Early Modern Communi(cati)ons : Studies in Early Modern English Literature and Culture [1 ed.] 9781443846455, 9781443841863

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Early Modern Communi(cati)ons

Early Modern Communi(cati)ons: Studies in Early Modern English Literature and Culture

Edited by

Kinga Földváry and Erzsébet Stróbl

Early Modern Communi(cati)ons: Studies in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, Edited by Kinga Földváry and Erzsébet Stróbl This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Kinga Földváry and Erzsébet Stróbl and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4186-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4186-3

To the Memory of Professor István Géher (1940–2012)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix List of Tables............................................................................................... x Introduction KINGA FÖLDVÁRY and ERZSÉBET STRÓBL .................................................. 1 Part I: Social and Religious Issues in Early Modern Texts The Queen and Death: An Elizabethan Book of Devotion ERZSÉBET STRÓBL ..................................................................................... 10 On the Shoulders of Giants: Texts and Contexts behind William Harrison’s Description of England KINGA FÖLDVÁRY ..................................................................................... 32 Women of No Importance in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene ÁGNES STRICKLAND-PAJTÓK..................................................................... 53 “One Turne in the Inner Court”: The Art of Memory in the Sermons of John Donne NOÉMI MÁRIA NAJBAUER ......................................................................... 73 Ten Days in Paradise: The Chronology of Terrestrial Action in Milton’s Paradise Lost GÁBOR ITTZÉS ......................................................................................... 100 Part II: Shakespeare on Page and Stage Hymen’s Truth: “At-one-ment” from Shakespeare to Tyndale, from Tyndale to Shakespeare TIBOR FABINY .......................................................................................... 132

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William Kemp and Falstaff: Reality and Role in Elizabethan Popular Culture KRISZTINA N. STREITMAN ....................................................................... 152 Forgotten and Remembered: the Shakespearean Hobby-Horse and Circulations of Cultural Memory NATÁLIA PIKLI ......................................................................................... 177 This Great Ship of Fools: The Ship of Fools and Elizabethan/Jacobean Drama ZITA TURI ................................................................................................ 202 “Walking Anatomies:” Violence and Dissection on the Early Modern English Stage ATTILA KISS ............................................................................................ 222 “In what vile part of this anatomy doth my name lodge?” Parts of Names and Names of Parts in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet GÉZA KÁLLAY ......................................................................................... 243 “O Yet Defend Me, Friends!” Claudius’s Struggle for the Favour of His Audience BALÁZS SZIGETI....................................................................................... 261 “So Berattle the Common Stages”: Metatheatricality and Polyfunctionality in two Hungarian Shakespeare Productions VERONIKA SCHANDL ............................................................................... 283 Appendices .............................................................................................. 303 Bibliography............................................................................................ 311 Contributors............................................................................................. 336 Index........................................................................................................ 339

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1. Paradisal equilibrium at sunset..................................................... 104 Fig. 2. The earth’s shadow as an astronomical sundial............................ 108 Fig. 3. Key constellations in Paradise Lost ............................................. 109 Fig. 4. Satan steering his zenith (10.327–29) .......................................... 116 Fig. 5. Portrait of Andreas Vesalius from his De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543). (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged) .................. 227 Fig. 6. The title page of De Humani Corporis Fabrica. (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged) ............................................ 228 Fig. 7. Plate from De Humani Corporis Fabrica. (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged) ............................................ 239

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Epic chronology from the beginning of terrestrial action to Satan’s journey through darkness .................................................. 112 Table 2. Chronology of epic action from Satan’s re-entry into Paradise to Adam and Eve’s expulsion.............................................. 127 Table 3. Kapporet in LXX and its versions in the New Testament ......... 138 Table 4. Tyndale’s three translations of hilasmos ................................... 139

INTRODUCTION EARLY MODERN COMMUNIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS KINGA FÖLDVÁRY AND ERZSÉBET STRÓBL

The essays in the current volume have grown out of the fruitful discussions that characterised both the panels on early modern literature and culture, and the series of Shakespearean sessions at the 10th biennial Conference of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English, held on 27– 29 January, 2011 at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Piliscsaba, Hungary. The number of papers dedicated to Renaissance and particularly Shakespearean research at the conference aptly demonstrated the powerful presence of early modern studies in Hungarian academia, a presence which has been one of the traditional strengths of English studies in the country, and the animated discussion among scholars of early modern studies proved that there is not only a past but also a promising future for such collaborations. Taking up on the offer of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, the essays have been developed into research articles, with a conscious effort to emphasise links among individual contributions, thus strengthening the cohesion within the volume as a whole. The title of the volume, by its rather general tone admitting to the simple fact that there are many types of connections and communications within a field as diverse as early modern studies, also speaks of each and every contribution in particular, and the whole volume in general. More than anything, the volume demonstrates that the connections and common points of reference within early modern studies bind Elizabethan and Jacobean cultural studies and Shakespearean investigations together in an unexpected number of ways, and therefore no researcher should afford to keep themselves excluded of this discussion by focusing exclusively on a narrow and limited field. The variety of meanings associated with both key words hidden or laid over each other at the heart of the title Early Modern Communi(cati)ons, lend themselves to a particularly easy introduction of the individual

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contributions. At the same time, the words also reflect on the ties that bind the various topics and discussions to the collection as a whole. “Communion” is rooted in the Latin adjective communis, meaning “common,” and this sense of sharing notions, images, or particular pieces of creation and tradition is central to the argumentation of most essays in the collection. Communion is also defined by the OED as “the sharing and exchanging intimate thoughts and feelings, especially on a mental and spiritual level,” and it is hard not to feel this intimacy of approach, this emotional proximity that each and every author displays toward their own respective topics. Moreover, most pieces also focus on an exchange, a handing over of traditions, over time and space, from classical and medieval origins, frequently pointing beyond the early modern period. Communion is also regularly used with strong religious connotations, which is equally relevant in our case, since several of the essays deal at least in part with a sacred or clerical context within which elements of literary tradition gain an additional meaning of divine import. The root of “communication,” on the other hand, is none other than the Latin verb communicare, meaning again “to share,” and as most of the essays in the collection demonstrate, sharing is an inherent feature of the early modern period, in between the relatively closed cultural spheres of the Middle Ages, and the liberated thinking of the enlightenment. Early modern culture could not choose but share most of the traditions it inherited from the medieval period, particularly in the more informal spaces of low and popular culture, even though authors associated with high culture are often characterised by a conscious turning back to the art of the Antiquity. At the same time, the period also functioned as a bridge towards modernity, selecting and transforming elements of both pagan Antiquity and Christian Middle Ages to preserve and share with later eras. Set in the above delineated contexts of communions and communications, the first group of essays deals with early modern culture, presenting the socio-historical context which is necessary for any in-depth literary investigation, as exemplified through analyses of outstanding literary achievements from the period. The section is headed by Erzsébet Stróbl’s reading of a prayer book compiled for Queen Elizabeth I, where the significance of the visual layout of an Elizabethan book with the alternative narrative presented by the border illustrations is underscored. While the inherent relationship of text and margins is widely acknowledged in the context of pre-Reformation devotional books, the essay argues that during the first half of the Elizabethan period this tradition survived and was fostered by one of the outstanding publishers of Protestant works, John Day. In her essay Stróbl examines both the

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religious and political implications of the parallel messages offered by the dramatic juxtaposition of the prayers of the English Queen and the accompanying images of the danse macabre cycle. The following essay, still dealing with the mid-Tudor era, focuses on a short chapter from William Harrison’s Description of England, the chorographical text published as an introduction to Holinshed’s Chronicles. Kinga Földváry’s reading of Harrison’s treatise on giants shows that such a pseudo-historical topic, still in circulation in scholarly discussions of the period, helps the modern reader to get insights into themes as diverse as the Puritan belief in a providential interpretation of human history, the variety of Bible translations, and, first and foremost, the particular working methods of William Harrison himself. She argues that for all the textual and scholarly failings of the Puritan clergyman, Harrison’s text displays a personal dedication to the cause of Protestantism that elevates even the passages otherwise little characterised by individual authorial creativity. Similarly to the previous essay, Ágnes Strickland-Pajtók’s piece also approaches an often neglected aspect of a well-known late Tudor literary work. She offers an enquiry into another cornerstone of early modern literature from the Elizabethan era, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, focusing on a group of characters within the epic whose fate does not often trouble readers or critics: those female figures whom she calls middle women, since they belong neither to the impeccable and exemplary positive heroines, nor to the evil antagonists of the romance, but fall somewhere in between on a moral scale. The author argues that it is precisely their fallibility, their occasional weaknesses and proneness to commit mistakes what makes them human, and what invokes the sympathy not only of modern readers, but apparently also Spenser’s narrator, who shows a more lenient treatment towards them than what fallen women could reasonably expect in the age. The last two essays in the first part of the volume move beyond the sixteenth century, and approach two of the major authors of the seventeenth, John Donne and John Milton. Noémi Najbauer chooses a new perspective to examine the vast body of the extant sermons of Donne, the theory of mind, combining the philosophical, theological and literary approaches of scholarship on Donne. After introducing the basic concept of ars memoriae, the antique rhetorical technique of the art of memory, the essay argues for its relevance in the Anglican preaching tradition in general, and in the construction of the structure and imagery of Donne’s sermons in particular. Najbauer shows how both Donne’s use of mental spaces as structural units, and the variety of striking metaphors he

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employed testify to the significance of the art of memory in the homiletic literature of the early seventeenth century. No volume on early modern English literature would be complete without reference to the greatest masterpiece of English epic poetry, and thus an essay by Gábor Ittzés completes the first part of the volume, reexamining a key issue of the interpretation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost: the temporal aspects of the terrestrial action. Through the careful investigation of Milton’s use of cognitive and poetic-metaphorical indicators of time, and the meticulous study of the scholarship of the last three hundred years, the author offers a comprehensive analysis of Milton’s earthly chronology from Satan’s entry into cosmos until the day of the expulsion. Ittzés also establishes the general narrative principles of presenting the passing of time in Milton’s work, and calls attention to the pitfalls of the overinterpretation of the text. Set against the backdrop of the above delineated early modern literary traditions, the second part of the volume focuses on the oeuvre of the most famous representative of the age, William Shakespeare, with individual chapters creating a tangible continuum, moving from the cultural and literary context that informs his work, to the interpretation in present-day performances and their theoretical background. Tibor Fabiny’s article explores the influence of the language of the Bible upon the making of early modern culture. Going back to the time of religious controversies in the early Tudor period, Fabiny claims that the works of the first Bible translator, William Tyndale played a key role in the formation of the English language. Through analysis of the linguistic, theological and literary connotations of the word “atonement” coined by Tyndale, the essay presents how the word first used in Biblical-related contexts ultimately contributed to the artistic principle of “reconciliation” in the plays of William Shakespeare, and became the key motif in his mature comedy, As You Like It. The next two essays deal with the broader context of Shakespearean theatre, investigating various literary and performative traditions of sixteenth-century popular culture. Krisztina N. Streitman’s article, after introducing the most influential critical theories on early modern popular culture by C. L. Barber, Michael Bakhtin, and Peter Burke, outlines the major elements of this predominantly oral tradition, and provides an extensive analysis of its influence on the formation of the character of Falstaff in the Shakespearean canon. Writing about the arguably most famous Elizabethan entertainer, William Kemp, the essay sketches out the parallels between the life and career of Kemp as a star performer of the morris and jig, and the various character traits assigned to Falstaff by the

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bard in the Henry IV plays. Streitman argues that the metaphorical links between the historical and the fictional figures, both associated with the carnival and the Lord of Misrule traditions, may also provide support for a biographical connection between the two. In close communion with the previous piece, Natália Pikli’s essay also investigates the popular culture of the age of Shakespeare, albeit from a slightly different perspective: she underlines its transformation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as brought about by the disappearance of certain medieval festive and religious rituals due to the Reformation. Looking at one of the most interesting elements, the figure of the hobby-horse, a physical and metaphorical link to medieval traditions, Pikli unveils the palimpsest of inherited and translucent cultural and linguistic layers that inform the dramatic texts of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, proving the hobby-horse to be no less than a treasure trove of cultural connotations. Another exciting link between past ages and the early modern period is exemplified by the work of a young scholar, Zita Turi, in her essay on The Ship of Fools. Turi follows the appearance of the theme from Sebastian Brant’s fifteenth-century High German text, to its development into a widely used metaphor in English literature by the end of the sixteenth century. The author relies on an in-depth reading of critical literature to show the roots of the metaphor in popular culture, and to argue that by virtue of the tradition of the emblem book and the impresa behind the first English translation by Alexander Barclay, the volume may even be considered as the first emblem book printed in England. She then moves on to investigate various uses of the theme in the dramatic literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, identifying and interpreting references to The Ship of Fools in the work of Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker, beside the oeuvre of William Shakespeare. The very same rich dramatic tradition of the age provides the backdrop to the chapter by Attila Kiss as well, whose writing focuses on the presence of violence, horror, and transgression in the imagery of early modern tragedy. With examples from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, and through the analysis of The Revenger’s Tragedy, Kiss argues that the enhanced use of the “dissected, tortured, anatomized and mutilated human body on the Tudor and Stuart stage” signifies an epistemological change, and marks out the audience’s interest for hitherto unrevealed dimensions of the human anatomy. To substantiate his claims about the preoccupation with representations of the human body of an anatomical precision, he turns not only to dramatic literature, but also alludes to other artistic and narrative genres of the period where an intensified desire to

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present and test the “inward dimensions of the human body and mind” is detectable. Moving on from the heritage of past ages, the following group of essays also bears witness to the communicative power of the Shakespearean text, reaching out from the early modern period to our own times, constantly re-acquiring its relevance via new interpretive and performative traditions. The chapter by Géza Kállay examines the relationship between names and personal identity in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the related question of the various uses of the word “part” within the play. Relying on ideas of the theory of names by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Peter Strawson, John Searle and Saul Kripke, the essay analyzes the power of the name and naming above identity, and attempts to offer answers to questions such as how far a name may penetrate into the self of a person, or how it determines personal characteristics, or whether it is a social frame that can be discarded with ease. This analytical and systematic reading of Romeo and Juliet is followed by the close reading of the text of Hamlet by a young scholar, Balázs Szigeti. His analysis of the soliloquies of Hamlet and Claudius by the methods of pre-performance criticism sheds light above all on the text’s theatrical potential. Szigeti claims that the conflict and struggle of the two characters is manifested in the power of the soliloquies to best express the two characters’ inner thoughts and to secure the support of the audience. He enumerates the alternative performance possibilities the text provides for actors and interpreters, and approaches the play from a directorial aspect, sensitive to the living connection between Hamlet on the page, that is, in critical writing, and in live performance on the stage. The final chapter in the volume, Veronika Schandl’s essay may be easily read as a conclusion that reinforces many of the themes investigated by other contributors. She focuses on two Hungarian theatre productions, an 1986 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by István Somogyi, and Sándor Zsótér’s 2009 Hamlet. Her interpretation places both productions not only in the historical context of the fall of communism and the subsequent changes in the cultural and theatrical life of the country, but she also intends to point beyond the generally accepted categories offered by theatre historian Árpád Kékesi-Kun, and argues for the significance of metatheatricality and polyfunctionality as the key terms we may use to describe the postmodern developments in the theatre in the past two and a half decades. In the same way as the volume comprises writings on a diverse but still coherent range of topics, the authorial team is equally representative of diversity and continuity at the same time. The authors include several

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senior scholars working in the Hungarian academic community, representing all significant research centres in the field from all over the country, but a number of essays have been contributed by promising young talents as well. The editors hope that in the same way these essays have developed a network of communication between locations and generations, individual scholars and research communities, they will also manage to inspire further generations of early modern researchers, at times and places far removed from the birth of these essays. We wish to dedicate the volume to the memory of the late Professor István Géher, the father figure of Hungarian Shakespeare scholarship, whose vision and personality contributed to the formation of the close-knit scholarly community of early modern English studies in Hungary. We hope that these essays may communicate to the world at least part of his heartfelt enthusiasm for the early modern period, and his dedication to William Shakespeare’s oeuvre in particular, which is the true legacy of his life and work.

PART I SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS ISSUES IN EARLY MODERN TEXTS

THE QUEEN AND DEATH: AN ELIZABETHAN BOOK OF DEVOTION ERZSÉBET STRÓBL

In an early Elizabethan prayer book of 15691 one’s eyes meet with the depiction of a queen being led off by a skeleton. The verse lines accompanying it warns the reader “Queene also thou doost see: As I am, so thou shall be,” and the bottom border illustration further increases the threat by an effigy of a queen inscribed “We that were of highest degree; Lye dead here now, as ye do see.”2 The prayer framed by this margin is a Latin language composition speaking in the persona of a queen. It asserts her unworthiness, gives thanks for God’s protection and asks for his help: “Extend, O Father, extend, I say, to Thy daughter from thy sublime throne those things Thou judgest to be necessary for her in such an arduous and unending office.”3 The Queen’s words and the image of Death appeared in close proximity on the same page. Could it be a coincidence, or was it an editorial choice? The Christian Prayers and Meditations in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin was popularly known as Queen Elizabeth I’s prayer book, and the section where the Dance of Death sequence appeared contained the foreign language prayers speaking in the Queen’s personalized voice. Although this arrangement is conspicuous, no attempt has been made yet to study the reading of the text of the prayers and the border images together as a complex means of communication. The following article argues that this prayer book needs to be analysed in the way early modern books—especially devotional books—were read, that is, 1

Richard Day, Christian Prayers and Meditations in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin (London: J. Day, 1569). 2 Ibid., Oo3r. 3 “Porrige pater, porrige inquƗ è sublime solio filiæ tuæ, quæ illi ad tam arduú necessaria esse iudicas,” ibid., Oo4v. The translation is from the edition of the prayers in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 159–60.

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we have to take into consideration the implications suggested by the possible connection between the image of the Queen fashioned in the prayers and the illustrations depicting the figures of Death. The aim of the present paper is to look at this visual aspect of the printed page— illustrations, arrangement, and the medium—in order to enrich the understanding of the cultural significance of the text and to enfold the multiple layers of meaning inherent in this unique prayer book. The Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569) was published by John Day, a printer of important devotional books composed in a Reformation spirit. It is a compilation of prayers for private use and relies heavily on Henry Bull’s Christian Prayers and Holie Meditations4 published a year earlier. However, it contains additional prayers, among them some English language prayers scattered in the volume and a bunch of foreign language prayers printed together at the end of the book that address God in the first person singular spoken by the persona of the Queen. The book itself stands out among contemporary devotional writings by using figurative border illustrations throughout the entire volume. The richness of the illustrations reflects the influence of the Catholic private prayer books, the Books of Hours. While the Reformation launched an attack on religious images, John Day’s book is an example of the contrary process. Instead of purging his work from pictorial representation an attempt was made to establish a relevant Protestant visual imagery for private prayers. A degree of official approval of the project is expressed by the allusions to the Queen’s person. A portrait of Elizabeth I in prayer opens the volume, and her prayers end the book. The final position of the Queen’s compositions enhances the role of the danse macabre theme of the border decoration which also appears at the end of the work. Could this layout have any religious or political overtones on the eve of the Catholic Northern Rebellion and in the climate of severe disputes in Parliament about the Queen’s succession? The following study renders a cultural reading of the pages of Christian Prayers and Meditations where the image of the printed page is “understood as a cultural agent rather then a passive medium”5 and the significance of the layout of texts and borders are treated as important ingredients of the compiler’s intentions. The analysis of the visual experience of the reader, the pre-existing cultural, social and political formations and the text of the prayers shed light on one of the aspects of

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Henry Bull, Christian Prayers and Holie Meditations (London: Thomas East, 1568). 5 Evelyn B. Tribble, Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia: 1993), 3.

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this early modern devotional writing, the message inherent in the dramatic juxtaposition of the image of the English Queen and the figure of Death.

A Book of Devotion: Re-Forming a Catholic Tradition The Christian Prayers and Meditations is a collection of devotions for private use in the tradition of the medieval Books of Hours. The Book of Hours (in Latin “Horae,” in English “Primer”) was the single most popular book of the late Middle Ages representing the “innermost thoughts and most sacred privacies of late medieval people.”6 Modelled on the Latin books used by the clergy it contained a simplified version of the seven daily offices, the Gradual Psalms, the Penitential Psalms, the Litany of Saints, and the Office of the Dead. While the richly illustrated manuscript versions cost a fortune, with the arrival of printing cheap editions were available for a broad layer of society including not just the prosperous aristocracy, but also the gentry, the mercantile classes, shopkeepers and even domestic servants.7 This laicisation of the clerical forms of prayer was typical of the heightened seriousness of interior religious life that penetrated late medieval society. By 1530, there were at least 760 editions of Books of Hours, among them 114 produced for England.8 These books appeared also on many portraits9 to accompany a rich sitter and became icons of an age where private and public beliefs were the subject of the highest political importance. Books of Hours represented not just a valuable possession to be bequeathed in legal testaments, but they were in use for several generations containing notes about their owners as well as remarks about the births and deaths of family members. After the Reformation the practice of using primers did not cease in England in spite of the concern to enforce communal observance rather than the suspect forms of private prayer.10 As the devotional life of people 6 Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 4. 7 Ibid., 4, 19, 25, 28, 30. 8 Ibid., 36. 9 See the Portrait of a Young Man (National Gallery, London) by Petrus Christus, the Portrait of Mary Wooton, Lady Guildford, 1527 (St Louis Art Museum, Missouri) and The More Family, 1527 (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel) by Hans Holbein. The portrait of Princess Elizabeth, 1546–47 (The Royal Collection at Windsor) attributed to William Scrots represents the English princess with a similar book to the one appearing in the Holbein portraits. 10 There was a primer printed or reprinted nearly every year between 1534 and 1559 by printers such as N. Bourman (1540), John Byddel (1534, 1535, 1536),

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is by nature conservative,11 even official primers were produced to cater for the unchanged demand for this type of devotional literature. In 1534 a Protestant primer was produced under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell where the denounced doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church (e.g., the rubrics referring to indulgences, or the Office of the Dead) were cut. In 1539 the bishop of Rochester compiled an official primer in Latin and English, and in 1545 an official royal primer was issued where only the doctrinally incorrect prayers (for indulgences, or the Office of the Dead) were left out, but other old prayers used by a broad layer of society remained untouched. During the early reign of Elizabeth primers also continued to be printed12 and the Christian Prayers and Meditations fits into this tradition by its content and layout. Among the old forms of prayer it contained were the Litany, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the arrangement of prayers according to the hours of the day, scriptural prayers and meditations. John Day, its printer and perhaps compiler, who was one of the champions of the Reformation printing trade, realized the continued demand to furnish people with such prayers. The layout of the book, with its sumptuous border illustrations from the life of Christ, the Dance of Death and the Last Judgement furthermore associated the work with primers and catered for the unchanged visual appetite of people. From the earliest times primers contained a rich selection of illustrations. There were elaborate borders, initials as well as full-page images. A Book of Hours by the sixteenth century in most cases started with the calendar that was accompanied by a set of twelve prints containing the twelve different ages of man, and a depiction of the Anatomical Man. The opening of each of the hours was also illustrated by a set of standardized scenes from the life of Christ, as well as powerful single images, among them a reference to death by the depiction of the Robert Clay (1555), Arnold Conings (1559), R. Copland (1540), John Day (1557), T. Gaultier (1550), T. Gibson (1538), Thomas Godfray (1535), Richard Grafton (1540, 1542, 1545, 1546, 1547, 1549, 1551), Richard Kele (1543, 1548), John Kyston and Henry Sutton (1557), John Mayler (1539, 1540), John Mychell (1549), Thomas Petyt (1540, 1542, 1543, 1544, 1545), J. Le Prest (1555, 1556), R. Redman (1537, 1538), Francis Regnault (1535, 1538), C. Ruremond (1536), Wilhelm Seres (1560, 1565, 1566, 1568), Robert Valentin (1551, 1554, 1555, 1556), John Wayland (1539, 1555, 1558), Edward Witchurche (1545, 1546, 1548). 11 About the reluctance of the population to conform to regulations demanding the burning or defacing of images during the early Elizabethan period see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 565–92. 12 It was only by the late 1570s that the form became old-fashioned. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 171.

