: the whole crucial description of the crime—'vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast'—is written over an erasure." Journals of the House of Lords, Beginning Anno Primo Henrici Octavi, Vol. 1, cols. 60a, 61a, 61B, 65a; Elton, Reform and Renewal, 148 n.53. 13 See Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England; Smith, Homosexual Desire, 4 1 53; Ed Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side, 103-25; Stewart, "Bounds of Sodomy," Chap. 4. 14 "Because Sodom was the most prominent example of judgment passed upon a polls in all the lore of Christendom, this call for discipline soon made Sodom a commonplace." As Warner argues, "the topic of sodomy was linked primarily to the topic of national judgment," hence the need for the king to be concerned with the national effects of Castlehaven's sodomy. "New English Sodom," American Literature 64 (1992): 19-47, rpt. in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 330-58, at 330-32. 15 The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the new (London, 1611), Genesis xix.

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INTRODUCTION

stroys the city. The resemblance of this narrative to the processes of the English legal system which investigated and prosecuted sodomy was not lost on the prosecutor in the 1631 trial of Mervin Touchet, earl of Castlehaven, accused of a number of crimes, including sodomy with his male servants: My Lord Audley, The king hath beene given to vnderstand both by reporte, and by the verdicte of divers gent: of qualitie in your Countne, that you stand impeached of sundrie crimes, of a most high and heynous nature, And therfore to trie whether they bee true or noe, (to the end Iustice may receuie her dewe) hee brings yow this daie vnto triall, doeing therin like the Almightie Kinge of Kings in the 18th of Genesis ver: 20: 21: who went downe to see whether the sywnes of Sodome and Gomorha were soe greivous as the cry of them that came vpp before him: Because the crie of Sodome & Gomorha is great, and their synne greiuous I will goe downe saith the Lord, &c see, whether they haue done altogether accordinge to the cry of it, w:ch is come vpp vnto me. And kings on earth can haue noe better patterne to followe, then that of the Kinge of heaven.16 Sodomy is investigated and punished as an act, but it begins as a "cry." The narrative that unwinds inexorably from the initial complaint seems almost to make the verdict and the punishment of death a fait accompli: what is being investigated is not primarily the acts involved but the cry, the accusation, and it is the dynamics of the accusation, the social interactions which produce it, with which I am concerned here. "A F E W F U M B L E S IN O U R RENAISSANCE A D O L E S C E N C E "

If importance can be measured by scholarly attention, the Renaissance has a special place in the gay man's heart, second only to the wonders of Ancient Greece. As one queer wit put it recently, the history of male homosexuality can be seen as "one big coming out story: after a polymorphous perverse infancy in antiquity we felt little bar a few fumbles in our Renaissance adolescence. It was only this century that we came of age and burst triumphantly out of the closet." 17 The disproportionate attention paid to the Renaissance by historians of sexuality from John Addington Symonds to A. L. Rowse to Michel Foucault to the current generation of literary critics demands explanation. 18 This study attempts to answer the question, What makes the Renaissance so fascinating to gay men?—a 16

Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC [FSL], ms V.b.328, fols. 4b-5a. Richard Smith, "Queer Indeed" (review of Patrick Higgins, ed., A Queer Reader, Gay Times 183 (December 1993), 72. 18 For Symonds see infra., Chap. 1; A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History; the unpublished fourth volume of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality dealt with the Renaissance, after following the standard itinerary of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe (Vol. 1), through Greece (Vol. 2) and Rome (Vol. 3). 17

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question which needs to be answered on two levels. On a primary level, this book is about sodomy and humanism in early modern England. It argues that the English humanists of the sixteenth century negotiated their way into positions of influence and occasional power by designing a program to place themselves in deliberate and direct opposition to a notional dominant order. This order, as portrayed in humanist writings, was feudal in nature, lacking in humanistic learning, and structured through male bonding, which perpetuated itself through the exchange of women in marriage. In contrast, the humanists portrayed their own social relations as drawing on classical notions of friendship and pedagogy, lacking a profit motive, and existing directly between men. These "humanist relations" were vulnerable to accusations of another relationship between men—sodomy—a vulnerability that the humanists themselves often took glee in exploiting. It is these humanist relations that are recorded and celebrated in the great works of the English literary canon to which we are heirs; this literature, however, masks a more crudely pragmatic program with which individual humanists sought to infiltrate the very "feudal" structure they attacked, through their own and their children's marriages. On another level, as that formulation of my question—What makes the Renaissance so fascinating to gay men?—suggests, an answer will involve a consideration not only of Renaissance culture, but also of the nature of gay men's involvement with and investment in the literature, art, and history of that period. In his groundbreaking 1982 study Homosexuality in Renaissance England, the historian Alan Bray locates the impetus to write gay history in the emergence, following World War II, of visible gay subcultures, "which in the last ten or fifteen years have become increasingly articulate and questioning. And the questions, on the level of the individual or the many, have largely meant asking Who am I? What then are we?" 19 Similar concerns have been raised by recent academic studies of homosexuality and English Renaissance literature: these books are "an attempt to consolidate gay identity in the last decade of the twentieth century," books "entering the world as a member of a community." 20 For these scholars, studying the Renaissance in effect becomes a matter of self-affirmation as contemporary gay men. Yet the reasons why homosexuality should be writ so large evidently require some thought. Why the Renaissance? Why not medieval England, or the Romantic period? 21 I shall argue that this apparent relevance and importance of Renaissance England to contemporary gay male sexuality is prefigured in the 19

Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, 10-11. Smith, Homosexual Desire, 27; Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation, ix. 21 This generalization is in no way intended to belittle the outstanding work done in other periods by gay scholars, merely to stress the disproportionate attention paid to the Renaissance. 20

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ways that humanists made sense of their own situation and of their own contribution to early modern English culture. Take, for example, Samuel Daniel's summary of the sixteenth century: A time not of that virilitie as the former, but more subtile, and let out into wider notions, and bolder discoveries of what lay hidden before. A time wherein began a greater improvement of the Soueraigntie, and more came to be effected by wit than by the sword: Equall and iust incounters, of State, and State in forces, and of Prince, and Prince in sufficiencie. The opening of a new world, which strangely altered the manner of this, inhancing both the rate of all things, by the induction of infinite Treasure, tk. opened a wider way to corruption, whereby Princes got much without their swords: Protections, &C Confederations to counterpoyse, &C preuent ouergrowing powers, came to bee maintained with larger pensions. Leidger Ambassadors first imployed abroad for intelligences. Common Banks erected, to returne and furnish moneys for these businesses. Besides strange alterations in the State Ecclesiasticall: Religion brought forth to bee an Actor in the greatest Designs of Ambition and Faction.22 In this way Daniel characterizes the sixteenth century—"the succession of fiue Soueraigne Princes of the Line of Tewdor"—from the vantage point of the early seventeenth: an age of recognizably modern ideas and ideals—the assured hold of centralized control, colonial expansion and its attendant treasures, embassy and foreign intelligence, the foundation of the banking system, religious reformation—and at the same time an age of lost virility. Both these moves are premised on another move: from the sword to the wit, from the feudal valorisation of martial prowess to the humanistic valorisation of the wit. The trajectory described by Daniel is the premise for a great deal of scholarship on sixteenth-century English humanism, most notably perhaps that of Fritz Caspari's 1954 Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England. More recently, the work of Mervyn James on English history of this period, still fundamentally premised on the movement described by Daniel, has provided an influential model for historians and literary critics. According to James, the sixteenth century was a crux in the development of English society from what he calls a "lineage society" to a "civil society." In his account, a "lineage society" was "bonded by kinship and the ties of the extended family, its sociopolitical determined by loyalties which centred on the great aristocratic household"; a "civil society," by contrast, was characterized by a "more privatized" family, state-centered loyalties, with "local society conforming to the generalized pattern of the body of the realm, bonded by law, humanistic wisdom and Protestant religion." A new moral unity was conferred by means of a single religion and a unified value-system founded on 22 Samuel Daniel, "Epistle Dedicatory," The First Part of the Htstorie Of England, sig. A3—.

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a combination of Protestant doctrine and Erasmian humanism. The emergence of a state-centered honor system was facilitated by the permeation of this humanistic religious impulse, itself a result of the inroads made by literacy and education. At the same time, the country had to adapt to a new social mobility, as various groups—especially lawyers, officials, merchants, as well as husbandmen and artisans—started to move up the social ladder. 23 Exactly how humanism became so central to sixteenth-century England is a question that is never really posed. The tacit assumption of most critical writings is that certain innovations—in diplomacy and printing, for example—made textual skills necessary in new areas, and that the humanists conveniently stepped in to fill this gap. I challenge this model, and argue instead that humanism worked consistently to produce this gap, that humanism deliberately created the perceived need for humanism. Recent innovative work by Lorna Hutson has shown us how the new social relations (of James's "civil society") in which English humanists were implicated were actually forged by and for themselves through their writings. She argues that during the sixteenth century, "the notion of 'friendship' between men was transformed from that of a code of 'faithfulness' assured by acts of hospitality and the circulation of gifts through the family and its allies, to that of an instrumental and affective relationship which might be generated, even between strangers, through emotionally persuasive communication, or the exchange of persuasive texts." 24 Clearly, forging such a relationship was no simple task, and I shall contend that it is in anxiety about the generation of these new bonds between men that the question of sodomy, and its relationship to humanism, surfaces. To interrogate the relation of humanist writings to these new social relations, I shall be employing the notion of transaction as an analytical tool. Lisa Jardine has coined the term "knowledge transactions" to describe the negotiations whereby an educated man might exercise his expertise to provide persuasive textual support for a particular political or military strategem. 25 The term encompasses more than merely a direct 23

Fritz Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England; Mervyn James, Society, Politics and Culture, 11, 9, 373, 375. See also R. Weiss, Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century; Maria Dowhng, Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII. For recent surveys of the extensive literature on and critical debate about English humanism see Richard J. Schoeck, "Humanism in England," in Renaissance Humanism, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr., 5 - 3 8 ; and Geoffrey Elton, "Humanism in England," in The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe, ed. Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay, 259-78. 24 Lorna Hutson, The Usurer's Daughter, 1-13 at 2 - 3 . 25 In this enterprise, I am drawing on the recent studies by Lisa Jardine, Anthony Grafton and William Sherman on the scholarly work undertaken by late Elizabethan

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deal—cash reward for services rewarded—since such reading might be part of a patronage or sustenance relationship in which the scholar would be dependent on his patron for a period of time, with settlement of the arrangement between the two men endlessly deferred. At the same time, this arrangement would often imply a complicatedly intimate relationship between scholar and patron, as we shall see in my final chapter. 26 All this is implicit in Jardine's formulation of knowledge transactions, carrying as it does the notion of a mutual benefit from activities firmly placed within a social agreement. However, transaction in the modern sense implies a mutually agreeable settlement between two parties. Bringing this mutual agreement into question, I ask, How does this agreement come about? After all, these transactions are taking place between social unequals, and appear to be driven by the socially inferior party. For the purposes of this study, I work back the notion of "transaction," to interrogate the theoretical basis of the arrangement. The word derives from a Roman and Civil Law term denoting "The adjustment of a dispute between parties by mutual concession; compromise; hence gen. an arrangement, an agreement, a covenant." 27 In other words, while the twentieth-century use of "transaction" suggests only an amicable exchange of services or goods, its ancient and early modern uses insist on a more troubled negotiation. What this study aims to achieve is a reexamination of sixteenth-century knowledge transactions via a new emphasis on the "dispute between parties" that underlies them, and on the "mutual concession" that allows the dispute to be adjusted in order for the transaction to take place. Patronage, of course, was not new to the sixteenth century, nor to humanism. As Eleanor Rosenberg and Michael Brennan have argued, throughout the Middle Ages there had been an accepted relationship between the arts and the nobility, based on an ethic of noblesse oblige; what distinguished the English Renaissance was the new utilitarian nature of the nobility's patronage of scholars, which can be traced to Henry VIIPs use of humanist scholars to construct his divorce case, and Thomas readers such as Gabriel Harvey and John Dee. Jardine and Grafton, " 'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy," Past and Present 129 (1990): 3 0 - 7 8 ; Jardine, "Mastering the Uncouth: Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser and the English Experience in Ireland," in New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought, ed. J. Henry and S. Hutton, 68-82, revised as "Encountering Ireland: Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser, and English Colonial Ventures," in Representing Ireland, ed. Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield, and Willy Maley, 6 0 - 7 5 ; Jardine and William Sherman, "Pragmatic Readers: Knowledge Transactions and Scholarly Services in Late Elizabethan England," in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Anthony Fletcher and Peter Robert, 102-24; Sherman, John Dee. 26 For discussions of "knowledge transactions" see Jardine, "Mastering the Uncouth"; Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 119; Jardine and Sherman, "Pragmatic Readers." 27 Oxford English Dictionary [hereafter OED] s.v. transaction, 1.

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Cromwell's subsequent harnessing of scholarship for the Reformation propaganda campaign of the 1530s. Sixteenth-century patrons were thus more aware of the ability of scholars to occupy the new roles of moral commentator and political adviser in their writings, as well as the household positions of secretary, tutor, chaplain, physician, and even general man-servant. 28 It is clear that specifically humanistic textual practices are implicated in these knowledge transactions, which suggests that a shared investment in humanism might be required for these negotiations—that humanism itself provides the common ground for the compromise. 29 I want to go further, however, and argue that the "mutual concession" manipulated by humanist texts is a more socially significant compromise: a double ethic of similitude of studies and friendship. The two are inextricable: friendship cannot exist except between equals, and where social equality is lacking then intellectual equality or equality of learning takes its place. English humanism, then, concerns more than the solitary scholar, immersed in philology: it is premised on notions of social relations and transactions. And it is this relationality or transactionality which leads us inexorably to sodomy. As Robert Padgug writes, "sexuality is relational. It consists of activity and interactions—active social relations—and not simply 'acts' . . . 'It' does not do anything, combine with anything, appear anywhere; only people, acting within specific relationships create what we call sexuality." By forging such relations, however, sodomy eschewed another set of relations: as Guido Ruggiero writes in his study of sex crime in early modern Venice: "Sodomy threatened to undermine the basic organizational units of society—family, male-female bonding, reproduction—which struck at the heart of social self-perceptions." Jonathan Goldberg goes further and argues that, by definition, "sodomy is, as a sexual act, anything that threatens alliance—any sexual act, that is, that does not promote the aim of married procreative sex . . . these acts— or accusations of their performance—emerge into visibility only when those who are said to have done them also can be called traitors, heretics, 28

Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester Patron of Letters, esp. 3 - 1 8 ; Michael Brennan, Literary Patronage in the English Renaissance, esp. 1-18. For a general overview, see also the collection Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel; and, arguing for a late Elizabethan crisis of patronage, Patricia Thomson, "The Literature of Patronage, 1580-1630," Essays in Criticism 2 (1952): 267-84. On the Cromwellian use of scholars see James Kelsey McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics; and on the utilitarian bent of English humanism generally see Arthur B. Ferguson, Clio Unbound. 29 Mary Thomas Crane has argued cogently that a common ground is provided by the textual materials on which humanistic learning draws: the already validated classical authorities, a "common textual matter" from which the humanist gathers and frames his own texts, using a dominant cultural code and thereby not threatening the dominant order. Framing Authority, 7.

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or the like, at the very least, disturbers of the social order that alliance— marriage arrangements—maintained." When this "alliance" is not threatened, he continues, it is unlikely "that those sexual acts called sodomy, when performed, would be recognized as sodomy." 30 Although he does not go on to make the point, the implication of Goldberg's argument is that sodomy is by definition a disturbance of alliance/marriage arrangements; a second implication is that sodomy is by default an accusation of that disturbance. In his 1990 essay "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England," Alan Bray pointed out two images—the masculine friend and the sodomite—which, although extremely different in the reactions they provoked, possessed a strange parallelism, and "in some respects occupied a similar terrain," sharing the same signs. Bray suggests that during the sixteenth century traditional hierarchies of rank and class became less stable; when intimate, affective male-male relations appeared to take precedence over other hierarchical relations, these relationships could attacked as sodomitical. My approach is inspired by Bray's findings, but takes more seriously the role of the literary: Bray discusses the literature of idealized friendship, noting how it echoes Cicero, but concludes that primarily it reflects dominant social conventions. 31 But, as Lorna Hutson notes, "the friendship articulated in literature tends to be, reflexively, about literature; that is, it tends to articulate itself as arising from the intimacy of shared reading and writing." 32 I am concerned here with interrogating that "intimacy of shared reading and writing." Recent work by Wayne Koestenbaum and Jeff Masten has given us a vocabulary for talking about the "erotics of male literary collaboration," and Masten has argued forcefully that, for example, Michel de Montaigne's essay on friendship, as translated by John Florio, emphasizes a "collaborative textuality," the textual relationship with his friend which Montaigne describes as "bound" up in the friend's writing. 33 My contention is that such literary topoi are not only reflections of, but also origi30

Robert Padgug, "Sexual Matters: Rethinking Sexuality in History," rpt. in Hidden from History, ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr., 54-66; Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 109-10; Goldberg, Sodometnes, 19. 31 Alan Bray, "Male Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship," History Workshop Journal 29 (1990): 1-19; rpt. in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 4 0 - 6 1 . My formulation of Bray's argument is indebted to Michael Warner ("New English Sodom," 347). 32 Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 3. 33 Wayne Koestenbaum, Double Talk; Jeff Masten, "My Two Dads: Collaboration and the Reproduction of Beaumont and Fletcher," in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 280-309 at 2 8 0 - 8 1 . Koestenbaum's work deliberately does not engage with either histoncized methods of textual production or authorship's social construction (see 7), and Masten's field of research—the writings of Beaumont and Fletcher—emphasizes what he considers to be a shift away from a sixteenth-century norm of homoerotic collaboration toward the figure of the patriarchal author.

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nary contributions to, novel social relations that are forged through and maintained by textual skills and humanist literary exchange. We might say, then, that humanism—in its constant lip service to equality between patron and patronized who are by definition socially unequal—signals an alternative economy of social relations, which produces anxiety; sodomy, too, signals an alternative economy of social relations which produces another anxiety.34

T H E BOOK NAMES THE GOVERNOR: A M O D E L OF HUMANIST TRANSACTION

The classic formula for calling a humanist scholar to the attention of a potential patron was through the presentation of a book or piece of writing as a gift.35 The books that were transacted between humanist scholars and their potential patrons carry in their rhetoric the terms on which the humanist desired to make that transaction.36 We might take as an early and key example Sir Thomas Elyot, and his manifesto of humanist training for the gentleman, The Boke named the Gouernour, the first major vernacular articulation of an English humanism. Elyot fits perfectly, and presumably informs, the model of the sixteenth-century humanist familiar from the work of Fritz Caspari: well-read in classical and contemporary Continental literature, he lived mostly in the country, held office as a Justice of the Peace and sheriff, became an ambassador, and spent six years in central government as Clerk of the Council. The achievement of a humanist such as Elyot was not to have the ideas contained in his writings implemented, although that may have been his aim; it lies rather in the fact that he established himself as an important figure by virtue of his humanism, and simultaneously established humanism as important by virtue of his success.37 The Boke named the Gouernour, a lengthy work, 34

I am extremely grateful to Gregory Bredbeck for providing this formulation. See Natalie Zemon Davis, "Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 33 (1983): 6 9 - 8 8 . For the presentation of early English humanist books see Carlson, English Humanist Books, passim.; Love, Scribal Publication, 5 9 - 6 2 . 36 It needs to be remembered that these dedicated manuscripts and books are not evidence of an already agreed patronage arrangement: they are, by contrast, objects that are actively attempting to transact—as French Fogle notes, "in the case of dedications we may have, in many cases, no more than an author's hope for favor." French R. Fogle: '"Such a Rural Queen': The Countess Dowager of Derby as Patron," in Louis A. Knafla and Fogle, Patronage in Late Renaissance England: Papers read at a Clark Library Seminar 14 May 1977, 1-29 at 3. 37 Thomas Elyot, The Boke named the Gouernour (London, 1531). All subsequent references in the text are to this edition. See James, Society, Politics and Culture, 378-79; Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order, 76-109. The tendency of some current influen35

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displays a remarkable self-consciousness about its purpose, motivation, and status. Elyot claims that his efforts are not intended to be taken as pedagogically motivated: he can only remind and facilitate the reading of those in power. This attemptate is nat of presumption to teache any persone I I my selfe hauinge moste nede of teachinge: But onely to the intent that men I which wil be studious about the weak publike / may fynde the thinge therto expedient compendiously writen. And for as moch as this present boke treateth of the education of them I that hereafter may be demed worthy to be gouernours of the publike weale vnder your hyghnesse . . . I therfore haue named it the gouernour / & do nowe dedicate it vnto your hyghnesse as the fyrste frutes of my studye. (a.iiv) In the same breath as he disclaims the pedagogical high ground, the book is reinstated as being about education; in its exposition of how the perfect governor should be formed, even its title reveals that that formation must ultimately be named through "The Boke." Elyot's text is full of such assertions, slippages, and evasions: inevitably, I suggest, because Elyot's position as one able to advise the king on government is by no means assured. His offering of The Gouernour to Henry VIII is likened, first, in the most popular sixteenth-century formula of unworthy gift-giving, to the poor man giving King Artaxerxes water from his hands (and Artaxerxes' condescending acceptance of the gift), but then to Alexander's retaining of the poet Cherilus for writing his historie all though that the poete was but of a small estimation: whiche that prynce dyd nat for lacke of iugement I he beynge of excellent lernynge as disciple to Aristotell: but to thentent that his liberalite emploied on Cherilus / shulde animate or gyue courage to others moche better lerned I to contende with hym in a semblable enterpryse. (a.iijr) Significantly, while the poet is declared to be "but of a small estimation," the reason that Alexander retains him is placed in his excellent learning as a student of Aristotle: in other words, good judgment in the acceptance of learned offerings is premised on a good education. The notion of a longerterm "retaining" introduced in the story of Cherilus is not lost either: Elyot promises the king "the residue of my studie and labours" (a.iijr). Elyot's tract assumes monarchical government, with one ruler, but also argues for a host of inferior governors, who must be "worshipfull" men, tial historical criticism—for example, the revisionist work of Alistair Fox—has been to argue that humanism failed to achieve its goals: to point out that the political changes proposed in the writings of a man such as Thomas Elyot never came to pass, and that ergo, humanism did not "work." See, for example, Fox's essays in Reassessing the Henrtcian Age, ed. Fox and John Guy. A more sympathetic assessment of humanism is given in the recent collection, Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth, eds. Paul A. Fideler, and T. F. Mayer.

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correctly educated. In this distinction he explicitly disallows men of lower rank who are not educated: "the potter & tynker I only perfecte in theyr crafte I shall littell do I in the ministration of iustice. A ploughman or carter I shall make but a feble answere to an ambassadour. Also a wayuer or fuller / shulde be an vnmete capitaine of an armie / or in any other office of a gouernour" (A.vv). Elyot's position on the birth/nurture question is clear from his silence: nobility's continuance must depend on the renewal of its virtue through his brand of education. 38 To this end, Elyot devotes virtually his entire first book to an educational program, drawing heavily on the pedagogical treatises of Quintilian and Erasmus. The second and third books deal with the conduct of the appointed governor, defining virtues and vices through a collection of mainly classical exempla. Elyot dwells at length on the question of true friendship ("The true definition of amitie and betwene what persons it hapneth," a.V) demonstrating the interplay of studies and friendship: while contentious and overly serious studies tend to inhibit amity, similarity of education often promotes friendship "specially if the studies haue in them any delectable affection or motion" (S.iiijv), demonstrating the point with the perfect friendship of Titus and Gisippus (S.viv-V.viiv) expressing "the description of frendship engendred by the similitude of age and personage: augmented by the conformitie of maners and studies: and confirmed by the longe continuaunce of company" (V.vv). These ideas are absolute commonplaces during the sixteenth century, but it is clear from the correspondence of humanistically educated men that these ideas were mobilized in a serious bid to engender and maintain friendship, and to influence patrons in their political lives: the rhetoric of this double premise— similarity of studies and friendship—works its way into Elyot's own correspondence to Thomas Cromwell, Elyot addressing him as "you, whome I have allway accompted one of my chosen frendes, for the similitude of our studies which undoubtidly is the moste perfeict fundacion of amitie." 39 The dedicatory presentation of a book was intended to encode the relationship between the giver and the receiver through the content of and expectations raised by the book and its dedication which established, in Natalie Davis's words, "a context for the subject of the book, the kind of circle where and the spirit with which the book should be read and its contents discussed." 40 This notion was also inherently problematic. How could a scholar send a book to his social superior, with the intention of 38

James, Society, Politics and Culture, 378-79. Elyot to Cromwell, March 6 1536. BL ms Cotton Cleopatra E VI fol. 254, in K. J. Wilson, ed., "The Letters of Sir Thomas Elyot," Studies in Philology 73/5 (December 1976): 26. 40 Davis, "Beyond the Market," 78. 39

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getting him or her to read the book for its contents, when the scholar could not impose himself as teacher? One formula for negotiating this dilemma can be found regularly in sixteenth-century dedications. When, for example, John Harington dedicates his englishing of Cicero's treatise De amicitia to Katharine Brandon, duchess of Suffolk in 1550 he writes that "This [the dedication] did I not to teache you, but to let you see in learnyng auncient, that you haue by nature vsed: nor to warne you of ought you lacked, but to sette forth your perfection." 41 This formulation is explicitly and regularly rehearsed in the letters of Roger Ascham, both in correspondence which is supposedly free from thought of advancement (as in his self-consciously learned exchange with the German humanist Johann Sturm) and in correspondence that is more obviously a means to social placement: "I have done so, not so much to ingratiate myself with you shamelessly as to indicate lovingly by this pledge that I should like some part of your friendship to be shared with me. I send this volume because I hear you would take delight in reading it," 42 capping this sentiment with the tag used by Harington: "He that exhorts, doth praise what thou dost doe, I And by exhorting doth his liking shew," encapsulating perfectly the double-bind of letters and the book as gift: what is actually exhortation for the future must be readable as praise for the past and present. It is in the negotiation of this point that the writer must encode his or her relationship to the potential patron, and display his or her skill. The lines are from the fourteenth elegy in the fifth book of Ovid's Tristia, the elegy in which (as a seventeenth-century English translator put it), "Ovid shewes his wife that shee, I Shall by his bookes immortall bee," although they are forcibly parted by his exile. He advises her to be like a string of faithful classical wives and daughters—not to die for him, but to love him, so that he can continue to praise her in his work, and finishes by clarifying, N o r thinke I exhort thee, cause that thou dost faile, T h o u g h the ship goe with oares, we put on saile. H e that exhorts, doth praise w h a t thou dost doe, And by exhorting doth his liking shew. 4 3 41

John Harington, trans. The booke of freendeship of Marcus Tulhe Cicero, sig. A.iiiv. "Quod factum meum non tarn audacter sane suceptum, vt me tibi vewditem, quam amanter certe institutum fuit, vt aliquam amicitiae tuae partem, vel hoc pacto mihi adiungerem. Hunc librum mitto, quia vt audio, vehemewter eo legendo delectans." Roger Ascham, Familiarium eptstolarum, ed. Edward Grant, sig. L.njr; Letters of Roger Ascham, trans. Maurice Hatch and Alvin Vos, ed. Alvin Vos, letter 16, 78-79. Hereafter references to Ascham's letters are given as Grant and Vos. 43 Ovids Tristia, trans. W.S., sigs. I2V, Iv, titlepage, I2V. "nee te credideris, quia non facis, ista moneri: I vela damus, quamvis remige puppis eat. I qui monet ut facias, quod iam facis, ille monendo I laudat et hortatu comprobat acta suo" (V.xv.43-46). 42

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Ovid's piece works by manipulating the reception of the reader, his wife, requiring her to tolerate her present undesirable status in order to be properly produced textually by him for posterity. In the hands of the English humanist Ascham, the manipulation is more subtle: Ascham casts himself as the immortal poet, and the recipient of his letter as his wife, dependent on him for her social status now and in the future. Forcing this analogy of the Ovidian elegy—written between marital partners—with what are only putative patronage relations serves to demonstrate the complex rhetorics and realities within which these transactions operate, and the subtle and coercive textual means by which a humanist author might attempt to deal with them. These dedicatory epistles are clear, almost textbook examples of the "letter of friendship," which Erasmus outlines in his letter-writing manual, De conscribendis epistolis. Forrest Tyler Stevens has shown how Erasmus, while classifying the friendship letter as "persuasive," goes further and subdivides the category into two sections, honorable and dishonorable: "I call the honourable kind 'conciliatory' and the other 'amatory.' " The basis for this division, Stevens argues, is the acknowledgment that the friendship letter contains sexual as well as social elements: "the taxonomy of 'honourable' versus 'dishonourable' rests on a distinction between gaining a new acquaintance through praise and persuasion versus sending a persuasive letter 'of or pertaining to a lover, to lovemaking or to sexual love generally' (OED)." The conciliatory letter "is that by which we insinuate ourselves into the good graces of a person previously unknown" by "convincingly set[ting] out the reasons that have led us to solicit his friendship" without flattery, and then specifying "anything in us which can induce him to reciprocate our affection." The "amatory" letter, however, deals with such topics as "seeking to arouse mutual love in a girl": Erasmus discusses (at much greater length) various situations in which such amatory letters might be appropriate—all posit a masculine sender and a feminine recipient.44 In this way, in a popular school textbook, Erasmus simultaneously acknowledges, promotes, and denies the erotic charge of persuasive friendly letter writing, and, by implication, the erotic charge of the social and textual transactions which those friendly letters aim to forge. The relationships between men which humanism claimed to forge and maintain were expressed in a set of quasi-ritualistic moments—such as book presentation—and a rhetoric of intense emotional affect, which by 44

Forrest Tyler Stevens, "Erasmus's 'Tigress': The Language of Friendship, Pleasure, and the Renaissance Letter," in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 124-40, esp. 129-35; CWE 25:203-205. Stevens mistakenly asserts that the practical examples of letters supplied by Erasmus are all between men: two are from Pliny to his wife Calphurnia (VI.4 and VI.7). This does not however affect the validity of Stevens's general argument.

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the standards of the late twentieth century can often appear to be romantic, and even erotic. We are familiar with the courtly love language with which so much dedicatory writing to Elizabeth is executed.45 The transition from the favor of patronage to a more intense affective relationship is conveyed by Thomas Elyot in his Image of Governaunce in a fictitious letter by the Roman emperor Alexander Severus: "where before we dyd fauour you, nowe do we moste hartilye loue you, and haue no lasse ardant desyre to haue the fruition of your vertue & lernyng, than hath the true louer of his wyfe or companyon. What suche loue is, ye that haue ben at Socrates banket, do knowe most certaynely."46 This new affective relationship is couched in terms no longer of favor, but of love, and of love simultaneously as marital love ("the true louer of his wyfe") and a love between men ("the true louer of his . . . companyon")—a love which is known by those at Socrates' symposium.

"CONTEMNED OF GENTYLMEN": HUMANISM'S PLAN OF ATTACK

The rise of the humanists in sixteenth century England was—and is still—always figured as a pitched battle between the rising humanist middling classes and a feudal aristocracy for whom the bearing of arms and the leisure pursuits of hunting and hawking were more appropriate, and more importantly, who felt that learning was beneath them.47 The image, not surprisingly, can be traced to a number of early humanist writings. These humanist writings succeeded in portraying chivalry—incorrectly— as coterminous with feudalism. The social reality (and the previous literary representation) of the learned chivalric knight was suppressed in favor of an artificially polar distinction of the knight and the scholar. At the same time the "gentleman" supplanted the knight as a social ideal, absorbing those aspects of the knight that were still valued; the humanist 45

See, for example, Leonard Tennenhouse, "Sir Walter Ralegh and the Literature of Clientage," in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Lytle and Orgel, 235-58; Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege; Catherine Bates, The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature; Bates's bibliography lists a wide range of criticism. See also Lauro Martines, "The Politics of Love Poetry in Renaissance Italy," in Historical Criticism and the Challenge of Theory, ed. Janet Levane Smarr, 129-44. In a subsequent "Discussion," Martines notes that "talking to one's lady, one's servant, or one's prince" was "part of the same discourse, the new system of humanistic education" (213). 46 Thomas Elyot, The image of governance compiled of the actes and sentences notable, of the moste noble Emperour Alexander Seuerus, late translated out of Greke into Englyshe, sig. Y.ur. 47 Robert P. Adams, "Bold Bawdry and Open Manslaughter: The English New Humanist Attack on Medieval Romance," Huntington Library Quarterly 23 (1959-60): 33-48.

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48

portrayal of the knight was a ridiculous, drunken, philistine. A typical example comes from Thomas Starkey's Dialogue between Pole and Lupset: the "educatyon of the nobylyte," who are "custumably brought up in huwtyng & haukyng dysyng & cardyng etyng & drynkyng & in conclusyon in al vayn plesure pastyme & vanyte"; they should rather be brought up in "featys perteynyng to nobylyte no les then lernyng & letturys, as in al featys of chyvalry." Alexander Barclay complains that in 1519, "at this tyme [the understandyng of latyn] is almost contemned of gentylmen." 49 For Juan Luis Vives also, the nobility's illiteracy is a comic butt: as Mendoza complains in Linguae latinae exercitatio, "[T]he crowd of our nobility do not follow the precept (as to the value of writing), for they think it is a fine and becoming thing not to know how to form their letters. You would say their writing was the scratching of hens, and unless you were warned beforehand whose hand it was, you would never guess." 50 When the noble Manricus cries "I don't know how it is inborn in me to plough out my letters so distortedly, so unequally and confusedly," Mendoza retorts sardonically, "You have this tendency from your noble birth." 51 But the tendency can be reversed through humanist endeavor: through practice, habit can change even what seems to be inborn. Vives' text attests to a flexible notion of nobility: when the noble students Manricus and Mendoza meet their teacher, he notes that "The names themselves are evidence of noble education and generous minds." But that nobility is always only potential without the correct cultivation: But first then, you will be truly noble if you cultivate your minds by those arts which are especially most worthy of your renowned families. How much wiser you are than that multitude of nobles who hope that they are going to be better born in proportion as they are ignorant of the art of writing. But this is scarcely to be wondered at, since this conviction has taken hold of the stupid nobles that nothing is more mean or vile than to pursue knowledge in anything.52 48

This account follows the lines of Arthur B. Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England. For a study that takes seriously Elizabethan chivalry literature as an ideological resource, see Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood. 49 Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T. F. Mayer, 86, 124; Alexander Barclay, Here begynneth the famous cronycle of the wane, which romayns had agaynst Jugurth usurper of the kyngdome of Numidy, sig. a.iiijv. 50 "sed huic prascepto non paret uulgus nostra; nobilitatis, qua; pulchrum & decorum sibi esse ducit nescire literas formare: dicas scarificationem esse gallinarum. & nisi prasmonitus sis cuius sit manus, nunquam diuinaris." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. d 5 _ v ; trans. Foster Watson as Tudor School-Boy Life, 67 [hereafter Watson]. 51 "Nescioquo pacto naturale est mihi, distorte, inajqualiter, perturbate exarare literas. Hoc habes nobilitatis." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. d 5V; trans. Watson, 68. 52 "Nomina ipsa testantur ingenuam educationem, & generosos animos. Ita demum eritis uere nobiles, si ijs artibus excolatis animos, qua; maxime sunt dignissimae clans natalibus: quanto magis sapitis uos, quam multitudo ista nobilitatis, qui eo se habiturum iri

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The nobles' stupidity in their willful illiteracy is portrayed practically by Vives as a source of displaced power: they can only sign their names— illegibly—to letters "composed by their secretaries." 53 The men with the skills of humane letters become guarantors of the power of the nobles. The opposition between chivalric prowess and the art of letters is comically revived at the end of this exchange: Teacher: But have you come here armed? Manricus: Not at all, good teacher, we should have been beaten by our teachers if we had dared to merely look at arms, at our age, let alone to touch them. Teacher: Ah, ah! I don't speak of the arms of blood-shedding, but of writingweapons, which are necessary for our purpose.54 When Alexander Barclay dedicates his translation of Sallust's Jugurth to the Duke of Norfolk "as a perpetual memorial, and an evident testimony of my deuout seruice I amorous affection against your magnificent hyghnes," the choice of text is not easy. Finally, after having "reuolued many & diuerse volumes," he "remembered that a mercyal matter is most cowgruent vnto a marcial & victorious prince." But his method of presenting the translation side by side with the Latin original belies this easy acceptance of the "mercyal matter": those who "shal dysdayne to read my translation in englysshe . . . may rede this hystorie more compendyously & more obscurely writen in laten"; however, "vnto many noble gentylmen whiche vnderstande nat latyn tong perfetly I dout nat but that this my labour shalbe both pleasure & profet. For by the same they shal haue some help toward the vnderstawdyng of latyn: whiche at this tyme is almost contemned of gentylmen. And also they shal vnderstande a ryght fruytful hystorie: bothe pleasant / profitable I & ryght necessary vnto euery degre: but specially to gentylmen I whiche coueyt to attayne to clere fame and honour, by glorious dedes of chyualry." Barclay, tongue firmly in cheek, neatly points out that for the noble gentlemen to attain their "clere fame and honour" through "glorious dedes of chyualry," they are dependent on his skill at englishing from the Latin histories that contain them. This form of knowledge is indispensable: "princes shall fynde generosiores sperant, quo imperitius pingant literas. Sed minime est hoc mirandum, quandoquidem persuasio hasc dementiam nobilitatis iampridem inuasit, nihil esse abiectius aut uilius quam aliquid scire." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. d 6 r _ v ; trans. Watson, 69. 53 "Ergo uidere est, illos epistolis a hbrari]s suis compositis subscnbentes id, quod legi nullo pacto potest, nee scias a quo tibi epistola mittatur, nisi sit a tabellario prjedictum, aut signum agnoscas." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. d 6V; trans. Watson, 70. 54 "Man. Id modo ego & Mendoza querebamur. Mag. Sed uenitis hue armati? Man. Minime uero bone preceptor, uapularemus a nostris pasdagogis, si ausi essemus arma hac xtate uel aspicere, nedum tangere. Mag. Ah ah non loquor de armis crudehtatis, sed de istis scriptorijs, qua; ad praesentem rem faciunt." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. d 6V; trans. Watson, 70.

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writen in bokes before their eyen ryght many thyngs cowcernyng their wele I honour I & fame: which their frends dare nat be bolde to tell them from drede of dysplesure: fathermore without the knowlege of hystories neuer man coude become good oratour." The old nobility becomes no more than the paintings on their shields, as Robert Whittinton writes in 1532, translating Erasmus's De civilitate morum puerilium, "All are to be taken for noble I whiche exercyse their mynde in the lyberall science. Lette other men paynte in their shyldes Lyons I Egles I Bulks I and Leopardes: yet they haue more of verye nobylyte whiche for their badge may paynte so many ymages / as they haue lerned sure the lyberall scyence." 55 The vivid image of the outmoded painted chivalric shields implies at one level that mastery of "the lyberall scyewce" is now to be valued above the martial prowess, established through metonymy with the shield—symbol of chivalry, of the prospective nobleman. And yet there is also an implied sense here of the shield not only in its obvious chivalric, martial role, but as the heraldic sign of family genealogy, of lineage that is now under threat by the new skills of humanism. Of all the classic accounts of chivalric feudal ignorance as portrayed and purveyed by the humanist polemicists, it is Richard Pace's infamous drunken nobleman, presented in a prefatory letter to De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur (1517), that is most often cited. The nobleman's comments on a humanist education—"By God, I'd rather my son were hanged than he should study letters. Sons of the nobility ought to blow the horn properly, hunt like experts, and train and carry a hawk gracefully. Studies should really be left to country boys" 56 —has ever since encapsulated for students of both humanism and chivalry their fierce opposition. 57 Pace himself can be seen as an exemplary early English humanist: after serving as a page in the household of Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, was sent at the turn of the century to study at the University of Padua, from where he progressed to Bologna, Ferrara, and Venice. En route he encountered and formed friendships with Cuthbert Tunstall, William Latimer, and by autumn 1508, Erasmus. Moving into diplomatic circles from 1509, Pace became Wolsey's secretary in April 1516, and then principal secretary to the King, launching a decade of high powered continental embassies. De fructu qui ex doctrina percipi55 Barclay, Cronycle of the wane, sigs. a.vv-a.vir; Robert Whittinton, trans., De civilitate morun [sic] puerilium, sigs. A2 v -A3 r . 56 "(Corpus del iuro) uolo films meus pendeat potius, quam Uteris studeat. Decet enim generosoruw filios, apte inflare cornu, pente uenari, accipitrew pulchre gestare & educare. Studia uero literarum, rusticorum fihjs sunt reliquenda." Richard Pace, De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur, sig. b4 r ; trans. Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester as The Benefit of a Liberal Education [hereafter Manley & Sylvester], 25. 57 See for example Early English Meals and Manners, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, xii-xiv; Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order, 136-37; Ferguson, Chivalric Tradition, 58.

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tur was drafted in August/September 1517, while Pace was detained in Constance. The bulk of the work praises various academic disciplines (some speaking for themselves): Theology, Law, Philosophy, Art, Music, Astronomy, Astrology, Geometry, Arithmetic, Rhetoric, Grammar, and Dialectic—these also argue amongst themselves and tell stories concerning Pace, who eventually merges into the personified Grammar. Pace's work is closely linked to other humanistic educational tracts: Thomas More wrote two poems in praise of knowledge for John Holt's Lac puerorutn (1497); Erasmus wrote five verse pieces for Colet's school; the colloquialism is reminiscent of the racy vernacular of the vulgaria. To claim the piece as a straightforward humanist polemic is, however, surprisingly difficult: as his editors argue, "most of the book devastatingly undermines the eulogy oi learning which it is apparently promoting," prompting the doubt whether Pace "really believed in the new learning. Perhaps he felt that studies (which, in the De fructu, he describes as too harsh) were unreal and deadening, and perhaps he wrote his book to remedy this defect. If this was the case, then it implies an entire educational theory that Pace was not consciously aware of or able, apparently, to articulate for himself."58 Much of this ambiguity derives from the antichivalric anecdote that occurs in a prefatory epistle. Pace introduces the butt of his story: "a nobleman, or so we call them, who always carry horns hanging down their backs as though they were going to hunt while they ate," 59 and responds to the drunken onslaught quoted above by objecting angrily but still courteously: "I don't think you're right, my good man. For if some foreigner came to the king, a royal ambassador, for example, and he had to be given an answer, your son, brought up as you suggest, would only blow on his horn, and the learned country boys would be called on to answer him. They would obviously be preferred to your son, the hunter or hawker, and using the freedom that learning gives, they would say to your face, 'We would rather be learned, and thanks to learning, no fools, than to be proud of our stupid nobility.' " 6 0 The horn-carrying nobleman 58

Manley and Sylvester, "Introduction," ix-xi, xx-xxi, xx n.4, xvii. See also Alistair Fox, "English Humanism and the Body Politic," in Reassessing the Henrician Age, ed. Fox and Guy, 3 4 - 5 1 at 41-42. Fox sees De fructu as "an embarrasing display of bad taste and intellectual feebleness" and concludes, "Transparently, Pace does not feel that a liberal education has any real utility at all." 59 "unus ex his, quos nos generosos uocamus, & qui semper cornu aliquod a tergo pendens gestant, acsi etiam inter prandendum uenarentur." Pace, De fructu, sig. b 4 1 ; Manley & Sylvester, 23. 60 "No« uideris, inquara, mihi bone uir recte sentire. nam si ueniret ad regem aliq«is uir exterus, quales sunt principum oratores, &c ei danduw esset responsum, filius tuus sic Ut tu uis, institutus, inflaret durctaxat cornu, & rusticorura fihj docti, ad respondendum uocarenXur, ac fiho tuo uenatori uel aucupi longe anteponerentur, 8c sua erudita usi libertate, tibi in

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is reduced to burying his face in a cup of wine. Such is the story. The exchange neatly highlights the novel requirements of a nobleman, international diplomacy rather than hunting etiquette. Pace's anecdote caught the imagination of his contemporaries, as we shall see; a century later it was being retold by William Camden, 61 and it remains the key example of the "feudalism versus humanism" story. But almost without exception, commentators rehearse this story without including the nobleman's full speech, which reads: "What's all this stuff, friend? To hell with your stupid studies. Scholars are a bunch of beggars. Even Erasmus is a pauper, and I hear he's the smartest of them all. In one of his letters he calls tan kataraton penian, that is, cursed poverty, his wife, and complains bitterly that he's not able to get her off his back and throw her in the ocean, bathyketea ponton. By God, I'd rather my son were hanged than he should study letters. Sons of the nobility ought to blow the horn properly, hunt like experts, and train and carry a hawk gracefully. Studies should really be left to country boys." 62 The immediacy of Pace's account has, inevitably, led commentators to hunt for its grounding in a real incident, but his dating of "about two years ago, more or less" places it two years before the writing and first publication of the Erasmus letter quoted, written on or around 19 June 1516 to Guillaume Bude. This forces them to conclude that the story is if not untrue, then at least a collation of two stories. But this neat referencing is surely to miss the point. The correspondence between Erasmus and the French humanist Guillaume Bude spans twelve years and is represented by fifty extant letters. This prolonged exchange, much of it published almost immediately in collections of Erasmus' letters, and later in collections of Bude's correspondence, is marked by its self-conscious display of erudition: several of the letters are wholly or partially in Greek. The exchange was apparently initiated by the Dutch scholar in early 1516 with a letter now lost. Bude's faciem dicerent, Nos malumus docti esse, & per doctrinam no« imprudentes, quam stulta gloriari nobilitate." Pace, De Fructu, sig. b 4 r _ v ; Manley &C Sylvester, 2 3 - 2 5 . 61 M.N., [i.e. William Camden], Remaines, concerning Britaine, 284. "A Noble man of this time, in contempt of learning said, that it was for Noble mens sonnes enough to winde their home, and carrie their Hauke faire, and to leaue studie and learning to the children of meane men. To whome the fore-said Richard Pace replied: Then you and other Noblemen must be content, that your children may winde their homes, and keepe their Haukes, while the children of meane men doe manage matters of estate. [R. Pacceus De fructu doctrinal.]" 62 "Quid nugaris, inquit, amice? abeant in malam rem istae stultae liter*, omnes docti sunt me«dici, etiaw Erasmus ille doctissimus (ut audio) pauper est, &C in quadam sua epistola uocat tan kataraton penian uxorem suam, id est, execrandam paupertatem, 8c uehementer conquentur se non posse illam humeris suis usque in bathyketea ponton, id est, profundum mare excutere. (Corpus dei iuro) uolo filius meus pendeat potius, quam literis studeat. Decet em'm generosoruw fihos, apte inflare cornu, perite uenan, accipitrem pulchre gestare & educare. Studia uero literarum, rusticorum fihjs sunt reliquenda." Pace, De Fructu, sig. b 4 r ; Manley &C Sylvester, 25.

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reply from Paris, dated 1 May 1516 (ep. 403), contained the first seeds of what was to become something of a running joke in the missives between them: "I envy you your leisure and your devotion to the Scriptures, which I have been promising myself this long time; but my spare time is devoted to family business rather than philosophy. How can it be otherwise when I have six sons to educate, brothers of my one small daughter, and am as devoted as anyone to my relations? So neglectful have I always been hitherto of the skills needful for a man with many children." 63 The passage cited by Pace comes from the response to this letter: Erasmus' letter to Bude, dated by P. S. Allen as 19 June 1516, where Erasmus writes admiringly of Bude's literary output, given his other commitments: "[A]gainst your children, your wife, and your other household cares I set my one sole wife, that accursed Poverty, whom I still cannot shake off my shoulders, such is her love for him that hates her." 64 In this letter, Erasmus lines up the responsibilities of the family man—wife, children, household— against his own life—unmarried, mobile, the eternal guest in someone else's household. That lifestyle is characterized as poverty, gendered female, and portrayed as grasping—physically and amorously grasping to a man who does not desire her. The conceit runs through their correspondence for several months 65 (and is later adapted for different ends in a lengthy letter from Bude to Cuthbert Tunstall, in which Philology becomes a second wife; a producer of books to complement Bude's real wife, a producer of children.) 66 Clearly then, the conceit of the wife Poverty and the mistresses Philosophy and Philology became common currency in the circle of scholars formed by Erasmus (it was Erasmus who urged Bude and Tunstall to correspond, and who then published their letters in his own collected epistles). However, Erasmus was not pleased with Pace's work. On 22 February 1517/18, the day he received a copy of the book, he writes to Thomas More from Antwerp: "In the Muses' name, has he not bethought him that it is a serious matter to broadcast a friend's name to the world and to posterity?. . . What was all the point of putting in that nonsense about . . . my complaints of poverty? Does he suppose that what any noisy fellow anywhere drivels over his cups deserves to be set forth for the world to read?" 67 The complaints are re-

« CWE 3:403. 64 "Porro liberie, vxori, reliquaeque curae domesticae ego vnicam vxorem meam oppono ten kataraton penian, quam nee adhuc humeris excutere possum, adeo ton misounta philei." Erasmus to Bude, 19 June 1516, ep. 421; Allen 2:255; CWE 3:308. 65 See Erasmus to Bude, 28 October 1516, ep. 480; Allen 2:366; CWE 4:103. Bude to Erasmus, 26 November 1516, ep. 493; Allen 2:390-40; CWE 4:149, 150, 152. Bude to Erasmus, 5 February 1517, ep. 522; Allen 2:444-49; CWE 4:209-10. 66 Bude to Tunstall, 19 May 1517, ep. 583; Allen 2:560-75; CWE 4:351-67. 67 "O philai mousai, an non perpendit ille rem esse sacram amici nomen orbi postens-

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iterated in letters from Louvain in March to Beatus Rhenanus, Paolo Bombace, and to his "longest-standing Maecenas" ("Moecenafs] vetustissime"), William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, to whom he protests that "Richard Pace has caricatured me in his book as a poor starveling, though anyone might almost take me for a Midas"; while joking uneasily that "If this is my reputation, some of it is to be laid at your door" he claims that he has patrons galore to whom he can turn. 68 Writing to Pace himself on the same day, however, he adopts a very different tone: after complaining of his characterization in De fructu, he enlists Pace's help in prodding various benefactors, claiming "What I need is ready money." 69 So, while admonishing Pace for portraying him as impoverished, Erasmus is happy to recruit him in a personal fund-raising drive. And of course, how can he really blame Pace, when the words in question were not only written by Erasmus, but published by him—three times by the time Pace's book was launched. Nor did the De fructu debacle lead to Erasmus cutting the passage: it appears again in the Froben folio edition of his letters in 1529. 70 Here we need to return to his letter to More: "he mentions me so often by name . . . in such a way that an enemy could not have done me more harm . . . Does he suppose that what any noisy fellow anywhere drivels over his cups deserves to be set forth for the world to read?" 71 What the editors miss in their dating of the letter, accepting this as a real incident, is Pace's ironic humor: Erasmus is quoted not by the humanist Pace but by the horn-carrying noble fool. Both sides of the argument are fighting with the weapons of Erasmian humanism: the voice supposedly of the noisy fellow drivelling over his cups belongs to Erasmus himself. But the joke, by "dividing" Erasmus between the two men, provides a que, tradere . . . Quorsum attinebat referre nugas illas de rotulo, de heresibus, de paupertate? An quicquid vsquam inter cyathos effutiunt rabule, dignam esse putat quod orbi legendum propanatur?" Erasmus to More, 22 February 1518, ep. 776; Allen 3:219; CWE 5:301. 68 Erasmus to Rhenanus, 13 March 1517/18, ep. 796; Allen 3:251; CWE 5:344. Erasmus to Bombace, 14 March 1517/18, ep. 800; Allen 3:254-55; CWE 5:349. "Richardus Paceus me suo libello traduxit veluti tenuem inopemque, cum ipse propemodum Midas quispiam viderer. Hec infamia nonnihil ad te quoque pertinet." Erasmus to Blount, c. 5 March 1517/18, ep. 783; Allen 3:235-36; CWE 5:322. 69 "Opus est praesente pecunia." Erasmus to Pace, 5 March 1518, ep. 787; Allen 3:242; CWE 5:331. 70 Epistole alioquot illustrium virorum ad Erasmum Roterordamum, & huius ad illos (1516); Aliquot epistole saneque elegantes Erasmt Roterodamt & ad hunc aliorutn eruditissimorum hommum (1517); Aliquot Epistolx sane que elegantes Erasmus Roterodami, & ad bunc ahorum eruditissimorum bominum (1518); Opvs Epistolarvm . . . per avtorem dtligenter recognitvm, et adiectis innumeris nouis, fere ad trientem auctum (1529). 71 "Denique meo ipsius nomine doleo, quem tones nominat, non dubito quin amico animo, sed tamen ita vt immicus non magis fuerit nociturus: . . . An quicquid vsquam inter cyathos effutiunt rabule, dignam esse putat quod orbi legendum proponatur?" Erasmus to More, 22 February 1518, ep. 776; Allen 3:218-19; CWE 5:301.

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means of splintering the apparent unity of tjhat philosophy, exposing its breaking point, or faultline: that faultline, it becomes clear, is on the opposition of humane letters and marriage. 72 Here the notion of "transaction" helps to clarify Erasmus' apparently contradictory attitudes. The correspondence between Bude and Erasmus was initiated, maintained, and published as the correspondence between two great humanist scholars: in other words, even before a single letter is written, their common ground is accepted—friendship through similarity of studies, in the most basic Ciceronian formulation. Although Pace also belonged (or aspired to belong) to this humanist enclave, he mobilizes the Poverty conceit not across a friendship, or across two men linked by studies, but as an accusation between two men not so linked. In other words, the premise of common ground required for transaction is absent: the same material, despite its place in a humanist text for humanist readers, is expressed across a divide of humanist and nonhumanist. This means that the shared joke about the poverty endured by the humanist scholar is no longer a shared joke, but an accusation against the humanist by the drunken lord, pointing out the humanist's need for patronage and protection, a situation Erasmus is keen to play down. 73 But there is another aspect to this misuse of the conceit. Bude's answer to Erasmus' letter, dated 7 July 1516, picks up the notion and challenges it. [B]achelor as you are, you complain that you have a wife called Lady Poverty, who not merely sits at home but travels around with you, whom you cannot be quit of, range widely as you may, such is the devotion of your odious spouse; and you set off the tedium and disgust she causes you against all my household cares as a husband and a father, just as though in place of your Poverty I had a pretty boy called Wealth, in whom I could take pleasure to my heart's content. Let me make this quite clear: I am, it is true, your rival in the pursuit of Philology, but she whom you call your wife has been pretty much my bedfellow ever since I fell a victim to this crazy love of learning. The only difference is that you call her cursed Poverty in jest, and I in all seriousness the poverty that never 71 I borrow the term from Alan Sinfield, whose criticism has demonstrated a way of "apprehending the strategic organization of texts—both the modes by which they produce plausible stories and construct subjectivities, and the faultlines and breaking points through which they enable dissident reading." Faultlines, 9. 73 The potential poverty of the English humanist can be found in the preface to Elyot's The Image of Governance, where he alleges that some readers will be "dispraysinge my studies as vayne and vnprofitable, sayinge in derision, that I haue nothing wonne therby, but the name onely of a maker of bokes, and that I sette the trees, but the printer eateth the fruites . . . yf I wold haue employed my study about the increace of my priuate commodity, which I haue spent in wrytinge of bokes for others necessary, few men doubt (I suppose) that do knowe me, but that I shuld haue attayned or this tyme to haue ben muche more welthy, Sc in respect of the worlde in a more estimation" (sig. a.uv).

INTRODUCTION

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leaves one's side; so true is it that all serious scholars (few enough!) are haunted 74 by this rival to their mistress Philology, who sticks closer almost than a shadow. While Bude acknowledges the difference between himself and Erasmus, he extends the general misogynistic collapsing of Poverty with the wife by portraying the pleasurable alternative, Wealth, as a pretty boy, endlessly available for the scholar to take pleasure in. While in the context of the careful and extended conceit of Lady Poverty in the letters, this invocation of the pretty boy is just about acceptable (and anyway ascribed to Bude), the reference to the exchange by the drunken nobleman places the conceit in the hands of the antihumanist accuser, in the hands of what humanism has designated as the old order. The fissure of the Erasmian ideal of letters caused by both the nobleman and the humanist Pace using Erasmian ar­ guments exposes the chink in the humanist project: by gaining a place in society (or at least support for living) through skill in letters rather than through involvement in the maintenance of kinship through marriage, the humanist is obliquely challenging that system of alliance. Pace's work highlights that opposition by Assuring "Erasmus": in the resulting chink, we see the spectre of the pretty boy, the constant accusation of human­ ism's failure to engage in the perpetuation of kinship. And yet the accusation of sodomy against the humanist comes from the humanist himself.75 The banter about the pretty boy Wealth comes from a published correspondence by two key humanists: their objection, if that 74

"Nam cum sis ipse coelebs, Peniam quandam nomine vxorem tibi esse conquereris non tantum domesticam sed etiam viatoriam, quam nulla quantumuis longa peregrinatione possis a te abigere, vsqueadeo ab inuisa vxore adamare; humsque toedium odiumque om­ nibus oeconmicis meis curis, coniugahbusque et paternis, opponis, perinde quasi Peniae tuae loco ego Plutum pusionem iucundum habeam, in quo oblectare me ex sententia animi mei possim. At ego te hoc ignorare nolo, me quidem riualem esse tibi in amore philologiae, sed quam tibi vxorem esse dicis non longe a contubernio meo abfuisse, ex quo hoc insano hterarum amore captvs sum. Hoc tantum refert quod tu earn kataraton penian ioculariter, ego serio penian ouk hademonousan voco: vsqueadeo omnes vere studiosos, qui ran sunt, ista velut aemula philologiae comitatur, vmbra prope dixerim sequacior." Bude to Erasmus, 7 July 1516, ep. 435; Allen 2:275; CWE 3:332. 75 This feature is to be found in Lodovico Ariosto's sixth satire: written by a humanist to a humanist (Pietro Bembo) in the hope of procuring a humanist education for his son, its author Ariosto nonetheless draws attention to the sodomitical possibilities of that educa­ tion. "Few indeed are grammarians and humanists without that flaw which forced, rather than persuaded God to make Gomorrah and its neighbors sad. . . . The people laugh to hear one has a vein of poesy, and say 'What a risk it is if you sleep with him and turn your back on him.'" ("Pochi sono grammatici, e humanisti, I Senza il uitio, per cui Dio Sabaor I Fece Gomoro, e ι sui uicini tristi . . . Ride il uolgo, se sent' un c'habbia uena I Di Poesi, & poi dice e gran periglio I A dormir seco, Sc uolgergli la schiena." Le satire, sigs. G.iiij v -H r ; trans. Rudolf B. Gottfnend, The Satires, 48. See Barkan, Transuming Passions, 48-59, 66-74. For another humanist on humanist sodomy accusation (although across national borders), see Ingnd D. Rowland, "Revenge of the Regensburg Humanists, 1493," Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994): 307-22.

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objection were indeed real, was not at the hint of sodomy, but at its omission in the retelling of the story. Pace tells of the humanist's wife Lady Poverty, but without the Pretty Boy Wealth—humanism's weakness (its material dependence on patronage) without its threat (a same-sex erotic attraction away from lineage considerations). Erasmus, it seems, was more than willing for the literate world to share the joke about the Pretty Boy Wealth; it was the deadweight wife Poverty he wanted to keep well out of sight.

This book argues that the writings of early modern England are especially resonant for the modern gay man, and that the texts gain their resonance as records of and vehicles for relationships between men. Texts were commissioned, written, taught, learned, presented, dedicated, accepted, and read within a series of socially acknowledged but socially problematic transactions between men, which necessarily impinge on the texts themselves. As such, this study is a negotiation between contemporary gay male sexuality and early modern humanism, and it takes as its starting point an early intersection between the two: when one of the founders of English sexology and homosexual apology hit on a flaw in his image of an idyllically homoerotic Florentine afternoon. The dependence of the early sexology movement on both the classical world and the Renaissance is made clear in Chapter One, where the scholarly work of John Addington Symonds on quattrocento Florence is interrogated through the gayappropriated figure of Angelo Poliziano, and the set of social relations involving patron, wife, and patronized scholar that might be described as the "Poliziano" model. In Chapter Two, an examination of the propagandistic agenda to which sodomy was put in the English Reformation campaigns of the 1530s—both in visitation reports and dramatic and polemical texts— leads to a consideration of the effects of the dissolution of the monastic libraries, and their implications for the writing of English Protestant history. John Bale is the key figure who moves from cloistered Carmelite prior, to married advocate of the "new learning," to a more considered reconciliation of a new Reformed history with a sodomitical monastic past. As we have seen, Thomas Elyot's Boke named the Governour (1531) proposes a model of humanist textual transaction, based on similarity of study and friendship, which underlies the discussions in Chapters Three and Four, respectively, of the educational experience of boys and the anxious relationship between Ciceronian ideals of amicitia and older feudal loyalties. In Chapter Three, the early modern schoolmaster is put under

INTRODUCTION

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scrutiny, in an examination of the accepted but unacceptable role of eroticized beating as evidenced in the schoolbooks that taught boys Latin, from the vulgaria of John Stanbridge, Robert Whittinton and William Horman through to the "enlightened" works of Richard Mulcaster, in the sodomy scandal involving the Eton headmaster and key educationalist Nicholas Udall, and in the social and textual transactions underlying the key educational tract by Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster. Chapter Four dramatizes the problems surrounding friendship by interrogating its roles and representations in the scandal in 1548 preceding the downfall and execution of Sir Thomas Seymour, an affair in which many humanists, including Ascham and John Astley, were closely involved, and from which they called on their alibi of amicitia to escape, both in the manuscript accounts of interrogations, and in their later printed and unprinted "literary" works. It proposes that what has frequently been read as a homoerotic scene in Ascham's Scholemaster is in fact a deliberate strategy to evacuate the act of reading of dangerous political significance. My final chapter continues this interest in the ways in which male intimacy is often used to disguise the political nature of textual transaction. The position of the male secretary, the most intimate of the posts open to the humanist scholar, is interrogated through the contemporary metaphor—popularized by Angel Day—of secretary as closet: a term with considerable gay political resonance, and current queer theoretical mileage today, and with differently but equally loaded meanings in the Renaissance. I argue that our current mis-taking of the closet as a space of solitary isolation is prefigured in the humanistic accounts of the closet, which obscure its function as a transactive and generative space. This study then, unlike many of its peers, does not primarily explore representations of sodomy in early modern England, nor does it locate analogies with modern male homosexuality in the sixteenth century. Rather, the book moves between the two, picking up on images of "close readers" that appear to have recognizably gay modern import—two men sharing a bed, the closet, the close friendship—and on those people and institutions which early modern society pointed to as sodomitical: the beating schoolmaster, the cloistered monk, the humanist bedfellow, the closeted secretary. In its constant resonances with our contemporary concerns and problems, the Renaissance's place in the history of homosexuality may here be seen to have been more than a passing phase.

CLOSE

EADERS

Chapter One FROM SINGING BOY TO SCHOLAR THE DEATHS, LIVES, AND LETTERS OF ANGELO

POLIZIANO

C U R L Y - H E A D E D Q U A R R Y M E N AND S I N G I N G BOYS

I

T MIGHT seem perverse to open an exploration of early modern English humanism and sodomy in the heady artistic circles of quat.trocento Florence. Yet this is where, historically, the tradition of homophile apology that structures gay scholarship's relationship with Renaissance England took its inspiration and established its icons. This chapter examines the ways in which a preeminent literary figure, poet and scholar Angelo Poliziano, was appropriated to this proto-gay tradition, and argues that it is in Poliziano's specific place within the complex social structures of quattrocento Florence, as much as in his homoerotic verse, that we can find his vulnerability both to contemporary accusations of sodomy and to later appropriations by a gay criticism. James Saslow has written of the group of late nineteenth-century scholars who were "actively concerned to resurrect and analyze homosexuality as a historical phenomenon," "conceptual pioneers of what is now termed gay studies," and especially of John Addington Symonds, whose studies of Michelangelo, Cellini, and The Renaissance in Italy, drawing on hitherto unconsulted archival sources, "were the first to redress the bowdlerizations and oversights of earlier writers." 1 For Symonds, the English Renaissance and the nascent study of homosexuality were two intensely personal concerns, 2 but he fell short in his copious writings of connecting the two directly. In order to make the associations he wished to highlight, he turned instead to the Italian Renaissance—as indeed in his personal life he turned to Italy: In the winter of 1875—6 my health, as usual, began to fail. Dr. Beldoe recommended me to go to the Riviera. My wife and I accordingly settled at S. Remo 1

Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, 46, 14. Symonds edited works by Ben Jonson, Sir Thomas Browne, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood, John Webster, and Cyril Tourneur as well as producing critical works on Philip Sidney, Jonson, and the influential Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama. 2

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in February. There I wrote a large part of the second volume of my Renaissance in Italy. It has also to be mentioned that I took a fancy there for a curly-headed quarryman from the hills beyond Savona. This amour did not advance far beyond Platonic relations.3 As his long-suppressed Memoirs demonstrate consistently, lurking behind each of his major and influential critical works—including the massive Renaissance in Italy—is a string of quarrymen, guardsmen, and coalmen, purveyors of casual sexual liaisons, which appear to have been at least as important to Symonds as the ostensible object of his studies.4 As Wayne Koestenbaum has written, Symonds was "the first writer in British history who felt that his sexual preference was central to his literary career," his autobiography a work "remarkable for recognizing no bridge between growth as writer and growth as homosexual." 5 When the reader is forewarned, a rereading of the second volume of The Renaissance in Italy, the tome contemporaneous with the curly-headed quarryman from the hills beyond Savona, reveals this preoccupation creeping beyond Symonds's private diary and into the text. Take, for example, his reworking of this already poetic flight by the historian Henry Hallam: In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, [Lorenzo de' Medici] delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.6 In Symonds's hands, the idyll unfolds further: As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole, or linger beneath the rose-trees that shed their petals from Careggi's garden walls, once more in our imagination "the world's great age begins anew;" once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose . . . Savonarola in his cell below once more sits brooding over the servility of Florence, the corruption of a godless Church. Michael Angelo, seated between Ficino and Poliziano, with the voices of the prophets vibrating in his memory, and with the music of Plato sounding in his ears, rests chin on hand and elbow upon knee, like his own Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, 3 John Addington Symonds, The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds, ed. Phyllis Grosskurth, 253. 4 See, for example, the encounter with the "brawny young soldier" at "a male brothel near the Regent's Park Barracks" in February 1877, as Symonds was giving three lectures on "Florence and the Medici" at the Royal Institution. Memoirs, 253-55. 5 Koestenbaum, Double Talk, 5 and 43. See also Koestenbaum's analysis of Symonds's collaboration with Havelock Ellis on Sexual Inversion in ibid., 4 3 - 6 7 . 6 Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, 1:43.

FROMSINGINGBOYTOSCHOLAR

5

whereof the afterfruit shall be the Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs. Then, when the strain of thought, "unsphering Plato from his skies" begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a sing­ ing boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo's last-made ballata.7 The observant reader might detect some unexpected intruders into Hallam's scene, most obviously the pensive Michelangelo and the brooding Savonarola; both these, I would argue, are meant to signify to that obser­ vant reader the nature of Symonds's appropriation of Hallam's history. Michelangelo was—then as now—a reference point for homosexuality. Far from being cell-bound, Girolamo Savonarola exerted great energy in attacking what he saw as prevalent vices, allegations to which the men at Fiesole were vulnerable. In his sermon of 1 November 1494, Savonarola urged Florence: "Abandon, I tell you, your concubines and your cata­ mites [cinedi]. Abandon, I say, that unspeakable vice, abandon that abominable vice that has brought God's wrath upon you, or else: woe, woe to you!" On Savonarola's own death at the stake just four years after his antisodomy sermon, Benevenuto del Bianco, a member of the Council of Ten, was heard to remark: "And now we can practice sodomy again!" That the Medici group feared him is well established: when Savonarola held his infamous Bonfire of Vanities in 1497 and 1498, several of Lorenzo's intimate circle threw their works into the flames.8 The scene is artfully menace-free, its emphasis on youth, music, and male company, its possible threats (women, Savonarola) elaborately ab­ sent. And this complete acceptance is necessary, for Symonds wants to identify Poliziano as one of the key "humanists of the third age," a third age which, in the context of the invention of printing, and a renaissance in Italian, saw the gradual disappearance of "the vagrant professors of the second period," and the emergence of a new "republic of letters" crystal­ lizing "round men of eminence in coteries and learned circles," the emer­ gence, in fact, of "the age of the academies" with Florence as the "capital of learning," and Lorenzo as "the master spirit of this circle." 9 The gar­ den at Fiesole works simultaneously as a representation of this new "re­ public of letters," the most eminent of "coteries of learned circles," in Florence, encircling Lorenzo himself, and as the erotic fantasies of a Vic7

Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Vol. 2, The Revival of Learning (London, 1877), 3 2 2 -

23. 8

". . . lasciate, dico, Ie vostre concubine ed ι cinedi . . . Lasciate, dico, quel vizio indicible, lasciate quel maledetto vizio che tanto ha provocato l'ira di Dio sopra di voi; che, guai, guai a voi!" P. Villari and E. Casanova, Scelte dt prediche e scritti di Fra Girolamo Sa­ vonarola, 61, 63. See Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, 47-48 and nn. 73-74; Rich­ ard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 350, 470; Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn, 169. 9 Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 2:310-12.

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torian homosexual. This "republic of letters" provides Symonds with first, a conveniently distant culture about which to make his polemical points and second, a culture in which certain social structures are very clearly defined and understood. Florence thus takes on an iconic significance, standing for "the Renaissance," without dangerously implicating English culture. This gathering clearly draws on what were to become Symonds's obsessions. From his essay "The Renaissance" in 1863 he produced a body of work that deliberately drew parallels from the ancient world, the Renaissance, and his contemporary society. Greece and Italy were a constant source of inspiration: 10 as Robert Aldrich points out, Renaissance in Italy "was for many decades the standard English language study of the Renaissance. In a variety of genres . . . [l]ate nineteenth-century attitudes towards Italy, the Renaissance and Antiquity, as well as enlightened attitudes towards homosexuality, owed more to Symonds than to any other writer in English." 11 But today Symonds is best remembered for the sideeffects of his immersion in Greece. The final chapter of his Studies of the Greek Poets dealt with "Greek love"; a decade later he produced A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883), which Jeffrey Weeks has described as "the first serious work on homosexuality published in Britain," 12 and later A Problem in Modern Ethics (completed by 1890, published in 1896), which reached a new view of homosexuality through a survey of the literature on the subject, and went on to propose legal changes. More crucially, Symonds coauthored with Havelock Ellis the first (German) edition of Sexual Inversion: his family pressured Ellis into removing Symonds's name posthumously from the text before the first British printing in 1897. 13 10

Studies of the Greek Poets (1873-76); Sketches in Italy and Greece (1874); Sketches and Studies in Italy (1879); Sketches in Italy (1883); Italian Byways (1883); New Italian Sketches (1884); Renaissance in Italy (7 vols., 1875-86); and Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (2 vols., 1893). Symonds translated the sonnets of Michelangelo and Tommaso Campanula (1897), translated the autobiography of Benevenuto Cellini (1888), the memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi (1889), and wrote critical works on Dante and Boccaccio (An Introduction to the Study of Dante [1872], Giovanni Boccaccio as Man and Author [1895]). His work was issued in popular form as A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy (ed. A. Pearson, 1893) and even translated into Italian, as Il rmascimento in Italia, by S. Fortini Santarelli (1879). His tastes in contemporary poetry led, tellingly enough, to his study of Walt Whitman (1893). 11 Aldrich, Seduction of the Mediterranean, 79. 12 Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out, 51. Weeks devotes an entire chapter (4) to a consideration of Symonds's contribution. See also Aldrich, Seduction of the Mediterranean, 77—85. Aldrich illustrates the effects of various texts on Symonds's early homosexual development: Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Priam in Homer's Iliad, and later Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus (77-78). 13 See Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side, 217 n.l.