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Legend of the Three Living and Dead. Another allusion to the topic of death was the Dance of Death series, which appeared mostly with male characters, though could contain a separate male and female sequence, as for instance in the primer printed in Paris in 1502 by Philippe Pigouchet (STC 15896). Books of Hours for English use were printed not only in England, but on the Continent as well, where their layout was much more elaborate than that of their insular counterparts. After the Reformation—despite the attack of certain images (those about Mary, Thomas Becket or other saints)—visual representation was not altogether abandoned. Although numerically being slightly less than in other parts of Europe, between 1536 and 1603 more than five thousand images were catalogued in England, and with a moderate estimate of two hundred copies for each volume, over one million images had been in circulation throughout the country by the end of the sixteenth century.13 Speaking about early modern images Patrick Collinson pointed out that by the later reign of Elizabeth I the mode of representation shifted towards the emblematic, exempting the visual experience from popular culture and making it “terse, cryptic, and allegorically bookish.”14 Instead of the “sacramental gaze” of late-medieval piety, images were looked upon with the “cold gaze” of the reformers that assessed “images in a more didactic and doctrinal way.”15 No such tendency appeared in the books published by Day, which set out to establish a popular visual tradition within the Protestant faith. John Day was one of the earliest publishers of Reformation polemics. During the Catholic Marian years, he was presumably the printer of the radical Protestant tracts published by the clandestine press under the name of Michael Wood.16 With the reign of Elizabeth his reputation as a printer of the new faith grew further by becoming the publisher of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. While Day’s Protestant allegiances cannot be disputed, it is obvious from his works that he was no puritan iconoclast. Foxe’s volume showcased Protestant faith and devotion not just by its text but also by its memorable images. In the various editions of Foxe’s martyrology Day created a visual propaganda of the English Reformation 13

David Jonathan Davis, Picturing the Invisible: Religious Printed Images in Elizabethan England (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2009), https://eric.exeter .ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/85653/DavisD.pdf?sequence=2, 33. 14 Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 236. 15 Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 39. 16 Elizabeth Elveden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 30–34.

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and laid the foundations of a Protestant religious imagery. In the first 1563 edition fifty-three illustrations with fifty-seven occurrences appeared, while in the enlarged 1570 edition 105 illustrations with 149 occurrences were published.17 Far from rejecting visual representation, Day’s work demonstrates a deliberate attempt to continue the long pictorial tradition of Christianity, creating memorable images about the life and struggle of the church. Day’s other work, attempting a similarly ambitious task, his Christian Prayers and Meditations also attests to his attempt to produce visually pleasing, deluxe editions of writings that advocate the new faith in order to popularize its beliefs not by refusing visuality but by re-forming it. The volume’s association with the Queen, both through her personalised voice in some writings and by the royal approval proclaimed in the two full-page royal arms (depicted at the beginning and the end of the book), granted him a chance to explore the possibilities the old medium offered for the new material. One of the copies of the book, which was specially prepared for the Queen as a presentation copy with hand-coloured illustrations,18 shows that the taste of the Queen was not against such editions. In 1578 a very similar prayer book with the foreword by John Day’s son Richard was published under the title A Book of Christian Prayers.19 In its content this book is usually regarded as a separate work rather than a new edition of the Christian Prayers and Meditations as it drastically rearranged its material, deleted and added parts, omitted the foreign language prayers of the Queen, and changed her English language prayers from the first person to the third. However, in its scheme of illustrations it continued John Day’s earlier program of using a parallel visual narrative on its borders. The scope of illustrations was largely extended: in addition to the representations of the Life of Christ cycle, the male and female sequences of the Dance of Death and a Last Judgement scene appearing in the 1569 prayer book, it included spectacular new sequences on the Signs of Judgement, the Works of Mercy, the Five Senses, and a procession of Virtues accompanied by their corresponding Vices.20 This magnificent prayer book was far from unpopular and was reprinted in 1581, 1590, and 1608. However, one may wonder why the Queen’s prayers were left out 17

Ibid. 100–101. This copy is in the Lambeth Palace Library. It was hand-coloured presumably by artists in the workshop of Archbishop Matthew Parker at Lambeth Palace for the personal use of the queen. 19 Richard Day, A Book of Christian Prayers (London: John Day, 1578). 20 See Samuel C. Chew, “The Iconography of A Book of Christian Prayers (1578) Illustrated,” in Huntington Library Quarterly 8, no. 3 (May, 1945): 293–305. 18

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from these later versions. But before seeking an answer to this question, it is worth considering what importance the margins—in which such illustrations appeared—had in early productions of the printing press and in the reading process of the early modern public.

Texts and Margins In modern editions early modern works appear as abstract texts detached from the actual visual form in which they were presented to their original audiences. Yet books, especially scriptural ones, were often accompanied by extensive commentary and illustration in the margins which formed part of the experience of reading and added further layers of meaning to their study. For instance, the annotation of scripture was a common practice in Catholic works from the earliest times. Their importance over the interpretation of the core text was decisive, and Reformation theologians, fearing the influence the glosses exerted over the Word of God, often condemned the use of them. In England, a royal proclamation of 1538 explicitly banned all marginal annotations in devotional texts,21 which shows that the margins were estimated as an important place of communication to the reader. In spite of the prohibition, the practice continued and even in Protestant editions of devotional works compilers often added their own comments on the margins.22 Illustration as a means to extend the appeal of the text also survived in books after the Reformation and was used extensively both in religious and secular contexts. For instance, in Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar (1579) both the images preceding the eclogues of the individual months and the glosses of E. K. added valuable aspects to the comprehension of the lines of the Calendar. Such works provide a clue to the reading methods of the early modern period and justify the comparative analysis of margin and text as parts of a single concept. James A. Knapp described the early modern reading process as a “movement back and forth—between text and image—[. . .] to merge the effects of a book’s verbal and visual information to produce a totally complex and hybrid object.”23 He pointed out that illustrations were “related to the words in a way that drew on prevailing cultural tastes while simultaneously capitalizing on the power of images to convey a variety of 21

Duffy, Marking the Hours, 150. Tribble, Margins and Marginality, 9–12. 23 James A. Knapp, “A Bastard Art: Woodcut Illustration in the Sixteenth Century,” in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, ed. Douglas A. Brooks (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 165. 22

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messages” and “images opened the text to multiple and sometimes contradictory readings (and viewings).”24 D. J. Davis also reached a similar conclusion when writing on early modern religious images. He claimed that images appearing on the borders of a page “illustrate the text, but often they represent a parallel narrative to the text and usually act as guides for the reader.”25 The Christian Prayers and Meditations contains both text and images in its margins and invites readers to such a parallel reading. Though it has been examined many times by those interested in the iconography of one of the most richly illustrated books of the Elizabethan period,26 and by those examining the change and purging of religious practices in the early reign of Queen Elizabeth,27 and also by those writing about the literary achievements of England’s female monarch,28 in all approaches, the text and the illustrations were divorced from each other, appearing as autonomous entities in two different genres and their complementary relationship and significance were disregarded. The Christian Prayers and Meditations used two themes to illustrate its contents. There were seven sequences of the scenes from the Life of Christ represented in a typological layout, with the image in the middle of three marginal compartments containing the New Testament scene and the two Old Testament types shown below and above it. There were also three sequences of the danse macabre, two with male and one with female characters, each page containing two episodes. Appropriate verses accompanied all images, thus it was possible to flip through the pages and just enjoy the reading and viewing of the margins. Both of these themes were common in book illustration and though the woodcuts were presumably designed and cut for this volume (perhaps by foreign workmen living in the vicinity of John Day’s workshop)29 they presented 24

Ibid., 161, 151–52. Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 36. 26 Chew, “Iconography,” 112–15. 27 Duffy, Marking the Hours, 171–74. 28 Jennifer Clement, “The Queen’s Voice: Elizabeth I’s Christian Prayers and Meditations,” in Early Modern Literary Studies 13, no. 3 (January, 2008): 1.1–26, http://purl.oclc.org/emls/13-3/clemquee.htm; Steven W. May, “Queen Elizabeth Prays for the Living and the Dead,” in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, ed. Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo (London: The British Library: 2007), 201–11. 29 John Foxe, whose Acts and Monuments was printed by John Day too, made a request to William Cecil, that the number of foreign workmen working for Day should be allowed to be raised. This fact shows the increased amount of work Day was facing in the 1560s. Evenden, Patent, Pictures and Patronage, 96–108. Twenty-one of the Life of Christ designs in the Christian Prayers and Meditations bear the initials “I C,” while in about half of the Dance of Death images the initial 25

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well-known narratives to their audience, and were more or less free copies of illustrations from France.30 It was a common practice in early modern print that woodcuts appeared in more than one book. This recycling of images “created numerous messages by being re-contextualized”31 and mapped out an interesting iconographic, religious, cultural and commercial interrelationship between widely different texts.32 The design of the individual cuts was often not original, but imitated postures and gestures of figures in a long line of tradition of religious iconography. However, the arrangement of text and image was always unique to a volume, mostly not even repeated in the different editions of the same work. Thus, the recycling of the woodcuts meant a repetition of images, but not a repetitive pattern of reading as this depended on the complex layout of the page. The representation of the scenes of the life of Christ was a common topic for Books of Hours. In the Christian Prayers and Meditations the series contained thirty-eight plates appearing in all the seven repetitions of the cycle, and some additional episodes in certain sequences. Samuel C. Chew’s iconographical analysis of the border illustrations concentrated on the chronological misplacements in the sequences and carefully enumerated the “errors” in the line of events and the instances where these were set right. He blamed Day’s business where “there was not very alert supervision of the press-men [. . .] who unintelligently returned to the original wrong order and had to be corrected again.”33 However, he failed to realize a possible connection between the structural units of the prayer book and the corrections, and missed the examples where the misplacement of a scene could have been deliberate to reflect the meaning or the structure of the text. A marked adjustment to the content of the prayer book is the fitting of the beginning of the fourth sequence of the Life of Christ to the new material introduced in the book. Up till that point Day’s compilation contained prayers selected from Bull’s Christian Prayers and Meditations, but there it continued with an old form of prayer, not included in Bull’s compilation but part of the Catholic primer tradition, the Seven Penitential “G” appears. Most scholars agree that the craftsmanship exhibited on the woodcuts was above the level of the native workmen. Ibid., 96, Chew, “Iconography,” 395. 30 Chew mentions that the design for the Last Judgement scene that concludes the Dance of Death is practically identical with one used by Pigouchet. Chew, “Iconography,” 294–95. 31 Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 65. 32 Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 34. 33 Chew, “Iconography,” 296.

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Psalms. While the second sequence of the Life of Christ started during a meditation, and the beginning of the third was also unmarked, this fourth sequence commenced with new material within the book. To enable a fresh start of the episodes of the Life of Christ, the editor inserted the first English language prayer of the Queen at this point, and, as this ran just beyond the last scene of the sequence used so far, he included additional cuts (chronologically misplaced) to fill in the space. These new images (the Miracle of the Pool at Bethesda, Christ and the Canaanite Woman, the Walking on the Water) celebrated God’s power over sin, sickness and nature that rhymed with the words of prayer “how [. . .] shall I thy handmaide, being by kinde a weak woman, have sufficient abilitie to rule [. . .] unless thou [. . .] doe also in my reigning endue and help thy heavenly grace, without which, none, even the wisest among the children of men, can once think a right thought.”34 This section break of the book was also marked by an interrupted pagination. After P4 it started afresh with A1. Furthermore, in the central textual unit of the page layout on the top corner of the pages Arabic numerals (from 41 to 88) appeared, which may point to a possible borrowing of the typeset of the middle section from an older work. While the continuity of the layout of border illustrations gives a unified impression, the transition from one type of prayer to another was definitely stated by pictorial means in the margins. Another similar break in the pagination occurs after the second N2, which continues with Aa1, and which again uses Arabic numerals (from 1 to 48) in the top corners of the central section of the page. The episodes of Christ’s life are also interrupted here: the line of the sixth sequence being at the scene of the Transfiguration reverts to the Flight into Egypt. Once again, new content is introduced here: a Mirror for Princes (“Of the kingdome of God, and how all kinges ought to seeke his glory,” “Promises, admonitions and counsels to good kinges with examples of their good successe,” “Sentences of threatening to evill kinges and examples of their evill successe”). It is interesting to notice that in these two sections, marked by a definite break both in the illustration and the pagination, the confused order of the episodes of the Return from Egypt and the Baptism of Christ within the sequence of the Life of Christ (noticed by Chew in his analysis as an “error”) is corrected. While Chew was right that these corrections reflect a more alert supervision of pressmen, he did not notice that the enhanced interest in these parts resulted

34

Christian Prayers and Meditations, P4r.

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from the content of the prayers. The new material introduced in these parts was emphatic as it addressed the Queen directly or indirectly. A further example of adjustment of the borders to the content of the prayers can be seen in the conclusion of the fifth sequence of the Life of Christ, where the second English language prayer of the Queen is placed. Here again, to enable a prominent ultimate position, additional images were used (thus extending the set of the Life of Christ to forty-three cuts, the most complete within the book). Furthermore, while Chew pointed out the chronological misplacements of the scenes, these can be explained by the editor’s intention to match the prayer’s words about relief in sickness by scenes depicting Jesus’s power to heal the sick in body and soul. The Queen’s prayer “In Time of Sicknes” appears next to three scenes (used already next to the first prayer of the Queen) about three miracles of Christ and new scenes on sin (Woman taken in Adultery), power to work miracles (Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes) and redemption (Healing of the Sin of the Palsy). According to Chew’s study the Life of Christ sequences are followed by the Dance of Death “with casual abruptness and no relation to the text of the prayers.”35 However, again the content of the prayer book changed with the new set of illustrations. This part of the book contained the foreign language prayers of the Queen. Although the Queen’s first, and part of the second French language prayer was illustrated by the last scenes of the last Life of Christ sequence, the great majority of her prayers appear next to the images of the danse macabre. As there is a correspondence between image and prayer both in structure and in content at the most important parts of the compilation, this proximity of the words of the Queen and the representation of death must not be overlooked or dismissed.

The Motif of the Dance of Death The dramatic juxtaposition of the living with the dead was an ancient motif in western culture. In the Middle Ages the theme received a growing attention with several literary genres exploiting its associations. From the thirteenth century representations of the legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead, in which three young men on a hunt met three dead men, served as a warning for the right manner of living.36 The medieval vado 35

Chew, The Iconography, 297. “Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, vos eritis” (Where we were, you are; what we are, you will be). About the legend see István Kozáky, “A haláltáncok struktúrái,” 36

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mori poems, where individual representatives of society lamented the coming of death in a monologue, were also widespread. However, the drastic experience of the Black Death of 1348 and the recurring outbreaks of the epidemic throughout Europe caused a heightened awareness of sudden death and mutability in the fourteenth century. Books on the art of dying well (ars moriendi) became popular and were published in several languages in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further genre connected to mortality and appearing in both literature and the visual arts was the Dance of Death, where death figures engaged in dance or dialogue with members of the social scale. Kings and paupers, queens and simple maids were equated in the perspective of the new genre, and the grotesque combination of music and dance with the imminence of death created an emotionally shocking memento mori. The sequence usually started with a person of the highest social rank (the pope in the clerical hierarchy, or the emperor in the secular one) and depicted figures on the descending social scale, combined with variations on the ages of men and representatives of various professions. While the danse macabre appeared in the verse of Jehan le Fèvre in 1376 for the first time, the first pictorial representation of a Dance of Death was painted on the wall of the churchyard Cimetière des Innocents in Paris in the year of 1425 during the period of the English occupation of the city. The murals were accompanied by French verses that were translated within a few years by John Lydgate into English. A wealthy citizen of London, John Carpenter commissioned that Lydgate’s translation should be transformed and incorporated into a pictorial representation of the Dance of Death in the churchyard of Old St Paul’s cathedral.37 This series became the model of many further frescos throughout England, and can be frequently found in texts which refer to it just as Paul’s dance.38 Lydgate added six additional episodes to the Paris sequence, among them four female figures. The Paris [“The Structures of Dances of Death”] in Mauzóleum: A halállal való foglalkozás [Mausoleum: Preoccupied with Death], ed. Lajos Adamik, István Jelenczki and Miklós Sükösd (Budapest: ELTE BTK, 1987), 217–37; and Gert Kaiser, Der Tanzende Tod: Mittelalterliche Totentänze [The Dancing Death: Medieval Death Dances] (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag GmbH, 1982). 37 Sophy Oosterwiyk, ‘Fro Paris to Inglond’? The Danse Macabre in Text and Image in Late-Medieval England, (Unpublished PhD diss., Leiden University, 2009), https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/13873, 34–36. 38 It was destroyed together with other monuments of the churchyard in 1549. John Stow in his famous Survey of London (1598) describes the danse in detail together with its destruction by the order of the Duke of Somerset. Stow’s Survey of London (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1956), 293.

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set was probably an all-male series, similar to the one shown by Guyot Marchant’s publication of 1485, the first printed danse macabre. Marchant printed a female set only a year later in 1486. English manuscripts used both versions, some following Marchant, and some mixing female and male figures.39 From the late fifteenth century the Parisian printers Antoine Vérard, Simon Vostre, and Thielman Kerver published several Books of Hours containing a Dance of Death in the margins.40 Yet it was only in a Book of Hours produced for the English market in 1521 that the illustrations were accompanied by verse lines (by Lydgate).41 The Christian Prayers and Meditations also contained both text and image, and incorporated a female series as well. This Dance of Death illustration is exceptional, as it is the only known representation of a danse macabre in an English Protestant prayer book (apart from the later version of the book in 1578). There were only two other Dances of Death printed in the period by English presses. Both were one-page broadsides, combining text and image to please a wide audience of a secular interest. One of them, The Daunce and Song of Death,42 (published in the same year as the Christian Prayers and Meditations) emphasized the carnivalesque nature of the genre, with the figure of sickness acting as minstrel and skeletons leading a dance around an open grave with pairs of the king and beggar, the old man and the child, and the wise man and the fool. A similar popular print, arranged as a ballad was published in 1580 beginning with the line “Marke well the effect, purtreyed here in all.”43 The Christian Prayers and Meditations contained nothing of the popular lore and humour of the theme mirrored in these broadsides. It made no reference to music, dance or instruments but sounded a serious tone, a moralizing warning to its readers. The characters depicted in contemporary costume were taken by surprise and were reluctant to follow the skeletons. The bottom border illustrations further increased the threatening atmosphere of the danse macabre. They depicted images copying cadaver effigy tombs,44 that is, dead bodies in different states of decomposition of 39 Leonard P. Kurtz, The Dance of Death and the Macabre Spirit in European Literature (New York: Columbia University, 1934), 139–46. 40 Oosterwiyk, ‘Fro Paris to Inglond,’ 105. 41 Hore beate Marie Virginis ad usum in signis ac preclare ecclesie Sarum cum figuris passionis mysterium representatibus recenter additis Paris (London:Johan Bignon, 1521). 42 The Daunce and Song of Death (London: J. Awdely, 1569). 43 Marke Well the Effect Purtreyed (London: S. n., c. 1580). 44 On the tradition of the cadaver effigy see Oosterwiyk, ‘Fro Paris to Inglond,’ 222–54.

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the flesh. The grimness of the representation was increased by the ominous lines of warning: As we were, so are ye: / And as we are, so shell ye be. (Kk3v) Tyme do passe, and tyme it is, / Do use well tyme, least tyme do misse. (Kk4r) From earth to earth, so must it be, / From lyfe to death, as thou dooest see. (Kk4v)

Thus, next to the text of the foreign language prayers written by the persona of the Queen there was a visual message in the margins to inspire personal contemplation and meditation about the worthlessness and finality of worldly might and power. Before looking at the possible connection between the danse macabre and the words of the Queen, I would like to address the question of the authorship of these prayers.