FROMSINGINGBOYTOSCHOLAR

7

Evidently the garden at Fiesole is designed to represent the Renaissance appropriation of the Platonic symposium. And yet this neoplatonic academy falls short of the idyll Symonds desires. The homoeroticism is evident: while Michaelangelo is "lost in contemplation" and Pulci declaims his Morgante, Poliziano's contribution to Symonds's Fiesole is represented not actually by the poet himself—although he is physically present—but by a singing boy, bidden to tune his mandolin to the poet's "last-made ballata." In this picture is encapsulated Symonds's interest in the poet—a poet of song, indeed of singing boys. But the fantasy cannot be sustained. Trouble-free though Fiesole may appear, Symonds cannot suppress the tension that underlies the situation. Poliziano is bound to Lorenzo by more than a symposium. Symonds describes how Poliziano entered into Lorenzo's household and undertook the tuition of his sons, until their mother Clarice saw reason to mistrust his personal influence. There were, no doubt, many points in the great scholar's character that justified her thinking him unfit to be the constant companion of young men. Whatever may be the truth about the cause of his last illness, enough remains of his Greek and Italian verses to prove that his morality was lax, and his conception of life rather Pagan than Christian. 14

Through footnotes and cross-references, Symonds directs his reader to "The well-known scandal about Poliziano's death" (p. 354 n.l) and to some Greek elegiacs, specifically the Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and the love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus (p. 348, n.2). There is an almost touching crudity in the way Symonds ensures that the erotic Greek poems and the lurid accounts of his death are precisely signposted, in contrast to the rather broad brushstrokes of much of his work. It is not surprising then, as Symonds took his place at the forefront of the early study of homosexuality, that his picture of Renaissance Italy should hold sway amongst critics sympathetic to his rose-tinted vision and that Poliziano should find his way into the writings of Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis, and finally into The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse and the Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality.15 But I shall be arguing that the most important signal that Symonds picks up on is the dispute between Clarice de' Medici and Poliziano, a dispute centering on the incompatibility of traditional kinship structures through which Clarice understands her social status, with new service relations that appear to bypass 14

Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 2:354. Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes Von Sanitdtsrat, 669; The Pengutn Book of Homosexual Verse, ed. Stephen Coote, 137: Coote credits a piece translated as "Unto the Breach" to "Andrea Poliziano (1454-1495)" [sic]; Giovanni Dall'Orto, "Poliziano (Pohtian), Angelo Ambrogini known as (1454-1494)" ra Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality, ed. Wayne R Dynes, Warren Johansson, William A. Percy, with Stephen Donaldson, 2011-12. 15

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F R O M S I N G I N G BOY TO S C H O L A R

those structures, through which Poliziano has reached his intimate position in the Medici household. Following Symonds, gay critical references to Poliziano deal mainly with two areas: his homoerotic verse, and allegations and speculations about his sexual activities, the literature and the life usually considered separately. But Symonds is not merely referring his reader to the poetry but to the poetry in association with the story of "the cause of his last illness." It is to that last illness that I now turn.

DEATHS OF THE A U T H O R

When the Basel publisher Nicholas Episcopius Junior came to produce his edition of Poliziano's works in 1553, twenty years after the last revision, he added several new items. Prefatory notices of praise were taken from previously published works by Poliziano's former student Petrus Crinitus, from Erasmus, Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, and from the punning epitaph on his tomb: "In this tomb lies Angelo, who had one head, and, strangely enough, three tongues." 16 Except for the two lines of Erasmus, Episcopius appears to have lifted these recommendations directly from the source of his biographical notice, from Paolo Giovio's Elogia verts clarorum virorum. This collection, published in 1546, brought together a series of short biographical sketches of famous men of letters; it obtained wider currency over the following few years as Giovio was lured from Rome to the Florentine court of Cosimo de' Medici, and his works were subsequently published in profusion by Lorenzo Torrentino; the Elogia appeared in a successful vernacular translation by Torrentino's associate Hippolito Orio in 1552, the year of Giovio's death. 17 The governing conceit of the sketches was that these were word-pictures to accompany portraits of the men hanging in Giovio's villa at Como. Corresponding closely to the traditional blazon format, his portraits nonetheless did not shy clear of the less acceptable aspects of their subjects. In the case of Poliziano, Giovio found himself with plenty of intriguing material with 16 Angelo Poliziano, Opera . . . quae quidem extitere hactentvs, omnia, longe emendatius quam usquam antehac expressa, sig.* 3 ~ \ The encomia were first published in Petrus Crinitus, De honesta disciplina lib. XXV, sig. k.ir; Desidenus Erasmus, "Ciceromanus dialogus," in De recta Latini Graeciqve sermonis pronvntiatione . . . dialogvs. Eiusdem Dialogus cut tituus Cicerontanvs, siue, De optimo genere dicendi. Cum alijs nonnulis, quorum nihil non est nouum, sig. S.iijv; Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, "Eroticon liber. HII," Poetae, sig. M r _ v . The epitaph reads: "Politianus in hoc tumulo iacet Angelus, unum I Qui caput, & linguas, res noua, tres habuit." None of these writings had been used in previous editions of Poliziano's works. 17 Paolo Giovio, Elogia verts clarorum virorum imagimbus apposita. Quag in musxo loviano Comi spectantur. Addita in calce opens Adriani pont. vita; trans. Hippolito Orio as Le iscrittioni poste sotto Ie vere imagtni de gli huomini famosi.

FROMSINGINGBOYTOSCHOLAR

9

which to play. Indeed, when Episcopius came to appropriate the sketch for his edition, he found himself compelled to remove two sentences, toward the end of the piece, which told of how an insane love borne by Poliziano for a boy threw him into a fatal sickness. Burning with desire, and scorched by the searing fever, the poet snatched up his cither and sang verses to the limits of his strength until finally, delirious, life abandoned him, and he met a disgraceful death. 18 The story is clearly scandalous. Sodomy was illegal in Florence, and the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries witnessed a heightened rhetoric against the offense. The punitive measures instituted included in 1432 the evocatively named Ufficiali de' notti, a tribunal that received and investigated anonymous accusations of various crimes, including sodomy: among the familiar names falling foul of this body were Leonardo da Vinci in 1476 and Botticelli in 1502. The Florentine diarist Luca Landucci records the reformation of certain laws against the "vizio innominabile" on 29 December 1502, and tells of the fate of a group of men convicted under that accusation in March 1505/06. 19 Penalties were severe: grown men could be castrated; boys between fourteen and eighteen years were subject to a heavy fine of 100 lire; for boys over eighteen, the penalty rose to 500 lire. Procurers could pay for their wrongdoing with a fine or the loss of a hand; repetition of the crime led to the loss of a foot. Fathers of accused boys were treated by the law as procurers; the house in which the act of sodomy took place was destroyed; indeed, matters reached such a pitch that "anyone found day or night in a vineyard or a locked room with a boy who was not a relative was suspect." This late fifteenth century panic appears to have been a specifically Florentine phenomenon: Venice experienced a similar tightening of laws over half a century earlier (in 1418, 1422, 1431, and 1455). 20 During its seventy-year 18

"Ferunt eum ingenui adolescentis insano amore percitura, facile in lastalem morbum incidisse. Correpta enim Cithara, quum eo incendio, & rapida febre torreretur, supremi furons carmina decantauit, ita, ut rnox delirantem, uox ipsa, & digitorum nerui, &C uitalis denique spintus, inuerecunda urgente morte, desererent." Giovio, Elogia veris darorum virorum, sig. F ivv; Orio, lscrittiont, sig. k.n r - v . 19 Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentmo dal 1450 al 1516 . . . continuato da un anonimo fino al 1542 pubblicato sui codici della comunale di Siena e della Marucelliana, ed. Iodoco Del Badia, 251, 273-74 and 274 n . l ; trans. Alice De Rosen Jervis as A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516 by Luca Landucci Continued by an Anonymous Writer till 1542, 201, 218. 20 There is no published study of homosexuality in Renaissance Florence to compare with Guido Ruggiero's work on Venice, but on Florence's earlier drive against sodomy during the crisis years of the 1430s see Gene Brucker, ed., The Society of Renaissance Florence, 179 and 201-206; Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 3 7 9 82; Trexler, "La prostitution florentine au XVe siecle': patronages et clienteles," Annates: Economies Soctetes Civilisations 36 (1981): 983-1015; Saslow, Ganymede in the Renais-

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tenure from 1432 to 1502, the Ufficiali de' notti adjudicated cases involving over ten thousand men and boys and convicted around two thousand. Florence evidently provided a fertile breeding ground for gossip and accusation: even Giovio himself became posthumously the subject of a scurrilous epitaph generally ascribed to Aretino: "Here lies Paolo Giovio, hermaphrodite, I who knew how to play both husband and wife." 21 Evidently Episcopius found the passage unacceptable, even within a sketch that made no bones of Poliziano's famously odd face, his rows with rival scholars, and his generally unsavory character. Paolo Giovio paved the way for what was to become an extravaganza of historical scholarship of which its catalyst would have been proud. By the time Werner Jacob Clausius wrote his life of Poliziano in 1718, there were nineteen versions of the truth of his subject's death on which to draw; Friedrich Otto Mencke's 1736 biography contains an endnote on the controversy that runs to fifteen pages, while Norberto Alexandra Bonafous' 1845 study gives thirteen pages to an exhaustive discussion of over two dozen sources and counter-sources.22 The epitome of this macabre scholarship was reached in 1897 when the Florentine scholar Isidore Del Lungo published in his collection of essays Florentia a piece entitled "Pagina di cronaca," which surveyed the literature to date and added some manuscript writings, most notably a letter from Antonio Spannocchi in Campriano to Ricciardo Cervini in Castiglion d'Orcia, dated 14 October 1494. Spannocchi's letter tells a sensational story: Poliziano had fallen in love with a beautiful boy and had conducted himself disgracefully. Eventually the boy fell mysteriously ill, saying to the doctor, "Quaerite a PoIitiano"; he became mad and in his insanity spoke frequently of Poliziano. When at last he died, Poliziano's name was heard in rumors that spread across Florence. Fifteen days after the boy's death, Poliziano himself fell ill, his raving surpassing that of his lover of whom he spoke constantly: he believed himself to be God and wanted everyone to adore him; he called sance, 47; Wittkower and Wittkower, Born Under Saturn, 169-70; Vern. L. Bullough, Sexual Variance in Society and History, 416; Michael J. Rocke, "Il controllo dell'omossualita a Firenze nel XV secolo: gli Ufficiali di notte," trans. Nicola Grendi, Quaderm storici n.s. 66 (1987): 701-23; Rocke, "Sodomites in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany: The Views of Bernardino of Siena," in The Pursuit of Sodomy, 7-32 [previously published as Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988)]. See also Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 109—45 for an analysis of the archival evidence relating to sodomy accusations in Venice during this period. 21 "Qui giace Paolo Giovio Ermafodrito I Che seppe far da moglie, e da manto." Gian Maria Mazzuchelli, Vita di Pietro Aretino, 137-38. Mazzuchelli finds ascription to Aretino doubtful but concedes it is of long standing. 22 Werner Jacob Clausius, Politianus, swe de Angeli Bassi Polttiani, canomci olum Florentine atque ingemorum aetatis suae facile principis, vita, scriptis et moribus liber, sigs. E v -E3 r ; Friedrich Otto Mencke, Historia vitae et in literas meritorum Angeli Politiani, ortu

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Pico Peter; he tried to strangle his erstwhile student Piero de' Medici. Finally, Spannocchi writes, he died. 23 It might be assumed that, with this contemporary source revealed, the controversy might be at an end, and certainly, in his rigorous adherence to scholarly disputes already some two and a half centuries old Isidore Del Lungo was the last of a breed. The twentieth century has on the whole been unwilling to enter into the minefield of Poliziano's demise, and the two articles published on the matter up to 1960—by Vincenzo Chiaroni and Juliana Hill—display a properly modern concen with forensic evidence, quite literally so following the disinterment of Poliziano's remains in 1940. 24 Recent years, however, have witnessed a resurgence of interest: the rediscovery of a fifth Poliziano "sylva," "In scabiem," suggested to G. Del Guerra that Poliziano died of syphilis, a thesis that he expounded in two articles in the early 1960s. Vittore Branca's 1983 study of Poliziano cast doubt on the Spannocchi letter in order to extricate the scholar from the slur for which Branca held Giovio solely responsible. Carlo Dionisotti, responding in 1985, demonstrated how Branca's argument was untenable: several accounts of Poliziano's death were not only written but published before Giovio started work on his own. It was the reticence of the Italian academic community to deal with homosexuality, he claimed, that had kept this argument alive.25 Ambrogini, 4 5 9 - 8 3 ; Norberto Alexandra Bonafous, De Angeli Politiani vita et operibus disquisitiones, 153—65. 23 A. Spannochi to R. Cervini, 14 October 1494. "Scordavami dirvi che il Poliziano e morto: e la causa e stata questa, che ipse adamabat quemdam puerum forma adeo decorum et venustum Ut nihil supra: quem adeo discrete tractavit, ut sexus locum perdiderit. Quo facto puer ille aegrotavit ilhco: et quaerentes medici quare valetudinanus esset, nullum reddebat causam, sui ipsius conscius. At ipsi instantes: Quaerite, inquit, a Pohtiano. Et dicto citius insanivit: quae quidem insama nil ahud praeter de Politiano dictibat. Et tandem mortuus est. Quod ubi exivit in vulgus, rumor factus est Florentiae maximus, hunc homicidam nefarium puerorumque stupratorem inhonestissimum gladio cruce igne mori debere. Quae res tu ipse cogita quantum homini, graecae pariterque latinae linguae hac tempestate disertissimo, moeroris ac pudons attulent. Qui videns iam fama, cui mirum in modum studbat extolli, se ipsum excedere, febricitans aegrotavit. Qui quindecim dies [ante] obitum suum eadem furiositate qua puer affectus est; imo ardentius de puero, quam puer de ipso dixisset, praedicaverat: Christum se esse aiebat; ab omnibus volebat adoran: accessit Ioannes Mirandulae comes, quem illico divum Petrum appellavit: accessit Petrus Medices discipulus olim suus, quem aduncis manibus oppressit in gutture, et fere ipsum interfecit. Et sic denique hac cum insania diem clausit extremum. Nescio de ipso quid sit tua cum patria faciendum: an de vita et virtute gratulandum, an de morte et vitiis dolendum." Cit. Isidore Del Lungo, FlorenUa: uomint e cose del quattrocento, 265-66. 24 Vincenzo Chiaroni, "Le ossa del Poliziano," La rinascita 2 (1939): 476-86; Juliana Hill (nee Cotton), "Death and Politian," The Durham University Journal 15 (1954): 9 6 105. 25 G. Del Guerra, Uno Sconoscmto "Carme" sulla lue di Angelo Poliziano, Scientia veterum 4 (1960); idem., "La malattia e la morte di Angelo Poliziano in relazione alia

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Rather than enter into this honorable tradition, I shall argue that the scholarly desire to put Poliziano to rest that has produced work of this near-obsessional energy can be better understood if we avoid the questions of priority which inform the arguments of Del Lungo, Branca, and Dionisotti, and subject the sources to a different analysis. To enable that, I shall bring into play another account of Poliziano's death that has no claim to historical verisimilitude. When he first published his damning portrait in 1546, Giovio balanced it by printing with it a verse by one of Poliziano's proteges, Pietro Bembo. This lament, usually entitled "Tumulus Politiani," tells of how exultant Death, as Lorenzo's body is dragged to his funeral, hears the sound of an insane lament by a bard accompanying himself on a lute. Death takes offense at the presumption of the poet, and strikes him down. In the final line of the poem, the poet is revealed as Poliziano.26 Clearly, this was not intended to provide a real account of Poliziano's end—Lorenzo died on 8 April 1492, over two years before Poliziano; Poliziano, as might be expected, did indeed write a monody to his late patron, that was set to music, but he certainly finished it. 27 What we are dealing with here is a fairly conventional poetic expression of the grief of a poet for his dead patron. Or is it? In 1656 the Lettres Choisies of Jean de Guez, commonly known as Ie Sieur de Balzac, were published by the Elzevier brothers in Amsterdam. The volume included a letter dated 21 September 1646 to a Monsieur Colardeau, Procureur du Roy at Fontenay, advising him on how to use (and how not to use) Latin in the composition of his "illustres." Commenting that very few have the true gift of elegant Latinity, Balzac writes elegia 'In Scabiem,'" Atti del primo Convegno su Ximanesimo e Cbristianesimo, 113-22; Vittore Branca, "Marginalia: 4. La morte e la dispersione del hbri," Poliziano e I'umanescimo della parola, 322-26 and nn. 2 0 - 2 8 ; Carlo Dionisotti, "Considerazioni sulla morte del Poliziano," in Culture et societe en Itahe du Moyen-Age a la Renaissance, 1 4 5 56. The debates are summarized in Attiho Bettinzoli, "Rassegna di studi sul Poliziano (1972-1986)," Lettere italiane 39 (1987): 53-125 at 55 n.5. 26 "Dvceret extincto cam mors Laurente triumphum, I Lxtaque pullatis inueheretur equis; I Respicit insano ferientem pollice chordas I Viscera singultu concutiente uirum. I Mirata est; tenuitque iugum: furit ipse; pioque I Laurentem cunctos flagitat ore DEOS. I Miscebat precibus lachyrmas, lachrymisg«e dolorem; I Verba ministrabat hberiora dolor. I Risit; & antiquse non immemor ilia querela;, I Orphi Tartarea; cum patuere ui£e, I Hie etiam infernas tentat rescindere leges; I Fertgwe suas, dixit, in mea iura manus. I Protinus & flentem percussit dura poetam; I Rupit & in medio pectora docta sono. I Heu sic tu raptus: sic te mala fata tulerunt I Arbiter Ausonias Politian£e Lyra;." Giovio, Elogia, sig. Gv. This publication of Bembo's verse appears to have been overlooked even by Bembo scholar Marco Pecoraro, who gives as the first publication the 1552 editio princeps of Bembo's verse by Gualtero Scotto: Carminum Ubellus (Venice, 1552), 45. See Pecoraro, Per la storia dei carmi del Bembo: una redazione non vulgata, 204. 27 Poliziano's monody was set to music by Heinnch Isaac, known as Arngo Tedesco, and is subtitled in the Aldine edition "intonata per Arrighum Isaac." For the setting see

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You must satisfy the curiosity of the greatest number, by something singular and remarkable, which will stick in the memory, and don't go off the track with the sound of the words. In this respect the maker of Italian Elogies is far more diverting and instructive that his counterpart in France, although he's not as Latin nor as elegant. For example, isn't it good to know the truth about PoIiziano's death, that Cardinal Bembo disguised in the epitaph he wrote? . . . . I advise you to wake the reader up with some similar details in the life of your "illustres." Mix together as much as you can the curious story with the beauti­ ful language; don't forget the salt of Paolo Giovio in the same festins where you use Saint Marthe's sugar.28 Balzac sees in Bembo's lament a disguised version of Poliziano's death while singing on his lute a love song to a girl—a bowdlerization of Gio­ vio's story, admittedly, but it is to Giovio all the same that he refers CoIardeau. 2 9 Balzac is clear that Bembo's lament is another version of the same story told by Giovio: that the poet struck down while singing a monody to his dead patron, is the poet struck down while singing a love song to his (variously gendered) lover. Although the proliferating accounts of Poliziano's death generate end­ less extra details and twists, they can all be read as variations on two themes: the story told by Paolo Giovio, that Poliziano died after singing to a beloved boy in the midst of a fever, and the story told by Pietro Bembo, that Poliziano died in the midst of writing an elegy on his dead patron, Lorenzo de' Medici. Both have their adherents. Since Balzac, sev­ eral critics have noticed points of similarity between them—the sudden death, the excess of emotion, the singing of poetry to his beloved—and gone on to argue that Bembo's story is a correction or a bowlderization of Giovio's story, or equally that Giovio provides an obscene reading of Bembo's story. These rival conclusions are impossible to prove: Giovio's story and Bembo's elegy were first published together in 1546, but both

Isaac, Weltliche Werke, ed. Johannes Wolf (Denkmaller der Tonkunst in Osterreich, xiv Jahrgang, Erster Teil), 45-48. 28 "Il faut contenter la curionste du plus grand nombre, par quelque chose de particulier & de remarquable, qui demeure dans la memoire, & ne s'en aille pas avec Ie son des paroles. Et en cela Ie faiseur d'Eloges d'ltahe est beaucoup plus divertissant & plus instructif que celuy de France, quoy qu'il ne soit pas si Latin ni si elegant. Par exemple, n'y a-t-rl pas plaisir de βςβνοΐΓ la veritable mort de Politien, que Ie Cardinal Bembe a deguise dans l'Epitaphe qu'il luy a fait?. . . . Ie vous conseille de resveiller !'attention du Lecteur par de semblables particulantez de la vie de vos Illustres. Meslez tant que vous pourrez, Ie curieux de l'Histoire avec Ie pur de la Langue; & n'oubliez pas Ie sel de Paul love dans les mesmes festins ou vous employerez Ie sucere de Sainte-Marthe." Jean de Guez, Ie Sieur de Balzac, Lettres choisies, 105-106. 29 In a further twist, Isaac Bullart, writing in 1682, cites Bembo's verse as an account of the way that Poliziano fell down a staircase as he sang on his lute an elegy he had composed on the death of Lorenzo. Of course, there is no staircase in either Bembo's poem or Giovio's

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were circulating in manuscript long before that date. In his extensive bibliographical study of Bembo's works, Marco Pecoraro states with certainty that Bembo wrote the "Tumulus Politiani" in 1494-95, shortly after the subject's death, but the two manuscript sources he cites are both sixteenth century in origin (one belonging to Ariosto). 30 Giovio appears to have written some form of sketch on Poliziano as early as 1521, according to a letter sent on 28 August of that year to Mario Equicola, secretary to Isabella d'Este-Gonzaga. 31 Poliziano is not mentioned again in his correspondence until January 1545 when Giovio asks Pier Vettori for his opinion of some of the sketches, and verification of the year, month and date of death of several of his subjects, including Poliziano.32 The only extant manuscript of the Elogia, written by Giovio and two copyistsecretaries is at present undated. 33 So while common sense would probably date Bembo's lament before Giovio's, we cannot at present assume the priority of either. This apparent impasse can, I believe, be to our advantage. For without the notion of priority to hinder us we can examine the two stories as simultaneous rehearsals of feelings about Poliziano's death. Although, as we have seen, there are points of contact between the pieces, there are perhaps wider differences. Giovio's story is scandalous: the love of the poet for the boy is unacceptable because of the boy's gender and the excess of the emotion, as expressed both in the act of singing while ill, and in singing in the street. This is a passion which is publicly, socially unacceptable. Bembo's story, on the other hand, is set within the context of a socially sanctioned patronage relationship. Within these parameters, the outpouring of emotion in song by one man for his patron is not only conventional, it is expected. This is the critical line taken by

elogy—presumably Bullart is drawing on Balzac here. Bullart, Academic des sciences et des arts, 2 vols., 1:277-78. 30 Pecoraro, Storta dei carmi del Bembo, 136: "11 Politiani tumulus e certamente del 1494—1495, postenore, cioe, di poco alia morte del grande poeta . . . " (see also 209 for same conclusion). The manuscripts are Biblioteca Comunale, Ferrara ms. autografo dell' Ariosto, fol. l v . and Biblioteca Antoniana, Padua, cod. 635. fols. 13 v -14 v . Pecoraro prints the Paduan ms (163-64), which contains several additional lines and alterations (196). 31 We know that by this date he possessed portraits of illustrious men of letters to adorn his stanze: portraits "in primis Pontani, Mirandulae, Politiani, Ficini, Hermolai, Sabellici, Achillini, multorumque aliorum, ut Dantis, Petrarchae, Bocacn, Aretini, Baptistae Alberti, Pogii, Argyropoli, Savonarolae, Marulh et simihum." Giovio to Mario Equicola, 28 August 1521. Giovio, Lettere volume prtmo (1514-1544), Opera I, ed. G. G. Ferrero, 92. 32 "Vorrei sapere l'anno, il meso e giorno della morte di questi vostri citadini . . . del Poliziano . . ." Giovio to Pier Vettori, 16 January 1545. Giovio, Lettere volume secondo (1544-1552), Opera 11, ed. Ferrero, 7. 33 See introduction to Giovio, GIi elogi deglt uomini illustri (Letterati—artisti—uotnim d'arme), Opera VHI, ed. Renzo Meregazzi, 1 9 - 2 1 .

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William Roscoe in his 1795 Life of Lorenzo de' Medici in which, significantly, Bembo's elegy is taken as recounting a real story: "Such was the object of the affections of Politiano, and such the amorous effusion, in the midst of which he was intercepted by the hand of death." 34 Indeed, it was this "attachment to that [Medici] family" that contributed to his fall: "whatever was the immediate occasion of his death, indisputable evidence remains, that his misfortunes were not so much to be attributed to his misconduct or his immorality, as to his steady adherence to the family of the Medici, at a time when the public resentment against them was excited to the highest pitch, and that he breathed his last in the midst of his relatives and friends." The strategies that Roscoe uses here to contain the myths surrounding Poliziano's death are significant. Lest even intense emotion for a patron be considered too personal, Poliziano's grief is widened to include the misfortunes of the entire Medici family, in which he was implicated by association, and the specific misfortune of the destruction of the library of which he was librarian is evoked. "Steady adherence" to family is thus inserted in place of personal immorality; his lonely death is now watched over by "friends and family," and his insane passion replaced by a proper consideration of his burial, "in the church of S. Marco, in the habit of the Dominican order" entrusted to a favorite (and holy) student, Robert Ubaldino, whose handwritten and incontrovertible testimony rewrites the story. It should be noted that Roscoe does not attempt to erase the passion for a man that Poliziano's detractors alleged against him, but rather skillfully relocates that passion so that it is for a man who is in many sense "family."35 But while the demands of funerary verse sanction this emotion, the same cannot be said of such a display in reality. As Ronald G. Witt has written, death was central to (rather than the opposite of) Florentine life: " 'Did he make a good end' was not simply an attempt to solicit information about the deceased's final hours but about the character of the total life." Moreover, as George McClure and Sharon Strocchia have shown, ' 4 Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo, 2:259. Some years later, Roscoe concludes, Bembo paid tribute to Poliziano with an elegy in which "alluding to the unfinished monody of Politiano, he represents him as sinking under the stroke of fate, at the moment when frantic with excess of grief, he was attempting by the power of music, to revoke the fatal decree which had deprived him of his friend" (2:260-61). Once again, the tale was misconstrued: "The fiction of the poet, that Politiano had incurred the resentment of death by his affection for the object of his passion, suggests nothing more than that his death was occasioned by sorrow for the loss of his friend; but the verses of Bembo seem to have given a further pretext to the enemies of Politiano, who appear to have mistaken the friend whom he has celebrated, for the ob]ect of an amorous passion, and to have interpreted these lines, so honorable to Politiano, in a manner, not only the most unfavorable to his character, but the most opposite to their real purport, and to the occasion which gave them birth" (2:262). 35 Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo, 2:256-57, 263-64.

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the humanist "good end" was quite specific, demanding outward selfcontrol accompanied by inner consolations of philosophy and religion, a combination exemplified by Salutati leaving his wife's funeral in 1396 to administer the oath of office to incoming priors. This attitude was put on an official footing by Bruni's chancery reforms of 1436, which forbade signs of public mourning to members of the Signoria, principal communal officials and their notaries. Strocchia argues further that they "made the customary work of mourning a gendered task": These new models of public behavior introduced deep cleavages between the disciplined actions of learned men, on the one hand, and the customary, "disorderly" behavior of women, on the other. Paradoxically, at the same time humanists denied themselves this traditional emotional outlet, they still anticipated that women, especially their female kin, would honor the dead in the usual ways, although preferably at home rather than in the streets. . . . It was women, not men of power and prestige, who performed laments, selfmutilating gestures, and other physical expressions of grief. . . . this controlled demeanor at important public events both groomed future intellectuals and officeholders for the appropriate exercise of political power and offered them new definitions of manhood.36 Within this analysis, Bembo's elegy can be seen to be playing out in verse an emotion between scholar and patron that would be unacceptable in real life. The kind of restraint sketched by Strocchia is to be found in Poliziano's account of Lorenzo's exemplary death, as related in a lengthy letter to Jacopo Antiquario. Lorenzo's last energies are spent on cheering his beloved scholars Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, sitting at Lorenzo's side, and Poliziano, reclining on the bed near his patron's knees. With an unfailing spirit, Lorenzo jokes that he wishes he could obtain a reprieve from death until the scholars' library is completed. Savonarola arrives to exhort Lorenzo to stay firm in his faith; as he goes to leave, Lorenzo calls the holy man back and asks him for his benediction. His final hours are spent in meditation, occasionally repeating verses from the scriptures; he expires peacefully, kissing a crucifix. This is the perfect "good end." But Poliziano's account is compromised by an earlier episode. Poliziano enters Lorenzo's death chamber. On hearing his voice, Lorenzo tells him to approach, and clasps Poliziano's hands, gazing at him. Poliziano attempts to conceal his sobs, and when Lorenzo finally loosens his hold, is forced to rush into another apartment, fling himself onto the bed, and give 36 Ronald G. Witt, "Preface" to Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald G. Witt, and Rona Goffen, vii-xiv at viii; Sharon T. Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence, 119. See also George W. McClure, Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism, and the essays in Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Tetel et al.

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way to his grief. This account, 1 suggest, demonstrates the difficulties of expression inherent in the scholar-patron relationship: in order for the scene to produce the required effect, the farewell scene between Lorenzo and his scholars must be dignified, and their relationship should be seen as one of scholarly endeavor—Pico and Poliziano are elaborately produced as scholars, and Lorenzo as scholarly patron, with constant reference given to their work on behalf of the Medici library—ultimately, the patron's death means no more than the library is notfinished.And yet at the same time, Poliziano wants to show his particular personal relationship with Lorenzo, hence the scene between the two men before Pico's arrival, and the excess of intense emotion shared by the patron and the scholar—Lorenzo's too-firm grasp of Poliziano's hands, Poliziano's extreme, uncontrollable grief. The discrepancy between what is denied in life and demanded in verse commands our attention. As Lauro Martines has pointed out, love poetry of the period shared a common rhetoric with the discourse of compliment that oiled the wheels of a patronage-based society. In such verse, the female love object is referred to in terms of lordship, tyranny, dominion, or sovereignty; she is "my lord," the poet/lover her subject and servant, held in servitude or bondage to her. Martines evidently views the transfer of this vocabulary as emanating originally from the patronage society, and mapping itself onto love poetry—in his view, "the question of sexual politics was not preeminent." But he admits that "The equations were also reversible: in verse to or for the prince, he was assigned the qualities that made him worthy of love, along with a lashing of physical love, as when a servant said to his Lord: I belong to you body, soul, blood, and bone. In the assumptions of the age, servants and subjects owed a kind of tangible love to their princes and lords."38 With his "kind of tangible love," Martines here neatly sidesteps the more difficult kinds of tangible love that might exist between a servant and his lord. The sheer conventionality of Bembo's elegy, where a servant (Poliziano) collapses and dies because his lord (Lorenzo) has died, can 37 Poliziano to Jacopo Antiquario, 15 June 1492. Poliziano, Opera omnia, 4 6 - 5 1 (Epistolae 4:2). This account is the basis for the deathbed scenes in the two classic studies of Lorenzo: Antonio Fabroni, Laurenti Medicis Magnifia vita, and Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo. Poliziano's extreme grief is prefigured in his account of the Pazzi conspiracy. After seeing the body of the assassinated Giuliano de' Medici (Lorenzo's brother) Poliziano, "trembling, and hardly in possession of myself for the grief" has to be supported home by friends ("ibi titubans, &C ptae doloris magnitudine uix satis animi compos, a quibusdam amicis subleuatus, domumque sum deductus"). "Angeli Politiam de pactiana in Lavrentivm et Ivlianvm fratres, vniuersamq«e Medicasam gentem coniuratione, Historia siue Commentarius," Opera omnia, 636-43 at 639; trans. Elizabeth B. Welles as "The Pazzi Conspiracy," in The Earthly Republic, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, 305-22 at 314. 38 Martines, "Politics of Love Poetry," 130, 131, 130.

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blind us to the material implications of the piece. The message of the poem is that Poliziano cannot live because Lorenzo is dead. In this, Bembo is recasting the actual elegy that Poliziano wrote on Lorenzo's death, one that he did finish without fatal accident.39 Although the poem is noted mainly for its odd metrical structure, its content deserves some attention, representing as it does, in John Sparrow's words, "the last tribute by the greatest scholar to the greatest ruler of the day." 40 Picking up on the Vulgate Jeremiah 9:1, "Quis dabit capiti meo aquam et oculis meis fontem lacrimarum," Poliziano yearns to weep by night and day, comparing himself to the widowed turtledove, the dying swan, and the nightingale. Lorenzo becomes (through the conventional punning on the Latin form of his name) the laurel, celebrated by the Muses' chorus and the nymphs' chorus, now fallen after a sudden stroke of lightning. Under the laurel's broad spreading foliage, the lyre of Phoebus sounds more lovely, his voice sounds more sweet—now all is mute, all is deaf. The tribute to the patron inevitably becomes a lament for the changed status of the patronized: the fall of the laurel means that the lyre and the singer no longer sound the same—the poet is mute, because the patron is deaf. Bembo's verse effectively dramatizes this scenario. As John Sparrow notes, Bembo "singled out [this Monodia] for mention [in his elegy] and with considerable poetic licence . . . he represented Politian as dying while in the act of reciting it at Lorenzo's funeral." 41 The verse pays tribute to the need for personalized patronage: without Lorenzo, Poliziano is potentially nothing, as good as dead. He is in a position of dependence at once as intimate as a wife (attending on the deathbed) and yet without any guarantee of sustenance. Both Poliziano's own monody for Lorenzo and Bembo's tribute to Poliziano bear witness to this phenomenon. Bembo presents, within the sanctioned and safe space of poetic elegy, the unacceptable emotion that exists between Poliziano and Lorenzo, casting 39 "Quis dabit capiti meo I Aquam? quis oculis meis I Fontem lachrymarum dabit? I Vt nocte fleam, I Vt luce fleam. I Sic turtur uiduus solet, I Sic cygnus monens solet, I Sic luscinia conqueri. I Heu miser, miser, I O dolor, dolor. I Laurus impetu fulmmis, I IHa ilia iacet subito, I Laurus omnium Celebris I Musarum chons, I Nympharum choris. I Sub cuius patula coma I Et Phoebi lyra blandms, I Et uox dulcius insonat. I Nunc muta omnia, I Nunc surda omnia, I Quis dabit capiti meo I Aquam? quis oculis meis I Fontem lachrymarum dabit? I Vt nocte fleam, I Vt luce fleam. I Sic turtur uiduus solet, I Sic cygnus moriens solet, I Sicluscinia conqueri. I Heu miser, miser, I O dolor, dolor." Poliziano, Opera omnia, 621-22. 40 John Sparrow, "Latin Verse of the High Renaissance," in Italian Renaissance Studies, 354-409 at 405. Sparrow believes it to be "surely? an artistic failure," but notes its stylistic "deep impression" on works by Panfilo Sassi, Quintianus Stoa, and Andrea Dazzi. He discounts U. E. Paoli's contention that the form was modeled on Greek tragic choruses. See Paoli, "La trenodia del Poliziano," Studi italiani di filologia classica n.s. 16 (1939): 1 6 5 76. 41 Sparrow, "Latin Verse of the High Renaissance," 405.

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Poliziano as the woman publicly bewailing her dead man. Giovio's scene makes vivid that unacceptability by taking the figures out of a patronage relationship and playing instead solely on the intimacy between two men: here the beloved is a boy, and the relationship by its very nature sodomitical. Such a reading leads us back inevitably to John Addington Symonds and the pseudo-symposium at Fiesole. Here Lorenzo is surrounded by scholars, but Symonds portrays them in their more recognizably courtly garb. Poliziano is present, but he does not sing his own song—there is a singing boy to do it for him. So in this one image Symonds presents both Poliziano the respectable scholar, secure in the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Poliziano as singing boy, compromised and compromising in an all-male environment. UNLETTERED, AND A W O M A N

It still remains to speak of Poliziano's personal relations to the Medicean family. When hefirstentered the household of Lorenzo, he undertook the tuition of his patron's sons, and continued to superintend their education until their mother Clarice saw reason to mistrust his personal influence. There were, no doubt, many points in the great scholar's character that justified her thinking him unfit to be the constant companion of young men . . . Clarice contrived that he should not remain under the same roof with her children.42 John Addington Symonds deals with the three embarrassing aspects of Angelo Poliziano with a revealing sleight of hand. The homoerotic verses and the lurid allegations about his death are relegated to a footnote: the "casual" reader would not encounter them. In his portrait of the idyll of Fiesole, apres Hallam and with the historical respectability endowed by that austere scholar, Poliziano takes his place at Lorenzo's side, with Pico, Landino, and the rest: only by comparing the two descriptions could a reader realize that Symonds had also introduced Michelangelo and the singing boy, for that added Platonic frisson. But the anxiety has to be conveyed by something or somebody, and Symonds found his answer in Poliziano's dismissal from the position of tutor to Lorenzo's children, a dismissal not apparently in the hands of the Magnifico, but of his wife, Clarice, daughter of the prominent Roman Orsini clan. Symonds was not the first to make this point, although the first critic to draw attention to the incident was Antonio Fabroni, as late as 1784, when the philological battle over Poliziano's death was already in full flight. In his two-volume biography of Lorenzo de' Medici, Fabroni writes of Poliziano: 42

Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 2:354.

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Reproached for his hard character, this poet's talent seduced all other minds, although he could not himself master his own feelings. He finally pushed the patience of Clarice de' Medici too far: in a fit of anger she forbad him to enter her house. He had many detractors—not only of his work, but of his life. The singular attachment that Lorenzo de' Medici showed him provoked envy and hatred. People were indignant above all because he was sometimes charged with correcting the works of others. This duty rendered him hateful to Bartolomeo Scala, author of writings published under the name of the Florentine Republic, whose style was as hard as his character.43

Here, in one paragraph, Fabroni addresses all the anxieties he encounters in the character of, and by extension his study of, Poliziano. For Fabroni's task in hand is a biography, not of Poliziano, but of his patron Lorenzo, and thus some of the confusion evident in this paragraph might be read as a certain exasperation at having to address the matter at all. But as he shows, the questions of Poliziano's character and the singular love shown for him by Lorenzo are inextricably linked. The contradiction at the heart of Poliziano, he argues, is that his skill as a poet and as a humanist, his control in these fields, is belied by his lack of control in other fields—as exemplified, finally, by the way in which Clarice was forced to throw him out of the Medici country house at Cafaggiuolo. At the same time, he blames the resentment felt by the likes of Scala onto the attachment shown by Lorenzo. The index entry to this passage makes explicit what is only implicit on the page: that this is a discussion of Poliziano's "mores difficillimi." The reference is not—as we might expect—to his singing epigrams or his beloved boy, but instead to an incident earlier in his life. The "mores difficillimi" are demonstrated by their outcome when Clarice de' Medici, Lorenzo's wife, expelled him from the house. This expulsion is further cross-referenced to no. 161 of the supporting documents that comprise Fabroni's second volume, a letter from Clarice to Lorenzo, written from Cafaggiuolo in May 1479: Magnifice Conjux, &c. I hear that the plague is committing more ravages in Florence than usual. Your wife and children pray with all their might that you will take care of yourself, and if you can, with due precaution, come here and 45

"Quidni irascamur Poetae, qui cum ceterorum animos facile molliret, minime a se obstinere posset mansuetudinem morum atque facilitatem? Quapropter haud est mirandum si postquam jamdiu tentasset patientam Claricis Mediceae, adeo in se concitavent iram illius, ut ab ea domo fuerit expulsus , multos que habuent non solum studiarum suorum, sed etiam vitae obtrectatores. Ipse singulans amor, quo ilium prosequebatur Laurentius, concitabat aut invidiam, aut odium; & quae interdum ab eo mandata habebat de corrigendis alientis scriptis, ut accidit in iis, quae Bartholomaeus Scala vir oratione atque moribus durus Reipublicae Florentinae nomine exaravit, caussam majorum offensiorum dabant." Fabroni, Laurentn Medicis Magnifia vita, 1:158-60.

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see the festival we should be greatly consoled. I don't want to be turned into a laughing stock by Franco, as Luigi Pulci was, nor do I want Master Angelo to be able to say that he will stay in your house when I disapprove; nor that you have put him into your own room at Fiesole. You know I told you that if you wished him to remain I was perfectly content, and although I have endured a thousand insults if it has been by your permission I will be patient, but this I can hardly believe. I quite understand that Ser Niccolo has entreated me to make peace with him. The children are all well and long to see you, I long even more, for I have no other torment than that you should be at Florence during such times. I commend myself always to you.44 What remains unexplained in Fabroni's careful cross-referencing is how exactly Poliziano's most difficult morals are at stake in his expulsion from Cafaggiuolo. Poliziano entered the Medici household in 1473, three years after he had first won Lorenzo's attention at the age of sixteen by dedicating to him Latin hexameter translations of the second and third books of the Iliad. His exact status in the household has exercised commentators to the present day—secretary? chancellor? librarian? friend? tutor? nurse? —and our confusion as to his precise role is no doubt underpinned by some contemporary anxiety. Certainly at some point, probably in about 1475, Poliziano undertook the education of Lorenzo's very young sons, Piero and Giovanni, and it was at least partially in this capacity that he accompanied Clarice and the children out of Florence in 1478, victim of a combination of political danger (following the Pazzi conspiracy) and plague. During this exile, relations between Clarice and the tutor became increasingly strained until in May 1479 she threw him out of the house at Cafaggiuolo in which they were staying. Poliziano was sheltered by Lorenzo and remained as librarian of the Medici library, but was replaced as tutor, and never again enjoyed quite the same intimacy with his patron. Since Fabroni's first allusion, the episode at Cafaggiuolo has been retold and expanded, until it has entered into a sort of humanist folklore, 44 "Magnifice Conjux ec. Intendo costi la mana far danno piu che l'usato. Quanto possano e prieghi di vostra donna & figliuoli vi exorto a dovervi guardare, & anche se possete con riguardo di qui venire a vedere queste feste, ci sara consolatione. El tutto nmetto in vostra prudentia. Harei caro non essere in favola del Francho, come fu Luigi Pulci, ne che Messer Agnolo possa dire che stara in casa vostra a mio dispetto; & anche 1'habbiate facto mettere in camera vostra a Fiesole. Sapete vi dissi, che se volevi che stessi, ero contentissima, e benche habbia patito, che mi dica mille villanie, se e di vostro consentimento, sono patiente, ma non che Io possa credere. Credo bene che Ser Niccolo per voler fare pace con lui, me habbia tanta sollecitata. E fanciulh sono tutti sani, & hanno voglia di vedervi, &C maxime io, che non ha altro struggimento che questo, habbiava a star costi a questi tempi. Sempre a vol mi raccomando." Clarice de' Medici at Cafaggiuolo to Lorenzo in Florence, 28 May 1479. Fabroni, Laurentius Medtcis Magmficis Vita, 2:288; Lives of the Early Medici as Told in Their Correspondence, ed./trans. Janet Ross [hereafter Ross], 218-19.

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being perhaps most fully exploited in Alan Moorehead's elegant essay "The Ghost in the Villa." 45 In many of the accounts, the PolizianoClarice quarrel is seen in terms of personal resentment. In 1795, William Roscoe characterizes Poliziano as "restless, impatient of control, concentering all merit in the acquisition of learning," a man who "could brook no opposition to his authority. The intervention of Madonna Clarice, in the direction of her children, was in his judgment impertinent, because she was unlettered, and a woman" (2:152). Writing in the late nineteenth century, Isidore Del Lungo claims that from the beginning of her marriage to Lorenzo, Clarice "showed a distaste for the somewhat unbridled gaiety of the democratic city, the elegant scepticism of men who were at once scholars and courtiers, and those transactions between citizen and client which, in the service of the patron, could corrupt even old republican blood. These and other things [were] offensive to her Roman pride, and her feeling as wife and mother. . . . She even succeeded in driving Poliziano from the house, preferring the society of Ser Matteo Franco, a worthy chaplain and writer of humorous sonnets." 46 Alan Moorehead develops this portrait of Lorenzo's wife: There is something desperately pathetic about Clarice. Yet for some reason— perhaps because the list of her worries is too long and too complete—it is difficult to feel as sorry for her as one ought to be. She is the apotheosis of neglected wives. Married to a brilliant man, whose friends she never quite liked or understood, saddled with too many children too quickly, suffering from consumption and possibly well aware of Lorenzo's love affairs, there never seems to have been a moment when she could relax with a quiet mind.47 These accounts place the dissension entirely in the private sphere. The alleged personal incompatibility of Clarice and Poliziano is made to carry a series of binarisms: man/woman (with the invocation of Clarice's near constant pregnancies), humanist/Christian, Florence/Rome, intellectual/ non-intellectual.48 All these accounts, moreover, place the quarrel as dis45

Alan Moorehead, "The Ghost in the Villa," in The Villa Diana, 107-50. Del Lungo, 'Women of Florence, trans. Mary O. Steegmann, 199. Del Lungo is followed by Janet Ross in her 1910 edition of the Medici letters, who writes of "The stiff, proud Roman, Madonna Clarice," "irritable and anxious about her husband, whose attitude towards the Holy See she, with her education, could not approve," a woman who "had never known how to gain her husband's love, and did not get on well with his brilliant, sarcastic, rather Bohemian friends." Ross, 208. 47 Moorehead, "The Ghost in the Villa," 125. On Clarice's health see Ann G. Carmichael, "The Health Status of Florentines in the Fifteenth Century," in Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Tetel et al., 28-45 and nn. 199-204 at 33, and 201 n.23: "Clarice began to suffer from catarrh as early as September 1478, late in pregnancy." 48 Precisely the same set of binaries is mobilized in another popular account by Vincent Cronin (The Florentine Renaissance): "Clarice's portrait by Botticelli shows a lady with 46

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tinctly local: both temporally—Moorehead claims that until the winter at Cafaggiuolo, "there was no sign of the famous row that developed later between Poliziano and Clarice; indeed there were no clouds on Poliziano's horizon at all" 49 —and geographically—the title of Moorehead's essay, "The Ghost in the Villa" (which in turn informs the title of the collection in which it appears, The Villa Diana), deliberately limits the impact of the row to the house at Cafaggiuolo, a house utterly isolated in the middle of a particularly bleak countryside. It would, however, be wrong to believe that retreat to the country necessarily entailed a retreat from public life into utter isolation. Numerous accounts tell of formal gift-giving and gift-receiving carried out by Clarice in the country; of crowds of people following the children as they rode out on horseback. As Richard Trexler argues, "As far as the diplomats were concerned, the family palace to which Lorenzo returned was a public place." 50 Rather than blaming the individuals or the location, I shall show the quarrel was structurally based, the structures which collapsed when Clarice expelled Poliziano were always already under strain, and that therefore Clarice's action is not the emotional lashing out of an isolated, impotent, unlettered woman, but a reasoned critique of a set of changing social and textual relations, which were writing her out of Lorenzo's life and out of Florentine history. Stories such as these do not come from nowhere. All these critics write about the incident as if it were an internationally reported event, known to everybody from the moment Poliziano left the Villa Diana. In fact, the dull eyes, stoop-shouldered, almost limp, wearing a plain brown dress and no jewellery. The shyness Lucrezia noted in her seems rather to have been a form of vanity. She belonged to the old feudal world of castles, quarterings and religious narrowness. Literature and the arts, which Lorenzo could discuss with his mother, were closed worlds to her. She disapproved of Lorenzo's gay humanist friends and of his decision, presently, to resist Pope Sixtus. When her sons reached boyhood, she insisted that they learn not classical Latin but Church Latin from the Psalter, and when their tutor, Poliziano, protested, dismissed him and showed him the door, though Lorenzo promptly arranged for his return to the household if not to his tutorial duties. The climate of Florence suited her no more than its values and she often chose to winter in Rome. The marriage, in short, was neither close nor happy" (246). See also Acton, Pazzi Conspiracy, 21-22, 49—50, 66, 102-103 for a similar account. Acton also implicitly contrasts Clarice with Lucrezia Tornabuoni, "a Florentine of intellectual attainments" (12), to whom Poliziano was devoted. Acton (presumably drawing on Symonds's inferences) is particularly inventive on Clarice's reaction to the "symposium" at Fiesole: "Guiliano regretted the absence of women at these intellectual feasts, but their presence would have offended Clarice, who had a notion that philosophy was akin to black magic. The little she had heard of Plato repelled her, for how could the love of men for youths lead to higher things? Surely Socrates must have deserved his hemlock. She suspected that the Platonic Academy had an unhealthy influence" (66). For a slightly more sympathetic account see Judith Hook, Lorenzo de' Medici, 106-107. 4i * Moorehead, "The Ghost in the Villa," 116. 50 Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 444-45.

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story, such as it is, is a narrative intelligently framed around a series of letters, which happen to have survived: from Poliziano to Lucrezia Tornabuoni, from Clarice to her husband, but predominantly, from Poliziano to Lorenzo. The nature of the transmission of the story has not been questioned, however. The letters are in the vernacular—in the case of the letter from Clarice simply because she did not know Latin, but in the case of the letters from Poliziano to Lorenzo a more complex point is made: the letters are evidently designed to pass the censure of a vernacular reader (possibly Clarice?), but they contain phrases in Latin that are equally evidently designed to elude such a reader. These phrases are mes­ sages of urgent affect from Poliziano to his patron, phrases that almost always reveal a highly tense relationship between the tutor and the wife. The Latin phrases are often to familiar classical texts (Virgil's Aeneid and Horace's Odes are used here), thereby drawing not only on a shared lan­ guage, but also on a shared classical education and set of references. 51 For example, on 24 August 1478, Poliziano writes from Pistoja: I hope and trust Your Magnificence has not been disturbed by my letter written this morning under the influence of anger; the want of patience is my great fault. I hope that you will accept these things in good part and that you will attend to our prospects. . . . Piero is well and I take early care of him, all the others are also in good health; but I get all the kicks; yet on account of you the Libyans. I am longing for news that the plague has ceased on account of my anxiety for you and in order to return and serve you; for I hoped and I thought to be with you; but as you have, or rather my evil fortune has assigned to me this post in the service of your Magnificence, I endure it, there is nothing so hard that patience doesn't make light.S2 [Latin phrases indicated in italics] Similarly, o n 2 6 August 1478, Poliziano writes: 51

The phrase "te propter Lybicae" ("on account of you the Libyans") refers Lorenzo to Virgil's Aeneid, where it is part of the attack made by Dido on Aeneas in book IV for stealing away, breaking their marriage vows, and leaving her open to the hatred of the Libyans. See Virgil, Aeneid, 1.207; Horace, Odes 1.24.19. 52 "Desidero assai che la M.V. non si sia turbata d'una mia Ii scrissi stamani, dettatami dalla passione, la quale ho non d'altro che di non potere avere pazienzia. Spero in bonam partem acceperis, rebusque nostris prospectum curabis. . . Piero sta bene, et 10 h ho grandissima cura; cosi tutti Ii altn sono sani. Governiamoci il meglio possiamo: ma a me toccano tutte Ie botte: pure te propter Lybicae ec. Io aspetto con desiderio novelle che la moria sia restata per il sospetto ho di Voi, e per torrare a servire Voi: che con Voi volevo e credevomi stare; ma poiche Voi ο piuttosto la mia mala sorte mi ha assegnato questo grado appresso di V.M., Io sopportero, quamvis durum, nee levius fit patientia." Poliziano in Pistoja to Lorenzo in Florence, 24 August 1478: Poliziano, Prose volgart inedite e poesie latine e greche edite e inedite, ed. Isidore Del Lungo [hereafter Del Lungo], 57-58; Ross, 209.

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I look after Piero and incite him to write; in a few days I think he will write to you in a fashion that will astonish you, we have here a master that teaches writing infifteendays, he is excellent in his trade. The children play about more than usual and are in splendid health. God help them and you. Piero never leaves me or I him. I wish I had to serve you in some greater thing, but as this has fallen to my lot I do it willingly. But I beg you to ensure, either by letter or messenger, that my authority shall not be restricted, so that 1 can more easily guide the boy and fulfil my duty. If this is convenient, of course: if not, what fate brings we will bear resignedly. Be of good cheer and take courage, for great men are formed by adversity. Bear up, and good things will follow for you. I commend myself to you.53 In the middle of a letter that to the Italian reader appears to paint a bright picture of life with the Medici and to encourage Lorenzo in his adversity, comes a Latin passage that tells of a threat to the tutor's authority and thus his efficacy. The exhortations to Lorenzo to stand firm can then be equally read as reflexive. Letters from Lorenzo's son Piero testify to a humanist education, claiming that he is already learning Virgil and Theodore Gaza's grammar by heart, and that the master makes him decline and tests him each day. 54 Poliziano also appears to be responsible for taking Piero to mass, and the younger brother Giovanni is now sometimes included in this arrange­ ment, but there is a clear separation from the realm of "Madonna Clarice

53

"Io attendo a Piero, e sollecitolo a scnvere; et in pochi di credo vi scrivera, che Voi vi maravigherete: che abbiamo qua un maestro, che in quindici di insegna a scrivere, e fa maravighe in questo mestiero. E fanciulli s'attendono a vezzeggiare piu che l'usato, e sono tutti rifatti. Idio aiuti loro e Voi. Piero non si spicca mai da me, ο ίο da liu. Vorrei potere esservi a proposito in maggior cose; ma poi che mi tocca questo, Io faro volentieri. Rogo tamen, ut aliquid aut literarum auit nuntii hue perlatum ivi cures, desque operam, ne quicquid est in me auctontatis, patiantur exolescere, quo et puerum facilius in officio teneam, et meo munere, ut par est, defungar. Sed haec si commodum; sin minus, quod sors feret, feremus ajquo animo. State di buona voglia e fate buono ammo, che e grandi uomini si fanno nelle avversita. Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis. Raccomandomivi." Pol­ iziano in Pistoja to Lorenzo in Florence, 26 August 1578, Del Lungo, 59—60. 54 "Piero seguita in apparare a scrivere, e fassi un buono scnttore, in modo ch'io spero mi torra tosto questa fatica dello senvervi sine argumento, come fo, e io stesse me ne vergogno . . . [CJonosco quanto sono obbhgato a V.M., et porto tanto amore a Piero e agli altri vostri figliuoli, che a pena concedero a Voi, padre. Se accadera qualche cosa, qualche volta, un poco dura e strana, mi sforzero di tollerarla per vostro amore, cui omnia debeo." ["Piero continues to learn to write and will soon be so good a penman that I hope he will relieve me of the trouble of writing without an argument as I do now, so that I am ashamed of myself. . . I know how much I owe to Your Magnificence, and the love I bear to Piero and your other children is hardly second to your own. If anything unpleasant and unkind does sometimes happen I shall endeavour to bear it for love of you, to whom I owe every­ thing."] Poliziano in Pistoja to Lorenzo, September 20 1478. Del Lungo, 64-65.

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and the others." 55 In September or October 1478, under threat of approaching enemy forces, Clarice and her household moved again—this time to the allegedly isolated fortress-villa Cafaggiuolo in the Mugello. Here Poliziano, aside from his work with the boys ("my scholars"), felt himself utterly alone. Indeed, even his contact with the boys appears to have been reduced by the presence of "ser Alberto di Malerba," who "mumbles prayers with these children all day long" ("tutto di biascia ufficio con questi fanciulli').56 In early 1479, while Clarice returned to Florence for the birth of another child in February (a son, named Giuliano), Poliziano was left with Piero and Giovanni and took control of their education again, but on her return Clarice took measures to ensure that di Malerba diluted the undesirable influence exerted by Poliziano. In a letter dated 6 April 1479, Poliziano writes to Lorenzo: Our little friend Piero writes you about what is happening here at Cafaggiuolo; it is my part to explain that his last letter was not, like the previous ones, submitted to me for suggestions while he composed it and then a fair copy made. It was completed in one sitting, as the saying is, and by himself alone. I only suggested in course of conversation what he should write about. The words and the composition are all his own. . . . As for Giovanni, you will have seen for yourself. His mother has taken it upon herself to change his course of reading to the Psalter, a thing I did not approve of. While she was absent he had made wonderful progress. He was able to select, without any help from me, all the letters and syllables in his exercise in composition.57 Things came suddenly to a head: Clarice expelled Poliziano from the house at Cafaggiuolo, replacing him with Martino della Comedia, tutor to the Tornabuoni children.58 Poliziano was evidently forced to leave immediately since he departed without his books and manuscripts. 59 Poliziano wrote to Lorenzo (from Careggi, 6 May 1479) begging his erstwhile patron for an audience to explain the circumstances: I am here at Careggi, having left Cafaggiuolo by command of Madonna Clarice. The cause and the manner of my departure I should wish, indeed I beg of 55

Piero de' Medici in Pistoja to Lorenzo de' Medici, 21 September 1478. See Ross, 2 I l -

ia. 56

Poliziano in Cafaggiuolo to Lorenzo, 18 December 1478. Del Lungo, 69. "Scribit ad te Petrus noster de rebus Cafasolanis: nostrum est autem sigmficare tibi, has postremas ad te litteras, non ut ceteras a me primo, se dictante, exceptas, moxque ab eo scriptas, verum uno, ut ajunt, in actu a se uno formatas. Matenam tantum litterarum nos ad mensam suggessimus: suo sunt verba, suus ordo . . . De Johanne tu videris. Transtulit ]am ilium mater, id quod equidem non probavi, ad Psaltern lectionem, atque a nobis abduxit. Dum ilia abfuerat, incredibile est quam profecerat. Jam omnes per se ipsum litteras syllabasque in dictionem colligebat." Poliziano at Cafaggiuolo to Lorenzo in Florence, 6 April 1479. Fabroni, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita, 2:186-87. 58 Ross, 218, n.l. 59 Pottinger, The Court of the Media, 74. 57

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you as a grace, to explain by word of mouth, it is too long to write. When you have heard me I think you will admit that all the fault is not mine. Out of respect, and not wishing to come to Florence prceter jussa tua, I am here to await the commands of your Magnificence as to what I am to do, because I am yours even if the whole world was against me. If I have had but small success in serving you it was not that I did not serve with all my heart. I commend myself to Your Magnificence, at whose commands I am most entirely.60 A letter to Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici in July 1479 shows Poliziano asking for information about his hopes of regaining employment as tutor: I have been to see Lorenzo several times and cannot describe how well he re­ ceived me. Do try and discover what are his intentions with regard to me; it would surprise me if Piero were allowed to lose time, it would be a great pity. I hear that Master Bernardo [Michelozzo], brother of Ser Niccolo, is with him, but I do not know how his teaching will combine with mine. If he is to remain permanently, then of a truth I can assume that the bubble has burst. But I cannot believe it, and therefore beg you to find out what are Lorenzo's inten­ tions, then I shall know whether I am to arm for a joust only or for war.61 As this letter shows, the fact that Poliziano was reconciled on a personal level to Lorenzo seems oddly separate from the question of whether he would continue as tutor to the boys. As it turned out, Poliziano held his position in the Medici household, but as librarian: his position as tutor was filled within months by Bernardo Michelozzo and his place as con­ stant companion of Lorenzo and of Lorenzo's sons was no longer assured. As Elizabeth Welles writes, "By June 1480, after peace was concluded, Lorenzo returned triumphantly to Florence, and Poliziano was recalled to teach in the Studium. Although peace and security reigned for the next 60 "Io sono qui a Careggi, partito di Cafaggiuolo per comandamento di madonna Cla­ rice. La cagione et il modo di questa mia partita, desiderrei, anzi vi chieggo di grazia, di potervela dire a bocca; perche e cosa pur lunga. Credo, quando m'avete udito, vi accorderete che io non abbi tutto il torto. In effetto, per migliore respetto e per non venire a Firenze praster jussa tua, io sono qui, et aspetto che V.M. mi dica quello abbi a fare; perche sono vostro, se il mondo ci si impuntassi; e si io ho poca ventura in servirvi, non e pero che sempre non vi abbi servito con quanta fede ho avuta. Raccomandomi alia V.M., a' comandi della quale sono tutto." Poliziano in Careggi to Lorenzo, 6 May 1479. Del Lungo, 70. 61 "Sono stato qualche volta poi a Lorenze, ne vi potrei mai dire quanto volentieri m' a veduto. Deh fate, per vostra fe, di spiare il suo pensiero circa al fatto mio; che mi maraviglio molto che Piero s' avessi lasciato perdere tempo, che e troppo danno. Intendo pero e in casa messer Bernardo, fratello di ser Nicolo: pur non so come si ragguagliera el suo tessuto col mio; se gia e' non fosse quivr per istarvi continuo, che direi bene allora che questa boccia fussi pure scoppiata. Ma non credo pero; e pure vi prego tracciate il pensiero di Lorenzo, per vedere se io m' ό armare d'arme da giostra ο pur da battaglia." Poliziano in Fiesole to Lucrezia de' Medici in Careggi, 18 July 1479. Del Lungo, 73.

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twelve years until Lorenzo's death, it was never quite the same. The lieta pace had gone forever."62 L A U G H I N G STOCKS A N D S T O R I E S : PULCI AND FRANCO, CLARICE AND ANGELO

I want to return to a single sentence of the letter written by Clarice to Lorenzo shortly after her dismissal of Poliziano: "I don't want to be turned into a laughing stock by Franco [essere in favola del Francho] as Luigi Pulci was, nor do I want Master Angelo to be able to say that he will stay in your house when I disapprove; nor that you have put him into your own room at Fiesole." 63 In the midst of her assertions of marital loyalty, Clarice makes a plea that she should not "be turned into a laughing stock by Franco, as Luigi Pulci was." Alan Moorehead explains this odd reference (with no supporting evidence) with a story according to which, following his expulsion from Cafaggiuolo, "Poliziano at once began throwing out epigrams in praise of his patron, and it is not difficult to imagine the sort of gossip he spread about Clarice among his friends. Soon the whole court knew about the quarrel, and Matteo Franco, the poet, permitted himself to make a joke which came to Clarice's ears. She was furious." 64 This story feeds easily into the picture of Clarice we have encountered before: Clarice the emotional woman, stuck in the country, paranoically feeling herself the object of ridicule for highly educated cosmopolitan men at court. Such a reading depends on a set of misleading omissions and mistakes: not least of which was that Franco was in fact Clarice's close friend and chaplain, and was with her at Cafaggiuolo rather than back in Florence. Moorehead distorts the text, moreover, to make Clarice the object of Franco's mirth—in fact, the letter implies an analogy between Clarice and Luigi Pulci. The analogy is not easily read off, since it is difficult to line up Pulci/Clarice against Franco/Poliziano: both Pulci and Franco were friends of Poliziano; and Franco, as I have noted, was particularly close to Clarice herself. On the other hand, quarrels between the Medicean humanists were commonplace enough for us to detect that Clarice's reference must be to a specific incident involving Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco rather than any old quarrel in the Medici circles. 62 Welles, "Introduction" to her trans, of Poliziano, "Pazzi Conspiracy," in The Earthly Republic, ed. Kohl and Witt, 293-303 at 302. 63 "Harei caro non essere in favola del Francho, come fu Luigi Pulci, ne che Messer Agnolo possa dire che stara in casa vostra a mio dispetto; & anche l'habbiate facto mettere in camera vostra a Fiesole." Clarice de' Medici at Cafaggiuolo to Lorenzo in Florence, 28 May 1479. Fabroni, Laurentius Medicis Magnifici Vita, 2:288. 64 Moorehead, "Ghost in the Villa," 131.

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29

Luigi Pulci had been an intimate of the Medici family since 1461, forming a violent attachment to Lorenzo. His place had been sporadically threatened, however, by family financial embarrassments, which forced him to retire from Florence life. Pulci's standing within the Medicean household changed as Lorenzo's hold on the city increased. By 1473, this sea change had made itself known by some crucial personnel shuffles: Marsilio Ficino accepted Lorenzo's patronage, Poliziano moved into the Medici palace, becoming Lorenzo's librarian, and later as we have seen, tutor to his children; at the same time Matteo Franco, coming from equally impoverished beginnings, entered the Via Larga as the family chaplain. Pulci did not fit into this new regime, and his attempts to assert his old status led him into trouble. Instead of unconditional support from his patron, to which he had become accustomed, his set of sonnets ridiculing the newly influential humanists earned him a reprimand from Lorenzo; in August 1473 he was forced to counter Lorenzo's gibe that he had undertaken a trip to Bologna in order to avoid dealing with them. Under attack for his morals and alleged religious unorthodoxy, Pulci took Easter communion, and then in September took minor orders: strategic moves rather heavy-handedly reported by one of his supporters, Lorenzo's sister Nannino. It was at this point that Matteo Franco, clearly identified with the new regime, launched his attack on Pulci, ridiculing these attempts to conform in a series of sonnets that were deliberately foul, both in style and content, mercilessly pointing out Pulci's financial difficulties, as well as those of his brother Luca. Pulci replied in kind. Matters came to a head when Pulci composed and circulated his sonnet, "Costor che fan si gran disputazione," which ridiculed the concept of the immortality of the soul. His sonnet was answered by five other sonnets, written by Feo Belcari and circulated by Matteo Franco at Lorenzo's request. By October 1574, Lorenzo was openly acknowledging Ficino as his mentor: the friendship with Pulci was over, and Pulci was sent away on diplomatic missions—trusted and trustworthy, but no longer part of the household. 65 The status of these sonnets has remained in doubt: are they a serious fight, or merely a showcase for the two men to display their literary skills and to amuse the Magnifico? Until late in the last century, critical consensus tended toward the latter explanation, a thesis supported by the way in which the sonnets were later marketed by the printing press. A 65 For a summary of Pulci's career with the Medici, see Edoardo A. Lebano, "Luigi Pulci and Late Fifteenth-Century Humanism," Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974): 489-98; and Constance Jordan, Pulci's "Morgante," 2 8 - 3 2 . On Franco see Guglielmo Volpi, "Un cortigiano di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Matteo Franco) ed alcune sue lettere," Giornale stortco della letteratura itahana 17 (1891): 229-76; and Janet Ross, "A Domestic Chaplain of the Medici," The Monthly Review 6 (1902): 112-22.

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1495 Florentine edition of their sonnets contains a preface which claims insistently that despite their demonstrable enmity, "niente dimanco nel secreto erono amicissimi"—their intent was "per dare piacere & dilectare altri. . . perdilectare & dare piacere a altri disse & fece molte cose per far ridere labrigata." 66 Since a persuasive article by Guglielmo Volpi in 1891, opinion has swung the opposite way, and critics allow that even if the sonnets had their genesis in a light-hearted showfight, they ended up arousing extreme passion and pain. The quarrel is in one sense a playful squabble between rival poets designed to show off their skill, but it is placed in such a context that the playfulness is lost. Firstly, the form of the competition as a vitriolic quarrel is always in danger of turning truly sour; secondly, the context is of trying to win the patronage of the man who is already their patron: in other words, there is a huge emotional and financial investment in maintaining this patronage. 67 But is this all? In his discussion of the quarrel, Edoardo Lebano notes that the reasons usually advanced for the fall-out—"Pulci's so-called natural inclination to slander, his overstated broadmindness, his jealousy over the increasing number of favors Marsilio was receiving from the Medici, and finally Ficino's open support for Franco"—simply are inadequate to explain away the quarrel: it is, he argues, surely "wrong to believe that the poet would risk losing the friendship and protection of Lorenzo de' Medici just to give vent to his feelings of jealousy and personal dislike for a man as learned and as respected as Ficino." Pulci's troubles deepened when he lost the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of Marsilio Ficino, in February 1474 after he wrote to Lorenzo about the latest sonnet. Reviewing the Franco dispute alongside this simultaneous quarrel with Ficino, Lebano traces Pulci's entrenched intolerance of the new intellectual and religious climate. When Ficino lectured in Florence on the immortality of the soul and reward after death, Pulci introduced into his sonnets satire against pilgrims (Sonnet CXLIV) against the immortality of the soul (CXLV), and then went on to deny Biblical miracles. (CXLVI) Florence was scandalized: Pulci was publicly condemned and reprimanded by five open letters from humanists. He pursued the attack (XCVI, XCVII, XCVIII) while Ficino launched a counterattack, until finally in late 1476 Pulci was reprimanded by Lorenzo. A year later he made a public act of repentance by publishing his Confessione, a profession of faith, but by now "he had gone well beyond all permissible limits." When he died in November 1484 at the age of fifty-two, the clergy of Padua (where he was resting) refused to give him a religious funeral, and he was buried outside the cemetery walls of St. Thomas. 66 67

Sonecti di Messere Matheo franco & di Luigi de pulci iocsi & ad ridere, sig. a.iv. Volpi, "Un cortigiano di Lorenzo il Magnifico," 241-46.