Prayers of a Queen: Identity and Image Making The Christian Prayers and Meditations contains two English, seven French, four Italian, three Spanish, three Latin, and two Greek prayers addressing God in the voice of the Queen. Though the book was referred to popularly as the Queen’s Prayer Book,45 nowhere does it claim that any of its content was composed by Queen Elizabeth. While there is no factual proof for the Queen’s authorship, many scholars are inclined to accept it on the basis of stylistic evidence.46 However, there is a strong argument for the authenticity of the prayers that critics overlooked so far. The two English language prayers written in the persona of the Queen and placed at the end of two important structural units of the book are the rough translations of their Latin originals appearing under the name of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 in Precationes privatae.47 These are not new prayers 45

Both the Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569) and A Book of Christian Prayers (1578) were referred to as the Queen’s Prayer Books. 46 Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, the editors of Elizabeth I’s Collected Works (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), and Jennifer Clement in “The Queen’s Voice” all argue for this interpretation. 47 “A prayer for wisedome to governe the Realm” (P2v–P4v) is edited and translated in Elizabeth’s Collected Works under the title “Prayer for the Wisdom in the Administration of the Kingdom,” and “In time of sicknes” (K2v–L2v) appeared as “Thanksgiving for Recovered Health,” 139–43. In Precationes privatae. Regiae E. R. (London: T. Purfoot, 1563) they are between A2r–F1r.

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then, but have the personalized voice of the Queen and specific references to her because they are prayers written by the Queen, even though the question of who the translator was remains unclear. The use of different languages for prayer also points to the possible authorship of the Queen. Elizabeth’s knowledge of languages, as part of her Humanistic education, was well propagated and was part of her public image of the well educated monarch. There is another prayer book, a manuscript one, that contains prayers in foreign languages (Latin, Italian, French and Greek) attributed to Queen Elizabeth and decorated by her miniature.48 The Christian Prayers and Meditations also bears the visual signs of authorization: the Queen’s portrait and her coat-of-arms. Jennifer Clement supported the official nature of the prayer book by analysing the connection between the use of each language and the content of the prayer. She claimed that the choice of a particular language reflected a conscious act of aiming at a specific international audience with the issues presented within the prayers being tailored for that specifically addressed group of speakers.49 If we accept her argumentation, then this is further evidence to support that these writings were either by the Queen or were composed in her individualized voice. In the Christian Prayers and Meditations the Queen is subjected to a public gaze through the prayers given into her mouth. An image of a godly monarch is drafted in them, one who was specially elected through God’s grace alone to the English throne. This definition was a cornerstone of the early years of Elizabethan propaganda, as it justified the Queen’s rule in the language of Protestant polemics. After the succession of Elizabeth to the throne of England, next to the sensitive question of the legitimacy of her mother’s marriage and thus her own right to rule, her gender as a monarch posed a further problem that was advocated in the Scottish reformer’s John Knox’s pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558). Elizabeth’s unofficial apologist, John Aylmer answered the attack on female authority by pointing out that the Queen rules by the special providence of God, selected individually by 48

A Book of Devotions composed by Her Majesty, transl. Adam Fox (London: Colin Smyth Gerrards Cross and The Cornerstone Library and Studio Rome, 1977). The book contains two miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard that suggest a date in the late 1570s. The original copy has been lost and the book survives in the form of a photocopy. Patrick Collinson disputes the authorship of the queen in “Window in a Woman’s Soul: Questions about the Religion of the Queen,” in Elizabethan Essays, ed. Patrick Collinson (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1994), 90–91. 49 Jennifer Clement, “The Queen’s Voice.”

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him for the throne.50 The prayers in the Christian Prayers and Meditations echo this line of thought: Thou hast of thine own liberalitie, without my deserving and against the expectation of many, given me a kingdom and made me reign. (P3r) I do not hold royal rule by my own merit, but receive it from Thee as a handmaid and servant. (Pp4r)

In acknowledging her feminine weakness and God’s merit in raising her to rule a country, the Queen was presented to the public in an appropriately gendered role, which all the same left no place to dispute her royal position. A full-page illustration of Queen Elizabeth51 kneeling in her closet at her devotions also associates the Christian Prayers and Meditations with the Queen. Yet this representation shifts the emphasis from the Queen being the author of some texts of the book to her role as reader and user of the book. So let me now turn to the reading of the prayers composed by or in the name of or the Queen. How exactly was the Queen to interpret the lines of these prayers presented to her in this early modern book of devotion (one copy of which was emphatically decorated for her)? How was she to interpret the parallel narrative presented by the text and the margins depicting the Dance of Death? What message can the threatening figures of death bear in relation to the Queen?

The Politics of the Danse Macabre From the two English language prayers by the Queen the second is entitled “In Time of Sicknes” and the text refers to a recent illness of the Queen and her thanksgiving for recovery. The borders illustrate the Resurrection of Christ, and its two Old Testament prefigurations (Samson and Jonas—one escaping from his enemies, the other emerging from the belly of the fish), all referring to deliverance. Text and margins both draw 50

John Aylmer An harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subiectes, against the late blown Blast, concerning the Government of Women, wherin be confuted all such reasons as a stranger of late made in that behalf, with a brief exhortation to Obedience. Strasborowe: S.n. [i.e. London, printed by John Day], 1559. Ov O2r. The printer of the apology was the same John Day who published the Christian Prayers and Meditations. 51 The woodcut is attributed to Levina Teerlinc in Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 57.

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the attention of the reader to the tenet that the only cure for sickness and sin is through the grace of God. In such a context the prayer is a warning to all mankind, but its individualized voice points to a particular event in the reign of Elizabeth: [. . .] though hast stricken me with a grievous sicknes of my body, and very daungerous unto my life, and also troubled and abashed my minde with terrours and anguishes of my soule: and withal thou hast by my daunger sore flighted and amesed thy people of England, whose safetie and quietnes next after thee, seemeth to stay upon me above all other worldly creatures, and upon my life and continuance amongst them. (K4v–L1r)

The text refers to Queen Elizabeth’s near fatal attack of small pox in 1562, and is the rough translation of a Latin text published under the name of the Queen a year later in Precationes privatae (see above). As the quoted lines show, her illness created dismay among her courtiers who were faced by an unsettled succession and a possible civil war in case of the Queen’s death. In the aftermath of the crisis the question of Queen Elizabeth’s succession and marriage became of acute political importance. The House of Commons and the House of Lords separately handed in a petition to urge the Queen to name a successor in 1563; and in 1566 a joint effort was made by both houses to force an answer from the Queen. But the Queen reacted by a heated oration in front of the delegations of Parliament;52 she refused to act, and banned all discussion of her succession.53 Yet many godly gentlemen, that is, Protestant radicals, who felt a vested interest in the commonweal of the country and believed to have a right to counsel the Queen,54 were not satisfied with such a decision. A tract entitled A Common Cry of Englishmen Made to the Most Noble Lady, Queen Elizabeth, and the High Court of Parliament (1566) speaking about the succession turned to the Parliament to take action instead of the Queen:

52

See her speeches of April 10, 1563; November 5, 1566; January 2, 1567. Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 79–80, 93–98, 105–8. 53 This ban resulted in the famous incident of Peter Wentworth questioning whether such an act on behalf of the queen was not “a breech of the liberty of the free speech of the House.” See “Peter Wentworth’s Question on Parliamentary Privilege, November 11, 1566,” in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 100. 54 About the question see A. N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 134–60.

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And if the Queen [. . .] should seem not to be willing to hear and help [. . .] then we turn our cry to you our Lords and Commons [. . .] as you do know what your authority is, so beshow your wisdom and power to put your country out of such peril.55

The passage shows that among the Protestant elite there was a belief in the importance of counsel delivered to the Queen as part of the concept known as the “mixed monarchy.” The concept of the mixed monarchy was a theory in support of legitimizing female rule in the sixteenth century. It denoted a special relationship between crown and parliament, and was described by Sir Thomas Smith’s book De Republica Anglorum56 circulated in a manuscript form from the mid-1560s. When defining the commonwealth Smith considered only freemen and excluded women “whom nature hath made to keepe home and to nourish their familie and children, and not to meddle with matters abroade, nor to beare office in a citie or common wealth no more as children or infants.”57 Yet Smith made an exception in case the “authoritie is annexed to the bloud and progenie, as the crowne, a dutchie, or an earldome for the blood is respected, not the age nor the sexe [. . .] for the right and honour of the blood [. . .] is more to be considered, than either base age as yet impotent to rule, or the sexe not accustomed (otherwise) to intermeddle with publick affaires, being by common intendment understood, that such personages never do lacke the counsel of such grave and discreete men as be able to supplie all other defaultes” (emphasis mine).58 In other words the De Republica Anglorum asserted that “the most high and absolute power of the realm of England, is in the Parliament”59 and there is no threat in having a female monarch as long as she is surrounded by the counsel of her Parliament. Counselling the Queen was regarded thus not only a possibility but as the duty of “grave and discreete men.”

55

Quoted in McLaren, Political Culture, 149–50. The book was published only posthumously. The date for the first publication is usually cited as 1583, yet McLaren claims that there was an earlier edition of 1581, of which no copies survived. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, 201n13. The book was republished in 1583, 1584, 1589 and 1601, showing its popularity during a period which threatened the principles of mixed rule and depended in a growing extent on more absolutist modes of government. 57 Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 64. 58 Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 64. 59 Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 65. 56

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This voice of ‘godly’ counsel is heard when the Christian Prayers and Meditations includes biblical texts about “how all kinges ought to seeke his glory,” “counsels to good kinges,” and “threatening to evill kinges,” which were placed right before the Queen’s foreign language prayers.60 Furthermore, these foreign language prayers ask not just for wisdom and prudence from God to help the Queen to govern, but reiterate several times her wish to have good councillors: Give us also prudent, wise and virtuous councillors, driving far from us all ambitious, malignant, wily, and hypocritical ones.61 Strength, counsel, doctrine sound to me provide / That well I may Thy people rule and guide.62 May the mind of Thy handmaid be clear and just, her will sincere, her judgements fair and pious. Grant me, O Lord, help, counsels, and sufficient ministers, just and capable, full of piety and of Thy most holy fear.63 Thy Holy Spirit, [. . .] the Spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the Spirit of knowledge and of Thy fear, by whom I, Thy maidservant, may have a wise heart that can discern between the good and the bad [. . .] [a]nd in this manner may justice be administered in this Thy kingdom [. . .]. Since for this Thou hast constituted magistrates and hast put the weapon of authority in their hands, vouchsafe it.64 Thou hast granted councillors; grant unto them to use counsel rightly. Grant them, moreover, a pious, fair, sound mind and truly industrious diligence, that these may be employed for the people placed under me, and

60

Christian Prayers and Meditations, Aa1–Gg4v. “Donne nous aussi des Conseillers prudens sages & vertueux, chassant loing de nous, tous ambitieux, malins, cauteleux, & hypocrites.” Christian Prayers and Meditations, Ii2v. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 147. 62 “Force, Conseil, avec saine doctrine, / Pour bien guider, le peuple que domine." Christian Prayers and Meditations, Ll1v. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 152. 63 “Sia l’intelletto della tua serva chiaro & giusto, la volontà sincera, i giudici equi, & pÿ. Dammi Signore aiuti, consegli, & ministri abbastanti, retti, & sufficienti, pieni di pietà, & del tuo santissimo timore.” Christian Prayers and Meditations, Mm2r–v. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 154. 64 “Con ti sancto Espiritu, el qua les [. . .] Espiritu de cõsejo y de Fortaleza, Espiritu de sciencia y de temor tuyo, para que yo tu sierva tӁga coraçon entendido que pueda discernir entre lo bueno y lo malo: y desta manera sea en este tu Reyno administrada iusticia, [. . .] Pues que para esto tu has constituido el Magistrado y le has puesto el cuchillo en la mano.” Christian Prayers and Meditations, Nn2r–v. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 156. 61

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that they may be willing and able both to make provision under Thy direction and to give counsel.65

The Queen also acknowledges the mode of governing with the help of counsel in the sixth French prayer, which was written with the specific purpose of being used before consulting about the business of the kingdom: Thou sustainest and preservest under the guidance of Thy providence the state and government of all kingdoms of the earth, and that to Thee it belongs to preside in the midst of princes in their councils.66

The placement of the Queen’s prayers next to the scenes of the Dance of Death in the Christian Prayers and Meditations seems to be a form of counsel offered to the Queen on behalf of one of the most important Protestant printers, John Day, his patrons and the anonymous compilers of this pretentious prayer book of the new faith. While the Queen was viewing the images and reading the accompanying lines Queen also thou doost see: As I am, so shalt thou be. (Oo3r) We that were of highest degree; Lye dead here now, as ye do see. (Oo3r) We that sate in the highest seate; Are layd here now for wormes meat. (Oo3v) Beauty, honour, and riches avayle no whit, For death when he commeth, spoyleth it. (Oo4r)

she was reminded of her near-fatal illness and the threat her death would have posed to the country. The succession question being still unsettled, Protestant godly gentlemen were indirectly offering counsel to the Queen by reminding her of human mortality through the danse macabre. This highly sensitive issue was addressed with the means of the intertextuality of early modern print. 65

“Dedisti consiliarios, da dextrè eorum uti consiliis: illis autem & piam & æquam, & sanam mentem, industriam vero sedulam, ut quæ mihi subditoque; populo usui sint, & providere sub tuo præsidio, & consulere velint ac queant.” Christian Prayers and Meditations, Oo4v. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 160. 66 “Tu soustiens & conserve sous la conduite de ta providence l’estat & governement de tous les Royaumes de la terre, & que c’est à toy de presider au milieu des Princes en leur conseil.” Christian Prayers and Meditations, K4r. Translation in Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 150.

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Such freedom to express a voice of counsel was a unique phenomenon of the 1560s and 1570s. With the growing Spanish threat of the 1580s a more autocratic governmental form was introduced.67 This change is demonstrated well by the fate of another illustration that placed the Queen in close proximity to the figure of Death. In the year the Christian Prayers and Meditations was published, Henry Denham printed a late fifteenthcentury poem The Travayled Pylgrime (1569)68 with images from a Spanish book. He added only one extra woodcut, one that depicted the Queen in triumph. 69 In the background above the Queen’s figure drawn in a chariot appeared Death enthroned, and while the verses accompanying the image rang with the praise of the Queen’s unmatchable qualities, the context into which it was inserted served as a memento mori to humankind. The lines “Beholde also the ougly corps, that bony figure hee, / Is Thanatos [Death] which endes the life of every degree”70 stood right after the eulogy of the English queen, delivering a threatening warning to all mankind. The free coupling of the figure of the Queen and death in both The Travayled Pylgrime and Christian Prayers and Meditations in the year 1569 is remarkable. Its significance can be further understood if one looks at how the image of The Travayled Pylgrime was recycled in the printing industry. Eleven years later, it was reused for another text, Anthony Munday’s Zelauto: The Fountaine of Fame (1580),71 but the figure of death was clearly erased. Davis, an expert on religious printed images, pointed out that the amendment was not because of damage made to the woodcut, but was in connection with the stricter censorship that was introduced in the 1580s.72 The text above the picture read “Let all true English harts, pronounce while they still have breath, God save and prosper in renown, our Queen Elizabeth,”73 and eliminated all reference to 67

John Guy, “The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?” in John Guy, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–19. 68 Olivier de La Marche, The Trauayled Pylgrime (London: Henrie Denham, 1569). It was freely translated from the original by Stephen Bateman. About the work see Marco Nievergelt, “Stephen Bateman, The trauayled Pylgrime (London: Henry Denham, 1569; STC 1585)” in The EEBO Introduction Series, http://eebo .chadwyck.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/intros/htxview?template=basic.htx&content= intro99840252.htm. 69 I am indebted to Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 188–89 for drawing my attention to this image. 70 La Marche, The Travayled Pylgrime, M3r. 71 Anthony Munday, The Fountaine of Fame (London: J. Charlewood, 1580), E1v. 72 Davis, Picturing the Invisible, 189. 73 Munday, Fountaine of Fame, E1v.

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mutability. Any form of allusion to the Queen’s possible death, or pertaining to her private matters, as for instance public discussion of her marriage was severely punished by this time. In 1579, the year after the rearranged version of the Christian Prayers and Meditations was published, John Stubbs released a pamphlet criticizing Queen Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Duke of Anjou.74 The counsel of Stubbs was unwanted: the pamphlet was prohibited, burnt, and a trial was held at Westminster which resulted in a punishment of cutting off Stubbs’s right hand. It is then no wonder that the prayers of the Queen next to margins depicting a Dance of Death were omitted form the later version of the prayer book. In contrast to this later edition, in the Christian Prayers and Meditations one can still witness a freedom of expressing opinion on questions concerning the Queen, which included also the free access to her most personal thoughts in prayer. In the new edition of the prayer book the Queen’s voice was cut out and never again during Elizabeth’s reign was such a personalized image of her offered to her subjects.

Conclusion The Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569) received far less notice up till today than it deserves. While the foreign language prayers it contains have been mostly attributed to the Queen and examined as her writing, it has not been noticed that two English language prayers can also be firmly assigned to her. The placement of these compositions within the prayer book and their relation to the border illustrations mark them out as important ingredients of the compilation. The Christian Prayers and Meditations occupies an emphatic place in the history of Protestant devotional literature. On the one hand, it represents a piece of writing that continued and revitalized a long standing religious tradition of private prayer books, thus underpinning the view of many historians who regard the Reformation in England not as a drastic change of religion but as a gradual process of adoption, selection and incorporation. On the other hand, Day’s compilation of prayers by using the form of the Book of Hours exploited the visual, intertextual aspect of the medium to confer a new understanding of royalty as surrounded by godly councillors.

74

John Stubbes, The discoverie of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by an other French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes by letting her maiestie see the sin and punishment thereof (London: H. Singleton, 1579).

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS BEHIND WILLIAM HARRISON’S DESCRIPTION OF ENGLAND KINGA FÖLDVÁRY

William Harrison’s Description of England (1577, 1587), published as part of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, has often been described as a dull and uninteresting compilation, even by its editors.1 It is hard to deny that most of Harrison’s material came from a variety of sources other than his own experience, the volume lacking therefore in originality of both approach and content. At the same time, it is also undeniable that the volume abounds in exciting details that make it a collection of invaluable eyewitness accounts of Elizabethan everydays. While it is generally the personal details and firsthand information that deserve the attention of the modern reader, I would like to argue here that the copied, compiled, and thus second-class elements of the text are equally instructive for us today, even if for different reasons. Among other things, we may learn from the examination of such passages about the working methods of Harrison, and by implication we may also discover what the early modern reader and writer expected and accepted as regards reliability in historical (and pseudo-historical) sources, together with the intention of chorographic writing in general, and that of William Harrison in particular. As a case study, I have chosen to read and interpret Harrison’s chapter on giants, a topic of obvious significance for him, since he placed it close to the beginning of his volume in both editions, in 1577 as chapter 4 in 1

Cf. Frederick J. Furnivall’s foreword to his 1877 edition, in which he refers to the whole of book 1 as “long and dull.” Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Harrison’s Description of England in Shakspere’s Youth (London: New Shakspere Society, 1877), iv. Georges Edelen in the preface of his 1968 edition refers to some parts of the work as “lengthy and readily detachable historical digressions.” Georges Edelen, preface to The Description of England: The Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life, by William Harrison (1968; reprint, Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library, and New York: Dover, 1994), vii.

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book 1, entitled “Whether it be likely that there were euer any Gyaunts inhabiting in this Isle or not” (1577, 3r), and in the extended 1587 edition as chapter 5, with the slightly modified title “Whether it be likelie that any giants were, and whether they inhabited in this Ile or not” (1587, 8).2 The chapter has no complex argument or narrative structure, it contains hardly more than a long list of examples from various sources to prove that giants existed in reality, and they were to be found on the British Isles as well. Even so, I believe that the text needs revisiting particularly because it has suffered neglect for a long time, and has mostly remained unknown for modern readers. Apart from the 1807–8 edition, which is in fact a reprint of the 1587 text, without any critical introduction or other editorial matter, no editor considered this chapter important enough to be included in their publication. The first significant modern edition is the one by Frederick J. Furnivall, who in the foreword of his 1877 volume picks only a few paragraphs from each chapter of the first book, which he considers otherwise too tedious to torture his readers with: “because this Book I is so dull, I have left it out.”3 The most recent version, edited by Georges Edelen in 1968,4 again based on the 1587 edition, follows a similar principle, and leaves out the entire chapter on giants, together with most others from the first book.5 In this essay therefore I will attempt to find out how far we can see if we stand on the shoulders of Harrison’s giants, how much we may understand about the late Tudor period by reading what a Puritan clergyman has to say about the pseudo-history of his nation. For the same purpose, it is equally important to compare the texts of the two editions, since an examination of what Harrison himself recognised as faulty, and corrected when preparing the extended 1587 edition may prove instructive as regards the text as a whole.

2 All quotations follow the original spelling, with the exception of the long Ǖ, which is replaced by the letter s, and the vv, substituted by w throughout the essay. Parenthetical references to the text identify the edition by date (1577 or 1587) and page number. In case of unnumbered pages, such as the dedicatory epistle, I use the signature system accessible on the Holinshed Project website, http://www .english.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/dox/Contents.pdf. 3 Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, iv. 4 William Harrison, The Description of England: The Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life, ed. Georges Edelen (1968; reprint, Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library, and New York: Dover, 1994). 5 It is only through the recently completed online editions of the Holinshed Project that the average reader has access to the full text, moreover, that of both editions.

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1. Contexts: Humanism and Puritanism The gigantic tomes known as Holinshed’s Chronicles, within which William Harrison’s Description functions as a chorographical introduction, are today often (if not mostly) mentioned in a Shakespearean context, since the historical chapters, written by Raphael Holinshed, served as Shakespeare’s main source for his history plays and several of the tragedies as well. In fact, modern scholarship has often expressed the view that the only interest the volumes have for us is due to their Shakespearean connections. Quite a few editions used this context as their selection criteria,6 and although recent critical approaches have tried to counter this view, it has still remained the premise no one can leave out of consideration.7 The present essay, however, intends to focus our attention on the way William Harrison, preacher and antiquarian approached his own sources. The discussion of giants, similarly to other fantastic, legendary or quasimythological creatures, lends itself easily to an investigation into the way authors handled their source material, what they accepted as authoritative and in what way they were prone to rely on less than purely scientific information. The Tudor period is again particularly suitable for such examinations, since it is well known to have been a period of transition, in which belief in myth and legend was still living side by side with sceptical and critical interpretations of the same. However, as Arthur B. Ferguson remarks, such was the Renaissance capacity for ambivalence that even the most perceptive interpreter of what he believed to be a primitive mentality was also convinced that an arcane wisdom, good for all time, lay beneath the allegories supposedly contained in the ancient fables.8 6

See Furnivall, ibid.; W. G. Boswell-Stone, Shakspere’s Holinshed: The Chronicle and the History Plays Compared (London: Chatto & Windus, 1896); Allardyce Nicoll and Josephine Nicoll, ed., Holinshed's Chronicle as Used in Shakespeare's Plays (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927). 7 Cf. Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s “Chronicles” (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3–5; Alison Taufer, Holinshed’s “Chronicles” (New York: Twayne, 1999), 135–44; Igor Djordjevic, Holinshed’s Nation: Ideals, Memory, and Practical Policy in the “Chronicles” (Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 1; Christopher Ivic, “Reading Tudor Chronicles,” in Teaching Early Modern English Prose, ed. Susannah Brietz Monta and Margaret W. Ferguson (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2010), 123–24. 8 Arthur B. Ferguson, Utter Antiquity: Perceptions of Prehistory in Renaissance England (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 5.

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While humanism, which Ferguson describes as “the steering force in English intellectual life for more than a century,”9 was beginning to change age-old methods of textual interpretation, “it was preoccupied with the issues of contemporary England rather than with scholarship for its own sake.”10 As a result, humanism could not bring an overnight change in the nation’s attitudes to tradition and legend. At the same time, English Puritanism, as a branch of Protestantism, adhered to Luther’s sola scriptura principle, and gave the Bible central position not only in spiritual matters, but in all other aspects of knowledge and thought as well. As John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim summarise its significance: In rejecting papal authority, Puritans affirmed Luther’s teaching that the Bible was the Christian’s only infallible authority. Puritan religion was religion of the Word, and the preaching and reading of the Bible were central to their faith.11

It is not surprising therefore that a politically inclined, devoted Puritan thinker would revert to such an unquestioning acceptance of scriptural traditions that contradicted the advances of textual interpretation achieved by humanist scholars. William Harrison, whose writing towards the end of his life was increasingly showing signs of bitterness as a result of the sinful ways of English society, was exemplary in accepting the authority of the Bible even in the face of critical opposition. It is all the more remarkable since as a chronicler or chorographic author, he joined a tradition in which Tudor authors, among them the Italian humanist Polydore Vergil, had long rejected much of the legendary prehistory of the English nation.12 Nonetheless, as his chapter on giants demonstrates, William Harrison remained faithful to the Scriptures, for all the research he conducted throughout his long career.

2. Pre-Texts: From the Scriptures to Leland’s Itinerary Harrison was a child of his age in many ways, and nothing illustrates this more than the textual complexity, the uneven use of narrative and 9

Ferguson, Utter Antiquity, 10. Ibid. 11 John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2. 12 See e.g. Andrew M. Kirk, “Polydore Vergil,” in Major Tudor Authors: A BioBibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Alan Hager (Westford, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1997), 467. 10

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stylistic devices, and the sometimes contradictory statements of purpose that characterise his text at various points. On the one hand, he was an astute observer, and the passages in the Description that present his own personal observations, his opinion on Elizabethan society, whether implied or stated clearly, often stand out of the text, and their subjectivity is emphasised by textual and stylistic markers as well. On the other hand, Harrison also seems to have been aware of the generic tradition his work aspired to join, and the objectivity required of chroniclers and chorographers. As a result, the vast amount of chorographic information, from the flow of rivers to the number and size of towns all over the country that Harrison gathered from the notes and maps of contemporary antiquarians, is easily accepted as reliable, although these chapters are considerably less entertaining to read than the subjective but lively personal observations. Harrison’s readiness to accept information from others, however, makes him an easy target for criticism: he himself admits in the dedication of the work to his patron, Sir William Brooke that a significant part of the information in the volume comes from second-hand sources at best, since he never travelled to the places he describes. Rather, as he gratefully acknowledges his debt to his contemporaries, he took the information from John Leland, a sixteenth-century antiquarian, and several other, named and unnamed sources.13 Nonetheless, this authorial method does not mark out Harrison as extraordinary in the age, since the requirements of the genre and of scholarship in general meant that the author with the broadest reading, particularly in the classics, was considered the most convincing. It is worth noting, though, that it was precisely the great care Harrison took to make his geographical descriptions as up-to-date as possible that led to the fast decline of his work and chorography as a genre as well. He often simply transcribed the notes taken by John Leland, and the maps prepared by Christopher Saxton, published in the second half of the 1570s, into a continuous description. What he could not foresee was that within a few years, as Georges Edelen remarks, these maps “were to render obsolete the type of topographical description over which Harrison took such pains.”14 Were he to stick to his own personal impressions, as he did in many chapters of book 3, the Description may have held his readers’ fascination for a longer time. The passages, however, that do not rely on easily traceable, first- or second-hand geographical information are considerably more interesting, 13

William Harrison, “Epistle to Brooke,” in Holinshed’s Chronicles, 1577, *2v. Georges Edelen, “William Harrison (1535–1593),” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962): 268. 14

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and also more troubling from a textual point of view. On the one hand, it is remarkable in itself that they treat somewhat dubious or downright incredible topics with the same authorial concern for factual details as the chapters describing physical characteristics of the landscape. Moreover, some of these passages not only show the author as naïve from a twentyfirst-century point of view, but they display information that appears to have come in for criticism as suspiciously unsupported, even at the time of the original publication of the volume. It is hard to ignore that William Harrison’s attitude to evidence is often striking when viewed objectively; at certain points one single author (even a cleverly forged fifteenth-century collection, the work of Berossus, or Pseudo-Berossus15) is “proof sufficient” (1577, 97r), at other instances he quotes multiple events, dates, even names, and still claims that he cannot find sufficient evidence to make sure that this is true—all of which make it clear that when it comes to sources, there is a strong hierarchy between fully authoritative and less reliable items. Not surprisingly for a Puritan author, the most convincing evidence is derived singularly from the Scriptures, after which come Christian authors, and last (and least) of all those pagan writers whose prestige in classical antiquity made them acceptable for the early modern age, but only after the testimony of the godly. The chapter on giants offers a perfect example for the above described hierarchy of sources, and in what follows, I would like to probe into the text for a close examination of various details, looking at the sources used by Harrison, in order to learn more about his authorial intentions and his working methods, particularly by pointing out inaccuracies in the text. With this thorough knowledge of the text we may then go on to find the points of connection to issues of greater significance, and see what Harrison had to say about the state of his nation and his religion (the two intricately connected), and what message he wished to send to the readers of his own times. Harrison introduces the discussion on giants with a statement of his intention. His first paragraph is a perfect example of a carefully composed beginning, which joins the text to the previous topic, the description of earlier nations who used to dwell in the British Isles, and then goes on to present a clear statement of his thesis, as follows:

15

See e.g. Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 28, 59.

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Kinga Földváry Besides these aforesayde nations, which haue crept as you haue hearde into our Islande, we reade of sundry Gyaunts that shoulde inhabite here, which report as it is not altogither incredible, sith the posterities of diuers princes were called by ye name: so vnto some mens eares it séemeth so straunge a rehearsall, that for the same onely they suspect the credite of our whole hystorie and reiect it as a fable, vnwoorthy to be read. For this cause therefore I haue nowe taken vpon me to make thys briefe discourse insuing, therby to prooue, that the opiniõ of Gyaunts is not altogether grounded vpon vayne & fabulous narrations, inuented only to delite the eares of the hearers with the report of marveilous things. But that there haue bene such men in déede, as for their hugenesse of person haue resembled rather* [*Esay. 30. vers. 25.16] highe towers then mortall men, although their posterities are now consumed, and their monstruous races vtterly worne out of knowledge. (1577, 3r)

On the one hand, the passage displays a somewhat reluctant admission that can be considered enlightened and scholarly at the same time: the fact that there are doubtful elements involved in this topic. The significance of this statement is that while for Harrison, the sacred tradition and the unquestionable support of Biblical passages is never brought into doubt, here he recognises the existence and argumentation of his opponents, and prepares to defend his view accordingly. The necessity of this approach is created by the fear that the purpose of the whole narrative (and by implication, British history as such) may be discredited if minor details are insufficiently supported. Nevertheless, the statement of his thesis remains clear: we can have no doubt about where he stands in the issue, and indeed, he presents us with his reasons why he cannot choose but accept the notion as fact, rather than fiction: partly by virtue of present evidence (physical proof in the form of bones, and the evidence of verbal tradition), partly on account of the Biblical evidence available. While Harrison stands firm in his conviction, the disbelief of others is an issue he never takes lightly. Even though we get no more details here of who suspects what exactly, still, knowing that for Harrison the history of the nation is the same as providential history, that of the true church and its constant struggle with the evil church of Cain, it is easy to see that the question of giants is just another example where the real issue is the acceptability of providential genealogy, the line of descent from Creation to the present.17 16

Marginal note in the original. For more details on Harrison’s view concerning the two churches, see G. J. R. Parry, A Protestant Vision: William Harrison and the Reformation of Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 3–57. 17

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Beside the biblical reference, the passage implies rhetorically as well that the race of giants is characterised not only by their outstanding physical properties, but also by their morally degraded nature, as suggested by the adjective “monstrous.” This interpretation of giants as not only men of “huge & incredible stature,” but also inhuman, or even non-human creatures is reinforced by the vocabulary of the chapter, in which we can find the expressions “pestilӁt race,” “mõsters,” “wicked tyraunt,” “huge blocks,” and “tyrauntes, doltish, and euyill men” (1577, 3r–4v). Physical strength and bodily stature appear therefore to be the least significant elements in defining giants, as Harrison underlines by giving some counterexamples. He mentions at the beginning of his chapter several men “of Noble race, equall to the Gyauntes in strength, and manhoode” (1577, 3v), such as Hercules, slayer of Antheus, or the British prehistoric Corineus, who defeated Gomagot (according to Geoffrey of Monmouth). Notwithstanding their strength and stature, Harrison draws our attention to the fact that neither Hercules nor Corineus were called giants by the authorities who wrote about them, precisely on account of their nobility, since they did not oppress the people but rather attempted to free them from the tyrannous giants. We do not need to go far in the text to find an explanation readily offered for the moral monstrosity of the race of giants: they were the descendants of the line of the evil Ham, and therefore regarded as members of the false church of Cain, enemies of the true church of Christ. For Harrison, this needs no further elaboration since descent from Ham equals the worst imaginable evil, and he is ready to make strong statements on the basis of rather indirect assumptions and etymologies: Berosus [. . .] writeth that néere vnto Libanus there was a city called Oenon (which I take to be Henoch, builded somtime by Cham) wherein Gyauntes dyd inhabit, who trusting to the strength and hugenesse of their bodies, dyd verye great oppression and mischiefe in the worlde. The Hebrues called them generally by the name of Enach peraduenture of Henoch the sonne of Cain, frõ whom that pestilӁt race at the first descӁded. (1577, 3v, italics mine)

Thus the significance of giants is apparently increased by the recognition of their role in salvation history, and clearly the best place to look for traces of their existence is the biblical tradition. But the paragraph deserves our interest for another, more textual than rhetorical reason as well, which shows how the best of authorial intentions may be combined with (and undermined by) imperfect scholarship. The first passage that Harrison cites from the Bible is the reference to Isaiah in

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the very first paragraph of the chapter (quoted above). The marginal note in the Description is spelled as Esay, the form used by the Miles Coverdale Bible (1535), the Great Bible (1540), the Bishop’s Bible (1568), but not found in the Geneva Bible, except for a single in-text reference in Mark 7:6. The only reason why this is remarkable is that there is sufficient evidence to prove that Harrison considered the Geneva version the best one available, and used it, together with the Geneva catechism.18 The spelling variant may therefore be a result of some careless copying on the part of Harrison, but it seems even more plausible that he made the reference without consulting any version of the Bible at this point. Since he needed no more than a well-known Biblical name and a general idea to support his argument, but did not quote directly anything from the Bible, it appears safe to assume that he relied on memory rather than on a careful consultation of the Scriptures, particularly when he was forced to complete his text in haste, as we will see in part 3 of this essay. At the same time, even in such a casual reference to the Scriptures, Harrison displays traces of considerable research. Neither the marginal commentary of the 1560 Geneva Bible, nor the Geneva catechism interprets the towers that will fall according to Isaiah 30:25 as giants, which suggests that Harrison’s readings were wider and more scholarly than his daily pastoral work would have necessitated. While the standard commentaries by the reformers usually interpreted the towers as either the Babylonians or the Assyrians,19 the identification of towers with giants was common enough already in the Targum, the Aramaic translations of the Bible, known by medieval and early modern Biblical scholars as well, not to make Harrison’s opinion unique in the age. 20 Unfortunately, there is no evidence to prove any direct link between a particular contemporary Biblical commentary and Harrison’s text. Knowing Harrison’s tendency to rely on authorities, however, it is more likely that the passage quoted above is based on an earlier reading experience than an extraordinarily creative, independent interpretation. Nonetheless, Harrison is always aware of the need to convince the broadest range of his audience, and therefore he moves on to listing examples of the giants that conform to the widely accepted definition, which includes the evil and oppressive nature of these gigantic creatures. As we have said above, the Bible serves as the main authority, and thus the 18

See Parry, A Protestant Vision, 80, 155. See Joseph Addison Alexander, Commentary on Isaiah (1867; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1992), 483. 20 Cf. C. W. H. Pauli, trans., The Chaldee Paraphrase on the Prophet Isaiah (London: London Society’s House, 1871), 100. 19

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first part of Harrison’s supporting evidence comprises a long list of Scriptural references, ranging from Genesis 6:4,21 through Numeri 13:33– 34, Deuteronomy 3:11, 1 Samuel 17:4–5, to 2 Samuel 21:16–22. He then goes on to list Christian writers, primarily Augustine, but contemporary English chroniclers and antiquarians (Thomas Eliot, Richard Grafton and John Leland) also find their place in this part of the list. Their inclusion among Christian authors is only surprising since the opening paragraph of the chapter seemed to promise a separate argument concerning the appearance of giants in the British Isles, whereas here no distinction is made between ancient and contemporary, English and continental authors or examples. Last of all come the classical, that is, non-Christian authorities, Plutarch, Pliny, Alexander Trallianus, Virgil and others, with the obvious intention to silence sceptics by showing how the respectable pagan sources also support the argument put forward by the author. To round off his treatise, however, Harrison returns to the Bible at the very end of the chapter, as in final conclusion, helping his reader to understand the most significant characteristic feature that made the giants inhuman: that God did not delight in them. This passage is quoted from the Prophecy of Baruch, one of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, and Harrison quotes three Latin verses in full, giving even his translation for the benefit of the ignorant. The Latin text, however, raises again the issue of accuracy, partly in the form of an obvious printer’s error in the marginal note, in which the verse is given as “Cap.3.36,” whereas the quotation is Baruch 3: 26–28 (an error which remains uncorrected in the 1587 edition). The more problematic issue is the form of the text, though, since Harrison presents the three Latin verses as follows: Ibi fuerunt gigantes nominati, illi qui ab initio fuerunt statura magna, scientes bellum, hos non elegit dominus, neque illis viam disciplinae dedit, propterea perierunt, & quoniam nõ habuerunt sapientiam, interierunt propter suam insipientiam. &c. (1577, 4v, italics mine)

In several sixteenth-century editions of the Vulgate, on the other hand, the three verses can be found in the following form: 21

Interestingly, Harrison identifies Genesis as the “booke of generations,” which is a traditional denotation, based on the recurring phrase in the Mosaic books, not to be confused with the hypothesised ancient document called “The Book of the Generations of Adam,” for details of which see Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1997), 301.

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Kinga Földváry Ibi fuerunt gigantes nominati illi, qui ab initio fuerunt, statura magna, scientes bellum. Non hos elegit Dominus, neque viam disciplinae inuenerunt: propterea perierunt. Et quoniam non habuerunt sapientiam, interierunt propter suam insipientiam. (italics mine)22

Apart from the minor differences in punctuation, the most marked difference is seen in the second verse, particularly in the word order of several phrases, but also a choice of word and structure, which creates a different interpretation: “neque illis viam disciplinae dedit” versus “neque viam disciplinae inuenerunt.” The former phrase is an almost literal rendition of the Septuagint text,23 which emphasises the agency of God, who chose not to give the way of knowledge to the giants, while the latter version, the more commonly used in most editions of the Vulgate, creates the impression that it was the giants who did not achieve the way of knowledge. Harrison’s use of the former Latin phrase may be explained in several ways: on the one hand, since the text of the Vulgate circulated in a wide range of editions, it is not impossible that he was using a lesser known version, and copied it word by word.24 It is more likely, however, that once again, Harrison was not consulting his Bible, and therefore the Latin text is the result of a memorial reconstruction, which would explain the essential similarities of content, together with the minor differences in word order and punctuation. His choice of word then may be no accident: in his providential belief, the fate of giants is controlled by God and providence alone, rather than decided by the ambitions of the giants themselves. The English Bible translation used by Harrison raises similar problems. We have mentioned above that Harrison used the Geneva Bible, and at this point, his quotation from the prophecy of Baruch reinforces this claim, since the quotation is an exact copy of the passage as found in the 1560 edition of the Geneva Bible. (Surprisingly, however, in the 1587 edition of the Description, Harrison changed a few words in the last line, which ended up as different from any Bible translations in circulation in the age.) Back in the 1577 edition, at another passage within the same chapter, however, we seem to witness an even more curious case of memorial 22

Based on the Vetus Latina Database (Brepolis Publishers, 2011), http://www .brepolis.net/. 23 I am indebted to András Cser for drawing my attention to this detail. 24 This seems unlikely, however, since none of the texts included in the Vetus Latina Database is identical with it, and neither are the six different sixteenthcentury editions (published in 1520, 1522, 1526, 1528, 1547, 1556) I have consulted in the Rare Books collection in the Library of the University of Notre Dame.

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reconstruction, where neither Harrison’s choice of words, nor his factual reference corresponds to any contemporary versions of the Bible. When he describes the well-known biblical giant Goliath, he refers to the superhuman size of the monster with the following words: In the first of Samuell you shall reade of Goliath a philistine, [Cap. xvii ver. 4.5 Goliath25] the weight of whose Taberde or iacke was of fiue hundreth sicles, or so many ounces, that is, 312. pounde after the rate of a sicle to an ounce, his speare was like a weauers beame, the onelye head whereof weighed 600. ounces of yron, or 37. pounde and a halfe english, his height also was measured at 6. cubites and an hande bredth, all which do importe that he was a notable Gyaunt, and a man of great strength to weare such an armour & beweld so heauy a launce. (1577, 3v)

The first textual problem that we may notice in the passage is related to the piece of clothing the giant was wearing. While in this 1577 edition Goliath had a “Taberde or iacke,” this was changed to a “brigandine or shirt of maile” in the 1587 edition. When trying to substantiate the change in vocabulary, the first source to check is evidently the Bible. We cannot, however, find the word “taberde” in any sixteenth-century (or earlier) English translation of the Bible, although the translations use a rather wide range of expressions to describe the outer garment Goliath was wearing. The Geneva Bible (both the 1560 and later editions) has “brigandine,” in the Great Bible (1540) we can find “coate of mayle,” in the Bishop’s Bible (1568) “coate of male,” and in the Miles Coverdale Bible (1535) “fast habergeon.” Even if we look at the most prestigious translations that were in circulation before or after the period of Harrison’s composition of the Description, we can find no text that would include the word “taberde”; Wycliffe (1395) says: “he was clothid with an haburioun hokid, ether mailed,” and the King James Bible (1611) follows the previous authorised versions’ phrase with “coate of male.” 26 While looking for an explanation of the appearance of the word “taberde,” it appears that the word choice is not only rare, but clearly inaccurate, and relies on no more than a superficial association of meanings. The Latin text of the Vulgate has here “lorica hamata,” which can be translated as a “hooked cuirass,” that is, “a piece of armour for the body (originally of leather); specifically a piece reaching down to the waist, and consisting of a breast-plate and back-plate, buckled or otherwise 25

Marginal note in the original. For a comparison of Bible translations, both early modern English and the Latin Vulgate, see http://www.studylight.org/. 26

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fastened together,”27 the Latin adjective “hamata” specifying it as put together of small pieces, hooked together.28 None of the meanings given by the OED for “taberde” define it, however, as a piece of armour, even less as a coat of mail, which appears to have been the closest equivalent accepted by early modern Bible translators. It is true that several meanings of “taberde” associate it with a knightly context, but never as part of the armour. The word is rather defined as “a short surcoat open at the sides and having short sleeves, worn by a knight over his armour, and emblazoned on the front, back, and sleeves with his armorial bearings”29 or simply a sleeveless jacket used by lower class people, monks, and footsoldiers. The word appears to have been in common use in the early modern period, and may therefore have been the one that came to Harrison’s mind when trying to summarise the basic details, without consulting the English edition of the Bible. In the 1587 edition of the text, the corrections made to this passage reinforce our findings, as we have already mentioned above that instead of the odd “taberde,” Harrison used the expressions “brigandine or shirt of maile,” and this word choice makes it clear that it is again the Geneva Bible that he had in front of him. Back in the 1577 text, however, at this point we may be certain that Harrison was not checking the story in a Greek or Latin edition of the Scriptures, but he was relying on his memory when he made the reference to this well-known Old Testament passage. In all Bible editions, including the English translations from Wycliffe onwards, Goliath’s armour (whether “taberde” or “coat of mail”) weighs five thousand sicles (or shekels in modern usage), whereas here Harrison gives the number as five hundred only. Since his English description is so far removed from the original Latin even in the linguistically easy question of numbers, it seems safe to assume that Harrison composed the passage without using a Latin Bible either, relying on his memory to retell the story of Goliath. Moreover, he goes on to explain the actual weight of the measurement which does not correspond to any other rate, least of all to his own system of measurements. The exchange rate he offers here (a sicle to an ounce) is 27

Oxford English Dictionary online, 2nd ed., 1989 (online version June 2012), s.v. “cuirass.” http://oed.com/view/Entry/45604. 28 On the possible etymology of the partly non-Hebrew word used in the Hebrew text, see Miklós KĘszeghy, “Góliát a legenda és a történelem határán” [Goliath on the borderline between legend and history], Pannonhalmi Szemle 14, no. 3 (2006): 9–27. 29 Oxford English Dictionary online, 2nd ed., 1989 (online version September 2011), s.v. “tabard.” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/196736.