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Lebano concludes that "Luigi Pulci's lack of appreciation for the exqui­ site humanistic culture of his time, his disdainful refusal of the religious values of such a culture, and his inadequate cultural background make it possible for us to talk about an 'anti-humanism' of Luigi Pulci. It seems, finally, that . . . Messer Luigi Pulci belongs more to the still medieval methods and ideas of the cultural tradition of the fourteenth century than to the great humanistic tradition of the fifteenth century." 6 8 Agreeing that "in many respects, theirs was a battle fought over the suppression of one kind of culture in favor of another," Constance Jordan argues that Pulci "saw himself attached to the Medici by historical bonds and imagined himself in the guise of a feudal retainer, offering services to his lord and deserving his protection in return" 6 9 and points to what might be per­ ceived as the feudal retainer rhetoric in a letter written by Pulci to Lorenzo, asking for financial support: Recommending myself t o you, I h o p e you will help m e ; and I have for a long time wished that you might be able [to do this], both for your own security a n d that of your dear servants of ages past and of your father's time, for it seems t o me that I a m one of those. Help me, therefore, if you are able, and my p o o r descendants for w h o m I wear myself will live for y o u . 7 0

Jordan suggests that Pulci was unable to conceive of politics "as a sophis­ ticated science" and thus failed "to appreciate the needs of a ruler of Lorenzo's type or to take account of the manipulative side of Lorenzo's public character." 7 1 Pulci's adherence to a rhetoric of feudal retainership was in competition with the new humanist rhetoric used by Franco, Ficino, and Poliziano. Why does Clarice invoke this quarrel? What is at stake—for Pulci and Franco, and, I will suggest, for Clarice—is not the quarrel per se, but rather the positions of the opponents in relation to Lorenzo 7 2 —a situa* Lebano, "Luigi Pulci," 498. 69 Jordan, Pulci's "Morgante," 31-32, 30. 70 "Raccomandomi a te, et spero m'aiuterai; et lungo tempo ho desiderato tu possa, per tua salute propria et de' tuoi cari servitori et antichi et del tuo padre, che a me pare esser di quelli. Aiutami poiche puoi, e ι miei poven nipoti per ch' io m'affatico, viveranno per te." Luigi Pulci, Morgante e lettere, ed. Domenico De Robertis, Letter 23, 976; Jordan, Tula's "Morgante," 30. 71 Jordan, Pulci's "Morgante," 31. 72 This is the real issue in the most extreme antagonism between Bartolomeo Scala and Poliziano. Poliziano denied Scala's account of his close relationship with the Medici by quoting what Lorenzo de' Medici used to say to him about Scala: "Certainly Lorenzo (with whom I lived as part of the family) often used to speak to me about you, and he made it plain enought that he was keeping alive someone else's opinion about you, not his own. You know, however, he often rejected your official letters and gave them to me to rewrite, which was why you disliked and envied me in the first place. Nor did he allow me to tear up

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tion that she perceives as clearly analogous to that of herself and Poliziano. Lorenzo ultimately settled the quarrel in favor of Matreo Franco, who remained as chaplain in the Medici household, while Pulci was set about business of importance, but outside Florence. Following this through, we might see that by invoking Franco's attack on Pulci and applying it as a potential analogy to her position vis-a-vis Poliziano, Clarice is explicitly situating her quarrel with him in the context of "the suppression of one kind of culture in favor of another": Franco's culture in favor of Pulci's culture, broadly a humanist culture in favor of a feudal culture, expressed through the medium of poetic rivalry. This is the line advanced by Vincent Cronin: Clarice "belonged to the old feudal world of castles, quarterings and religious narrowness. Literature and the arts, which Lorenzo could discuss with his mother, were closed worlds to her." 73 Yet, unlike Pulci and Franco, Clarice is not competing in that medium: she represents the classic textbook case of the woman married as part of a gift exchange, forging links between the clans of the Roman Orsini clan and the Florentine Medici. The Orsini were one of the two most prominent Roman families; Clarice's maternal uncle was a cardinal. Three years after the wedding ceremony, Lorenzo wrote "I, Lorenzo, took to wife Clarice, daughter of Signor Jacopo, or rather she was given to me." 7 4 As the work of Christiane Klapisch-Zuber has shown, late fifteenth century Florence was a male society perpetuated through the exchange of women in marriage, the society that was subjected to a famous critique by Gayle Rubin. Rubin argues that marriage can be analyzed as the most basic form of gift exchange, a relationship ostensibly between a man and a woman but in fact functioning as the cementing of relationships between men, establishing reciprocity and kinship. Social organization is in this way guaranteed by the exchange of women between men. Klapisch-Zuber has shown that the woman born into one casa and marrying into another—the casa as both the material house and an entire agnatic group through which kinship and the physical estates are transmitted through the men—had no permanent place in the lineage.75 There would be noththat iambic poem I wrote against you, for someone might say it was a pity for so good a poem to be buried." ("Certe Laurentius [hunc enim famihariter colui] quoties de te mecum loquebatur, satis indicabat, alienum se iudicium fouere, non suum. Scis autem tu quoqwe literas ilium saepe tuas publice scripas reiecisse, nobisq«e dedisse formandas, quae prima odij, liuorisqtte in me tui cause extitit. Nee me passus Iambicum carmem, quod in re scripseram, concerpere: quippe qui diceret esse indignum nimis, ut ita bonum carmem internet.") Poliziano, Opera omnia, sig. P5V (ep. 12:17), discussed in Alison Brown, Bartolomeo Scala 1430-1497 Chancellor of Florence, 218. 73 Cronin, The Florentine Renaissance, 246. 74 Cit. Cronin, The Florentine Renaissance, 245—46. 75 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, trans. Lydia Cochrane, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, 117-118; Rubin, "The Traffic in Women."

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33

ing remarkable in this idea for the quattrocento Florentine woman. But what Clarice perceives here, expressed in her analogy, is that as a retained humanist scholar Angelo Poliziano is an oddly comparable position visa-vis lineage. Dependent on Lorenzo, living in his house, subject to his whims, Poliziano is living with the same sense of personal discontinuity, although by its nature his position is more tenuous. From the first, PoIiziano's literary transactions with Lorenzo are figured as domestic entrances—the same metaphor used by Klapisch-Zuber to describe the exchange of women in quattrocento Florence. In the dedicatory letter to his translation of the second book of Homer, Poliziano writes that his book "comes to you and timidly crosses your threshold" requesting an audience ("viene a Voi, e sale timidamente Ie vostre soglie"); 76 in his case the gambit is successful and Poliziano moves into the palace on the Via Larga. This in itself, however, is not enough to make sense of the analogy: why should Clarice, Lorenzo's wife, be in competition with a humanist retainer? Clarice is responding to a situation that becomes obvious only in the physical absence of the husband/patron. The important issue for Clarice is who gains control of the household: an issue somewhat complicated by the fact that the theoretical Medici household is actually split between several physical residences. While she has successfully thrown Poliziano out of her house at Cafaggiuolo, Lorenzo has immediately resituated him at his house at Fiesole. What Clarice is trying to force Lorenzo to do in this letter is to make a decision that will clarify the position of his wife and his friend/secretary/librarian within his household—hence the stress laid on her possible return to Florence. Isolated at Cafaggiuolo, Clarice and Poliziano are in competition for control of the children's education 77 —in itself, a minor issue, it could be argued, given the extreme infancy of the boys involved. But what they are also trying to control is the direction of the Medici lineage: both attempting to create situations in which they will remain useful, indeed indispensable, in years to come. The quarrel between Clarice de' Medici and Angelo Poliziano can thus be read not as a clash of personalities, nor even as the disagreement of the religious woman and the humanist man on the methods of educating children but as the refusal of the novel patterns of service facilitated by the textual relations of humanism (by which men become socially mobile) to map comfortably onto the existing kinship structures (by which women are exchanged). This refusal renders vulnerable those new service relations precisely on the grounds that they bypass the contracts of marriage (the exchange of women) that validate and perpetuate the kinship system. If, 76

Cit. Del Lungo, Florentia, 119; Ross, Lives of the Early Medici, 156-57. This is the argument of David Quint in the Introduction to his translation of The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano, vi. See also Ida Mai'er, Ange Polttten, 353. 77

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as Jonathan Goldberg has noted, "sodomy is, as a sexual act, anything that threatens alliance," 78 then the very relations between men that are reliant on textual transactions rather than the bonding of chivalry (either by lineage or by sworn service)—the tutor and the student, the learned friends, the master and the secretary, the patron and the artist—become open to attack as sodomitical. But the humanist man has one major advantage over the wife. This battle, like the quarrel between Pulci and Franco, is told in letters—from Clarice to Lorenzo, from Poliziano to Lorenzo, from Poliziano to Lorenzo's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni—and Clarice realizes that the medium is not to her advantage. She may have control of the letters leaving the house, but Poliziano can circumvent her by writing in Latin. When she says "Harei caro non essere in favola del Francho, come fu Luigi Pulci" ("I don't want to be turned into a laughing stock by Franco, as Luigi Pulci was"), the expression "essere in favola" is probably best read as "to be a laughing stock," but its literal rendering "to be in a story" makes clear where the power lies in the creation of laughing stocks. Franco makes a laughing stock of Pulci because ultimately he tells the story, or rather he tells it as a story: hence the publication of the letters with the disclaimers of all enmity: the personal torment recorded by Pulci in his letter to Lorenzo is lost. 79 Clarice also knows that the letters can be used to write a story, a favola; they can be used to turn her into a laughing stock. Which is of course what happened. From the moment Fabroni published Clarice's letter to Lorenzo, a story evolved, still current in the midtwentieth century, which has Clarice as the emotional (although of course cold), pregnant, ignorant, Roman, feudal wife: indeed the apotheosis of neglected wives, unlearned and a woman. It is a portrait that is only possible in competition with the sparkling, erudite, witty, Florentine humanist man, who turns her into a laughing stock.

FORMATION OF A HUMANIST

Poliziano's quarrel with Clarice still resonates through contemporary scholarship. Biographical and even critical accounts of Poliziano tend to break at 1480. 80 As Ida Ma'ier has written in her account of Poliziano's 78

Goldberg, Sodometries, 19. See Jordan, Pulct's "Morgante," 33. 80 See for example G. B. Picotti, "Tra il poeta e il lauro," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 65 (1915): 263-303, and 66 (1915): 52-104; Ma'ier, Ange Pohtien. Alessandro Perosa has already pointed out how this biographical lacuna occurs at precisely the moment of crisis in Poliziano's personal life and the single decisive turning point in his 79

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35

"formation as a humanist," the cut off date imposes itself naturally for two reasons. First, the biographical: Poliziano no longer belongs to the Medici household, is named professor at the Florentine Studio, and de­ votes himself entirely to the collation of ancient texts and his teaching. Second, the intellectual: the crisis period from which he emerges in 1480 has direct repercussions on his scholarly attitudes and activities, notably that he stops writing verse. 81 The break that the story relates is of course a false one. Although Poliziano did have a major split with Lorenzo, and did stay away from Florence for some months, the quarrel was patched up by the end of 1480, and Poliziano remained for the rest of his life within Lorenzo's sphere of influence, overseeing the Medici library, and using the Magnifico's protection at the Studio. Thus the notion of a "clean break" is complicated. In one sense, Poliziano did leave the Medici casa, but what he left was a peculiar distortion of the casa—a wandering headless version of the Medici household, driven out of Florence by war and the plague. In another sense, Poliziano never left the Medici casa, merely leav­ ing the household of Clarice for the Fiesole residence of the Magnifico himself. What is clear, however, is the critical impulse to see this incident as a turning point, not only in the life of Poliziano, but also in the tradi­ tion of humanist endeavor itself. By viewing this appropriation of "1480" (for convenience) in the history of humanism through the appropriation of the same incident by Symonds we can interrogate a contradiction at the heart of humanism itself. The humanist scholar could not work outside a patronage relationship: the "room of one's own" so familiar to the twentieth century was by necessity in quattrocento Italy "camera vostra," as Clarice wrote to Lorenzo. The social climbing by the humanists, which apparently took place through their textual skill and published works, in fact depended ultimately on their relationship with their patron. Anthony Grafton has shown how while the move out of the Medici household can be seen as a key moment in Poliziano's intellectual development, the new emphasis on a methodologically rigorous, textually obscure scholarship came about "in response to a specific historical and biographical situation," namely, "to maintain his position with the Medici, a position which became less intimate after 1480." "Less intimate" perhaps—but I would suggest even more vulnerable to accusation. Eugenio Garin famously complained that "the end of the Quattrocento is marked by a flight from the world, by a distinct turning towards contemplation," a thought developed by Lauro intellectual life. "Contributi e proposte per la pubblicazione delle opere latine del Pol­ iziano," in Π Poliziano e tl suo tempo, 88-100 at 96-97. 81 The Sylvae are an exception to this rule, Ma'ier admits, but contends that they func­ tion as praelectione to his university courses and are fruits of an intellectual, savante, poetic tradition.

36

FROM S I N G I N G BOY TO SCHOLAR

Martines, who sees "the leading intellectual concerns of the humanists" becoming increasingly "literary, philological, and aesthetico-moral," their position "transformed into mere courtiers and professors, often courtier-professors."82 It is in this context that Grafton and Jardine locate pre-1480 Poliziano as "a sort of court poet avant la lettre." They argue that toward the end of the century scholarly energies had been pushed to the margins of political debate, "providing ornamental and propaganda proof of the civility and moral probity of the regime, rather than technical expertise in politics and government" and point out the contradiction: "In this setting, the rhetoric of humanism represents the power of Latinity and eloquence as actual power—as meshed with civic activity in a close and influential relationship. But individual humanists are increasingly pursuing the recondite and arcane in scholarship as an end in itself." Significantly, their remarks on this contradiction between humanist rhetoric and the reality of humanists' existence occur in their discussion of women humanists, which interrogates the implications of women's accomplishment in the field dominated by men of letters. Defining the Florentine humanist community as "essentially . . . a gentlemen's club of noble or nobly-connected scholar-courtiers, who depended upon the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici," they suggest that this club "could not afford to recognise the implications of the fact that a woman could become a member." Following through this logic, they argue that if the gap between accomplishment (the ability of the noble, leisured pupil) and profession (the learned training of the active civic figure) is problematic in the case of women, might it not be so for men in a comparable position? That is to say, do the exchanges of letters between Guarino and Leonello d'Este or between Poliziano and Lorenzo de' Medici prove anything more about the noble pupil-patron than that he is accomplished, in currently validating social terms? It seems that for the nobleman also, who did not in practice earn a living or pursue a career, humanist learning provided the male equivalent of fine needlepoint or musical skill: it provided the fictional identity of rank and worth on which the precarious edifice of the fifteenth-century Italian city state's power structure depended. It read out as "valour," "manliness," "fortitude," "benevolence," the male equivalents of "modesty" and "chastity," but less readily discernible to our modern eye as culturally constructed "moral" attributes. 83

By exposing the lacuna between humanist accomplishment and social usefulness in the case of some outstanding women scholars, Grafton and Jardine bring into question humanist endeavor itself: does it have any 82

Anthony Grafton, "On the Scholarship of Politian and Its Context," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 150-88; Eugenio Garin, L'Umanesimo italiano, 103; Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists 1390-1460,4-5. 83 Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, 94, 47, 45, 48, 57.

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social point? But while the argument is highly disturbing, the examples employed are familiar: at the heart of the chapter is the correspondence between Alessandra Scala and Angelo Poliziano; one of their two examples of a humanist exchange of letters between humanist and patron is that between Lorenzo and Poliziano; their example of "erudition for its own sake" is "Politian's own dedication to Greek studies and textual problems in the last years of his life"—in other words, precisely the erudition that Grafton has earlier identified as being in response to the changing personal situation of Poliziano within the Medici household—which is in turn, of course, precisely the moment that Symonds uses as the catalyst for his hidden discussion of Poliziano's sexuality. And it is this connection which, I believe, throws light on the contradiction that Grafton and Jardine expose: for while humanist expertise may have attempted to read out as "valour," "manliness," "fortitude," "benevolence," the male equivalents of "modesty" and "chastity," the case of Poliziano shows that it was always in danger of being read out as sodomitical. So the disagreement with Clarice, which signals for Symonds the footnotes and cross-references to verses about pretty boys and murky secrets about a disreputable demise, is precisely the signal for a dominant tradition of humanist criticism to identify one of the key moments in its own formation—when a court poet turned his back on the sycophancy of patronage, and forged his own way in the academy, abandoning the verse tributes for the pure, socially disinterested philology of the Miscellanea. In this moment, though, we see the anxiety felt about humanism's threat to the social order: the scholar as competition for the wife in the patron's room; the singing boy entering the garden at Fiesole; the curly-headed quarryman advancing beyond Platonic relations.

Chapter

Two

REMAPPING THE BOUNDS OF SODOMY HUMANISM

AND THE ENGLISH

REFORMATION

T

HE SOCIAL TOPOI of English humanism—the invocation of the classical authority of Maecenas as patron, the forging and maintaining of relationships through an assumed friendship witnessed by a similarity of studies—were not reserved solely to men who subscribed to recognizably humanist notions of scholarship and personal ethics. Among the men who took on these topoi, while remaining vocally opposed to a Ciceronianism he considered godless, was the scholar, playwright and polemicist John Bale, a convert whose writings are being recognized as the foundations of a Protestant English historiography. As Bale had emerged from the cloistered life of the Carmelite priory, his writings had to negotiate a centuries-old anticlerical image associated with lechery and sodomy. He met his challenge with great gusto, providing English polemical literature with some of its most unrestrained attacks on the monastic votaries. As Bale came increasingly to subscribe to a humanist method of self-representation, the reputation of the cleric, who had lived (in his words) "within the bounds of sodomy," becomes complexly implicated in the newly forged reputation of the English humanist.

JOHN BALE—REFORMATION MAN The life and works of John Bale—the Carmelite prior who married and reformed zealously—are often constructed as an uncanny literary encapsulation of the English Reformation:1 taking off from a general assumption that "Bale's experiences as a man were so intimately associated with what he contributed to the world as an antiquarian and writer" comes 1

For Bale's place in the emergence of a Protestant literary tradition see John N. King, English Reformation Literature, 5 6 - 7 5 . Major studies of Bale include W. T. Davies, "A Bibliography of John Bale," Oxford Bibliographical Proceedings & Papers 5 (1936-39) (Oxford, 1940); Jesse W. Harris, John Bale; Honor McCusker, John Bale Dramatist and Antiquary; Thora Balslev Blatt, The Plays of John Bale; Leslie Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation. Recent Bale studies have been stimulated by fine new editions of some of his works: The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. Peter Happe, 2 vols.; The Vocacyon of John Bale, ed. Happe and John N. King (Binghamton, N. Y., 1990). For a reexamination of Bale's important role in the formation of an English national identity, see Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Politics and National Identity, 51-80.

REMAPPING

THE BOUNDS

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the conclusion that, as Thora Balslev Blatt writes, "It is hardly coincidence that Bale's conversion occurs at a time when legislation, based on historical interpretation, effectuates the break with Rome, and the spiritual climate seems to encourage further reformation tendencies." Jesse Harris sees the years immediately following Bale's departure from Jesus College, Cambridge, as the start of a career "which during the next three decades was to bring him into close contact with the life of his times. Roughly, these years bridge the gap between the old and the new drama in England, and Bale is a link between the old and the new." Honor McCusker represents Bale's life story as "a history which exemplifies the conflict of the Middle Ages and the Reformation in the lives of many men." In these accounts, Bale's personal conversion is simultaneous with, and dependent on, the national reformation; in later life, Bale himself exploited this narrative, casting himself as St Paul in the account of his own vocation, during the time of England's troubles in the Marian years.2 Bale's story is briefly as follows: born on 21 November 1495, in Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, he was placed by his parents, Henry and Margaret Bale, into the Norwich Carmelite Priory at the age of twelve. There he proved himself an assiduous scholar in his work on the hagiography of the saints, and of Carmelite writers. In 1514 he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where his immediate contemporaries included key Reformists such as Thomas Cranmer, Geoffrey Downes, William Capon, Thomas Goodrich, and John Edmunds he also traveled to Louvain and Toulouse (in 1527), yet any exposure to the new learning appears to have taken effect over time. After graduating as a Bachelor of Divinity, he left Cambridge in 1529 becoming prior at Maiden, then in 1530 at Doncaster, and probably in 1533 at Ipswich. As early as 1531, there is evidence that Bale held heretical ideas: he allegedly taught one William Broman that Christ was not really present in the sacrament of the altar. Falling under the influence of the prominent Suffolk reformer Thomas Lord Wentworth, Bale left the Carmelites, married a woman named Dorothy, and embarked on a career as a secular preacher. His new Protestant zeal landed him in trouble: John Stokesley, bishop of London, suspended him from preaching in Essex because he refused to leave the gospel and be sworn to observing Stokesley's injunctions; and in 1534 he was examined by Archbishop Edward Lee at Doncaster about his attitude on honoring and praying to saints, on which occasion Thomas Cromwell rescued him. At this point, Bale was serving as vicar of Thorndon, Suffolk, and apparently writing plays in the service of John Vere, earl of Oxford; he was also offering his support for John Leland's bibliographical work. In January 1536/37, Sir Humphrey Wyngfeld wrote to the duke of Suffolk complain2 Harris, John Bale, 9; Blatt, Plays of John Bale, 13-14; Harris, John Bale, 20; McCusker, John Bale, 1; and see his Vocacyon, passim.

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ing that Bale was preaching erroneous opinions in Thorndon; Bale was seized and detained in Greenwich, but once again Cromwell interceded, this time on the plea of John Leland. Bale subsequently became an official propagandist for Cromwell, writing and performing a series of plays throughout the country. On Cromwell's downfall, Bale fled with his family to Europe (Holland, Switzerland, North Germany), where he came into contact with Lutheranism, and entered into correspondence with Melanchthon and Gesner. He was a prolific writer and publisher during this period, and although his books were named as illegal in the proclamation of 8 July 1546, there is evidence that they were being imported into England. In 1547/8, Bale returned to England, lodging with the martyrologist John Foxe at the London house of Mary, duchess of Richmond. He undertook investigations of libraries in Cambridge, Oxford, and London, before in June 1551 becoming rector of Bishopstoke in Hampshire, an unhappy appointment. There followed his promotion to the vicarage of Swaffham in Norfolk, which he never occupied owing to ill health, and then in August 1552 the appointment as bishop of Ossory in Ireland. This latter proved even more unsuccessful, and Bale was forced to flee on Mary's accession in 1553, undertaking another five-year continental exile. By the time he returned to England in 1558, he was in his mid-sixties, his library had been abandoned in Ireland, and he had to be content with a minor post in Canterbury. He died in November 1563. 3 The place occupied by John Bale in English studies is a deeply troubled one. To some he is "the founder of English biography"; to others, "almost the first real scholar in the history of English studies," the tentative "almost" hinting not at a question of chronology but whether Bale is a "real scholar" at all—"he is more important than readable. At times Bale seems to be not so much writing as barking in print, and frequently the most charitable thing we can find to say . . . is that his bark is worse than his bite"—indeed, since Thomas Fuller coined the moniker, he has been "Bilious Bale." 4 Most significantly, Bale's recruitment to the approved history of the Reformed Church has been far from secure. The Reverend Leigh Richmond's massive eight-volume Fathers of the English Church (1807) features substantial biographies in its first volume of Bale's con3

Much of Bale's career can be gleaned from the numerous, autobiographical passages in his bibliographical writings: see Anglorum Heliades (BL ms Harley 3838), lllvstrium maioris Bntanniae scnptowm . . . Summartum (Wesel, 1548); and Scnptorvm illustrtum maioris Brytanntcae . . . Catalogus (Basel, 1557). The account of his time as bishop of Ossory, and subsequent kidnapping by pirates is told in Vocacyon. See also Harris, John Bale, 15-59; McCusker, John Bale, 1-28; Happe, "Introduction" to his ed. Complete Plays, 1:1-25. 4 Richard Watson Dixon, History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, 3:423; Davies, "Bibliography," 203; Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England.

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temporaries Tyndale, Frith, Patrick Hamilton, George Joye, and Robert Barnes, but Bale himself is represented by a selection from the Catalogus scriptorum illustrium Britannicorum, and dismissed as "a contemporary Writer, and a very learned and zealous Reformer of that Period." 5 In 1849, the Parker Society, an organization founded nine years earlier "dedicated to publishing works of the fathers and early writers of the Reformed English Church" produced a volume of the Select Works of John Bale. Included in this tome were the examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askew—the early Protestant martyrs "created" by Bale—and his anti-Rome satire The Image of Both Churches. Such recognition might appear to guarantee the Church's final sanction of Bale, but the volume's biographical notice exposes a major faultline in the foundation of John Bale as a "father and early writer of the Reformed English Church": "Bishop Bale occupied such a position in connection with the history of the Reformation, that it was in a manner necessary for the Parker Society, in pursuance of its plan, to republish some of his numerous works: but there are others of them, it must be acknowledged, which could not with propriety be presented to the public; and the reprinting of the present portion of them must not be considered as indicating an approval of all he either said or did." 6 Even within this grudgingly approved portion ("it was in a manner necessary. . .") Bishop Bale's work proved not to be wholly acceptable: for amongst the garish and violent representation of the whorish Church of Rome (reprinted in full), the Reverend Christmas felt three tiny amendments to be necessary to his text. On page 395, "a word [is] omitted" from a list of priests' activities including "idolatry, theft, murder, witchcraft, whoredom,. . . with other abominations;" on page 498 a reference to "the lewd boys also among prelates and priests" is footnoted to acknowledge that "lewd" is "a substitution"; and on page 517 a reference to "the filthy bishops" is similarly highlighted as containing "a word changed." 7 Thanks to Reverend Christmas's conscientious footnoting, however, cross-referencing with the original text is quite straightforward and reveals that the omitted word on each occasion is "buggery." Dozens of similar references to Sodom and its derivatives survive in the text—in the third example, in the same sentence8—presumably approved by their scriptural sanction. Twentieth-century Bale scholars have also tended to avoid certain as5

[Leigh Richmond, ed.,] The Fathers of the English Church, 1:627. Bale, Select Works of John Bale, D.D. Bishop of Ossory, ed. The Rev. Henry Christmas, xi. 7 Ibid., 395, 498, 517. 8 "For in her dwelleth the adulterous cardinals, the filthy [buggery] bishops, the prostibulous prelates and priests, the Gomorre and monks, canons, friars, and nuns, an innumerable swarm of Sodomites." Bale, Select Works, 517. 6

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pects of the oeuvre. Jesse W. Harris refers to "nauseous narratives" concerning monasteries and popes, and declines to expand further; Honor McCusker writes that "On the more indecent portions of the satire it is unnecessary to comment"; Thora Balslev Blatt, writing in 1968, asserts that "His bad reputation is caused mainly by his stories of sexual misconduct in the Curia and in monasteries. They are frequently boring . . . " and goes on to explain Bale's virulence by recourse to some amateur psychology: "It is the ferocity of his onslaught that calls for attention. It can only be understood when we consider the fervour with which Bale, a member of a monastic organization from the age of twelve, participated in its life and studied its history when he was very young; it is his zeal in his formative years which causes the violence of his reaction once he comes to the conclusion that he was misguided." This theme is picked up by Bale's most recent editor, Peter Happe, whose two-volume edition of the Complete Plays appeared in 1985-86: "Possibly Bale suffered a sexual shock when he entered the order. Though no direct evidence is available, his persistent indignation about the dangers of enforced celibacy seems indicative of long lasting anxiety, or even neurosis." 9 It must be admitted that on occasion Bale appears content merely to rehearse scurrilous antimonastic tales, as of how a Genevan grey friar named Petrus Ryarius procured, through his uncle Pope Sixtus IV, a dispensation "for the whole howsholde of the cardinall Saynt Lucie to haue the fre occupyenge of buggerye boyes for the .iii. hotter monthes of the yeare"; 10 or how Pope Julius procured "two young laddes" from the cardinal of Nantes (MI C.viv). In such tales, what is usually at stake is more the abuse of invested power (through nepotism or patronage) than the implied sodomy. In Actes of Englysh Votaryes, however, Bale takes some popular and apparently innocuous stories and exposes (or creates) a sodomitical subtext. For example, he "sodomizes" the familiar tale of Pope Gregory I's remarks on seeing some beautiful boys and being informed that they were from England: "WeIe maye they be called Angli (sayth he) for they haue verye Angelych vysages." Bale places the incident in the context of the selling of the boys as slaves in the open marketplace in Rome, and points to the lascivious subtext: "Se how curyouse these fathers were, in the wele eyenge of their wares. Here was no cyrcumstaunce unloked to, perteynynge to the sale." 11 The story of John VIII, the female pope, exposed as she gave birth, is here ornamented by a gleeful 9 Harris, John Bale, 9; Blatt, Plays of John Bale, 13-14, 53; Happe, "Introduction," 1:2-3. 10 Bale, A mysterye of inyquyte contayned within the heretycall Genealogye of Ponce Pantolabus I . . . here both dysclosed & confuted [hereafter Ml], sigs. D.vv—D.vir. 1 ' Bale, The Actes of Englysh votaryes comprehendynge their vnchast practyses and examples by all ages [hereafter AEV], sig. C.vi".

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description of how such an embarrassing mistake was avoided in future. Now, according to Bale, in a passage marginally glossed as "Popes chosen by their stones," at the "solempne stallynge" of priests (and the sexually charged horse imagery is heavy), the Cardinal "doth grope them [the new priests] brechelesse, at an hole made in the seate for that ghostlye purpose, and than cryeth yt out before all the multytude, that he hath ware suffycyent to proue hym no woman." The Cardinal's groping of the votaries' "doutye dymyceryes" (AEV, G.iiv) detects what makes a man not a woman, a difference that has been elided by the vow of chastity. In this anecdote Bale effectively remasculates the votaries, reintroducing to their "chastity" the physical members which belie that chastity. Within the context of an all-male environment, the possible activity of the "doutye dymyceryes" is limited as sodomitical. Even the sacrament of communion is turned into a vicious encounter with sodomitical overtones: Bale writes of priests "which (as they saye) do daylye receyue him with their mouthe I eate him with their lyppes I and teare him with their teathe" (MI F.iiiiv-F.vr). For Bale, the Roman prohibition on sacerdotal marriage is a strategy to detach and elevate the spirituality [the ecclesiastical establishment] from the rest of society: "To non other ende ded ye Pope with his prelates first inhybyt prestis their marryage I but to apere therby an holy spirituall kyngdome deuyded from the prophane multitude / & to lyue in all voluptuousnesse & deceyt . . . Onlye couetousnesse & ambycion interdicted this marryage" (MI D.iir, D.iiir)· In his eyes, the plan to debase marriage has been successful: "It ys onlye marryage that hath made men secular abiectes, and vnholye, lowlye, lewde, laye people" (AEV K.iiiir). The religious institution has drawn its own parameters in such a way that marriage is aligned with secularity, chastity with spirituality. Bale's strategy is to call into question firstly the supposed "chastity" of votaries, and thus to challenge the "spirituality" of the spirituality.12 The vow of chastity has various incontinent consequences: Bale cites numerous occasions of fornication by monks, often with nuns or with other men's wives, as well as "nyght pollucyows." The monks are characterized as "hote fathers"; their religious involvement is itself figured as a sexual act, a "spyrytuall occupyewge." "Chastity" as the state of the votaries is more directly fused with sodomy—Bale recounts the passing of the law ("An Acte for Sodome") that all religious men—and nuns are not mentioned here—"shuld eyther lyue chast, that ys to saye, become 12

"James Sawtry" (George Joye) also argued that the priests remained unmarried so as to distance themselves from the common people: "therfore haue these longe typeted and longer tayled treytours chosen them this strange singler separated secte that they might shewe themselfes the playner phansays bothe in name and very dede." James Sawtry [pseud. George Joye], The defence of the Manage of Preistes, sigs. B.vni v -C r .

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Sodomytes (for that hath bene their chastyte euer sens) or els be suspended from all spirytuall iurysdycyccon." Sodomy is part of the institutionalized pedagogy of monasticism: there are references to "most abhomynable sodometrye, which [a young votary] had lerned in hys youthe of the consecrate chastyte of the holye clergye" (AE V D.iiii v -D.v r , D.iiiiv, I r - V , C.vir). So Bale is at once the English Reformation Incarnate, a personal conversion paralleling the religious turmoils of the nation, and a marginal author to be carefully "selected." This radically ambivalent weighing of Bale's contribution is evidently unacceptable as a conclusion. Research by Paul Whitfield White, Seymour Baker House, and David Scott Kastan has started to analyze the contribution made by Bale to a Cromwellian campaign to put across the doctrinal messages of the Reformation through theater; a recent essay by Donald N. Mager has set one of Bale's plays in the context of the 1533/34 act against buggery.13 In what follows, I add to this rethinking of the work of John Bale, and suggest that the confused position accorded to Bale by later critics and historians is in fact a reaction to the way in which the "unacceptable" face of his output is central to the Cromwellian Reformation. V I S I T I N G S O D O M : T H E S U P P R E S S I O N OF T H E M O N A S T E R I E S

The timing of the parliamentary progress of the bill against buggery in January 1533/34 has traditionally led commentators to speculate on its relation to the seismic changes that hit England over the next few years: most specifically, the suppression of the monasteries. 14 The reputation of the monasteries' loose living begs that we make a connection between the two, and yet no evidence of the new statute being used against the monastic inhabitants has ever come to light. But the introduction of the bill does yield an intriguing connection. On the third day of the reassembled parliament, the first speech concerning new measures is recorded: a mention of sodomy is slipped in toward the end, and evidently led to the passing of the Act, but the bulk of the proposed measure in fact concerns not sodomy, but sanctuary: because various detestable crimes are being perpetrated at the m o m e n t , which seem worthy of being punished by death, but can be punished by n o condign 13 Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation, Chap. 1; Seymour Baker House, "Cromwell's Message to the Regulars: The Biblical Trilogy of John Bale, 1537," Renaissance and Reformation I Renaissance et Reforme 26 (1991): 123-38; David Scott Kastan, "'Holy Wurdes' and 'Slypper Wit'": John Bale's King Johan and the Poetics of Propaganda," in Rethinking the Henncian Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts, ed. Peter C. Herman, 267-82; Donald N. Mager, "John Bale and Early Tudor Sodomy Discourse," in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 141-61. 14 For an intelligent argument to this effect see Smith, Homosexual Desire, 4 3 - 4 5 .

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punishment, being outside the ordinance of the realm of the law . . . ; therefore it is devised to be advantageous that anyone taking sanctuary, who then quits the shelter and commits a capital offence on the outside . . . shall lose the benefit of clergy; and furthermore he who commits sodomy shall receive the death penalty; which matters were committed to the justices to draw up two bills.15 Sanctuary and sodomy: a coupling Geoffrey Elton describes as "a curious pair." 16 The proposed Sanctuary Bill never appeared, 17 but the Sodomy Bill did, and it was at this moment Cromwell resolved "Item specyallye to speke of the vtter destrucyon of Sayntuaryes. Item ffor the destrucyon of all franchisys and lybertyes thorowout this Realme. Item the abhomnynacyon of Religyous persons throwout the Realme." 18 This memorandum is usually quoted as evidence that Cromwell was planning his suppression of the monasteries. Taken in conjunction with the history of the sodomy/ sanctuary bill, Cromwell's explicit linking of sanctuary and religious persons in the memorandum suggests that we may be able to review the campaign against the monasteries through that campaign's exploitation of the charge of sodomy. The suppression of monasteries was not without precedent, 19 but this was on an entirely different scale. To achieve this new major suppression, Cromwell dispatched a team of traveling assessors in July 1535 to produce the Valor Ecclesiasticus, a catalogue of the income and possessions of the monasteries and priories. This supports the current critical con15 "Memorandum, quod cum diversa scelera detestabilia nuper per eos, qui, ut videntur, morte digni perpetrata fuerunt, quibus ex ordine Juris regni (ut Juris penti aiunt) nulla condigna imponi potest pena; ideo conducibile esse excogitatum est, quod quicunque in Sanctuana trahens moram, egrediens, et extra, scelus morte dignum perpetrans, ac in Sanctuariam regressus pro suffragio et corporis tuitione, Ecclesiasticum beneficium amittet; ac etiam qui Sodomiam committit, penam Capitis permittet; de quibus rebus Justiciariis committitur duas conficere Billas." Journals of the House of Lords, i.59b. 16 Elton, Reform and Renewal, 136-37. 17 For Cromwell's other attempts at changing the sanctuary laws, see Isobel D. Thornley, "The Destruction of Sanctuary" in Tudor Studies Presented . . . to Albert Frederick Pollard, ed. R. W. Seton-Watson, 182-83; W. S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 3:293-94, 3 0 3 - 7 ; J. Charles Cox, The Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Mediceval England, esp. 319-34; J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents A.D. 1485-1603, 15-16; Norman Maclaren Trenholme, "The Right of Sanctuary: A Study in Institutional History," The University of Missouri Studies 1/5 (1903): 298-403 [also paginated as 1 106]. 18 PRO SP 1/102 fol. 8b; LP 10:254 (p.93). 19 The bishop of Salisbury had closed the nunnery at Bromehall in 1521 on account of alleged "enormities"; in February 1532, the canons of Christ Church Aldgate, in financial ruin, had surrended to the king; the following year the Observant Order was dissolved after defying the king; and Wolsey had suppressed some religious houses to endow more colleges and cathedrals. LP 3:1863 (p.792); Peter Wilding, Thomas Cromwell, 95; A. G. Dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation, 124.

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sensus that Cromwell's motives for the suppression of the monasteries were economic, as well as political and religious, but, without disputing that primary motivation, I want to examine a subtext of the first dissolution act which followed in April 1536. A lengthy preamble to the act proper explains why the houses must be closed: Forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living, is daily used and committed amongst the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses of monks, canons and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of 12 persons, whereby the governors of such religious houses and their convent spoil, destroy, consume and utterly waste . . . their churches, monasteries, priories . . . and albeit that many continual visitations hath been heretofore had by the space of two hundred years and more for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal and abominable living, yet nevertheless little or none amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious living shamelesly increaseth and augmenteth. . . . The King's most royal Majesty . . . having knowledge that the premises be true, as well by the compts of his late visitations as by sundry credible informations.20 A later Elizabethan account expands more luridly on this "vicious, carnal and abominable living": [Cromwell] caused visitacions to be made of all the reehgious houses touching their conversations, whereuppon was returned the booke called the Blacke Booke, expressing of everie suche house the vile lives and abhominable factes, in murders of their bretherne, in sodomyes, in whordomes, in destroying of children, in forging of deedes, and other infinite horrors of life, in so muche as deviding of all the religious persons in England into three partes two of theise partes at the least were sodomites: and this appeared in writting, with the names of the parties and their factes. This was shewed in parliament, and the villanies made knowen and abhorred.21 In fact, according to Hugh Latimer, "[W]he« theyr enormities were fyrste read in ye parliment house, they were so greate and abhominable that there was nothynge but downe with them." 22 The report of the visitation, usually referred to by historians as the Compendia Compertorum or 20 27 Henry VIII c. 28 cit. G. R. Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution, 383; see also Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1:193; and Thomas Wright, ed., Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, 107-12. 21 Wright, Three Chapters, 114. 22 Hugh Latimer, The seconde Sermone, sig. Diij r - V . Geoffrey Baskerville doubts that the reports "had much weight with the House of Commons, even if, as is more than doubtful, they were ever seen by its members. . . . Nobody in the House could have taken this distinction between the small and the great houses seriously." As for Latimer, Baskerville detects "a perfervid imagination. Not only was he not present in the house, but he was preaching more than twelve years later." Baskerville, English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries, 141-42.

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Compendia Monastica acquired a near-mythical reputation: in his monumental seventeenth-century study History of the Reformation of the Church of England, Gilbert Burnet writes that the religious houses were suppressed, for the Lewdness of the Confessors of Nunneries, and the great Corruption of that State, whole Houses being found almost all with Child; for that dissoluteness of Abbots and the other Monks and Friars, not only with whores, but Marryed Women; and for their unnatural Lusts and other brutal practices; these are not fit to be spoken of, much less enlarged on, in a work of this Nature. The full report of this Visitation is lost, yet I have seen an Extract of a part of it, concerning 144 Houses, that contains Abominations in it, equal to any that were in Sodom. (1:190-91) So what was this visitation and what do the reports contain? This is not as easy a question to answer as it might appear. As Burnet noted, much of the report is lost, and we now have only the manuscripts from the north and east of England. Cromwell had employed teams of carefully chosen "visitors" to tour the monasteries and priories interviewing the residents. As the preamble to the act states, the visitations were an established routine, occurring usually at three-year intervals, and carried out by a bishop or official accompanied by legal advisers such as the archdeacon, an official of the consistory court, the commissary general and a public notary: there was an emphasis on its processional aspect. The votaries were interviewed separately, but probably at some speed, on the financial state of the house, any disobedience, failures to observe religion, tension between senior and junior monks, and any internecine squabbling. While the "visitation" was a tested means of internal policing by the Catholic Church, however, never before had it been employed by a secular authority; and whereas the Church's usual visitations could include hundreds of questions to each resident, this Cromwellian intrusion was brief and to the point. 23 Despite the eighty-six questions recorded by Burnet, it appears from the results, known as comperta or "comperts," that the visitors were furnished with an extremely explicit brief of the subjects on which to interrogate the residents, thus strictly delimiting the focus of the visitation in advance. 24 The brief comperta for Chertsey Abbey reveals the visitors' 23 Baskerville, English Monks, 7 4 - 9 5 ; Elton, Policy and Police, 217. Baskerville argues that "the abuse which has been poured on the royal visitors by naive sentimentalists is based on ignorance of the fact that in this, as in other matters, the visitors were following rules which the bishops had always used" (78). 1 take his point, but surely what is at stake here is the way in which the visitors exploited those rules in order to obtain suitably incriminating results. 24 Burnet, History of the Reformation, l.Records.131-37. For the extant comperta see PRO SP 1/102 fols. 91-110 ["Compendia compertorum per Doctorem Layton et Doctorem Legh, in visitatione regia in provincia Eborancensi ac episcopatu Coven, et Lie-

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preoccupations. Marginal headings divide up the inhabitants into their respective crimes. Seven men are listed as "incontinentes" for having indulged in sexual intercourse with women, both "soluta" and "coniugata." The next section contains four "Incontinentes et Sodomitae"— one man has sinned with four or five married women and two boys; a second with one married woman and three boys; a third with "diverse" women both married and single, two boys and by "voluntary pollution"; and a fourth with four women and "voluntary pollution." The next section records two "patientes Sodomiticum"—presumably passive partners; and the report ends with notes on "Apostatae" and "Supmtitio." 25 Even with the partial extant records of the visitation, covering only the north and east of England, the 153 houses mentioned in the reports register 239 confessions of incontinence with women, 161 of voluntary pollution (masturbation), and 60 of possessing relics. Many nuns confessed to having been or being pregnant; several even allegedly admitted to abetting in the killing of their children. Most shockingly, as far as Parliament was concerned, there were 105 accounts of sodomy that could not be explained as "voluntary pollution."26 Other records support the thesis of a very limited brief. When, ten years later, Henry was giving the benefit of his experience to his Scottish agent Ralph Sadler, to be conveyed to the regent, the Earl of Arran, regarding "the extirpation [uprooting] of hypocrisie and superstition maynteyed in the state of monkes and fryers," he wrote that "It shall be first necessary that the gourniowr sende substancial and faithfull commissioners as it hfelden"], 111-12 [concerning diocese of Norwich], 113-14 [fragment concerning diocese of Norwich]. These are calendared in LP 10:364 (1)-(3). The British Library holds seventeenth-century copies of the first document: BL ms Cotton Cleopatra E.IV fols. 185a197a and BL ms Lansdowne 988 fols. l a - 1 7 a [originally 1-32]. See also PRO SP 1/97 fol. 60 for an example of an individual compert [Chertsey Abbey]. 25 PRO SP 1/97 fol. 60. In his analysis of the reports, G.R.O. Woodward identifies only five categories of information which appear in an "almost tabular" format, and always in the same order: "[F]irst, the names of those monks or nuns declared guilty of certain offences against the vow of chastity; secondly, the names of those who want to be released from their vows and to leave the cloister; thirdly, what the visitors call the 'superstition' of the house, that is to say the relic or relics held in especial esteem there; fourthly, the name of the 'founder' of the house, that is to say the living heir of the first benefactor who was regarded as having a hereditary and particular interest in the affairs of the convent; and lastly, in round figures, the income of the house, and, where applicable, its debts." Woodward, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 33. 26 These figures are from G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, 4:697; alternative interpretations can be found in J. Thomas Kelly, Thorns on the Tudor Rose, 8, and David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3:297. The north reports contain 181 entries of sodomy; the east reports only four. Knowles has interpreted this discrepancy as indicating that the north visitors included "solitary vice" (masturbation) in their sodomy statistics. If the reports are interpreted in this way, there are only twelve "clear instances" of sodomy— as Knowles himself writes, a "total . . . indeed so low as almost to be surprising."

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were to put good order in the same . . . Which commissioners must haue secret commission most secretly &c groundly to examyn all the religious of their co«verdon and behauiowr in their livinges whereby if it be well handled he shal get knowledge of all their abhomynadons." 27 In a letter to Thomas Cromwell, Richard Layton, one of the "visitors" (the agents who carried out the visitation), writes of the tactics he intends to employ at the College in Newark, Lancashire: "The abbey here is cowfederyde we suppose, & nothyng will confesse. The abbot is an honeste man and doth varawell I but he hath here the most obstinate and factiouse chanons yc euer I knewe I this mornyng I will obiecte aganste diuers of them bugrie & adulterie I et sic specialiter discendere [and in this way go down the scale] I wiche I haue lernede of other I but not of any of them I what I shall fynde I cannot tell." 28 Only very rarely in the extant records are we given any more than brief descriptions of or possible reasons for the alleged offenses of the monks and nuns. This is the most lengthy: at West Dereham, one "Marke", who "confesseth sodfomy]" as well as incontinence with diverse women, both married and spinsters, asked for the following to be set down in the visitors' records: nota. Richard Norwold, alias Marke, says in virtue of his oath and conscience that, if all would so frankly confess their transgressions to my lord King as to speak [out], he would find not even one of the monks or priests who did not come together with women or share a bed with males, or by voluntary pollution or other unmentionable abuses of that kind, [vtatur femineo cowgressu aut masculo concubitu aut poHucionibns voluntarijs vel alijs id genus nephandis abusibws.]29 What this passage gives us is a semantic formulation articulating specifically the ideological difference between the registers' insistently divided "sodomy" and "incontinence." The note insists on the spatiality of these sexual encounters, and sharply resists any actual "moral" distinction on grounds of the gender of the sexual partner: intercourse with women is characterized as a "congression" ("congressu"), a physical coming together; intercourse with men is depicted purely in terms of sharing a bed ("concubitu"). This division is borne out in the formulation of the visitors' questions: 20. Item; Whether ye do keep Chastity, not using the company of any suspect Woman within this Monastery, or without? And whether the Master, or 27

BL ms Addit. 32, 650, fols. 123a-135a at fol. 131a; printed in Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:204. 28 BL ms Cotton Cleopatra E.IV fol. 162b; LP 9:1005; Wright, Three Chapters, 91-94 at 93. 29 PRO SP 1/102 fol. 114a; LP 10:364 (p.144).

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any Brother of this House be suspected upon lncontinency, or defamed for that he is much conversant with Women? 21. Item; Whether Women useth and resorteth much to this Monastry by back-ways, or otherwise? and whether they be accustomably, or at any time lodged within the Precinct therof? 22. Item; Whether the Master, or any Brother of this House, useth to have any Boys or young Men laying with him? 28. Item; Whether ye do sleep altogether in the Dormitorie, under one Roof, or not? 29. Item; Whether ye have all separate Beds, or any one of you doth lay with an other? (1.Records.132-33) Here "incontinency" with women depends on the monk being "conversant"; at stake is the security of the monastery, its secret "back-ways"; with men, the interest is quite simply on bedsharing. The insistence on the question of boys is borne out in the registers, which detail sodomy as "cum quatuor pueris," "cum diumis pueris," "cum pluribus pueris." 30 The interest in the men's sleeping arrangements is reinforced by the General Injunctions read to the houses by the Visitors: Also, that all the Brethren of this House, except the Abbot, and such as be sick, or evil at ease, and those that have fulfilled their Jubilee, lie together in their Dormitory, every one by himself, in several [i.e. separate] Beds. Also, that no Brother, or Monk, of this House, have any Child or Boy laying, or privily accompanying with him, or otherwise haunting unto him, other than to help him to Mass. (1.Records.139) The Abbot of Wardon admitted in his statement that this policing was difficult to maintain: I have often commanded both the sub-prior and . . . the custos ordinis that there should no secular boys be conversant with any of the monks, nor to lie in their dorter; this notwithstanding there is one Hugh, that was a young monk here, and he lieth in the dorter every night, but with whom I cannot know; and the same Hugh was here yesterday.31 Whereas it was common practice for men in secular life to share beds, some monastic orders (including the Benedictine) followed the Eastern church's model, explicitly drafted to forestall sexual activity between the monks, and forbade the practice. The immediate forerunner of the Rule of St. Benedict stipulated that all monks were to sleep in the same room with the abbot's bed in the center. This legislation was refined by Benedict: a light was to be kept burning in the dormitory throughout the 30 31

BL ms Lansdowne 988 fols. 3b, 5a. G. H. Cook, ed., Letters to Cromwell, 60.

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night, monks were to sleep with their clothes on, and young men were to be mixed in with older men, not allowed to sleep side by side. Of course, the "young men" might be very young, as children came into the houses from the tenth century as a result of oblation, provoking ever more elaborate measures against possible sexual contact.32 Sodomy and incontinence are thus radically distinguished in the rhetoric of the visitations. Incontinence—as the word itself suggests—refers to a lack of respect to being contained by boundaries, in this case the monastery walls. Incontinence is a literal transgression of those walls, a going beyond the bounds of the monastic institution. Sodomy, in sharp contrast, is literally embedded within the institution, dependent on the organizational requirements whereby men share sleeping quarters and are forced into intimate situations with boys. The questions asked at nunneries support this dichotomy. The visitors betray no anxiety about the women's sleeping arrangements: their primary concern is for the successful locking in—literally "enclosure" of the female votaries: 75. Item; Whether this Monastery hath good and sufficient Enclosure, and whether the Doors and Windows be diligently kept shut, so that no Man can have any entry into the same, or any part thereof, at inconvenient times? . . . 76. Item; Whether Strangers, both Men and Women, useth commonly to have communication with the Sisters of this House, without license of the Abbess or Prioress, specially in secret places, and in the absence of their Sisters? 78. Item; Whether any of the Sisters of this House useth to go forth any whither out of the Precinct thereof, without special license of their Abbess or Prioress? 81. Item; Whether any Sister of this House hath any familiarity with Religious Men, Secular Priests, or Lay-Men, being not near of kin unto them? 82. Item; Whether any Sister of this House hath been taken and found with any such accustomably so communing, and could not shew any reasonable cause why they so did? 84. Item; Whether any of you doth use to speak with any manner of Person, by night or by day, by Grates or back Windows, or other privy Places within this Monastry, without license of your Head? (1.Records.136—37)

Even letters and tokens are under suspicion, their transmission entailing a transgression of the walls.33 Of course, kinsfolk aside, the one man the 32

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 159-60, 187-88 and n. 69. 33 "83. Item; Whether any of you doth use to write any Letters of Love, or lascivious

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nuns would have to meet in secret was the confessor, already something of a stock joke. The final two questions ask whether the House's Confessor "be a discreet Man, of good learning, vertue and honest behaviour, of good name and fame, and whether he hath been always so taken?" and enquire after the frequency of his visits: "How oftimes in the year the Sisters of this House useth to be Confessed and Communicate?" (1.Records. 137)—even the technical term "communicate" betraying the experience of confession as somehow crossing the boundaries. The General Injunctions issued after the Visitation to all male houses show a clear anxiety about the movements of the votaries, and the firmness of the "Limits or Circuit" of the houses, declaring: Also, that no Monk, or Brother of this Monastery, by any means go forth of the Precinct of the same. Also, that Women, of what state or degree soever they be, be utterly excluded from entring into the Limits or Circuit of this Monastery, or place, unless they first obtain license of the King's Highness, or his Visitor. Also, that there be no entring [entrance] into this Monastery but one, and that by the great fore-gate of the same, which diligently shall be watched and kept by some Porter specially appointed for that purpose, and shall be shut and opened by the same both day and night, at convenient and accustomed hours; which Porter shall repel all manner Women from entrance into the said Monastery. (1.Records. 138) Notably, these injunctions do not attempt to tackle the practice of embedded sodomy, preferring to concentrate on the transgressive acts of sex between men and women which breach the walls of the monastery. It is against this highly developed rhetoric of embedded sodomy, of sodomy bounded by the monastery walls that we can start to consider John Bale's contribution to the Cromwellian campaign.

STAGING T H E B O U N D S O F S O D O M Y : J O H N BALE'S THRE

LAWES

In January 1536/37, Cromwell extracted John Bale from Greenwich prison, and set him to work producing plays. It is now generally agreed that Bale led a troupe of players patronized by Cromwell, identified as "Bale and his fellows" or "the Lord Cromwell's men," which toured the country between 1537 and 1540. Performances have been traced at King's College, Cambridge (8 September 1537); Shrewsbury, Leicester, Thetford, New College Oxford, and Cambridge town hall. In September 1538 there was a performance before the king; in the Christmas period of fashion to any Person, or receive any such, or have any privy Messengers coming and resorting unto you, or any of you, with Tokens or Gifts, from any manner secular Person or other?" Burnet, History of the Reformation, l.Records.137

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1538/39, the troupe appeared before Cranmer, probably playing King Johan. Later appearances are noted in Barnstaple, Thetford, York, MaIdon, and again in Cambridge. The five plays still extant—King Johan, Thre Lawes, God's Promises, Johan Baptystes Preachynge and The Temptation of our Lord—form only a fraction of the more than two dozen plays Bale reckoned to have written between 1533 and 1538. The connection between Bale and Cromwell was, however, stronger than merely the protection of his name. The plays were closely connected with the campaigns surrounding the suppression of the monasteries. Performance venues appear to have included not only the colleges, town halls, and private houses suggested by this itinerary, but also religious institutions. Seymour Baker House has argued that the itinerary of Bale's troupe corresponds closely to a plan of suppression of local religious houses suggesting that Bale was sent to try to win support or at least understanding for the imminent closure of the houses—the trilogy containing God's Promises, Johan Baptystes Preachynge, and The Temptation of our Lord, three far less virulent plays than Thre Laws or King Johan may well have been toured through hostile areas and monastic audiences: it appears to have been staged during the 1537 winter at the Cluniac priory in Thetford, Norfolk, and in the same year at Shrewsbury and Leicester in an effort to preempt opposition to the anticipated suppression of the greater houses, rumors of which gave rise to unrest in these areas during the spring and summer of 1537. 34 We might then think about Bale's plays in the context of a possibly monastic performance. In this case, an openly hostile antimonastic interpretation is inappropriate: we need to consider a way of understanding Bale's plays as informed, even insider, constructive satire. Within the bownes of Sodomye, Doth dwell the spirytuall clergye, Pope, Cardinall and pryst. Nonne, Chanon, Monke and fryre, With so many els as do desyre, To reigne vndre Antichrist. Detestynge matrymonye, They lyue abhomynablye, And burne in carnall lust. Shall I tell ye farther newes? At Rome for prelates are stewes, Of both kyndes. Thys is iust. 35 34

House, "Cromwell's Message," passim. John Bale, A Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of Nature, Moses, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees & papystes most wycked [hereafter TL], sigs. Cr-Cij r . 35

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When Infidelity utters these damning lines in Bale's play Thre Lawes sometime in the late 1530s, he is merely elaborating with propagandistic license on a well-known and much-loved medieval topos: the vaguely lecherous and particularly sodomitical clergy—as Geoffrey Elton puts it, "a whole folklore of the disreputable cleric testif[ying] to a common opinion whose significance is quite independent of its accuracy."36 Pederastic prelates had for centuries been a staple of anticlerical abuse and satire. Even outside the Holy Roman Empire, the monk's predilection for a pretty boy was proverbial: there is recorded a tenth-century Arabic phrase to the effect that one cannot be more devoted to "liwat" (active homosexual intercourse) than a "luti" (Christian monk) is; the importance of the institutional aspect of monasticism is conveyed in a euphemism for penetration—"you took my boy away . . . and deprived my monk of his monastery." 37 John Boswell has documented the considerable body of evidence suggesting that sodomy was especially associated with the clergy, pointing to comments on "sodomy" among the clergy emanating even from admirers of clerical learning such as Charlemagne and to the church's constant attempts to curtail sexual activity between clerics.38 Thus, as John Guy notes, although "the 'anticlerical' debate was theoretical and eristic," it "created reservoirs that Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell could tap." 3 9 While the earliest extant printed text of the play dates from 1548—that is, when Edward VI was in power, and the marriage of priests was permitted—an earlier version is known to have existed in the 1530s. From a reference to the possible renewal of "monkysh sectes," it appears that the extant text at least incorporates the changes wrought by the 1536 dissolution act. The detailed costume and casting arrangements indicate that the play was prepared for performance, and since Bale was in exile from 1540 to 1548, it seems probable that the piece as it stands dates from around 1537. Thre Lawes is a five-act play using what appear to be medieval morality concepts and structures, concerning the attempts of God to establish control, through the three laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ, over Man, who is threatened by Infidelity (the Church of Rome). Infidelity has at his disposal six vices, in three pairs to combat each law: the Law of Moses is Subsequently published as A Newe Comedy or interlude I concernyng thre lawes, of Nature, Moises, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharysies, and Papistes . . . nowe newely imprynted [hereafter TL 1562]. 36 G. R. Elton, "The Reformation in England" in The New Cambridge Modern History, Volume II The Reformation 1520-1559 ed. G. R. Elton, 262. 37 Everett K. Rowson, "The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists," in Body Guards, ed. Julia Epstein and Knstina Straub, 50-79, at 60, 76 n.27, 56, 75 n . l l . 38 Boswell, Christianity, 187. 39 John Guy, Tudor England, 123.

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pitted against Avarice and Ambition, the Law of Christ against Hypocrisy and False Doctrine, and the Law of Nature against Idolatry and—for the first and possibly last time on the English stage—Sodomy.40 The play's second act, which is given the running title of "Natura* lex corrupta" ("the Law of Nature corrupted") shows how Infidelity "cause[s] ydolatrye, I And most vyle sodomye" to "Corrupt. . . with ydolles, and stynkynge Sodometry" the Law of Nature, a country bumpkin hopelessly outwitted by this double-pronged assault on "the flesh" by Sodomy and "the sowle" by Idolatry (B.viiiv-Cr).41 The act's plot is summarised neatly by the Law of Nature himself: I w r o u g h t in hys [man's] hart, as G o d bad ernestlye, H y m oft prouokynge, to loue G o d ouer all, With the inner powers, But that false Idolatrye, H a t h hym peruerted, by slayghtes dyabolycall. And so hath Sodomye, through hys abuses carnall. T h a t he is now lost, offendynge without measure, And I corrupted, to my most hygh dyspleasure. (TL Cij 1 ·--)

Sodomy's self-representation, in the form of lists of his multifarious iniquities, owes much to classic anti-clerical works such as Robert Barnes's Vitae Romanorum pontificum (Basel, 1535) and particularly Joannes Ravisius Textor's Officina (Paris, 1520), traces of which are readily apparent in the lists of cross-dressers, sodomites, and abusers of animals quoted to characterize Sodomy and his associate Idolatry.42 Sodomy's selfproclaimed power locus—the celibate monastic orders—is figured directly in his apparel—Bale's stage directions state that he should be 40

Cosmo Manuche's 1652 play The Loyal Lovers contains a character named "Sodome," who was "One of the Synod." Portrayed as an incorrigible womanizer, drunkard, and fool, Sodome becomes the butt of an extended prank devised by the plays' heroes, and ends up being tossed in a blanket and footing the bill for their merriment. There is no suggestion of any same-sex erotic interest in his characterization. Both Harris and McCusker follow Alois Brandl's erroneous implication that Richard Wever's 1565 play An Enterlude called lusty juuentus contains a character named "Sodomismus," presumably meaning " Abhominable lyuing," a female character who seduces Juventus. See Harris, John Bale, 108; McCusker, John Bale, 96; Alois Brandl, Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare, lxiv-lxv. Bale records a play by Ralph Radclif, the schoolmaster at Hichen (Hitchin), entitled De Sodomae incendio, now presumably lost. Catalogus, 700, cited in Harris, John Bale, 106. 41 For Nature's characterization as a country bumpkin see Thomas P. Hennings, "The Anglican Doctrine of the Affectionate Marriage in The Comedy of Errors," Modern Language Quarterly 47 (1986): 97-107, at 102. 42 Barnes, Vitae Romanorvm pontificum, quos Papas uocamus, quos diligentia ac fide collects; Ioannes Ravisius Textor, Officina, esp. "Molles, effoeminati I &C Elegantes" (sig. r.iiij r - v ), "Viri muliebrem habitum mentiti" (sig. r.vr—v), "Mulieres habitum vinlem mentit[ae]" (sigs. r.v v -r.vi r ), and "Alij Libidinosi / & Lasciui" (sigs. f.vv-f.vii)v).

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"decked . . . lyke a monke of all sectes" [TL 1562, Gv). Despite this treatment of Sodomy as a role to be played, to conceive of Sodomy as a discrete character in the modern sense is to ignore the constant reiteration of his relationship—although the word is too loose for the connection— with Idolatry. Indeed, Sodomy cannot even appear on stage alone: Infidelity has to conjure him together with Idolatry by use of the Latin word "ambo" 4 3 ("both"), thus locating their association within the Latin discourse of the Roman Church, stressing the "bothness" of Sodomy and Idolatry, or to follow the Latin "ambo," the "ambiguity" of their joint self. In his autobiographical Vocacyon ofjohan Bale (1553), Bale writes that of necessity "the impenytent ydolatour must therwith be also a fylthie adulterer or most detestable sodomite. It is his iust plage. Rom. I. We can not stoppe it" (VJB C v ) . Indeed, in a brief account of a 1551 performance of Thre Lawes, Bale recapitulates the plot without acknowledging any distinction between Idolatry and Sodomy—"wyth ydolatricall Sodometrie he hath defyled nature." 44 Sodomy describes himself as "soche a vyce trulye, / As God in hys great furye, I Ded ponnysh most terryblye, I In Sodome and in Gomorre"; having dwelt among "the Sodomytes, I The Beniamytes, and Madyanytes," and with Noah's son Cham scorning his father, with Onan spilling his seed, with Joseph's brothers accusing their sibling, he is now embraced by "the popysh hypocrytes" and "become all spyrytuall, I For the clergye at Rome and ouer all, I For want of wyues to me doth fall" (TL B.vi r_v ). Throughout this supposed self-presentation, the first-person singular slips inevitably to the plural, building on the first delayed entrance to show that he cannot exist as a stage-entity without Idolatry (and vice versa): We two togyther beganne, To sprynge and to growe in manne, As Thomas of Aquyne scanne, In the fort boke of hys sentence . . . Dauid ones warned all men of vs two, Do not as mules and horses wyll do, Confounded be they that to ymages go, Those are the waves to hell. Both Esaye and Ezechiel, Both Hieremy and Daniel, Of vs the abhomynacyons tell, With the prophetes euerychon, 43

Sodomismus: "Ambo is a name full cleane, / Knowe ye not what I meane? I And are so good a clarke" (TL Biiv). 44 Bale, An Expostulation or complaynte agaynste the blasphemyes of a franticke papyst of Hamshyre, sig. C.inr.

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For vs two God strake with fyre & waiter. With battayle, with plages & fearfull matter, With paynefull exyle, than at the latter, Into Egipt and Babylon. As Paule to the Romanes testyfye, The gentyles after Idolatrye, Fell to soch bestyall Sodomye, That God ded them forsake. Who foloweth vs as he confesse, The kyngedom of God shall neuer possesse. (TL Bviv-Bviir)

The association is intensified in their final speeches, where Sodomy pledges to "corrupt Gods Image, I With most vnlawfull vsage, I And brynge hym into dottage, I Of all concupyscence" (TL B.viiiv), thus apparently assuming Idolatry's role of worshipping false images and entwining that role with the role of "concupyscence" which he embodies. When Infidelity asks, "Is not thy name ydolatrye?" it is Sodomy who answers, and sums her up: "Yes, an wholsom woman verelye, I And wele seane in Phylosophye" [TL B.iijr). According to Bale's stage directions, Idolatry is a "Necromantic" (TL B.iijr)—a magician concerned with conjuring the dead—and he makes clear that Idolatry is "decked lyke an olde wytche" (TL 1562, Gv). Idolatry can tell men's fortunes, cure toothache, fever and pox, milk cows and hunt foxes, recover lost objects, fetch the Devil from Hell and perform miracles, "Without the helpe of the holye Ghost," merely by saying the Catholic "Aue Marye." The character is defiantly female, "ych am a she, I And a good mydwyfe per de" (TL B.iijv, B.iij1, B.iijv), locating her status and power as a woman in her knowledge and efficacy in the traditional female spaces of midwifery. Bale's presentation of the witch-midwife achieves a skillful redeployment of a traditional threat to (Roman) Church power by merging that threat with the Church itself. He draws on an anxiety about the midwife's privileged access to the sexually and spiritually charged space of childbirth. In addition to their practical function, female midwives "occupied a significant symbolic role, since it was they who ascertained virginity, diagnosed pregnancy, certified a child's legitimacy, and, as witnesses, ensured that one child was not substituted for another, that still-born children were properly baptized and disposed of, and could testify that if a child died it had perished of natural causes." The classic text on witchcraft, the Malleus maleficarum, declared that "No one does more harm to the Catholic faith than the midwives," representing the midwife as a witch with control over sexual intercourse, conception, abortion, birth, and killing newborn children to offer to the devil, and from 1512 midwives had been licensed by the Church. In another reflection of what was to become offi-

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cial policy, Bale manipulates this threat to the power of the (male) Church by wedding it to the Roman Church itself; in 1542, the Witchcraft Act prohibited the activities of the good witch because she practised midwifery without a license.45 In this way, Bale conventionally collapses Catholicism and its image worship with superstition, witchcraft, and with women in general, in the body of Idolatry, but only after establishing the ambiguity of Idolatry and Sodomy. Idolatry is the play's only female character: however, the demands of a touring production mean that the part must be doubled with the roles of the Law of Moses and Hypocrisy, both of which require an adult male actor (TL 1562, Gv). Instead of ignoring the implications of this cross-dressing, Bale plays on the ambiguity in the dialogue: Infidelity exclaims "What, sumtyme thu wert an he" to which Idolatry replies "Yea, but now ych am a she" (TL Biijv). In his Actes of English Votaries, Bale describes how male homosocial relations are played out through the shared idolatrous image of one woman—the Virgin Mary. Bale exposes Mary as a device to "couer their [the votaries'] sodometrye" (AEV B.vr), the inevitable companion of sodomy, "their souerayne ladye and swete sacred Sodomye" (Ml Dr—v) and by extension, the symbol of sodomy. Bale points out the celibate connection of this idol with great relish: "He [Christ] found his worthy mother Mary no professed Nonne, as the dottyng papystes haue dreamed, to couer their sodometrye with a most precyouse coloure, but an honest mannys wyfe, marryed accordynge to the custome than vsed" (A£VB.iiij v -B.v r ). The Madonna-whore dichotomy does not exist for Bale: they are one and the same, faces of the Church of Rome in opposition to woman's accustomed usage as wife. He attempts to put Mary in her place in relation to man as "an honest mannys wyfe" but there is a sense of desperation as he heaps on the concept of this as socially natural: "accordynge . . .custom . . .used." Married, Mary is safe and man is "honest"; her status as a sodomitical cover is eliminated by her use by a man. Sodomy is here figured as inextricably idolatrous as well as problematically not-quite-male through the association with Idolatry. Located already within the bounds of the Roman Church, Bale is able to attack some of Rome's most notorious features, notably the confessional. In the context of the Reformation, the confession had taken on a dangerously 45 Elizabeth D. Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices, 81; Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trrans. Montague Summers, Malleus maleficarum 66 and passim; Jean Towler and Joan Brammall, Midwives in History and Society, 38 and passim; see also Thomas R. Forbes, "Midwifery and Witchcraft," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 17 (1962): 2 6 4 - 8 3 . For an important reevaluation of how witchcraft accusations relate to anxieties about childbirth, see Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, esp. 25, 201, 212-13.

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political character, as conservative priests were accused of exploiting the sanctity of the confession to attack innovatory ideas. More generally, it was seen as an indecently close situation for a man and a woman to be in, and accusations against confessors of sexual behavior or sexually-loaded speech were not unknown. 46 The confessional is explicitly linked with Sodomy by the Law of Nature at the end of Act II: I abhorre to tell, the abusyons bestyall, That they daylye vse, whych boast their chastyte. Some at the aulter, to incontynency fall, In confessyon some, full beastly occupyed be. (TL Cir») When Infidelity gives his instructions to Sodomy in his fight against the Law of Nature, it is through confession ("Benedicite") that he is encouraged to attack: Set thu fourth Sacramentals, Saye dyrge, and synge for trentals, Stodye the popes Decretals, And mixt them with buggerage. Here is a stoole for the, A ghostlye father to be, To heare, Benedicite, A boxe of creame and oyle. (TL B.viiiv) Bale plays on the traditional sexual reputation of the confessional, both in its physical space and as a source of sexual information for the confessor, and then uses the two synonymously.47 The opening blessing—"benedicite" —becomes sexual foreplay, confession becomes one of Sodomy's religious duties, which are inextricably "mixt . . . with buggerage"; the "boxe of creame and oyle" become lubricants for his ghostly/sexual acts. Thus far Sodomy's impact has been felt only when the character is on stage, but through this sexualization of the confessional, its sodomitical potential is exploited in act IV in an extraordinary exchange between Infidelity and the enemies of the law of Christ, Hypocrisy ("a graye fryre") and False Doctrine ("a popysh doctour"). As Sodomy is clearly designated as a non-specific "monke of all sectes" (TL 1562, Gv)—in contrast to the other monastic figures who are assigned to definite and 46

Elton, Policy and Police, 27; for the use of the agent provocateur in the confessional, see 2 7 - 3 0 ; for accusations against the confessor, see 91. 47 See also Bale, Vocacyon, sig. Fiij r - V : "A wele papped Pygion of Paules I is wholsome (they saye) for a tippetted gentilman of the popes spialte I in a darke eueninge I to coole the contagiouse heates of a coltish confessour."

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recognizable orders—these two specifically characterized votaries are al­ ready imbued with sodomy. Hypocrisy. What, brother snyp snap, how go the wor[l]de with the? Infidelity. What, fryre flyp flap, how saye ye to, Benedicite? Hypocrisy. Marry nothynge but well, for I crye now aduauntage. Infidelity. At her purse or arse, tell me good fryre succage? Hypocrisy. By the Messe at both, for I am a great penytensar, And syt at the pardon, Tush, I am ye popes owne vycar If thu lackest a pece, I knowe where thu mayst be sped. With c[h]oyse of a score, & brought euen to thy bed. (TL Ε.ϋ·-ν) The gendered possessive pronoun "At her purse or arse" suggests the object of Hypocrisy's lust is female, and the subsequent lines might con­ firm that assumption: "Pope, Cardynall, byshop, monke, chanon prest & fryre, /Not one of ye all, but a woman wyll desyre" (TL E.iiv). But given that the relationship between two monks has already been rendered po­ tentially sodomitical in this space on this stage, we could read this ex­ change in a more ambiguous way. The only characters onstage are Infi­ delity, Hypocrisy and False Doctrine—therefore the "Benedicite," the "bit of confession" referred to (by Infidelity) becomes False Doctrine him­ self. Infidelity's reference to Hypocrisy as "good fryre succage," the possi­ bility of penetration "At her arse," and Hypocrisy's custom of kneeling take on a sodomitical resonance. So, we are presented with Infidelity pimping for False Doctrine, a sodomitical procuring which is further con­ fused by the slippage of gendered terms ("her purse") and its unproblematic linkage to the clergy's lust for women. However outrageous such scenes may be, Sodomy's influence is still "within the bounds": it is the monastic orders and Catholic rituals which are rendered sodomitical in this satire. Until, that is, the end of act II, when the Law of Nature comes back onstage in a sorry state: I thynke ye maruele, to se soch alteracyon, At thys tyme in me, whom God left here so pure? Of me it cometh not, but of mannys operacyon, Whome dayly the deuyll, to great synne doth allure, And hys nature is, full bryttle and vnsure. By hym haue I gote thys fowle dysease of bodye, And as ye se here, am now throwne in a leprye. (TL C.if) "Leprye" suggests leprosy, the mark of sin in the Bible, but the Law of Nature claims he has not actively sinned himself: his affliction is caused by "mannys operacyon." "Leprye" here conveys not only leprosy in our

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modern understanding of the disease, but also the morbus gallicus, the epidemic syphilis which swept Europe for nearly a century from 1494. 48 There are striking resemblances between Bale's use of the disease, and a contemporary translation of a 1519 treatise by Ulrich von Hutten on guaiacum (De guaici medicina et morbo Gallico liber unus), published by the King's printer, Thomas Berthelet, in 1533, with new editions in 1536 and 1540. In the preface, Thomas Paynell, canon of Merton Abbey, and one of Berthelet's regular translators, notes that "almoste into euerye parte of this realme, this mooste foule and peyneful disease is crepte, and manye soore infected therwith" and that "They that be taken with pockes, often times becom lepres." Various explanations have been preferred for this, but convincingly "the diuines did interpretate this to be the wrathe of god, and to be his punyshement for our euylle lyuynge." Paynell continues that "It is thoughte this kynde nowe adayes to growe in no person, but throughe infection by defylynge of hym selfe, which thing especially happeneth by copulation. . . . And the more that man is gyuen to wantonnesse, the sooner he is infected."49 In Bale's play, Nature goes on to lament, With Man haue I bene, whych hath me thus defyled, With Idolatrye, and vncleane Sodomye. And worthye I am, from God to be exyled. (TL CiD The phrase "With Man have I bene whych hath me thus defyled" suggests a sexual encounter which is by its implication sodomitical, given the male-gendering of both Nature and Man. Nature is therefore "truly worthye . . . from God to be exyled," even though "of me it cometh not, but of mannys operacyon"; the "fowle dysease of bodye" emblematises his corruption by Idolatrical Sodomy. Here, as elsewhere in his prose writings, Bale's description of the sodomy of "chastity" is not as simple as that forwarded by the monks questioned during the visitation. Throughout the visitation reports, marriage is a recurrent theme. In their confession-cum-plea, the West Dereham monks go on to outline their proposed solution to what they see as inevitable incontinence and sodomy: 48 For leprosy, see Geoffrey Eatough, "Introduction" to his edition of Fracastoro's "Syphilis", esp. 10-28; Claude Quetel, trans. Judith Braddock and Brian Pike, History of Syphilis. Early modern syphilis is mobilized in a pernicious discussion of AIDS by Stamslav Andrevski, Syphilis, Puritanism and Witch Hunts. 49 Thomas Paynell, trans. Of the wood called gvaiacvm . . ., preface, first unnumbered sig.v, sigs. A.vv, A.iir, A.iiir. Ironically, given later prejudice against the Mediterranean countries, the text notes that "it is very easy vnto the Italyans and Spanyardes, and so such as lyue soberly, but through our surfetynge and intemperate lyuyng, it dothe longe contynue with vs, and greuousely doth vexe and chafe vs."

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they seek leave for all who wish to marry, and hope the King has been for this divinely sent on earth. The two monks who have the cure of souls of the country say the crime of sodomy is prevalent among the priests, as well secular as regular, and the youths who are not yet married; they seek that the remedy of marriage may be granted to such.50 Bale's work inverts the language of disease and cure: "And thus hath holye wedlock bene vnto them euer sens a most pernycyouse poyson I and stynkynge whoredome with buggerye a most suffren remedye of their naturall dyssease" (M/ D.iiv). The tone may be ironic, but in making this transvaluation, Bale confers on sodomy an active, enabling character, on which he plays further in his interpretation of the major scriptural passage on sodomy: For thys presumpcyon God gaue them clerelye ouer, and left them to themselues with all their good intentes and vowes, wherupon they haue wrought sens that tyme fylthynesse vnspekeable. Their chast women, vestals[,] Monyals, Nonnes, and Begynes, changynge the naturall vse, haue wrought vnnaturallye. Lyke wyse the men in their Prelacyes, presthodes, and innumerable kyndes of Monkerye, for want of women hath brent in their lustes, and done abhomynacyons without nombre, so receyuynge in themselues the iust rewarde of their errour. (AEV A.viiir-V) Here Bale locates the celibate clergy directly in terms of prohibited sodomitical practices in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans {Romans, 1.2427), one of his favorite scriptural texts. Bale's appropriation suggests that sodomy is the result of celibacy ("for want of women") rather than a willful desertion of women, as Paul implies; and it locates sodomitical potential not in the men themselves but in their institutionalised votary state (prelacies, priesthoods and monkery). The women, on the other hand, are represented as their votary status, as nuns. Following Paul, Bale depicts the male-male lust as an active force which can "do . . . abhominacions." Female-female relations are seen only in relation to the women's orthodox "use" (both exploitative and customary) by men; although they "wrought unnaturallye," the verb has no object, their action no purpose and Bale thus perpetuates the myth of sex between women as unproductive and pointless. These characterizations appear again when, translating from the Vulgate Bible (again the strategy of damning the Catholics by their own words), Bale paraphrases the passage in A Mysterye of lnyquyte: Relicto naturali vsu femine I exarserunt in desyderiis suis in inuicem I mascuh in masculos turpitudinem operawtes. They which haue vnrightouslye with holden the truthe of the lorde in vnrightousnesse I leauinge ye naturall vse of 50

PRO SP 1/102 fol. 114b; LP 10:364 (p.144).

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women I haue burned in lustes amonge themselues /workinge menne with menne vnspekable fylthynesse. (MI G.iiir-V) Once more, women are seen as a "naturall use" of men; men with men is a "working," productive situation, albeit only of "fylthynesse." Bale's reiteration of the sodomitical nature of the monasteries has inevitably been seen, even by his champions, as obsessive, but he is by no means alone in his concern. The King's Answere to the petitions of the traytours and rebelles in Lyncolneshyre, published in 1536, stresses the self-incrimination of the visitation reports: "for there be no houses suppressed where god was welle serued, but where moste vice mishiefe and abhomination of lyuynge was vsed: And that doth well appere by their owne confessions subscribed with their owne handes, in the tyme of our vysitations." In his 1541 The defence of the Manage of Preistes, George Joye (writing as James Sawtry) attacks the new prohibition of clerical marriage. His main concern is with the "celibate" clergy's stealing of other men's wives and use of whores; he goes so far as to claim that the recent prohibition is to allow secular men to steal priests' wives. Despite this focus, he still refers to the celibate clergy as "what Sodomites what Gomorreans," "a prodigiouse Sodomitical secte of vnshamefaced shauelinges," "our synful sodomyts," "an odiouse ordir of shorelingis and smered sodomytes," "a very sodomiticall sentyne," referring explicitly to Deuteronomy 28 and Romans I. He draws attention to the visitation reports but feels it his duty to suppress the details: For what Sodomites what Gomorreans I what monstrouse aduouterers they be I they that haue herde their filthy daly ere confessions of theis preistes I &C the visitours late of the suppressed religious places of men & weme» / cane tell it. Whose prodigious filthenes lest it shuld poyson ye paper I & the breathe of the reder shulde corrupt the ayer and infecte honest eares I I suppresse it.51 John Poynet, in his defence of priests' marriages, asks: what a number of faultes I praye you, were there founde in the abbaies at the kynges maiesties visitation? Dyd not the confessions of theim selues, in maner without examination, wytnes those abbays to be the store houses of al vicious Iyfe and abhomination? Was not there couched togither in one dunghyll, superstition, ydolatrie, pryde, malice, ydelnesse, ignorance, abhorryng of maryage, and yet a satisfyeng of their stynkynge lustes of theyr bodyes other ways?52 Perhaps the most interesting writings in this genre came from the pen of Richard Morison. After paying his passage back from Padua, where he 51

Answere to the petitions of the Traytours and rebelles in Lyncolneshyre, sig. A.iiv; Sawtry, Defence of the Manage of Preistes, sigs. A.iiijv, A.vir, B.iujv, B.vv, C.iiijv, C.viir, A.vmr, A.vir. 52 John Poynet, A defence for manage of prtestes, by Scripture and aunciente wryters, sig. C.viir.

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had lived and studied in the household of Reginald Pole, Cromwell put Morison to work producing tracts to answer the various uprisings of the period, such as A remedy for sedition (1536), A lamentation in whiche is shewed what ruyne cometh of seditious rebellyon (1536) and An inuectiue ayenste the great and detestable vice, treason (1539). 53 The recurring message of these tracts is to warn against the ex-votaries—"polshorne pedlers"—whom he claims are behind the risings in Lincolnshire, drawing direct links between their current seditious behavior and their corrupt life in the monastic houses: "Is it not verye lyke, that they liued vertuously in their cloisters, where they might do al mischiefe, and no man see them, whiche now in the face of the worlde are not ashamed to be the ringleaders of these trayterous rebelles?" In common with his contemporaries, Morison can be on occasion coy about the details of the visitation: It were not honest to vtter al that the vysitours in their inquysitions brynge home, that these holy hooded religious haue theym selfe confessed, and confirmed with the subscription of theyr owne handes. What thynges can they be ashamed of, that confesse suche crimes, as no honest man can well reherse, nor good man abyde to here? They shall pardone my shamefastnes, I am content that I lacke boldnes to wryte that which they are not ashamed to do. They haue fautes inowe, thoughe I lay not this to theyr charge. They nede none to accuse them, except they chaunge their apparayle. The worlde hath spyed them. Elsewhere, however, he becomes almost as open as Bale. Characterising "the puttinge downe of abbeyes" as "the puttinge awaye of maynteyned lecherie, buggery, and hypocrisie," Morison appeals to Romans I to invoke the crimes discovered by the visitations "that I lacke boldnes to wryte": I wolde scarce beleue, that men coude teche nature a newe waye, excepte it hadde ben proued to their teethe, and vttered by theyr owne selfes. They that be lerned, knowe what I meane, and what they are. Paule layd the same faut to the Romayns. They that be vnlerned wyl moche meruayle, except they haue ben brought vppe with monkes and friers, howe yonge nouyces maye stand in stede of yong wyues. I haue sayd ynough. It stynketh to sore, to [b]e sturred to moche. 53 Richard Morison, A remedy for sedition; Morison, A Lamentation in whiche is shewed what Ruyne and destruction cometh of seditious rebellyon; Morison, An inuectwe ayenste the great and destestable vice, treason. On Morison see DNB s.v. Sir Richard Morison (39.60-61); Morison, ed. David Sandler Berkowitz, Humanist Scholarship and Public Order; W. Gordon Zeeveld, Foundations of Tudor Policy, 157-89; on the campaign in general see McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics, 150-99. Morison was not above including in his own tracts scurrilous and gratuitous sodomitical stories, such as that of Petrus Aloisius in An exhortation to styrre all Englyshe men to the defence of theyr countreye, sig. C.vir.

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This remarkable passage reveals a perception of how the transmission of knowledge has been affected by the visitation and suppression of the monasteries. The secret of Paul's letter to the Romans—sodomy—has previously been known only to two groups of people: the learned, who could read the Biblical allusions, and those "brought uppe with monkes and friers," the inhabitants of religious institutions. Morison goes on to point out that, for the crimes they have committed, they should have been executed; instead, they have been merely evicted: I am glad that they haue greatter cause to say, that the kynges grace sheweth mercy, out of his place, than to thynke them selfe hardely delte withall, whiche lese but theyr dwellynge places, where they ought to lese theyr lyues. The ciuile lawe puttethe suche not out of theyr house, but with the swerd putteth them to deth. And howe strayte the acte of the parlyament is, they shulde haue founde, if it had ben put into execution. If the kynges grace had done as the lawe wolde, and not as his most gracious nature prouoketh hym, coude any man haue sayde, such detestable vices to deserue lesse punishment.54 Various commentators have assumed that the "act of the parliament" in question is the act of suppression: but this surely does not make sense, since there was no death sentence attached to that measure. It seems more logical to assume that Morison is referring to the act against buggery, only two years old at the time of writing, and that what he is registering here is confusion that the law is not being applied to the findings of the visitation. Whatever the case, Morison was in turn attacked for his words about the monks. The State Papers at the London Public Record Office contain two drafts of a further, unpublished tract in Morison's hand, evidently written as a response to reaction to his Lincolnshire tirade. 55 In one, he writes, I haue ons all ready lamented the foly, the madnes of lincoln shyre, and as well as in so shorte a tyme I cowde, brefely declared the hurts that ensured sedidon. I pleased not all men, the trowthe is, it was not myw intent. They sayd, I myght haue spoken neuer a deale of the nouyces, and yet haue sayde euyl inowghe. I thowght nay, and so dyd as meny, as sawe, how ernestely som were bente in ther defence. I thowght it better to wryte, that they haue subscribed, than to se my contrey, to gither by the ears for them, lothe I was to se men so made, to lose ther lyues, for the»?, w' ther own mowthes had gyuen sentence ayenn them selfe, and by wrytyng testified, that both by gods lawes & mans lawes, they had deservyd to dye. I was lothe to se a parliaments acte, seance [?] vnto so many, so ayenst the welthe of ingland. finally I was lothe, that men shold thynke, 54

Morison, Lamentation, sigs. B.iir, B.iiiv-B.iiiir, B.iiijv, B.iiiv, B.iiij1, C.iiijr.

55

PRO SP 6/13 fols. 16'-24 r and 25^-33' (LP 11:1409 [1] and [2]).

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abbeys were put down, for saing of deprofuwdis. for rysing at mydnyght, for lying alone, for gyuywg almse to the lame, poor &c blynde.56 The other draft (which, heavily revised, may well have been a first draft) elaborates on the anger felt against Morison for revealing the secrets of the novices: Som wer angry w' me but I trust none, but such as few owght to estyme ther anger. They sayd, I shold haue left owght the nouices. I thowght in such a tyme, trowthe owght to be spoken whew the henng of it, myght so settel mews harts, that were so ernestly bewte in the defence of them, whom no maw caw so loue, but he muste abhorre ther lyfe, excepte he be much worse thaw they.57 I want to concentrate on the specific complaint against Morison's ruthless truth: not his attack on the monks in general, but on the novices. He described "how yonge nouyces maye stand in stede of yong wyues"—in other words, that the older monks would use the youngest men sexually. His critics felt that this institutionalized, embedded practice should not be generally known, or more exactly publicly acknowledged. But Morison asserts that two groups of people already know to what he is referring: "they that be lerned," who will recognize the reference to Romans; and those who "haue ben brought vppe with monkes and friers." What Morison's claims mean is that vast numbers of men, brought up into a life of sodomy, are now being reabsorbed into the secular community. According to John Foxe, the Visitors "set at liberty all such religious persons as desired to be free, and all others that were under the age of four-and-twenty years: providing withal that such monks, canons, and friars as were dismissed should have given them by the abbot or prior, instead of their habit, a secular priest's gown and forty shillings of money; and likewise the nuns to have such apparel as secular women did then commonly use, and be suffered to go where they would." 58 What Foxe neglects to mention is that in the years following the suppression, these secular priests and nuns were still unable to marry, and thus one of the major tenets of the Roman Church survived. As Hooper lamented, writing from Strasburg to Heinrich Bullinger in 1546, Our king has destroyed the pope, but not popery; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down their monasteries; he has caused all their posses56

PRO SP 6/13 fol. 17". PRO SP 6/13 fol. 27 v . This is itself a revision of a passage that originally read: "They sayd, I shold haue left owght the nouices. I thowght & so dyd other, at whose coraawdmettte, I wrote it, trowthe myght haue hen spoken . . . " Evidently, Morison's initial impulse is to justify his attack on the novices by claiming that his own line on the matter was shared by the person or persons who commissioned the tract. But this impulse is overtaken by a decision not to specify the authority by which he publishes the attack. 58 John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe ed. the Rev. Stephen Reed Cattley, 5:102. 57

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sions to be transferred into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail female sex, by the king's command to perpetual chastity. England has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is allowed to marry.59 That the debate around chastity and marriage was a key issue can be seen in the act of dedication of Richard Taverner's translation of the Erasmus tract, A rygbt frutefull Epystle . . .in laude and prayse of matrymony to Thomas Cromwell in 1532. 6 0 An exhortation to a young nobleman to marry and continue his stock, rather than remaining celibate, the Epystle treats sacerdotal celibacy in a rather double-handed manner. At one point, the speaker (attempting to persuade his cousin through counsel to marry) asserts Lette thapostolycall men folowe thapostles, whyche (because there offyce is to teche &c instructe the people) can nat both satisfye theyr flock & theyr wyfes, if they shuld haue any. How be it that thappostles also had wyues, it is euidently clere. Let vs grauwt bachellarshyp to ye bishops. What do ye folowe the appostes {sic] forme of lyuynge, beynge so farre from the offyce of an apostle, syth ye be a man bothe temporall and also without offyce? It is lycenced them to be without wyues, to the entent they may the better attend to begette the more chylderne to Christ. Let this be yc pryuilege of prestes δί relygyous men, whych (as it appere) haue succeded the Essenes forme of lyuyng whych damned holy matrymony. Your estate requireth otherwyse.61 The slightly contemptuous tone—"can n a t . . . satisfye," "Let us graurct bachellarshyp . . . ," "It is lycensed them . . ." "forme of lyuyng whych damned holy matrymony"—is a hint of the attack that is to follow: And wold god they were trewly chaste, so many as cloke theyr vyces vnder the gloryous tytle of chastite and castratyon, whyche vnder the shadowe of chastyte doo more fowly rage in fylthy and bestely abhomynation. For I am ashamed, so helpe me god, here to reken vp, in to what shamefull abhominatyons they ofte 59 John Hooper to Henry Bullinger, Strasburg, 27 January (1546), cit. the Rev. Hastings Robinson, trans, and ed., Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, 1: 36. This anger about the failure of the suppression to eradicate "chastity," to lift entirely the anxi­ eties surrounding incontinence and sodomy, can be detected even in Latimer's strident 1548 evocation of the horrors of the visitations, which I quoted earlier in a truncated form: "I woulde not that ye should do wyth chauntrye pnestes as ye dyd wyth the Abbotes whew Abbeyes were put downe. For whew theyr enormities were fyrste read in y e parliment house, they were so greate and abhommable that there was nothynge but downe with them. But within a whyle after, the same Abbottes were made byshops as there be some of them yet alyue to saue and redeme theyr pentioras. O Lorde, thinke ye that God is a fole, & seeth it not, and if he se it, wyl he not punyshe it." Latimer, The seconde Sermone, sig. D.in r - V . 60 Richard Taverner, A ryght frutefull Epystle . . . in laude and prayse of matrymony. For the role of this text in a wider campaign to persuade bachelors to marry during the 153Os, see Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 64—76. 61 Taverner, Epystle, sigs. B.vni v -C.i r .

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tymes falle, whyche doo thus repugne agaynste nature. To be shorte, Christ neuer commaunded bachelarshyp to none erthly persone, but he openly forbyddethe deuorcement. Suerly me thynke, he shulde be nat the worste counsellour for ye commune weale (cowsyderyng the fashyons & manners of men) whyche wolde graunt also the prestes & relygyous persons lycence to mary, namely sythe ther is euery where so greate a multytude of prestes, of which (alas) how few lyue a chast lyfe? How moch better were it to tourne theyr cowcubyns into wyues . . . and beget chylderne whom they may loue as trewly legytymate. 62 In his dedication to Cromwell, Taverner declares that as soon as he read the epistle by Erasmus, he thought it a thynge full necessarye and expedyent, to translate it in to our vulgure to«g / & so vnder your noble protection to communicate it to the people, namely when he considered the blynd superstition of men and women / which cease nat day by day to professe &c vowe perpetuall chastyte before or they suffyciently knowe themselues &C thinfirmite of theyr nature. Which thyng (in my opinion) hath bene and is yet vnto this day the rote and very cause original of innumerable myscheues.63 Significantly here, in contrast to the content of the Epystle itself, Taverner draws attention to the situation of those living under a vow of chastity (that is, the priesthood and the votaries in the monasteries and convents) rather than on the good husband sowing his seed for the commonwealth and the continuance of his family line. This association of the "new learning" 6 4 and marriage in opposition to sodomy is also found in Thre Lawes where Bale presents an alternative to the Church of Rome in "Euangeliura" or "Christes Gospell." Infidelity meets Evangelium for the first time—his only previous contact having been a m a n w h o swore repeatedly by the gospel. As we discover when Infidelity (in disguise) challenges him, Evangelium is figured simultaneously as a man of the new learning and a married man (married to the true Church): Marry so they saye, ye fellawes of the newe lerwynge, Forsake holy church, and now fall fast to wyuynge; to which Evangelium responds Naye, they forsake whoredome, with other darapnable vsage. 62

Ibid., sig. Cu'--. Ibid., sig. A.iir. 64 For a point-by-point demonstration on how the "new learning" differs from the old see William Turner, The olde learnyng and the new. For a discussion on how the phrase was first applied to specifically Lutheran ideas and should not be confused with humanism, see Allan G. Chester, "The 'New Learning,'" Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955): 139-47. 63

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And lyue with their wyues, in lawfull marryage, whyls the popes oyled swarme, raigne styll in their olde buggerage (Er) and characterizes Infidelity as one of them, that detesteth matrymonye, Whych is afore God, a state both iust and holye. Of soch as thu art, saynt paule ded prophecye, By the holy Ghost, that a serten curapanye, In the latter dayes from the truth of God shuld fall Attendynge to spretes, of errour dyabolycall. Bale's Thre Lawes, for all its "sensational" elements, can thus be seen as not out of step with a consolidated propaganda campaign, characterized from the start by a peculiarly English version of Erasmian Christian humanism, emanating from Thomas Cromwell via the press of Thomas Berthelet—the start of the Protestant literary tradition that was to give us the works of Foxe, Spenser and Sidney. So why isn't John Bale canonised as they are? MEETING MAECENAS ON THE R O A D TO DAMASCUS:

T H E CONVERSION OF JOHN BALE

The concerns of marriage, the new learning, and the transition from clerical to secular life converge—inevitably—in the figure of John Bale. His own published account of his conversion, the final version of which from his 1557 Catalogus provided and still provides the basic substance of his biographical entries, 65 adds a further factor to the equation: I, a boy of twelve years, was thrust by my parents, who were both weighed down by numerous offspring and deluded by the tricks of pseudo-prophets, into the abyss of the Carmelite order in the city of Norwich . . . There and at Cambridge I wandered in complete barbarism of scholarship and blindness of mind, having neither mentor nor Maecenas: until, with the word of God shining forth, the churches began to be recalled to the purest springs of true theology. But in that splendour of the rise of the new Jerusalem, called not by monk or by priest but by the distinguished Lord Wentworth, as though by that Centurion who said that Christ was the Son of God, and earnestly aroused, I saw and acknowledged my deformity for the first time. . . . And lest henceforward in any way I might be a creature of so bestial a nature I took the faithful Dorothy 65 See for example the version by Puritan Thomas Gataker, "The Life and Death of John Bale" in Thomas Fuller et al., Abel Redevivus, 503-4.

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to wife, listening attentively to this divine saying: let him who cannot be continent marry.66 Bale here strikingly links his personal conversion—and his shift from the "barbarism of scholarship" to the new learning—explicitly not to a spiritual revelation mediated by the Church ("by monk or by priest") but rather to the utterly secular Lord Wentworth who is figured simultaneously as the Roman Centurion who recognized Christ as the Son of God and as Maecenas, the patron of Virgil and Horace and hence the archetypal patron of humanist learning. In other words, Bale's conversion —figured as parallelling the change in the country—moves away from an institutionalised monastic scholasticism towards a form of (Roman) new learning which necessarily engages in a secular patronage system— indeed, which is born out of such an engagement. And at the same moment, Bale introduces the question of his potentially incontinent sexuality: echoing the prayers of the West Dereham monks, he marries to redefine the borders of his "incontinence" and to render it innocuous as marriage to the "faithful Dorothy." These themes are exploited elsewhere in his work. Although Bale is often portrayed as a solitary scholar, he evidently attracted patronage— from Cromwell in the 1530s, Mary Fitzroy, duchess of Richmond in the late 1540s, and from Edward VI, who preferred him to the bishopric of Ossory. Bale's physical return to England in 1548 after the accession of the young king was prefaced by the publication of three of his plays and the Wesel publication on 31 July 1548 by Dirik van der Straten oi his bibliographical register, the Illustrium maioris Britanniae scriptorum summarium. Dedicated to Edward VI, the volume bears two images of dedication. The smaller shows the scene in profile, with Edward on his throne with a writing desk in front of him, and Bale handing over the book, making a slight curtsy. The larger image on the titlepage is another view of the same scene but with some significant alterations. While the king's robes, throne and the arras are identical, the king is no longer 66

"A parentibus enim, numerosa prole turn grauatis, turn pseudoprophetarum prxstigijs delusis, duodecim annorum puer, in Carmelitani monachatus barathrum, in urbe Nordouicensi trudebar . . . In omni hterarum barbane ac mentis caecitate illic & Cantabrigiae peruagabar, nullum habens tutorem aut Mecoenatem: donee lucente Dei uerbo, ecclesis reuocari coepissent ad uerae theologize punssimos fontes. In eo autem splendore ortus nouie Hierusalem, non a monacho aut sacrifico uocatus, sed ab illustn Domino Vuenfordo, tanquam a Centunone illo qui Christum Dei filium esse dicebat, seno excitatus, deformitatem meam quam primum uidi & agnoui. . . Et ne deinceps in ahquo essem tam execrabihs bestias creatura, uxorem accepi Dorotheam fidelem, diuinae huic uoci auscultans: Qui non continet, nubat." Bale, Catalogus, 702 (sig. Tt 3V), trans. Peter Happe in his ed., Complete Plays, 1: 147. An earlier version of Bale's life story in the 1548 Summarium is less secularized: see sigs. Ppp ij v -Ppp iijr. Contrast the conventional Carmelite version in Anglorum Heliades: BL ms Harley 3838, fols. 99b-100a [now repaginated as H I b - I H a ] .

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sitting at a writing desk. We look at the king face on: the king looks at— and this time holds—the book being given him by Bale. Bale, however, now in a fully kneeling position is looking at neither the king nor the book, but at a male courtier peeping through the arras to the left of the picture. The titlepage emphatically places Bale in a patronage relationship even at the very moment when he is presenting his summary of writers of England to England himself. So John Bale places in a problematic nexus not only incontinence and sodomy and the English Reformation, but also the new learning and patronage, dramatising them all in his own personal narrative. But how does this relate in any practical manner to the writing of history of England, the reformed England whom he is supposed to represent?

O L D H A B I T S : J O H N BALE AND T H E R E F O R M A T I O N OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

Although the illicit sexual activities of votaries are cited in works by Erasmus, Thomas More and William Tyndale, their treatment by John Bale is undeniably more persistent, and qualitatively different. Bale does not follow Tyndale in exhibiting a chronic mistrust of the literary heritage monopolised by the Roman Church; 67 to a greater extent than his contemporaries, Bale relies on ecclesiastical history and to some degree subscribes to the sanctity of these texts, but is able to "interpret" source material which he recognizes as biased, in search of a sympathetic "truth" or, in other words, to read for a Reformed subtext in the Roman texts. He characterizes this textual exercise in terms of the true faith providing the correct interpretation of the Scriptures. In contrast, the lackeys of Rome are incompetent and fraudulent commentators, lacking the necessary analytical and literary skills even to put their case properly. In response to a Catholic pamphlet entitled An exhortacyon to avoyde false doctrine, Bale penned in deliberately jangling verse An answere to a papystycall exhortacyon, pretendynge to avoyde false doctryne, under that color to maynteyne the same.68 His opening assault equates the Catholic propagandists' inferior "wits," education, and grasp of poetical technique quite explicitly with their misreading of the scriptures and their subsequent false doctrine: "Everye pylde pedlar I WyIl be a medlar I Though ther 67 Rainer Pineas, "William Tyndale's Influence on John Bale's Polemical Use of History," Arcbw fur Reformationsgeschichte 53 (1962): 79-96 at 84-86; Jean-Fra^ois GiImont, "Les Vaudois des Alpes: mythes et realites," Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique 83 (1988): 68-89 at 71-72. Gilmont thinks that Bale's work follows Tyndale's in this mistrust but employs different methods to exploit it. 68 Bale, An answere to a papystycall exhortacyon . . . [hereafter APE].

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wyttes be drowsye I And ther lernynge lowsye I Ther meters all mangye I Rashe, rurall, and grangye" {APE A2r). Using rhyme to link poetical incompetence with false doctrine, Bale continues throughout the piece to characterize Catholic beliefs in terms of the misuse of both scripture and poetical technique: "Your penne and your mynde I Are both of one kynde I And fyt for soche an hart" {APE A3 r ); "Your doctryne is chaffe I Your ryme dyrtye draffe" {APE A3V); "Ye are a papyst I In lernynge verye basse" {APE A4r). Bale uses similar methods to belittle "Ponce Pantolabus," the author of the Genealogye of heresye to which his A mysterye of inyquyte is a response. Pantolabus becomes "this chaunter of babylon with his mangye mawgled meters" {MI B.vir), "this braynelesse hypocrite and blasphemouse beastyle babler" (D.viiv), "a wytlesse wrangeler . . . / and a dodypoll dawepate" (F.vr); the Genealogye is an "abhominable peruertinge of the scripturs" (L.viiiv). Bale concludes that "Pantolabws hath here full honorably beshytt the scripturs I and full Iyke a worshypfull gentylman of ye Popes churche" (E.viiiv). The Genealogye moves from the abstract—"Blynde obstynacye, I Begate heresye. / By a myschaunce. I Of dame ignoraunce" (Bv)—through strife, debate, ambition, superstition, disdain, slowth, sluggishness, willfulness, which "Nygh cosyne to heresye / Begate myschefe. I Father of Wyclefe." From Wyclif, Pantolabus moves to Hus, Luther, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Zwingli, and then into England with John Frith, John Lambert, Peter Franck, Barnes, Garrett, Jerome, and the current "rowte I Of these same slepers I And corner crepers." Pantolabus' jangling quatrains are accompanied by scriptural citations: Bale's critical method is consistently to contextualise the citation in order to interrogate the charges laid in the quatrain. For example, in response to Next after him [Luther] Is his chefe lym. One Melanchtonus. Nequaquam bonus. Euanuerunt in cogitationibus suis. ro. I. (MI D.vi*-D.viir)

Bale contends: The scripture that ye haue brought forth here I out of saynt Paules Epistle to the Romanes I Euanuerunt in cogitationibus suis is as ryghtlye youre owne good as is possyble. For yt is spoken there vnto them that withholde the truth of God in vnryghtousnesse / as you do here in this iest of yours I and as doth youre whole popysshe generacyon I becowmynge all vayne in youre thoughtes I & hauynge youre folysshe hartes so darkened. But I maruele sore whan ye redde that chapter / whye ye marked not this clause folowynge. Propterea tradidit vos Deus in passiones ignominie &c. For youre obstynate frowardnesse hath the lorde geuen you ouer into most shamefull lustes I and

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suffred you to worke fylthynesse amonge yourselues leauynge the naturall vse of women. This hath he geuen you as a due rewarde of your errour I for that ye haue turned his verite to a lye / and serued the creature rather than ye creator or maker. This therfore doth rather perteyne to you than to Melanchton: for you contempne marryage I &C not he / you are the Sodomites / and not he. you are the abhominable ydolaters I sensynge styll stockes and stones / and not he. It is you most execrable papistes that are there now noted to be full of iniquite / malyce I fornicacyon / auaryce / falshede / enuye I murther / contencyon / fraude I frowardnesse I and so forth as foloweth there in course / and not these godlye men. [MI D.viii r - V ] The same scriptural chapter is cited by Pantolabus against John Lambert: Next of this secte That was suspecte. Was one Lamberte A manne peruerte. And almost wood. Probauerunt habere Deum in notitia, tradidit illos Deus in reprobum sensum. Rom. I. (MI Gv) Now cometh here one in / borowed of ye first chapter of saynt Paule to the Romanes Marke the good workemanlye handelynge (I praye ye) therof. Sicut non probauerunt illos Deus in reprobrum sensum. As they haue not regarded to knowe their lord god / so hath he geuen them ouer into a lewde mynde. And what is this text to the purpose to proue that Johan Lambert was a manne peruert and almost wood? This is there a conclusyon of an olde stynkynge matter of yours goynge but a lyttle afore I and therfore lete it not be left so cowardlye behynde you. Relicto naturali vsu femine I exarserunt in desyderiis suis in inuicem I masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes. They which haue vnrightouslye with holden the truthe of the lorde in vnrightousnesse / leauinge ye naturall vse of women / haue burned in lustes amonge themselues / workinge menne with menne vnspekable fylthynesse. Be ashamed wretches / be ashamed I and bestowe ones the scnpturs where as they shuld be bestowed. Lerne to amende yowr abhominable lyuinge / and leaue to blaspheme the poore innocerctes by them. For yf ye can no rightlyar bestowe them / trulye yf yowr wrytinges come to owr handes I we shall teache yow the right waye I bycause yowr own shepeherdes are slacke. [MI G.iiir-V] Bale's insistence on the sodomitical nature of doctrinal error—and equally the doctrinal error inherent to the institutions promoting sodomy—is here pushed to its limits to challenge the very act from which doctrine is produced: biblical exegesis. The Roman reading of the Bible is not merely a misreading, but an interpretation that deliberately sup-

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presses the sodomy carried within the scriptural texts themselves. According to this critique, it is not merely the embedded sodomy of the monasteries which is at stake, but the sodomitical reading adopted by the Roman Church. And yet ironically, the alternative readings suggested by Bale do not seek to avoid the sodomy in the Biblical texts but to foreground it. The Reformed exegesis is thus one that by its very nature insists on sodomitical reading. Bale often uses the trope of the two female churches—the "true bride of Christ" and "the painted whore of antichrist" to figure the choice of readings available.69 Within the celibate clergy, however, the allegiances forged and the vows made are not of marriage but of chastity. The metaphorical marriage to chastity is thus rendered sodomitical: "they toke theyr oyled orders and [were] marryed to Sodome & Gomor" (MI Dr). Bale presents the sexual misdoings of the celibate clergy at greatest length in his vitriolic Actes ofEnglysh Votaryes. Here again, his polemic is "collected out of their owne legendes and Chronycles" [AEV titlepage), so that the votaries incriminate themselves through their own texts. Bale claims that he is unable to deal with them on the level of disputable scriptural exegesis because "they regarde not the sacred scrypturs" (AEV A.iiiiv),70 but tellingly he persists in depicting their sexual exploits in terms of a misreading/misrepresentation: I haue therfor thought yt best, seynge they regarde not the sacred scrypturs, to laye before them their abhomynable practyses and examples of fylthynesse, by their owne legendes, chronycles, and sayntes Lyues, that all men maye knowe what legerdemaynes they haue vsed, and what lecherouse lyues they haue led here in Englande sens the worldes begynnynge. (AEV A.iiiiv)

The "lecherous lyves" of the votaries are the fleshly expression of the textual "legerdemayne" performed on the historical facts and scriptural writings in order to produce their Catholic chronicles and hagiographies. As an experienced and devoted ex-hagiographer himself, Bale sees his erstwhile textual "legerdemayne" as intrinsic to his votary life. The vow of chastity that defined him as an English votary is the "legerdemayne" which he seeks to expose in his writing. We cannot see Bale's prose revaluations of ecclesiastical history independently of his revaluation of his own position in relation to the vow of chastity. Bale's obsessive publishing on the existence and activities of the votaries needs to be seen in what he saw as its context. His most sustained 69 This is the basis for his massive Image of Bothe Churches, an exegesis following Luther's interpretation of Revelations as a prediction of the Reformation. 70 Catholic ignorance of scripture or of the context of certain basic tenets remains one of Bale's favorite targets: see Satan in A brefe comedy or enterlude concernynge the temptacyon of our lorde, sigs. D4 v -El r .

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attack is contained in his massive 1546 publication The Actes ofEnglysh votaryes, comprehendynge their unchast practyses and examples by all ages, from the worldes begynnynge to thys present yeare, collected out of their owne legendes and Chronycles, in which Bale constructs a history of England hinging on the narrative of celibacy starting from before Noah (B.iv-B.ijr) moving through "Albion wyth hys Samothytes" (B.ijr), and "Brute with hys Druydes" (B.iijr) and then tracing a Biblical line through the (married) apostles to the event of "Brytayne first conuerted by men maryed" (B.vir), with Lucius as the first Christian king. Christianity is soon corrupted, by the division into dioceses, and the "first sprynge of monkerye" (B.viir); chastity is finally imposed on the "new broched broode or newlye fashioned clergye" following the Saxon invasion (D.iiiiv). Throughout his work, Bale shows a strong interest in English historiography and a realization of the importance to the nation of a new Reformed history: 1 wolde wyshe some lerned Englyshe marcne . . . to set forth the Englyshe chronycles in theyr ryght shappe . . . I can not thynke a more necessarye thynge to be laboured to the honour of God / bewtye of the realme / erudicyon of the people I and commodite of other landes / next to the sacred scripturs of the Byble / than that worke wold be.71 In his play Kingjohan, for example, Veritas defends King John against his indecorous literary reputation: 1 assure ye, fryndes, lete men wryte that they wyll Kynge Johan was a man both valeaunt and godlye. What though Polydorus reporteth hym very yll At the suggestyons of the malicyous clergye? Thynke yow a Romane with the Romanes can not lye? Yes! Here Bale identifies the chronicle writers—particularly the Italian Catholic Polydore Vergil ("a Romane")—as agents of the Catholic Church ("the Romanes"). His riposte is to summon a close friend: Therfor Leylande out of thy [slumbre] awake And wytnesse a trewthe for thynbe owne contraye sake.72 The potential rectifier of the chronicle records here invoked is the antiquarian John Leland, from 1533 the King's librarian. Bale was a longtime friend of Leland: in 1536, when Bale was imprisoned for his radical 71

Bale, A brefe Chronycle concernynge the Examinacyon and death of. . . syr Johan Oldecastell the lorde Cobham, sig. Avv. 72 Bale, King John in Happe ed., Complete Plays, 1: 86, lines 2193-99.

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preaching, it was Leland who wrote to Cromwell to win patronage for his friend. Bale later dedicated his Anglorum Heliades to Leland, undertaking a short tour in the south to complement Leland's travels. Leland had been charged with making a sort of literary visitation to the monastic libraries, to compile an inventory of the books and their locations and from them to gather information for the writing of a reformed English history.73 Bale tells how Henry VIII, acting "of a godly zele, by specyall commyssyon, dyrected maystre Johan Leylande, to ouerse a nombre of theyr sayde [the monasteries'] libraries." 74 Leland's technique was of "inspecting the Books . . . taking exact Catalogues, and transcribing from them whatsoever Passages he judg'd might serve to give any manner of Light to the History and Antiquities of this Kingdom.'"75 A recommendatory letter written on behalf of Leland for use in Bury suggests more clearly his manner of working: In right hearty manner I commend me on to yow. And where as Master Leylande at this praesente tyme cummith to Byri to see what bookes be lefte yn the Library there, or translatid thens ynto any other corner of the late monastery, I shaul desier yow upon just consideration right redily to forder his cause, and to permite hym to have the use of such as may forder hym yn setting forth matiers as he writith for the King's Majeste.76 The influence of the work compiled by Leland in this way was and is massive. As the keeper of the Bodleian Library Thomas Hearne wrote to Humphrey Warley, then occupied in cataloguing the Harley papers, in 1714, "Holinshed as well as Stowe borrow'd much from Leland. And the best Part of the Description of Britain before Holinshed by Harrison is extracted from him, Harrison himself being a Man but of indifferent Judgment, and having not been a Traveller. Indeed all the Antiquaries of note since his time have drawn very many of their Materials from him, tho' oftentimes without acknowledgment." 77 Hearne's hint here of the importance of Leland's traveling is expanded in the Preface to his 1710 73

The analogy to the visitation is not without foundation: the editor of A Summary of all the Religious Houses in England and Wales successfully muddles Leland's Itinerary and the Valor Ecclesiasticus, referring to "that very Catalogue [of Valuations], which was taken by a special Commission and given into the King, by that great Antiquary Mr. Leland, at the Time of the Dissolution of the Abbies" (xxiv). 74 John Leland, The laboryouse Journey & serche of Johan Leylande . . ., ed. John Bale [hereafter LJ], sig.Aij\ 75 Thomas Hearne, ed., The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary, 1:V1. 76 Cit. William Huddesford, The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, John Leland, Thomas Hearne and Anthony a Wood, 1: 15. 77 Thomas Hearne to Humphrey Warley, Oxford, 23 October 1714. BL ms Harley 3779 fol. 34a [catalogued as Harley 3781, art. 21]; printed in Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 355.

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edition of Leland's Itinerary, prepared from the Bodleian Library manuscript. Here Hearne argues that before Leland, catalogues prepared in the monasteries were precise in detail on ecclesiastical and civil transactions but lacked a wider scope. He suggests that one reason for this might be the monks' "Confinement to their respective Societies by which they were incapacitated for travelling and making such Observations as were absolutely necessary for a just and faithful Description of the Isle. Had they been left at liberty, and been indulg'd by some Powerful Patrons, there is no doubt but they would have perform'd such a Work with the utmost exactness."78 Hearne identifies the essential shift without which a scholarly work of national scope, such as Leland's Itinerary, could not have been executed. Here again, as Bale argued, this shift requires the removal of the barriers preventing the monks from traveling—the monastery walls—a removal which allows the monks to enter into relationships with "some Powerful Patrons." The suppression of the monasteries is here with hindsight appraised from the point of view of the antiquarian as the moment when the scholar was freed from the physical, ideological, and practical limits of the monastery and able to—and indeed required to— further his scholarship through his entry into some form of patronage transaction. Bale eventually took over Leland's work—to later hostile charges of opportunism and plagiarism79—when Leland, faced with the task of writing up fifteen years' worth of notes made traveling around the country, suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. Thus the two names are inextricably linked in the creation of a new English history, at least by later commentators.80 Bale's influence on chronicle history is also more direct. Jesse Harris credits Bale as being "thefirsthistorian of English literature" and suggests it was "partly through his suggestion and influence, [that] the chronicle history was revised from its Romish colouring to one of Protestant leaning."81 Bale's attack on the Italian Polydore Vergil, late Historiographer Royal, continued in his martyrology of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, accusing him of "polutynge oure Englyshe chronycles most shamefullye with his Romyshe lyes and other Italyshe beggerye."82 He reworked the account of Oldcastle that 78

Hearne, ed., Itinerary of John Leland, 1:VI. See John Pits, Relationum Historicarvm de Rebus Anglicis Tomus Primvs, 5 3 - 5 9 . 80 Huddesford writes of "Bale, the friend and fellow-labourer of Leland. The same pursuit was the end of their joint industry: if one, under the patronage of his Prince, had greater opportunities to collect and preserve the antient monuments of national literature, the other was a diligent and zealous volunteer in the same laudable and beneficent employ." Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, l:vi. 81 Harris, John Bale, 110, see also 116. 82 Bale, Cobham, sig. A.vr. 79

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Vergil had promulgated in his 1534 Historia Anglica,S3 a reworking whose effects were felt beyond his own book—becoming part of the first great post-Reformation English chronicle, by Edward Hall. As John Foxe tells it in a vivid anecdote, Bale's life of Oldcastle was printed just as Hall was putting the finishing touches to his Chronicle.84 Foxe himself, a colodger with Bale in London at the house of Mary, duchess of Richmond and later in Zurich with the printer Oporinus, 85 was heavily indebted to Bale's account of the Anne Askew affair. Even the Catholic Abbot Gasquet has begrudging praise for Bale's work: "Bale has a redeeming point in his literary character. Whilst it was yet possible, he gathered up with scrupulous care the memorials of his order in England, and thus showed, in spite of violence and virulence of speech and pen, that there was somewhere in his heart a tenderness for the men of his old habit." 86 But what Gasquet identifies as Bale's saving grace—a sentimental link with his "old habit"—emerges in Bale's work as a deeply troubled continuation. For Bale started work on his catalogue of English writers as a catalogue of English Catholic writers, and continued to use even the same manuscript copy after his personal conversion. 87 What changed was not Bale's own methods of working but rather the new possibilities of working caused by the breaking up of the monasteries' library collections. Bale identifies England as the most "negligent and vntoward" nation in its search for its "auncyent hystoryes" (L/ Aijr), a situation currently exacerbated by extraordinary events: A much forther plage hath fallen of late yeares. I dolorouslye lamente so greate an ouersyghte in the moste lawfull ouerthrow of the sodometrouse Abbeyes &C Fryeryes, when the most worthy monumentes oi this realme, so myserably peryshed in the spoyle. Oh, that men of learnyng &c of perfyght loue to their nacyon, were not the« appoynted to the serche of theyr lybraryes, for the conseruaciow of those most noble Antiquitees. (LJ Aijv) Bale's dilemma is clear: his unquestioned support for the "most lawfull ouerthrow" of the monasteries' inhabitants, here markedly—and it might be argued, gratuitously—identified as "sodometrouse," is simultaneously "dolorouslye lamente[d]" as the death knell of the monuments and antiquities housed in the monasteries. He elaborates on the loss of the monastic collections: 83 Polydore Vergil, Vrbinatis Anglicae btstoriae libri XXVI: see 435-36 for the passage Bale takes to task in Cobhant, sigs. A.v v - A.viv. 84 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 3:377-78. 85 Harris, John Bale, 119. 86 Abbot Francis Gasquet, Henry VlH and the English Monasteries, 311-12. 87 See Leslie P. Fairfield, "John Bale and the development of Protestant hagiography in England," The Journal of Eccesiasttcal History 24 (1973): 145-60 at 146-47.

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Neuer had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes, beynge so many in nombre, and in so desolate places for the more parte, yf the chiefe monumentes and moste notable workes of our excellent wryters, had bene reserued. If there had bene in euery shyre of Englande, but one solewzpne lybrary, to the preseruacyon of those noble workes, and preferrement of good lernynges in oure posteryte, it had bene yet sumwhat. But to destroye all without consyderacyon, is and wyll be vnto Englande for euer, a moste horryble infamy amonge the graue senyours of other nacyons. A great nombre of them whych purchased those superstycyouse mansyons, reserued of those lybrarye bokes, some to serue theyr iakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, &c some to rubbe their bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers, & some they sent ouer see to ye bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. (LJ B.ir) The conversion of what is by rights the textual legacy of "that publyque wealthe" into "pryuate commodite" (L/ Aijv) is deplored at length by Bale. He contrasts Princess Elizabeth's efforts in translating the work of Margaret of Angouleme with the hoarding of the monks: "She haue not done herin, as ded the relygyouse and anonynted hypocrytes in monasteryes, couewtes and colleges, in spearynge their lybraryes from men studyouse, and in reseruynge the treasure contayned in their bokes, to the most vyle dust and wormes. But lyke as God hath gracyously geuen it, so do she agayne most frely dystrybute it." 8 8 Bale's solution to the problem of the monasteries (articulated with hindsight) is to beg the king: Finallye to take from them their inordinate pompe and ryches and more godlye to bestowe them I that is to saye I to the ayde of his pouerte and mayntenaunce of his common welthe. As for an example the noble Germanyes hath gracyouslye done before him I makinge of their monasteryes I nonnes I couentes and fryers houses I scoles of Christen lernynge I hospitalles for sycke people I and conuenient dwellinge places for the impotent I poore I and aged. 89 Bale, writing in 1548, and treading rather close to condemning the king's father for the dispersal of the libraries, displaces the blame onto "Avaryce," and argues for a national library to serve as an information resource for the personal use of the monarch: Auaryce was the other dyspatcher, whych hath made an ende both of our lybraryes and bokes wythout respecte lyke as of other moste honest com88 Bale, "The Conclusyon" to Margaret of Angouleme, trans. Elizabeth, A Godly Medytacyon of the christen sowle, concernynge a hue towardes God and hys Christe, sig. Eviiir. 89 Henry Stalbrydge [pseud, of John Bale], The Epistle exhortatorye of an Englyshe Christiane vnto his derely beloued contreye of Englande, sig. C.vv. Bale was not alone in urging Cromwell to convert the monasteries into places of learning: see Dowling, Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII, 102-3, for similar pleas by Thomas Starkey and Cambridge University.

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modytees, to no small decaye of the commen welthe. Cyrus the Kynge of Perseanes (as testifyeth Esdras) had a noble lybrary in Babylon, for the conseruacyon both of the landes Antiquytees &C also of the prynces actes, lawes, &C commaundementes, that whan necessyte shoulde requyre it, the certentie of thynges myghte there be sought and founde out. i.Esdre.vi. Nehemias the Prophete made a lybrarye also, and gathered into it bokes from all contreyes, specyally the bokes of the prophetes and of David, the epystles and actes of the kynges, with serten annotacyons and writynges, Judas Machabeus addynge dyuerse vyctoryes to the same. ij.Macha.ij. Thus are buylders of lybraryes commended in the scriptures, than must their destroyers haue of the same, their iustly deserued infamyes, namelye whan couetousnesse is founde the most busy doar, whose workes are alwayes to be detested. (LJ A.viiir-V) The role of the library, according to Bale following Esdras, is to house the nation's antiquities, acts, laws, and commandments, in addition to the scriptures, together with "annotacyons and writynges," in order to be called upon as a resource "whan necessyte shoulde requyre" in order to establish "the certentie of thynges." Such a library would negate the need for the kind of "laboriouse iourney and costly enterprise" for knowledge the post-suppression John Leland was forced to make, ultimately causing his breakdown. 90 But without a public royal library Bale was forced to create his own, a project that reached its apogee during his years in Ireland. It seems more than likely that Bale took many of Leland's books and papers with him to Ossory, but he was to lose his library in Ireland when he was forced to flee in 1553. The Queen herself wrote to the son (Warham) and brother (Robert) of the Lord Deputy for Ireland at the time, Sir Anthony St. Leger, in an attempt to ensure the return of the books, describing Bale as "a man that hath byn studious in the serche for the history and antiquities of this our realme" requiring texts "for the illustration and setting forth of the storye of this realme" but he never recovered his collection.91 90

One of Bale's correspondents informed him that "Maistre Leyande . . . is in suche a frenesy at thys present, that lytle hope I haue of hys recouer." Bale concludes that "It hath pleased god that he shuld thus be depryued of hys wyttes" (LJ Cr, Biiiv, Bvv). 91 Happe and King, "Life and Works," in their ed. Vocacyon, 8. For the story of Bale's Irish library see the undated letter from Elizabeth to Warham Sentleger and Robert Sentleger: Calendar of State Papers, relating to Ireland . . . 1509-1573, ed. Hans Claude Hamilton, 158, cit. McCusker, John Bale, 3 0 - 3 1 ; "A Letter from Bishop Bale to Archbishop Parker," Communicated by the Rev H. R. Luard, Cambridge Antiquarian Communications 3 (1879): 157-73, rpt. McCusker, John Bale, 5 8 - 6 6 . Many of Leland's papers eventually found themselves in what were to become key collections. Some were transmitted via Sir John Cheke to the Purefoy family, then in 1612 to William Burton, who gave them to the Bodleian Library; others found their way via Paget and Cecil to Robert Cotton's study, now in the British Museum (Huddesford, Lives, 28).

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Even safely within his own library, however, anxiety about the bounds of sodomy crops up insistently, returning us once again to the registers of the visitation. That Bale was familiar with the visitation reports is in no doubt. In the autobiographical Vocacyon ofjohan Bale, he writes, In that malignaunt assemblye / were false wurshippinges commaunded for Gods holy seruice I and monstruouse buggery for a professed virginite I in our consecrate clergye admitted. Thus were ye people nusled up from their yowth in callinge vpon dead mew and ymages I the preastes and religiouse in the meane time occupied / in all beastly wurkes of ye fleshe. I haue the registre of ye visitaciows of yc cloysters of Englawde / & therfor I knowe it to their confusion. (VJB B.vi*) Bale returned to this theme in his Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytannicae Catalogus, claiming that "In my possession at the moment are facts and findings of the visitations of a hundred monastic establishments of both sexes, and of the priests of eighty colleges, by the King's Commissioners . . . In which so numerous are those reported as sodomites and incontinents . . .The book is called the Breuiarium compertorum in monasteries, conuentibus, collegijs, etc.'"92 and goes on to give lists of names of specific "sodomites and incontinents." The fact that Bale has the registers in his possession is telling. For if Bale is to write the history of England, he must now write of the Reformation that could bring that new history into being—including the reformation of the bounds of sodomy. In his Acta Romanorum pontificum, translated into English by John Studley and published in 1574 as The Pageant of Popes, Bale writes: Many things haue bene hidden in darkenesse &C priuie places, the which the Sunne hath not seene, but tyme the mother of truthe. The monasteries being put down in England, hath learned to speake and to bewraye them. As for example, the registers of the kinges visitation, or as they call it, the abbrigement of things knowen by experience in the very congregation &c colleges of the Papistes, the which thinges I sawe them to my great feare and terrour, but nowe I possesse them, and kepe them to their great ignominie and shame, and haue opened a few of them hereafter, in the Epistle to the Reader. If Ezechiel now should pearce through the wall, and should be brought into their entries, halles, and darke chambers, he shoulde not see the Israelites bewayle Thamnum, but gelded men unmaried, worthy to be woundred at, for the godly profession, offring their sacrifice to Baalpeor, Bacchus, &C Venus. And sithe I 92 "Apud me ad prasens sunt uisitationes centum monastenorum utriusqae sexus, et octodecim collegiorum sacerdotalium, per commissarios regios Richardum Laytow legum doctorem, Thomam Bedill archidiaconum Cornubiensem, & Thomam Bertheletum notanum facta: & collect*. In quibus, tanto numero reperti sunt Sodomitae &c incowtinentes ut in unoquoq«e eorum credideris nouam adfuisse Gomorram. Liber uocatur Breuiarium compertorum in monasterijs, conuentibus, collegijs, etc." Bale, Catalogus, sig. Pp r [p. 665].

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knowe these thinges to be certayne and true, should I not ouerthrowe them, should I not make them manifest and openly knowen to all the worlde? Truly they will saye that an Englishe man, whiche is separated from all other nations, dothe certainly knowe what is done at Rome in the secret chambers of the Pope and his Cardinall. Shall not I openlye declare for a truth those thinges whiche are declared in Bookes, and seene wyth the eyes of the wryter, the whiche thinges not the secrete chambers, but the princely court, not the priuie corners, but the open streetes, do euidently shew, but they deny it not, and yet defende it wyth moste wicked Bookes set foorth in their owne tongue, the which Christian shamefastnes forbiddeth me to declare. . . . This our miserable Realme of Englande may be vnto vs a familiar example, for whose sake more willinglye I toke in hande to write this booke, that oure Englishe men may see now at the last what a terrible beast they haue receyued into theyr common wealth.93 Bale's description of his personal passage from fear of the sodomitical acts of the votaries to control of them is produced by the textualization itself of the acts—"qua; cum horrore tunc uidi, nunc autem habeo, atque ad eorum ignominiam seruo"—a line whose halting shift from past to present tenses is registered in the awkwardness of John Studley's attempt at translation: "the which things I sawe them to my great feare and terrour, but nowe I possesse them, and kepe them to their great ignominie and shame." 94 The movement here is complex and points finally to the intensely problematic and anxious nature of the relationship between the experience of the institutionalized celibate votary and his later integration into the secular service system. In the past, Bale saw these things—both 93 John Studley, trans., The Pageant of Popes, contayninge the lyues of all the bishops of Rome, sigs. *'c.iiij v - ,t dr. "Multa in latebris ac tenebns latere potuerunt, quae sol non uidit: tempus iam uentatis mater, dirutis in Anglia monasterijs, loqui didicit & prodere. Exemplo sunt Regiarum uisitationum registra, uel, ut illi uocant, Compendia compertorum in ipsis Papistarura coenobijs & collegijs: qua; cum horrore tunc uidi, nunc autem habeo, atque ad eorum ignominiam seruo: quorum ahqua in sequenti ad Lectorem epistola exhibui. Si Ezechiel modo perfoderet panetem, mtroductusqwe in uestibula, atria & cubicula istorum abscondita, esset: now ibi Israelites plangentes Thamnur, sed castratos csehbes, sanctitatis professione spectabiles, Baal Peor, Baccho, Veneri hta«tes cerneret. Hsec ego cum explorata habeam, non eruerem? non orbi perspicua ac testata facerem? Homo nimirum, inquiunt, ortus a toto diuisis orbe Brytannis, nouit scilicet qua; Roma; geruntur in Pap* ac Cardinalium conclauibus. Quae libn loquuntur, qua; testes oculati scnptis mandarunt, qua; non secreta cubicula, sed aula Romana, quae non anguh, sed platea; clamant, pro certis non referam? Sed nee ipsi negant, sed defendunt, etiam monstrosis lingua sua editis libelhs: qua; me pudor Christianus haud finit eloqui. . . . Exemplum hums rei, nimirum famihare ac intestinuw, est Anglia nostra misera: cuius etiam causa ad scribewdum accessi libentius, ut Angli mei uideant, nunc saltern, qualem belluam in Rempublicam adduxermt, quam uiperam in sinu foueant" (Bale, Acta Romanorum pontificum, sigs. *6 r -*7 r ). The examples of visitation sodomy mentioned are presented in the letter to the reader, sigs. s *gr_***v ) 94 Bale, Acta Romanorum pontificum, sig. *6V; Studley, Pageant of Popes, sig. *cmjv.

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the physical acts and the textual record of the confession of those acts— with horror; now he possesses them—in the form of the textual record— and his possession of that record can be used to detrimental effect against the Church. But it is precisely because of that past experience that he now possesses the instruments which make him useful in his current service: the practices and experiences of the monastic institution ironically but inevitably determine his success in his present work. John Bale showed in his writings the connections which the "new learning" was unwilling to declare. Sodomy could only exist transactively, in the space conjured by the Roman Church, ambiguous with Idolatry. But by collapsing celibacy and sodomy, Bale endangered one of the founding tenets of the humanist project: relationships between men which relied on textual inscription rather than social validation through the exchange of women in marriage. Leslie Fairfield has characterized Bale as a "mythmaker," "because his retelling of English history supplied his countrymen with a new way of understanding the meaning of their national experience. Partly drawing upon historical data, partly inventing it, Bale wove an explanation of England's past which showed his contemporaries why the Reformation had been necessary and inevitable. His achievement—fulfilled in the work of John Foxe—was to supply Protestant Englishmen with a usable past." 95 But Bale's own "past" was never truly usable. The history he wrote was forever dependent on the history he had lived; he was the continuity that Reformation England could not afford to admit. For Bale, marrriage to "faithful Dorothy" could be only a partial answer: the experience which gave him the textual skills to produce his new history could not be erased by the leveling of the monastery walls. If the Catholic Church lived "within the bounds of sodomy," then so must its Reformation. 95

Fairfield, John Bale, x.

Chapter Three "TRAITORS TO BOYES BUTTOCKES" THE EROTICS OF HUMANIST

EDUCATION

. . .whilst I should haue written the actions of men, I haue been constrayned to hue with children. Samuel Daniel . . . a pure Pedantique Schoolmaster sweeping his living from the Posteriors of little children. Ben Jonson1

N

O MATTER how grand the pretensions of the humanist movement may have been, the harsh reality of the life of the man who tried to use his humanist training for financial gain was that he was often forced into badly paid (or even unpaid) employment as some kind of teacher. The suppression of the monasteries led to a de facto suppression of the learning they supplied; at the same time, the state intervened to regulate English education through the 1536 Injunctions. From these years on, the most prominent vernacular voices in education (joining the Continental theorists Erasmus and Vives) were clearly and often stridently humanist: Thomas Elyot, Nicholas Udall, John Cheke, Roger Ascham, Edward Grant, Richard Mulcaster, William Kempe, John Brinsley. However, their educational tracts reveal a group far from secure in their position, constantly seeking to locate the basic ground from which to launch their pedagogical program. Throughout these writings, one theme recurs with startling consistency—the beating of boys. The intense concern that these texts register about beating is importantly linked to the emergent social status of the humanist teacher in relation to a new, elite class of students; it plays not only on fears about the control of the boys' welfare and bodies, but also on fears about the humanist schoolmaster's social aspirations through marriage. Ironically, but through a logical enough thought process, these fears are expressed as an accusation of 1

Samuel Daniel to Lord Keeper Egerton, in Daniel, The Complete Works in Verse and Prose, 1:10; Ben Jonson, "Conversations with Drummond," Works, 1:138. Leonard Barkan has also used the appealing phrase "Traitors to boyes buttockes" as the epigraph for his Transuming Passions (vu). The present chapter takes the phrase in a different direction.

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sodomy—a charge that was in fact leveled against Nicholas Udall, the headmaster of Eton College. Two recent critical accounts have adumbrated the area in which this chapter operates. Richard Halpern argues that "as transformative or transitional institutions, Tudor schools instilled a new disciplinary economy in their subjects." To a site in which the pedagogue exercised "a sovereign, sometimes unpredictable form of violence" which "clearly worked as a political ritual, in which the pedagogue both assumed and reinforced the sovereign authority of the monarch or magistrate," the humanists injected rhetoric into education, "abjuring violent pedagogy in favor of a gentler method." As Halpern points out, however, the situation is more complex than it at first appears: "the sixteenth century simultaneously witnessed both an intensification of physical punishment in schools and the humanist alternative of persuasion." Mary Thomas Crane works through this apparent aporia to argue that humanist educators mediate between old and new cultural codes by replacing an aristocratic martial training with a nonviolent humanist curriculum and then by including in that curriculum "the actual violence of corporal punishment and the metaphoric violence of a coercive cultural code as substitutes for the old displays of violence as power . . . an internalization of symbolic violence designed to replace the openly violent codes of feudalism" so that the humanist program will appear equivalent to the aristocratic codes it seeks to replace.2 In order to trace the anxieties clustering around education we need to study its changing place during the sixteenth century, in the context of the radical social movements associated with the new and encroaching humanism. Put simply, the school and the schoolmaster came to replace the noble household and a retinue of servants as the focus of a young gentleman's education. Traditionally, noble families had sent at least their eldest sons to the house of a great lord to act as companions and occasionally servants to his own sons. In return, they received an education, usually in chivalric skills (riding, hunting, hawking, archery) and, as a page, in "courtesy." Skills of literacy, usually in French, were not neglected, but texts studied would be predominantly religious or chivalric romances; equal attention was paid to skills in singing and dancing, games, and waiting at table. By the age of fourteen or fifteen, the boy could serve as a squire, aide to a knight; and at twenty-one, he could become a knight himself. During the sixteenth century, however, new demands came to be made on the gentlemen of England. The rise of international diplomacy during the reign of Henry VIII, the influence of Northern and Italian humanisms, and the textual emphasis of Protestant thought influenced 2 Richard Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, 21-45 at 2 6 - 2 8 , 35; Crane, Framing Authority, 5 5 - 5 6 .

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and in turn were influenced by the growth of the universities, the grammar schools, and the Inns of Court. Whereas before these had been the domain of scholarship boys, they now began to be infiltrated by the noble and gentle classes.3 Thus the relationship between tutor and noble student—an openly anxious relationship—came to replace the relationship between a lord and the young gentleman-to-be doing service in his household: but why should the particular relationship between tutor and student constitute such a dangerous closeness rather than the relationship it replaced? The earlier model was admittedly a more public affair, as the skills learned were public skills. However, the public display did not include a great deal of public communication: conversation between the nobleman and the boy was restricted to more intimate occasions. In the 1530s, Hugh Rhodes, a gentleman of the royal chapel at Windsor, gathered the two standard texts of old-style service-cum-education (John Lydgate's poem Starts puer ad mensam and the Boke of Nurture, written by John Russell, servant to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester) in his own Boke of Nurture for menseruants and Children, which was reprinted several times during the sixteenth century. As Rhodes describes it, this form of service involved a degree of intimacy between the boy and his master in the master's chamber: "in the euening or in the morning your maister being alone if ye haue any thing to say to him, then is good leasure and time to know his pleasure." What is notable in Rhodes's account is that he detects nothing amiss in the physically intimate relationship between master and boy. Vilification comes from elsewhere: "And if ye put them to a schoole away from you, see ye put them to a discreet maister, that can punish sharply with pacience and not with rigour, for it dooth oft times cause them rebel and run away, wherof chaunceth oft times much harme." 4 Lawrence Stone argues that "there can be no doubt . . . that more children were being beaten in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, over a larger age span, than ever before"; more significant was the fact that a new class of boys—the newly educated nobility—was being disciplined in this way.5 The shadow of the beating schoolmaster is present even in an ostensibly lighthearted anecdote, one of the "one hundred conceits never before Printed, very witty, usefull, and delightfull" added to the 1660 "en3 The preceding description is based on John Lawson and Harold Silver, A Social History of Education in England, 78-79. See also Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry; David Cressy, Education in Tudor and Stuart England; Joan Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England. 4 Hugh Rhodes, The Boke of Nurture for menseruants and Children (with Stans puer ad mensam) newly corrected (London, 1560?), sigs. Aiiiv, Air. 5 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, 163-64.

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larged" edition of the bestselling A Thousand Notable Things of sundry sorts:6 Queen Elisabeth, being a learned Princesse, on a time comes into WestminsterSchoole, to see her Scholars, and to examine them, amongst the rest, espies one of a faire, and ingenious countenance, with which she was much pleased, comes to him, and strokes him upon the head, and demanded him to tell her how often he had been whipt, the Scholler being as witty, as beautifull and comely, replies extempore, unto her Majesty, this verse out of Virgill. Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem She being wonderfully pleased with the witty answere, said he should be her Child, if he did English it, which presently he did thus, to her great comfort, and his advancement. Most gracious Queen you do desire to know, A grief unspeakable and full of woe. This reference to Virgil's Aeneid (2.3)—marking the opening of Aeneas' woeful account to Dido of the horrors he has witnessed during the destruction of Troy—would be recognizable to any sixth- or seventh-form boy at Westminster.7 We might detect a hint of flirtatiousness in the schoolboy's assuming the role of Aeneas, and casting Elizabeth as Dido, newly besotted with the Trojan. But it is no accident that the "compliment" hints of eroticism, that the boy is not only witty but also objectified as "beautifull and comely"; it is no accident that the information required by the Queen concerns whipping; and it is no accident that the information can be conveyed to her only through the Englishing of a classical textual allusion which ultimately tells her no more than that the horror, the "dolorem," is "infandum"—not only unspeakable, but not to be spoken. 8 At the turn of the seventeenth century, Thomas Nashe's Will Sum6

This compilation of anecdotes, recipes, cures and fascinating facts started life as A Hundred Notable Things by Thomas Lupton and went through several editions before being revised as A Thousand Notable Things. The following anecdote first appeared in the 1660 edition: A Thousand Notable Things of sundry sorts, enlarged, 359-60. 7 Virgil was added to the curriculum in the top forms alongside Caesar, Livy, Demosthenes, and Homer. See Arthur F. Leach, Educational Charters and Documents 598 to 1909, 5 1 0 - 1 1 ; John Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster, 39. 8 Compare the available published translations by Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (1557): "O Quene, it is thy wil, / I shold renew a woe cannot be told"; Thomas Phaer (1558): "A dolefull worke me to renewe (O quene) thou doost constraigne"; and Richard Stanyhurst (1583): "You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare." Howard, Certain bokes of Virgiles Aenceis turned into English meter, sig. A.iir; Phaer, The seuen first bookes of the Eneidos of Virgill, couerted into Enghshe meter, sig. C.inv; Stanyhurst, The first fovre bookes of Virgiles Aeneis, Translated into English Heroicall Verse, sig. C.iir.

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mers memorably condemns the whole business of learning in one withering diatribe: Out upon it, who would be a Scholler? not I, I promise you: my minde always gaue me this learning was such a filthy thing. . . . In speech is the diuels Pater Noster: Nownes and Pronounes, I pronounce you as traitors to boyes buttockes: Syntaxis and Prosodia, you are nothing but to get a schoolemaster two pence a weeke.9 Summers's outburst introduces factors that have become commonplaces during the sixteenth century: learning as a "filthy thing," and a causal relationship between grammatical training and the punishment of boys, and that punishment and the remuneration, albeit scanty, of the schoolmaster. This forms a nexus of significant contemporary issues which must be negotiated in early modern pedagogical texts, and which is implicit even in the anecdote of Elizabeth and the Westminster scholar, where the boy's unhelpful Englishing of the Virgilian lines earns him his "advancement." This anecdote encapsulates some of the tensions inherent to boys' education in the sixteenth century: the compliments bandied between the schoolboy and his female patron are a telling indicator of a complex system of social contracts built ostensibly on the bringing up of boys but carrying implications for the whole framework of humanist learning, its employment and deployment. T H E R O D A N D T H E PALMER: T H E S C H O O L M A S T E R AS P R O F E S S I O N A L BEATER

Today, the links between the segregated education of boys and same-sex sexual activity seem self-evident: a recent study of English boys' public schools from 1800 to 1864 devotes an entire chapter to the subject.10 These connections were first made explicit in the latter part of the seventeenth century: the centrality of boys' buttocks in this anxiety as both the object of sodomitical desire and the target of the schoolmaster's cane is highlighted by Marchamont Nedham in 1663: "Indeed the great indiscretion and intemperance of Masters in that [beating], hath brought a very great contempt and hatred upon the Profession it self; and not to speak of the ill use some have made of it to lewdness (of which Instances are not wanting, but that they are odious) it being a kinde of uncovering of nakedness." 11 In 1669, a Children's Petition opposing "the accus9

Thomas Nash[e], A Pleasant Comedie called Summers last will and Testament, sig.

G3\ 10

Chap. 14 "A Demon Hovering," in John Chandos, Boys Together: English Public Schools 1800-1864, 284-319. 11 E. B. Castle, Moral Education in Christian Times, 96.

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tomed severities of the school discipline of this Nation" was published.12 According to a later source, the papers for this book were brought to the publisher Roger LeStrange "by a Knight of his Acquaintance, and the Book was Presented by a Lively Boy (with a Servant of that Knight attend/wg him) to the Speaker, and to several Members of the House, as a Petition in behalf of the Children of this Nation."13 Citing the men of Sodom demanding to know the angels sheltered by Lot, the "Children" allege that "our sufferings are of that nature as makes our Schools to be not meerly houses of Correction, but of Prostitution, in this vile way of castigation in use, wherein our secret parts, which are by nature shameful, and not to be uncovered, must be the Anvil exposed to the immodest eyes, and filthy blows of the smiter."14 They call on the gentlemen in Parliament, of whom "some are not so old as to forget what was unhandsome,"15 to put an end to this abuse of the position of schoolmaster. The measure failed, but a later pamphlet entitled Lex Forcia (an allusion to the punitive Roman Forcian Law) attempted to revive the debate at a more explicit level thirty years later, pointing out the vulnerability of the flogger to accusations of sodomy: "those that keep Boys and Girls to Attend them, or be Taught by them, [are warned] to forbear this Punishment after they come to their Teens, seeing Casuists who occasionally touch on such things, must and cannot but Brand it for a Spice, or Degree, of this Enormity, which is therefore to be Abandoned by Modest Persons." The pamphlet signs off resignedly, saying "If the Nation will not take the Warning, but will be Wicked, and a Sodom, let it be Wicked still."16 This explicit identification and vilification of the beating schoolmaster 12 The Children's Petition: Or, A Modest Remonstrance of that intolerable grievance our Youth lie under, in the accustomed severities of the School-discipline of this Nation. 13 Lex Forcia: Being A Sensible Address to the Parliament, for an Act to remedy the Foul Abuse of Children at Schools, 3. 14 Children's Petition, 7 - 8 . Other instances cited include Samuel Butler, "The Pedant in the School-boyes breeches, I Does claw and curry his own itches" (17). See also Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman: "I [haue] knowne these good and towardly Natures, as roughly handled by our Plagosi Orbilij, as by Dionysius himselfe taking reuenge vpon the buttockes of poore Boyes for the losse of his kingdome" (sig. E2 r ); "I knew one, who in Winter would ordinarily in a cold morning, whip his Boyes ouer for no other purpose then to get himselfe a heat" (sig. E4 r ). The author of the 1698 pamphlet Lex Forcia adds to the repertoire Westminster Headmaster Dr. Busby, "that transcending Rabbi," as being "Famous for this Geare" (8) and tells of a young schoolmaster who "would sometimes have a Forme of Boys stand at once with their Breeches down, and Shirts up, or sometimes to go up and down the School Bare, and to Slash them as he pleased" (7). The author also links the custom to the recent vogue for flagellation in adult sexual relations (10-11). For a brief survey of this literature see Castle, Moral Education in Christian Times, 9 6 - 1 0 1 . 15 Children's Petition, 23. 16 Lex Forcia, 19, 30.