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a very much simplified, and rather inaccurate translation of the idea Goliath and his armour may have weighed (the usual rate is about four sicles to an ounce). The misquoted passage is remarkable as it shows that Harrison did not even consult his own notes concerning weights and measurements, and therefore his calculations contradict his own chapter on weights and measures in book 3. This error thus underscores that the passage on giants must have been written hastily, and therefore it needed correction when the mistakes were noticed. In the 1587 edition, Harrison replaces the measurements with the ones used by the Geneva Bible, and changes the weight of Goliath’s shirt of mail from 500 to 5000 sicles, together with his explanation of how much this weighs in contemporary English terms. He writes in the revised text about Goliath, the weight of whose brigandine or shirt of maile was of 5000. sicles, or 1250. ounces of brasse, which amounteth to 104. pound of Troie weight after 4. common sicles to the ounce. The head of his speare came vnto ten pound English or 600. sicles of that metall. (1587, 9)

This short example may easily prove not only that Harrison’s conditions of work in 1577 were less than ideal, as we will see below, and in the absence of his library, he attempted to supply memorial reconstructions of all data he could, but also that he never had the time or opportunity to join the separate chapters of the volume into one coherent whole, and therefore did not even notice the inconsistencies between various parts. Apart from the Scriptures, there are certain other sources that Harrison relies on throughout his writing, to the extent that they appear in themselves almost as an independent subtext of the volume as a whole. As Harrison was no archaeologist, and there were only a few instances when he could supply his own first-hand experience, to convince those down-toearth critics for whom the biblical text may be no more real than an allegory, he enlisted the help of the most important Tudor antiquarian, whose premature death did not allow him to live to see the dissemination of his work: John Leland and his Itinerary. Harrison’s reliance on Leland’s notes is so obvious that he has even been accused of plagiarism,30 although I believe that his references to Leland in the dedication to his patron, Sir William Brooke, and all over the volume make it clear that he never wanted to hide his indebtedness. In the chapter on giants in the 1577 30

Cf. Oliver Harris, “ ‘Motheaten, Mouldye, and Rotten’: The Early Custodial History and Dissemination of John Leland’s Manuscript Remains,” The Bodleian Library Record 18, no. 5 (April 2005): 475–76.

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edition, he refers to Leland twice in marginal notes, and one of the sentences he thus marks is based (almost word by word) on the information found in Leland. In Leland’s Itinerary we read the following statement: A xxx. Yeres ago not far fro the Chapel of the Moore, the which is in Come Whitton Paroch in Gillesland, and stondeth a vi. Myles Est from Cairluel, was fownd a Grave, and theryn Bonys inusitatae magnitudinis.31

In Harrison’s chapter on giants, the sentence goes as follows: In Gillesland in Come Whitton paroche not far from the chappell of the Moore, sixe miles by East from Carleill, a coffin of stone was founde, and therein the bones of a man, of more then incredible greatnes [Leland32]. (1577, 4r)

The reason why this reference is remarkable is not Harrison’s reliance on Leland, as that is easy to see elsewhere as well; not even his conscientious reference to his source, since his whole work is characterised by a readiness to acknowledge his debt to other writers. I find this particular instance rather telling because it is in a somewhat unusual place, the chapter dealing with giants. To be able to cite a reference from the disorganised but vast collection of Leland’s notes suggests an immense and intense familiarity with Leland’s work, in fact, a thorough study of the rather sketchy text. At the same time, it is again interesting to see that Harrison was not averse to some magnification when it came to establishing evidence. On the one hand, Harrison includes the decisive detail of “the bones of a man,” which is missing from his source. On the other, Leland’s text only mentions bones “inusitatae magnitudinis,” that is, bones of “unusual greatness” (maybe ‘uncommon, extraordinary, or very rare,’ but certainly no more than that), which Harrison translates as “of more than incredible magnitude.” The eagerness with which he exaggerates his evidence may, however, have worked against him—the use of the word “incredible” certainly puts the whole argument at risk of dismissal as fiction.

31

The Itinerary of John Leland, Antiquary, ed. Thomas Hearne, vol. 7 (Oxford: James Fletcher and Joseph Pote, 1769), 56. 32 Marginal note in the original.

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3. Texts: From 1577 to 1587 The chapter on giants is in many ways typical of Harrison’s whole enterprise, and exemplifies both his general working method, and the specific personal working conditions. These were considerably different in 1576–77, when he was preparing his text for the first edition of the Chronicles, and in 1586–87, when he was revising and expanding his own text, polishing it to a level that the constraints of time made him unable to do earlier, and modifying several passages, to reflect changing circumstances and opinions. The difficulties he had when writing the first edition mainly derived from the fact that he joined the Holinshed team rather late in the process, and had to complete his work in a relatively short time. G. J. R. Parry shows that “only in the second half of 1576 was Harrison commissioned to write the Description of Britain for the Chronicles,”33 which meant on the one hand that he had access to some material collected by other members of the authorial team, but also that he had to work in haste not to hinder the publication of the whole enterprise. What is more, Harrison also admits that for a considerable period throughout the writing process, he did not even have access to his own library, as he claims in the dedicatory epistle to his patron, he had to work “almost as one leaning altogether vnto memorie, sith my books and I were parted by fourtie myles in sonder,” which reinforces our findings concerning his use of the Biblical sources described above: his reliance on memory was considerable. Even later, when he had “some repaire vnto my librarie,” he claims that this was “not so great as the dignitie of the matter required, & yet farre greater then the Printers haste woulde suffer” (1577, *2r). It seems clear that his extensive notes for the planned but never published “Great English Chronology” were not in London with him during the months his duties forced him to stay there. As we have seen above, the haste and lack of access to his notes and sources resulted in inaccuracies he was unlikely to have committed otherwise, and which he duly corrected in the 1587 edition. Moreover, we can notice a more conscious organisation of the volume in 1587, which is absent in the first edition: after the above mentioned, rather free translation of a Leland passage, there is a cross-reference to other chapters, in which Harrison promises to provide further details, again based on information from Leland.

33 G. J. R. Parry, “William Harrison and Holinshed’s Chronicles,” The Historical Journal 27, no. 4 (1984): 791.

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When comparing the two editions, the reader soon realises that the alterations seem anything but consistent. There are practically no chapters, and hardly any paragraphs unchanged in the Description of England, which proves that Harrison made an effort to revise the whole text, polishing and extending it in a variety of ways. At the same time, it is equally interesting to see that certain parts of the volume he failed to revise, which are therefore in a somewhat discordant relation to the rest— among them most of the dedication. Although he left out a few lines in which he complains about the shortness of time at his disposal, the rest of the epistle was left as it first appeared, including the reference to the months he spent in London, without access to his library. The epistle in this way acquires a rather mock-apologetic tone, since the ten years that passed between the two editions gave the author more than ample opportunity to find and correct any mistakes that remained in the text, and consult his library for more elaborate details, which he in fact did, as the considerably increased size of the second edition testifies. Still, the epistle, however exaggerated its humble tone, remains honest in the most important aspect: it underlines the author’s dedication to the goals of the Reformation and his devotion to his patron who supported him in these efforts. When we examine the particular ways in which the expansion of the text took place, the chapter on giants may once again be seen as typical. Just as the Chronicles as a whole, the text of the second edition of Harrison’s Description is considerably longer, the chapter on giants growing from the approximately 2800 words of the 1577 version to more than 6400 words by 1587. The most significant reason for this remarkable increase can be attributed to the added sources and authorities: within the scope of this relatively short chapter, more than thirty sources were added, identified by name, but many of them even by title and precise reference as well. Several of these clarifications contain no new information, but only add the reference that he was apparently unable to do when working away from his library in 1576–77. At other points, the text displays the author’s intention to strengthen his argument by adding further supporting evidence to his text, such as locations, precise geographical names, even dates. Other newly inserted passages clarify what may not have been clear at first reading, sometimes by purely compositional tools, by adding textual linking devices, replacing pronoun references by proper names, and in general, attempting to make the text as smoothly fluent and readable as possible. The considerable amount of time Harrison had for the revision of his text, and to ponder on what he wanted or did not want to include in the

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new version, had the consequence that the differences are often not simply quantitative, but qualitative as well: the content and even the conclusion also underwent changes at several points. One interesting example of this expansion can be found right at the beginning of the chapter on giants, in the second paragraph, where the 1577 edition refers only to Hercules and Antheus, implying that their stories (and their gigantic size) would be common knowledge to the reader. When revising the text for the 1587 edition, however, Harrison appears to have found such a superficial reminder unacceptable, and therefore he provides his source, who is not surprisingly a classical author, Lucan.34 What is more, he does not stop here but adds another classical authority, the fifteenth-century Italian humanist scholar Angelus Politianus (or Politian in the anglicised form) with a direct quotation of six Latin lines.35 In this way, we can witness again how the general authorial intention for a coherent narrative is defeated by the eagerness to convince all readers by effectively overwhelming them with excessive details. It is not only details of content, but the method of approach, or what we may describe today as the thesis of the chapter, is also considerably clearer and more detailed in the second version. Whereas in the 1577 text, Harrison claims that “by particular examples shalbe manifestly confirmed without the obseruation of any method, or such diuision in the rehearsal hereof as sound order doth require” (1577, 3v), by 1587, he leaves out this disclaimer, and provides a very clear methodology. First of all, he summarises what it is exactly that he is trying to prove (giants have been both in this island and in other parts of the mainland as well). Then he describes the order in which various types of evidence will be presented, starting with the Scriptures, i.e. the highest authority, which should be enough for the godly; after which he offers infidel and pagan authors as well—altogether these shall suffice to confute his opponents.

34

The reference is identified by Henry Summerson in the annotations of the Holinshed Project as Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, De bello civili, ed. D.R. Shackleton Bailey (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1997), 96–9 (book 4, 593– 653). http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/1587-note97.html. 35 Identified by Henry Summerson as Angeli Politiani Opera Quae Quidem Extitere... (Basel, 1553), 598 (Liber epigrammatum). http://www.english.ox.ac.uk /holinshed/1587-note98.html. Summerson does not mention the two minor mistakes in Harrison’s text, which again seem to be Harrison’s own misreading, since neither the 1553 Basel edition Summerson identifies as Harrison’s source, nor the 1533 or 1537 Lyon editions (both published by Sebastian Gryphius) print the text in the way Harrison does.

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Talking of opponents, there is one particular name whose presence in the 1587 edition is so marked that it needs some detailed discussion. It is none other than Johannes Goropius Becanus (also known as Johan van Gorp), a humanist scholar from Antwerp, whose Origines Antwerpianae, including a treatise entitled Gigantomachia, was first published in 1569, three years before his death. Goropius is never mentioned in the 1577 edition, but he gets a central position in the 1587 text, by appearing no less than eight times, from the first page to the last paragraph. The main argument Goropius put forward in his work is summarised by Arthur B. Ferguson as the claim “that giants never really existed and that the term “giant” had originally been applied to oppressors, and only because of their oppression, not because of preternatural stature.”36 He dismissed the physical evidence of bones as remnants of animals, and in general, handled all stories of giants with disbelief. He was not the first to argue in this way, but as Ferguson also shows, this “raw rationalism […] was gaining strength”37 in the era, and the scepticism such writers showed towards the Scriptural evidence made it impossible for Harrison to consider their claims as justified. We can also see why Harrison took care to change the above-mentioned Leland quotation to include “bones of a man,” since any odd bones could easily be refuted by Goropius and his kind. Even though the publication date of Goropius’ work implies that it may have been available for Harrison before the first edition (already in the 1577 edition he refers to the idea that Goropius expounded, namely that giants were simply tyrants and oppressors), the name does not appear in the first edition of the Description. The reason for the omission may be either that Harrison was working away from his library, and could not remember Goropius’s name to provide the accurate reference, or he did in actual fact not have this piece of information in 1577, and therefore refers to giants as tyrants and oppressors based on another source. It is, however, also possible that Harrison had access to his work only after the publication of the first edition, and felt personally called into argument by Goropius’s systematic refutation of the traditional scriptural argument concerning the existence of giants. While in the 1577 edition Harrison was already countering attacks from unnamed disbelievers, identified only as “some men” (1577, 3r), his approach was more general, and significantly less emotional. In the 1587 text, however, it is noticeable how much personal passion has gone into 36 37

Ferguson, Utter Antiquity, 110. Ferguson, ibid.

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his narrative, characterising Goropius’s text as “cavillations” (1587, 9) and his attitude as “pertinacitie” (1587, 12). By rhetorical implication, we also learn that Goropius does not belong to the “godly” (1587, 8), since for true believers Scriptural evidence would be sufficient, but for him the pagan and infidel authors are also necessary. Goropius (and possibly others, who were of the same opinion) in this way inspired Harrison to create a more reflexive text, as if all the added details were there to refute Goropius’ opinion line by line. Apparently the infidel attitude of the Antwerpian humanist was one of the principal reasons why Harrison felt obliged to include several non-scriptural and non-Christian authorities in his argumentation. At the same time, what is slightly surprising is the great lengths Harrison is willing to go to refute his arguments, which suggests either that the reputation of Goropius necessitated a strong counterattack, or simply that the Puritan Harrison felt personally called to the arena by the unreligious attack of rationalism that he perceived as threatening Christianity as a whole.

4. Conclusion It is hard to decide whether the above detailed inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the text can be explained by Harrison’s absent library (allowing for a rather extraordinary memory, since his quotations are remarkably accurate if relying only on memorial reconstruction), or the lack of time and haste with which he had to compose his work. None of these reasons are fully applicable in case of the second edition, where apparently his corrections were done in a somewhat random way, even though he had ten years for revising his text. But it is also possible that the text simply outgrew its author’s ability to see it as a coherent whole, and for all the effort he made to create a work of eternal value, he only succeeded in shaping it into a rather chaotic monster, gigantic in scope, although noble in its intentions. Nonetheless, we need to acknowledge, from the distance of more than four centuries, that even though he forgot about certain details, and neglected to include or refused to accept some others, he always remained true to his vocation as a minister, a servant of his flock. That is why he never failed to keep his main purpose in mind: to disseminate the promise that salvation history and the history of the English Church was in fact one and the same, and it is only the true church that could bring each and every human being to eternal life. This may also provide an answer to the extent of passion and bitterness that characterises particularly the second edition, when the ten years that had passed since the first publication of the

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Chronicles showed him that Elizabethan English society and its leaders in particular were fallible men, who often gave up their ideals, or whose political ideals moved along different lines from the path that Harrison saw as the single one towards salvation. That is why the existence of giants, and through them, the presence of sin and evil in the world was such a significant issue, which Harrison approached with the intention of a missionary. He saw it as an opportunity to show his flock the ways of God, and no sceptical humanist scholar could have dissuaded him from doing so. In the very last paragraph of the chapter on giants, Harrison concludes that these huge blocks were ordeined and created by God: first for a testimonie vnto vs of his power and might; and secondlie for a confirmation, that hugenes of bodie is not to be accompted of as a part of our felicitie, sith they which possessed the same, were not onelie tyrants, doltish, & euill men, but also oftentimes ouercome euen by the weake & féeble. Finallie they were such indéed as in whom the Lord delited not. (1587, 12)

All three purposes connect the topic to the wider issue of individual salvation, and we can understand through them why Harrison decided to stand on the shoulders of giants to show the way forward for himself, his nation, and his church. In the fall of giants he could also find the Scriptural promise that there will be days in which the weak and the poor will be rewarded, but the mighty will be humiliated in front of God—and as a devoted Puritan, he could not wish for more than to invoke the delight of the Lord.

WOMEN OF NO IMPORTANCE IN EDMUND SPENSER’S THE FAERIE QUEENE ÁGNES STRICKLAND-PAJTÓK

The examination of women in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene instantly outlines two distinct groups: there are the good, virtuous women and at the other extreme, the ill-willed, wicked ones. Yet, between these rather homogenous groups, a space is occupied with less delineated, less meticulously portrayed, almost invisible females. Owing to this borderline position the term “middle women” seems to be an apt definition of them. When reading the romance for the first time middle women might fail to catch our attention. Usually, we only notice them after a second reading, when one becomes more open to more minute details. Once recognised, these women command our consideration: in opposition to the two other groups, whose moral state is obvious, middle women’s position is ambiguous, especially when they are judged according to sixteenthcentury moral standards. Our more lenient age would probably regard them as less conspicuous. In Spenser’s age conduct books functioned as compasses of proper behaviour, hence, we shall consult these publications when wanting to find out more about the moral state of the era. These books, following the traditional gender conception of male supremacy, attempted to control every facet of a woman’s life, from appearance, to verbal utterances and private life. The most important of these manuals is The Instruction of a Christen Woman written by Juan Luis Vives, the adviser of Queen Catherine of Aragon, and translated into English in 1529 by Richard Hyrde.1 The general advice which characterises Vives’s Instruction and other conduct books is the ardent propagation of chastity. This is the primary virtue, the source of all other reputable traits, such as shamefastness, 1 Other important conduct books were Baldassare Castiglione, The Courtyer, trans.Sir Thomas Hoby (London, 1577), Edward Tilney, A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Mariage, Called the Flower of Friendshippe (London, 1568), Stefano Guazzo, The Ciuile Conuersation, trans. George Pettie (London, 1581).

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obedience, modesty. In the case of unmarried women, the definition of chastity is transparent and uncomplicated, from them absolute abstinence is required: “a woman hath no charge to se to, but hir honestee and chastitee.”2 Therefore, this virtue has to be protected by demureness. “For shamefastnes and sobrenes be the inseparable companions of Chastitie, in so muche that she cannot be chaste, that is not ashamed.”3 Strict, though different rules apply to married women. In their instance, chastity will cease to be equal with virginity. Honesty, loyalty, devotion and submission to the husband become prevalent: “A maryed woman oughte to bee of greatter chastitee than an unmaryed.”4 And: [a]monge all other vertues of a maried woman, two there ought to bee moste speaciall and greattest: the which onely if she haue theim, maie cause mariage to be sure, stable, durable, easy, lyght, swete, and happy [. . .]. These two vertues, that I meane, be chastite and great loue towarde hir husbande.5

Even when judged according to these guidelines of conduct books The Faerie Queene’s middle women seem mediocre, they are neither too good, nor too bad. They have a wide moral range, from bordering on the virtuous to the nearly indecent. In terms of scope and depth they are also fairly variable. Some of these women re-emerge in consecutive cantos, while others dominate only one episode; some are presented as mere sketches, and some are delineated with stronger contours. Because of their heterogeneity it is difficult to set up defining features for this group of women. Mostly negative patterns can define them and offer a compass to this study as they neither belong to the grandiose group of chaste Spenserian heroines, nor to the condemnable female characters. They inhabit a moral no man’s land. Without fully exploiting and probing the topic Caroline McManus tackled the matter: Spenser’s poem [. . .] provide[s] extensive commentary on the range of social and sexual behavior expected of women who could not be so neatly pigeonholed and who often occupied the interstices of prescribed sexual categories, especially the liminal space between complete naïveté and utter depravity.6 2

Vives, Instruction, A3r. Vives, Instruction, K1r. 4 Vives, Instruction, S1r. 5 Vives, Instruction, R4v–S1r. 6 Caroline McManus, Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” and the Reading of Women (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 154. 3

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These women’s presence is especially dominant in book 6, where no other strong female character is there to overshadow them. Prior to that, only three middle women appear, in books 2, 4 and 5, where although their role is not negligible they do not eclipse their main counterparts, but rather show another aspect of them, or serve as their extension. Amavia, the first and most fallible middle woman, emerges as an addition and antithesis to the evil Acrasia, one of the most malignant enchantresses of the romance. As we first glimpse Amavia lying wounded on the grass the tone of desperation and gloom is immediately set: in her “white alabaster brest did stick / A cruell knife, that made a grisly wownd, / From which forth gusht a stream of gore-blood thick” (1.1.39).7 This ambience is further intrigued by the sight of her husband, Mortdant, who even dying has sexual appeal: Besides them both, vpon the soiled gras The dead corse of an armed knight was spred, Whose armour all with bloud besprinckled was; His ruddie lips did smile, and rosy red Did paint his chearefull cheeks, yet being ded, Seemed to haue beene a goodly personage, Now in his freshest flowre of lustie hed, Fit to inflame faire Lady with loues rage, But that fiers fate did crop the blossome of his age. (2.1.41)

After the brutal yet decorous portrayal, Amavia turns into the narrator of past events. She reports how Acrasia seduced Mortdant into an adulterous relationship, and how she set out to find her husband. Coming across him, Amavia realizes that her once true Mortdant is “so transformed from his former skill, / That me he knew not, neither his own ill” (2.1.54). However, Amavia’s matrimonial devotion is more powerful than her husband’s lecherous passion: “through wise handling and faire gouernance, / I him recured to a better will, / Purged from drugs of foule intemperance; / Then meanes I gan deuise for his deliuerance” (2.1.54). Nevertheless, the temptress’s vengeance proves to be more trenchant and causes the couple’s downfall. Mortdant’s attraction both to Amavia and Acrasia illuminates the dichotomy between lechery and temperate marital love. One of the contributors of the seminal Spenser Encyclopedia, Carol V. Kaske goes as far as saying that “his failure to recognize Amavia, dramatizing the drug’s 7

Citations of Spenser’s poetry are from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche (London: Penguin Classics, 1987). The numbers in brackets refer to The Faerie Queene’s books, cantos and stanzas.