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was a more subtle and complex matter in sixteenth-century England. Perhaps because of the facility with which we make these associations, however, modern historians are adamant in their linking of homosexuality and early modern boys' education, and then surprised at how this link was apparently made so little of at the time. Lawrence Stone's influential The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, for example, digresses at length on the "astonishing" indifference shown by early modern parents "to what today would seem to be obvious temptations for the children that were better avoided": Another piece of evidence of parental indifference to the dangers of adolescent homosexual contact is that in Oxford and Cambridge colleges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was normal practice for the tutor, who was usually a young bachelor in his middle twenties, to share his bedroom with several young students, aged perhaps fifteen to eighteen. One would have supposed that this was a situation which would have given great anxiety to parents, but in fact there is no evidence whatever that this is the case. In fact, parents were eager for their son to live with his tutor so that he could be more closely supervised.17 Stone goes on to cite two primary sources as evidence. The first is John Marston's The Scourge of Villanie (1598), a satirical verse attacking "falsed, seeming, Patriotes" returning from "Doway seminary," the "source of Sodom vilanie," to England "Tainting our Townes, and hopefull Accademes." 18 Even the sole first-hand account which he cites of the prevalence of sodomy at educational institutions—Father Augustine (David) Baker's lament of the "viciousnesse" he experienced at Oxford in the 1590s—is clearly motivated by a desire to accuse on religious grounds: citing the relevant Biblical injunctions against same-sex desire (1 Corinthians 5:1; Romans 1:26; 1 Corinthians 6:9), Baker attacks Oxford not only during his stay but also twenty years later.19 He also writes of "a Cambridg scholar" who comes to Christ's Hospital Blue-Coat School who "seemeth to have suckt (most likely at Cambridge) most odious vice, and sought to practise it on some others of the scholars; the which made him to become privately accused to the master and mistresse, uti de crimine pessimo." Baker contends that "the greatest corruption, in our land, as to such abominable vice . . . cometh from the two universities of England, the which the enemy of mankind hath extremely corrupted in these 17

Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, 516, 517. John Marston, The Scourge of Villanie, sig. C6V. 19 "And I have heard our scholar, of whom we treat, say that 20 years after he had left Oxford as to studies, he passing through the town and lodging there one night, his hostesse complained to him of this vice in the scholars." Memorials of Father Augustine Baker and Other Documents Relating to the English Benedictines, ed. Dom Justin McCann and Dom Hugh Connolly, 43. 18

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daies of heresy with the forsaid most detestable vice." 20 A satire, a religious polemic, and a "common-sense" idea of what inevitably happens between boys sharing a bed is fairly thin evidence for Stone's "obvious temptations" of "the dangers of adolescent homosexual contact." The intimacy between men and boys necessitated by the widespread practice of bedsharing at schools and universities was by no means unique to educational establishments and cannot account for the specifically antisodomitical abuse leveled at these institutions. Other work has cited an alleged construction of "adolescence" that problematized the years during which boys were under the influence of schoolmasters and tutors. 21 Alan Bray claims the pupil-teacher relationship as an example—alongside the household and prostitution—of the patriarchal model through which homosexuality could be expressed with impunity as long as the peace and the social order were not disturbed: "The teacher stood in loco parentis, with some of the authority over his children and servants due to the master of the household; and there is reason to think that the educational system, as well as the household, involved forms of institutionalized homosexuality. This was particularly likely at the universities, where an unmarried and supposedly celibate college fellow would customarily share his room with a number of young male students." 22 But why draw attention to the precarious situation of students? Why not apprentices, young soldiers, or youths in domestic service?23 While Bray's evidence for actual sexual practices in the household is plentiful, his material to support his claims about the educational institutions is again intriguingly scanty: two satirical barbs—one predictably enough from John Marston and one from "R.C., Gent."—and two alleged legal cases of sodomitical schoolmasters. R.C.'s The Times' Whistle (1614-16), bemoaning the infection not only "In Academie" but also in "country, citty, Courte" is modeled heavily on Marston in its fleeting lament: "Alacke the while! / Each pedant Tutowr should his pupill spoile." 24 Elsewhere in Bray's book, such "evidence" is written off as religiously motivated, for20

Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 20, 34. Carmen Luke uses this strategy in her explicitly Foucauldian reading of the Protestant education program in sixteenth-century Germany. See Carmen Luke, Pedagogy, Printing and Protestantism, passim; see also Gerald Straus, "The State of Pedagogical Theory c.1530: What Protestant Reformers Knew About Education," in Schooling and Society: Studies in the History of Education, ed. Lawrence Stone, 69-94; Smith, Homosexual Desire, 8 5 - 8 8 . 22 Bray, Homosexuality, Chap. 2 and 74, 51. 23 Drawing on Bray's work, Lisa Jardine has suggestively examined the vulnerability of the young man and woman in domestic service in her "Twins and Travesties," rev. in Reading Shakespeare Historically, 65-77. 24 Bray, Homosexuality, 51—52. R. C , Gent., The Times' Whistle: or a Newe Daunce of Seven Satires, and other Poems, ed. J. W. Cowper, 79-80. 21

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mal satire. 25 The court records are no more convincing: the schoolmaster of Great Tey in Essex, Mr. Cooke, was presented in the ecclesiastical court in 1594 as "a man of beastly behaviour amongst his scholars" who "teacheth them all manner of bawdry," but failed to appear to answer this charge. Bray takes this case from F. G. Emmison's study of the Essex Archidiaconal Records, where Emmison notes that Cooke "was presented on a serious charge, presumably paederasty."26 However, since pederasty was not distinct from buggery in the eyes of the law and buggery was not under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in 1594, to interpret "beastly" and "bawdry" in terms of sodomy seems to stretch the point. Bray's other case is the Eton headmaster, Nicholas Udall, questioned in 1541 by the Privy Council about alleged buggery with an exstudent, a more complex case to which 1 shall return. Whatever the truth, in both cases the accused came to no permanent harm. 27 To understand the anxiety about schoolmasters we need to go further than court records and partisan satire. The beating schoolmaster is a stock character whose roots go back much further than humanism. Records feature him in early Egyptian, Hebraic, and Hellenistic cultures. The languages betray the linking of beating and learning: the Hebrew "musar" means both "education" and "chastisement"; the Latin phrase "manum ferulae subducere" ("to put one's hand out for the cane") means "to study." 28 References can be found in the works of Ovid, Juvenal, Martial, Cicero, Varro, Seneca, Quintilian, Plautus, Ausonius, and, most famously, Horace in the character of his own schoolmaster, "plagosus Orbilius." 29 Contemporary uses of the classical prototypes for the myth of the beating schoolmaster are commonplace in Renaissance literature: Juan Luis Vives, for example, introduces Orbilius, "a fierce man, fond of flogging, imbued with a vast haughtiness, instead of being learned in literature, although he has seriously persuaded himself that he is the Alpha of learned teachers"; 30 and "the bandy-legged schoolmaster" ("magistro loripede") who is "a deter25

Elizabeth Pittenger provides an excellent critique of Bray's use of evidence: " 'To Serve the Queere': Nicholas Udall, Master of Revels," in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Goldberg, 162-89 at 166-70. 26 Bray, Homosexuality, 52-53; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts. Mainly from Essex Archidiaconal Records, 47. 27 Walter Yonge records the case of a "Doctor Rudon, of Oxford, detected of Sodomitry, and complained of (to the house, I take it)" in May or June 1624, but here again the accused "had no punishment." Yonge, ed., George Roberts, Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., 76. 28 See W. J. Frank Davies, Teaching Reading in Early England, 80-85. 29 Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, 143-45. 30 "salutemus modo, & sinamus abire hominem rabiosum & plagosum, ingentis supercilij, imbutum magis literis, quam eruditem; tametsi persuasit sibi serio, se esse literatorumalpha." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. e8r; Vives, Tudor School-boy Life, trans. Watson, 91.

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mined, courageous man, prompt with blows. He compensates for the slowness of his tongue by the swiftness of his hands." 31 It is worth noting at the outset that the early modern association of beating with the profession of the schoolmaster is by no means merely a literary topos. Initiation ceremonies for the Master of Grammar at both Cambridge and Oxford required that the graduand prove his grammatical worth by giving a display of his beating hand, as the statutes bear witness: When the Father hath arguyde as shall plese the Proctour, the Bedyll in Arte shall bring the Master of Gramer to the Vicechauncelar, delyvering hym a Palmer wyth a Rodde, whych the Vycechauncelar shall gyve to the seyde Master in Gramer, and so create hym Master. Than shall the Bedell purvay for every master in Gramer a shrewde Boy, whom the master in Gramer shall bete openlye in the Scolys, and the master in Gramer shall give the Boye a Grote for his Labour, and another Grote to hym that provydeth the Rode and the Palmer. The practice extended beyond the universities: the rules for the school at Bury St. Edmunds, dating from 1550, specify that "Who either in church, or in public, shall not have borne himself modestly, let him be flogged"; those for St. Olave's in 1572 require that the pupils are to be at evening prayer on the sabbath day, other holydays, Wednesday, Monday, and Saturday: "every tyme that he shall mysse . . . to have fowre stripes." Beating is also written into the statutes of Westminster School (1560), the scene of our opening exchange: "[The masters] shal further appoint various monitors from the gravest scholars to oversee and note the behaviour of the rest everywhere and prevent anything improper or dirty being done. If any monitor commits an offence or neglects to perform his duty he shall be severely flogged as an example to others." The Harrow curriculum also incorporates specific damage-limitation measures: "The Scholemaster shall vse no kynde of correctyon save onelye with a Rodde moderatelie except yt be a verye thynne feruler vppon the hande for a light negligence, so likewise of ye vssher. Yf they doe, by the discrec/'on of the Governors after admonytion they shallbe displaced." In his Shorte Dictionarie for yonge begynners, published in 1553, John Withals includes the following terms as among the essential vocabulary for "The Schole with that belongeth therto": "A rod to doe correction with; to beate; to be beaten; A Palmer to beate or strike scholers in the hande; A rebuke; A stripe; to beate or strike; A Blow or clappe with the open hand; A buffet with the fiste; to buffet," and, most alarmingly, "the marke or prynte of a hurt in the body." In John Redford's interlude Wit and Science (written between 1531 and 1547), the schoolmaster Idellnes attempts to teach his pupil 31 "Vir strenuus, 8c fortis, et manu promptus. celeritate manuum compensat lingua: tarditatem." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. g4 v ; Tudor School-boy Life, trans. Watson, 122.

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Ingnoransy (Ignorance) to remember his name through a ridiculous mnemonic division: "Ing-no-ran-sy." The syllable "no" is produced through the expected response to Idellnes's suggestion that he should beat Ingnoransy: Idellnes. foorth shal I bete thy narse now? Ingnorance. vmmm Idellnes. shall I not bete thy narse now Ingnorance. vmmm Idellnes. say no foole say no. Ingnorance. noo I noo / noo / noo I noo I

A plaintive poem entitled "The Birched Schoolboy" (c. 1500) tells the sorry story of a would-be scholar, who "wold ffayn be a clarke; / but yet hit is a strange werke": the byrchyn twygg/s be so sharpe, hit makith me haue a faynt harte . . . My master pepered my ars with well good spede: hit was worse than ffnykll sede; he wold not leve till it did blede.32 This popular testimony to the endemic violence of education is borne out even by the humanist texts designed to promulgate learning. Erasmus' tract Declamatio de pueris statitn ac liberaliter instituendis, probably written in 1512 and revised for publication in 1529, and translated at least three times into English during the sixteenth century, reveals the same preoccupations. He paints a picture of a four-year-old child confronted by "an unknowen scholemaster, rude of manners, not verye sober, and sometyme not well in hys wytte, often lunatike, or hauynge the fallyng sycknes, or frenche pockes." The schoolhouse is "a tormentynge place: nothynge is hearde there beside the slappynge upon the hande, beside yorkynge of roddes, besyde howlynge and sobbinge and cruell threatnynges." He tells of how he witnessed a boy beaten by a monitor on the command of the master until he was "almost in a sounde" ("vsque ad pueri syncopen"): the master justifies it on the ground that the boy "muste be made lowe" ("humiliandus"). On another occasion, a boy is 32

Matthew Stokys cit. in G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain, 55-56; school rules cit. T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's Petty School, 83,103; "Monitores varios e gravionbus discipulis praeterea constituant, qui rehquorum mores ubique inspiciant ac notant, ne quid uspiam indecon aut sordidi perpetretur. Si quis monitorum deliquerit, aut in officio negligenter se gesserit, aspere in aliorum exemplum vapulet." Leach, Educational Charters and Documents, 496-99; cit. T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere's Small Latine, 1:311; John Withals, A shorte dictionarie for yonge begynners, sig. R.ijv [my punctuation]; John Redford, Wit and Science, 18-19; cit. Early English Meals and Manners, ed. Frederick J. Furmvall, 385-86.

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forced to swallow excrement stuffed into his mouth, and is then hanged up naked and beaten. A third episode concerns a young gentleman who arrives at university to learn the liberal sciences: he is daubed with and forced to swallow urine, vinegar, and salt; finally, he is hoisted up and his back smashed against a wall. Erasmus inscribes himself in this abuse of pedagogical power: he claims to have been beaten quite arbitrarily by a master at the age of fourteen.33 The preoccupation is also evident in the influential textbooks known as "vulgaria" which Englished Latin phrases, often culled from classic texts, to illustrate grammatical precepts. This format—popular in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—allows for the simultaneous teaching of language and of basic social concepts, so the inventive use the writers make of this banal format possibility deserves some study. Moreover, as each schoolmaster may well have invented his own vulgaria, the genre is highly personalized, and specific to the educational transaction each example facilitates. At the most basic level the advantages of education itself are made clear in these texts. The relationship between the schoolmaster and the student is also defined: in John Colet's influential Rudimenta grammatices, the phrase "Amo magistrum. I loue the mayster" is used to demonstrate the accusative case. William Lily's Angli Rudimenta, included in the Colet text, continues the concept: "The nominatyue case cometh before ye verbe I & answereth to this questyon who I or what, rehersed with the verbe: as. The mayster loueth his scolers. This worde mayster I is ye nominatyue case, for it answereth to this questyon I who loueth." 34 Thus the two cases nominative and accusative—forming the basic social transaction—are demonstrated through the love of the master for his scholars, and the love of the scholars for their master. Each of these vulgaria contains vocabulary and phrases associated with schooling, and beating maintains a high profile. William Horman (1519) 33 Translations by Leonard Cox in 1534, Richard Sherry in 1550, and Edward Hake in 1574. See E. J. Devereux, A Checklist of English Translations of Erasmus, 12. Richard Sherry, A treatise of Schemes & Tropes; Edward Hake, A Touchstone for this time present. AU translated passages are from Sherry, unless otherwise noted, "praeceptor ignotus, agrestis, ac moribus parum sobnis, interdum ne cerebri quidem sani, frequenter lunaticus, aut morbo comitiah obnoxius, aut leprae, quam nunc vulgus scabiem gallicam appellat." "Dicas non esse scholam, sed carnificinam, praeter crepitum ferularum, praeter virgarura strepitum, praeter eiulatus ac singultus, praeter atroces minas nihil illic auditur." ASD 1:2.54, 57, 59-60, 6 0 - 6 1 ; Sherry, Treatise of schemes, sigs. Lvnv, Mij v , Mv r _ v , Mvii v NMviii r . For other discussions of discipline, see Francis Clement, The Petie Schole, sig. C r " . Clement defines Solomon's "rod of correction" as "diligent nourture and erudition." William Kempe, The Education of children in learning, sigs. F v , H l v - H 2 r . 34 John Colet, Rudimenta grammatices et docendi Methodus, sig. Ci v ; "Guillelmi Lilii Angli Rudimenta" in Colet, Rudimenta grammatices, sig. Givv. Colet's text served as the basis for part of Lily's Grammar.

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asserts that "Some be so shreud to theyr gyders: that they must nedes be all to beate"; and describes the results of this necessary antidote to shrewdness: "He was foule entreated and sore beate"; "He made a sore complaynt and shewed openly his naked body al to bete." 35 Robert Whittinton's Vulgaria (1520) aimed at a more extended use of the genre, by arranging phrases more or less formally in loose dialogues, a technique later exploited famously by Juan Luis Vives in his Linguae latinae exercitatio (1539). The experience of vicious beating is constantly anticipated and recalled throughout Whittinton's text: "I am thus sadde for feare of the rodde / and the breke fast that my master promest me. Be of good chere man I sawe right nowe a rodde made of wythye for the: garnisshed with knottis. It wolde do a boye good to loke vpon it." 36 And then later: "My maister hath beate me backe and syde: whyle the rodde wolde holde in his hande . . . He hath torne my buttocks so: that there is left no hole skyn on them . . . The wales be so thycke I that one can stande scantly by a nother." 37 The black humor evident in the imagery also betrays the pedagogical function of beating and its promise of eventual reward: "it wolde do a boy good to loke vpon [the rod]"; "he hath taught me to synge a newe song"; beating is "the breke fast my master promest me." It is indicative of the embeddedness of ideas connecting learning and physical punishment in English education that we still use Whittinton's phrase "I'll teach you a lesson" to denote a threat of castigation, eliding the physicality of the threat totally in favor of an image of learning, or alternatively, eliding a notion of learning in the reality of physical threat. A manuscript vulgaria, written by a master of grammar at Magdalen School in the last years of the fifteenth century, reveals how the beating of the boy may have been acceptable to the boy's father—but not to the boy's overbearing mother: I wyll make youe an example by a cosyn of myne that [was sent] to his absey [primary school] hereby at the next dore. and if he come wepynge after his maister hath charede away thefleesfrom his skynne, anone his mother loketh onn his buttockys yf the stryppys be a-sen. And the stryppys appere, she wepyth and waileth and fareth as she were made, then she complayneth of the 35

William Horman, Vulgaria, sigs. 0.iii) v , P.ir. "Quidam I monitoribus taw sunt asperi: vt eos oportet insigniter verberan.' 'Multa cum indignitate est flagris admotus." "MuItis qwerimonijs terga vibicibus foeda nudabat I ostentabatq«e." 36 Robert Whittinton, Vvlgari . . . et de institutione grammaticulorum opusculum: Iibello suo de concinnitate grammatices accommodatum: et in quatuor partes digestum, sig. Hii v . "Adeo tristor, uel sum tristis timore, pra; timore, per ob, uel propter timorem, uirgae et supplicium: a praeceptore mihi interminatum." "Esto bon animo, virgam ex salicto factam tibi nodis refertam nuper vidi: opera: preciuw foret puero aspicere." 37 "Preceptor me undiq«e cecidit: dura m manu durauit uirga . . . Nates cecidit adeo: nee cutis in ljs sana relinquatur . . . Adeo constipantur plagae, ne alij uix cedat alia." Whittinton, Vulgaria, sig. H.iiijv.

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cruelte of techers, saynge she hade lever [rather] se hire childe wer fair buriede than so to be intretide. These wordes thei speke and suche other infinite, and other while for the childrenys sake ther begynneth afray betwixte the goode mann and his wyffe, for what he commaundeth, she forbyddeth.38 This demonstrates vividly an extreme anxiety about the violence done to the boy by the schoolmaster that leads to dispute along strictly gendered lines: the father versus the mother, and by implication, the boy versus the mother—since the purpose of this anecdote, as the writer goes on to show, was to demonstrate the bad end lying in store for the boy whose mother was too indulgent. Similarly Whittinton's phrases assert "Both my father and my mother be so tendre and choyse νροκ me I that they will nat suffre me to be punisshed: whome therfore I / in tyme to come vtterly may curse." 3 9 In other words, punishment is something that in time the beaten boy will come to appreciate; the unbeaten boy will curse his parents "in tyme" for their negligence. However, I want to concentrate on one particular euphemistic image that appears fleetingly in John Stanbridge's Vulgaria. Stanbridge has the master saying "I shal mary my doughter to the" ("Collacabo tibi gnatem"), followed by the student lamenting "I fere the mayster" ("Timeo preceptorem vel a preceptore"). This peculiar juxtaposition, and the unlikely sound of the master's proposition, is more fully exploited by Whittinton: "I maryed my maisters doughter to day full soore agenyst my will . . . My [sic] thynke her so roughe and sowre a houswyfe I that I care not and she were burned in the hote colys . . . She enbraseth or enhaunceth me so I that the prynt of her stycketh vpon my buttokkes a good whyle after.' 40 This odd scene is then contextualized and we begin to see the true nature of "marrying the master's daughter," why the boy should want to see her burnt in hot coals, and why her embrace should stick in his buttocks: It is clene ageynst my stomake I that I study to day: and bycause I feare a brechynge . . . I played my maister a mery pranke or playe yesterdaye / and 38

William Nelson, ed., A Fifteenth-Century School Book from a Manuscript in the Brit­ ish Museum (MS. Arundel 249), 13-14. 39 "And thus in processe of tyme, when thei cum to age, thei waxe bolde to do all myschevousnes, settynge htell to do the greatest shame that can be. And at the laste, after ther mentes, sum be hangede, sum be hedyde; on goth to nought on way, another another way; and whan thei cum to thatende, then thei curse the fathers and mothers and other that hade rule of them in ther youghe." Nelson, Fifteenth-Century School Book, 14; Whittinton, Vulgaria, sig. B.iiijv. 40 John Stanbridge, Vulgaria stanbryge, sig. Bvir; "Praeceptoris filia mihi inuitissimo nupsit, uel nupta est hodie . . . Mihi adeo asperaet acerba uidetur coniux: ut si ardentibus prunis cremaretur nihil penderem . . . Sic me complector (uel sic ab ea complector) ut uestigia (dm post) natibus inhasreant." Whittinton, Vulgaria, sig. G.ij v .

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therfore he hath taught me to synge a newe song to daye . . . He hath made me to reune [run] a rase or a course I that my buttockes deth swete a blody sweat . . . The more instantly that I prayed hym to pardone me: the faster he layed vpon . . . He hath taught me a lesson / that I shall remembre whyle I lyue . . . I wolde shewe the a thynge in counsaile / if thou woldest kepe it cloose frow other . . . My maister hath beate me so: naked in his chambre I that I was not able to do of nor vpon myn owne clothes . . . I preye the kepe this mater close from hym and all other: for if it be disclosed I am vndone.41 "Marrying the master's daughter" is simply a common euphemism for the practice of flogging in schools but the implications of this euphemism are intriguing. Firstly, by figuring the master's beating of the boy as the marrying of his daughter, the text places punishment within an erotic economy, indicating a potential and indeed probable sexual consummation to the act. More significantly, it then resituates the now sexualized practice of beating within the economy of the male kinship structure, in which women are exchanged between men, thus betraying the (homo)erotics of that male exchange system by emptying it of its supposed female object. Simultaneously, as we have seen, beating is figured as a transfer of information and a sustaining material reward, implicating education itself and the material benefits of education within the erotic economy of beating. Presumably the boy is marrying the schoolmaster's daughter—an association that would be more advantageous to the impoverished schoolmaster than to the privileged boy enjoying a Latin education. At the same time the boy's buttocks are marrying the schoolmaster's rod: even without our modern use of "rod" for penis, the suggestion of penetration (intensified by the torn skin and bleeding buttocks) is still clear. The conceit was taken even further by Richard Mulcaster, according to a story which has passed into the folklore of St. Paul's School: Of Monckaster, the famous Paedagogue. Monckaster was held to be a good schoolemaster, and yet he was somewhat too severe, and given to insult too much over children that he taught. He beeinge one day about whippinge a boy, his breeches beeinge downe and he ready to inflict punishment uppon him, out of his insultinge humour he stood pausinge a while over his breech: and there a merry conceyt taking him he sayd, 41

"Inuito ammo hodie literis incumbo, turn quae supplicium pauesco . . . Heri dolosum praeceptori lusum ludi: quocirca asperura canticum hodie canere me edocuit. . . Curriculum uel cursum currere me fecit: adeo ut sanguinem sudorem desudent nates . . . Quo obnixius eum ueniam postulaui: eo grauius inflixit supplicium . . . Documentum me edocuit: cuius recordabor dura uiuam . . . Rem abditara te docerem si ea easterns celare uelis . . . Prseceptor me nudatum sic deuerberauit: ne uestibus me exuere, aut induere ualerem . . . Oro ut hanc rem ilium et casteros omnes celes. VeI sic. Oro ut hanc rem illi et casteris celes. VeI sic. Oro hanc rem illo uel de illo celes. Vt. Oro ilium de hac re et casteros celes omnes: nam si palam fiat ego pereo funditus." Whittinton, Vulgarta, sig. G.iijr~v.

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"I aske the banes of matrymony between this boy his buttockes, of such a parish, on the one side, and Lady Burch, of this parish on the other side: and if any man can shewe any lawfull cause why they should not be joyned together, let them speake, for this is the last time of askinge." A good sturdy boy, and of a quicke conceyt, stood up and sayd, "Master, I forbid the banes." The master, takinge this in dudgeon, sayd, "Yea, sirrah, and why so?" The boy awnswered, "Bycause all partyes are not agreed"; whereat Monkaster, likinge that witty awnswer, spared the one's fault and th'other's presumption.42 The format of this exchange is strikingly reminiscent of the anecdote about the queen at Westminster: here, however, there is no advancement, only a release from punishment. More importantly, however, the punchline of the repartee—"Because all parties are not agreed"—strikes to the heart of the politics of humanist education. Mulcaster was acutely aware of the problematic status of the schoolmaster, working within a system where parental approval was constantly required but never guaranteed. He tackled the subject headlong in his Positions (1581), once again bringing "the master's daughter" into play: "For the priuate, what soeuer parentes say, my ladie birchely will be a gest at home, or else parentes shall not haue their willes." 43 The rod/Lady Birchely here becomes something that parents may wield, but we cannot forget that Lady Birchely is the schoolmaster's daughter, with the implication that without the schoolmaster's presence and action the authority of parents over their children is in doubt. And yet, while all thus is openly figured in the schoolboy's textbook, the reader (i.e., the schoolboy) is made aware of its urgent secrecy, the need not to speak of it: "I preye the kepe this mater close from hym and all other: for if it be disclosed I am vndone." "This mater" must refer to the beating which has gone before, and to the circumstances in which that beating took place: "My maister hath beate me so: naked in his cham42 The anecdote is quoted by William Barker ("Introduction" to his ed., Richard Mulcaster, Positions Concerning the Training Up of Children, lxv), although its source is unclear: H. Fleetwood Sheppard, in his article "Flowers of anecdote" (Notes and Queries 11 [1855]: 260), identifies it as deriving from a manuscript "compiled by Thomas Wateridge of the Middle Temple in the reign of James I." The passage is also quoted in Michael F. McDonnell, A History of St Paul's School, 151, "as related by an old writer." 43 Mulcaster, Positions concerning the training up of children (London, 1581), 277. Richard Halpern notes of this passage that Mulcaster "casts some unintended light on the sexual dynamics of punishment," but does not further interrogate the nature of these dynamics {Poetics of Primitive Accumulation, 276 n.30). William Barker suggests that " 'Lady Birch' is the common expression for a form of punishment given by males to males; presumably punishment by a (symbolic) female to the male buttocks would intensify the humiliation" (Barker, ed., Positions, 446 n.270.7). However, we might compare the later "marrying the gunner's daughter"—a euphemism for flogging in the navy, another all-male environment—which appears not to carry the anxiety of its educational counterpart. 1 am grateful to Miriam Marcus (QMW London) for pointing this out.

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bre I that I was not able to do of nor vpon myn owne clothes." Here the boy draws attention to the privacy of the beating, a privacy that was not common in early modern England, 44 and his own nakedness (the intimacy of this punishment is also conveyed in another phrase: to have "a rod under" or "at one's girdle," meaning "to have been whipped"). 45 While the bare buttocks, as we have seen, was a favorite site of the master's rod, here his nakedness appears to have been coerced and extended beyond the demands of the thrashing: "I was not able to take off or put on my own clothes." The implication is that this scene, already sexualized within the economy of marriage, can be read within the discourse of the day as sodomitical: the boy realizes the secrecy with which the incident must be kept in order to protect not only the schoolmaster but also his own implication in the act. 46 This may sound like a paradox—surely the victim of a sexual assault does not need to protect himself—until we remember that the definition of buggery in the early modern period was a confused and much debated topic. Legally there was no concept of a victim of buggery: both men involved were liable to prosecution. 47 On a less literal level, the boy's plea for secrecy enacts the text's need both to acknowledge the erotic potential of beating and then to protect all those implicated in it. Following the lead of the influential 1959 essay by Walter Ong, "Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite," it has become commonplace to explore the role of beating in relation to the acquisition by adolescent boys of Latin—in Bruce Smith's words, "the public language of male power and the private language of male sexual desire—of homosexual desire in particular." Ong argues that "the Renaissance teaching of 44

The Children's Petition was later to dwell on this point: "If there were no consciousness of what is ugly in the fact, what need of this privacy? Why is the Boy or Girl retired from their fellows, and why so long a punishment then made over them Bare in a Corner? The end of vertuous punishment is for example . . . " (24). 45 The OED (s.v. rod 2d.) cites late sixteenth-century examples from John LyIy and Ben Jonson. 46 It is useful to cite here the only known case of sodomy brought before the London ecclesiastical courts between 1470 and 1516. This concerned one William Smith, who was summoned to appear on 9 May 1471 because he had publicly proclaimed ("publice predicauit") that he had committed the crime of sodomy with (his?) schoolmaster Thomas Tunley. What is significant in the Smith case is that there is no trace of any action being brought against the master, which implies that the real crime here was the public denunciation of the pedagogical relationship, rather than any sexual act. Unsurprisingly, Smith failed to show up and was summarily excommunicated. See Richard Wunderh, London Church Courts and Society, 84, although Wunderh assumes the physical act is at stake here. 47 Bruce Smith argues the opposite case: "By and large, what the legal discourse addresses is the narrow case of forcible rape of an underaged boy by an adult male" (Homosexual Desire, 53). Against this, one might cite the prosecution and execution of the servants assaulted by the earl of Castlehaven.

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Latin involved a survival, or an echo, devious and vague but unmistakably real, of what anthropologists, treating of more primitive peoples, call puberty rites." Borrowing Arnold van Gennep's notion of rites de passage, Ong outlines the process whereby the male child learned Latin, removed from his family and placed in an all-male didactic environment (what van Gennep calls a "marginal" environment). Through Latin study, the boy inculcated "corage," but flogging was an integral part of this process: "the boy must acknowledge the equation of learning and flogging, and thereby face courageously into learning as into an initiation, something of itself taxing and fearsome." 48 This reading, however, can be profitably challenged through Pierre Bourdieu's recent critique of Gennep's "rites of passage." Bourdieu demonstrates that Gennep's theory actually conceals one of the rites' essential effects, "namely that of separating those who have undergone it, not from those who have not yet undergone it, but from those who will not undergo it in any sense, and thereby instituting a lasting difference between those to whom the rite pertains and those to whom it does not pertain." Bourdieu dubs this process "acts of consecration," or more tellingly for our purposes, "acts of institution," inevitably recalling Quintilian's massively influential lnstitutio oratoria, which remained a constant reference point for sixteenth-century pedagogical works such as the anonymous The lnstitucion of a gentleman (1555). Educationalist Richard Mulcaster explained that these books were called "institutions" "bycause theie enter the young and vntraueled student into that profession whereunto theie belong." Read through this critique, Ong's article can be seen to carry the flaws of Gennep's thesis: what are to we to make of those girls who learned Latin—"only occasional exceptions," as he admits, but powerful and oft-cited exceptions nonetheless? How are we to account for the humanist predilection for home-based education, which removes the conditions for the requisite "marginal" environment? How finally do we explain the charge of effeminacy that hangs over those learned Renaissance men who allegedly went through this process, their explicit lack of "corage"? It would appear that as a "puberty rite," Latin language study in the Renaissance acts as anything but a guarantor of virtu.49 48

Walter J. Ong, "Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite" (1959), rpt. in Rhetoric, Romance and Technology, 113-41 at 115. Ong condenses the ideas as part of his Fighting for Life. For the classic "rites of passage" formulation see Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee as The Rites of Passage. Among followers of this thesis is Bruce Smith: see his Homosexual Desire, 83-84. 49 Bourdieu, however, is giving the word "the active sense it has, for example, in expressions like 'institution d'un heritier' ('appointing an heir')," while his key example of the line drawn between those to whom the rite pertains and those to whom it does not, is male circumcision. These examples draw on, respectively, the traditional kinship structure based

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The answer lies in that education's use of beating. The boy's nakedness during beating, remarked upon by virtually all contemporary commentators, stresses the importance of breeches in a boy's life. In their early years, boys and girls were raised identically, and dressed identically. The "breeching" of a boy at around the age of seven was a major event: Thomas Elyot links the age to the ideal age for the starting of an education. 50 The "breeching" of a boy was not only the entry into his education, but also his institution as a man, now visually distinct from his female companions. For this major psychological event of breeching to be temporarily reversed by the schoolmaster in a new form of breeching, to expose the boy for beating, can therefore be seen as a radical form of "unmanning." Moreover, as we have seen, the educational institution of a nobleman is figured almost irresistibly in opposition to notions of marriage and dynastic continuation. Ong's attempt to incorporate Latin language study— undoubtedly a major part of that institution—into a notion of rites of passage is forced to fall on a pre-fixed notion of social institution (as shown by Bourdieu), which is dependent on those very systems of marriage and dynasty. I suggest that the value of the educational experience of a young man as a rite of passage or an act of institution—the making of the man—is fundamentally threatened by that experience itself. This making of the man is figured in extreme terms by Juan Luis Vives in his Linguae latinae exercitatio (first published 1539): in Section HI, a father hands his son over to the schoolmaster, Philoponus, saying "I bring you this boy of mine for you to make of him a man from the beast." Philoponus replies, "This shall be my earnest endeavor. He shall become a man from a beast, a fruitful and good creature out of a useless one. . . . " A social contract is struck, as the father witnesses: "We share the responsibility then; you to instruct zealously, I to recompense your labor richly." 51 It is in this contract, I suggest, that we need to look. In his on the exchange of women, and male/female physiological (genital) difference, to support Bourdieu's contention that "the act of institution is an act of social magic that can create difference ex nihilo, or else (as is more often the case) by exploiting as it were pre-existing differences, like the biological differences between the sexes, or as in the case of the institution of an heir on the basis of primogeniture, the difference in age." Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, ed. John B. Thompson, as Language and Symbolic Power, 117'. Bourdieu's translators use "rites of institution," which seems essentially to miss the point of Bourdieu's opposition to van Gennep. The lnstitucion of a gentleman; Richard Mulcaster, The First Part of the Elementarie which entreateth chieflie of the right writing of our English tung, 227; Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 117, 118, 119-120; Ong, "Latin Language Study," 114, 120. 50 Elyot, Gouernour, sig. C.ijr. 51 "Pa[ter]. Hunc filiolum meum ad te adduco, ut ex belua hominem facias. Phil[oponus

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exposition of the father-schoolmaster-son relationship, Erasmus draws on a simultaneous comparison of and distancing from the contract whereby the boy is transferred from father to master, to the exchange of women between father and husband in marriage: [Parents] shall take heede bothe to the master &c to the sonne, neither shall they so caste away al care from them as they are wonte to laye all the charge of the doughter vpon the spouse, but the father shall oftentyme looke vpon them, and marke whether he proflte.52 Erasmus introduces the comparison—of schoolmaster to son-in-law, and therefore sexual possessor of the child—only to deny it, but its implications remain. The handing over of the daughter from father to husband is by tradition and by law a transfer of property, a transfer of rights over the mind and body of the female child. In the case of male children, no such transfer is enshrined in law, but Erasmus judges the move to a tutor to be of a comparable nature. In John Marston's 1598 satire, The Scourge of Villanie, the threat of the sodomitical schoolmaster is figured in terms of what he might do not to any boy, but to Marston's (hypothetical) sons: Had I some snout faire brats, they should indure The new found Castilian callenture: Before some pedant Tutor, in his bed Should vse my frie, like Phrigian Gantmede. What he attacks is the possible threat not merely to young boys, but to his lineage, and more generally the lineage of the nobility: now at threat from the Catholic seminarians' "Nero-like abuse" of "the bloomes of young nobilitie, I Committed to your Rodon's custodie." 53 This corruption is so pernicious that David [Augustine] Baker feels he must make a plea to parents: [P]arents, especially gentlemen of lively hood and worth, should take heed how they send their sons (especialy their eldest, whom they intend for their inheritours) to either of those two universityes of England . . . namely, were it but for this, that is of infinite mischiefe, that the youth in is danger to become corrupte will never be able to get a child. Whereby, becoming afterwards maried, either ludimagister]. Dabo in earn rem operam sedulam. fiet: reuertetur ex pecude homo, ex nequara frugi & bonus . . . Pa. Partiamur inter nos igitur hanc curam: tu ut sedulo institutas, ego ut benigne compensem tuam operam." Vives, Linguae latinae exercitatio, sig. a 6 r ; trans. Watson, 10. 52 "Obseruabunt et praeceptorem et filium, nee sic ablegabunt ab se solhcitudinem, quemadmodum solent omnem filiae curam in sponsum transferre, sed subinde reuiset pater exploraturus ecquid profecent." ASD 1:2.43; Sherry, Treatise of Schemes, sig. Kir. 53 Marston, Scourge of Villanie, sigs. C7 r , C6V.

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the wife bringeth forth no children, or seeketh to have children by some other, as more likely will frequently be the case. Evidently fighting from a pro-Benedictine corner, Baker's attack on the universities is intriguing not only for its notion of a "bodily harm"— sterility—that could be caused by sodomy, but also for its vision of sodomy as a threat to the continuance of lineage.54 The metaphors being used to describe the educational transaction of father, son, and schoolmaster are complex and even contradictory: anxiety about the power of the schoolmaster over the son's body is expressed in terms both of a sodomitical threat and the threat of the boy marrying into the schoolmaster's family; the handing over of the son makes him into a girl to be enjoyed by her husband/schoolmaster, and again involves the marriage of the two parties. But as in Mulcaster's joke, the parties are not agreed, the transaction is fatally flawed.

TRANSACTING THE

SCHOLEMASTER

The vulgaria of Whittinton, Stanbridge, and Horman would be lost to all but antiquarian interest if it were not for a fleeting but vitriolic reference to them in one of the key English educational tracts of the sixteenth century: Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster, written between 1562 and 1568 and published posthumously by Ascham's widow Margaret in 1570. In common with many other, lesser educational books of the period, it constituted or claimed to constitute part of a service contract intended to provide humanist scholars with lucrative students, and wealthy young boys with outstanding one-to-one tuition. The evidence of Erasmus' aforementioned tract and of all three sixteenth-century English translations of it—by Leonard Cox in 1534, Richard Sherry in 1550, and Edward Hake in 1574—fits this pattern. Erasmus' treatise was probably written in 1512 as a rhetorical showpiece and then revised to be pressed into service in 1529 when the wife of Prince William, duke of Cleves, gave birth to a boy: Erasmus then published the text, invoking William's educational instructor, Conrad Heresbach, as the motivating force behind the 54

Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 35. As historical "evidence," the value of Baker's Memorials is highly questionable: they suffer from being a spiritual journey not written with an eye for empirical fact (Baker writes of being himself "infeebled and hastned to old age, by disordered youth, in ignorance"), and indeed not actually written by Baker himself, but in 1636 through his "socio," one of a series of young men with whom he lived in intimate retirement for many years, a lifestyle that itself became the subject of speculation. Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 50; for the domestic arrangement see 8. For accusations against Baker see Fr. Peter Salvin and Fr. Serenus Cressy, The Life of Father Augustine Baker, ed. Dom Justin McCann, 19, 4 1 - 4 2 .

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discourse. The pattern is repeated in the production of the various English translations. Leonard Cox's now lost version was written during the 1530s, after graduating as MA from both universities, as he was angling for employment—a letter dated 13 May 1533 to the publisher John Toy asserts that "I am also a translating of a boke w ch Erasmus made of the bringing vpp of children I whiche I entend to dedicate to the saide master [Thomas] Cromwell and that shortly after whitsontide . . . his mastershipp is recorder of bristow [Bristol] I wherfor if I may know by yo r lettres I that he is great wc my doinges I I entend to write to besech him to be my good master for the obteyning of the fre shole there, ffor thowgh I haue many gode masters in the cawse yet I had leuer haue his fauor then all the others." Cox eventually found work as master of the Reading Grammar School. Richard Sherry wrote his translation, added to his A treatise of Schemes & Tropes, in the early 1540s: he had been headmaster of Magdalen College School in Oxford from 1534 to 1540 (graduating Master of Arts from Magdalen College), was still associated with the teaching profession, and may well have hoped to work in an educational establishment again. Sole among the three translators, Edward Hake was not a schoolmaster, but even his loose verse adaptation, published with A Touchstone for this time present (verse because "metters unto the unlearned (whom I heartily wish to be followers of this booke) doth seeme a great deale more pleasaunt than prose, and doth mitigate (as it were) the harshness of the matter") is dedicated to Maister John Marlowe, with whom he shared "that learned and exquisite teacher," Maister John Hopkins, "that worthy schoolmaster, nay rather that most worthy parent unto all children committed to his charges of education." While Hake is not here forging a contract for future commodity, he draws on shared educational experience to locate his text. Hake tells of masters who are "manquellors . . . whose doggishe deedes depraue I The due successe of forwarde wittes"; later he dwells on the boys' nakedness during beating: "Yea, bashefully we shoulde lay bare I their bodies when we fight [i.e. beat them]: / For nakednesse to gentle boyes / if many are in sight, / A kinde of great reproche doth seeme, I and Fabius doth deny I That body of a gentle boy I in nakednesse should lye." 55 Of the texts that influenced educational theory and practice from the early fifteenth century, two in particular stand out: Plutarch's De educatione puerorum, translated into Latin by Guarino da Verona in 1411, and Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, a complete manuscript of which was unearthed in 1416, both of which associate same-sex desire with education either implicitly (Quintilian) or explicitly (Plutarch). The reader negotiat55

PRO SP 1/84 fol. 22, calendared as LP 7:659; McConica, English Humanists, 140; DNB s.v. Leonard Cox (12:411-12); DNB s.v. Richard Sherry (52:99); Hake, Touchstone for this time present, sigs. F5 r , F5 v -F6 r , F8 r .

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ing these classical texts to encode his own position in early modern educational policy needed, therefore, either to omit or to submerge the sodomitical element, or to tackle it head-on. Some of the embarrassments of these texts could be avoided by the invocation of good taste or of strict historicity. For example, De educatione puerorum contains a lengthy passage dealing even-handedly with the issue of boys' male admirers: in his Englishing, The Education or bringinge vp of children (1531), Thomas Elyot writes that he has "omitted to translate some parte of this matter, conteyned as well in the Greke as in the Latin I partly for that it is strange from the experience or vsage of this present tyme, partly that some vices be in those tonges reproued, whiche ought to be vnknowen, than in a vulgare tonge to be expressed." Edward Grant, in his A President ofParentes (1571), writes that his strategy in Englishing the classical educational treatise is to "disrobfe] Plutarke, of a gay grakish garment & to . . . attir[e] him in a course englishe vesture." This unclothing of the Greek text paradoxically does not reveal a naked truth but hides an editorial surgery: "the things yr I in him thought not necessary, I haue amputated and pared away, and put other lessons (which of others I haue receyued) in their place." 56 Unlike Plutarch, Quintilian was not published in English translation during the sixteenth century, but we have one reader's response which shows a clear awareness of the subtext. The first book of lnstitutio oratoria includes a passage on beating, to which Quintilian is opposed: When children are beaten, pair or fear frequently have results of which it is not pleasant to speak and which are likely subsequently to be a source of shame, a shame which unnerves and depresses the mind and leads the child to shun and loathe the light. Further if inadequate care is taken in the choices of respectable governors and instructors, I blush to mention the shameful abuse which scoundrels sometimes make of their right to administer corporal punishment or the opportunity not infrequently offered to others by the fear thus caused in the victims. I will not linger on this subject; it is more than enough if I have made my meaning clear [nimium est quod intelligitur]. 57 56

Thomas Elyot, The Education or bringinge vp of children, sig. Air (mispaginated as A ); Edward Grant, A President for Parentes, sigs. *vv—*vir, *vir. The offending passage was first rendered literally into English by Philemon Holland in his The philosophie, commonlie called the morals, 13-14. Holland's own gloss on the subject can be found in his "explanation of certaine obscure words": "Paederasti. The loving of young boies: commonly taken in the ill part, as signifying the abuse of them against kinde" (sig. Zzzzz5v). De educatione puerorum is now generally accepted to be pseudo-Plutarchan, but no such doubts were raised in the early modern period. See W.H.S. Jones, "Quintilian, Plutarch, and the Early Humanists," The Classical Review 21 (1907): 33-43. 57 "quod multa vapulantibus dictu deformia et mox verecundiae futura saepe dolore vel metu acciderunt, qui pudor frangit animum et abncit atque ipsius lucis fugam et taedium v

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The second book includes a passage dealing with the need to vouch for the moral character of the schoolmaster. Quintilian writes, Indeed, I little likeflogging,although it is the received custom and Chrysippus does not disapprove; in the first place because it is disgraceful and fit only for slaves, and is in any case an injury [iniuria est], as will be agreed if you change the age [i.e., of the beaten boy].58 Gabriel Harvey's marginal notes in his copy of Quintilian, now in the British Library (shelfmark C.60.1.11), cross-reference this passage with a passage dealing with the moral character of the teacher, where Quintilian notes that the example of the teacher's personal self-control is insufficient unless combined with the ability to govern his pupils' behavior by the strictness of his discipline: As a rule boys are on the verge of manhood when transferred to the teacher of rhetoric and continue with him even when they are young men: consequently we must spare no effort to secure that the purity of the teacher's character should preserve those of tenderer years from corruption [iniuria] while its authority should keep the bolder spirits from breaking out into license. Nor is it sufficient that he should merely set an example of the highest personal selfcontrol; he must also be able to govern the behavior of his pupils by the strictness of his discipline.59 dicat. lam si minor in ehgendis custodum vel praeceptorum moribus fuit cura, pudet dicere, in quae probra nefandi homines isto caedendi iure abutantur. quam det aliis quoque nonnunquam occasionem hie miserorum metus. Non morabur in parte hac; nimium est quod intelligitur." Quintilian, The Institution Oratorta, trans. H. E. Butler, 1.3.16-17. The "nimium est quod intelligitur" tag is picked up by John Rainoldes in his attack on cross-dressing in Th'Overthrow of Stage-Playes: it references the Quintilian text to a discussion of "a sinne against nature mens naturall corruption and vitiousness is prone to," alongside references to Genesis 19:5 (the men of Sodom demanding to know the angels sheltered by Lot), Judges 19:22 (the sons of Belial demanding to know the Levite sheltered by the old man at Gibeah), and 1 Kings 14:24 (a reference to "sodomites" in Judah). Th'Overthrow of Stage-Playes, 10-11. This cross-reference is detected and discussed by Lisa Jardine in Still Harping on Daughters, 15-16. The tag is also picked up in The Children's Petition, which declines to discuss it: "We will not English this last of his Reasons, because it is the very sore upon which we touch, and the rise of this Address; onely thus far, It is too much already (sayes he) which is understood" (30); and by Lex Forcta, which features the phrase on its title page and quotes the passage on 6-7, adapting the translation from The Children's Petition to provide a more personally suggestive "I will not English this, because it is the Sore which I am yet even too tender to touch" (7). 58 "Caedi vero discentes, quamlibet et receptum sit et Chrysippus non improbit, minime belim. Primum, quia deforme atque servile est et certe, (quod convenit, si aetatem mute), iniuria est." Quintilian, Institutionum oratoriarum Libri XII (Gabriel Harvey's copy), 21. This passage is also invoked in The Children's Petition, 2 6 - 2 8 . 59 "Nam et adulti fere puen ad hos praeceptores transferuntur et apud eos iuvenes etiam facti perseverant; ideoque maior adhibenda turn cura est, ut et teniores annos ab iniuria

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Harvey's cross-reference neatly highlights the anomaly in Quintilian's apparent rejection of flogging and simultaneous espousal of strict discipline, and directs our attention to the teacher's self-control or more literally, "abstinence." By bringing these two passages together we also note the resonance of the "injury" in the second passage denoting the corruption that an immoral teacher might bring about with the younger members of his class, with the "injury" in the first passage, which is the problematical nature of flogging when the age factor is negated. As Lorna Hutson has observed, a token of service or hoped-for service between a patron and the reader seeking employment often carried in its form an expression of the skills that the prospective employee might offer. These skills, it follows, as encoded in the token, provide the initial bond between the men involved in this knowledge transaction. 60 In the case of an transaction involving education, and the skills of the schoolmaster— most famously Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster—it can be seen the "bonding" between two men would be a tense and ambiguous one, rooted in and yet constantly and necessarily denying the problematic status and experience of sixteenth-century English boys' education. As we might expect, Ascham eschews corporal punishment. Divided into two books—the first of ethics, regarding "the bringing up of youth," and the second of technique, for getting "the ready way to the Latin tongue"—The Scholemaster propagates a teaching process based on imitation, double translation, and a gentle, friendly manner. On the first page of book one, this process is placed in explicit contradistinction to the "making of latines" as espoused by Horman and Whittinton: [T] here is no one thing, that hath more, either dulled the wittes, or taken awaye the will of children from learning, then the care they haue, to satisfie their masters, in making of latines. For, the scholer, is commonlie beat for the making, when the master were more worthie to be beat for the mending, or rather, marring of the same: The master many times, being as ignorant as the childe, what to saie properlie and fitlie to the matter. Two scholemasters haue set forth in print, either of them a booke, of soch kinde of latines, Horman and Whittington.61 Ascham clearly identifies and collapses the "latines" espoused by Whittinton, Horman, Stanbridge, and others with the beating schoolmaster. sanctitas docentis custodiat et ferociores a licentia gravitas deterreat. Neque vero satis est summam praestare abstinentiam, nisi disciplinae severitate convenientium quoque ad se mores astrixent." Quintilian, lnstitutionum oratortarum Libri XIl (Harvey's copy), 73. 60 These ideas are expanded in Hutson, The Usurer's Daughter, passim. 61 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, sig. Ci r .

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This collapsing of technique into the master extolling that technique is evident in the title of his book, and from his extant correspondence. Ascham's book was intended to be more than a mere pedagogical tract. As he wrote to Johann Sturm, "This Schoolmaster of mine is not Cantabrigian, but Windsorian, of the court, not of the university. For that reason he may not exhibit the more flashy sort of learning, but he makes clear his usefulness, however modest, as much as he can." 62 Ascham's text imitates an imitative education whose teacher does not exist anywhere except in Ascham's text; Ascham's schoolmaster, basing his teaching processes on Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, is not a man with wavering moral character, but a text teaching education through imitation, a book about the social assimilation of the pedagogic function and the pedagogic industry. As such we need to temper Ascham's claims for it as pure Sturmian pedagogy with reference to the social relations which commissioned it. The Scholetnaster becomes the textual inscription of a pedagogical technique, but also inevitably becomes humanized, just as the "vulgars" become beating schoolmasters: to Sturm he writes in late 1568, "I wanted to show you only the face of my Schoolmaster, but I am not only revealing and describing his other limbs, but with neither prudence nor modesty I am even uttering his inner thoughts and feelings."63 Almost in spite of himself, Ascham cannot write of his textual schoolmaster without embodying him with limbs and inner thoughts that should not be revealed. Pedagogical technique for Ascham cannot be abstracted, but always returns to the limbed body of the schoolmaster with his imprudent inner thoughts. Even the crux of Ascham's humanist technique is explained to Sturm via the embodied schoolmaster: "I allow my Schoolmaster to be sparing in laying down rules, provided that he shows himself liberal and generous not only with offering examples, which takes effort and diligence, but also with analyzing them, which takes learning and good judgment." 64 Ascham's schoolmaster works by examples, not rules: the grammatical ingurgitation of Whittinton's latins through beating is replaced by the diligent imitation of examples through coaxing. To Sturm Ascham writes, "You write about imitation, and I have been doing some thinking about the same topic. Your treatment of it is polished, for edu62 "Sed est preceptor hie meus, non Cantabrigiensis, sed Vuindsorius: Aulicus, non Academicus: Ideoq«e non illustnorem aliquam ostentat doctrinam, sed mediocrem & nonnullum, quoad potest, ostendit vsum" (Grant, sig. A.ij v ; Vos, letter 60, 267). 63 "Nae ego temere nimis, qui, cum faciem tantum Prjeceptons mei tibi ostendere volui, non solum c[as]tera membra apeno & exphco, sed intenora ilia eius, consilia &c sensus omnes, nee prudenter, nee pudenter offero" (Grant, sig. A.iij'-"; Vos, letter 60, 268). 64 "Patior Prasceptorum parcum esse in prEeceptorum traditione, modo liberalem se Sc largum in exemplorum, non solum productione, quod laboris est &C dihgentia:, veriim etiam tractione, quod est doctrinae & iudicij, ostendat"(Grant, sig. A.iiijv; Vos, letter 60, 270).

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cated men; mine is rough, for the uneducated, who are yet boys." 65 Here, the "manning" process of education—turning educated boys into educated men—is seemingly transferred from the "breeching" technique to a concept of education by imitation, a project linked to Sturm's own work, and indeed starting with Cicero's letters, which Sturm had edited. Although Ascham has his reservations about Quintilian's insufficient respect for Cicero, it is to Quintilian's lnstitutio oratona that he turns both for the recommendation of imitation [10.1.108], and for his condemnation of beating. The transacting of The Scbolemaster takes place on 10 December 1563, at Windsor Castle, as Elizabeth and her court abandoned London on account of the plague. The dinner takes place in the chamber of the queen's principal secretary, Sir William Cecil, with the following present: "M. Secretarie him selfe, Syr William Peter, Syr/. Mason, D. Wotton, Syr Richard Sackuille Treasurer of the Exchecker, M. Haddon Master of Requestes, M. Iohn Astely Master of the Iewell house, M. Bernard Hampton, M. Nicasius, and I." Of these, as Ascham notes, "the most part were of hir Maiesties most honourable priuie Counsell, and the reast seruing hir in verie good place" (Ascham, Scholemaster, sig. B.ir). Ascham himself was on hand to provide ad hoc reading sessions in the queen's privy chamber. This, then, is a gathering of some of the most powerful politicans in the country and yet their topic of conversation is not politics, but education: M. Secretarie hath this accustomed maner, though his head be neuer so full of most weightie affaires of the Realme, yet, at diner time he doth seeme to lay them alwaies aside; and findeth euer fitte occasion to taulke pleasantlie of other matters, but most gladlie of some matter of learning: wherein, he will curteslie heare the minde of the meanest at his Table. (Ascham, op.cit., sig. B.ir)

Cecil's alleged custom is a perfect demonstration of the pretended leveling powers of humanism: despite his political duties and a head filled with the realm's weightiest affairs, he sets aside his communal hours—at dinner— to discussions of other matters, predominantly of learning. Dinnertime discourse took the form of "strange newes" from Windsor's local school, Eton College, where "diuerse Scholers . . . be runne awaie from the Schole, for feare of beating." The beating of schoolboys subseqently becomes the topic of conversation, with the men taking sides for and against the institution: 65

"Scribis tu de Imitatione: & ego nonnihil cogito de eodem argumento: Sed tu, absolute eruditis iam ac virrs: Ego inchoate, rudibus adhuc & pueris" (Grant, sig. A.i]r; Vos, letter 60, 266-267). Ascham refers to Sturm's as yet unpublished De imitatione oratona libri tres, cum scholis eiusdem authoris, antea nunquam in lucem edtti.

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M. Peter, as one somewhat seuere of nature, said plainlie, that the Rodde onelie, was the sworde, that must keepe, the Schole in obedience, and the Scholer in good order. M. Wotton, a man milde of nature, with soft voice, and fewe wordes, inclined to M. Secretaries iudgement, and said, in mine opinion, the Scholehouse should be in deed, as it is called by name, the house of playe and pleasure, and not of feare and bondage: and as I do remember, so saith Socrates in one place of Plato. And therefore, if a Rodde carie the feare of a Sworde, it is no maruell, if those that be fearefull of nature, chose rather to forsake the Plaie, than to stand alwaies within the feare of a Sworde in a fonde mans handling. M. Mason, after his maner, was very merie with both parties, pleasantlie playing, both, with the shrewde touches of many courste boyes, and with the small discretion of many leude Scholemasters. M. Haddon was fullie of M. Peters opinion, and said, that the best Scholemaster of our time, was the greatest beater, and named the Person. Though, quoth I, it was his good fortune, to send from his Schole, vnto the Vniuersitie, one of the best Scholers in deede of all our time, yet wise men do thinke, that that came so to passe, rather, by the great towardnes of the Scholar, than by the great beating of the Master: and whether this be true or no, you your selfe are best witnes. (Ascham, op.cit., sig. B.iv) Walter Haddon's educational history provides Ascham with a chance to sever the effects of beating from the production of a great scholar. Haddon had himself been at Eton, under Richard Cox, before moving to King's College, Cambridge, where he excelled as a writer of Latin prose. Indeed, in 1561, he had been in line for the provostship of Eton, until the queen decided upon William Day.66 He is not being set up here as the ignorant foil to Ascham's sophisticated humanist—indeed, Ascham was wont to claim Haddon as his greatest friend this side of the English Channel (the Continental rival being Johann Sturm). The summary of the conversation concludes with Ascham's contribution, which is carefully shown to be supported by his host, Cecil: I said somewhat farder in the matter, how, and whie, young children, were soner allured by loue, than driuen by beating, to atteyne good learning: wherein I was the bolder to say my minde, bicause M. Secretarie curteslie prouked me thereunto: or else, in such a companie, and namelie in his presence, my wonte is, to be more willing, to vse mine eares, than to occupie my tonge. (Ascham, op.cit., sigs. B.r-B.ijr) After dinner, he is taken to one side by Sir Richard Sackville, the Treasurer of the Exchequer, who, having "said nothing at all" during the conversation, now informs him that he was highly impressed by Ascham's arguments. Sackville then puts a proposition to Ascham: 66

DNB s.v. Walter Haddon (23:429-32).

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I heare saie, you haue a sonne . . .: we wil deale thus togither. Point you out a Scholemaster, who by your order, shall teache my sonne [his grandson, Robert] and yours, and for all the rest, I will prouide, yea though they three do cost me a couple of hundred poundes by yeare: and beside, you shall finde me as fast a Frend to you and yours, as perchance any you haue. (Ascham, op.cit., sig. B.iir-V) Sackville then asks Ascham, "at my request, and at your leysure, [to] put in some order of writing, the cheife pointes of this our taulke, concerning, the right order of teachinge, and honestie of liuing, for the good bringing vp of children & yong men." His motivation, Sackville explains, lies in his own experience: he confides that "a fond Scholemaster, before I was fullie fourtene yeare olde, draue me so, with feare of beating, from all loue of learninge, as nowe, when I know, what difference it is, to haue learninge, and to haue litle, or none at all, I feele it my greatest greife, and finde it my greatest hurte, that euer came to me, that it was my so ill chance, to light vpon so lewde a Scholemaster." (Ascham, op.cit., sig. B.ijv) This connection between reading skills and the nature of the bonding between patron and reader is especially pertinent here. The SackvilleAscham contract produces not only a practical benefit to both men—a safe schoolmaster for their children—but also engenders a text that will encode the terms of their transaction, and will also (once published) prove of financial benefit to the Ascham family. Eventually Ascham's widow was to dedicate The Scholemaster to William Cecil, who in turn provided the education of her eldest son at Westminster; the headmaster at Westminster, the Edward Grant we met earlier, became Ascham's editor and published his letters, thereby ensuring the family's economic security. Thus this knowledge transaction—which extends beyond The Scholemaster to embrace virtually the entire published Ascham ceuvre— is predicated not only on a form of reading skill but also on a mutual educational experience through which those skills were acquired, that of the beating schoolmaster. Indeed, Ascham's attack on Horman and Whittinton is feigned: by the time he came to write The Scholemaster in the 156Os, those vulgaria had been out of print for over thirty years. Stanbridge's Vulgaria, first published in 1509 was last reprinted in 1534; Horman's book was published only twice, in 1519 and 1530; Whittinton's over the period 1520 to 1533. They did not pose any kind of challenge, theoretical or practical (in the sense of publication) to The Scholemaster —they can only have represented Ascham's own schooldays. 67 Indeed, Ascham's attack on Horman and Whittinton erases for us 67 Joan Simon notes, "the book he write in the 1560s was, some contemporary asides apart, essentially the product of learning and teaching in the Cambridge of the Reformation and correspondence with Sturm" {Education and Society, 269).

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what had been the vital opposition of these two texts (Horman as sponsored by Colet's St. Paul's School, and Whittinton drawing on Donatus) during what became known as the "Grammarians' War" of 1520. 68 So in terms of content and commission, Ascham's text is dependent on lived experience of sixteenth-century male education, an experience it must constantly deny in order to justify its own existence. Although Ascham's "Preface" is usually read as an account of a dinner conversation, in fact temporally and spatially it tells much of the positioning of these transactions in relation to Elizabeth. The dinner party takes place in Sir William Cecil's chamber, in an all-male company that permits the sometimes "merie" discussion of beating. Ascham makes much of the fact that "After dinner I went up to read with the Queenes Majestic We red than togither in the Greke tonge, as I well remember, that noble Oration of Demosthenes against Aeschines for his false dealing in his embassage to king Philip of Macedonie." And yet this exemplary proof of tutor-student reading 69 takes place away from the productive conversation. "Syr Rich. Sackuile came up sone after," continues Ascham, "and finding me in hir Maiesties priuie chamber, he tooke me by the hand, and carying me to a windoe, said . . . " Thus even the knowledge transaction that occurs between them, inside the very privy chamber of the queen, takes place in the privacy of the window, out of her earshot. Ascham's objections are abruptly terminated when "sodeinlie [I] was called to cum to the Queene." So we can see that the queen's exemplary humanist learning is figured not as an aid to the writing of The Scholemaster, as references in the main text might suggest, but as an interruption and hindrance to the forging of a male social contract, the basis of which she cannot have lived. So the experience underlying the transaction with Sackville radically undermines the claims of the text. It is notable that Ascham forwards, as several of his proofs, young women as well as his close male friends and students. The most famous of these is Jane Grey: And one example, whether loue or feare doth worke more in a child, for vertue and learning, I will gladlie report: which maie be hard with some pleasure, and folowed with more profit. Before I went into Germanie, I cam to Brodegate in Lecetershire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie lane Grey, to whom I was 68

For a full discussion of this War, alert to its implications of humanist self-promotion, see Carlson, English Humanist Books, 102-122. See also Crane, Framing Authority, 8085. In her discussion of the Grammarians' War, Crane appears to imply that Ascham supported Horman's grammar against Whittinton's, (82) but this clearly is not the case. 69 See "The Speech on the Embassy," in The Speeches of Aeschines, trans. Charles Darwin Adams, 158-301; and "De falsa legatione," in Demosthenes, De corona and De falsa legatione, trans. C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince, 231-343.

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exceding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, with all the houshold, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber, reading Phcedon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as moch delite, as som ientleman wold read a merie tale in Bocase. (Ascham, op.cit., sig. B.iijv) Jane Grey epitomizes the victory of learned reading over traditional aristocratic pursuits on the level of personal pleasure received: "I wisse [certainly], all their sporte in the Parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure, that I find in Plato: Alas, good folke, they neuer felt, what trewe pleasure ment." When Ascham presses her as to how she (as one of "not many women, but verie fewe men") attained "this deepe knowledge of pleasure," she replies One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure, and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presenthe some tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies, which I will not name, for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I thinke my selfe in hell, till tyme cum, that I must go to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurements to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because, what soeuer I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and whole mishking vnto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch my pleasure, & bringeth dayly to me more pleasure &C more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deede, be but trifles and troubles vnto me. (Ascham, op.cit., sigs. E.iijv-E.injr) Jane is allowed to speak in order to provide the complete converse of the standard "beating schoolmaster" scenario. Here the student escapes to her tutor, to avoid the verbal and physical gibes of her parents—of both her parents. Even the suggestion of "other waies" of chastisement, "which I will not name," irresistibly evokes memories of the dolorem infandum inflicted by the beating schoolmaster. Ascham rounds off the story with an implied moral: "I remember this talke gladly, both bicause it is so worthy of memorie, & bicause also, it was the last taulke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I saw that noble and worthie Ladie" (Ascham, op.cit., sig. E.iiijr). By the time Ascham returned from Germany, Jane Grey was dead, executed as a direct result of the political manipulations of her parents—or, in other words, precisely the result we might expect from such beating parents.

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While these women are of course hardly typical—they tend to be on the throne or very near to it—it remains significant that Ascham does not prescribe a separate syllabus or tutorial technique for girls as, for example, Juan Luis Vives did earlier in the century. However, Ascham's ideal parity of learning is in no way matched by an equality in the pragmatic use to which men and women can employ that learning. The Scholemaster, while imagined explicitly in opposition to the Latins of Whittinton and Horman, in fact owes its existence to the harsh experience of male education that they exemplify: the implications of this experience for women humanists is that their knowledge is always imperfect.70 Alternatively, it might be seen that Ascham is attempting to present a pedagogical transaction which elides the physical experience of beating: he can produce this phenomenon textually, but as soon as the textbook is in the hands of a flesh-and-blood schoolmaster, then the scholar is once again at risk. Figuring the perfect scholar as a highly-born female (and thus theoretically safe from the violence of beating) is perhaps the only way in which this ideal situation might be achieved. Ultimately, however, whatever Ascham says he is doing in the preface to The Scholetnaster, the social achievements of the preface and its attendant dedication speak for themselves. The Scholemaster itself attained a status comparable to that of the King's Grammar of 1540: the Stationers' Register of 6 March 1581 notes that permission to print Richard Mulcaster's Positions—a text that might be seen to occupy ground similar to that of Ascham's Scholemaster—was to be denied "yf this booke conteine any thinge preiudiciall or hurtfull to the booke of maister ASKHAM that was printed by master Daie I Called the Scolemayster."71 Mulcaster's text does, in fact, register the author's annoyance at Ascham's presumption in making his schoolmaster the schoolmaster: "the curteouse maister Askam in his booke, which I wishe he had not himselfe, neither any other for him entitled the schoolemaister, bycause myselfe dealing in that argument must needes sometime dissent to farre from him, with some hasard of myne owne credit, seeing his is hallowed." 72 So, whatever Ascham's text achieves in the way of pedagogical reform is secondary to its function in fulfilling the continuity of Ascham's hardwon social status through his children. More than ensuring that the nobleman Sir Richard Sackville's son is free from the horrors of the beating schoolmaster, it ensures that the humanist Roger Ascham's son is free from the horrors of poverty.

70

See Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, Chap. 2 on women scholars. 71 A transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554-1640 A.D. vol 2, ed. Edward Arber, 390. 72 Mulcaster, Positions, 243.

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Read through the knowledge transactions of The Scholemaster, we can perhaps see what is happening in the anecdote of Elizabeth and the beautiful, comely, witty Westminster scholar. As his patron (as foundress of Westminster School), Elizabeth attempts to forge some form of verbal sparring contract with the boy—as Sackville does with Ascham—by demanding "how often he had been whipt." Although the boy displays a proper grasp of reading skills which work to "his advancement," the textual encoding of their relationship betrays its inherent impossibility— "you do desire to know, I A grief unspeakable." The Queen's insistence on the boy's educational experience merely serves to underscore her own lack of the common educational experience, and to place her, despite her total grasp of Ascham's program of humanist learning, ultimately outside the erotics of male knowledge transactions. Elizabeth knew that she was excluded from this institution, but understood its power; she may have been outside that erotic economy, but she still recognized a well-beaten boy when she saw one—as another Elizabethan anecdote will suffice to show. After witnessing a performance of a play by Richard Edwards in Oxford in 1563, Elizabeth "went to Christ Church; and as she passed out of St Mary's Church door, Mr Eldrick, sometime Greek Reader of the University, presented to her a book of Greek verses, containing the noble acts of her Father; the which the Queen having no sooner received, and looked on the title, but Mr Edwards, the comedian before-mentioned, said to the Queen, 'Madam, this man was my master'; to which rather inept intervention the Queen gave answer, 'Certainly he did not give thee whipping enough.' " 7 3

T H E G R E A T E S T BEATER?: N I C H O L A S U D A L L

AND A N E W

VULGARIA

As we saw earlier, it is from later seventeenth century accounts that the modern myth of the sadistic sodomitical master emerges explicitly. What I find interesting is the subsequent rewriting of the sixteenth century to fit this image. For, although Erasmus and Ascham write of the beating schoolmaster as commonplace, only one schoolmaster has come down to posterity as "the greatest beater"—Nicholas Udall, headmaster of Eton College between 1534 and 1541, and later head of Westminster School (1554-56). A recent study of boys' public schools by John Chandos labels Udall as "the notorious Eton flogger," who set the pattern for later homo73 Cit. Charles William Wallace, The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare, 114 n.2.

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sexual sadism in boys' schools. 74 The Dictionary of National Biography presents a standard portrait: As a schoolmaster Udall had the reputation of severely enforcing corporal punishment. Thomas Tusser was one of his pupils, and he states in his autobiography, prefixed to his Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry (1575), that he received from Udall on one occasion fifty-three stripes for "fault but small or none at all." Tusser exclaims, "See, Udall, see the mercy of thee to mee, poor lad!" Udall's connection with Eton was terminated under disgraceful and somewhat mysterious circumstances . . . an accusation against him of unnatural crime. . . . On gaining his liberty he piteously petitioned an unnamed patron probably at court to procure his restitution to Eton, while he professed a wish to pay off his debts and to amend his way of life.75 Born of a Hampshire family in 1505, Udall attended Winchester College and Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he became an early adherent of the Lutheran movement, an affiliation that hindered him from taking the degree of Master of Arts until 1534. By this time, Udall was an intimate friend of John Leland, the composer of Latin verses for Anne Boleyn's entry into London; he then became Head of Eton College. In preparation for this appointment, Udall produced a selection of phrases from Terence, Floures for Latine Spekynge, which became one of the central school texts of the sixteenth century.76 All in all, Udall was a major figure in English education. Then on 12 March 1541 a London goldsmith named William Emler was examined by the Privy Council "for the buying of certain images of silver and other plate which wer stolen from the college of Eton; and beyng suspected to haue used hym self lewdly in the handlyng of the matter." Subsequently two "late scholer[s] of Eton," John Hoord and Thomas Cheyney, were charged with the theft: Cheyney implicated Headmaster Udall and his servant Gregory. When Udall was "sent for as suspect to be counsail," he did "confesse that he did cowmitt buggery with the sayd Cheney sundry tymes hertofore, & of late the vjth day of this present monethe in this present yere at London; wherupon he was committed to the Marshalsey." 77 Udall lost his job at Eton, but does not seem to have been unduly affected by the episode: indeed, most of his subsequent problems stemmed from shaky financial transactions. A year 74 Chandos, Boys Together, 230. For a provocative interrogation of Udall's life and writings, and of critical responses to both, see Pittenger, " T o Serve the Queere'." 75 DNB s.v. Nicholas Udall (57:6-9, at 7). 76 See William L. Edgerton, Nicholas Udall, 31. 77 Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, vol. 7, ed. Sir Hans Nicolas, 152-53.

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after this affair, Udall was paid the full arrears of his salary by the Eton bursars; 78 he maintained his post as Vicar of Braintree (held since 1537) until September 1544, and then under the patronage of Queen Catherine Parr, and in collaboration with Princess Mary, he worked on the Paraphrase of the New Testament. Under Edward, Udall remained in favor, composing a response to the West Country insurgents, and continuing to publish and to teach—he was the tutor of the imprisoned Edward Courtenay, and later schoolmaster in the house of Stephen Gardiner. He was made prebend at Windsor in November 1551 (a post later forfeited through his absence), and in March 1553 he received the rectory of Calborne on the Isle of Wight. In 1554, almost until his death in November 1556, he was head of Westminster School. The smoothness of this career—seemingly only temporarily disrupted by a sodomy scandal—has distressed commentators. William Durrant Cooper laments UdalPs "lax discipline" and notes that "in the year 1541 his own irregularities were the cause of an abrupt termination of his connection with Eton school"; when Cooper quotes from the Privy Council records, he substitutes "buggery" with "a heinous offence." The remarkable lack of after-effects has encouraged critics to think better of Udall: J. W Hales notes that "The fame [as a playwright] he had probably acquired at Eton had not deserted him amidst all his troubles; nor had he come to be looked upon as a disreputable person, which surely would have been his condition, had he been really guilty of certain charges brought against him—if those charges are rightly understood." W. H. Williams and P. A. Robin (1901) quote approvingly Henry Morley's thesis on the theft of the images and plate: "Udall had Lutheran tendencies that caused him to assent to the removal of images from the college chapel; theologic hatred added infamous imputations that would have ruined him for life had they been true," and conclude that "It is therefore difficult to believe the more serious charges against him, and he speedily recalled himself to a blameless life, setting to work to liquidate his debts by literary labours." 79 Perhaps the most ingenious solution comes from William L. Edgerton in his 1965 biography of Udall, who notes that "If [the clerk of the court, William] Paget were working under such pressure as his entries indicate and if indeed his handwriting were deteriorating . . . 'Buggery' and 'burglary' are near enough alike, especially if written in rough notes by a hurried clerk, to be mistaken for each other." 80 78

H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of Eton College, 115. William Durrant Cooper, "Introductory Memoir" to his ed. Ralph Roister Dotster, xvu; J. W. Hales, "The Date of 'The First English Comedy,'" Englische Studien 18 (1893):414; Udall, Ralph Roister Dotster, ed. W. H. Williams and P. A. Robin, ix. 80 Edgerton, Nicholas Udall, 39-40. Pittenger brilliantly probes the implications of Edgerton's amendment ("'To Serve the Queere,'" 165-66). 79

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Tempting though this might be for those who would rather see Udall as a burglar than a bugger, Edgerton probably comes nearer the truth when he notes that Thomas Cheyney, one of the boys involved, was likely to have been a relative of the wife of Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who was sitting on the Council at the hearing. 81 The apparent lack of concern at the sodomitical schoolmaster can then be seen as a fairly standard coverup. Indeed, there does exist textual evidence for the other component of this biography—Udall's viciousness as a schoolmaster—in an oft-quoted autobiographical verse by Thomas Tusser. Tusser's accepted biography is heavily reliant on the verse autobiography in Five hundreth points of good husbandry, from which the references to the "fiftie three stripes" and "Udall" derive: From Powles I went, to Aeton sent, To learne straight wayes, the Latin phraise, Where fiftie three stripes giuen to mee, at once I had: For faut but small, or none at all, It came to passe, thus beat I was, See Udall see, the mercy of thee, to mee poore lad.82 Away from this source, however, facts are elusive: one source has Tusser born in 1523; another places the date in 1515. The one fact of which we can be (reasonably) sure is that Tusser was elected to King's College, Cambridge, in 1543, an event that must have taken place before his nineteenth birthday. In the absence of any record of him at Eton (the college records contain only a William Tusser, entering in 1543), his editors Payne and Herrtage conjecture that Tusser must have transferred to Eton "in 1540 or 1541." 8 3 Since Udall was removed from his post in 81 Wnothesley's wife was the daughter of William Cheyney of Chesham Bois; Cheyney's father also came from Chesham Bois. See Edgerton, Nicholas Udall, 3 9 - 3 9 . A letter exists written by Udall, and circumstantially assigned as intended for Wriothesley in 1541/2, in which Udall thanks the recipient for his unsuccessful attempt to regain his position, and asks for his continued clemency after having "deserved your displeasure and indignacion" for his "lewdness and foly." BL ms Cotton Titus B.VIII, fol. 371. The letter is quoted in full in G. Scheurweghs, "Introduction" to his edition of Udall, Roister Doister, xxv-xxxii, and Sir Henry Ellis, Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 - 7 , and discussed in Pittenger, " 'To Serve the Queere,'" 170— 72. 82 Thomas Tusser, "The authors life," in Five hundreth points of good husbandry united to as many of good huswiferie (London, 1573), fol. 27 v . 83 Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 3:248; William Mavor, "Biographical Sketch of

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1541, it is possible that Udall did not in fact teach young Thomas Tusser. Or at least, not in any physical sense. We might see the "Udall" to whom Tusser makes his lament as less of a "whom" and more of a "which": "Udall" as an Eton text, his Floures for Latin spekynge, straight Latin phrases gathered out of Terence. Udall's Terence was not merely yet another schoolbook. Its first printing (by the King's Printer, Thomas Berthelet, in 1533) was of wider significance. For several decades, the vulgaria had held sway as pedagogical tools: Stanbridge had gone through at least sixteen editions from 1520, Whittinton through fourteen. But the publishing of Udall's Terence also marked the last printing of the vulgaria by Whittinton, Horman, and Stanbridge, and of an older vulgaria from Terence, compiled by John Anwykyll, and published from 1483. In other words, Udall's Terence effectively became the new vulgaria. Yet it is a very different sort of educational text. The dual-language phrases are not drawn from everyday life and lack the racy colloquialism of the older works. More importantly, the phrases are all drawn from Terence's comedies, in the order in which they appear in the plays (in this way they differ from Anwykyll's earlier "Terence vulgaria"). 84 In other words, the educational tool moves its reference point from everyday life to a classical text; Latin is learned not as a way of describing actual events but through the dictates of Terentian comedy. In Udall's Terence, marrying the master's daughter means nothing but marrying the master's daughter. This thesis is supported by a contemporary French phrase glossed by Randle Cotgrave in his 1611 Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues; "Les diables estoient encores a leur Donat" ("the devils were still at their Donatus"). Donatus, Cotgrave explains, is "The name of a certaine Grammarian, read in some Schooles": a grammarian certainly integral to the English grammar-school curriculum through his commentary on Terentian comedy. Cotgrave goes on to describe the true nature of these "diables": "The diuells were, as then, but breeching boyes, like Grammar Schoole boyes, but young in experience, but Nouices in the world." 85 Here again, "breeching," a common term for beating, is adduced as a phase in the institution of the man into experience and the world: significantly, it is figured in the phrase as a particular stage— Tusser," in his ed. ofTusser, Five Hundred Points ofGood Husbandry,. . . together with A Book of Huswifery, 5; DNB s.v. Thomas Tusser (57:380); Thomas Harwood, Alumni Etonenses, 160. Since Thomas did have a younger brother William there seems to be no cause to conclude, as does the DNB, that this is an erroneous reference to Thomas, in the wrong year. See DNB s.v. Thomas Tusser; and, for the brother, W, Payne and Sidney J. Herrtage, "Biographical Sketch of the Author," in their ed. of Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, xii, xiii. 84 For publication details of the vulgaria see STC; John Anwykyll, ed., Vulgaria quedam abs Terentio in Anglicam linguam traducta. 85 Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, sig. Dd.vv.

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Donatus—in the curriculum. Like Donatus, Udall is an integral and unavoidable part of the Terentian component of the curriculum. 86 Is it not then possible that in this over-quoted complaint by Thomas Tusser, the "Udall" is not necessarily the master in person, but the text by Udall? If this were the case, then Tusser's location of beating can be reread as not the personal flaw of one man, but of the educational system as a whole. To single out Udall as the greatest beater of Tudor England is to ignore other contenders. Richard Mulcaster, for example, the headmaster of Merchant Taylors' (1561-86) and St. Paul's Schools (1596-1608), was portrayed as just such a great beater in Thomas Fuller's influential portrait—a dozing schoolmaster who would then awake and dole out vicious punishment to the student who had "slept the while": The prayers of cockering Mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent Fathers, rather increasing then mitigating his severity on their offending child. In a word, he was Plagosus Orbilius, though it may be truly said (and safely for one out of his School) that others have taught as much learning with fewer lashes.87 As William Barker argues, the alleged personal details "may be based less on any ascertainable facts than on Fuller's self-confessed intention to amuse his readers," pointing out that the dozing schoolmaster was an established stereotype.88 So Nicholas Udall was perhaps not the prototype sadistic homosexual schoolmaster, as he has come to down to posterity. One reference to his alleged beating has been incautiously linked to a Privy Council examination on buggery or burglary to produce this monster. With anxiety offloaded onto the individual man, the institution of the nobleman is cleansed of the imputation of sodomy. By constructing Udall as the modern "sadistic homosexual," education displaces onto a single man the anxiety registered by the sixteenth-century educationalists, forging intimate knowledge transactions with other men on the basis of the shared secret of the dolorem infandutn, the pain not to be spoken. 86 The Eton timetable included Terence in the third and fourth form every day from Monday to Thursday. See Leach, Eductional Charters, 451. 87 Fuller, History of the Worthies, s.v. Westermerland, 3rd sequence of pages, 149-50. 88 Barker, ed., Positions, lxxi n.l. For the dozing schoolmaster, see Stephen Bateman, A christall glasse of christian reformation, sig. F r : to illustrate the chapter "Of sloth," the schoolmaster sleeps and his students fool around. See also Richard L. DeMolen, Richard Mulcaster (c. 1531-1611) and Educational Reform in the Renaissance, 82.

Chapter Four "THE PROOFE OF FRENDS" READING

AMICITIA IN 1548

O

NE OF THE most famous of erotic relationships between men, known to every sixteenth-century grammar-school boy, was that of Corydon and Alexis in Virgil's second eclogue. The shepherd Corydon laments his unrequited love for the sophisticated and beautiful Alexis, the master's favorite. In the influential fourth-century commentary by Servius Maurus Honoratus—from which the standard Renaissance schoolroom editions of the Eclogues drew heavily—the desire of Corydon for Alexis was by no means derided. The Servian commentary places the poem in two historicized, biographical contexts, both concerned with patronage: in one of these, Corydon represents Virgil and Alexis a beautiful slave-boy named Alexander, given to the poet by his patron Pollio; in the other, Corydon is Virgil, and Alexis stands for Caesar himself, deaf to the pleas of the neglected poet. 1 But for Desiderius Erasmus, the eclogue posed a pedagogical dilemma that could only be solved by some highly directed teaching: If, for instance, someone were going to teach Virgil's second Eclogue, he should prepare or rather protect the minds of his audience with a suitable preface along the following lines: friendship can exist only among similar people, for similarity promotes mutual good will, while dissimilarity on the other hand is the parent of hatred and distrust; moreover, the greater, the truer, the more deeply rooted the similarity, the firmer and closer will be the friendship.2 This, notes Erasmus, is the essence of a good deal of literary proverbs, which he proceeds to elaborate. The binary opposites he draws on pick up all the standard problems of friendship and learning: "the ignoramus 1 Servius Maurus Honoratus, [Incipit:] Mauri Serun Honorati grammatici, unpaginated, leaf 3 r . For a typical use of Servius' commentary see Virgil, Bucohca . . . cum commento famtliarissimo parisius elucubrato. 2 "Veluti si quis praelecturus secwwdam Maroms Eeglogara, commoda praefatione piaeparet, vel poti«s prjemuniat auditors»? animos, ad hunc modura, vt dicat. Amicitiara no« coire nisi inter similes, similitudinera eniw esse beniuolentise mutua; corcciliatncem, contra dissimilitudinem odi), dissidijqwe parentem. Quoqwe maior ac verior, stabiiiorqae similitudo fuerit, hoc firmior, atq«e arctior est amicitia." Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studij, ac legendi, tnterpretandique auctores libellus aureus &c, ASD 1:2.111-51, CWE 24:661-91 at sigs. A.viii"-B r , ASD 1:2.139, CWE 24:683. The comments on Virgil's second eclogue were not included in the 1511, 1512, and 1513 editions.

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detests the scholar, the layman the priest, the rustic the courtier, the 3 young man the old." Seen this way, it is a symbolic picture of such an ill-formed friendship which Virgil is presenting in this Eclogue. Corydon is from the countryside, Alexis from the city. Corydon is a shepherd, Alexis a courtier. Corydon is unsophisticated (for Virgil calls his song artless), while Alexis is widely read. Corydon is advanced in years, Alexis in his early manhood. Corydon is ugly, Alexis handsome. In short, they differ in every respect. The prudent man should therefore choose a friend in tune with his own character, if he wants the affection to be mutual. If, then, he prefaces his remarks in this way, and thereupon shows the passages which indicate the mistaken and boorish affections of Corydon, I believe the minds of his audience will suffer no ill effects, unless someone comes to the work who has already been corrupted. For such a person will have brought his infection with him and will not have acquired it from this activity. I have dealt with this particular example at some length so that each person may more easily come by similar means of exposition for himself in other cases.4 Erasmus' assertive interpretation of the eclogue should not lead us to be­ lieve that the homoerotic element was firmly or consistently quashed. The understanding of friendship as at once to be desired only among equals and as potentially sodomitical is tempered by the Servian reading of the relationship as clearly erotic and clearly based on patronage patterns. Virgil's second eclogue is only one of a huge range of classical texts deal­ ing with friendship drawn on by humanistic educational programs, and probably unique in its explicit engagement with the issue of same-sex sexual desire between men. But it remains important because, despite its status as exceptional, it firmly brings the question of sexual desire into the discussion of male friendship. In a seminal essay, Alan Bray has warned against the anachronistic identification of homosexuality in depictions of Renaissance friendship, arguing that intense intimacy between men, in the form of institutionalized bedsharing and a highly visible semiotics of friendship, was an integral, albeit not utterly accepted, part of early mod­ ern English culture. 5 In this chapter, I suggest that modern gay appropria-' "Ut idiota studiosum hteraram oderit, prophanus sacerdotem, rusticus aulicum, iuuems senem." Erasmus, De rattone studij, sig. B r ; ASD 1:2.140; CWE 24.685. 4 "Eius igitur amicitia: male cohaererctis quasi simulacrum qwoddam, in hac segloga proponit Vergilius. Corydon rusticus, Alexis vrbanus. Corydon pastor, Alexis aulicus. Cor­ ydon indoctus (nam huius carmma vocat incowdita) Alexis eruditus. Corydon state prouectus, Alexis adolescens. Corydon deformis, hie formosus. Breuiter dissimila omnia. Quare prudewtis est amicum suis moribtts aptum dihgere, si veht amari mutuura. HEEC inquam si praeietur turn autem locos demonstratorios perperam, & bucohce a rustico affectatos indicet, nihil opinor turpe veniet in mentem auditonbus, nisi si qws iam corruptus accesserit. Nam iste venenum non hinc hauserit, sed hue secum attulerit." De ratione study, sigs. Β.Γ-B.ij'; ASD 1:2.142; CWE 24.686-87. 5 Bray, "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship," passim.

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tions of Renaissance male friendship may not be totally anachronistic, and that our differing modern interpretations of male friendship were in fact present in a highly charged and dangerous contemporary debate on the subject, of which Virgil's second eclogue is merely a tiny, academic instance. This debate was engendered by a new humanist mobilization of classical treatments, which played a vital role in the construction of reading within humanist pedagogy and practice. In turn, that humanist construction of reading challenged and started to redefine dominant assumptions regarding the social practices of friendship. I argue that the friendship debate centered on different and often contradictory definitions emanating from on one side, humanistic theory, and, on the other, the social structure it sought to transform, and that an understanding of humanistically defined friendship is essential to an understanding of how humanism saw itself working in early modern England. From the late fifteenth century onwards, humanistically trained men started to move into positions of key importance and influence in English society. They presented themselves to the established ruling elite as counselors, and forwarded their counsel across a space that they defined in terms of an intellectual equality, an amicitia in Ciceronian (and Erasmian) terms. The rhetoric was consistent, simultaneously flattering to its recipient and self-advancing for its orator, and remains to the modern reader, educated in a humanistic tradition, properly persuasive and naturally credible. Yet it would be a mistake to confuse the fact of the advancement of certain humanistically trained men with the certainty of their rhetoric. For the rhetoric was neither accepted nor even fully acceptable in midsixteenth-century England. The purity of the Ciceronian amicitia, in its male-only cerebral space, had to negotiate a strong alternative native tradition of "friendship" which explicitly accepted that relationships between men should be cemented by the exchange of women: the subject of this chapter is the troubled attempt to exchange several highly placed women—including Elizabeth and Jane Grey—under cover of amicitia. Mervyn James has argued that sixteenth-century England saw a shift in relationships between lord and servants, based on changes in tenurial arrangements, a shift that has been crudely summarised as "from feudalities to friendships," but which in fact involves rather a reevaluation of the nature of friendship. James writes of the medieval social unit: "The setting in which lordship deployed itself was the household of a landed magnate (or of the king) with its inner circle of officers and servants, and its outer circle of client gentry of the 'affinity,' calling themselves 'followers' or 'friends.' The code of honour required faithfulness to friends as well as to one's lord. The notion of friendship commonly indicated a relationship between equals, and often arose out of 'chamber companionship,' that is, the sharing of lodgings by young men serving at court or in a

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great household." The pattern of "chamber companionship" was gradually usurped by a model of liberal education, which itself aimed to inform prevailing ideas of friendship with models from the classics. More importantly, however, the rise of the valorization of skill in letters marked a new social possibility for friendship. As James writes, " [Friendship might also imply a relationship to a benefactor and patron, and as such entered into the implications of lordship." If skill in letters was becoming a valuable way of gaining patronage, then it could also be a potential route for inscribing oneself as a friend.6 Evidently this route could not be opened without injury to the prevailing systems of friendship. This was the battle we saw waged and won by Angelo Poliziano, the humanist scholar who rose socially through his "friendship" with his patron Lorenzo, in his collision with Clarice Orsini de' Medici, the noble-born woman who hoped for a similarly intimate relationship with Lorenzo after being given to him as a wife. But Poliziano, the confirmed humanist bachelor with no interest in marrying into Lorenzo's family, functions as an icon rather than a social norm. For it was the task of the upwardly mobile humanist not only to claim the moral highground of the Ciceronian amicus, in contrast with the feudal friend, but then to consolidate his progression in the time-honored fashion: by marrying an eligible woman from an established family. Alan Bray has written that the idealization of the Ciceronian friendship "consisted rather in what it missed out: its tactful omission of those bonds of mutual interest of which the everyday signs were such conventions. The engaging artifice is part of a tough reality."7 Friendship was socially founded on a concept of "assurance": one could rely, in times of need, on one's "assured friends," a notion with its roots in systems of medieval allegiance.8 But what constituted an "assured friend" in the midsixteenth century was increasingly open to question.

BEDTIME READING: ROGER ASCHAM, JOHN WHITNEY, AND A B O O K OF FRIENDSHIP

Roger Ascham's work contains an image that has proved irresistibly seductive to scholars dealing with male homosexuality in Renaissance En6

James, Society, Politics and Culture, 330. The phrase derives from G. W. Bernard's lucid critique of James in his "Introduction: The Tudor Nobility in Perspective," in The Tudor Nobility, ed. Bernard, 1-48 especially 2 - 6 . 7 Bray, "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship," 7. 8 Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn, Middle English Dictionary, "assured (a) Of a person: bound by oath of allegiance." This primary medieval definition is subsumed in the OED under " 3 . Engaged, covenanted, pledged."

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gland. 9 The image is of Roger Ascham and a young man named John Whitney, studying Latin together through reading Cicero's treatise on friendship, De amicitia, while sharing a bed at Sir Anthony Denny's household at Cheshunt in 1548. The friendship is immortalized by Ascham in the second book of The Scholemaster as a "profe" of the efficacy of his preferred tutorial technique of double translation: I had once a profe hereof, tried by good experience, by a deare frende of myne, whan I cam first from Cambrige, to serue the Queenes Maiestie, than Ladle Elizabeth, lying at worthie Sir Ant. Denys in Cheston. lohn Whitneye, a yong ientleman, was my bedfeloe, who willyng by good nature and prouoked by mine aduise, began to learne the Latin tong, after the order declared in this booke. We began after Christmas: I read vnto him Tullie de Amicitia, which he did euerie day twice translate, out of Latin into English, and out of English into Latin agayne. About S. Laurence tyde after [i.e., 10 August], to proue how he proffited, I did chose out Torquatus taulke de Amicitia, in the later end of the first booke de finib. bicause that place was, the same in matter, like in wordes and phrases, nigh to the forme and facion of sentences, as he had learned before in de Amicitia. I did translate it my selfe into plaine English, and gaue it him to turne into Latin: Which he did, so choislie, so orderlie, so without any great misse in the hardest pointes of Grammer, that some, in seuen yeare in Grammer scholes, yea, & some in the Uniuersities to, can not do halfe so well. This worthie yong Ientleman, to my greatest grief, to the great lamentation of that whole house, and specialise to that most noble Ladie, now Queene Elizabeth her selfe, departed within few dayes, out of this world.10 The shared bedchamber, the shared book, and of course the choice of text place the scene firmly within the realms of Ciceronian amicitia: as such, it is only one of countless sixteenth-century accounts of male friendship, stretching from Erasmus, Colet, and Elyot to LyIy, Shakespeare, and Bacon, a topos which has been documented at length in Laurens J. Mills's classic survey One Soul in Bodies Twain. Cicero's discourse De amicitia was the single most influential text on friendship and one of the few classical texts to be printed in translation by William Caxton (in 1481 in the version by the humanist John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester); there were to be two further printed translations before the end of the sixteenth century. Ascham's neat welding of friendship and pedagogy draws on the classic Socratic-Epicurean formulation that friendship was not only "the basic condition for instruction" but also the object of instruction itself; his 9 Goldberg, "Colin to Hobbinol: Spenser's Familiar Letters," in Displacing Homophobia, ed. Ronald R. Butters, John M. Clum, and Michael Moon, 107-26 at 122; Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England, 84; Goldberg, Sodometries, 79; Thomas Healy, Christopher Marlowe, 76. 10 Ascham, Scholemaster, sig. K.iiijr-V.

THE PROOFE OF FRENDS" 127 pedagogy is here carefully distanced by the friendship from any notion of remuneration. The image of the two men reading is perfectly contained: spatially by the bedchamber, temporally by Whitney's death and in terms of any possible consequence, by the text—read and reread, translated and retranslated, reinforcing a mutual relationship based on love, pleasure, and the striving for similitude. Bruce Smith's description encapsulates the endless circuit of friendship, sex and reading: De amicitia is the "pre-, sub-, and actual" text defining and limiting the relationship. Jonathan Goldberg similarly notes that De amicitia is "A proper choice. The scene fulfills the dictates of Erasmian pedagogy to the letter, as the teacher incites the pupil to learn—by loving imitation within the specular relationship of similarity and simulation." The scene functions not only as a paradigm of Erasmian pedagogy, however: it is also available to Goldberg as "that bedroom scene." 11 That an icon of sixteenth-century male friendship should be so readily available as an icon of late twentieth-century male homosexuality naturally arouses suspicion of anachronism, but I would argue that Smith and Goldberg are here perceiving the relationship in a manner that is close to what Ascham intended. Alan Bray has argued convincingly that the shared bed was a public signal of friendship rather than a private disclosure of sexual intimacy. But the scene is remarkable in its selfcontainment, and suspiciously so considering what was going on the other side of the bedchamber walls. 12 This chapter aims to show that the "profe" of friendship supplied by John Whitney is in fact a strategy by Ascham to protect their reading together at Cheshunt from other possible "profes" which might have compromised him: namely, Ascham's intimate involvement as an informal scholarly reader in the circle of the disgraced Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. This in turn suggests that Ascham recognized the possibility of an erotic interpretation of his relationship with Whitney and, further, understood that erotic interpretation as a way of deflecting interest in a political interpretation, a separation of homoeroticism and politics, which later readers have been eager to embrace. The sad story of the ambitions of Thomas Seymour has been told often and in lurid detail. 13 At the death of Henry VIII, Seymour's brother Ed11 Lauren J. Mills, One Soul in Bodies Twain; Smith, Homosexual Desire, 84; Goldberg, "Spenser's Familiar Letters," 122, and Sodometries, 79. 12 Bray, "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship," 5; T. W. Baldwin, never a great admirer of Ascham, senses something awry but conjectures, ironically, that Whitney's death was the result of overstrenuous education and flogging. Baldwin, Shakespere's Small Latine, 1:163. 13 The most recent and fullest account is G. W. Bernard, "The downfall of Thomas Seymour," in his ed., The Tudor Nobility, 212-40. Bernard draws on several earlier tellings: Gilbert Burnet, History of the Reformation, 2:97-101; John Strype, Historical Me-

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ward, duke of Somerset, became Lord Protector—of the realm, and of the body of the young King Edward, the brothers' nephew. As Somerset took control, he attempted to gain the support of his fellow councilors through gifts of titles and land. Unsatisfied, Seymour made a bid for his share of the spoils, including the governship of the king's person. Somerset refused, but after arbitration Seymour was partially placated by a place on the Privy Council and a prestigious reappointment as Lord Admiral, a post he had held in 1544. But his real coup was to marry the queen dowager, Catherine Parr, possibly only a month after Henry's death, later causing some alarm when it was realized that if Catherine had conceived immediately after marrying Seymour, the paternity of the child could have been in doubt. The couple set up house—or rather, held court—in Catherine's Chelsea Palace, their household containing the young Princess Elizabeth. During this period, Elizabeth was subjected to some early morning visits from the Lord Admiral, the physical intimacy of which became the talk of London; Catherine allegedly joined in the fun—on one notorious occasion holding Elizabeth down while her husband cut her dress to shreds. However, by Whitsuntide Elizabeth was obliged to remove to Sir Anthony Denny's house in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. Possibly this was due to the queen dowager's pregnancy; possibly also it was due to her belated suspicions of her husband's intentions toward the young princess. In September 1548, the queen dowager gave birth to a daughter; within a week she was dead: of puerpural fever, although according to Gilbert Burnet "not without suspition of Poison." 14 Outside the household, Seymour continued to attack Somerset's treatment of the young king, accusing him of keeping him like a ward, in a beggarly state. Assisted by a groom of the Privy Chamber named John Fowler, he entered into a direct correspondence with the king, sending him gifts and money. At the same time, with the help of Sir William Sharington, he embezzled money from Bristol Mint and attempted to build a party of disillusioned countrymen. After a ridiculous scheme to abduct the king from his bedroom failed, the Lord Admiral stepped up attempts to marry Elizabeth, and to win control of the young king through the corruption of men in his privy chamber, and subsequently by bribing the king with pocket money. In parliament he opposed every proposal from the Lord Protector—he had even opposed the confirmation of the letters patent endorsing Somerset's appointment as Lord Protector—while trymorials, Chiefly Ecclesiastical. . . Under the Reign and Influence of King Edward Vl, vol. 2 of Ecclesiastical Memorials, 123-28; John Maclean, The Life of Sir Thomas Seymour, Knight, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Lord High Admiral of England and Master of the Ordnance; J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth I, 24-34; W. K. Jordan, Edward VI, 369-82; B. N. DeLuna, The Queen Declined, 4 7 - 5 4 ; S. T. Bindoff, ed., The History of Parliament, 3:295-97; Lacey Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England, 19-30. 14 Burnet, History of the Reformation, 2:97.

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ing to win the support of several key noblemen including the marquesses of Dorset and Northampton, the earls of Rutland and Southampton, and Lords Russell and Clinton. In the country he attempted to win over local support, to gather finance and military resources for a possible coup d'etat, using Sudeley Castle as a military depot. In his capacity as Lord Admiral, he refused to command the fleet in 1547 and 1548; instead of stamping out the privateering that had taken hold on the southern and western coasts during the French wars (one of his key duties as Lord Admiral), he came instead to illegal deals with the pirates, running a primitive protection racket whereby he took a proportion of their loot in return for effectively ensuring their immunity. He made plans to marry Edward to Lady Jane Grey, who for some reason was resident in his household. Lord Russell, among others, tried to warn the Lord Admiral to change his behavior, but to no effect. Finally, Sir William Sharington was arrested on various charges, including clipping coins, debasing currency, and the bulk buying and minting up of church plate for personal gain. On 6 January 1548/49, papers were found at Lacock Abbey, Sharington's home, detailing his illegal understanding with Seymour about the use of Bristol Mint. Lord Protector Somerset summoned his brother to a private meeting to discuss the matter, but Seymour declined to attend. Pushed too far, Somerset decided to act against his brother: on 17 January Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Baker were sent to arrest the Lord Admiral, and he was conveyed to the Tower, followed by several of his servants, allies, and some of Elizabeth's retinue. Over 200,000 crowns were found during the subsequent search of his house. Seymour was examined on 25 January and two days later wrote a submission to Somerset. An astonishing thirty-three articles of accusation were drawn up against the Lord Admiral, but a Privy Council delegation to the Tower from both Houses succeeded only in obtaining elusive responses to the first three. He was speedily accused of high treason, a bill of attainder drawn up (on 25 February) and passed within a week by both Lords and Commons, and Seymour was executed in late March, with several of his adherents staying in the Tower until well into the following year. Elizabeth, who had been examined at Hatfield House by an agent of the Privy Council, Sir Robert Tyrwhit, remained in semiofficial disgrace there for over two years. On a parallel timescale, the career of Roger Ascham might be summarized thus: 15 in January 1547/48, Princess Elizabeth's tutor, William Grindal, died of the plague. Grindal's own former tutor, Roger Ascham, a distinguished but perpetually impoverished scholar of St. John's College, 15 For Ascham's career path see Alvin Vos, "Introduction" to his ed., Letters of Roger Ascham; Lawrence Ryan, Roger Ascham; DNB s.v Roger Ascham 2:153-54; DNB s.v. Thomas Seymour 51:332. For details of the interrogations of the Astleys see Acts of the Privy Council, ed. John Roche Dasent, n.s. vol 2 (1548-50), 240.

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Cambridge, dispatched a series of letters to those with influence in an attempt to win the post for himself. He succeeded, with Elizabeth's support, and within a few weeks joined Elizabeth's retinue at Chelsea Palace, the home of her guardians, Queen Dowager Catherine (Parr), and her new husband, the Lord Admiral, Thomas Baron Seymour of Sudeley. Given these connections, it seems incredible that Ascham could have been personally unaffected by the scandal: Elizabeth, his student and patron, was questioned at length; two of his close friends, John and Catherine Astley, were imprisoned in London and interrogated; other ex-Cambridge colleagues, such as John Cheke, tutor to the king, were subjected to questioning. Ascham was also a close acquaintance of Seymour's friend Katharine Brandon, who took in the Seymour baby after the queen dowager's death; he had been a fellow undergraduate with Anthony Denny (to whose household Elizabeth was sent) at St. John's; there even exists a letter from Ascham to Seymour himself, on university business. 16 Ascham's whereabouts during January and February 1548/49, the months of the interrogations, are uncertain: it is known that he returned to Cambridge for Christmas, but he may well have been back at Hatfield by the time of Seymour's arrest. Significantly, no correspondence either to or from Ascham has ever been published from the period between July 1548 and January 1549/50, by which time Ascham had either left or been dismissed from Elizabeth's service. In a letter to John Cheke dated January 28 1549/50, Ascham refers to "my recent disastrous shipwreck," of being "overwhelmed . . . by court violence and injustice, more through bad fortune than through any fault of mine." 17 He claims that "Certain men are trying very hard during these difficult and very trying times to block the course of [Cheke's] kindness towards me" and more specifically that "I have been attacked without any fault of my own by the injustices not of my most illustrious Lady [Elizabeth], but of her oeconomus [presumably her cofferer, Thomas Parry]." 18 Editors and biographers dissent as to the meaning of these lines: Alvin Vos suggests that "[p]erhaps he 16

BL ms Additional 33, 271, fol. 36. "tanto sane acerbior mihi mm sollicitudo iniecta est, quod in hoc recenti naufragio, quod ego nuper Aulica vi & iniuria iactatus, fortuna magis quam culpa calamitosum feci, tantopere certi homines laborarent, vt in meo maxime alieno difficiliqwe tempore, tua; etiam de me beneuolentix cursum impedirent." Ascham to Sir John Cheke, 28 January 1549/50. Grant, sigs. M.iij v -M.iiij r .; Vos, letter 30, 121. Cheke uses the same image of shipwreck in a letter to Peter Osborn written in May 1549 on his return from court to Cambridge, saying "That he now felt the Calm of Quietnes, having been tossed afore with Storms, and having felt Ambitions bitter Gall, poisoned with hope of Hap." John Strype, Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, 50. 18 "Sin aliter, & me acerbe nimis, absq«e vlla culpa mea, iniunjs non illustnssima; Domino: mea:, sed oeconomi illius oppugnatum esse comperies." Ascham to Sir John Cheke, 28 January 1549/50. Grant, sig. M.nij v ; Vos, letter 30, 122. 17

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was the victim of the scandal involving Thomas Seymour's indiscretions with Princess Elizabeth" but rejects as "hardly plausible" claims that he was a victim of the Lord Admiral's jealousy for Elizabeth or that his fall was connected to the fall of the Lord Protector in October 1549, while Lawrence Ryan asserts that it was more probably "a personal rather than a state matter." 19 Whether Ascham was directly involved in or affected by the Seymour drama may remain unknown, but his undeniable proximity to its key players renders quite intriguing some minor anomalies in The Scholemaster's account of his friendship and reading with Whitney. For example, while Ascham and Whitney may well have been bedfellows and may indeed have spent weeks together reading De amicitia, it could not have been for the language practice: John Whitney was a noted scholar (for a courtier—noted, in fact, by Roger Ascham himself, in a letter written three years before their sojourn at Sir Anthony Denny's house, in which he praises Whitney in Latin for "following the leisure of letters in the midst of the great business of court." 20 Moreover, Ascham states that he and Whitney started reading together after Christmas in the year of Whitney's death (1548) at Cheshunt: however, Elizabeth's retinue was lodging at the queen dowager's Chelsea Palace until Whitsun—three or four months after Whitney and Ascham started to read together. Chelsea was the scene of the notorious early morning visits of the Lord Admiral to Elizabeth's chamber; either Ascham made a mistake with his dates— which seems improbable given his acute attention to chronology in the passage—or perhaps he thought it advisable to "contain" his friendship with Whitney as far as possible to the most innocuous interpretation. But we need no "evidence" of collusion with Seymour's intrigue in order to understand why Ascham might need to limit interpretations of his reading relationship with John Whitney. Rather, it is by rehistoricizing and interrogating the act of reading together itself that we will find the source of his apprehension. The majority of the official papers relating to the Seymour affair are now lodged in the Cecil Papers at Hatfield House, and were printed in extenso in 1740 by Samuel Haynes. 21 They comprise a remarkably complete collection, containing not merely the records of the interrogations of the principal players, but also abstracts of those interrogations, plans for 19

Vos, 110-11 and 9; Ryan, Roger Ascham, 112-13. "qui in tanto AuI* negotio literarum otium sequeris." Ascham to John Whitney, undated. Grant, sig. K.vir; the letter is not printed by Vos, but see Vos, 117 n.3. The dating is by the Rev. Dr. Giles in his ed., The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, letter xxxvii, 1:83. 21 A Collection of State Papers, relating to affairs in the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, From the Year 1542 to 1570, ed. Samuel Haynes [hereafter Haynes]. 20

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further questioning, and earlier letters (both originals and copies), which might be brought to bear on the accusations. I shall demonstrate with what subtlety and care various, often conflicting, notions of friendship are mobilized in these papers. This apparently inordinate attention to friendship will already be clear to readers of Haynes's transcripts: the original papers themselves, however, reveal an even greater and more anxious concern with how friendship should be defined and recorded. In the Tower, a "very sad" Seymour told his keeper, Christopher Ayer, that "I had thought before I cam to this Place that my Lords grace [the Lord Protector] wc all the rest of the Counsell had bene my frends, And that I had had as many frends as eny maw wcin the realme, but now I thynk they haue forgoten me." 2 2 This confession confirms the impression of the supporting evidence: that Seymour had aimed to build up "as many frends as eny marc wcin the realme," an hyperbole which paradoxically masks the fact that he really did reckon to have as much influence as any other man in England. The expectations of friendship are clear: as Catherine Parr wrote to her new husband in 1548, "I supposed my Lorde Protectour wold have used no delay with his Frend and naturall Brother in a Mater wyche ys upryght and just, as I Take yt." 23 In his examination of 11 February, Sir William Sharington related more vividly how Seymour mapped out the extent of his friends: . . .the Lord AdtnircAl wold divers tymes loke vpow a charte of England which he hath &C declare to this Examinate how stronge he was, & how far his lands &C domynions did stretche, & how it lay all to gither betwene his howse Sc the holt, & what shires & places wer for hym & that this way he was emonge his frends so notyng the places. & whan he cam to bristow [Bristol] he wold say this is my Lord protectors, & of other that is my Lord of warwicks, To the which two this Examinate knoweth he had no great affection. He saith further that what tyme he cam from the Lord marques dorset As this Examinate &C the Lord Admirall rode to gither The said Lord Admirall did shew the contreys about vnto this examinate wold say all that be in thies partes be my frends, And so he did vaunt & recon that he had as great nowxber of gentlemen that loved hym as eny noble Man in England, And further said that he thought that he had more gentlemen that loued hym thew the Lord protector 22 Examination of Christopher Ayer [Eyre], 16 February 1548/49; Hatfield House, Cecil Papers [hereafter Hatfield Microfilms] ms 150/99r; Haynes, 1:106. The relevant Cecil papers are calendared in Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Ho. The Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., &c. preserved at Hatfield House [Historical Manuscripts Commission], Vol. 1 and Part 13. Other papers are in the PRO: SP 10/6/176-79,181-98,202-205; calendared in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Edward VI1547-1553, rev. ed., ed. C. S. Knighton. 23 The queen dowager to the Lord Admiral, [1548]; Hatfield Microfilms 133/3; Haynes, 1:61.

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had, And vpon that he said he was happye that hath freends in this world what so ever shuld chaunce.24 Sharington went on, in another confession of 15 February, to "remembre that the Lord Admirall did say that he could make or bryng of those which be within his Rules & of his own tenants, & servaunts, if he shuld be comanded to serve ten thowsand men." 25 Although Seymour's own statements were deliberately brief, terse, and unforthcoming, 26 the confessions of his allies provide a clear idea of how the Lord Admiral made and kept his friends. The earl of Rutland said, Thes ar the Wordes &C Talke that my lord admyrale had to me, rydyng together frome my mothers towardes my lord marques dorsetes howse, in the later end of thys late somer. fyrst he towlde me that he was my frend &C wolde be glade to do me that plesure he coulde I I thanked hym for his frendshype {and sayd, that I have ever} borne him my good wyll &C Wolde so contynve I then I asked hym whether I myghte set in the parlement howse, & w'out a wryte for that I was a ward thys last yere he ansured he coulde not tell &c that I were best to aske counsell howe be yt he seyd, he was glade that I shoulde be of the howse for that he trusted to haue my voyse wch hym. I seyd I was content in that my consyens wold serue me. [2] then he enquyred of me the estate of my lyuyng & allso howe I was frended in my contry I declared to hym syche frendes as I had & he lykewyse declared to me a great numbre of hys frendes Sc allso howe he was banded in the contrys I saying further he thout [thought] me to be so frended in my contry as I was able enhowe [enough] to matche w( my lord of shrosbery I I seyd I cowlde not tell howe beyt I thowte my lord wolde do me no wronge. [3] then he counseled me to make myche of the Jentyllmen in my contry but more of syche honest & wellthy yemen as wher [were] rynglederes in good townes for he seyd, as for the Jentyllmen ther is no great trust to be to them but for the other makyng myche of them & sumtymes dynyng lyke a good felowe in on of ther howses I showlde by that Jentyll enterteynment alure all ther good wylles to go wth me whether I wolde leade them.27 Seymour's notion of friendship is as a public event, to be enacted with lavish displays of traditional liberal hospitality the world to see. 28 For 24

Hatfield Microfilms 150/93"; Haynes, 1:105 Hatfield Microfilms 150/98'; Haynes, 1:105-6. 26 For the Lord Admiral's examinations see Hatfield Microfilms 150/64, Haynes, 1:87 (25 January 1548/49); and Hatfield Microfilms 150/101, Haynes, 1:107-8 (18 February 1548/49). 27 Confession of the earl of Rutland, January 1548/49; Hatfield Microfilms 150/52 r ; Haynes, 1:81—82.1 have followed Haynes's transcription of dubious passages {indicated in brackets}. 28 For an account of an incident in 1541 when Seymour attempted to indict Cranmer on 25

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some later sympathetic writers, Seymour came to symbolize a lost era of good friendship and hospitality: the link is made by the anonymous author of The Legend of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, in the persona of Throckmorton (an erstwhile ally), who claims Seymour "was hardie, wise, and liberal. . . at all essayes, my perfect friende, I And patron too," and notes of the queen dowager's residence: "Her house was term'd a second Court of ryght, I Because there flocked still nobilitie. I He spared no coste his ladie to delight, I Or to maintaine her Princelie Royaltie." 29 Henry Grey, the marquess of Dorset, father of Lady Jane Grey and Seymour's closest parliamentary ally, testified to the Lord Admiral's grasp of the importance of these public shows: Whenne I was w[ Thadmyrall at Sudeley whiche was in thend of Somer, and also whenne he was at my house which was after michelmass, Thadmyrall diuising w1 me to make me stronge in my cuntrey, aduised me to kepe a good house, and asked me what freends I had in my cuntrey, to whome I made answer that I had diuers seruants that were gentlemen well hable to live of themselfs, that ys well, said Thadmyrall yet trust not to much to the gentlemen for they haue sumwhat to loose, but I wold rather aduise you to make muche of the head yeomen and frankeleyns of the cuntreye, specially those that be the Ringeleaders, for they be the men that be best hable to perswade the multitude and may best bring the number / and therefore I wold wishe you to make muche of them, and to goe to their houses, nowe to som and nowe to an other, caryeng wf you a flagon or two of wyne, and a pasty of venison, and to vse a familiaritie with them, for soe shall you cause them to love you, and be assured to haue them at your commaundemente, and this manner (I may tell you), I intende to vse meself said he.30 In his deposition, the Lord Marquis Northampton asserted that, fyrst the lord admirall abowte a Yere paste supposing for diuers causes that I was not contentid and pleasid (as he knew well enogh the Cawse whie he shuld thynk so) discoursid w1 me as well of hys own estate as also of mine, & aduisid me to go &c sett up howse in the north contre wher as my lands laye thynking it to be moche for my commoditie and that being welbelouid ther of mi frendes and tenaunts I shuld be the more strong and more able to serue the kynges a charge of failure of hospitality, see Felicity Heal, "The Archbishops of Canterbury and the Practice of Hospitality," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982): 544-63 at 545. For sixteenth-century trends in the perception of hospitality, see Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England. 29 The Legend of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, ed. John Gough Nichols and Paul Butler,

17-19. 50 PRO SP 10/6 no. 7, fos. 18 r -21 v ; England under the reigns of Edward VI, and Mary, with the contemporary history of Europe, illustrated in a series of original letters never before published, ed. Patrick Fraser Tytler, 1:140.

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maiestie and by that meanyes I shuld se my lord protector and the cownseill woold be as glad of me as I of them . . . usyng me also uery frendly at the same tyme as well in dedys as also in words saying I shuld lacke nother money nor any other thyng that he had &C at y1 tyme he gaue me certayn sp[e]cial[tes?] of a good value, & otherwise in store & plate shewid me mych frendship 6c kyndnes.31 In the forging of friendships with eligible young women, however, even openness was no defense against suspicious minds. Even before his downfall, Seymour shows an awareness of the possible negative interpretations of the social expressions of friendship between himself and Elizabeth: he tells Mary Cheke that he "wold colm to se my Lady Elizabeth, but he fearid it wold be sayd, that he came a woeng." Even here, however, Seymour shows perception only of the possible constructions that could be placed on the public expression of his "friendship." A more perceptive observer, Elizabeth's governess Catherine Astley, recognizes the danger of more private signs of friendship, warning Thomas Parry, Elizabeth's cofferer, "after he had written down Lettres to hir of the great Friendship that my Lord Admyrall semyd to bere the said Lady Elizabeth," that "it was dangerous . . . to write it home so earnestly, lest it shuld kyndle Affection in hir." 32 "Lest it shuld kyndel . . .": Astley sees the danger of tokens of friendship, not in the token itself, nor even in the public implications of the giving and receiving of tokens, but in a possible "kindling," a generative consequence of "friendship." It was this aspect that concerned the Privy Council's examiners, led by Sir William Petre and Sir Thomas Smith. Lacking the obvious, local function that a defined service relationship possessed, even the most public, ostentatious friendship was vulnerable to suspicion on the grounds of what it might generate in its intimacy: the dividing line between friendship and conspiracy was the lack or presence of an accusation. The examiners show constant interest not only in what was said by the Lord Admiral, but to whom, in whose hearing, and, above all, where: most of the conversations that interested the interrogators took place out of public earshot in the garden, in the gallery, or in the carriage on the way to and from Parliament. Seymour's alliances and schemes were legion, but I shall focus on one particular friendship: with Henry Grey, the marquess of Dorset. Dorset was a staunch ally of the Lord Admiral in Parliament, often being the only other person to oppose measures sponsored by the Lord Protector. He allowed his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, to go to live with the Lord Admiral and the queen dowager; and then, when she came home after the queen's death, required her to return to the admiral. Jane's reappearance caused 3i Hatfield Microfilms 150/122'; Haynes, 1:79-80. 32 Hatfield Microfilms 150/85-88; Haynes, 1:100.

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much consternation at court, because there was no good reason for her to be in his bachelor household. Some thought that the Lord Admiral was planning to marry her to the young king; others thought she functioned as an excuse to allow him to maintain the retinue of waiting women that would be required to serve one of the princesses, should Seymour succeed himself in marrying either Mary or Elizabeth, or even, as was mooted at one point, Anne of Cleves, the sole surviving Henrician bride. Evidence that Jane Grey's presence in the Seymour household was controversial can be found in the flurry of correspondence between the Lord Admiral and her parents, the Dorsets, in September 1548. On the seventeenth of the month, Seymour wrote to the earl of Dorset: where by my Last leiires vnto the same, wrytten in a tyme when partleye with the Quenes hieghnes death I was so amased that I had smale regard eyther to my self or to my doings I And partelye then thinking that my greate losse must presently haue constrayned me to haue broken vpp and dissolued my hole house I offred vnto yor Lordeship to sende my Ladye Jane vnto yow whensoeuer yow wolde sende for her I as to him whome I thought wolde be most tendre on hir I fforasmuche as sithens being bothe better aduysed of my self And hauing more depely disgested wherunto my power wolde extend I I fynde indede that with gods helpe I shall right well be hable to contynewe my house together without dyminisheng any greate parte therof I And therfore putting my hole affyance and Trust in god haue begone of newe to establissh my housholde where shall remayne not oonelye most the gentlewomen of the Quenes hieghnes priuy chamber, but allso the mayds which wayted at lardge and other women being about her grace in her lief tyme C xx [i.e. 120] gentlemen and yeomen contynualle abydying in house together . . . And therfore doubting least yor Lordship might think anye vnkyndness that 1 shoulde by my saide leiires take occasion to rydd me of yor doughter so soon after the Quenes deathe / for the profe bothe of my hartye affedon towards youe / and good will towards hir I mynd now to keape her vntill I shall next speak with yor Lordshipp I whiche should haue been within these three or foure dayes if it had not been that I must repayr vnto the courte . . . My ladye my mother shall and wooll I doubte not be as deare vnto hir as though she weare hir owne doughter. And for my owne parte 1 shall contynewe her haulf father and more And all that are in my house shall be as diligent about hir as yor self wolde wyshe accordinglye/.33 Two days later, the earl wrote back, rejecting Seymour's proposal in polite but firm terms: Wher it hath pleasid yow by yor most gentle Lettres to offre me thabode of my doughter at yor Lordeshypes house: I do aswell acknoledge yor most frendlye -" Hatfield Microfilms 150/119i"\ 120 r ; Haynes, 1:77-78.

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affection towards me and hyr herin as also rendre vnto yow most deseruid thanks for the same I Nevertheles considering the state of my doughter and hyr tendre yeres wherin she shall hardlie rule hyr sylfe as yet without a guide, lest she shuld for lacke of a bridle tak to moche the head and conceave suche opinion of hyr sylfe that all such good behauio«r as she heretofore hath learnid by the Quenes and yo r most holsom instructions shuld either altogither be quenched in hyr or at the leste moche diminishid: I shall in most hartie wise require yo r Lordeshype to coramitt hyr to the governance of hyr mother, by whom for the feare and duetie she owithe hyr, she shall most easelye be rulid and framid towards vertue which I wishe aboue all thinges to be most plentyfull in hyr / And althoughe yo r Lordshypes good mynd concerning hyr honest and godlie education ys so great that myn can be no more: yet waying that yow be destitute of suche one as shuld correcte hyr as a mystres, and monishe hyr as a mother: I perswade my sylfe that yow wyll think the eye and oversight of my wife shalbe in thys respect most necessarie I My meaning herin ys not to withdrawe anie parte of my promise to yow for hyr bestowing I for I assure yo r Lordeshype I intend god wyhng to use yo r discrete aduise and consent in that behalf &c no lesse then myn own / Onlye I seeke in thes hyr yonge yeres, wherin she nowe standeth either: to make or marre . . . thaddressing of hyr mynd to humylytye, Sobrenes, and obedience I wherfore looking vpon that fatherlie affection wfoch yow beare hyr: my truste is that yor good Lordship waying the premisses wylbe content to charge hyr mother with hyr, whose waking eye in respecting hyr demeanor shalbe I hope no lesse, then yow as a frend and I as a father wuld wishe. 34 At this point, the epistolary approach having evidently failed, Seymour took more direct measures, intervening personally with Dorset and sending his henchman Sir William Sharington to put pressure on Lady Frances. The Lorde Marques Dorset saieth / that he was fully determined that his doughter the Lady Jane shuld no more com to remaine w th the lord Admirall, how be it my lord Admirall himselfe came vnto his house and was so earnest w t h him in persuasions that he colde not resist him I Emongs the w ch persua34

Hatfield Microfilms 150/118 r - v ; Haynes, 1:78. His letter was supplemented by one written the same day by his wife, Lady Frances Dorset: "And wheras of a frindlye and brotherhe good wyll you wishe to have Jane my doughter continuyng still in your house I glue you most hartie thankes for your gentle offer, trustyng neuertheles that for the good opinion you haue in your sister, you wyll be content to charge hir wyth hir who promyseth you not onlye to be redye at all tymes to accompt for the ordering of your deere Neese but also to vse your counsaile and aduise in the bestowing of hir Whensoeuer it shall happen. Wherfor, my good brother my request shalbe that I maye haue the ouersight of hir w' your good wyll and therby I shall haue good occasion to thinke that you do trust me in such wise as is conuenient that a syster to be trusted of so louing a brother. . . . " Hatfield Microfilms 150/121- Haynes, 1:79.

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sions one was that he wold mary hir to the Kings Ma/estie sayeng ferthe that if he might get the Kinge at libertie he durst warraunt the said lord Marques that the King shuld mary his sayd Daughter I And ferther, the said llord Marques sayeth that Sr willm Sherington was as earnest and travailed as sore wth my lady his wife that she shulde be content to let the sayd Lady Jane come to my lorde Admirall and as I thinke vsed the persuasions that the lord Admirall did I and so persuaded her at the last to agre so, and then he could not but consent I And that he the said lorde Marques was so seduced and aveugled by the said lord Admirall, that he promised him that except the Kings Majesties person only / he wold spend his lief and bloode in his the said Lorde Admiralls parte against all Men / Wherfore as it wer for an ernest peny of the favor that he wold shewe vnto him when the said lord Marques had sent his doughter to the said lord Admiral he sent vnto the said lord Marques immediately v cl ' [£500] pijrcell of ijml1 [£2000] which he promised to lend vnto him and wold have axed no bond of him at all for it / but only to have had the lord Marques doughter for a gage.35 Dorset is "seduced and aveugled" (hoodwinked, or literally, blinded) by Seymour, and finally unable to resist ("and then he could not but consent"), although his assent is displaced onto his wife's capitulation to Sharington's persuasions. His alliance with Seymour is sealed with a promise of lifetime service ("spend his lief and bloode") reminiscent of medieval military allegiance ("in . . . the . . . Lorde Admiralls parte"), and the pact is sealed with a loan of money, with the surety, the "bond" or "gage" (originally "pledge," erased in favor of "gage") being Dorset's daughter. Northampton testified that Seymour had told him, "in hys owne gallerye that ther wolde be moch ado for my lady iane the lord marques dorsetts dowghter and that my lord protector and my lady of Somersett wolde do what they colde to obtayne hyr of my sayd lord marques for my lord of hertforde [Somerset's son] butt he sayd they shuld not preuayle therin for my sayd lord marques had gyuen hyr hollye to hym vpon certeine couenants that wher betwene them two." 3 6 Another version of Dorset's examinations, now in the Public Record Office, gives a new dimension to the same story: 1 ffirst ymmediatelie after the king our late maisters death oon Harrington seruant to the said Admyrall came to my house at Westm/wsier, and amonges other thinges shewed me that the said Admyrall was like to come to a greate auciorite, and that being the kinges majesties vncle and placed as he was he might doo me much pleasure, aduising me therefor to resorte vnto him, and to entre a more frendeship and familiaritie with him. 35

Examinations of Marquis of Dorset, no. 4, February 1548/49; Hatfield Microfilms 150/115'; Haynes, 1:76. ·'« Hatfield Microfilms 150/122'; Haynes, 1:80.

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2 At the same tyme and place the said Harrington aduised me to be contented that my Doughter Jane might be wc the sayde Admyrall, wherunto if I wold agree he said he durste assure me that Thadmyrall wold finde the meanes she should be placed in mariage much to my comforte, w£ whome said I woll he matche her, mary quoth Harrington I doubt not but you shall se him mary her to the king, and feare you not but that he woll bring yt to passe, and thenne shall you be hable to helpe all the freinds you haue. 3 Vpon these persuasions of Harrington I repaired w'in a sevenight after to the said Admyralls house at Seymowr place, and there walking w* him in his garden he vsed vnto me at more length the like perswasions as had ben made by Harrington fore the hauing of my Doughter, wherin he shewed himself soe desierous and ernest, and made me suche faire promises, that I sent for my Doughter, who remayned in his house from that tyme contynuelly vnto the deathe of the Quene. 4 After the Quenes death I sent for my doughter to come home to my house, where she remayned wf me for a litle space, but shortely after Thadmyrall came to my house himself, and was soo ernestly in hand w· me and my wief, that in thend because he wold haue no naye, we were contented she shoulde againe returne to his house . . . And at this tyme sir William Sherington trayvailed as ernestly wl my wief for her good will to the returne of my doughter, as Thadmyrall did wf me, soo as in thende after long debating and muche sticking of our sides, we did agree that my doughter should returne, who soo did and remayned at his house vntil his comminge to the Tower.37 Here, the same set of actions are inextricably linked to notions of friendship. Dorset surrenders neither to his wife, nor to the blindingly seductive Seymour, but to the earnest persuasions of a man with whom he has already entered into friendship, and then only "after long debating." The point here is that the contract between them can only be brought about through persuasive discourse already constituted on, and assuming, friendship. Friendship here becomes not an end in itself, not an allegiance of assurance, but the prerequisite for the possibility of persuasive reasoning between men. As Lorna Hutson notes, "The cultural instrumentality of friendship—its power to control the transference of wealth and honour—has not been replaced but displaced into a new affective medium." 38 Mervyn James's concept of an honor-bound friendship becomes challenged by a friendship based on a mutual education in humane letters, permitting persuasion through probable thinking to lead to social redistributions that fail to correspond to the old models. And yet, for all 37 PRO SP 10/6 no. 7, fos. 1 8 r - 2 1 \ quoted in full in Ruth Hugheyjofc» Harington of Stepney, 23-24; reprinted in modern spelling with some minor changes (indicated below) in Tytler, England under the reigns, 1:138-139. ,8 Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 64.

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its rhetoric, Seymour's persuasion still facilitates the handing of the daughter from one man to another. The model is not, however, the simple homosocial triangle of Dorset, Seymour, and Jane. Dorset's account introduces into the scene John Harington, whose role as friendship-broker and occasional intermediary is edited out by Secretary Petre. John Harington is most often encountered as a name among thousands in countless mundane state papers, and achieves most prominence when confused with his son, Sir John Harington, who won fame as Elizabeth's godson, the translator of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1591), and the designer of the first royal water closet in England. However, in early 1548 John Harington the elder would have been a familiar face to the households that contained Ascham and Whitney in his capacity as the Lord Admiral's "man." 39 Details of the early life of John Harington are scant. He held a post in the royal household during the 1530s, and studied music with Thomas Tallis; by 1538 he was a gentleman of the King's Chapel. He was married, probably in 1546-47, to a natural daughter of Henry VIII, variously noted as Esther, Ethelreda, and Audrey, a union that brought him estates in Berkshire and Somersetshire, including Kelston; the marriage produced at least one child, Hester, who was still alive in 1568. At some point he entered the service of Sir Thomas Seymour—possibly in the late 1530s, and definitely by April 1546, by which time he was acting as Seymour's confidential agent, delivering letters and plans to English agents abroad. 40 Harington's name begins to crop up with some frequency in the official records only after the Seymour scandal breaks (indeed the manuscript account of his first examination leaves a blank for his first name, evidently not known to the examiner, Sir Thomas Smith).41 On 18 January, the day following the admiral's removal to the Tower, "the Signetes of the admirall were taken from his secretary and delivered to Mr. Secretary Smyth to kepe; and Harington his man was sent to the Tower by decre of the Counsell." 42 It is not immediately apparent why Harington should be singled out alongside the admiral's secretary, William Wightman. As Seymour's "man," he is not best placed to know everything about Seymour's correspondence or even his movements: he says that he believes that Seymour had not ridden out of London during his last sojourn there, "but if eny Man can tell I Hamon 39

The phrase "Harington his man" comes from APC 2:239. Hughey, John Harington of Stepney, 6-19. The first recorded instance of Harington being in Seymour's service is in a letter from Edward Seymour to Henry, in April 1546: "Finally here arryved yesternight Harrington—my brothers servant with lettres of your Majestys pleasure, and also a platte of such fortifications as your grace woll ferther down here." See LP 21:686 (339). "i Hatfield Microfilms 150/54'. « APC 2:239. 40

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Pigot I & sturton can tell I who kept his chamber." 4 3 But no one ever questions Hamon, Pigot, and Sturton; these are men who, despite their physical proximity to Seymour, are not likely to have been privy to his alleged intrigues. Instead it is Harington who is subjected to examination, four times, on 25 January, and on 2, 3, and 4 February. Seymour's perception of the possible manipulation of friendship's pub­ lic face is hinted at in one of Harington's depositions, when he speaks of a "comwmcaczon betwixt my L. of Warwick & hym [the Lord Admiral] & therin one of them began to say he can not tell whither I that the world said thei were not frends / & it was answerid by thother that the world shuld se the contrary I for thone of them wold resort to thothers hows." 4 4 Harington's own testimony, in response to questions designed to incriminate the Lord Admiral by their use of loaded rhetoric, shows an acute awareness of the alternative constructions that could be placed on the "friendship," and skilfully refuses to fall into the traps set by his examiner, Sir Thomas Smith. Asked "Whither the L. Admyrall hath told hym that he had won certayne noblemen or other to his opynion in that part, or no; or that he had such or such men his assurid freends," Har­ ington answers, "that the Lord admyrall myght peradventure say to hym he or he is my frend but to say that eny man were his assurid or that I haue this or this man assurid I or eny thyng soundyng to makyng a part I he η [ever] hard hym speke such thyngs in his lief."45 Harington thus attempts to distinguish a friendship with no assurance, with no po­ litical allegiance attached. Smith then moves on to Harington's role in Seymour's alliances: "Whether he hath moved eny man to take thadmyralles parte in his procedynges & whom he hath so movid &C where": He answerith that he never moved eny man to take my L. Admyralles parte But he saith he moved my Lord marques Dorset a little befor the late Kings 1 death I to make frendship w my Lord Admyrall then beyng Sir Thomas semowr δί this was in my Lord marques garden at wesfmwster / & so by his meanes hee brought them to aquayrctaunce &C frendship I And syth that tyme f he hath diuerse wayes Si tymes had comunicacion w the said L. Marquis &C 46 allwaies percev[ed] hym to be my L. Admyralles very frend. Here again, "to take my Lord Admyrall's part" is carefully distanced from his exhortation "to make frendship with my Lord Admyrall." Moreover, the manuscript reveals an amendment: "But he saith he moved my L. marques Dorset < t o take his frendship> a little befor the late K. 45

Hatfield Hatfield 45 Hatfield a Party." 4 « Hatfield 44

Microfilms 201/73'-"; Haynes, 1:94. Microfilms 150/55*; Haynes, 1:83-84. Microfilms 150/54 v ; Haynes, 1:82-83. Haynes reads "foundyng to makyng Microfilms 150/54*; Haynes, 1:84, 85.

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death I to make frendship w1 my L. Admyrall." The passage moves from "to take his frendship" to "to make frendship wf my L. Admyrall," a change that was clearly made while the examination was being transcribed: the amendment runs directly after the original, excised phrase rather than being interpolated above the line. Whether the change was suggested by Harington, or by Smith, it is a sigificant one. In the latter formulation, "to make friendship with," friendship becomes a process undertaken by two parties; in the original, "to take his friendship," friendship is a parceled entity that can be given and taken, not a process but a given commodity, such as "support," "patronage," or "part." 4 7 What promyses his Mr or he hath made to eny man tallure them the rather to his devodon part or frendship I He saith yx at the begynnyng he movid my Lord marques hym self w'out eny cowimission or knowledge of my Lord Admyrall I & when he perceved hym enclinable &C glad to be frend 8e famyliar w' his Master I he told the same to his Master I who said he wold be glad of the frendship of eny of his servants & mych more of hym beyng a noble man. I And syth that tyme he hath as befor knowen them to haue bene frends I promyses & offres he made none to eny man for that purpose.48 Harington claims to have "moved" Dorset without a commission from the Lord Admiral, without the lure of "promyses and offres." In his own account of the persuasion, it is he who provides the persuasive arguments: He saith for my lady Jane the Lord marques doughter I he was sent wf a leiire I &C used all the persuasions he could to obteyn that she might com I for he perceved my Lorii marques somwhat cold therin I. And emongs others for so mych he had hard the Lord admyrall not playnely speak it I but cast out such words that he might perceive his meanyng I as speakyng of the said lady Jane I That she was as handsom a lady as eny in England I And that she might be wife to eny prynce therin I And that if the Kings Ma/'estie when he cam to age wold mary w'in the realme it was as likely he wold be there as in eny other Place. I & yc he wold wish it. &C vpow that &C such words he likewise procedid to my Lord Marques, castyng out such words, that she were as like in his Masters hows to haue a gretter &c better turn then he wold thynk I &c that he durst not tell what it was / & y* beyng kept in my lords hows / who was vncle to the kyng yt were neuer the wors for hyr I &C that my Lord wold be right glad if the Kings Ma/esti could like eny in his howse I or such like words wherby he might take occasion to thynke as mych by hys words I as he thought by the [ord admyralls words.49 47 This distinction is not made in the OED entry, but the range of definitions of "friend" suggests that one should be made. 48 Hatfield Microfilms 150/55'; Haynes, 1:83. 49 Hatfield Microfilms 1 5 0 / 5 5 ' - ; Haynes, 1:82.

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He consistently refuses to set himself in a clearly subordinate position to Seymour, so that Seymour cannot be accused of having ordered or commissioned Harington to do anything. 50 In this way, Harington inscribes not only Seymour's social negotiations but also his own relationship with Seymour within the rubric of friendship—a move that places himself at risk: as Petre noted sardonically of Harington's faithfulness to Seymour, "He labours to ha^e byn in the towre wc the lord admyrall." 51 The rhetoric, however, does not work. Harington's refusal to accept that he had been commissioned to persuade, that he had instead moved others to enter friendship without the knowledge of the Lord Admiral, is dismissed. His statements posit a notion of friendship free from medieval notions of allegiance and bond but Sir William Petre, minuting Harington's examination, again presents friendship as a contractual arrangement to transfer control of the marriageable Jane Grey: "His corayng to perswade the lord marques dorsett, to enter fryndshipp wc my lord admyrall to delyuer his daughter." 52 In the articles of treason against the Lord Admiral, the notion of friendship is expunged completely: instead Seymour is said to have "laboured and gone about," "corrupted with money," "moved," "persuaded," and "advised" various noblemen and servants "to atteyne [his] . . . purposes"; men who have joined with him "sticke and adhere," he aimed to "combine and confederate [him]self." His advice to Dorset concerning hospitality toward potential friends is glossed purely in terms of its purpose: [You] specially moved those noble men whom yew thought not to be contented to depart into their countreys and make themselfes strong, and otherwise to allure them to serve your purposes by gentle promises and offers, to have a part and faction in a redynes to all your purposes . . . [Y]ou had advised certain men to entertaigne and tvynn the favour and good wtlles of the hed yemen and ringeleders of certain countreys, to thintent that their might bringe the multitude and commons when yow should thinke meete to the furtheraunce of your purposes, [my emphasis].53 Two images come to prominence, and point to the Council's preoccupation with study and persuasion. The Lord Admiral has "contynually by your self and other studied and laboured to put into the Kinges Majesties heade and myende a misliking of the Gouvernement of the realme and of 50

This is a consistent formulation: for example, in answer to the question, "What Commandement my Lord Admyrall hath given hym to speke in the Parlement?" Harington answers, "my Lord Admyrall never bad hym, nor willed hym to speke eny Thing in the Parleament to eny Bill." 5i Hatfield Microfilms 150/57'; Haynes, 1:85. 52 Hatfield Microfilms 150/57'; Haynes, 1:84, 85. " APC 2:250.

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the Lorde Protectour's doenges," and "studied and imagined how to have the rule of a nomber of men in your hands." 54 Both the study and the subsequent action are open to censure. The implications of the Seymour affair are clear: friendship is vulnerable to accusations of conspiracy; persuasive discourse between friends can be construed as seduction and sedition. But Ascham and Whitney weren't the only men reading amicitia at the time of the Seymour scandal. During a lengthy stay in the Tower from January 1548/49, John Harington had ample opportunity to read Cicero (in French), and indeed, with the help of some fellow prisoners, to produce a translation, which was published by Thomas Berthelet in 1550. 55 It is left to him to provide an alternative "profe of frendes," 56 by rewriting the affair in terms of Ciceronian amicitia. He does this firstly by dedicating his translation, The booke of freendeship, to Katherine Brandon, the duchess of Suffolk, whose perfect friendship is attested to by her "freendly stedfastnesse declared to the deade" (Thomas Seymour and Catherine Parr), which "doth assertaine vs of your stedfast frendlinesse toward the liuyng" in taking in Seymour's baby daughter and presumably in assisting Seymour's allies, such as Harington. 57 Further "proofs" are to be found in the miscellany volume popularly known as the Arundel Harington manuscript. In her edition Rugh Hughey argues that imprisonments, such as the one in the Tower, "provided lengthy periods of enforced leisure for groups of cultivated men, [from which] may well have come the beginnings of an edited verse collec54

APC 2:248, 249, 250. Harington, Booke of freendeship. Hughey identifies Harington's source text as Jean Collin's 1537 French translation (John Harington, 32). The conditions for reading in the Tower during this period might reward some study. If we are to take Harington at his word, he had at hand "both skilful prisoners to enstruct me, and therto plenty of bookes to learne the language" (Preface, sig.A.iiv). Yet others in the Tower—for example, Stephen Gardiner and Nicholas Throckmorton—complain of harsh restrictions on their reading. 56 Roger Ascham, John Harington, and his son all return to the same phrase when describing their particular friendships (with Whitney, or with Seymour): these are a "proof of frendes." This term "proof" contains within it the particular contradictory construction of friendship. Proof is, essentially, "That which makes good or proves a statement" (OED la), but it also bears meanings of ongoing testing or proving: "The action, process or fact of proving, or establishing the truth of, a statement; the action of evidence in convincing the mind; demonstration" (OED 2), and "The action, or an act of testing or making trial of anything, or the condition of being tried" (OED 4a). It also refers to the result of such a process: "That which anything proves or turns out to be; the issue, result, effect, fulfilment" (OED 7). It is also fair to refer to the interrogations as "proofs": in law, the term also refers to written statements (OED lb). 57 Harington, Booke of freendeship, Preface, sig. A.iiir. Katharine Brandon was by no means enamored of her role as friend to all of Seymour's dependants: on 27 August 1549, she wrote to Cecil to complain of the costly imposition of the Seymour child. See Cecihe Goff, A Woman of the Tudor Age, 175. 55

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tion such as the earlier group of poems in [the Arundel Harington manuscript] or Tottel's Miscellany."ss The first poem, "I once had money and my ffrend, and did them bothe preserve," is one of a number of pieces about friends who prove false which Hughey has attributed to Harington.59 The second, written in the same hand (which is not Harington's) is explicitly related to the affair, and was first printed by Henry Harington in his Nugae Antiquae of 1769 with the heading "Upon the Lord Admiral SEYMOUR'S Picture," with the ascription "J.H. 1567": A sonet writen vpon my Lord Admirall Seymour. I Of person Rare, Stronge Lymbes, and manly shapp of nature fram'de to rule on Sea or lande of frendship firme in good state and ill happ In peace head wise, in warr harte great, bolde hande on horse on foote, in peryll or in playe None coulde excell thoughe many did assaie A Subiect true to Kinge, and seruant great ffreend to goddes truthe en'mye to Roomes disceat Somtuous abroad, for honor of the lande Temp'rat at home; yet kept great state w th staie And noble house; and gaue moe mowthes more meat then some that Clym'de on higher steppes to stande I Yet against Nature Reason and iust Lawes His blood was spilt, guiltles w th out iust cause / 6 0 The third poem is again about Seymour: None can deeme nghte, whoe ffaithfull freendes do rest whilste they doe Rule, and Raigne in great degree ffor than bothe faste, and fained freendes are preste Whose faithes seeme bothe, of one effect to bee But if that welthe vnwynde and fortune flee 58

The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry, ed. Ruth Hughey, 2 vols, [hereafter AH], 1:66. 59 AH 1:79, no. 1; for attribution see 2:3-5. Hughey also attributes "All ye that ffnndshipp do professe" (1.91-93, no. 18, see 2.23), "Husband, yf you will be my deare . . ." (1:95, no. 21, see 2.31-32), "Amanza myne with heedefull eye beholde . . ." (1.9798, no. 23, see 2.38), to Harington—all verses that deal in part or in whole with friendship. 60 AH 1:79, no. 2. Hughey notes, "It would seem reasonable that Harington's sonnet on Seymour, No. 2, was written during this imprisonment, although in the [Nugae Antiquae] it is dated 1567" (1:64). "If the heading of the [Nugae Antiquae] copy was also in John Harington's hand, it may be assumed that these are the verses that were attached to the portrait of Seymour. The notes to Book XIX of Sir John Harington's translation of the Orlando Furioso . . . do not specify, however, that these are the particular verses, nor does the heading in AH so indicate. If the portrait could be located,this question could, of course, be answered at once" (2:5).