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blockage of his reason, thus confirms that Amavia allegorizes reason.”8 Yet, although Amavia represents the other extreme in relation to Acrasia on our imaginary axis, she shall not be deemed as the allegoric representation of reason: she is definitely courageous enough to fight for her husband and not to rely on divine justification, but her affection towards Mortdant is so strong that she is willing to sacrifice everything for this sacred devotion. In addition to being a wife, Amavia also takes up the role of mother, since during her errand she undergoes an extremely painful childbirth (2.1.50). However, her motherly instincts do not prove to be as powerful as her spousal ones: after her husband’s death she lacks the endurance to overcome her despair and stabs herself to death, leaving her son, Ruddymane to his fate. Although Amavia is a character who embodies marital continence, she also bears traits which foreshadow her negative counterpart, Acrasia, the evil witch. The setting of Amavia’s and Mortdant’s above quoted debut scene in 2.1.41 recognizably alludes to Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss: There, whence that musick seemed heard to bee, Was the faire witch herselfe now solacing With a new lover, whom, through sorceree And witchcraft, she from farre did thether bring: There she had him now layd a slombering, In secret shade, after long wanton ioyes. (2.12.72)

Both images depict a young woman in a fountain and a seemingly lifeless attractive male. From the distance no distinction can be made. Only upon closer inspection can the basic difference be noticed: in the Bower of Bliss, Acrasia and Verdant are in a tender, post-coital state, whereas the reason for Amavia’s and Mortdant’s docility is their impending death. In Schoenfeldt’s interpretation this scene is also proof for the romance’s handling spiritual and corporeal phenomena as cause and result: “The book at large is a series of responses to the congenital frailty of flesh, a frailty which is at once physiological and moral.”9 The two images are each other’s antitheses: Acrasia and Verdant’s post-coital lassitude is in sharp and decadent contrast to the other couple’s grave exitus. Understanding these two juxtaposed pictures sheds light on 8

A. C. Hamilton, Spenser Encyclopedia, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 26. 9 Michael C. Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 44.

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so far undetected layers of both situations. These images reflect on the proximity of death and sexual satisfaction: instead of being repellent, both couples are depicted as decadently corporeal, yet beautiful. By comparing the two sets of images, the analogy of the Amavia–Mortdant and the Acrasia–Verdant episodes is revealed: the horror of the former gains sensuality, while the latter’s sensuality is tainted with elements of horror. The border between death and sexuality is blurred. Although Amavia’s omnipotent passion corresponds with Acrasia’s fervour, their targets and aims are dissimilar: with Amavia, only one person can trigger uncontrollable feelings, whereas Acrasia’s zeal is impersonal. The object of her love is interchangeable. The former feeling is understandable, human, while the latter shows signs of insatiable, perverse “hunger.” On this account, Amavia’s character becomes a lifelike, credible woman with motivated, acceptable actions. The Amavia-episode bears narrative significance as well. At her grave, Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, the main hero of book 2, swears revenge on Acrasia, and subsequently this aim is going to be the cohesive topic of the book, making it thematically the most unified, succinct, and lustrous part. Through the figure of Guyon, who serves as the narrator’s mouth-piece in the scene, questions of blame and responsibility are also raised. Mortdant was seduced “[f]or he was flesh: (all flesh doth frailtie breed)” (2.1.52). Therefore, the responsibility is not his, but Acrasia’s. Similarly, Guyon does not condemn Amavia for committing suicide: he was merely “Accusing fortune, and too cruell fate, / Which plunged had faire Ladie in so wretched state” (2.1.56). Here objectivity is overshadowed by circumstances, and by the narrator’s fondness or hatred of certain characters. Although on the characters’ level, no severe criticism is expressed, some judgement is implicitly transmitted. Not uniquely for Spenser the names speak for themselves: Mortdant is from the Latin ‘death-giving,’10 probably referring to the knight’s excellent fighting skills and chivalry. Paradoxically and tragically his name finally becomes the denotation of his indirect and involuntary, yet fatal and unquestionable destruction of his loved ones, his devout wife, and newly born male heir. The etymology of the name Amavia, ‘I have loved,’11 alludes to her distinctive passion. Although the narrator is lenient towards Amavia, she is inherently disapproved of. Being an embodiment of intemperate love makes it impossible for her to exist in the romance’s world, where instinctive 10 11

Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1109. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1109.

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feelings are deemed not only inappropriate, but even threatening to the harmony of social order. Amavia’s and Mortdant’s burial scene performed by Sir Guyon serves as an apt metaphor for the narrator’s ambivalent and complex treatment of the couple, which can be labelled with lenience, disapproval, embarrassment and confusion. The great earthes wombe they open to the sky, And with sad Cypresse seemely it embraue, Then coureing with a clod their closed eye, They lay therein those corses tenderly, [. . .] The dead knights sword out of his sheath he drew, With which he cut a locke of all their heare, Which medling with their bloud and earth, he threw Into the graue [. . .]. (2.1.60, 61)

Spenser himself is unable to allow Amavia’s actions to go uncriticised, and forces his character into the role of the good, conformist Protestant knight. Verbally he does not disapprove, but his farewell to the dead Amavia does so by depriving her and Mortdant of a proper funeral. Yet, in this beautiful, though pagan ceremony the young couple are endowed with a dignified and soothing end: their eternal embrace suggests calmness and solace. The next middle woman in line is Hellenore, the ambiguous beauty of book 3, who even among the members of this controversial group is highly difficult to make a moral judgement on. Her case is unique: she is not one of the discourteous ladies of book 6, her sin is graver than theirs: she is culpable of lewdness, adultery and promiscuity. On this account she could be a condemnable figure in the romance. Yet, she is not. Her character lacks malice, evilness and aggression. She is the young and beautiful wife of the rich but old and impotent Malbecco: “Yet he [Malbecco] lincked to a louely lasse, / Whose beauty doth her bounty far surpasse” (3.9.4). “But he is old, and withered like hay / Vnfit faire Ladies seruice to supply” (3.9.5). Thus emphasising her unfavourable circumstances, the romance provides an excuse for Hellenore’s adultery, and even implies some encouragement. In the Hellenore-episode the act of initiating a sexual relationship is excused. Paridell, one of the guests in Malbecco’s castle lusts after the young and joyful wife, and clearly indicates his intentions. With speaking lookes, that close embassage bore, He rou’d at her, and told his secret care:

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For all that art he learned had of yore. Ne was she ignoraunt of that lewd lore, But in his eye his meaning wisely read. (3.9.28)

Understanding and welcoming Paridell’s seductive hints, Hellenore responds with a seemingly innocent, but suggestive act: while they are having dinner she drops her cup filled with wine onto her lap. “The guilty cup she fained to mistake, / And in her lap did shed her idle draught, / Shewing desire her inward flame to slake” (3.9.31). Paridell’s and Hellenore’s emotions escalate into the hasty decision of eloping. While fleeing, the lovers set Malbecco’s money on fire, which, again, alleviates Hellenore’s sin by showing Malbecco plainly renouncing her in the hope of saving his wealth. Despite the highly charged attraction, once consummated, Paridell’s desire vanishes. His treatment of Hellenore becomes rather disparaging, he decides to “take no keepe of her” (3.9.38), and abandon the woman in the middle of a forest. Had the Hellenore-episode ended here, it could have served as a moral example of the humiliation and emptiness felt after surrendering to desire. But her plot continues resulting in a favourable ending for Hellenore: after a short hiatus, we see the woman once more, this time from Malbecco’s point of view, who—after ensuring his money—sets off in search of his wife. Suddenly he glimpses her heartily entertaining herself with a tribe of satyrs: The iolly satyres full of fresh delight, Came dauncing forth, and with them nimbly led Faire Hellenore, with girlonds all bespred, Whom their May-lady they had newly made: She proud of that new honour, which they red, And of their louely fellowship full glade, Daunst liuely, and her face did with a Lawrell shade. (3.10.44)

The woman’s confidence, freedom, the lack of shame and frustration turn her into one of the most contented female characters in the entire romance. We can say that she sinks to bestiality, yet, it cannot be doubted that during her storyline she gradually reaches a form of existence she always desired. In most scenes of Bacchanalian excess, women participate reluctantly, not of their own will. McManus depicts Amoret as a counterexample to Hellenore: “Unlike Amoret, who is forced to play a role in Busirane’s Petrarchan masque, Hellenore participates willingly in the antimasque dance with the satyrs.”12 Although Hellenore’s story can be 12

McManus, Reading of Women, 261, n51.

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interpreted as evidence for her savagery, it also serves as an example for her being content and comfortable with her fate. Hellenore’s skill is to enjoy and celebrate sensuous life. In the romance there are numerous respectable heroines (for instance Una, Britomart, Belphoebe), who are all honourable, but their characters lack vivacity, and their fates frustratingly miss completion. Hellenore is provided with both: we have seen her ability for gaiety and our last glimpse is of her satiated, celebrated and content with the satyrs. Malbecco still spying becomes a witness of her excessive nocturnal joys: Hellenore “emongst them lay, / Embraced of a Satyre rough and rude, / Who all the night did minde his ioyous play: / Nine times he heard him come aloft ere day” (3.10.48). In a romance which is so obsessed with different forms and variations of blame and punishment, this episode escapes any contemplation on this issue. Here, while the course of events is narrated, no moral judgement is explicated. The general ambiance of this story, hence, is rather lighthearted. These stanzas radiate a peculiar kind of wit, which very rarely occurs in this romance, as if the narrator here would be able to not take himself and his characters too seriously, and handle them with a modicum of ridicule and amusement. However, it is important to note that this episode is embedded into the Britomart and the Amoret plotlines, which offer an elaborate analysis of blame and the nature of sin. In this serious, highly philosophical environment a brief and humorous interlude facilitates to digest the moral message of the main plot. Probably because of this weightless position of this tale was it possible for a liberated unconventional character like Hellenore to remain in the plot without the narrator’s explicit disapproval. Since one could only speculate what the authorial intention was with the Hellenore-plotline, we are limited to rely on the text itself, in which she fails to become a deterrent of improper behaviour. The narrator’s lenient handling—although less emphatically than in Hellenore’s instance—will typically characterise the attitude towards middle women. Also with Aemylia, the mock heroine of book 4 of Friendship, significantly more emphasis is laid on the plot than on its moral analysis. Aemylia is—in some ways—a counterpoint of Amavia in book 2: while the former is fickle, the latter is loyal to the extreme. Aemylia’s unsteady feelings also accentuate the constancy of Amoret, the book’s real heroine. This assumption is enhanced by their physical proximity in the course of book 4 canto 7. Being kidnapped by a savage man, Amoret meets Aemylia in Lust’s cave. In this situation, Aemylia, who has been held captive there for a longer period seems more adept, practical: she is a natural survivor. She has spent twenty days in the cave

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and meanwhile has “seen / Seauen women by him slaine, and eaten cleane” (4.7.13). Amoret’s main distress, however, is not caused by fear of the loss of her life, but fear for her chastity. Aemylia knowingly soothes Amoret’s worries about being abused by the lustful man by informing her that an old woman is also held captive there, who does not mind pleasing the savage, hence “[f]or euer when he burnt in lustfull fire / She in my stead supplied his bestiall desire” (4.7.19). Aemylia also tells Amoret about her calamities, about how she lost her beloved husband, and how she was abducted by an evil man. Amoret has enough self-awareness to detect similarities to her story in this recollection: “Thy ruefull plight I pitty as mine owne” (4.7.19). The similarity of their destinies does not end here. After they escape from the cave, we chance upon them again in canto 7. Arthur finds the two women starving and miserable in the forest “Both in full sad and sorrowfull estate” (4.8.19), and the three continue together—through other mishaps—to find the ladies’ knights (Amyas and Scudamour). In this book, whose thematic virtue is friendship, it is enthralling to see these two women who are so alike in their appearance, principles, background and capabilities sharing experiences without forming any amiable bonds with each other. Yet, viewed from another angle, the ostensible indifference might gain theoretical significance: the two women can be handled not only as separate characters, but as variants of the same story, hence, as different manifestations of the same character. This way, their role is not to display friendship (they will do that with someone else, Aemylia with Poeana, Amoret with Britomart), but to demonstrate possible responses to similar events by two opposing figures: a worldly, fallible woman, and an outstanding heroine. To preserve her chastity, Amoret rather risks her life, and flees from the cave of lust, while Aemylia stays there (probably raped) and waits to be rescued. Amoret, although lethally wounded, continues her journey, while Aemylia complains about being hungry; Amoret remains loyal to her knight, Aemylia has an eye for other men. However, despite Amoret being more righteous, it is Aemylia who is endowed with love and happiness. Amoret’s plot remains unfinished and vanishes in the vastness of the romance. In Aemylia’s and her friends’ story there are interrelations between several members of the group: at the beginning of their plot Aemylia is the fiancée of Amyas, whose best friend is Placidas. (The two men’s closeness is underscored by their identical looks). Poeana, the fair daughter of the giant, Corflambo lusts after Amyas, hence she keeps him as her captive, and later due to their resembling looks, captivates Placidas, who wandered to Corflambo’s castle to free his close friend. Simplifying the seemingly

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complex texture of emotions, we can state that here Amyas is in the centre, and the other three are in love with him. The girls’ love towards him probably does not need profound evidence, yet, Placidas’s affections are rarely analysed and disambiguated. His devotion towards his friend, something similar to Shakespeare’s Antonio’s feelings for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, is revealed by many of his actions. His ardent search for him (4.8.55); the fact that he lets himself be captivated just to be with him (4.8.57); or that he puts himself into danger for his sake (4.8.61), and his joy when seeing Amyas liberated from his dungeon are all signifiers of deep affection. The instance of their reunion is especially telling. Here Placidas behaves exactly as the amorous Aemylia: Whom soone as faire Aemylia beheld, And Placidas, they both vnto him ran, And him embracing fast betwixt them held, Striuing to comfort him all they can, And kissing oft his visage pale and wan. (4.9.9)

At this point the dense web of emotions gets even more chaotic. While hugging in a threesome Aemylia suddenly notices the striking resemblance of the two men, and becomes confused: in the heat of the moment she cannot decide which squire she finds more attractive, which is not the archetypical sign of true and devoted love. She, though full oft she both of them had sene A sunder, yet not euer in one place, Began to doubt, when she them saw embrace, Which was the captive Squire she lou’d so deare, Deceiued through great likenesse of their face, For they so like in person did appeare, That she vneath discerned, whether whether weare. (4.9.10)

Evidently, with emotions like these it is impossible to please everyone, hence by the end of this plotline at the end of book 4 canto 9 some authorial intervention is needed to disentangle the chaotic threads. Aemylia and Amyas are provided with satisfaction, whereas Placidas and the suddenly reformed Poeana—as remainders—are given to each other. The interchangeability of the object of one’s love purely on account of their similar looks warns us of the arbitrary nature of human relationships. This minor plotline ends with a slightly forced, though optimistic ending, which is especially fortuitous for the sinful females: the voluptuous Aemylia, and even the wanton and cruel Poeana are forgiven and endowed with a conventionally content life. It is alarming to notice

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that while the stories of virtuous women such as Una’s, Amoret’s or Britomart’s were deprived of happy completion, sinful or merely fallible women like Poeana and Aemylia are given their desired stability. Aemylia’s and Amyas’s relationship has yet another aspect, the issue of women marrying below their rank, which cannot be elaborated in depth in this canto, hence it will reappear in book 6 in connection with Priscilla. Aemylia mentions that she eloped with Amyas due to the impossibility of their marriage (4.7.15), and Amyas is often referred to as a “Squire of low degree,” but the problem will not be resolved, circumstances will not change, they merely get accepted. Similarly to Aemylia, who provided contrast to Amoret’s figure, Samient, the emphatic middle woman in book 5, also represents a missing aspect of a major female character: she functions as the active, flexible and mobile self of Mercilla, the threatened queen. Her matter-of-fact figure appears in the consecutive cantos 8 and 9 in book 5 of Justice, displaying a new type of woman. She is unique even among the middle women, which derives from her position. She is not defined by any relation to a man (ostensibly lacking sexual drive), but by her profession, since she is the messenger of the queen. Samient is the only woman in the romance who is employed, and, moreover, entrusted with high responsibility. She lives up to her position, in her brief appearance she comes across as articulate, adventurous and clever. In her presence even prominent men seem somewhat stolid: for instance when furore aggravates and deafens Arthur and Artegall to such an extent that if it was not for Samient’s intervention, their fight would have been lethal. They [Arthur and Artegall] drew their swords, in mind to make amends ......................................... Which when the Damzell, who those deadly ends Of both her foes had seene, and now her friends For her beginning a more fearefull fray, She to them runnes in hast, and her haire rends, Crying to them their cruell hands to stay, Vntill they both doe heare, what she to them will say. (5.8.10)

Samient’s eloquence is demonstrated by the lengthy narration (5.8.17ԟ23) about the threatened state of Mercilla by the belligerent Souldan and his wife Adicia, and her mission to seek peace and initiate negotiations with the enemy. Mercilla entrusts Samient to approach Adicia “in friendly wise” to reach “finall peace” and “mutuall consent.” It shall not escape our attention that here—despite their frailty, and even malignance—women are expected to possess a significantly higher

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propensity for amicability than their male counterparts. In this part of the romance, peaceful and humane decisions are favoured against unnecessary aggression. More feminine values, such as altruism and mercy are pushed to the foreground, at the expense of brutality. Naturally, this milder tone does not involve the total elimination of violence: where words and wit fail, physical power still prevails. As Artegall, Arthur and Samient (disguised as their captive) enter Souldan’s castle, they are troubled by a violent attack, which they fight off with similar aggression. The outcome of this scene also models the romance’s moral double standards, which always favour middle women. While Souldan is destroyed, with a minor but surprising twist, focus is taken away from Adicia’s eventual fate: in her franticness she transforms into a tiger. Metamorphosing into an animal is not an indubitable reward by any means. However, comparing Adicia’s storyline to her husband’s reveals that a less serious punishment has been handed down on her than on Souldan, who was annihilated: especially, since the tiger does not only epitomize negative connotations. By summarising Edit Újvári’s entry it can be discerned that although the tiger can be identified with evil forces of darkness, it also represents positive power, activity and energy.13 Intriguingly, while throughout the romance middle women’s appearances are relatively scanty, the last completed part of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, book 6 of Courtesy offers abundant material for our search for women who belong neither to virtue, nor to vice. At this stage, towards the end of the grandiose fragment, the so far moralistic, didactic tone seems to exhaust itself, and gradually, silently gives way to a more lenient undertone. In Briana’s and Crudor’s story this permissiveness can be detected. Although Briana violates the law of courtesy, she only does so to please her fiancé, who would marry her only on condition of receiving a coat lined with human hair. The couple are no threat to life, but by shaving everyone’s hair who goes past, they break the code of civility. They saw that Carle [Maleffort, the servant] from farre, with hand vnblest Hayling that mayden by the yellow heare, that all her garments from her snowy brest, And from her head her lockes he nigh did teare, Ne would he spare for pitty, nor refraine for feare. (6.1.17)

13 József Pál and Edit Újvári, ed., Szimbólumtár: jelképek, motívumok, témák az egyetemes és a magyar kultúrából (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 1997), 460.

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Depriving someone of her hair is tantamount to the deprivation of one’s dignity,14 which here in the book of Courtesy cannot remain unpunished. Both members of the couple are lectured and threatened, but finally Briana is acquitted, while Crudor is punished, and—ironically— they are given the same treatment, and the same destiny: they have to marry each other. Blandina’s and Turpine’s episode in book 6 canto 6 also depicts a strange kind of relationship with unconventional moral judgement. The first reference of Turpine is in book 6 canto 3, when he refuses to provide shelter to Calepine and the wounded Serena. To take revenge, Arthur, the epitome of all virtues, including courtesy, enters Turpine’s castle. He pursues the lord of the castle who fled into his mistress’s, Blandina’s chamber, where the prince knocks him unconscious. Blandina, the loyal maid covers her lord with her skirt (“And with her garment couering him from sight, / Seem’d vnder her protection him to shroud” [6.6.31]), and begs Arthur for mercy. Blandina’s plea seems to be both highly effective and affective, since Arthur spares Turpine, but mysteriously and ambiguously spends the whole night with her. “The Prince himselfe there all that night did rest / Where him Blandina fayrely entertayned” (6.6.41). Although providing no evidence, the narrator does not fail to add the tarnishing detail about Blandina being “false and fayned” (6.6.42). On this account Blandina can be dismissed as falsely flattering and fickle. Nevertheless, her attempt to save her paramour is still remarkable, even selfless, and courageous. In the bedchamber scene she behaves not only as a faithful lover, but motherly traits can also be discovered. It is probably not accidental that from the enraged Arthur, Turpine instinctively seeks protection in the safe, intimate and private closed space of Blandina. She lets him enter her chamber, and then she entirely encloses him. She fully covers Turpine with her skirt, she protects him with her body, and he gets inside her contours as if he was immersed by her. Later we will see that Turpine was not worthy of such an affectionate treatment. He breaks all his vows, and hence ends up being punished by Arthur with being hung upside down from a tree. Blandina, on the other hand, although scolded for flirting with Arthur, escapes any major retribution. For her brief and merely implied affair with the prince Blandina is described as having “guilefull wits to guyde” (6.6.42). The incident of Blandina makes the narrator contemplate on the mysterious nature of female attractiveness: “Whether such grace were 14 J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 77.