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as neuer knowen revokes th'vnfaithfull gheste but he whose hart, in life once faithe linckt faste Will loue and serve, euen after deathe is paste (AH 1:80, no. 3) This piece is an Englishing of the first stanza of book nineteen of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, a work that achieved new popularity in England through the 1591 translation by Harington's son, Sir John Harington. The younger Harington merely adapted his father's rendering for his own version, a n d added the following note: In the first staffe of this Canto, is an excellent morall of the proofe of frends, which my father many years since did translate, almost word for word as I haue set it downe, applying it to his master, the worthie Lord Admirall Seymor: and because the verse was my fathers, I count I may without vsurpation claime it, by inheritance. He applied it to that noble peere (very aptly) diuerse wayes: both for his life, and for his death, but specially (which I count worth the noting) for his seruants, who loued him so dearely, that euen in remembrance of his honorable kindnesse, they loued one another exceedingly: and my father I remember, but a weeke before he died, which was in the yeare 1582. wrate with his owne hand the names of those were then liuing of the old Admiraltie (so he called them that had bene my Lords men) and there were then xxxiiij of them liuing, of which many were knights and men of more reuenew then himselfe, and some were but meane men, as armorers, artificers, keepers, and farmers; and yet the memorie of his seruice, was such a band among them all of kindnesse, as the best of them disdained not the poorest, and the meaner had recourse to the greatest, for their countenance and ayd in their honest causes, and many of them are euen now liuing, and yet it wants litle of fortie yeares since that noble man was put to death. His picture my father gaue after to the Queenes Maiestie that now is, with a pretie verse written on it, and it now hangs in the gallerie at Somerset house. 61 61 Sir John Harington, Orlando Furioso, 151. Sir John Harington's version runs as follows (146):

None ca« deem right who faithful friends do rest While they beare sway & rule in great degree, For then both fast & faind friends are prest, Whose faithes seem both of one effect to be: But then reuoltes the faint and fained guest, When welth vnwindes, and Fortune seems to flee But he that loues indeed remaineth fast, And loues and serues when life and all is past. Hughey notes, "It is very probable that the AH version represents the elder John's translation before it was touched up by his son to fit in with the whole Orlando." A copy in BL ms Additional 36, 259 (another of the Harington manuscripts) fo. 44 r : "differs somewhat

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This earlier group of poems includes those that are clearly related to the Seymour affair, but the second group of poems (nos. 24-63), headed "dyvers sentences," which may well have been arranged for possible publication, represent, in Hughey's words, "the current proverbial and sententious wisdom popular in the sixteenth century" with several of the sentences having "sources or parallels in Cicero's De amicitia" (AH 2:38). For example, the following: Theare be two thinges especially^ that makes a man noted of inconstancie if either in his awne prosperitie He sett his frind light or in his frends adversitie He cast hym of quight. I (AH 1:99 no. 26) which, as Hughey observes, is most directly a rendition of a phrase from De amicitia (17:64): "tamen haec duo levitatis et infirmitatis plerosque convincunt, aut si in bonis rebus contemnunt aut in malis deserunt." Harington's prose translation is strikingly similar to the epigram in its choice of language: "Yet these two thynges make men for the most part to be noted of vnstedfastnesse and lightnesse, if either in their owne prosperitee they set their frerades light, or in their frewdes aduersitee they cast theim of."62 It appears, then, that the language of Cicero on friendship influenced not only the translation by Harington and the poetry miscellany he kept—the "literary"—but also the way in which he attempted to negotiate a possibly life-threatening political scandal. from that in AH and appears to represent the middle stage" (2:7). "No. 3 also was addressed by him to Seymour, but there is no certainty of the date" (1:64). This portrayal has found an appreciative audience in J. E. Neale: "He was a person with many attractive qualities; handsome, of manly build, strong-limbed, bold, skilful in war and the tournament. He was capable of warm and open-hearted friendship, but equally of growing jealousy, which he had not the prudence to conceal. He was ambitious, but also rash and obstinate. He talked too much and too openly. He was made for action, not statesmanship, and politics brought out the worst features of his character." Queen Elizabeth I, 25. 62 AH 2:40; Harington, Booke of freendesbip, sig. F.nr. For further treatments of friendship in the Arundel Harington manuscript see "When fortune doth faile, then frindship is gone / and nature will crave agayne that she lent I but that that is gott withe vertue alone I will ever endure and never be spent" (AH 1:101, no. 46); see 2:49, and for a similar sentiment in De amiatta see 9:32, trans. Harington, sig. C7V; "Wolves be lyke Dogges flatt'rers lyke frends / yet their desyres haue vnlyke ends" (1:102, no. 48; see 2:50); "He was frend never / that is not frend ever" (1:103, no. 44); "A gratefull guift, from thanckfull mynd / t'approved frend, for present sent / Suche acceptadon, must needes fynde / as by the guift, the gever ment / Whiche geven and tane, as it is fitt / Assured ffrends, more sure may kyntt" (1:104, no. 63; see 2:55-56).

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F R I E N D L Y R E A D I N G T O G E T H E R : O R , STUDYING F O R A C T I O N ? : ANOTHER " P R O F E " OF

AMICJTIA

So how does this affect Ascham and Whitney reading in bed together? Although they, like everyone else, are dependent on an accepted system of patronage and allegiance, it is precisely his freedom from the more vicious side of court life that Ascham goes on to praise in "Myne owne John Whitney": Yong yeares to yelde soch frute in Court, where seede of vice is sowne, Is sometime read, in some place seene, amongst vs seldom knowne. His life he ledde, Christes lore to learne, with will to worke the same, He read to know, and knew to Hue, and liued to praise his name.63 Yet here in the midst of a conventional eulogy, where Whitney's achievements are given in terms of standard Christian virtue, 64 Ascham implies a relationship between reading, which the modern reader might perceive as a withdrawal from the business of life, and life itself: "He read to know, and knew to live." Whitney died soon enough not to witness the upheavals to which Ascham fails to refer explicitly in The Scholemaster; but in the final section of this chapter, I suggest that Ascham's formula here— "reading to know, and knowing to live"—describes a form of reading which is both expressed and denied in the account of their reading together of De amicitia in 1548. In a series of recent essays, Anthony Grafton, Lisa Jardine, and William Sherman have sketched their theory of "the activity of reading" in the late sixteenth century, "reading intended to give rise to something else," as pursued by professional scholar-readers in a service relationship: "Above all . . . this 'activity of reading' characteristically envisaged some other outcome of reading beyond accumulation of knowledge; and that envisaged outcome then shaped the relationship between reader and text. In consequence, a single text could give rise to a variety of goal-directed readings, depending on the initial brief." To date, their research has focused on the reading practices of later sixteenth-century individuals, such as Gabriel Harvey and John Dee, employed in recognized or semirecognized service contexts. Here I want to extend Jardine and Grafton's ex63 Ascham, Scholemaster, sig. L.j r . The third line reads "with ill to worke the same" in the first edition, "will" in all subsequent editions. 64 Compare, for example, from the same circle, John Cheke's elegy of the early death of William Gnndal, the student with whom Ascham shared his rooms at Cambridge, and who died of the plague in January 1547/48: "Vncertaine certaine deathe free gnndall hath thee caught," in AH 1:334 (no. 285), and Hughey's notes, ibid., 2:431.

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amination of "the relationship between reader and text" to interrogate the relationship between men reading together and the text, reading occurring outside a recognized service context but within a notional friendship.65 If we examine Ascham's famed tutorial technique more closely, the basic components are as follows: reading through these texts, the scholar should not only make note of "hys sixe pointes" as they occur— proprium, translatum, synonymum, contrarium, diversum, and phrases —construing and parsing where necessary; in addition, the schoolmaster should then find some unseen passage of Cicero, translate it into English, and then give it to the scholar to turn into Latin again, finally comparing his version to the original Ciceronian text: "by this way . . . being streight, plaine, & easie, the scholer is alwayes laboring with pleasure, and euer going right on forward with proffit: . . . Which, bicause he shall do alwayes in order, he shall do it alwayes with pleasure: And pleasure allureth loue: loue hath lust to labor: labor alwayes obteineth his purpose" (K.iijv-K.iiijr). This form of learning of grammar is contrasted explicitly with the cruel force-feeding of "latins": "for here, shall all the hard pointes of Grammer, both easely and surelie be learned vp: which, scholers in common scholes, by making of Latines, be groping at, with care & feare, & yet in many yeares, they scarse can reach vnto them" (K.iijv). Ascham's own educational experience is invoked as an example: I remember, whan I was yong, in the North, they went to the Grammer schole, litle children: they came from thence great lubbers: alwayes learning, and litle profiting: learning without booke, euery thing, vnderstawdyng with in the booke, litle or nothing: Their whole knowledge, by learning without the booke, was tied onely to their tong & lips, and neuer ascended vp to the braine & head, and therfore was sone spitte out of the mouth againe. (K.iijv)

The Northern brand of education here is derided through excretory images: nothing of this process is retained but spat out again. Knowledge, in the sense of a store, is not expanded, and so the experience is worthless, and ends in the classroom. In contrast, Ascham states himself that the purpose in his exercises is only a means to an end, other "purposes." 66 At the most elementary level, the reading practices proposed by Ascham—selection of the six points, parsing, and construing—are not 65 Jardine and Grafton observe the goal-orientated reading "was normally carried out in the company of a colleague or student." "'Studied for Action,'" 30, 31. 66 This is the point that Jonathan Goldberg and Bruce Smith pick up on in their erotic appropriation of the reading. Interestingly, writing in another context—i.e., not in a volume of "gay male perspectives"—Goldberg perceives another proof, namely the practical implications of Ascham's double translation. "[I]ts rhetoric is a modus Vivendi, attempting to negotiate the position of a pedagogic class within the reformed courtly society which the pedagogue claimed to form." Goldberg, 'Writing Matter, 44.

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passive reading, but can be seen as actively "giving rise to something else" beyond an attainment of the Latin tongue. Indeed, Ascham distinguishes "this waie of double translating" from the usual grammar-school method, for all your constructions in Grammer scholes, be nothing els but translations: but because they be not double translations, as I do require, they bring forth but simple and single commoditie, and bicause also they lacke the daily vse of writing, which is the onely thing that breedeth deepe roote, both in ye witte, for good vnderstanding, and in ye memorie, for sure keeping of all that is learned. (L-Γ) "Commoditie" signifies not merely a beneficial product of reading but something "produced for use or sale," something "commodious" (OED). The construings or constructions of Latin grammar are also the construings or constructions of textual meaning "produced for use or sale." If a text's "commoditie" is not "simple and single," however, it is open to various interpretations. The possible connections between friend­ ship and commodity are noted by other contemporary writers: in The Paradise of Dainty Devices "RK." writes that "From Freendship, springeth all commoditie"; in Richard Edwards's play Damon and Pithias, Cariosphus says of Aristippus, "I wyll vse his friendship to myne owne commodytie." 6 7 But how can literally textual constructions of friendship, reading amicitia together, be useful or saleable socially? Ascham shortlists several Latin authors as suitable for double transla­ tion, 6 8 but chooses only Cicero's treatise on friendship, De amicitia, and an extract from De finibus (which expands on a point in his primary text) as the texts to be read with Whitney. The privileging of the discourse of classical amicitia in the exposition of the basic components of textual construing indicates an appreciation of reading together as a social exer­ cise always already inscribed in the social matrix of early modern male friendship. Friendship is inscribed in the text so that its reader enters into an understanding of friendship, and simultaneously of persuasive debate ("disputacion"): it is a "disputacion . . . whole of frendship, whiche your r selfe (when you reade) shall vnderstand" (A.iiii ). Cicero's dialogue draws on the sense of an intimate, domestic space—the home of Quintus Mucius Scaevola, "sittyng at home in his half round chayre (as his maner v was) when I and very fewe his familiars were presente" (A.i )—and simul67 F.K., "Nothing is comparable unto a faithfull freend," in Richard Edwards et al., The Paradyse of daynty Deuices, sigs. B.iin v -C.i r , at C.i r ; Edwards, The excellent Comedie of two the moste faithfullest Freendes, Damon and Pithias, sig. C.mj v . 68 Cicero—"the third booke of Epistles chosen out by Sturmtus, de Amicitia, de Senectute, or that excellent Epistle conteinyng almost the whole first book ad Q. fra:" as well as "some Comedie of Terence or Plautus . . . Caes. Commentaries . . . or some Orations of T. Ltuius." Ascham, Scholemaster, sig. K.iij1".

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taneously on a public discussion, "that talke, which then was almost common in many mens mouthes" concerning the feud between Sulpitius and his erstwhile intimate friend Quintus Pompeius: "Therfore at that tyme Scaeuola, when he fell in a rehersal therof, declared vnto vs the talke that Laelius had vpon friendship with hym and his other sonne in lawe C. Fannius, the sonne of Marcus, shortely after Affricanes death" (A i v -A iir). The dialogue that Cicero reproduces from memory and stages for posterity is therefore itself a private discussion about Scipio Africanus, but one that was then recalled and applied to a discussion about the public separation of Publius Suplicius and Quintus Pompeius. Cicero presents the discussion, as it were, "neat": what we are given is the conversation between Laelius, Gaius Fannius and Scaevola—"I haue brought in as it were thewselfes speakyng, to the entent, these woordes quod I, and quod he, should not be to oiten rehersed. And the rather I dyd it, that the talke might seeme of two that were present before you" (A.iiv)—rather than Scaevola's later use of it. De amicitia, then, already exists in a contested area. Cicero again calls on this ambiguity in his foreword: "For where as often times ye were in hand with me Atticus, that I shulde write somwhat vpon freendsippe, me thought it a thyng both meete for the knowlage of al men, and also for our familiaritee" (A.iiv). The text therefore moves in concentric circles: the glorious friendship of Laelius and Scipio; within a discussion of public moment about the apparently aborted friendship of two powerful men; in the private domestic setting of Scaevola's house; in a text written by Cicero for public reading. In the dialogue, Cicero's speakers discuss whether friendship can exist when the friends are not good men; whether proximity by kin or geography strengthens friendship; how friendship is an accord in all things conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, second only to wisdom; whether friendship is inspired by weakness and a need for security; how friendships end (through differing political views, when they cease to be mutually advantageous, through rivalry in courtship, or most usually through lust for money); how far love should go in friendship; whether sinning for a friend is justified; whether one should ask of friends only what is honourable; loyalty; how friendship should encourage equality.69 Twice Laelius portrays the daily activities of his friendship with Scipio: but yet I take such fruite of the remembraunce of our frendship, that I thinke I lyued happilie, that with Scipio I ledde my lyfe, with whom I had a ioynct care, for the common wealthe, and for our pnuate causes, with whom bothe in peace and warre I tooke lyke parte: yea, and wee agreed euermore in loue, mynde, pourpose, and opinion, in whiche thyng the whole pithe of freradship standeth. (B.iiv) 69

Cicero also discusses friendship and expediency in De officiis 3.10.43—45.

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Truely of all the thynges whiche fortune or nature gaue me, I haue nothyng to matche with Scipioes freendship. In it was my conference for the common wealth: in it was my counsaile for priuate causes: In it was my rest full of al delite. And I neuer offended him in any thing that euer I could perceiue, and I neuer herd any thyng of hym that I was against. (Ir_v) Private reading together is integral to the friendship: "We had one howse, one diet, and that euen common: yea, not that onely, but warfare, and also our iorneis and goyng abrode were a like common. But what shall I speake of our studies in serchyng alwaies and learnyng of somewhat, in the which we bestowed all our leasure and tyme, whan we were out of the sight of men" (Iv). It is the mutual textual skills that are emphasised in Thomas Elyot's lengthy discourse of friendship in The Governour, presented as "an allectife to good men to seeke for their semblable I on whom they may practise amitie," following Cicero in the first book of De officiis: "For as Tulli saieth: Nothinge is more to be loued / or to be ioyned to gether / than similitude of good maners or vertues: where in be the same or semblable studies / the same willes or desires: in them it hapneth / that one in an other as moche deliteth as in him selfe" (S.ijv). Although Elyot draws fleetingly on Aristotle (Ethics 6) and Seneca (De beneficiis), it is Cicero who provides the most pertinent model: Friendship cannot exist without virtue, and only between good men; it is "but a parfecte consent of all thinges appertayninge as well to god as to man I with beneuolence & charitie." (S.iijr) However, even taking two men's virtue as given, they may not necessarily be friends: "it also requireth that they be of semblable or moche like maner or studie I and specially of maners." Although these manners must be shared by the two men, Elyot does not prescribe what sort of manners they should be: indeed, his list—gravity, affability, severity, placability, magnificence, liberality, frugality, soberness and moderation in living—includes contradictions. Thus he makes it clear that if virtue is conjoined with "similitude of studie or lerninge" then "frendship moche rather hapneth: and the mutuall enteruewe & conuersation is moche more pleasaunt: specially if the studies haue in them any delectable affection or motion." He does not advise studies when they are "to serious or full of contention": then "frendship is oftentimes assaulted I whereby it is often in parile." Friendship is most likely "where the studie is elegant I and the mater illecebrous I that is to say swete to the redar I the course wherof is rather gentill persuasion and quicke reasoninges I than ouer subtill argumentes or litigous controuersies: there also it hapneth that the studentes do delite one in a nother I and be without enuie or malicious contention" (S.iiijv— S.vr). His classical examples include Damon and Pithias, ideal friends since they were "two Pythagoriens I that is to say studentes of Pythagoras

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lerninge" (S.vv). In his exemplar of friendship—the longest in his entire work—"The wonderfull history of Titus & Gisippus I . . . whereby is fully declared the figure of perfet amitie," 70 Fulvius sends his son Titus to Athens to live with Chremes. Chremes' son Gisippus, was not only "equall to the said yonge Titus in yeres I but also in stature I proporcion of body I fauour I and colour of visage / countenaunce & speche. . . . They to gether / and at one tyme went to their lerninge & studie I at one tyme to their meales & refection I they delited bothe in one doctrine I and profited equally therein: finally they to gether so increased in doctrine I that within a fewe yeres I fewe within Athenes mought be compared vnto them" (S.viir). So closely are they allied that when the time comes for Gisippus to marry, he found "his hart all redy wedded to his frende Titus I & his mynde fixed to the studie of Philosophic" (S.viiv). In time, he falls in love with his intended, and "often tymes he leauinge Titus at his studie I secretely repayred vnto her" (S.viii1); eventually "neither the study of Philosophic I neyther the remembraunce of his dere frende Gysippus I who so moche loued and trusted hym I coulde any thinge withdrawe hym from that vnkynde appetite I but that of force he must loue inordinately that lady" (S.viiir_v). Elyot concludes, "This example in the affectes of frendshippe expresseth (if I be nat deceyued) the description of frendship engendred by the similitude of age and personage: augmented by the conformitie of maners and studies: and confirmed by the longe continuauance of company" (V.vv). The image of the shared studies is picked up by countless sixteenthcentury authors to signify intimacy of relations—for example Richard Edwards's Damon and Pithias are "All one in effecte: all one in their goynge, I All one in their study, all one in their doyng"—so much so that a deviation from the commitment to private reading together comes to signal an absence of true friendship: thus John LyIy, depicting the superficial friendship of Euphues and Philautus, writes, "they vsed not onely one boord, but one bedde, one booke (if so be it they thought not one to many)"—their disregard for the "booke" as nothing more than an unwarranted convention of friendship guarantees the superficiality of their "hot loue," which "waxed soone colde." 71 What impact does this literary topos have on the social negotiations of the readers of amicitia? Erasmus, as might be expected, seizes on the image to elevate his own friendships, as when he dedicates his Parabolae to Pieter Gillis in 1514 using a letter sent two months earlier, which stresses that whereas "Friends of the commonplace and homespun sort, most open-hearted Peter, have their idea of relationship, like their whole lives, 70

Elyot, Governour, Bk. 2, Chap. 2, sigs. S.viv—V.vnv. For a full account and analysis of Elyot's use of the "Titus and Gisippus" story see Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 57—64. 71 Edwards, Damon and Pithias, sig. B(4)r; John LyIy, Euphues, fol. 10 r .

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attached to material things" with their physical separation marked by a constant exchange of material tokens, in contrast, [Y] ou and I, whose idea of friendship rests wholly in a meeting of minds and the enjoyment of studies in common, might well greet one another from time to time with presents for the mind and keepsakes of a literary description. Not that there is any risk that when our life together is interrupted we may slowly grow cold, or that the great distance which separates our bodies may loosen the close tie between our minds. Minds can develop an ever closer link, the greater the space that comes between them. Any loss due to separation in the actual enjoyment of our friendship should be made good, not without interest, by tokens of this literary kind. Erasmus skilfully exploits the Ciceronian nexus of friendship and reading in order to negate the materiality—and hence the obvious commercial and service implications—of books as gifts. In so doing he produces both reading and friendship as independent from the systems of finance and favour in which all subjects are implicated.72 The negative implication of this, as Roger Ascham discovered in the 1540s, was that if reading were detached from systems of patronage and favor, then professional readers could not sell their services directly, because they were not perceived as services. As early as 1541, Ascham is attempting to increase his income by selling his literary skills, suggesting in a letter to Archbishop Lee that If you wish to know for what matters and necessities your lordship may be able to use my service, which (so far from being able to effect great things) cannot even fulfil moderate things, yet if your lordship wishes to hand down anything to immortality, and to leave to posterity any monument of your great learning, I may be able to save your lordship from some trouble and labor in this matter 72 "Vvlgare quidem et crassum istud amicorum genus, Petre amicorum candidissime, quorum vt omnis vitae, ita necessitudinis quoque ratio in corporibus sita est, si quando procul seiunctos agere contigerit, anulos, pugiunculos, pileolos atque alia id genus symbola crebro solent inuicem missitare; videlicet ne vel consuetudinis intermissione languescat beneuolentia, vel longa temporum ac locorum intercapedine prorsus emonatur. Nos vero, quibus animorum coniunctione societateque studiorum omnis amicitiae ratio constat, cur non potius animi xeniolis et literatis symbolis identidem alter alterum salutemus? Non quod vllum sit periculum ne propter mterruptam vitae consuetudinem frigus aliquod obrepat, neue tantis regionum interuallis semota corpora copulam an nexum soluant anumorum; qui vel hoc arctius sibi conglutinan solent, quo vastioribus spacus ilia fuerint dirempta: verum vt si quid ex amicitiae fructu detrahere videatur absentia, id huiusmodi pignoribus literanis non sine foenore sarciamus." Erasmus to Pieter Gilles, 15 October 1514, ep. 312; Erasmus, Opus epistolarum, ed. Allen, 2:33; CWE 3:43-44. In her examination of books as gifts, Natalie Zemon Davis notes that the notion that friendship of Erasmus and Gilhs "rests wholly in a meeting of minds and the enjoyment of studies in common" is "a slight exaggeration, since Gilhs helped Erasmus sell his books." "Beyond the Market," 77. See also Hutson, Usurer's Daughter, 4.

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either by collating, revising, or making notes to passages, and, if there is any book which you have not time to read because you are entangled in so many businesses, by making an abstract of it for you.73 Here, his literary skills—collating information, revising, annotating, abstraction—are the very skills Ascham and Whitney are developing together in the close reading of De amicitia. In late March 1544, he writes to John Redman, If you were to ask me . . . how I have planned my way of life and the conclusion of my studies, to which in particular all my cares and nightly meditations have been devoted, I should frankly respond: the study of God's word, attended by the reading of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, which is, as it were, its attendant and handmaid. This is the end to which I have proposed, God willing, to direct and guide the rest of my life. But if the option were given to me, and the Lord of York [at the time his patron] gave me the opportunity, and my slender resources allowed it, I should like nothing better than for a few years to accompany some distinguished man who was serving abroad as His Majesty's ambassador. For I trust that I would not be incapable at all of handling work of this sort, whether it be in studying literature together, or, when needed, in sending letters home to lighten the load to some extent when the ambassador was being overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.74 Here Ascham summarizes the services a skilled reader could offer an ambassador: sending (and presumably drafting) "letters," official reports, to the English court; and studying literature together with the "distin73 "Si scire velis ad quas res & necessitudines, opera mea tua Domtnatio poterit vti, qua; tantum abest vt pra;stet summa, cum vix audeat pollicen mediocria, tamen si Dominatio tua ahquid immortahtati tradere, & insigne aliquod summs eruditionis tuse monumentum posteritati rehnquere voluerit, ego hac in re vel locis conferendis, relegendis, adnotandis, & si quis liber fuerit, quem tibi ahjs negotijs prjepedito & detento euoluere non licuent, in pauca redigendo ahquibus molestijs & labonbus D. tuam possim liberare." Ascham to Archbishop Lee, 1541. Grant, sigs. F.viv—F.viir; Vos does not include this letter but see translation by Giles, Whole Works, l:xxn-xxiii. 74 "Si tu me interrogates . . . quam mihi viuendi rationem & studiorum meorum exitum proposuenm, ad quem potissimum omnes cura; & cogitationes mea; sunt euigilaturae, ingenue responderem, verbi dei cogmtionem, Platonis. Anstotelis Ciceromsque lectione, quasi ministra & ancilla comitatam, & eum finem mihi esse propositum, ad quem reliquum vita; mea; cursum dei voluntate intendam atq«e dirigam. Verum si optio mihi daretur, et facultas a Domino Eboracensi concederetur, 8c fortunarum nostrarum tenuitas pateretur, nihil prms optarem, quam vt aliquem pra;clarum virum, qui a Regia maiestaie ad exteras nationes legaretur, aliquot annos comitarer. Nam vt confido, me posse in huiusmodi munere non ineptissime versan, siue pros ton sytnphilologem, siue cum res exigeret, vt liter» domum mitterentur, cum vir ille magnitudine negotiorum distraheretur, ad ilium laborem aliqua ex parte minuendum, ita plane existimo talem viuendi ad tempus rationem, priori meo propositi nequaquam aduersari." Ascham to John Redman, Lady Day, 1544. Grant, sigs. N.vv— N.vi r ; Vos, letter 6, 47.

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guished man" in question. The reference to "studying literature together" is in Greek (the letter is of course in Latin)—symphilologeo, "join in literary studies" cognate to symphilia, "mutual friendship." This picks up on a similar momentary use of the Greek term in a letter from Cicero's eldest son Marcus to Tiro in August/September 44 B.C., in which Marcus writes of his joy in hearing from Tiro and continues, "Tu velim in primis cures, ut valeas, ut una symphilologein possimus"—begging him to take care of his health, so that "we may study literature together." 75 As Erasmus argued so insistently, for the humanist the familiar letter is a kind of mutual exchange of speech between absent friends.76 "Studying literature together," however, necessitates not only also a mutual and intimate friendship, but also a physical proximity that cannot be satisfied through correspondence—a double reading available in the sixteenth century as a 1544 Italian translation of Cicero's phrase by Sebastiano Fausto demonstrates: "che possiamo de studi amoreuolmente conferire insieme" ("so that we can confer lovingly together"). 77 Thus even letters that are clearly applications for patronage, such as that sent to Redman, hint at the formalization of the relationship as a reading friendship, and thus demand that we call into question the apparent informality, easy intimacy, and political inconsequence of the reading relationships suggested in the portrayal of the reading friendship with Whitney. Indeed, we happen to know that Whitney was not Ascham's only reading partner during 1548. When a fragment of Ascham's Report and Discourse . . . of the affaires and state of Germany, written in 1553, was finally published by John Day in 1570, it was prefaced by a letter allegedly written by John Astley to Ascham in October 1552, and referring back to halcyon days spent together in Elizabeth's mobile retinue in 1548-49, citing in particular our frendly fellowshyp together at Cheston [i.e. Cheshunt] Cbelsey, and here at Hatfield her graces house: our pleasant studies in readyng together Aristotles Rethorike, Cicero, and Liuie: our free talke mingled alwayes with honest mirth: our trimme cowferences of that present world: and to true iudgementes of the troublesome tyme that followed. These commodities I now remember with some grief, which we then vsed with much pleasure, besides many other fruites of frendshyp that faythfull good will could affourd. Here, "our trimme conferences of that present world"—their negotiation of their present circumstances—lead inexorably "to true iudgementes of 75 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, rev. Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 2:1687; Cicero, The Letters to His Friends, ed. Wi. Glynn Williams, 16.21.8 76 Erasmus, Epistolae Hieronymi, 1:218; see Lisa Jardine, Erasmus Man of Letters, 150-52; Reading Shakespeare Historically, 78-97. 77 Sebastiano Fausto, trans., Epistole dette Ie familiara, sig. Zz.iijv.

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the troublesome tyme that followed"—constructions from their reading to attempt to negotiate in advance what was to follow, a reference pre­ sumably to the events of January and February 1548/49, when Astley was briefly imprisoned in the Fleet Prison. Both of these textual trans­ actions are classed by Astley as at once "fruites of frendshyp" and "commodities." 7 8 Ascham's Report and Discourse, an account of his time as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador at the court of Charles V, is now appre­ ciated primarily as a fine example of early English historiography. Its de­ clared methodology is cribbed almost entirely from Cicero's De oratore,79 but early in the Report Ascham highlights one of his primary concerns contained within that methodology: When you and I read Liuie together if you do remember, after some reasonyng we cowcluded both what was in our opinion to be looked for at his hand that would well and aduisedly write an history: First, point was, to write nothyng false: next, to be bold to say any truth, wherby is auoyded two great faultes, flattery and hatred: For which two pointes Ccesar is read to his great prayse, and Iouius the Italian to hys iust reproch. Then to marke diligently the causes, counsels, actes, and issues in all great attemptes: And in causes, what is iust or vmust: in couwsels, what is purposed wisely or rashly: in actes, what is done couragiously or fayntly: And of euery issue, to note some generall lesson of wisedome δί warines, for lyke matters in time to come. (A.iijv) Since, as Astley notes, Report and Discourse is in effect the "proof" of their reading together in 1548, in terms both of their discussions about historiography and of "conferences of that present world: and . . . true iudgementes of the troublesome tyme that followed," then we might ex­ pect that the issues that Ascham chooses to highlight for his friend are those that they have discussed together. Significantly, the subject matter that interests Astley is not so far from De amicitia. Astley writes, We heare of great sturres in those parties [where Ascham was posted]: and how the Emperour a Prince of great wisedome and great power hath been driuen to 78

A Report and Discourse . . . of the affaires and state of Germany and the Emperour

Charles his court, duryng certaine yeares while the sayd Roger was there, sig. Aijr. Once again, the Arundel Hanngton manuscript suggests a connection between Hanngton and Astley. Astley is credited with a seven-line verse which opens, "When tender youthe and pleasaunt yeares are past" (AH 1:344, no. 296), which Hughey identifies with the Seymour scandal, presumably because of its closing lines: "Thus am I short not longe / though somwhat rownd I because I know you take me not your frend I but as 1 was 1 am and so will end." See Hughey's notes, 2:443-44. 79 Ascham, Report and Discourse, sig. Aii)v. Lawrence Ryan notes that this is "a direct paraphrase, with supplemental details from other ancient sources such as Lucian's How to write history, of a speech assigned to Marcus Antomus in Cicero's De oratore." Ryan, Roger Ascham, 164 and 317 n.10; De oratore, 2.15.62-64.

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extreme shiftes, and that by the pollicie of mean men who were thought to be hys frendes, and not by the puisantnes of others who were knowne to be his open enemyes. (A.ijv) Ascham also recounts the telling incident of the manner in which Albert of Brandenburg comes under suspicion by Emperor Charles: [H]e left comming to the Court, and kept his owne house: rising euery day very early: and writing all the forenoone very diligently yet what he did no man knew: so that his absence breed a talke in the Court, and his soddein and secret study wrought a wonderfull gelousy oi his doynges in the Emperours head: for he knew the Marches to haue courage enought to attempt matters ouer great. (A.ijv) The failure of friends and "sodden and secret study" engendering "wonderful gelousy": two main themes of the Report and Discourse that completes the reading together of Astley and Ascham in 1548. Albert is known to be "writing" yet "what he did no man knew." When performed in the private company of another man, reading and writing, and their unknown consequences, give rise to anxiety to others. And since reading is predicated on the assumption of friendship, all the anxieties associated with the generative potential of friendship, made visible in the Seymour scandal, are brought to bear. Private reading together in the retinues of Elizabeth and Seymour produced several "proofs." Even imprisoned in the Tower, John Harington writes of his reading/translation of De amicitia as both a negotiation of the present situation of himself and his friends and a commodity for the future: "the goodly rules, the naturall order, and ciuile vse of freendship . . . for my state I deemed good to be embraced, as a glasse to discerne my freendes in, and a ciuile rule to leade my life by." As an extension of his reading circle, he asks that "my enterprise . . . be enterpreted rather by freendes, as a treatise of frendship, then by lerned clerkes in an argument of translacion" (Preface, sigs. A.iiir, A.iiiv). At face value, this is merely the generic plea of most mid-century English translators that their translation should not be expected to be literal, but a crude personal rendering; in the context of Harington's negotiation of De amicitia, it shows an alertness for its need to be accepted as a single, simple commodity among friends, not to be construed in the way his master's words and actions were by nonfriends. Friendship paid off for Harington: imprisoned in the Tower once more in 1554 by Stephen Gardiner, after illicitly conveying a letter to Elizabeth, he remarried in 1559, to the daughter of his jailer, Isabella Markham. Elizabeth evidently appreciated his actions, and the Haringtons enjoyed her patronage, with John representing Caernarvon in two parliaments, and Isabella becoming one of the ladies of the Privy Cham-

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ber: ultimately, Elizabeth stood as godmother to their son John, born in 1561 (AH 1:96). Like the Arundel Harington manuscript, Harington's translation was evidently not the work of a solitary prisoner. Before publication, he passed it to others capable of commenting on the correlation of his text with the Latin original I caused it to be conferred with the latine auctor, and so by the knowen wel lerned to be corrected: after whose handelyng me thought a new spirite and life was geuen it, and many partes semed as it were with a new cote araied, aswell for the orderly placyng and eloquently changeyng of some woordes, as also for the plainly openyng and learnedly amending of the sence, whiche in the Freenche translacion was somewhat darkened, and by me for lacke of knowlage in many places missed. (Preface, sig. A.iiijr) Ruth Hughey has speculated that although it is possible that fellow prisoners (among them Sir Thomas Smith, Stephen Gardiner, and John Feckenham) had the skill to perform this checking, they had political differences with Harington. She contends that it is more likely that the manuscript was sent to Sir John Cheke, with whom Harington later had a friendly correspondence, or indeed to Roger Ascham. Both Cheke and Ascham were members of the Cambridge circle favored by Katharine Brandon, the dedicatee of the translation; Harington later preserved two of Ascham's letters in his collection of manuscripts. When Harington dedicates his englishing of De amicitia to Katharine Brandon he writes that "This [the dedication] did I not to teache you, but to let you see in learnyng auncient, that you haue by nature vsed: nor to warne you of ought you lacked, but to sette forth your perfection" (Preface, sig. A.iiijv), the favorite Ovidian tag-phrase of Ascham's familiar letters. Finally, in 1561, our two apparently discrete, but increasingly resonant, stories meet in print, in the dedication of Thomas Blundeville's third of Three moral treatises, "The porte of rest," an englishing of Guillaume Bude's Latin translation of Plutarch's De tranquillitate animi. Blundeville dedicates this treatise "To the true louers of wisedome Iohn Asteley Maister of the Quenes Maiesties Jewell house, and John Harington, Esquier." The yoking together of the two friendly readers of 1548 remains unexplained, but is rendered even more intriguing by the contribution of three quatrains by none other than Roger Ascham at the beginning of the second treatise ("The fruites of foes"). 80 80 Thomas Blundeville, Three morall treatises, sigs. D.vir, B.vr. The coincidences multiply beyond this text: in the same year, Blundeville published A newe booke concernynge the arte ofryding (London, 1561); Astley later published his The art of riding (London, 1584). Blundeville's othet publications were to include A very briefe and profitable treatise declar-

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Ultimately, however, despite the accumulation of undeniable resonances between the letters and works of Roger Ascham, the Ciceronian translations of John Harington, the interrogation reports by Harington and Sir Thomas Smith, and the poems of the Arundel Harington manuscript, I am not suggesting that we seek to explain these connections in a reductively historicist manner (although I am sure that this could be done). Rather, my aim has been to show that a peculiarly humanistic interpretation of a single classical text, Cicero's De amicitia, the "proofe of frendes," could inform not merely those areas of early modern culture where we might expect it—the correspondence and "literary" outpourings of humanistically educated men, the traditional "highground" of literary and intellectual history—but also areas which we might consider more "practical": the negotiation of a potentially disastrous interrogation relating to a charge of treason. The evidence suggests that a man such as Harington might indeed draw on his reading in an attempt to negotiate such a situation; that Ascham and Astley might indeed read Cicero to negotiate their situation. It also suggests that such reading was becoming seen as itself having potentially damaging political import, and that Ascham's way of distancing himself from that danger was to resituate his reading in a space of male intimacy—the shared bed, the humanist friend—that we now recognize, and increasingly appropriate, as homoerotic. It is this deliberate distancing of intimate male transaction—in the closet, rather than the bedroom—from the business of political plotting, and the politics of our contemporary appropriation, which concerns my final chapter. mg howe many counsells, a prince ought to have (London, 1570); and The true order and methode of wryting and reading hystories (London, 1574): echoes of friendly reading together indeed. Hughey conjectures, "Blundeville perhaps had some connection with the fellowship and study together in the Greek and Latin writers which the Princess Elizabeth's followers, including Astley and Ascham, if not Harington, had enjoyed at Hatfield" (John Harington, 70). Again, she is unwilling to admit Harington into the reading friendship circles.

Chapter Five EPISTEMOLOGIES OF THE EARLY MODERN CLOSET

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HERE ARE stage-sins, and there are closet-sins," wrote Bishop Joseph Hall in 1615, 1 and—while we might be a little edgy about Hall's notion of "sin"—that formulation is still readily familiar to us today. "Stage sins" are public sins, enacted on the stage of the world, while "closet sins" are secret sins, hidden in a private personal space. This symbolic use of "closet" has over the last quarter of a century become inextricably linked with its appropriation by the lesbian and gay communities. Through them, the image of the closet has been mobilized to invoke and sustain a series of binary oppositions experienced by, on one side, those "in the closet" and, on the other, those who have made the step of "coming out of the closet"—community:isolation; pride:!repression; political action::apolitical apathy; moral truth::hypocrisy. My list here is suggested by the multiple binaries that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has identified as "the most crucial sites for the contestation of meaning in twentieth-century Western culture . . . quite indelibly marked with the historical specificity of homosocial/homosexual definitions, notably but not exclusively male, from around the turn of the century," in her committed, elegant probing of the Epistemology of the Closet, published in 1990. 2

In analyzing the closet, Sedgwick draws heavily on D. A. Miller's "aegis-creating essay," "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets," where he proposes secrecy as "the subjective practice in which the oppositions of public/private, inside/outside, subject/object are established," "a mode whose ultimate meaning lies in the subject's formal insistence that he is radically inaccessible to the culture that would otherwise entirely determine him." The relations of the closet, Sedgwick notes, are "the relations of the known and the unknown, the explicit and the inexplicit"; it bears the traces of "mappings of secrecy and disclosure, and of the private and the public." For the purposes of her project, Sedgwick reads these relations and these mappings as being "around homo/heterosexual definii Joseph Hall, The Works of Joseph Hall, 2:111. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 72. James D. Woods notes that "A quarter century after the Stonewall riots, conversation about self-disclosure remains shackled to this binary metaphor, one that severely limits our understanding of what is at stake. Some version of the metaphor infiltrates virtually all discourse on the subject." Woods with Jay H. Lucas, The Corporate Closet, 26. Of course, to some extent, this is now changing: "closet" as a qualifying adjective can be used to denote any "hidden" characteristic or affiliation—e.g. "closet liberal," even "closet homophobe." 2

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tion," while admitting that "the phrase 'the closet' as a publicly intelligible signifier for gay-related epistemological issues is made available, obviously, only by the difference made by the post-Stonewall gay politics oriented around coming out of the closet." 3 During the late 1980s, however, the limitations of "coming out" as an effective political strategy for liberation became increasingly obvious, symptomatically causing various strands of the lesbian and gay movement to attempt to replace "coming out" with its more coercive counterpart, "outing." At the heart of this shift was a growing realization that the negative on which the positive "coming out" was based—the closet—did not meet the requisite negativity demanded of it by "coming out." Most notably, the person in the closet (Miller's "secret subject") was not isolated nor necessarily apolitical. She or he did not exist beyond society. As the agenda of what could be addressed within the context of "queer" lengthened, it became possible for the first time to speak from an antihomophobic perspective on previously taboo subjects such as right-wing homosexuals wielding power through networks of closeted contacts. Simultaneously, the transmission of HIV identified the man who had sex with men but who did not identify as homosexual (the classic "closet case") as a key and untargetted figure in the fight against AIDS.4 The closet was revealed emphatically not as a place of isolation, except in the rhetoric of coming out: rather, it was a transactive space within which people met, had sex, organized politically and socially. Thus precisely at the moment when the most sophisticated probing of one epistemology of the closet took hold in the academy, that epistemology was changing once again. In this chapter, I shall argue that this crisis of the epistemology of the closet in the early 1990s is inherent to and prefigured in the closet as architectural reality and topos in sixteenth-century England. Sedgwick herself quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of "closet" as a preface to her key chapter on the "Epistemology of the Closet," definitions that invoke its early modern architectural specificity.5 At the same time, her work, inspired by Miller, draws on a critical practice that is concerned with the individual subject. The connection is not accidental: the early modern closet, as we shall see, is often associated with the construction of a new modern subjectivity. Yet I shall show that the epistemology of the early modern closet—and by extension, our contempo3 D. A. Miller, "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets," in The Novel and the Police, 192—220 at 207, 195; Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 3, 71, 3, 14. 4 These two issues were exploited to stunning theatrical effect at the heart of Tony Kushner's two-part play, Angels in America: Part 1, Millenium Approaches; Part 2, Perestroika. 5 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 65.

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rary closets—demands an analysis that rejects the search for the secret subject in favor of an interrogation of secret spaces and relationships; an analysis that extends our knowledge of the closet beyond the binaries within which it currently obtains (and which are now being proved theoretically inadequate); and which proposes an alternative reading of the closet as a politically crucial transactive space.6 His AND H E R S : T H E RISE OF THE CLOSETS IN S I X T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L A N D

It is possible to trace from Xenophon through quattrocento Italy to early sixteenth-century Spain to Reformation England a series of local twists to the notion of the closet. In Xenophon's Oeconomicus, Ischomachus describes how he explained to his new wife the importance of orderliness in his house, so that any particular object might be found easily and quickly (Books VIII-IX). 7 In his dialogue Delia famiglia, written in Florence between 1432 and 1434, and later expanded in the 1440s, Leon Battista Alberti recast Xenophon's ideas on household management in the context and language of quattrocento Tuscany. In Book Three, Giannozzo tells of the part played by his virtuous, industrious, prudent wife in managing the household. Following Xenophon, he describes how he took her by the hand, showing her the whole house, describing how certain areas of the house were designated for the storage of particular commodities: grain upstairs, wine and firewood in the cellar, and so on. At this point in the Oeconomicus (9.5), Ischomachus points out the separate sleeping quarters of the men and women, and discusses how he can control the breeding of the servants. Alberti, however, replaces this consideration with another. Giannozzo shows his wife their valuables—silver, tapestries, clothes, and jewels—locked within his room, so that as few people as possible would know their whereabouts. However, one set of valuables is kept even from his wife: I kept only the books and my writings, those of my ancestors as well as mine, locked so that my wife could not read them or even see them then or at any other time since. I always kept the writings, not in the sleeves of my clothes, but under lock and key in their proper place in my study, almost as if they were sacred or religious objects. I never allowed my wife to enter my study either alone or in my company, and I ordered her to turn over to me at once any papers of mine she should ever find. 6 As James Woods notes, by casting secrecy in passive terms, "despite its apparent suitability, the 'closet' actually misrepresents the ways gay men reveal and conceal themselves in social settings." The Corporate Closet, 27, 26-27. 7 Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus, trans. E. C. Marchant.

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This injunction against his wife is supported by his frequent condemnation of "those bold, impudent women who expend so much energy finding out about their husbands' or other men's affairs outside the home," citing the judgment of his kinsman Cipriano Alberti that "wise men say that women who want to know too much about men give rise to the suspicion that they take an undue interest in them." He restricts conversation with his wife to "household matters, habits, and our children." 8 Thus although the wife is responsible for the ordering and retrieval of all household goods, Alberti marks off a set of materials (his writings and papers), a set of relationships (with other men), and a room within his house (his study) as beyond the household, not falling within the possible conversation of man and wife. Any curiosity on the part of the wife about those particular materials, relationships, or that room will give rise to doubts about her chastity: a wife asking about transactions with men must be interested in men. In a recent article, Mark Wigley works with the same material (Xenophon, Alberti), but consistently couches his argument in terms of simple access, privacy, and surveillance, reproducing a strict binarism, "opposing male mobility in the exterior to female stasis in the interior." 9 I want to stress here that the wife's debarring from the closet is not merely a matter of nonaccess, ensuring the husband's privacy and control through surveillance, but rather a limitation on the wife's knowledge for—and hence power of—retrieval. A more fruitful way of approaching this is provided by Stephanie Jed in her study of mercantile writing in quattrocento Florence. Quoting Alberti's Giannozzo on how he bars his wife from seeing his papers, Jed argues that "It is important to see these cultural attitudes not as pure linguistic/symbolic constructs, detached from any historical practice, but as actually generated from the merchants' relation to their objects of writing and to the practice of representing and conserving in writing those 'facts' which they deemed pertinent to the maintenance and continuity of the family structure." She then proceeds to examine how the merchants' "secret books" were inscribed in a complex identification to enable retrieval only by the right people, the right people being "family members," who "will be able to make profitable use of the private family writing." 10 We may seem here to be hitting an impasse: why is the wife barred from those writings which are to be used by the family? Are only male family members given access to these rec8 Leon Battista Alberti, The Albertis of Florence trans. Guido A. Guarino [translation modified], 217, 218. 9 Mark Wigley, "Untitled: The Housing of Gender," in Sexuality & Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina, 327-89, esp. 332-51 at 334. 10 Stephanie H. Jed, Chaste Thinking: The Rape ofLucretia and the Birth of Humanism, 81, 82.

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ords? What then of those women who we know were active in business transactions? What we need to remember here is that what Alberti is giving us is a topos, taken from Xenophon, and not an unmediated account of household practice in quattrocento Italy. What is equally important to note is that a topos only functions insofar as it expresses something recognizable about the society to which it is being applied. In other words, we should not see Giannozzo's injunction against his wife as an absolute truth, but as a powerful social myth functioning in a particular way. By probing the apparent contradictions of the topos—the wife being the object of exclusion from records that are designed to guarantee the family's continuity— we can attempt to reconstruct the way in which the topos was effective. To do this, I turn to a later reworking of Alberti: Antonio da Guevara's Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio (1528). Guevara shows that Alberti's fairly commonplace set of anxieties about female chastity carries within it the roots of another anxiety: the hidden contents of the forbidden papers and relationships, and the forbidden room. Freeing the discussion from the fait accompli against the wife described by Giannozzo in his discussion with another man, Guevara takes the same set of injunctions and dramatizes them in a direct confrontation between the emperor (Marcus Aurelius) and his wife Faustine: As it is naturall to wome» to dispise that thing that is gyuen them vnasked, so it is deathe to them to be denayed of that they do demaunde. This emperour had the study or closet of his howse in the mooste secrete place of his palays, wherin he neyther suffred his wyfe, seruant, nor frend to entre. On a day it chanced, that Faustyn thempresse desyred importunatly to se that study, sayenge these wordes: My lorde, let me se your secrete chaumbre. Beholde I am greatte with chylde, and shall dye, yf I see it not. And ye knowe well, that the lawe of the Romaynes is, that nothynge shall be denyed to womenne with chylde, of that they desyre. And yf ye doo otherwyse, ye do it in dede, but not of ryghte. For I shall dye with the chylde in my bodye. And more ouer I thynke in my mynde, that ye haue some other louer within your study. Therfore to put away the peryll of my trauaylynge, and to assure my harte frome Jelousie, hit is no great thyng to lette me entre into your studye. 11 This passage (rendered here in John Bourchier, Lord Berners' translation, completed in 1533, and published by the King's Printer, T h o m a s Berthe11

Antonio da Guevara, Libro avreo de Marco Avrelio: emperador: y elequenttssimo orador, Chaps. XIX-XXI, sigs. g.iijr-h.iijr; trans. John Bourchier, Lord Berners, as The golden boke of Marcvs Avrehvs Emperovr and eloqvent oratovr , sigs I.iiiv—I.niir. On the place of the estudio, and referring to Guevara, see Eleazar Gutwirth, "Habitat and Ideology: The Organization of Private Space in Late Medieval Juderias," Mediterranean History Review 9 (1994): 205-34, at 216-34.

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let) re-presents the tension between male knowledge and the demands of the wife. The wife asks to be allowed to see the one room of their house— her husband's "study or closet" ("entrar en tu estudio")—which is barred to her, the servants, and his friends. In its ultimate secrecy, the closet is imbued with an unfocused but powerful eroticism: Faustine suggests that her husband must have a lover locked in his closet; she uses the signs of their shared sexual experience (in the form of her pregnancy) to try to force Marcus to let her in. Finally, Marcus answers her, "seynge that Faustynes wordes were of trouth, & bycause he sawe her wordes washed with wepyng" 12 —but not by allowing her to see into the closet. Instead, her pleas are the catalyst for his merciless tirade against women, wives, and marriage lasting three chapters, one of the most famous sections of the book. Aurelius' attack on Faustine can be seen as a defense against the danger posed by Faustine's questioning, since Faustine's plea to Marcus Aurelius to see inside his forbidden closet is itself laced with an explicit threat to his lineage: Beholde I am greatte with chylde, and shall dye, yf I see it not. And ye knowe well, that the lawe of the Romaynes is, that nothynge shall be denyed to womenne with chylde, of that they desyre. And yf ye doo otherwyse, ye do it in dede, but not of ryghte. For I shall dye with the chylde in my bodye.13 The hyperbolic flourish of "For I shall dye" is given weight by the contained threat of "with the chylde in my bodye": Marcus' continued refusal to grant her access to his closet will threaten the continuance of his lineage, the death of his yet unborn child. While Marcus Aurelius sees the danger to be in the curiosity of the wife, the curiosity is in turn aroused by the husband's marking off as forbidden a set of papers, relationships, and household space. Now that the closet operates almost solely in terms of metaphor, it takes a huge leap of the imagination to conceptualize the specific role of the closet in the social and architectural schema of the early modern house, but that role becomes clear only in the context of major architectural change in England during the sixteenth century. Alice T. Friedman has indicated a number of architectural innovations over the century which affected the lives of the inhabitants: an increase in the size and number of spaces provided for socializing and polite entertainment; the increased isolation of the Elizabethan manor house from the village community; and finally the diversification and separation of private space and service areas from the large formal "showpiece" rooms. Simultaneously, small rooms known as closets appeared all over large houses—or indeed did not appear: they could often be secreted within massive interior walls, 12 13

Bourchier, Golden boke, sig. I.imr. Ibid.

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in "false" chimney stacks, in the center of the house, or in high basements, with little or no natural light. 14 As the architectural historian Mark Girouard writes, the closet "was essentially a private room; since servants were likely to be in constant attendance even in a chamber, it was perhaps the only room in which its occupant could be entirely on his own. By the end of the Middle Ages it had acquired two of what were to remain its principal functions: it was a room for private devotions, and a room for private study and business." 15 What is striking about Girouard's account of the closet is his emphasis on its utter privacy. This insistence on the closet as a private space—the notion that still obtains in its lesbian and gay appropriations—effectively collapses the "private" nature of what went on in the closet with a supposed nonsocial, individual inhabitant of the closet, "entirely on his own," whether it be the solitary worshipper, praying and reading the Bible ("private devotion"), or the household manager studying and preparing accounts ("private study and business"). But this clear-cut model needs to be examined more closely. "Closet" was also used to designate private chapels from the late middle ages and particularly in the early sixteenth century. This closet could form "part of suites of rooms closely associated both with the chapels and with the private apartments of the sovereign" and by the mid-sixteenth century had become "a place for the sovereign [or lord] and his or her immediate entourage to sit and hear the liturgy performed." Significantly, the experience of the worshipper in this closet is not solitary (the lord being accompanied by his entourage) and the closet works in a complex relationship with a wider society: it is placed "like a gallery at one end of, and looking down into, a two-storey chapel. The family and important guests attended services up in the closet, and everyone else down in the main body of the chapel," the lord's family thus taking part in the social event, while remaining aloof from it. To describe this as "private devotion," when the devotion takes place apart from general society but still and deliberately in public view, begs the question: what is being constituted as "private" here? 16 Similar paradoxes are to be found in Lady Margaret Hoby's diary, where the (private) closet is placed in contrast to her (public) bedcham14 Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England, 8; Mark Girouard, Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House, 123-24, 132, 137. 15 Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 56. 16 See John Bickersteth and Robert W. Dunning, Clerks of the Closet in the Royal Household, 5, 7; Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 56. For this closet as a site of solitary withdrawal see Barnaby Googe's translation of Conrad Heresbach's Fovre bookes of Husbandry: "When my Seruantes are all set to woorke, and euery man as busie as may be, 1 get me in my Closet to serue GOD, and to reade the holy Scriptures." Googe trans., Fore Bookes Of Husbandry, sig. A.nir.

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ber, where she is often accompanied by her gentlewomen, acting as a sign to distinguish public praying—that is, praying in company—from private, solitary praying, which takes place in her closet. For example, on Thursday 13 September 1599 she concludes her day, "then I wrought tell almost :6:, and praied with Mr. Rhodes [her chaplain], and priuatly in my Closett:" Even here, however, the notion of "privacy" needs to be unpacked. For when Lady Margaret goes into her closet, she does not merely withdraw to privacy, but rather she enacts that withdrawal publicly, and records it textually, indicating a space of secrecy outside the knowledge of the household. Even her journal, undertaken as a spiritual "Course of examenation," is a public text in comparison to her closet writings: for example, on 4 February 1599/1600 she repairs "to my Closit, wher I praied and Writt som thinge for mine owne priuat Conscience": that "som thinge" eluding her journal which paradoxically is the very record of its writing. The closet is thus constructed as a place of utter privacy, of total withdrawal from the public sphere of the household—but it simultaneously functions as a very public gesture of withdrawal, a very public sign of privacy. It should be noted that Lady Margaret does read and write in her chamber, and "busies herself" in her closet: the activities are interchangeable, but the signification of their location is distinct. 17 Asserting that "even the most private rooms in Elizabethan houses . . . were sites where privacy could never be achieved," Patricia Fumerton has recently argued that Elizabethans habitually represented "private experience as inescapably public." The subject lived "in public view but always withheld for itself a 'secret' room, cabinet, case, or other recess locked away (in full view) in one corner of the house." The paradox of being "locked away (in full view)" is central, Fumerton claims, to the Elizabethan perception of public and private. Intimacy was achieved by attaining entrance to the private room by penetrating a long succession of decreasingly public chambers. "Such an experience must have registered with a double emphasis: one moved inward, but inwardness could be reached only after running a gauntlet of public outerness . . . The overall sense was of privacy exhibited in public, as if one were visiting a museum of the history of private life. " 1 8 A classic example of this can be found in a remarkable letter sent from Sir John Harington to Sir Amias Paulet in December 1603, at the beginning of the reign of the new king, James. Describing his account as an attempt "to recite my journal" (the contradiction of making public the most private of writings), he tells of "my gracious commande of my Sovereigne Prince, to come to his closet." The 17

Lady Margaret Hoby, Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605, Meads, 71, 70, 101, 66, 76, 98, 99. 18 Patricia Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics, 76-77, 69, 71-72.

ed. Dorothy M.

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progression to the closet, from the public realm to the private, is dwelt upon: When I came to the presence-chamber, and had gotten goode place to see the lordlie attendants, and bowede my knee to the Prince; I was orderde by a specyal messenger, and that in secrete sorte, to waite a whyle in an outwarde chamber, whence, in near an houre waitinge, the same knave ledde me up a passage, and so to a smale roome . . . Soon upon this, the Prince his Highnesse did enter . . . 19 The journey made by Harington seems to be a literal and symbolic voyage of access to the king, moving from a public realm to an increasingly private, and obscure one, through passages and into a small room. After the interview, Harington "withdrewe downe the passage, and out at the gate, amidst the manie varlets and lordlie servantes who stoode arounde." The purpose of this elaborate process is not only to produce the interview as private, but to make the knowledge of that privacy extremely public. Both the lord and the lady of the sixteenth-century country house would possess a personalized closet, possibly leading off a main social room, but more likely built inside their respective bedchambers. We might anticipate that the gentleman's closet would be in symmetry with the closet of his lady, but the limited evidence we have does not support such a view. Take for example entries in the diary of Lady Anne Clifford, countess of Pembroke, which signal her estrangement from her husband by a mutual withdrawing to their respective closets—but note again their different functions: Upon the 8th [January 1616/17] we came from London to Knowle. This night my Lord & I had a falling out about the Land. Upon the 9th I went up to see the things in the Closet 6e began to have Mr Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks, my Lord sitting the most part of the day reading in his closet. Upon the 10th my Lord went up to London upon the sudden, we not knowing of it till the Afternoon.20 She goes to "see the things in the closet" and to be read to: he to read. The distinction is further emphasised in the private account book of Sir William More, of Loseley Hall, which contains an incomplete valued inventory of his possessions, room by room, taken on 20 August 1556. 19

Sir John Harington, The Letters and Epigrams, together with "The Praise of Private Life," ed. N. E. McClure, 109-11. 1 am extremely grateful to Jason Scott-Warren (Jesus College, Cambridge) for bringing this letter to my attention. This audience came as Harington was trying to recover his fortunes: imprisoned in May 1603, as the guarantor for an unpaid debt, he seems only to have escaped from prison to avoid the plague in October. For details of the debt, see D. H. Craig, Sir John Harington, 2 5 - 2 6 . 20 Lady Anne Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D.J.H. Clifford, 4 4 - 4 5 .

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Among the rooms included are his closet, and that of his wife. Sir William's closet contains various maps, a writing slate, a perpetual calendar, a calculating board and a purse of counters, an inkstand, coffers, sets of weights and balances, a globe, scissors, seals, compasses, pens, a hammer, a penknife, a footrule, and a vast selection of texts in English, French, Italian and Latin. His wife's closet contains a table, a cupboard, several chests, caskets and hampers, a desk, working baskets, boxes, glasses, pots, bottles, jugs, conserve jars, sweetmeat barrels, an hourglass, grater, knives, a pastrymould, "a payre of great shers," brushes, a pair of snuffers, and a grand total of five books: "a boke de partu mulieris" (Sir William has the corresponding but cheaper "de partu hominis"), "the pomeaunder of prayers" and "iij. other bokes of praye[r]s." Thus at Loseley Hall, the closet over which Sir William More's wife has jurisdiction is a room stuffed with household utilities, a room where she may retire to read a rather restricted selection of books alone. However, More's closet does not suggest a decorative "World's Best Books" display: he owns everything from the classics (Cicero, Ovid, Caesar, Udall's Terence, Juvenal) through the continental standards (Petrarch, Boccaccio) and contemporary writers (Castiglione, Machiavelli), recent English poets (Skelton, Barclay), chronicles (Fabyan, Hardyng), and books of religion to books of geometry, almanacs, dictionaries, books of proverbs, books of prognostications, individual and collected statutes (of the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and "all the Statuts before," as well as convenient "brygements"), "the new boke of Justics," "Lytteltone tenures," "munsters cosmografye" and "a boke of land mesurying." Added to these are manuscripts (unpriced on the inventory) containing "a note of wards sold," "a certeficat of the barons deth," "a note for payments of fynes levyde," "a note of the knights fees in Surrye," "two paper books concernywg Shyrfs," "a great boke of presydents," and "other papers proclemadons & scoss [i.e., scrolls] knyt to gethers." 21 The texts in Sir William More's closet are evidently working papers: a resource of useful reference information with which to cross-reference and to plan—so why should they be a site of such anxiety and open secrecy?

O F T H E PARTES, PLACE A N D O F F I C E OF A SECRETORIE

[W] ee do call the most secret place in the house appropriate vnto our owne priuate studies, and wherein wee repose and deliberate by deepe consideration of all our waightiest affaires, a Closet, in true intendment and meaning, a place where our dealings of importance are shut vp, a roome proper and peculier 21 FSL ms L.b.550, fols. 3a—7a at 3a-5b; printed in "Extracts from the Private Account Book of Sir William More," ed. John Evans, Archaeologia 36 (1855): 290-93 at 290-92.

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onely to our selues. And whereas into each other place of the house, it is ordinary for euery neere attendant about vs to haue accesse: in this place we do solitarie and alone shutte vp our selues, oi this we keepe the key our selues, and the vse thereof alone do onely appropriate vnto our selues.22 Thus writes Angel Day in 1592, apparently predating the twentiethcentury historians who accept his version of the early modern closet as a locked room containing a single man or a single woman, "proper and peculier to our selues"—a key location for the emergence of the modern subjectivity.23 But the apparent language of the self is in fact a language oi the "selves": Day constantly and problematically talks of what we want to see as singular in the ambiguous plural "our selues" in the context of a published discourse "Of the parts, place and Office of a Secretorie." For the position of the gentleman's closet in the household is invoked only to express as an extended metaphor the position of a secretary in his relationship to the lord: The Closet in euery house, as it is a reposement [repository] of secrets, so is it onely . . . at the owners, and no others commandement. The Secretorie, as he is a keeper and conseruer of secrets: so is he by his Lord or Master, and by none other to be directed. To a Closet, there belongeth properly, a doore, a locke, and a key: to a Secretorie, there appertaineth incidently, Honestie, Troth and Fidelitie.24 I suggest that the male closet is not designed to function as a place of individual withdrawal, but as a secret nonpublic transactive space between two men behind a locked door. The inventory at Loseley Hall reveals that Sir William's study contains two writing desks and two chairs—"a ioyned chayre of chestnut tree," "a close cheyre of strawe," "a deske of chesnut tree," "a lyttle other deske to wryte on" 2 5 —but if the closet was the solitary withdrawing room of Girouard's account, why should it need two desks and two chairs? The extra chair and extra desk 22 Angel Day, The English Secretorie (1592 ed.), 109. All references are to this edition unless otherwise stated. 23 See, for example, Goldberg, Writing Matter, 267: "In this analogy, the secretary is his lord's closet, the place to which he retires to deposit secrets. The inferiority of the master, which replicates the structure of his abode, is replicated in the inferiority of the secretary." This is also the basis for the discussions of reading and the library in the influential History of Private Life series: see for example, Roger Chartier, "The Practical Impact of Writing," in A History of Private Life, Vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Chartier, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 111-59 (134-44 on the library). For a deft critique of this critical tradition, demonstrating how the "Montaigne model" of the solitary, withdrawn reader was and is constructed see Sherman, John Dee, 46-50. 24 Day, English Secretorie, 110. 25 FSL ms L.b.550, fol. 3a; More, "Account Book," 290.

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in the gentleman's closet are for his secretary.26 That closets might be purpose-built as studies rather than merely improvised according to personal taste can be seen in a set of four elevations drawn in sepia pen by Robert Smythson around 1600. This room, labeled "the Clossette," contains a desk and two further fold-down desks; space "for a mape," "For: incke," "For writings," "For loose Papers." The walls are shelved and pigeon-holed, to facilitate filing and processing of information. Evidently, this closet was planned as a working study, rather than as a storage place (the room has a hearth and a window) and was designed to accommodate at least two people: the fold-down desks are placed side by side, as if to be used to read the same text or consult the same map simultaneously.27 Twentieth-century commentators on the Elizabethan secretary28 have found it impossible to describe clearly the duties and responsibilities of even the most prominent secretary, the principal secretary of state. Instead, they are forced to displace the master/secretary relationship and the activity of the closet: "the ideas upon which [the secretariat] was founded and the forces which moulded its development . . . can be summed up in two words: personality and prerogative";29 the role of the secretariat "varied in power and influence with the character of the sovereign and the character of the secretary."30 Irresistibly invoking notions of "passing phases," one commentator writes that, compared with more established posts, "the younger office of the secretariat was still involved in the uncertainties of adolescence."31 In support of these proposals, the commentators draw on the work of a few writers who did attempt in the latter half of the sixteenth century to define the role of the secretary. An 26 Richard Rambuss's Spenser's Secret Career explores this area in depth, but tends to read the transactive relationships contained by the closet as an expression of an emergent early modern subjectivity (see especially his Chap. 2). 27 Robert Smythson, "The Smythson Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects," ed. Mark Girouard, Architectural History 5 (1962): at 42, 111. In Hanngton's account, James's closet is "a smale roome, where was good order of paper, inke, and pens, put on a boarde for the Prince's use" (Letters, 110). 28 See, for example, Florence M. Gner Evans, The Principal Secretary of State; David Kynaston, The Secretary of State; Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols., and Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth. For an important recent reevaluation of the contemporary and later critical accounts of the secretariat, see Goldberg, Writing Matter, Chap. 5; and Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, 97-99. 29 Evans, Principal Secretary of State, 1. 30 Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham, 1:268. See also Goldberg, Writing Matter, 258: "Whatever its medieval origins and precedents, the office was represented in the sixteenth century as the sphere of individual power and genius; serving as go-between among the king, his council, parliament, and petitioners, the limits of the office were nowhere prescribed, and the granting of the position, at least early on, was done by fiat, not by any letters patent detailing what was involved." 31 Evans, Principal Secretary, 1.

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early published discourse is to be found in Francesco Sansovino's Il Secretario (1564), a Venetian letter-writing manual depicting generic letters with examples of "actual" letters written by professional secretaries. Sansovino devotes the opening pages to a brief theoretical outline of the ideal secretary, noting that he must be faithful and secretive, serving his prince not only with his body and his secretarial skills, but also with his soul. 32 In 1592, two other discourses were written—by Nicholas Faunt and Robert Beale, both professional secretaries previously in the service of Francis Walsingham: Faunt's "Discourse touchinge the Office of principall Secretarie of Estate etc.," a "few notes, which in my poore experience I thinke it not altogether unnecessarie to bee pervsed by him, that shall enter into this place," and Beale's "Instructions for a Principall Secretarie, observed by R. B. for Sir Edwarde Wotton: Anno Domini, 1592"; in 1600 Dr. John Herbert also produced a brief "Duties of a Secretary" and Robert Cecil drafted "The State and Dignitie of a Secretarie of State." 33 Angel Day's discussion of The English Secretary, the longest extant discourse on the subject, starts by disclaiming any pretension to a prescriptive analysis of the secretary, but delivers only "what in mine owne opinion, I haue coniectured to be meetest in such a person" 34 and merely allies the rhetorical handbook with a generalized if highly suggestive notion of the master/secretary relationship as previously outlined by Sansovino. The secretary, he conjectures, is not made merely by "the praiseable endeuour or abilitie of well writing or ordering the pen" but rather by his position in a relationship with his patron, a position "which containeth the chiefest title of credite, and place of greatest assurance, in respect of the neerenesse and affinitie they haue of Trust, Regard, & Fidelitie, each with the other, by great conceyte and discretion." This formulation is amended in later editions to show that the primordial quality, as the etymology—secretary—demonstrates, is "Secrecie, trust and regarde"; the secretary is "a keeper or conseruer of the secret vnto him committed." 35 32

Francesco Sansovino, Del Secretario . . . Libri Qvattro, sigs. A r -A6 r . Nicholas Faunt: "Mr. Fants discourse touchinge the Office of principall Secretarie of Estate etc. Aprill 1592," Oxford Bodleian ms Tanner 80 fols. 91-94, a transcript dated 1610. All references are to "Nicholas Faunt's Discourse touching the Office of the Principal Secretary of Estate, &c. 1592," ed. Charles Hughes, English Historical Review 20 (1905): 499-508 at 500. Robert Beale: BL ms Additional 48149 [BL ms Yelverton 161, pt 1] fols. 3b-9b. All references are to the reprint by Conyers Read as an Appendix to Volume 1 of his Walsingham, 1:423-43. John Herbert: printed in Select Statutes and other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the reigns of Elizabeth and James 1, ed. G. W. Prothero, 166-68. Robert Cecil: all references are to Bodl. ms Ashmole 826, fol. 29, published with some amendments as The State and Dignitie of a Secretarie of Estates Place, With the care and perill thereof. 34 Day, English Secretorie, 108. 35 Day, English Secretorie (1599 ed.), 102; 102; (1599 ed.), 102; 109. 33

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The closet pervades these discourses as both the metaphor for and the physical location of the secretarial role. Faunt employs the metaphor to insist on the need for the secretary to maintain only a minimal entourage, to "vse as little as hee may the advise and help of his equalls or superiours" and to use his own servants—and as few of them as possible to accomplish what needs to be done, because "by experience I canne say that the multitude of servantes in this kinde is hurtfull and of late yeares hath bredde much confusion with want of secrecie and dispatch in that place." Instead, "of necessitie the Secre: must vse one as his owne penne, his mouth, his eye, his eare, and keeper of his most secrett Cabinett." 36 Faunt shows that the level of trust is directly proportional to access to the closet, and to the "cabinetts" (chests) which they contain: And though ye Sec: haue one more speciall to himself of the freshest maters yl occurre whereof hee onely Reserueth the Key to himself, yett oftentimes hee must Committ ye secretest thinges to the trust of this servant and bee forced to send him to and froe from one Cabinett to an other himself cannott remoue, or cause them to bee remoued to him, and therefore as those imploymentes bee of the highest trust, soe must the servant trusted therewith bee of speciall trust both for honestie and other good sufficiencie, as hath beene remembred beefore.37 As the questions of trust raised in this passage suggest, the duties of the secretary need to be understood within an analysis of the secretary's place in relation to his master or patron. Robert Cecil, himself a Principal Secretary, notes in his "The State and Dignitie of a Secretarie of State" that whereas "All officers and councellors of Princes haue a prescribed authority, either by Patent, by oathe or by Custome," the Secretary is an exception: "to them out of Confidence and singular affecion there is a liberty to negotiate at discretion at home and abroad with friends and enemies in all matters of speech38 and intelligence." Confidence, singular affection, discretion: these seem slippery grounds on which to base a career. He continues, unlike other servants of the prince, "A Secretary hath noe warrant or Comiss/on in matters of his owne greatest perrill, 39 but ye vertue and word of his Soueraigne." Here is the place of personality alleged by twentieth-century historians—but that "personality" is in fact an interaction, a contract between the secretary and his patron. Faunt conveys the master/secretary relationship by invoking an intangible, socially indeterminable, affinity: "[T]he dutie of a servant in this kind must proceed from a speciall loue and affeccion hee beareth towards 36 37 38 39

Faunt, "Mr Fants discourse," 5 0 0 - 1 . Faunt, "Mr Fants discourse," 5 0 2 - 3 . The reading of the 1642 pamphlet (sig. A3 r ); the manuscript is unclear. The 1642 pamphlet substitutes "particulars" (sig. A3V) for "perrill."

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e

his Master, y same beeinge grounded likewise upon some testimonie of his masters good opinion and recipracall love borne vnto him." Day expands on this by portraying the secretary in two simultaneous roles in relation to his lord: "being in one condition a Seruant, he is at the pleasure and appoyntment of another to be commaunded: and being in a second respect as a friend, hee is charely to haue in estimate, the state, honor, reputation and being, of him whom he serueth." 40 There is of course a problem with this: how can a man be in service to someone, implying a necessary social inequality, and at the same time be his friend, implying social parity? Day's anxiety on this question is attested to by his major revisions to the passages concerning friendship between 1592 and 1599 (whereas the majority of the "Discourse" remains intact) as he attempts to answer his own dilemma noting that "The limits of Friendshippe (as it might bee obiected) are streight, and there can bee no Friend where an inequality remayneth. Twixt the party commanded & him that commaundeth, there is no societie, and therfore no Friendship where resteth a Superiority."41 But in 1599 he goes on to counter that [T]his friendshippe so called and reputed among men, as it is a simpathie of affections firmlie vnited togithers, so is it such a vniting, as wherein what the one coueteth, the other desireth, in respect whereof worlds and life, and all are not desirable, but despised . . . [M]aie not our Secretorie as well as any other, merit neuerthelesse in this place of seruice at the handes of his Lord or master, the name of a Friend} . . . Touching the equalitie of affections, though it is still laid down that therein ought to be no difference, &C the commander and the commanded, do yet alwaies make a discordance: I maie neuerthelesse thus much deliuer thereof, that by all common likelihood it is assuredlie to be coniectured, that no one personage of estate, laieth choice vpon such a one to serue so neer about him, and to be in place of so great trust as appertaineth to a man of that reckoning, but ere he long haue vsed him, he bindeth vnto him at least some good part of his affection. For how can it otherwise be thought, but that our Secretorie being one euerie waie so waightilie to be imployed as he is, partaking as he doeth with so manie causes of importance, and vndiscouered secrets and counsels, standing as he must vpon so neere attendance, as hee that is almost (as occasion serueth) euerie minute of an houre to be vsed, but that to his Lord or Master, he must of necessitie bee verie charie, and at the least wise more particularlie then manie others, by a great deale to be beloued.42 The argument is circular: Day claims that the usual system of friendship can be ignored, and social unequals bound in a service relationship can be friends, because the patron would not let anyone in such a position of 40

Faunt, "Mr Fants discourse," 501; Day, English Secretorie, 110. Day, English Secretorie, 118. 42 Day, English Secretane (1599 ed.), 112-13. 41

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proximity unless he were a friend. In fact, what Day is suggesting is a relational space which is radically impossible under the early modern systems of patronage, service and amicitia: a relationship which literally cannot exist within society. As the space of the closet is beyond household management, the place of the secretary is beyond social determination, drawing on the rhetorics of service and friendship but operating outside them.43 Two LOVERS: T H E PRINCE AND THE SECRETARY

Operating then in a space beyond the household—the closet as site of sexual anxiety—and in a place beyond social determination—is he a friend? is he a servant?—the secretary and master in the closet are vulnerable to attack, witnessed by Faustine's accusation that Marcus Aurelius was secreting a lover in his closet. In full knowledge of this vulnerability, Angel Day is at pains to insist that this mutual fanning by the master and secretary of theflamesof united fervency does not in itself, however, constitute a valid relationship between social unequals: indeed, he stresses the probably unsavoury nature of such liaisons: I would not here be taken, that of any sortes of people that runne into all or a number of these like effects, without exception of qualitie, I intend, that they therefore were also to beare the name of friends, for so men vtterly vicious and leudly giuen, consorting in wickednes, and other base exercises, in which each spendeth his life, or desperately dyeth one for an other, might bee reputed as friendes, I haue no such meaning, nor is my intent herein to so generall a purpose. 44

The potential vicious, lewd wickedness of this relationship is picked up by other commentators. According to Robert Cecil, the secretary is the object of envy to his fellow councillors because of his "most easie and free accesse to Princes," an access which Cecil proceeds to render as an amorous encounter: "As longe as any matter of what weight is handled onely between ye Prince and ye Secretary, those Councells are compared to yc mutual affecion of two lovers."45 Fictions of the late sixteenth century 43 Jonathan Goldberg's reading of this passage stresses the impossibility of the friend/ servant formulation, but reinstates the closet as a solitary space: "Here, between the secretary and his lord, there is the distance of the master-servant relationship and the proximity of friendship; nothing could be closer than the intimate space into which the lord retires, and yet even that intimate space is separated as a special privy chamber, the space in which one can be alone (in other rooms one is not). The secretary serves in two rooms, present and absent at once; he is, exactly, 'in place of friend and servant, structured by and as a replacement for his lord, as the space of his lord's secret." Writing Matter, 268. 44 Day, English Secretorie, 118-19. 45 Bodl. ms Ashmole 826, fol. 29.

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exploit this anxiety around the locked closet and the master/secretary relationship by picking up on this striking image of Cecil's andfiguringit as sexual. However, there is a clear distinction at work in this representation. In plays where lords or kings have secretaries, the secretary is portrayed as a public counsellor, recognisable by his general frenzy, overwork, and knowledgeability. Only secretaries of ladies and queens are invariably seen as having a problematic degree of access to their mistress' closet or cabinet46 which renders their relationship sexually suspect. The closet itself can be explicitly sexualised47 or could act to render erotic activities inside the lady's closet: John Florio, englishing Michel de Montaigne, writes that "It vexeth me, that my Essayes serue Ladies in liew of common ware and stuffe for their hall: this Chapter will preferre me to their cabinet: I love their societie somwhat private; their publike familiaritie wants fauor and sauor."48 The anxiety caused by the intimate access of male servants—and particularly of literate male servants—to powerful and vulnerable female rulers or heads of household is immediately familiar as a topos from canonical Renaissance literature. In Shakespeare's King Lear, for example, Goneril relies on her steward Oswald not only to write letters to her sister, but also to "add such reasons of your owne, as may compact it more": their textual intimacy (rather than their sexual intimacy) causes Regan to assert to Oswald that she knows he is "of her bosome . . . in vnderstanding." Twelfth Night rehearses the ridiculousness of the steward/mistress relationship—through Malvolio's lecherous courting of Olivia—while simultaneously displaying the erotic possibilities granted by Cesario's textual skills displayed in "his" courting of Olivia. John Webster's Duchess of Malfi fatally takes as her lover her secretarially-skilled steward, Antonio. In Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra, the heroine is betrayed by her secretary 46 During the late sixteenth century, "cabinet" (borrowed from the French "cabinet," rather than the English diminutive of "cabin") comes increasingly into use, especially of women's private rooms. Under the French-influenced Scottish court of James, the political "cabinet counsel" came into general use sometime after 1607. The older English "closet" thus lost its chance to become popularly understood as a political term. See OED s.v. cabinet. 47 As in this epigram by Sir John Harrington, "Of a Ladyes Cabinet": "A Vertuous Lady sitting in a muse, I As oftentimes faire vertuous Ladyes vse, I Did leane her elbow on her knee full hard, I The other distant from it halfe a yard. I Her Knight to taunt her with some priuie token, I Said, Wife, awake, your Cabinet stands open. I Shee rose, and blusht, and smil'd, and soft did say, I Then locke it if you list, you keepe the key.' John Hanngton, "Epigrammes by Sir I.H. and others," in Alalia. Philoparthens louing Folly etc., sig. M4 r . I owe this verse to Juliet Fleming (Cambridge). 48 John Florio, trans., The Essayes Or Morall, Politike and Millitarte Discourses of Lo: Michaell de Montaigne, 508.1 am grateful to Warren Boutcher (QMW London) for bringing this passage to my attention in his "Vernacular Humanism in the Sixteenth Century," in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye, 189-202 at 197.

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Seleucus who reveals all her secrets to Caesar, only to find himself unemployable: proved a false secretary to Cleopatra, why should Caesar trust him? "For how could hee imagine I would be I Faithfull to him, being false vnto mine owne?" 49 In George Gascoigne's "A discourse of the aduentures passed by Master F.I.," Elinor, the object of Master F.J.'s passion, appears to write love letters to her suitor, but the recipient is not long deceived by this ploy: he guesses from the style that the letter "was not penned by a womans capacitie"—indicating that "she had mo ready clearkes then trustie seruants in store." One day, however, a letter arrives in Elinor's own handwriting, and the narrator G.T. reveals the reason: Shee had in the same house a friend, a seruaunt, a Secretary: what should I name him? such one as shee esteemed in time past more than was cause in tyme present. . . Hee was in height, the proportion of twoo Pigmeys, in bredth the thicknesse of two bacon hogges, of presumption a Gyant, of power a Gnat, Apishly wytted, knauishly mannerd, & crabbedly fauord, what was there in him then to drawe a fayre Ladies liking? Marry sir euen all in all, a well lyned pursse, wherwith he could at euery call, prouide such pretie conceytes as pleased hir peeuish fantasie, and by that meanes he had throughly (long before) insinuated him selfe with this amorous dame. The secretary is at once described as ugly, ill-witted and without manners, but he does possess skill in letters with which he can "insinuat[e] him selfe with [an] amorous dame." G. T. goes on to describe him as "This manling, this minion, this slaue, this secretary": a degradation from nonman, to sexual object of man, to physical possession—and only then to secretary. As the secretary rides to London, Elinor suffers "a disfumishing of eloquence," and F. J. discovers "an opertunitie of good aduauwtage . . . to lend his Mistresse such a penne in hir Secretaries absence, as he should neuer be able at his returne to amende the well writing thereof."50 The secretary is problematised as at once a non-man and a potent competitor in the sexual use of women, a "minion" and one who enjoys unequalled access to the most secret part of the household, figured in Gascoigne as the lady's chastity. 49

William Shakespeare, The Chronicle Histone of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters, sigs. D2V, I2 r ; Twelfe Night, Or What you Will in Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, Published according to the True Origtnall Copies, sigs. Y2 r -Z5 r ; John Webster, The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy; Samuel Daniel, Delta and Rosamund augmented. Cleopatra, sig. L4V. 50 George Gascoigne, "A discourse of the aduentures passed by Master F.I." in A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one small Poesie, 208, 215-16, 216. In the 1590s, secretary Robert Cecil was known as Elizabeth's "pygmy," owing to his small, hunched physique. Later he became James's "beagle." See Kynaston, Secretary of State, 50, 51.

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The exception to this clear distinction between male and female patrons of secretaries is Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. The king appoints Piers Gaveston "Cheefe Secretarie to the state and me"—a key appointment but apparently already a divided one, the responsibility of the secretary unclear: to Edward or to the state? Or to both? The implication of Marlowe's secretary is that secretarial service to the state at the highest level has necessarily to be mediated in a personal relationship to the monarch—and that relationship in the case of Edward II and Gaveston, is one vulnerable to the joint accusations of bad counsel, theatricality and sodomy.51 50 anxiety surrounding the locked male closet is presented to the world as sexual anxiety about the unlocked female closet. This is witnessed in the rise of a new form of miscellany publication in the early seventeenth century: whereas in the sixteenth century, miscellanies took the form of anthologies, literally gatherings of various flowers, now readers were tempted by "closets," "cabinets," "studies," collections of information hitherto unavailable and secret but now "discovered" and "disclosed" to the reader: The Rich Cabinet, The Secretaries Studie, The Queens Closet Discovered and so on. 52 Here again, the closet is being taken for granted as a public signal of a secret which could be disclosed. What these collections emphatically do not contain is details of the knowledge-processing technologies of the male study-closet: when The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt Opened was published in 1669, the world was not given the benefit of Digby's papers, which were later to become a prime source for historical research: rather, Sir Kenelme's closet "Discovered Several ways for making of Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine &c. Together with Excellent Directions for Cookery: As also for Preserving, Conserving, Candying, &c.': precisely the material we might expect to find in the closet of Sir Kenelme's lady. Perhaps now we need to look past the closet relationship—Richard Rambuss has written of "relations of the 51 Christopher Marlowe, The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England, sig. A4V. I have written on this at greater length in "Edward II: the Pliant King" (unpublished paper given at Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, University of Kent at Canterbury, July 1993). 52 For examples of published closets, see Edmond Elviden, The Closet of Counsells, containing the aduice of diuers wyse philosophers (1569); William Lowth, trans., The Christian Mans Closet (1581); John Partridge, The treasurie of commodious conceits, & hidden secrets, and may be called, the huswiues closet, of healthfull prouision (1573); [anon.], A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, or, the art of preserving, conserving, and candying. Also divers soveratgne medicines and salves (1608); Thomas Tymme, A Dialogue Philosophicall. Wherein Natures secret closet is opened, and the cause of all motion in Nature shewed out of Matter and Forme (1612); Thomas Bonham, The Chyrurgian's Closet; or, an Antidotane chyrurgicall (1630); A.M., A rich closet of physical secrets [The Childbearers Cabinet] (1652); A.M., Queen Elizabeth's closet of physical secrets (1652); W.M., The Queen's Closet opened (1655). The dates refer to the first editions: many of these were reprinted over a period of decades.

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closet," "a phrase that signifies both in the discourse of secretaryship and in the homosocial order in which the secretary has his place" 53 —and ask, what is actually going on in that closet? B E I N G SECRET: T H E T E C H N O L O G I E S O F T H E C L O S E T

As I mentioned earlier, in Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick quotes from the OED to show the range of meanings held by the closet through history since the late mediaeval period. But she cites only those meanings attributed to "closet" as a noun. "Closet" was also coming into use as a verb, a clear indication of its active and transactive potential: the OED gives the active definition of "to closet" as "to shut up or detain in a 'closet,' as for private conference, or secret treaty" and "to discuss or arrange in the closet, to scheme in secret (to do something)";54 David Hume notes in his History of England that by the time of James II in the late seventeenth century, "private conferences were . . . called closetings." 55 This indicates a recognition that the closet was a site of political transaction between men, signalling secrecy: in projecting that secrecy, however, the nature of those transactions is left vague: "conference," "treaty," "arrange," "scheme." Similarly I would argue that within a certain milieu (the milieu within which professional secretaries move) even the phrase "to be secret" carries within it an accepted implication of textual consultation and plotting (in the sense outlined in Lorna Hutson's recent work). 56 In his diary of 24 January 1582/83, John Dee writes: "I, Mr. Awdrian Gilbert, and John Davis went by appointment to Mr. Secretary to Mr. Beale his howse, where onely we four were secret, and we made Mr. Secretarie privie of the N.W. passage, and all charts and rutters were agreed uppon in generall." 57 Here "only we four were secret" evidently implies more than "we met in secret" or "we spoke in confidence": it also conveys the act of being party to secret transactions—in this case, the mapping of the northwest passage. In this section, I shall suggest some possible ways in which the siting of such secret conference in the closet is significant, not merely for its signalling of secrecy, its lack of access, but also for the way in which such conference might depend on the contents of the closet, and on the powers of retrieval exercised by the secretary. 53 The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Dtgbie Kt Opened (1660); Rambuss, Spenser's Secret Career, 59. 54 OED, s.v. closet vb. 1, Ic. The emphasis is in the original. 55 David Hume, The History of England to the Revolution, 5:70.264. 56 See Lorna Hutson, "Fortunate Travelers: Reading for the Plot in Sixteenth-Century England," Representations 41 (1993): 83-103. 57 John Dee, The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee and the catalogue of his library of manuscripts, ed. James Orchard Halliwall, 18.

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On 15 August 1582, the secretary Nicholas Faunt wrote to his friend Anthony Bacon (son of Sir Nicholas and elder brother of Francis), at that time working as an intelligence gatherer for Walsingham in France. Faunt, recently returned to London from a lengthy period as intelligencer on the Continent, writes enthusiastically of his new role as secretary, boasting that sitting in one place he has access to more knowledge than he ever could have gained in situ as a government agent. Opposed to this secretarial "Experience," the traveler is always restricted by obstacles. Partly this is due to the dangers inherent in conveying information through letters: Faunt writes that he "suspects the Conveyance of my Letters to Robineau in Paris, where you know there is hearkening after Letters that come not visible as mine cannot," and claims that "the time serveth not now almost to write any thing from hence into those parts, such search is made of ordinary Letters upon any the least suspicion: And how much such a mishap might prejudice me in the place, that I am, I leave to your good discretion to judge." More importantly, though, Faunt cites the knowledge accumulated at "home": For 1 must needs say, that this is home, when all is done; I mean the place, where I live, & have lived before, yieldeth me more Experience, than all my Travel hath done. You will say now that you are returned, that you will perceive it more. Truth, I do so; but yet where abroad I enjoyed all outward sights, &C Observations, here I see into the inward Course of things; Sc very Cabinets of Secrecies, indeed: not common to many.

Faunt writes that his "Devotion" to Bacon has increased in his absence in spite of "the slow & slender show I have made in writing to you since my return hither" but letter-writing is not the real test of his "devotion": Faunt will reserve the full tryal thereof, till I may hear of your being nearer, when I will adventure more than I can now by Letters; &c yet not half that I could afford you, if you were on this side. In the mean time I will daily augment my store, having already recovered all my Writings &C Books, which I left behind me in Italy & at Frankfort; & whatsoever I have gathered either before or sithence, remaineth here with my self as your's, whereof you shall at your pleasure dispose, &C no man else.S8

Bacon will be welcomed back not by renewed intimacy with Faunt per se, but by access to Faunt's "store"—his papers, now collected from his time on the Continent. Friendship is refocused on access to the closet. Faunt's letter betrays the physical fact of an archive, a study, which empowers 58 BL ms Additional 4109, fols. 187-96 at 187,188, 188-89,190. All references are to this eighteenth-century transcription of the letter by Thomas Birch; the original is in Lambeth Palace Library, London.

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their continued correspondence as friends. Indeed, the archive casts a different light on the supposed transmission of knowledge from master to secretary: as William Sherman has shown, intelligence was quite often anonymous in its textual form,59 the social processes by which it was authorised, generated and protected being eventually elided as the paper took its place in the closet. In his secretarial discourse Faunt describes one of the secretary's main tasks as the compiling oi "necessarie collections made into bookes"— alongside a bedside book, and a journal, the secretary should have a number of "Bookes peculiar for forraine services," such as "A booke of Treatises," "A booke of ye present negotiacions"; "Bookes for home service" such as "A survay of ye lands with the Commodities thereof," "The Sea causes," "The defence of ye Realme within ye Land," "The revenues of ye Land," "The Charges of ye Crowne," and "The Courtes of Justice." 60 Here we find again the resource closet reminiscent of, but far more extensive than, Sir William More's closet at Loseley Hall. Robert Beale advises that A Secretarie must have a speciall Cabinett, whereof he is himself to keepe the Keye, for his signetts, Ciphers and secrett Intelligences, distinguishing the boxes or tills rather by letters than by the names of the Countreyes or places, keepinge that only unto himselfe, for the names may inflame a desire to come by such thinges.61 In this passage, Beale states that the secretary must keep to himself the basic method of knowledge retrieval from the texts contained in the closet, the truly "secret" part of the secretary's job. Here—exactly where Alberti took off from Xenophon—is one of the key technologies of the early modern closet: the ability to retrieve information from its stored position in the closet. The contents of the closet are per se useless: it is in the act of retrieval and their subsequent co-ordinated use that is their true potential lies. If we are to understand the manuscript accounts by Beale, Faunt, Herbert and Cecil, we need to ask: Why were these discourses written? A practising secretary would find no reward in revealing the tricks oi his trade, and we know that these were not written for publication. We might see these as discourses which can only be read in the context of the act of patronage and the occasion engendering them; in my terms, only read59

William Sherman, "'Official Scholars' and 'Action Officers': Research, Intelligence and the Making of Tudor Policy in Early Modern England" (paper given at the London Renaissance Seminar, 1990). "Most of the individual papers [in a collection] have in common an action officer as their addressee; yet most of them were produced by anonymous, though well-informed and well-educated writers." 60 Faunt, "Mr Fants discourse," 503—8. 61 Beale, "Instructions for a Prmcipall Secretarie," 428

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able through the relations and technologies of the closet. The version we have of Nicholas Faunt's discourse is dated 12 June 1610 and seems to have no direct connection with its author: it refers to Faunt as being "nowe one of ye Clerks of the Signett to K. James," 62 apparently unaware that by 1610 he was already dead. With Beale's discourse, however, the situation is more promising. We possess an exquisitely neat copy of the discourse, bound in a quarto volume with clean copies of letters to and from Beale. The original cataloguers of the Yelverton manuscripts concluded that the compilation is "apparently contemporary and may have been intended for Beale's personal use," 63 an interpretation which treats the secretarial discourse as an aid to Beale's own practice as a secretary. And yet, when contrasted with a volume of what are clearly Beale's working papers, 64 it becomes clear that this volume is a presentation volume: the secretarial discourse is, as advertised, "observed by R. B. for S/r Edwarde Wotton: Knno Domini, 1592," and there is evidence that Wotton was a contender for the post of Secretary of State in that year.65 We should then read the volume not as Beale's working papers, nor primarily as a helping hand to Wotton on how to be a secretary, but as a display of Beale's own skill as a secretary. To this end, Beale produces a set of obscure and valuable letters—these papers relate primarily to Beale's mission to William Prince of Orange in 1576 and to Leicester's administration of the Netherlands from 1586 to 1588—and outlines the role of the secretary in the appended discourse, which opens the volume. As D. A. Miller writes, "The social function of secrecy . . . is not to conceal knowledge, so much as to conceal the knowledge of the knowledge." 66 And yet what is clear about the closet, as witnessed by Beale's volume for Wotton, is that there seems to be an injunction not to conceal the knowledge of the knowledge: indeed an injunction to reveal that knowledge. Returning to Robert Cecil's striking image of the counsels of the prince and his secretary as being like "the mutuall affecion of two lovers," we find the conceit is extended: 62

Faunt, "Mr Fants discourse," 499. BL Yelverton manuscripts catalogue (2 vols in 3 pts., typescript), entry s.v. ms Additional 48, 149. The new printed catalogue does not speculate on its function. The British Library Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts. The Yelverton Manuscripts, 1:340-43. 64 See for example, BL ms Additional 48, 150, formerly Yelverton ms 161 pt. 2, which contains Beale's working papers as a clerk of the Council, dating from 1572. 65 For example, a letter from Thomas Phelippes to Thomas Barnes, dated 31 August 1591, suggesting a letter to be written to J — , which notes that "No secretary has yet been appointed, though the Queen had given it out, and the parties, Sir Edw. Stafford and Mr. Wotton, were ready to be sworn at Nonsuch, the day Sir Rob. Cecil was sworn of the Council." Calendar of State Paper, Domestic Series, Elizabeth 1591-1594, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green, 122. Herbert's discourse was written in April 1600 and may have been aimed at higher places; by the middle of May, he had been installed as secretary. 66 Miller, "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets," 499. 63

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As longe as any matter of what weight is handled onely between ye Prince and ye Secretary, those Councells are compared to ye mutual affecion of two lovers, discouered to their friendes. When it cometh to be Disputed in Councell, it is likened to conference of Parentis, and solemnization of Marriage, The first matter, The second Order, and indeed ye one ye Acte, ye other ye Publication. When Cecil's discourse was published in 1642, the word "discouered" was silently amended to "undiscovered." 67 The alteration forces the passage to emphasise hidden secrets within the relationship, whereas the original formulation is in fact a very insightful description not of how the relationship is perceived but rather how it is to be projected, or staged: the effect required of the secretary is one of "discovered secrets." Similarly, in his treatise De repvblica anglorvm (one of the key texts to be held in the secretary's closet, according to Robert Beale), Thomas Smith, himself a practising secretary, describes his job in Parliament as "to aunswere oi such letters or thinges passed in counsell whereof they [the secretaries] haue the custodie and knowledge." 68 Smith's public role is to be seen to discover secrets. Beale's proffered volume therefore needs both to articulate knowledge of the technologies of the closet and to demonstrate the ability to "discover" that knowledge textually. Far from rendering relationships and transactions secret, the closet paradoxically draws attention to those relationships and transactions, and marks them off as socially and even ethically problematic. More to the point, what we have perceived as a contemporary social anxiety about the closet can now be seen as if not wholly created then certainly exploited by those writings which supposedly circulate within the closet. C O D I C I L : B E Q U E A T H I N G THE C L O S E T

So why does the secretary need to discover the secrets of the closet? The impulse to record textually the place of the secretary is in itself instructive because, contrary to the message of the discourse, it effectively privileges the textual closet over the personal secretary. The "personality and prerogative" model proferred by Sansovino and Day, and subsequently taken up by historians of the secretariat, willfully occludes the continuity of the secretarial place which, by transcending the death of the secretary or the prince, belies that dependence on "personality and prerogative." Despite their long service, Faunt and Beale were dependent on the patronage of 67 Bodl. ms Ashmole 826, fol. 29; Cecil, State and Dignitie of a Secretarie of Estates Place, sig. A4 r . 68 Thomas Smith, De repvblica anglorvm. The matter of Gouernement or policie of the Realme of England, sig. F.iiir.

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Walsingham, who died in 1590 (Beale was Walsingham's brother-in-law). For two years the appointment of secretary had been on ice, while the aged Burghley stood in; when they wrote their discourses in 1592, Faunt and Beale were actively seeking employment, in the form of patronage from a prospective Principal Secretary. The crisis of the closet in 1592 was caused by the rush of candidates to replace Walsingham: as a contemporary letter states, No secretary has yet been appointed, though the Queen had given it out, and the parties, Sir Edw. Stafford and Mr. Wotton, were ready to be sworn at Nonsuch, the day Sir Rob. Cecil was sworn of the Council. It is said that the Lord Treasurer seeks to bring in his son, notwithstanding the Queen seems resolved to the contrary; but my Lord being sick, the whole management of the secretary's place is in his hands, and being already a councillor, any employment of him between the Queen and his father will be a means to install him into the place. Some say the father is too wise to wish for him the secretary's place, which is dangerous in the declination of a reign, and in a doubtful succession . . . 69 Despite the Queen's reservations, the obvious candidate for the post of secretary is Robert Cecil, the son of former secretary and current Lord Treasurer, William Cecil, Lord Burghley. After Walsingham's death, Burghley has stepped in as acting secretary; his illness has allowed Robert Cecil to act de facto as secretary. What of course this situation demonstrates is that secretarial success may not lie in the relationship between master and secretary, as the discourses would have us believe, but in the very lineage system (father to son) which the secretary is always figured as opposing. At the same time as it registers this denial, however, the letter reiterates the old "personality and prerogative" saw: a secretary is a dangerous thing to be when a change of prince is imminent. Finally, of course, neither Wotton nor Stafford became secretary: Robert Cecil took up the post, and continued with it well in the reign of Elizabeth's successor, James. 70 The secretary might be said to have two bodies: the body personal and the body archival. While the death of the secretary destroys the personal relations, the body archival—the contents of the closet and the technologies of the closet—remains intact, a textual legacy which clearly gives rise to anxiety. On 20 October 1599, Rowland Whyte (himself a secretary) writes to his master Sir Robert Sydney saying that he has been told by Michael Hickes "that in perusing my Lord Treasorers [Burghley's] papers he finds many letters of yours, which he hath bundeld up, and promises to «9 CSPD 1591-1594, 122. 70 On the dangers of being a secretary during the declination of a monarchy, see also Francis Bacon, "Of Cunning," The Essaies, sigs. B7V-CV. On Burghley's moves to limit the upward social mobility for humanistically educated men that he had himself enjoyed, and his efforts to ensure his family's continuing success, see Crane, Framing Authority, 78.

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deliver them to me for your Lordship to burn. Let me know your pleasure in yt." 71 Burghley's death throws the fate of his papers, and especially the letters he received from others, into a dangerously open arena. Robert Beale tells of how after Walsingham's death "all his papers and bookes both publicke and private weare seazed on and carried away, perhapps by those who would be loath to be used so themselves" (i.e., by other secretaries?). Beale's remedy is to ensure a strict separation of the body personal and the body archival, or in his terms, the private and the public: In the Collecdon of thinges I would wish a distincaon used betweene that which is publicke and that which is private,—that is, a separadon betweene those thinges which are her Ma/estie's Recordes and appertaines unto her and those which a Secretarie getteth by his private Industrie and charge. Heretofore there was a chamber in Westminster where such thinges, towardes the latter end of Kiwg Henry 8, were kept and were not in the Secretarie's private Custodie; but since, that order hath beene neglected and those thinges which weare publicke have bine culled out and gathered into private bookes, wherby no meanes are left to see what was donne before or to give anie light of service to yonge beginners, which is not well; and therfore I would wish a Secretarie kept such thinges aparte in a chest or place and not to confound them with his owne.72 Beale's concern is bound up with the question of legacy: it is not a matter of what the secretary can call his own while he is alive, but what he can bequeath as his own, and what remains as part of the job. For here again, textual relations clash with lineage relations (Marcus Aurelius' locked closet versus Faustine's unborn child): to whom does the gentleman leave his papers, and the knowledge and subsequent power they contain? To his son? To his widow? Or to his secretary? An answer might be found ironically in the fate of the discourse which contains this passage. Beale's volume is now public property, available for readers at the British Museum, but until 1784 it was held in the library of the Yelverton estate, having passed into the possession of Sir Henry Yelverton in the early seventeenth century through his wife Margaret, one of the daughters of Robert Beale.73 Thus the "Instructions for a Principall Secretarie," readable only in the context "observed by R. B. for S/'r Edwarde Wotton," end up not as one of Wotton's papers, but as one of Beale's (the secretary). Secured thereafter by the lineage of the secretary, it passes through marriage to another gentleman, whose name it still bears. In this way, a document which in its textual content stages the supposed workings of the early 71 White to Sydney, 17 October 1599. C. L. Kingsford and William A. Shaw, eds., Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de L'Isle and Dudley, 2:403. 72 Beale, "Instructions for a Principall Secretarie," 431. 73 See DNB s.v. Robert Beale.

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modern closet (in the master-secretary relationship, a danger to lineage) performs in the route of its archival survival (via lineage) a contradiction of that content. These discourses of the early modern secretary are persuasive texts: they persuade us that the secretary is to his master as a closet is to a house; they persuade us that the closet is a figure of speech; they persuade us that the relationship between a master and his secretary obtains in an impossible space, beyond society. They deliberately obscure the fact that the closet was a real, physical space, within which men transacted in a highly complex and socially resonant way. The closet remains for us a powerful metaphor, one that is textually and polemically produced and reproduced, now most frequently—and ironically—in the queer criticism which seeks to destabilise it. Yet, as Miller has argued, even when "we know perfectly well that the secret is known, . . .nonetheless we must persist, however ineptly, in guarding it." 74 The closet, and the apparent resonances it permits between early modern and contemporary cultures, should give us pause for thought about our gay appropriations of the Renaissance. By identifying the literary output of sixteenth-century humanist England as possibly homoerotic, we effectively drain the relationships that produced that literature of their political import. The closet can function as an open secret only with our connivance. We have much invested with maintaining the early modern closet "undiscovered": as a marginal yet important locus of apparent homoeroticism in an acknowledged site of emergent subjectivity. Yet it is only when we recognise the extent of our own collusion with these closet practices that the early modern closet will be truly "discovered." 74

Miller, "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets," 207.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES London,

British

Library

Additional 4109 Additional 32, 650 Additional 33, 271 Additional 36, 259 Additional 48, 149 Additional 48, 150 Cotton Cleopatra E.IV Cotton Cleopatra E.V1 Cotton Titus B.VIII Harley 3779 Harley 3838 Lansdowne 988 London, State State State State State

Public Record

Papers Papers Papers Papers Papers

Hatfield

Office

1/84 1/97 1/102 6/13 10/6

House

Cecil Papers, mss 133, 150, 201 consulted on microfilm Oxford,

Bodleian

Library

Ashmole 826 Rawlinson D 1035 Tanner 80 Washington,

DC, Folger Shakespeare

Library

L.b.550 V.b.328

EDITIONS AND CATALOGUES OF MANUSCRIPT SOURCES Arber, Edward, ed. A transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 1554-1640 A.D. Vol. 2—Text. London: privately printed, 1875.

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INDEX

Aeschines, 113 AIDS, 162 Albert of Brandenburg, 158 Alberti, Leon Battista: Delia famiglia, 163-64, 165, 182 Aldrich, Robert, xvn, 6 Alexander (slave-boy), 122 Alexander Severus, emperor, xxxiv Alexander the Great, xxx Alexis, 122 Allen, P. S., xl amicitia, xliv, xlv, 124, 125, 126-27, 144, 150, 153, 176. See also Cicero, Marcus Tulhus; friendship Amsterdam, 12 Anne of Cleves, Queen, 136 Antiquano, Jacopo, 16 Antwerp, xl Anwykyll, John, 120 Ariosto, Lodovico: 14; Orlando Furioso, 140, 146; sixth satire of, xhii n.75 aristocracy, xxxiv Aristotle, xxx, 155; Ethics, 152; Rhetorica, 156 Arran, earl of. See Hamilton, James Artaxerxes, xxx Arundel Harington manuscript, 144—46, 147, 159, 160 Ascham, Margaret, 104 Ascham, Roger, xxxii, xxxiii, 84, 104, 108-16, 125-27, 129-31, 140, 144, 148, 149-50, 154-58, 159, 160; "Myne owne John Whitney," 148; Report and Discourse . . . of the affaires and state of Germany, 156-58; The Scholemaster, xlv, 104, 126, 148; tutorial technique of, 149-50 Askew, Anne, 41, 78 assurance: in friendship, 125, 141 Astley, Catherine, 130, 135 Astley, John, xlv, 110, 130, 156-58, 159, 160 Ausomus, 92 Ayer, Christopher, 132 Aylmer, John [Mr. Elmer], 114

Bacon, Anthony, xvi, 181 Bacon, Francis, xvi, 126, 181; "On Cunning," 185 n.70 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 181 Baker, Augustine (David), 9 0 - 9 1 , 1 0 3 104 Baker, Sir John, 129 Bale, Dorothy, 39, 69-70, 83 Bale, John, xv, xix, xliv, 3 8 - 4 3 , 5 2 - 6 3 , 6 8 - 8 3 ; Acta Romanorum pontificum, 81; Actes of Englysh Votaryes, 4 2 - 4 3 , 58, 7 4 - 7 5 ; acting company of, 52—53; Anglorum Heliades, 76; An answere to a papystycall exhortacyon, 7 1 - 7 2 ; critical opinions on, 4 0 - 4 2 ; God's Promises, 53; lllustrium maioris Britanntae scriptorum summarium, 70; Image of Both Churches, 4 1 ; as incarnation of the English Reformation, 38-39, 44; johan Baptystes Preachynge, 53; King johan, 53, 75; library of, 8 0 - 8 1 ; life of, 39-40; A Mysterye of Inyquyte, 6 2 - 6 3 , 72-74; Oldcastle, work on, 77-78; place in English studies, 40; place in Reformed Church, 4 0 - 4 1 ; plays written by, 53; as St. Paul, 39; Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytannicae . . . Catalogs, 4 1 , 69-70, 81; Select Works of, 41; The Temptation of our Lord, 53; Thre Lawes, 5 3 - 6 1 , 6 8 - 6 9 ; Vocacyon of Johan Ba, 56, 81 Barclay, Alexander, xxxv, 170; translation of Jugurth, xxxvi-xxxvn Barkan, Leonard, xvii Barker, William, 121 Barnes, Robert, 41, 72; Vitae Romanorum pontificum, 55 Barnstaple, 53 Beale, Robert, 173, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186 beating, xlv, 8 4 - 8 , 86-89, 92-102, 105, 106-108, 109-12, 114, 115, 116-17, 119, 120-21, 127 n.12; erotic potential of, 88-89 and 89 n.14, 100 bedsharing, xv, xlv, 126, 131, 148, 160; in monasteries, 5 0 - 5 1

214

INDEX

Belcari, Feo, 29 Bembo, Pietro, xlui n.75; "Tumulus PoIitiani," 12, 13-15, 16, 17-19 Benedict, St., rule of, 50 Berthelet, Thomas, 61, 69, 120, 144, 165-66 Bible, Vulgate, 62 "Birched Schoolboy, The," 94 Bishopstoke, Hampshire, 40 Blatt, Thora Balslev, 39, 42 Blount, William, Lord Mount]oy, xh Blundeville, Thomas: Three moral treatises, 159 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 114, 170 Boleyn, Anne, Queen, 117 Bologna, xxxvu, 29 Bombace, Paolo, xli Bonafous, Noberto Alexandre, 10 Bonfire of Vanities, 5 books, as gifts, xxix, xxxi—xxxn; humanist, xix, xxi; presentation of, xxix, xxx, xxxi-xxxii, xxxin, 70-71 Boswell, John, 54 Botticelli, Sandro, 9 Bourchier, John, Lord Berners, 165 Bourdieu, Pierre, 101, 102 and 101 n.49 Braintree, 118 Branca, Vittore, 11, 12 Brandon, Charles, first duke of Suffolk, 39 Brandon, Katharine, duchess of Suffolk, xxxn, 130, 144 and n.57, 159 Bray, Alan 91-92, 123, 127; "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England," xxvin; Homosexuality in Renaissance England, xxiii Bredbeck, Gregory, xvni Brennan, Michael, xxvi Brinsley, John, 84 Bristol, 105; Mint at, 128, 129 British Library, London, 107 Broman, William, 39 Bruni, 16 Bude, Guillaume: correspondence with Erasmus, xxxix-xliv, xhi—xlin; correspondence with Tunstall, xl; De tranquillitate animi, 159 buggery, xvi, xxi; concept of victim in, 100; statute against xxi, 4 4 - 4 5 , 65. See also sodomy Bullart, Isaac, 14 n.29 Bullmger, Heinnch, 66

Burgh, Benedict, xvii Burghley, Lord. See Cecil, William Burnet, Gilbert, 128; History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 47 Bury St. Edmunds School, 93 Busby, Dr. Richard, 89 n.14 Butler, Samuel, 89 n.14 buttocks, boys', 88-89 and 89 n.14, 9 8 99, 100 C , R.: The Times' 'Whistle, 91 Caernarvon, 158 Caesar, Julius, 122, 157, 170 Cafaggiuolo, Medici house at, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 33 Calborne, Isle of Wight, 118 Cambridge 40, 53, 69, 90, 93, 130; Jesus College, 39; King's College, 52, 111, 119; St. John's College, 129-30; town hall, 52; University of, 79 n.89 Camden, William, xxxix Campriano, 10 Canterbury, 40 Capon, William, 39 Careggi, 4, 26 Carlson, David, xix Carmelites, xliv, 38, 39, 69 Caspan, Fritz, xxix; Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England, xxiv Castighon d'Orcia, 10 Castiglione, Baldassare, 170 Castlehaven, earl of. See Touchet, Mervyn Cato: Disticha de mortbus, xvn Caxton, William, 126 Cecil Papers, 131 Cecil, Robert, 173, 174, 176-77, 182, 183-84, 185 Cecil, Sir William, Lord Burghley, 110, 111, 112, 113, 185-86 and 185 n.70 celibacy: monastic, xv, 42, 4 3 - 4 4 , 49, 58, 61-62, 63, 66-69, 74, 75, 81-83 Cellini, Benvenuto, 3 Cervim, Ricciardo, 10 Chandos, John, 116 Charlemagne, 54 Charles V, emperor, 157, 158 Chartier, Roger, xix n.8 chastity. See celibacy Cheke, John, 84, 130 and n.17, 148 n.64, 159

INDEX Cheke, Mary, 135 Chelsea Palace, 130, 131, 156 Chenlus, xxx Chertsey Abbey: visitation report of, 47-48 Cheshunt, 126, 127, 128, 156 Cheyney, Thomas, 117 Chiaroni, Vincenzo, 11 Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, xvii Children's Petition, The, 88-89, 100 n.44, 107 nn.57-58 chivalry, 34 Christ's Hospital Blue-Coat School, 90 Christmas, Rev. Henry, 41 church: Reformed, 4 0 - 4 1 ; of Rome, xv, 41, 54, 58, 66, 68, 71, 74 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, xxviii, xln, xliv, 4, 92, 110, 144, 147, 149, 155, 156, 160, 170; De amiatia, xxxii, 126, 131, 147,148, 150-52, 158, 160; De fimbus, 150; De officiis, 152; De oratore, 157 Cicero, Marcus Tulhs, the younger, 156 Ciceroniamsm, 38 Clausius, Werner Jacob, 10 clergy, 43—44; and sodomy, xv, 38, 4 6 52, 5 3 - 5 4 , 55-56, 58-60, 61-69 Clifford, Lady Anne, countess of Pembroke, 169 Clinton and Saye, Edward Fiennes, de, 9th lord, 129 closet case, 162 closet: as architectural space, 166-67; as metaphor for secretary, 170-72, 174, 176; published, 179; symbolic use of, xlv, 161-62; as transactive space, 1 6 2 63, 187; as verb, 180 Cobham, Lord. See Oldcastle, Sir John Colardeau, M., 12 Colet, John, xxxvm, 113, 126; Rudimenta grammatices, 95 collaboration, male literary, erotics of, xxvni Comedia, Martino della, 26 coming out, 161-62 commodity: in friendship, 150 Commons, House of, 129 Como, 8 Compendia compertorum, 46—47 Compendia monasttca, 6—47 confession, 52, 58-60 Constance, xxxviii

215

Cooke, Mr., 92 Cooper, William Durrant, 118 Corydon, 122 Cotgrave, Randle: Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 120 Courtenay, Edward, 118 Cove, Suffolk, 39 Cox, Leonard, 104, 105 Cox, Richard, 111 Crane, Mary Thomas, xxvu n.29, 85 Cranmer, Thomas, 39, 52 Crinitus, Petrus, 8 Cromwell, Thomas, xxvi-xvn, xxxi, 39, 40, 45, 46, 47, 49, 52, 53, 54, 64, 67, 70, 76, 105; anti-monastic campaign of, 44, 45-53 Cromn, Vincent, 32 Daniel, Samuel, xxiv, 84; Cleopatra, 177-78 Davis, John, 180 Davis, Natalie Zemon, xxxi Day, Angel, xlv, 170-71, 173, 175-76, 184 Day, John, 115, 156 Day, William, 111 De partu hominis, 170 De partu mulieris, 170 de Vere, Edward, earl of Oxford, xvi death: in Florence, 15-16 Dee, John, 148, 180 del Bianco, Benevenuto, 5 del Guerra, G., 11 Del Lungo, Isidore, 10, 11, 12, 22; Florentia, 10 Demosthenes, 113 Denny, Sir Anthony, 126, 128, 130, 131 Dictionary of National Biography, 117 Digby, Sir Kenelme, 179 Dionisotti, Carlo, 11, 12 diplomacy, xxv, 85 Donatus, 113, 120-21 Doncaster, 39 Dorset, marquess of. See Grey, Henry Downes, Geoffrey, 39 dowry, xviii Dudley, John, earl of Warwick (later duke of Northumberland), 141 Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester, 183 Dunwich, Suffolk, 39

216

INDEX

Edgerton, William L., 118-19 Edmunds, John, 39 education: 149; humanist, xix-xxi, xxiii, 25, 84-121, 122-23, 126-27; segregated, 88. See also textbooks, educational; vulgana Edward VI, King, 54, 70, 79, 118, 128, 129, 136, 170 Edwards, Richard, 116; Damon and Pithias, 150, 153; The Paradise of Dainty Devices, 150 Eldrick, Mr., 116 Elizabeth, Princess, later Queen, xxxiv, 79, 80, 87-88, 110, 111, 113, 116, 124, 126, 128, 129-30, 131, 135, 136, 158, 185 Ellis, Havelock, 7; Sexual Inversion, 6 Elmer, Mr. See Alymer, John Elton, Geoffrey, 45, 54 Elyot, Sir Thomas, xxix—xxxi, 84, 102, 126; Boke Named the Gouernour, xxix-xxxi, xhv, 152-53; on Damon and Pithias, 152-53; The Education or bringinge vp of children, 106; Image of Governaunce, xxxiv Elzevier brothers, 12 Emler, William, 117 Emmison, F. G., 92 Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality, 7 Episcopius, Nicholas, Junior, 8, 9, 10 Equicola, Mario, 14 Erasmus, Desidenus, of Rotterdam, xxxi, xxxvii, xl—xli, xliii, 8, 67, 68, 71, 84, 103, 116, 126, 153: correspondence with Bude, xxxix-xhv, xlii—xliii; Declamatio de pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis, 94-95, 104-105, and English translations of, 104-105; De civilitate morum puerilium, xxxvii; De conscribendis epistolts, xxxiii; on friendship, 153-54; Pace's portrayal of, xxxix; Parabolae, 153; on Virgil's second eclogue, 122 Essex, 39; Archiadiaconal Records of, 92 Este, Leonello d', 36 Este-Gonzaga, Isabella d', 14, Eton College, xvi, xlv, 85, 92, 110, 111, 116-17, 119 Exhortacyon to avoyde false doctrine, An, 71

Fabroni, Antonio, 19-20 Fabyan, 170 Fairfield, Leslie, 83 faulthnes, xlii and n.72 Faunt, Nicholas, 173, 174-75, 181, 182, 183, 185 Fausto, Sebastiano, 156 Feckenham, John, 159 Ferrara, xxxvii feudalism, xxiii, xxxiv, 31-32, 124-25 Ficino, Marsiho, 4, 29, 30 Fiesole, 19, 21, 28, 33, 37 Fitzroy, Mary, duchess of Richmond, 40, 70,78 Florence, xx, xliv, 3, 4, 5-6, 8, 9, 10, 20, 21, 22, 27, 29, 32, 33, 35, 163, 164; Council of Ten, 5; Ufficiah di' notti, 9-10 Florio, John, xxvui, 177 Forcian law, 89 Foucault, Michel, xxi, xxii Fowler, John, 128 Foxe, John, 40, 66, 69, 78, 83 Franck, Peter, 72 Franco, Matteo, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 3 1 , 32, 34; sonnets of 29-30 Friedman, Alice T , 166 friend, masculine, image of, xxvui friendship, xxiii, xxv, xxvu, xxviii, xxxi, xxxui, xlii, xhv, xlv, 38, 122-25, 1 2 6 27, 132-35, 139, 141-47, 150-54, 156, 160; learned, 34; and literature, xxvui, 38; in Virgil's second eclogue, 122-24; and servants, 175. See also amicitia Frith, John, 4 1 , 72 Fuller, Thomas, 40, 121 Fumerton, Patricia, 168 Ganymede, myth of, xvi—xvni Gardiner, Stephen, 118, 158, 159 Gann, Eugenio, 35 Garrett [or Gerrard], Thomas, 72 Gascoigne, George: "Adventures passed by Master F.J.," 178 Gasquet, Francis, 78 gay history, xxiii gay men, xxiii, 162, 163 n.6; relationship with Renaissance, 3 Gaza, Theodore, 25 Gennep, Arnold van, 101

INDEX gentleman: as social ideal, xxxiv Germany, 40, 114 Gesner, 40 gifts: circulation of, xxv; women as, 32-33 Gilbert, Adrian, 180 Gilhs, Pieter, 153-54 Giovio, Paolo, 10, 12, 13-14, 19, 157: Elogia veris clarorum virorum, 8, 13 Girouard, Mark, 167, 171 Gloucester, duke of. See Humphrey Goldberg, Jonathan, xviii, xxvii—xxvui, 34, 127 Goodrich, Thomas, 39 Grafton, Anthony, xix-xx, 35, 36-37, 148 Grammarians' War, 113 Grant, Edward, 84, 112: A President of Parentes, 106 Great Tey, Essex, 92 Greece, Ancient, xxn, 6 Greek studies, 37 Greenwich, 40, 52 Gregory (Udall's servant), 117 Gregory I, Pope, 42 Grey, Henry, marquess of Dorset, 114, 129, 134, 135-40, 141-42, 143 Grey, Lady Frances, 114, 137-39 Grey, Lady Jane, 113-14, 124, 129, 134, 135-36, 138, 139 Gnndal, William, 129, 148 n.64 Guanno da Verona, 36 Guevara, Antonio da: Ltbro aureo de Marco Aurelto, 165-66 Guez, Jean de, Sieur de Balzac: Lettres choisies, 12—13 Guy, John, 54 Haddon, Walter, 110, 111 hagiography, 39 Hake, Edward, 104, 105 Hales, J. W., 118 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 161 Hall, Edward: Chronicle, 78 Hallam, Henry, 4, 5, 19 Halpern, Richard, 85 Hamilton, James, 2nd earl of Arran, 48 Hamilton, Patrick, 41 Hamon (Seymour's servant), 140-41 Hampton, Bernard, 110 Happe, Peter, 42

217

Hardyng, John, 170 Harington, Esther or Ethelreda or Audrey, 140 Harington, Henry: Nugae Antiquae, 145 Harington, Hester, 140 Harington, John, xxxii, 138-39, 140-43, 144, 145, 146, 147, 158-59, 160; Booke of freendeship, 144, 147, 158, 159, 160 Harington, Sir John (the younger) 140, 146 and n.61, 159; Orlando Furioso, 140, 146, 168-69 Harley papers, 76 Harris, Jesse, 39, 42, 77 Harrison, William, 76 Harrow School, 93 Harvey, Gabriel, 107-108, 148 Hatfield House, 129, 130, 131, 156 Haynes, Samuel, 131 Hearne, Thomas, 76-77 Henry VIII, King, xxx, xxxviii, 48, 52, 54, 75, 76, 79, 85, 127, 128, 140, 141, 170, 186; Answere to the petitions of the traytours and rebelles in Lyncolneshyre, 63; divorce case of, xxvi Herbert, Dr. John, 173, 182 Heresbach, Conrad, 104 Herrtage, Sidney J. H., 119 Hertford, lord of. See Seymour, Sir Edward Hickes, Michael, 185 Hill, Juliana, 11 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 7 historiography: humanist, 3 4 - 3 7 ; Protestant English, xhv, 38, 71-83 HIV, 162 Hoby, Lady Margaret, 167-68 Holmshed, Raphael, 76 Holland. See Netherlands Holt, John: Lac puerorum, xxxviii Holy Roman Empire, 54 Homer, Iliad, 33 homoeroticism, xlv, 160 homosexuality, male, xxi, xxii, xlv, 3, 6, 11, 127; and segregated education, 88; studies in, xliv, 3, 6 - 7 homosociality: relations of, 58; theory of, xx n . l l Hooper, John, 66-67 Hoord, John, 117 Hopkins, John, 105

218

INDEX

Horace, xix, 70, 92; Odes, 24 Horman, William, xlv, 95-96, 103, 108, 112, 113, 120 hospitality, xxv, 133-34 House, Seymour Baker, 44, 52 Howard, Thomas, 2nd duke of Norfolk, xxxvi Hughey, Ruth, 144-45, 147, 159 and 144 n.55 humanism, xix-xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxix, 3, 5— 6, 22, 68 n.64, 7 0 - 7 1 , 84-86, 99, 111, 123, 124-25, 160; continental, xix; and death, 16; definition of, xix-xxi, xxix; English, 3, 38; Erasrman, xxv; in opposition to feudalism, xxxiv-xliv, 31—34; program of, xix-xxi, xxiii; and religion, xxiv—xxv; as social relations, xxix; social topoi of, 38; as threat to alliance, xxvii-xxvin, xxxvii, xliii-xliv, 32-34, 37, 102-104, 186-87. See also education: humanist, historiography: humanist humanists, xxiii—xxiv, xxix, xxxiv, 5, 16, 28, 29, 36, 104, 124-25, 160; women, 36, 115 Hume, David: History of England, 180 Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, 86 Hungerford, Walter Lord, xvi Hus, Jan, 72 Hutson, Lorna, xxv, xvin, 108, 139, 180 Hutten, Ulrich von: De guaici medtcma et morbo Gallico liber unus, 61 incontinence, 48, 49, 50, 51, 61; definition of, 51 Inns of Court, 86 Institucion of a gentleman, The, 101 intimacy, male, xxviii, xlv, 160 Ipswich, 39 Italians, xv Italy, 3, 6, 7; academic community of, 11 James II, King, 180 James VI and I, King, 168-69, 183, 185 James, Mervyn, xxiv, xxv, 124—25, 139 Jardine, Lisa, xix—xx, xxv, 36-37, 148 Jed, Stephanie, 164 Jerome, William, 72 John VIII, pope, 4 2 - 4 3 Jonson, Ben, 84, 100 n.45; Poetaster, xvn Jordan, Constance, 31

Joye, George, 4 1 , 43 n.12; The defence of the Manage of Pretstes, 63 Julius II, Pope, 42 Juno, xvii-xviu Jupiter, xvii—xvui Juvenal, 92, 170 K., F., 150 Kastan, David Scott, 44 Kelston, 140 Kempe, William, 84 King's Chapel, 140 King's Grammar (1540), 115 Klapisch-Zuber, Chnstiane, 3 2 - 3 3 knight, chivalric, xxxiv; humanist portrayal of, xxxv Koestenbaum, Wayne, xxviii, 4 Lacock Abbey, 129 Lambert, John, 72, 73 Landino, Cristoforo, 4, 19 Landucci, Luca, 9 Langton, Thomas, bishop of Winchester, xxxvii Latimer, Hugh, 46 Latimer, William, xxxvii Latin, xlv, 12, 24; as puberty rite, 1 0 0 101, 102 Latinity, 36 Latins. See vulgana Layton, Richard, 49 Lebano, Edoardo, 30, 31 Lee, Edward, archbishop of York, 39, 154-55 Legend of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, The, 134 Leicester, 52 Leicester, earl of. See Dudley, Robert Leland, John, 39, 40, 75-77, 80, 117; Itinerary, 77 leprosy, 60-61 LeStrange, Roger, 89 letters, 37; amatory, xxxiu; conciliatory, xxxiii; familiar, 156; of friendship, xxxiu; stories told through, 34 Lex Forcia, 89 libraries: monastic, 78-79; national, 79-80 Lily, William: Angh Rudimenta, 95 Lincolnshire: risings in, 63, 64, 65

INDEX lineage, 34; threatened by sodomy, xviii, xxvii-xvin literature: and friendship, xxviii; and sodomy, xviii-xix Littleton, Sir Thomas, 170 Livy, 156, 157 London, 40, 110, 130; ecclesiastical courts in, 100 n.46; Fleet Prison, 157; Tower of, 129, 140, 144, 158 Lords, House of, 129 Loseley Hall, 169, 170, 171, 182 Louvain, xli, 39 Luther, Martin, 72 Lutheranism, 40 Lydgate, John: Stans puer ad mensam, 86 LyIy, John, 100 n.45, 126, 153 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 170 Maecenas, xix, xli, 38, 69-70 Magdalen College School, Oxford, 96-97, 105 Mager, Donald N., 44 Mai'er, Ida, 34-35 Maiden, 39 Maldon, 53 Malerba, Alberto di, 26 Manners, Henry, 2nd earl of Rutland, 129, 133 Manuche, Cosmo: The Loyal Lovers, 55 n.40 Margaret of Angouleme, Queen, 79 Markham, Isabella, 158 Marlowe, Christopher, Dido Queen of Carthage, xvii-xviii; Edward H, 179 Marlowe, John, 105 marriage, 83, 100, 103; as gift exchange, 3 2 - 3 3 ; of priests, 54; prohibition of, 43, 61-62, 63, 66-69 Marston, John, 90, 91, 103: The Scourge of Villanie, 90, 103 Martial, 92 Martines, Lauro, 17, 35-36 martyrs, Protestant, 41 Mary Tudor, Princess, later Queen, 40, 118, 136, 170 Mary, Blessed Virgin, 58 Mason, Sir John, 110, 111 Masten, Jeff, xxviii McClure, George, 15-16 McCusker, Honor, 39, 42 Medici, Clarice Orsini de', 7, 19-24, 26,

219

28, 3 1 - 3 3 , 34, 35, 37, 125; representations of, 2 2 - 2 3 , 34 and 22 nn.46, 48 Medici, Cosimo de', 8 Medici, family of, 32; household of, 2 1 , 35; library of, 16-17, 2 1 , 35 Medici, Giovanni de', 21, 25, 26 Medici, Guihano de' [brother of Lorenzo], 17n.37 Medici, Guihano de' [son of Lorenzo], 26 Medici, Lorenzo de', 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 2 4 - 2 5 , 26-29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 125; death of, 16-17; group surrounding, 4 - 5 , 7, 19, 2 8 - 3 1 and 31 n.72; Poliziano's monody on, 18-19 Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de', 24, 27,34 Medici, Nannino de', 29 Medici, Piero de', 10, 2 1 , 25, 26 Melanchthon, Philip, 40, 72-73 Mencke, Friedrich Otto, 10 Merchant Taylors' School, London, 121 Merton Abbey, 61 Michelangelo, Buonarotti, 3, 4, 5, 7, 19 Michelozzo, Bernardo, 27 Michelozzo, Niccolo, 21, 27 midwives, 57-58 Miller, D. A.: "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets," 161, 162, 183, 187 Mills, Lauren J.: One Soul m Bodies Twain, 126 monasteries, xv, xix, xliv, 38, 39, 41-42, 44-52, 53, 54, 55, 6 1 - 6 8 , 69-70, 76, 77, 78-79, 8 1 - 8 3 ; act concerning (1536), 46, 47, 54, 65; corrupt life in, 4 6 - 4 7 , 64-66; suppression of, 4 4 - 4 6 , 65-67; women in, 5 1 - 5 2 . See also monks; nunneries; visitations mobility, social, xvii, xxv monks, xlv, 44, 46-52, 53, 54, 5 5 - 5 7 , 58, 59-60, 61-69, 7 1 - 7 5 , 77, 78, 8 1 82; novice, 65-66 Montaigne, Michel de, xxviii, 177 Moorehead, Alan, 28: "The Ghost in the Villa," 2 2 - 2 3 ; The Villa Diana, 23 morbus gallicus. See syphilis More, Lady, 170 More, Sir William, 169-70, 171, 182 More, Thomas, xxxvin, xl, xli, 71 Monson, Richard, 63-66 and 66 n.57, 157; An inuectiue ayenste the great and

220

INDEX

Monson, Richard (cont.) detestable vice, treason, 64; A lamentation in whicbe is shewed what ruyne cometh of seditious rebellyon, 64; A remedy for sedition, 64; unpublished writings of, 65-66 and 66 n.57 Morley, Henry, 118 Muenster, Sebastian: Cosmografye, 170 Mulcaster, Richard, xlv, 84, 98-99, 101, 103, 121; Positions, 99, 115 Munster, Sebastian. See Muenster, Sebastian nakedness, 102, 105 Nashe, Thomas, 87-88 Nedham, Marchamont, 88 Netherlands, 40, 183 new learning, xliv, 39, 68 and n.64, 70 Newark College, Lancashire, 49 Nicasius, Mr. See Yetswaert, Nicasius Norfolk, duke of. See Howard, Thomas Northampton, marquess of. See Parr, William Norwich, 39, 69 Norwold, Richard, 49 nunneries, 5 1 - 5 2 . See also monasteries Oecolampadius, Johann, 72 Oldcastle, Sir John, Lord Cobham, 4 1 , 77-78 Olympus, xvii Ong, Walter, 100-101, 102: "Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite," 100-101 Oponnus, Joannes, 78 Orbilius, 9 2 - 9 3 , 121 Orio, Hippohto, 8 Orsini, Clarice. See Medici, Clarice Orsini de' Orsini, family of, 19, 32 Orsini, Jacopo de', 32 Osborn, Peter, 130 n.17 Ossory, 40, 70, 80 outing, 162 Ovid, 92, 159, 170; Tristia, xxxu-xxiii Oxford, 40, 90, 93, 116; Bodleian Library, 76, 77; Corpus Christi, 117; New College, 52 Oxford English Dictionary, 180

Pace, Richard, xxxvn—xli; De fructu qui ex doctrina percipttur, xxxvii-xh Padua, 30, 63; University of, xxxvn Paget, William, 118' "Pantolabus, Ponce": Genealogye of heresye, 72-73 Parker Society, 41 Parliament, xxi, 89 Parr, Catherine, Queen, 118, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 144 Parr, William, marquess of Northampton, 129, 134-35, 138 Parry, Thomas, 130, 135 patronage, xix-xxi, xxvi-xxvii, xix, xxxiu, xxxiv, 12, 14-15, 17-19, 34, 35, 37, 7 0 - 7 1 , 176 Paul, St., 39; epistle to the Romans, 6 2 63, 64-65 Paulet, Sir Armas, 168 Payne, W, 119 Paynell, Thomas, 61 Pazzi conspiracy, 17 n.37, 21 Peacham, Henry: The Compleat Gentleman, 89 n.14 Pecoraro, Marco, 14 pedagogy. See education Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, The, 7 Petrarch, Francesco, 170 Petre, Sir William, 110, 111, 135, 140, 143 Philip, king of Macedonia, 113 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 10, 16— 17, 19 Pigot (Seymour's servant), 141 plague, 110, 129 Plato, 111, 155; Phaedo, 114 Platonism, 4, 19 Plautus, 92 Plutarch: De educatione puerorum, 1 0 5 106; De tranquillitate animi, 159 poetry, love, 17 Pole, Reginald, 64 Poliziano, Angelo, xliv, 3, 4, 5, 7 - 9 , 1 0 15, 16-28, 29, 3 1 , 33-37, 125; death of, 7, 8-19; homoerotic poetry of, 7, 8, 19; Miscellanea, 37; monody on Lorenzo's death, 18-19; Opera omnia (1553), 8-9; quarrel with Clarice Orsini, 19-28; translation of Iliad, 21,33

INDEX Pomeaunder of Prayers, The, 170 poverty, of humanists, xln n.72 Poynet, John, 63 printing, xxv, J privacy, 100, 161-62, 167-69 Privy Council, 92, 110, 117, 118, 119, 121, 128 Propertius, xix Protestantism, xxiv-xxv; literary tradition of, 69. See also Church, Reformed; Reformation, English Public Record Office, London, 138 Pulci, Luca, 29 Pulci, Luigi, 2 1 , 28, 29-32, 34; Confessione, 30; Morgante, 5, 7; sonnets of, 29-30 Pythagoras, 152 Quintilian, xxxi, 92; lnstttutio oratorta, 105-108, 109, 110; beating discussed in, 106-108; Harvey's notes on, 107— 108 Radclif, Ralph: De sodomae incendto, 55 n.40. Rainoldes, John, 107 n.57 Rambuss, Richard, 180 Ravisius, Joannes (Textor): Officina, 55 Reading Grammar School, 105 reading, xix n.8; together, xxviii, 152, 160 Redford, John: Wit and Science, 93-94 Redman, John, 155, 156 Reformation, English, xliv, 38-39, 44, 83 Renaissance, 5 - 6 ; English, 3; Italian, 3; relationship to homosexuality, xxii-xxiii Rhenanus, Beatus, xh Rhodes, Hugh, 86 Rhodes, Mr., 168 Richmond, Leigh: Fathers of the English Church, 4 0 - 4 1 rites de passage, 101 Robin, P. A., 118 Robineau, 181 Rome, xix, 8, 19, 22, 39, 53. See also church: of Rome Roper, Lyndal, 58 n.45 Roscoe, William: Life of Lorenzo de' Media, 14-15, 22 and 15 n.34 Rosenberg, Eleanor, xxvi Rowse, A. L., xxn Rubin, Gayle, xx n . l l , 32

221

Ruggiero, Guido, xxvii Russell, John Lord, (later earl of Bedford), 129 Russell, John: Boke of Nurture, 86 Rutland, earl of. See Manners, Henry Ryan, Lawrence, 131 Ryanus, Petrus, 42 Sackville, Sir Richard, 110, 111-12, 113, 115, 116 Sadler, Ralph, 48 Sallust: Jugurth, xxxvi Salutati, Coluccio, 16 sanctuary, 44-45 Sansovino, Francesco: Il Secretario, \Ti, 184 Saslow, James M., xvu, 3 Savanarola, Girolamo, 4, 5, 6 Sawtry, James, 43 n.12; The defence of the Manage of Preistes, 63 Scala, Alessandra, 37 Scala, Bartolomeo, 20 scholar: xxxiv; image of, xxi, xxvii scholarship, 38 schoolmasters, xliv, 84-86, 88-100, 1 0 2 104, 105-21; beating, 88-90, 9 2 - 9 5 , 96-100, 105, 106-108, 111-12, 1 1 6 21; and sodomy, 89-92, 99-100, 1 0 3 104, 105, 106-108, 117-19; textual, 108-10, 119-20 schools, 85; grammar, 86. See also Bury St. Edmunds School; Eton College; Harrow School; Magdalen College, Oxford; Merchant Taylors' School; Reading Grammar School; St. Olave's School; St. Paul's School; Westminster School; Winchester College secrecy, 180, 183-84 secretaries, xlv, 34, 170-80, 182, 183-87: danger of being a, 185 n.70; literary representations of, 177-79; twentiethcentury commentators on, 172 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, xx n . l l , 161—62, 180; Epistemology of the Closet, 161, 162, 180 Seneca, 92; De beneficiis, 152 servants, xv—xvi, xvii-xvui, 91, 163, 174, 175 Servius Maurus Honoratus, 122-23; commentary on Virgil, 122-23 Seymour, Lady Anne (Stanhope), 138

222

INDEX

Seymour, Lady Margery, 136 Seymour, Sir Edward, 1st duke of Somerset, 127-28, 129, 131, 132, 138 Seymour, Sir Edward, earl of Hertford (b. 1539), 138 Seymour, Sir Thomas, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Lord Admiral, 127-29, 130, 131, 132-39, 140-43, 144, 145-46, 158 Shakespeare, William, 126; King Lear, 177; Twelfth Night, 177 Sharington, Sir William, 128, 129, 13233, 138-39 Sherman, William, 148, 182 Sherry, Richard, 104, 105 shields, chivalric, xxxvii Shrewsbury, 52 Sidney, Philip, 69 sin, 161 Sinfield, Alan, xlii n.72 Sixtus IV, Pope, 42 Skelton, John, 170 Smith, Bruce, xvii, xviii, 100 and n.47, 127 Smith, Sir Thomas, 129, 135, 140, 141, 159, 160; De repubhca anglorum, 184 Smith, William, 100 n.46 Smythson, Robert, 172 Socrates, xxxiv, 111 Sodom and Gomorrah, xxi-xxn, 4 1 , 89 sodomite, image of, xxviii sodomy, xxv, xxix, xlv, 3, 83; accusation of, xv-xvi, xxvu-xviii, xxii, xxiii, xliii, 9-10, 8 4 - 8 5 , 92; act against, xxi, 4 4 45, 65; anxiety about, xvui; biblical narratives of, xxi-xxii; and the clergy, xv; definition of, xxi-xxii; in Florence, 9; and the law, xv; in monasteries, xv, 51, 61—66; Paul's injunction against, 6 2 - 6 3 , 6 4 - 6 5 ; prosecutions for, xvi; punishment of, 9; as result of celibacy, 6 2 - 6 3 ; as theatrical character, 55-60 and 55 n.40; as threat to alliance, xxvu-xviii, 34, 102-104 Somerset, duchess of. See Seymour, Lady Anne Somerset, duke of. See Seymour, Sir Edward Southampton, earl of. See Wriothesley, Sir Thomas Spain, 163

Spannocchi, Antonio, 10 Sparrow, John, 18 Spenser, Edmund, 69 St. Leger, Robert, 80 St. Leger, Sir Anthony, 80 St. Leger, Warham, 80 St. Olave's School, 93 St. Paul's School, 98, 113, 119, 121 Stafford, Sir Edward, 185 Stanbridge, John, xlv, 112, 120: Vulgaria, 97-98, 103, 108 Starkey, Thomas, 79 n.89: Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, xxxv Stationers' Register, 115 Stevens, Forrest Tyler, xxxin Stokesley, John, bishop of London, 39 Stone, Lawrence, 86, 9 0 - 9 1 ; The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1S001800, 90 Stonewall, 162 Stow, John, 76 Strasburg, 66 Straten, Dirk van der, 70 Strocchia, Sharon, 15—16 Strozzi, Tito Vespasiano, 8 studies, similitude of, xxvii, xxxi, xln, xliv, 38 studium (Florentine studio) 27, 35 Studley, John: The Pageant of Popes, 81-82 Sturm, Johann, xxxii, 109-10, 111 Sturton (Seymour's servant), 141 subcultures, gay, xxin subjectivity, emergent early modern, 1 6 2 63, 171 Sudeley Castle, 129 Suffolk, duchess of. See Brandon, Katharine Suffolk, duke of. See Brandon, Charles Swaffham, Norfolk, 40 Switzerland, 40 Sydney, Sir Robert, 185 Symonds, John Addington, xxii, xliv, 3 - 8 , 19, 37 and 3 n.2, 6 nn.10, 12; Memoirs, 4; A Problem in Greek Ethics, 6; A Problem in Modern Ethics, 6; "The Renaissance," 6; Renaissance in Italy, 3 - 7 ; Sexual Inversion, 6; Studies of the Greek Poets, 6 symposium, Platonic, 7 syphilis, 61

INDEX Tallis, Thomas, 140 Taverner, Richard: A ryght frutefull Epystle, 67-68 Terence, 117, 170; comedy of, 120; in grammar school curriculum, 120-21 and 121 n.86 textbooks, educational, xxxiii, xlv, 94-98, 99-100, 102-103, 105-16, 120-21 Thetford, 52, 53 Thorndon, Suffolk, 39, 40 Thorpe, William, 41 Thousand Notable Things of sundry sorts, A, 86-87, 88 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 134 Tiptoft, John, earl of Worcester, 126 Tiro, 156 Titus and Gisippus, story of, xxxi, 152-53 Torrentino, Lorenzo, 8 Tottel's Miscellany, 145 Touchet, Mervin, earl of Castlehaven, xvi, xxii, 100 n.47 Toulouse, 39 Toy, John, 105 transactions, knowledge, xxv-xxvu, xxvni, xxix, xliv, xlv, 104-16, 154-58; definition of, xxv-xxvu translations, xxxvi Trexler, Richard, 23 Tunley, Thomas, 100 n.46 Tunstall, Cuthbert, xxxvn, xl Tusser, Thomas, 117, 119-20; Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, 117, 119-20; verse on Udall, 119 Tusser, William, 119 Tyndale, William, 41, 71 Tyrwhit, Sir Robert, 129 Ubaldino, Robert, 15 Udall, Nicholas, xvi, xlv, 84, 85, 92, 1 1 6 21; Floures for Latine Spekynge, 117, 120-21, 170; life of, 117-18; Paraphrase of the New Testament, 118; sodomy accusation against, 117—19 universities, 86, 9 0 - 9 1 , 93, 103 Valor Ecclesiasticus, 45-46 Varro, 92 Venice, xxvii, xxxvii, 9 Vere, John, earl of Oxford, 39 Vergil, Polydore, 75, 7 7 - 7 8 ; Histona Anglica, 78

223

Verona, Guarino da, 105 Vettori, Pier, 14 Vinci, Leonardo da, 9 Virgil, xix, 25, 70, 122; Aeneid, 24, 8 7 88; second eclogue, 122-24 visitations, 4 6 - 5 2 , 61-62, 63-66; General Injunctions issued following, 52; of nunneries, 5 1 - 5 2 ; questions asked during, 4 9 - 5 2 ; reports of, xliv, 63, 64, 65, 81-82 Vives, Juan Luis, 84, 9 2 - 9 3 , 115; Lingua: latmx exercitatio, xxxv-xxxvi, 96, 102-103 Volpi, Guglielmo, 30 Vos, Alvin, 130-31 votaries. See monks vulgaria, xxxviii, xlv, 95-98, 99-100, 104, 108, 109, 112-13, 120, 149 Wall, Wendy, xix Walsingham, Sir Francis, 173, 180, 181, 184-85, 186 Wardon, abbot of, 50 Warley, Humphrey, 76 Warner, Michael, xxi Warwick, Lord. See Dudley, John Webster, John: The Duchess of Malfi, 177 Weeks, Jeffrey, 6 Welles, Elizabeth, 27 Wentworth, Thomas Lord, 39, 69-70 West Dereham, 49, 61-62, 70 Westminster School, 8 7 - 8 8 , 89 n.14, 93, 99, 112, 116, 118 White, Paul Whitfield, 44 Whitney, John, 126-27, 131, 140, 144, 148, 150, 155, 156 Whittinton, Robert, xlv, 120; translation of De cwilitate morum puerdium, xxxvn; Vulgaria, 96, 97, 103, 108, 109, 112 Whyte, Rowland, 185 Wightman, William, 140 Wigley, Mark, 164 William, Prince, of Orange, 183 William, Prince, duke of Cleves, 104 Williams, W. H., 118 Wilson, Thomas, xv-xvi, xvii Winchester College, 117 Windsor, 86, 109, 110, 118 witches, 57-58

224

INDEX

Withals, John: Shorte Dtctionarie for yonge begynners, 93 Witt, Ronald G., 15 Wolsey, Thomas, xxxvu women: education of, 113-15; and humanism, xx, xl-xhv, 5, 2 2 - 2 3 , 28, 31-34, 113-15; and sodomy xv-xvi, xvu-xvui Woods, Gregory, xvii World War H1 xxiii Wotton, Dr. Nicholas, 110, 111 Wotton, Sir Edward, 173, 183, 185, 186 Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, earl of Southampton, 119 and n.82, 129 Wunderli, Richard, 100 n.46

Wychf, John, 72 Wyngfeld, Sir Humphrey, 39 Xenophon: Oeconomicus, 163, 164, 165, 182 Yelverton, Sir Henry, 186 Yelverton, Margaret Beale, 186 Yelverton manuscripts, 183 Yetswaert, Nicasius, 110 York, 53 York, lord of. See Lee, Edward Zwingli, Ulrich, 72