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giuen her by kind, / As women wont their guilefull wits to guide; / Or learn’d the art to please” (6.6.43). As Charles Grosvernor Osgood states in the Variorum edition, “in false courtesy, particularly in women, the poet has found it hard to distinguish nature from art as its origin.”15 Yet, regardless of whether women are endowed with charm by nature or nurture, the effect is universal: men are defenceless against female allure. Even if Blandina’s intention was to pacify Arthur merely to ensure his forgiveness of Turpine, she is attracted to Arthur as well. Also, with her exceptional skills of pleasure Blandina causes no harm: after his demanding fights, Arthur willingly chooses to spend a night with Blandina, who makes the effort to please him: “With all the courteous glee and goodly feast, / The which for him she could imagine best” (6.6.41). Due to her caresses the next morning Arthur leaves the castle strong and invigorated. Blandina, although being the mistress of a dubitable character possesses traits like her loyalty (although not to the right person), femininity and tenderness, which make her superior to her lord. Even in the romance world, she is pardoned. Arthur’s enjoyment of Blandina’s embraces makes him forgive her: even when Turpine turns against him again, he only punishes the evil knight, not his lady. She is exempted from punishment. Mirabella’s story, fractured into cantos 6, 7 and 8 in book 6 is close to Briana’s and Blandina’s in its moral, all presenting sinning women who are able to reform and repent. In displaying penitence Mirabella is the most ardent, however, her sins are also the gravest. As an exception to Spenser’s rule of connecting beauty to good breeding, Mirabella comes from a base family, and is “Yet deckt with wondrous giftes of natures grace” (6.7.28). Because of her exquisite beauty, “all men did her person much admire” (6.7.28), and yearn for her. This extreme pining has lethal consequences: due to this incurable languish, twenty-two men distress themselves to death. Seeing her vanity and pride, Cupid sentences Mirabella to a lengthy wandering. She cannot return until she saves the lives of as many knights as she caused the death of, in addition to which, she has to fill a leaking bottle with tears of contrition and a torn bag with her repentance (6.8.24). Her involuntary undertaking seems highly demanding. In the light of her punishment, her encounter with Arthur is a clear signifier of her moral improvement and honest repentance: the prince attacks Mirabella’s two guards, Disdain and Scorne, but Mirabella hinders their killing, admitting that she needs to complete her punishment, 15

Edmund Spenser, The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Frederick Morgan Padelford (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932), 6: 216.

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otherwise her “life will by his death haue lamentable end” (6.8.16). In the group of middle women, Mirabella is rather difficult to judge. Her initial stubbornness, vanity and cruelty could almost classify her as an evil woman. Yet, Arthur’s sympathy saves her. This might be due to her resemblance to Canacee, the chaste heroine of book 6 of Friendship: prior to marrying Triamond, the knight of Friendship, Canacee was also a woman who attracted many men who willingly died for her. The only dissimilarity between Canacee and Mirabella is that while Canacee’s suitors died in a joust, Mirabella’s admirers pined themselves to death. This disparity—especially by Renaissance standards—is significant, but the difference between judgements these instances entail seem exaggerated. Although Mirabella is offered salvation, and Arthur is willing to immediately restore her into society, she has to face her previous sins. She is not above any laws, no special treatment applies to her: being involved in other men’s death requires repentance. She is not condemned, rather pitied, and even revered for her capability of repentance. Her plotline does not conclude with a happy ending, but she goes through moral improvement, which results in the narrator’s clemency to Mirabella. Priscilla’s and Aladine’s episode in book 6 cantos 2–3 also displays an instance of tolerant handling of prescribed rules. As often with Spenser, all the background information about the lovers is given after their current relationship is described. In the romance’s present Priscilla’s caring love towards the wounded Aladine is emphasised. We see her deep concern both in the covert forest where Calidore and Tristram come upon them and also later in Aladine’s father’s castle, where they find temporary shelter: “But faire Priscilla (so that Lady hight) / Would to no bed, nor take no kindely sleepe, / But by her wounded loue did watch all night, / And all the night for bitter anguish weepe, / And with her teares his wounds did wash and steepe” (6.3.10). These lines outline a caring relationship. However, as the immediate danger of physical annihilation is over, the fundamental problem of their love re-emerges. The young couple eloped together after Priscilla’s father had forbidden their marriage because of Aladine’s lower social status. Following the unpleasant events of Priscilla’s attempted seduction and Aladine’s injury, doubts start rising in Priscilla regarding her reputation and the righteousness of her bold decision. These feelings prove to be stronger than her love: ensuring Aladine’s well-being in Aldus’s castle she opts to return to her parental home. It seems that Priscilla has not reached that level of individuality which we can see in case of Aemylia or Amavia. She is too weak and lacks the perseverance to go along the unconventional path she embarked on. She

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cannot shake off the depressing weight of her determination, and finally yields to it. But despite this submission her figure still has a lot to offer, having the willpower to elope from her father’s house, which does not seem a mere hasty decision, but a choice inspired by deep love. She is liberated enough to yield to the calling of physical passion without regretting her deed. As we hear about their intimacy from a lady: “We chaunst to come foreby a couert glade / Within a wood, whereas a Ladie gent / Sate with a knight in ioyous iolliment / Of their franke loues, free from all gealous spyes” (6.2.16). The way she finds her way back to her parents is also remarkable: she neither victimises herself, nor pleads guilty, but—with Calidore—fabricates a clever lie, due to which, the father welcomes his daughter back. This episode curiously displays the ironic nature of chastity and one’s reputation: regardless of what happened in the past, if society deems one as respectable, then the past can be erased, what is in the depth of one’s heart and mind is inaccessible. Here, in the case of Priscilla, no signs of repentance are shown, yet, her reputation can be fully restored. The narrator also employs this superficial perspective: no preaching is given about Priscilla’s supposed lechery, disobedience and dishonesty. Flawless purity, obedience and honesty only seem to be requirements of the near-transcendental exemplary heroines. Serena’s position in the last completed part, in book 6 is definitely emphatic. Judging by her strong and dominant presence she would even be entitled to be handled similarly to Britomart, Una and Amoret, as a major Spenserian heroine. However, her personality prevents her from joining the group of virtuous women. While Una, Belphoebe or Britomart were able to fight off temptation, Serena welcomes it. What is uniquely different and novel in her story in comparison to the chaste women, is not her propensity to sin, but the lack of struggle and hesitation with which she embraces certain behavioural forms, which seemed unacceptable and unimaginable for the romance’s chaste women. Her first appearance is emblematic in this regard: Knight Calidore comes upon Serena and her lover, Calepine embracing in a bush: He chaunst to come whereas a iolly Knight, In couert shade him selfe did safely rest, To solace with his Lady in delight: His warlike armes he had from him vndight; For that him selfe he thought from daunger free, And eke the Lady was full faire to see, And courteous withal, becoming her degree. (6.3.20)

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After the incident, Calidore apologizes to Calepine and Serena because he “Troubled had their quiet loues delight” (6.3.21), and starts a jolly conversation with the couple. Calepine “His long aduentures gan to him relate” (6.3.22), and “The faire Serena [. . .] / Allur’d with myldnesse of the gentle wether, / And pleasurance of the place, the which was dight / With diuers flowres distinct with rare delight” (6.3.23). What is new in this situation is not only the couple’s ease with which they handle this embarrassing situation, but also the narrator’s approval of it. Not even a slight hint suggests his condemnation. The woman’s name, referring to serenity, hence calmness and cheerfulness also fits into the positive ambience surrounding her. In Spenser’s fairy world Serena’s chaste alter ego is definitely the wandering naive Florimell, the heroine of book 3. Although Serena is less gullible, both she and Florimell need male protection to fend off attack— usually of a sexually abusive nature. Their apparent vulnerability induces care in virtuous men they encounter. As Arthur, Guyon and Timias protect Florimell, so does Calidore, the Salvage Man, the Hermit and Calepine look after Serena. The fact that Serena cannot be classified as one of the Spenserian chaste women is not the failure of her guarding knights, but the result of her own choice. The knights are successful in saving her from unwanted, intrusive interaction, and the decision to fully devote herself to her beloved knight, Calepine is entirely hers. After highlighting Serena’s uniqueness in terms of her lack of moral struggle, the social facet of this matter still requires some consideration. The romance intriguingly captures the duality and division between Serena’s inner good conscience and her suffering caused by a general social condemnation of her actions and behaviour. McManus’s sensitive close reading of the romance reveals a riveting interpretation of the incident when Serena is severely bitten by the Blatant Beast. According to McManus, Serena’s incurable, deepening wound is to be associated with social shame due to her indecent behaviour.16 Although she is allowed to suffer lengthily, it seems that the narrator is on her side against social condemnation. The compassionate words which describe her miseries evoke pity and a feeling of unjustness in us, hence we feel relief when she is cured by the Hermit. Agreeing with McManus we can say that Serena’s story is a case of independent, autonomous thinking being rewarded over old-fashioned, zealous rule-governed, meaningless social norm. The romance’s lenient attitude to Serena is even more visible in the Matilde-episode. Here the fates of the two women of opposite intentions 16

McManus, Reading of Women, 201.

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and aims are inherently intertwined. Reading the text carefully reveals to us that the language describing the pain of Serena’s wound and copious bleeding (for instance “busie paines” [6.3.28]; “Sickely Dame” [6.3.31]; ”So sore her sides, so much her wounds did bleede” [6.3.46]) evokes strong associations of childbirth, hence also providing an explanation for the extent of social disapproval she received. Nevertheless, her suffering is not lasting. Her anguish is suddenly eased in an oblique scene: in pain and despair, she disappears into the forest, and the lamenting Matilde and Bruin appear. Their tragedy is that they are longing for an offspring, but their fate is to remain childless. Suddenly Calepine (Serena’s lover) glimpses a bear with an infant in its mouth, bravely snatches the baby from the beast, and encourages Matilde to raise him as if her own. When she agrees, Calepine seems hugely relieved “Right glad was Calepine to be so rid / Of his young charge” (6.4.38), which strengthens our growing suspicion about Serena being the mother of the infant. Although the implications about Serena’s childbirth and her surrender of the baby are not clear, the references are still strong enough to underpin Caroline McManus’s above quoted interpretation, and they fit smoothly with the Serena plotline. From the beginning of her story she is consistently portrayed as a woman who chose to devote herself to love which is free of commitments and responsibility, hence the role of being a mother seemed unacceptable for this kind of figure. And uniquely this decision is accepted at this point of the romance. McManus also draws attention to the enigmatic tone of the narrator, which also alleviates Serena’s culpability: “[h]er maternity is rendered obliquely, the Spenserian text both pointing and obscuring her childbirth experience, both condemning and exonerating her.”17 Taking into consideration the previous, severe, negative judgement of extramarital sexual relationships, in Serena’s case the elements of forgiving, accepting and understanding by all means prevail over blame. Juxtaposing Serena and Matilde highlights their sharp contrast: one of them wishes to remain childless, whereas the other would do anything for a baby. It is also worthy of notice that although these two women display two extremely different behavioural patterns, society normally would disapprove of them. Serena is judged for being indecent and Matilde’s most distinctive attribute is her barrenness. With Serena’s and Matilde’s past the reader would expect these women to feel guilty. However, as Serena’s conscience is free of guilt, so is Matilde’s. She does not condemn herself, only her destined fate: “For th’heauens enuying our prosperitie, / Haue not vouchsaft to graunt vnto vs 17

McManus, Reading of Women, 205.

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twaine / The gladfull blessing of posteritie” (6.4.31). When she accepts the baby, she decides to hide the circumstances of his “arrival” from her husband: “And with her husband vnder hand so wrought / That when that infant vnto him she brought, / She made him thinke it surely was his owne” (6.4.38). The reader can contemplate the nature of this lie, whether it is a white one or a deceiving one. Matilde might have acted this way to avoid social judgement, not to offend Bruin’s masculine confidence (6.4.33), or for the baby’s sake to hide his dubious lineage (6.4.36). One single reason cannot be chosen, but what is really important here is not for whose benefit Matilde opted to lie, but that she consciously decided that family life can be built on dishonesty. The aim of this analysis was to direct attention to an almost invisible group of woman in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, who do not possess the typical, clear-contoured, glowing bodies of Spenserian females, and who do not emerge from the romance as figures to pay instantly much heed to. Because of their lack of glamour, these women are usually dismissed as one-dimensional and uninteresting, or even ignored. However, if they are observed in more depth and if their essence is to be given, we can see that they have more to offer than we would assume at first sight. The behavioural pattern they represent displays something unique in the romance. These women err, and make mistakes, yet the romance treats them with exceptional lenience: they are adulterous, wanton, suicidal, disobedient, dishonest, but they are never condemned by the narrator. If we remind ourselves of the fundamental values of conduct books such as chastity, obedience and loyalty, and of the most condemnable traits, which are lewdness, adultery and vanity, and see how they materialise in the characters of The Faerie Queene’s “middle” women, a strange dichotomy can be experienced: according to conduct books these women should be punished, yet, common sense suggests the opposite; and Spenser also plausibly veers towards this latter. He cannot go against humane feelings, hence, in the romance a certain type of behaviour is tolerated, which is in opposition to its guidelines. “Middle” women might have to face the more or less implied or explicit scolding, but serious retaliation is annulled. Letting them err this way, questions the message about the nature of the romance’s chaste females, which doubt is also underscored by the cadence of women’s fate: while chaste women are never given blissful satisfaction, the destinies of middle women are always fulfilled. This inability to complete chaste women’s stories also parallels the broader inability of the author to complete this romance of virtues: as the

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individual stories in the work are not rounded off, so is the main plot left open. The most obvious reason for the work having been left unfinished is Spenser’s sudden death. However, the fact that between 1596 (when the second three books were published) and 1599 (the date of his death) nothing substantial was added to the original plot makes us suppose that the author had no great urge to finish this piece. One possible explanation for Spenser’s inability to complete this romance of virtues is that the work dangerously started to shift towards an ambience which it tries to deny and suppress. The intended message of good conduct fades, and gives way to a more worldly, more lenient and humane feeling, which is proven by the fact that the emerging figures of women of “no importance” naturally manage to have their stories completed. Most of them are rewarded with their desired aims (Aemylia, Briana and Serena with their lovers; Hellenore with liberated passions), and even those who did not reach their desired goal are morally exempted (Blandina, Mirabella), or given a dignified end (Amavia and Mortdant being buried together). Through these sketchy stories of middle women freshness and unconventionality—elements of everyday life—filter into the romance, and show a facet of reality behind the rigid stories of exemplary virtues. This way middle women paint an ironic picture of sixteenth-century society: through Priscilla we see that virginity is not a physical, but a social constraint, through Matilde we see that women lie to their husbands for their prospective long-term happiness, through Aemylia that love is not a constant emotion, but an undulating one. To capture the relevance of these episodes it can be noted that the importance of these stories lies in their ability to outline portraits of everyday women. This type of female is not Spenser’s invention, he merely depicted women of his age, yet, these portrayals are of the utmost importance. Through them the reader is provided with an invaluable glimpse into the informal, human side of the Renaissance, and can witness the emergence of a new kind of woman in early modern England in whom traces of the modern fictional heroine’s traits can be discovered.

“ONE TURNE IN THE INNER COURT”: THE ART OF MEMORY IN THE SERMONS OF JOHN DONNE NOÉMI MÁRIA NAJBAUER

Scholarship on the 160 extant sermons of John Donne, though still overshadowed by the disproportionately vast amount of reflection on his lyric oeuvre, has gradually come into its own. The fifty years since the appearance of the ten-volume critical edition (published 1953–1962) of the homiletic canon have produced an admirably wide range of approaches to these challenging texts. Scholars in the past two decades especially have sought to unite three distinct and often isolated strands of criticism (i.e., literary, theological and historical) through an increasingly holistic approach in which the literary form, theological content and historical context of the sermons are considered in tandem to produce more accurate readings and a deeper understanding of the works whose composition occupied the whole length of Donne’s mature years. I have in the past proposed the fundamental principle of memory, revealing itself both in theory and in practice, as capable of uniting two of the most robust areas of scholarship on Donne’s sermons, namely his theory of mind, treated within philosophical/theological criticism of the sermons and his exuberant use of imagery, the key concern of the literary approach. I have argued that Donne’s Augustinian/Thomistic theology of memory relates to the memorable structure and imagery of his sermons as theory does to practice.1 John Donne had a profound theological commitment to memory as the human faculty most suited to lead man to God. About this commitment, which is best understood in the context of Augustinian and Thomistic

1

See Noémi M. Najbauer, “ ‘The Art of Salvation, is but the Art of Memory:’ Memory as Art and Devotion in the Sermons of John Donne” (PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University, 2010).

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memory theory, I have written2 in response to the work of Robert L. Hickey, Dennis Quinn, Joan Webber, Janel M. Mueller, and Achsah Guibbory, who have argued, in their respective studies, for an Augustinian approach to memory in the sermonic oeuvre and for a preference for this faculty over the understanding and the will.3 Donne—as a practicing preacher whose ambition was to lead his fellows to God—put this commitment to memory into practice when creatively appropriating ars memoriae, an antique rhetorical technique, for pious use. Outside of Noralyn Masselink’s article,4 however, I know of no attempt to describe Donne’s use of the art of memory. Masselink herself focuses on Donne’s use of the architectural mnemonic, and leaves his alternative loci, not to mention his imagines agentes, or active images, unexplored. In the present paper, I wish to present in its entirety and variety what I believe to be Donne’s unique appropriation of an ancient rhetorical device. A brief review of the birth, codification and subsequent flourishing—in Donne’s day—of the art of memory will be followed by reflections on the form in which he may have encountered this ancient craft. A discussion of the place and importance of memory in the Anglican preaching tradition will give way to analysis of Donne’s use of mental spaces made public to foreground the structure of his sermons, and of a variety of striking metaphors—which I relate to the emblem tradition so prevalent in Donne’s time—placed within these structural units with the aim of making his message more memorable. As I have treated Donne’s theological commitment to memory at length elsewhere, in this present paper I will focus on what this commitment looks like in practice, hoping thereby to enhance readers’ experience of these difficult and beautiful texts.

I. The Ancient Art of Memory and its Renaissance The art of memory, variously known as ars memorativa, ars memoriae, or by its Greek name as mnemotechnics, is an ancient art, one

2

See for example Noémi M. Najbauer, “ ‘I Will Remember Thy Wonders of Old’: John Donne and the Search for God in Memory,” in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Spirituality in the Literatures of the English Speaking World, ed. John Bak and Franz Wöhrer (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 2011). 3 Their studies, too numerous to name here, are listed for further reference in the bibliography. 4 Noralyn Masselink, “Memory in John Donne’s Sermons: ‘Readie’? Or Not?” South Atlantic Review 63.2 (1998): 99–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus /3201040.pdf?acceptTC=true.

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might even say, based on the Greek etymology,5 a “craft,” “art” or “method” of memory that flourished in the West from antiquity until the seventeenth century. When Cicero, in De oratore, identified memory as the noblest of the five parts of rhetoric—the widely known inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio et actio—he irrevocably connected it with oratorical art, and its fate in our culture with that of rhetoric.

I.1. Invention and Codification In his classic De oratore, Cicero recounts the tragic story behind the invention of mnemotechnics. Simonides of Ceos (556–468 BC), the honey-tongued poet was employed by the nobleman Scopas of Thessaly to chant a poem in his honor at a banquet. At the end of the recitation, Scopas offered Simonides only half the sum they had agreed upon pointing out that Simonides had made a digression in the poem in honor of the gods Castor and Pollux. Precisely at that moment, the disappointed poet was summoned by two mysterious young men to the entrance of the hall, and no sooner had he left the hall than the roof caved in, burying Scopas and his guests and leaving Simonides the sole survivor. What is more, the bodies were so badly mangled in the tragedy that the mourning relatives were unable to identify their loved ones. Simonides then stood in the middle of the rubble and, from memory, reconstructed the entire hall including the exact location in which each of the guests had been reclining. Thus, based on his memory of loci (places) and imagines (images; in this case the faces of the victims), he was able to identify the broken bodies for proper burial.6 After its inception following a ruined banquet, mnemotechnics came to involve the building up of rooms, hallways, entire palaces in the mind, and the furnishing of these palaces with stirring images. It is fitting that the art of memory was born in response to death. Memory is the sole human antidote to mortality. Three Latin rhetorical handbooks serve as the basis for all subsequent discussions and adaptations of ars memoriae: the anonymous7 Rhetorica 5

The English word mnemotechnics stems from two Greek root words, ‫ ۏ‬ȝȞ‫ܛ‬ȝȘ, meaning ‘memory,’ ‘remembering,’ ‘the power to remember,’ and ‫ ۏ‬IJȑȤȞȘ, translating to ‘dexterity,’ ‘skill,’ ‘method,’ ‘art,’ and ‘craft.’ 6 Cicero, De oratore, 2.86.352–53.The story is retold, with slight variations and commentary, in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, 11.2.11–16. 7 Although sources as recent at the RossingtonԟWhitehead anthology, Theories of Memory: A Reader (2007), and The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric

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ad Herennium (3.16–24), Cicero’s De oratore (2.86–87), and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (11.2). The memory section in the Rhetorica ad Herennium is the only Latin memory treatise preserved in its entirety. Cicero’s and Quintilian’s remarks on memory, though informative, are not complete treatises and presuppose the readership’s familiarity with mnemotechnics and its terminology. All ars memoriae treatises up to the sixteenth century and beyond rely heavily on the Rhetorica ad Herennium.8

I.2. Loci The fourth step of the rhetorical process, memoria, was rooted in the extensive previous preparation of suitable loci.9 According to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the first responsibility of any aspiring orator was to construct, in his mind, a set of loci capable of housing images. These loci are generally architectural in nature, entire buildings and their elements, such as spaces between columns, archways, and corners.10 “We should therefore, if we desire to memorize a large number of items, equip ourselves with a large number of backgrounds, so that in these we may set a large number of images.”11 The loci must form some sort of sequence with a fixed order essential for successful recollection, during which (2009) cite the Rhetorica ad Herennium as anonymous, an alternative line of scholarship attributes it to the Roman orator Cornificius, who was in his late twenties in the 80s BC and therefore old enough to have composed this key text of classical rhetoric. For further reflections on Cornificius as the author of the work, consult Tamás Adamik’s excellent “Introduction” to his 1987 translation of Rhetorica ad Herennium, especially pp. 34–48 (under ‘Cornificius’) In Donne’s day, the text was attributed to Cicero and is still attributed to Cicero by the editors of the Loeb Classical Library. In the bibliography below, the Rhetorica ad Herennium is listed under Cicero’s name. 8 Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 5. 9 In a sense, the memory itself is such a locus. The Ad Herennian author introduces his discussion of memory with the following injunction: “Now let me turn to the treasure-house of ideas supplied by Invention, to the guardian of all the parts of rhetoric, the Memory.” [Marcus Tullius Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 3.16. 10 “By backgrounds I mean such scenes as are naturally or artificially set off on a small scale, complete and conspicuous, so that we can grasp and embrace them easily by the natural memory—for example, a house, an intercolumnar space, a recess, an arch, or the like” (Ad Herennium, 3.18). 11 Ad Herennium, 3.17.

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process we can start from any point in the sequence and move backwards or forwards with ease.12 In order to remember the order of the places, one should mark every fifth place with a golden hand and every tenth place with the portrait of a friend called Decimus. It is best to form loci in a deserted and solitary place, away from crowds of people, whose presence tends to “confuse and weaken the impress of the images, while solitude keeps their outlines sharp.”13 Loci should be of moderate size, not too brightly lit to keep the images from dazzling the beholder, and not too dark so that the images are still clearly visible. Furthermore, they should not be more than thirty feet apart, for distance, like elapsed time, enfeebles the memory.14 Those sufficiently practiced in the art of memory are admonished to create their own fictitious loci. (see Ad Herennium 3.19). Cicero wrote his De oratore in 55 BC, approximately three decades after the completion of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. He refers to the “science of mnemonics” as “well-known and familiar” and notes that the images storing the information to be remembered “require an abode, inasmuch as a material object without a locality is inconceivable.” He then proceeds to very briefly discuss the need for loci, stating that the orator is in need of “a large number of localities which must be clear and defined at moderate intervals apart.”15 Quintilian, active a century after Cicero, also defines memory as “the treasure-house of eloquence”16 and provides a lucid description of loci along with additional insights concerning their use. He advises that one choose a large, spacious building with as many rooms as possible. In memorizing the rooms, one should take care to fix in one’s mind permanent decorations such as statues, whose positions within the rooms will yield further, more subtle loci.17 Quintilian then describes the orator 12

“If these [i.e., the backgrounds] have been arranged in order, the result will be that [. . .] we can repeat orally what we committed to the backgrounds, proceeding in either direction from any background we please” (Ad Herennium, 3.18). 13 Ad Herennium, 3.19. 14 “And these backgrounds ought to be of moderate size and medium extent, for when excessively large they render the images vague, and when too small often seem incapable of receiving an arrangement of images [. . .]. I believe that the intervals between backgrounds should be of moderate extent, approximately thirty feet; for, like the external eye, so the inner eye of thought is less powerful when you have moved the object of sight too near or too far away” (Ad Herennium, 3.19). 15 Cicero, De oratore, 2.86.358. 16 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.2.1. 17 “The first thought is placed, as it were, in the forecourt; the second, let us say, in the living-room; the remainder are placed in due order all round the impluvium and

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walking through his memory edifice and scrutinizing the images he has placed there.18 He, too, encourages the orator to broaden his horizons by adding loci differing from his own home, and even to invent imaginary places of his own.19

I.3. Imagines The Ad Herennian discussion of images is evocative and reveals a keen understanding of human psychology: Now nature herself teaches us what we should do. When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, that we are likely to remember for a long time [. . .]. [O]rdinary things easily slip from the memory while the striking and the novel stay longer in the mind. A sunrise, the sun’s course, a sunset are marvelous to no one because they occur daily. But solar eclipses are a source of wonder because they occur seldom [. . .]. Thus nature shows that she is not aroused by the common, ordinary event, but is moved by a new or striking occurrence. Let art then imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. [. . .] We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. [. . .] [I]f we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, [these techniques] will ensure our remembering them more readily.20

entrusted not merely to bedrooms and parlours, but even to the care of statues and the like” (Institutio oratoria, 11.2.20). 18 “This done, as soon as the memory of the facts requires to be revived, all these places are visited in turn and the various deposits are demanded from their custodians, as the sight of each recalls the respective details” (Institutio oratoria, 11.2.20). 19 “What I have spoken of as being done in a house, can equally well be done in connexion with public buildings, a long journey, the ramparts of a city, or even pictures. Or we may even imagine such places to ourselves” (Institutio oratoria, 11.2.21). 20 Ad Herennium, 3.22.

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Notable here is the author’s strong appeal to nature and the natural, even as he presents an artificial technique for enhancing the memory. It is natural for human beings to remember that which is “new or striking” and to forget anything “common [or] ordinary.” The sunset and the solar eclipse are apt symbols of how natural and artificial memory are related. Sunsets and eclipses of the sun are both natural events in that they occur in the world of nature. They differ not in essence but in frequency, and therefore, originality. Images must be clear and, interestingly, in motion. The author proposes people, singularly beautiful or ugly, adorned with purple cloaks or disfigured with mud or blood, as the most memorable choices. Effective images are not static, “but doing something.” They are most like four-dimensional scenes being played out in the niches of the mind. Cicero describes optimal images as “effective and sharply outlined and distinctive, with the capacity of encountering and speedily penetrating the mind.”21 Quintilian’s discussion of images is brief. He proposes a few iconic examples, which he terms “symbols [that] may have reference to the subject as a whole.”22 It may be said of all three rhetorical treatises that they leave readers to their own devices where striking images are concerned, providing almost no concrete examples. The Rhetorica ad Herennium gives us only one for memoria rerum. It involves a legal case in which the prosecutor claims the defendant poisoned a man to obtain his inheritance and that several others were witnesses to the act. To best remember the details of this case, the author proposes that we picture the man in question as lying ill in bed, if we know this person. If we do not know him, we shall yet take some one to be our invalid, but not a man of the lowest class, so that he may come to mind at once. And we shall place the defendant at the bedside, holding in his right hand a cup, and in his left, tablets, and on the fourth finger, a ram’s testicles. In this way we can have in memory the man who was poisoned, the witnesses, and the inheritance.23

The cup should remind the speaker of the poison, the tablets of the motivation for the crime (i.e., the inheritance), and the testicles on the fourth finger, of the four witnesses (i.e., testes). 21 Cicero, De oratore, 2.87.358. Latin language quotations from Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s De oratore are from the bilingual editions listed in the bibliography. 22 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.2.19. 23 Ad Herennium, 3.20.

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I.4. The Art of Memory in the Age of Donne The Renaissance witnessed the rebirth of numerous antique genres, including the ars memoriae treatise. Such treatises gained intense popularity with the advent of printing, which could be viewed as a rival technology negating the need for virtuosic feats of memory. The first printed ars memoriae treatise, in the form of an appendix to the Oratoriae artis epitome of Jacobus Publicius, appeared in 1482. The genre remained highly popular throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.24 In this period, the art of memory branched out in five directions: post-Scholastic, secularized, iconoclastic, occultist and memory theatre, the latter two overlapping significantly. Frances Yates, in her seminal 1966 study entitled The Art of Memory, devotes individual chapters to each of these branches. Our concern here is with secularized mnemotechnics, which was taught as a part of rhetoric curricula to university students of Donne’s day, with the understanding that many of these students would apply their oratorical prowess to the cause of Christianity in the pulpit. John Donne matriculated at Hart Hall in Oxford in 1584, thereby entering a rigorous four-year course on the Trivium. Although students read widely in the fields of history, mathematics, physics, ethics, theology, modern languages and Latin and Greek, “classical literature, rhetoric and dialectic remained at the centre of official college and university teaching.”25 Cambridge students devoted one year entirely to rhetoric, their Oxford counterparts two. A catalogue of books on rhetoric belonging to students who had died in residence includes Cicero’s Orations, the Rhetorica ad Herennium and, in slightly smaller numbers, Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, Cicero’s De oratore and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Of Renaissance rhetorical manuals, Erasmus’ Ecclesiastes and works by Melanchthon and Omer Talon prove most frequent.26 The above is admittedly but circumstantial evidence for Donne’s direct knowledge of antique rhetorical manuals. In light of the lack of verbatim quotations in the Donnean oeuvre of the above-mentioned rhetorical handbooks, Donne’s intimate knowledge of the art of memory, which he most likely gleaned during his university years, must be proven with the help of examples of its use.

24

Yates, The Art of Memory, 106. Peter Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 50. 26 Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric, 52. 25

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II. Memory and the Seventeenth-Century Anglican Sermon After his 1615 ordination Donne, like any other preacher of his day, was expected to perform his sermons from memory. The seventeenthcentury sermon was a marathon affair lasting one to two hours, sometimes longer, and audiences took a dim view of a preacher who read his sermon aloud or even consulted notes too frequently. Donne may well have used the art of memory to learn his own sermons by heart. With the text of the sermon memorized, he was able to focus on other aspects of oratory like modulation of the voice, hand gestures, facial expressions, causing Izaak Walton to famously describe him as a Preacher in earnest; weeping sometimes for his Auditory; sometimes with them: always preaching to himself, like an Angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and inticing others by a sacred Art and Courtship to amend their lives; here picturing vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it; and a vertue so, as to make it be beloved even by those that lov’d it not; and all this with a most particular grace and an unexpressible addition of comeliness.27

Although we have no record of Donne’s use of ars memoriae to commit his sermons to memory, we have ample examples of his choice to publicize his system of mental spaces at the beginning of his sermons. Mental places were supposed to be an intimate, interior grid known only to the speaker and not to be shared with the audience. Donne, however, shared his mental grid openly with his public both in the divisio portion at the start of the sermon and in countless additional structural references throughout the body of the oration. Anglican sermons in Donne’s day, in both their oral and written forms, followed the Ramistical structure consisting of a proem, division into a few parts, amplification of each of the parts, a summing up, and an application of the message or teaching to the audience.28 Every sermon began with a proem, also known as the exordium, where “the orator introduces the occasion, justifies his presence before the auditory, and 27

Sir Izaak Walton, The Lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson (London: Methuen, 1895), 24. 28 Walter R. Davis, “Meditation, Typology, and the Structure of John Donne’s Sermons,” in The Eagle and the Dove: Reassessing John Donne, ed. Claude J. Summers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 166.

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begins the crucial work of engaging its sympathy.”29 As the exordium draws to its close, Donne expertly returns to the original verse by allowing his own reflections to flow seamlessly into the biblical text, so that the audience listening to Donne’s fluid prose suddenly realizes that it is hearing the verse for the second time. This pleasurable recognition is the first act of memory that Donne requires of his audience. After the second reading of the verse, the preacher presents the divisio of the sermon. Peter McCullough warns that thematic imagery, tropes and figures, and most wit evaporate while the preacher offers a detailed structural outline of the sermon. [. . .] The sermon divisio is by design schematic—these must be skeletally clear outlines in order to aid both the preacher and the auditory. For the former, it is a crucial aide memoir; for the latter, it offers a road-map marked with milestones which an audience (who themselves often took notes) will want to watch and listen for.30

The divisio is followed by the amplificatio, or elaboration of the topics proposed for each of the subdivisions during which Donne refers back to the landmarks previously proposed, and a conclusio, which includes the “emotionally clenching [peroratio] designed to summarize the whole of the sermon exercise with the aim of inspiring action on the part of the hearers.”31 As Donne saves his most vivid imagery for the amplificatio and conclusio, we will treat those sections during our subsequent discussion of the imagines. In the divisio phase, Donne presents the sermon structure over the course of half a page to multiple pages, unveiling it—whether twofold, threefold, fourfold or “string of pearls”32—in three basic ways. In some

29

Peter E. McCullough, “Donne as Preacher,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, ed. Achsah Guibbory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 177. 30 McCullough, “Donne as Preacher,” 178ԟ79. 31 McCullough, “Donne as Preacher,” 179ԟ80. 32 Donne has an alternative way of structuring sermons based on the grammatical makeup of the verse he is treating, which he divides into clauses, phrases and individual words to rigorously explore the full range of meanings. I have dubbed this the “string of pearls” approach, as the structure of the sermon proceeds from the word order of a sentence as one pearl follows the other on a string. The “string of pearls” approach is compatible with a twofold, threefold or fourfold structure. In such cases, the individual words of the verse become the subdivisions within the two, three or four established parts.

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sermons, he lists the parts with no spatial metaphors involved.33 In other instances, he makes use of a striking variety of spatial metaphors to hold the parts together. Donne’s most explicit use of ars memoriae occurs when he uses specifically architectural metaphors to establish the structure in the memory of the congregation. In what follows, we will work our way from simple spatial designations, through various spatial metaphors for structuring the sermon to Donne’s most explicit and complex use of the architectural mnemonic.

III. Donne’s Loci Made Public34 III.1. A Notion of Motion Sometimes Donne offers no more than the subtlest of indications that he is making pious use of memory places. The following examples—“In our first part, Holy Places, wee looke first upon the times of our meeting there, Holy Dayes” (4.365).35 “In the first of these, we shall passe by these steps [. . .]” (6.151 ).36 “In these three parts, we shall walk by these steps; Having made our entrance into the first [. . .]. In the second, we shall also first make this generall entrance. [. . .] In the third we have more steps to make (6.168ԟ69).”37 “Where we must necessarily make thus many steps, though but short ones” (6.264),38 and “in those two miles, wee shall also 33

This is especially true of sermons based on the “string of pearls” approach described above. 34 A note on citing the sermons: There are currently two conventions in use. The first is to provide the volume- and page number (e.g., 10.73). The second calls for the volume-, sermon-, and line numbers (e.g., 10.2.172ԟ75) in the Potter-Simpson critical edition. I follow the former convention throughout in my in-text references. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to situate every quoted sermon in its historical context, I wish to make a contextual gesture by providing, in the footnotes, the full title (normally including occasion, venue, date, biblical text, and page number within the sermon) of every sermon I quote. The biblical reference is given in the form in which it appears in the critical edition. All parenthetical citations refer to passages in the 10-volume critical edition of the sermons. 35 “Encaenia. The Feast of Dedication. Celebrated at Lincolnes Inne, in a Sermon there upon Ascension day, 1623. John 10.22,” 4. 36 “Preached to the Earl of Exeter, and his company, in his Chappell at Saint Johns; 13. Jun. 1624. Apoc. 7.9,” 2. 37 “Preached at Pauls, upon Christmas Day, in the Evening. 1624. Esaiah 7.14,” 1–2. 38 “Preached at S. Pauls, in the Evening, upon Easter-day. 1625. John 5.28 and 29,” 3.

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make up that Sabbath Dayes journey, when God shall be please to bring us to it [. . .]” (8.165)39—hardly give us more than the gentlest notion of motion.

III.2. Natural and Man-Made Structural Metaphors The most common metaphor Donne employs to convey the structure of his sermons is that of a tree, with its roots, branches and nourishing fruits. Sometimes he uses the metaphor simply to refer to the sermon as a whole as in “And by all these steps must we passe through this garden of flowers, this orchard of fruits, this abundant Text” (10.44)40 or “For the first, […] for, of the other two wee shall reach you the boughs anon, when you come to gather the fruit, and lay open the particulars, then when we come to handle them” (7.216)41 or in the following elaborate example: Be pleased to admit, and charge your memories with this distribution of the words; Let the parts be but two, so you will be pleased to stoop, and gather, or at least to open your hands to receive, some more (I must not say flowers, for things of sweetnesse, and of delight grow not in my ground) but simples rather, and medicinall herbs; of which as there enter many into good cordials, so in this supreme cordiall, of bringing God into the eyes of man, that every man may see it, men may behold it afar off, there must necessarily arise many particulars to your consideration. I threaten you but with two parts; no farther tediousnesse; but I aske roome for divers branches; I can promise no more shortnesse. (4.164)42

In most cases, however, he conscientiously returns to the organic imagery throughout the text, as in “For the first branch of the first part [. . .], This was our first branch [. . .], This was our second Branch” (6.116, 118, 119).43 Perhaps behind these tree-based images lives the conviction that the preacher, throughout the sermon, imparts correctly the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve yearned after as they gazed up at the fateful tree in Paradise. The harvest Donne proposes is divinely sanctioned. Besides the tree-based images, there are countless fascinating spatial metaphors Donne uses to foreground the structure of his sermon. The sides 39

“Preached at S. Pauls, May 21.1626. I Cor. 15.29,” 2. “Preached upon All-Saints Day. [?1623] Apoc. 7.2,3,” 4. 41 “Preached upon Whitsunday. John 16.8,9,10,11,” 2. 42 “Preached at Hanworth, to my Lord of Carlile, and his company, being the Earles of Northumberland, and Buckingham, &c., Aug. 25. 1622. Job 36.25,” 2. 43 “Preached upon Whitsunday [Conjecturally assigned to 1624] I Cor. 12.3,” 3, 5, 6. 40

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of the body serve as a form of spatial anchoring: “And then there is a dextra, and sinistra beatitudo, a right handed, and a left handed blessednesse in the Text: so there is a dextra and sinistra Interpretatio, a right and a left Exposition of the Text” (3.74).44 Donne’s excitement at the geographical discoveries of the times prompts him to use the language of maps and globes to convey mental space: You shal have but two parts out of these words; And to make these two parts, I consider the Text, as the two Hemispheres of the world laid open in a flat, in a plaine Map. All those parts of the world, which the Ancients have used to consider, are in one of those Hemispheres; All Europe is in that, and in that is all Asia, and Afrike too: So that when we have seene that Hemisphere, done with that, we might seeme to have seene all, done with all the world; but yet the other Hemisphere, that of America is as big as it; though, but by occasion of new, and late discoveries, we had had nothing to say of America. (4.181)45

Fountains of water, rivers that naturally lead into one another are also apt spatial metaphors for a sermon that flows: The teares of the text are as a Spring, a Well, belonging to one houshold, the Sisters of Lazarus: The teares over Jerusalem, are as a River belonging to a whole Country: The teares upon the Crosse, as the Sea belonging to all the World […at last] we shall looke upon those lovely, those heavenly eyes, through this glasse of his own teares […] For so often Jesus wept. (4.326)46

The layers of time, even in the abstract, contribute to a structural metaphor that points beyond itself. So that we have here the whole compasse of Time, Past, Present, and Future; and these three parts of Time, shall be at this time, the three parts of this Exercise [. . .]. First, His [David’s] distresse in the Wildernesse, his present estate carried him upon the memory of that which God had done for him before, And the Remembrance of that carried him upon that, of which he assured himselfe after. Fixe upon God any where, and you shall finde him a Circle; He is with you now, when you fix upon him. He was with you before, for he brought you to this fixation; and he will be with

44

“Preached at White-hall, the 30. Aprill 1620. Psal. 144.15,” 2. “Preached at the Crosse the 15th of September. 1622. Judges. 5.20,” 4. 46 “Preached at White-hall, the first Friday in Lent. [1622/23] John 11.35,” 3. 45

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Noémi Mária Najbauer you hereafter, for He is yesterday, and to day, and the same for ever. (7.52)47

Beside natural phenomena, manmade objects also serve as indicators of sermon structure. The following divisio is based on the shape of the letter Y: Our Text therefore stands as that Proverbial, that Hieroglyphical Letter, Pythagoras his Y; that hath first a stalk, a stem to fix it self, and then spreads into two Beams. The stem, the stalk of this Letter, this Y, in the first Word of the Text, that Particle of argumentation, For [. . .]. And then opens this Symbolical, this Catechistical Letter, this Y, into two Horns, two Beams, two Branches: one broader, but on the left hand, denoting the Treasures of this World; the other narrower, but on the right hand, Treasure laid up for the World to come. (9.174)48

The clock comparison is both a subtle reference to the amount of time allotted to the delivery of this relatively short sermon and fosters an awareness of the spacing or timing of a sermon whose parts are proportionate and harmoniously arranged: “These foure steps, these foure passages, these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock, for this houres exercise” (6.64).49 Donne’s rather leisurely reference to units of “quarter clocks” or intervals of fifteen minutes that would be signalled by bells in church towers is appropriate as minute hands on clocks did not appear until the end of the seventeenth century.50 A very unique spatial metaphor merging loci and imagines occurs when the verse being discussed mentions houses51 and Donne proceeds to use the image of four houses which will be visited as the sermon progresses: “That therefore we may take in light at all these windows that God opens for us, that we may lay hold upon God by all these handles which he puts out to us, we shall make a brief survey of these four Houses” (6.351).52 47 “The second of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes. Preached at S. Pauls, Ianuary 29. 1625. [1625/6] Psal. 63.7,” 2. 48 “A Lent-Sermon Preached to the King, at White-Hall, February 12, 1629. Mat. 6.21,” 2. 49 “Preached at S. Pauls, upon Easter-day, in the Evening. 1624. Apoc. 20.6,” 3. 50 Dan Falk, In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2008), 65. 51 Cf. “For there was not a house where there was not one dead” (Exod. 12:30). 52 “A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstans January 15. 1625. [1625/6] Exod. 12.30,” 3.

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III.3. Explicit and Weighted Architectural Mnemonic Architectural references range from instances where Donne simply uses the metaphor without further comment to elaborate cases when he consciously refers to the parts of the mental building as he “leaves” and “enters” them. Examples of the former include “So have you the designe, and frame of our building, and the severall partitions, the roomes; pass we now to a more particular survey, and furnishing of them” (4.146)53 and “so you have the Modell of the whole frame, and of the partitions; we proceede now to the furnishing of the particular roomes” (4.267).54 Donne’s most explicit use of the architectural mnemonic occurs in an undated sermon on Luke 23:24 simply entitled Preached to the Nobility. His choice of a palace to reflect the layout of the sermon shows a unique sensitivity to the needs of his audience. Not only does he share his loci with his auditory but he makes considerable effort to accommodate his listeners by selecting a kind of place with which they would be intimately familiar: These words shall be fitliest considered, like a goodly palace, if we rest a little, as in an outward Court, upon consideration of prayer in generall; and then draw neare the view of the Palace, in a second Court, considering this speciall prayer in generall, as the face of the whole palace. Thirdly, we will passe thorow the chiefest rooms of the palace it self; and then insist upon four steps […]. And lastly, going into the backside of all, we will cast the objections. (5.231–32)55

After unveiling the structure of the sermon, Donne returns to the loci at later points in the text, gallantly admitting that “It were unmannerlinesse to hold you longer in the Entry” and proposing “One turne in the inner Court, of this speciall prayer in generall, and so enter the Palace” (5.233).56 In one special architectural mnemonic, the parts themselves of the memory building convey the relative importance of the parts of the sermon. As Masselink has pointed out, this is highly unusual, because mnemonic devices are usually value neutral; they contain information but do not qualify it57 as Donne does when he says:

53

“Preached at St. Pauls on Midsommer day. 1622. John 1.8,” 2. “A Sermon Preached to the Honourable Company of the Virginia Plantation. 13. November 1622. Acts 1.8,” 4. 55 “Preached to the Nobility. Luke 23.24,” 1–2. 56 “Preached to the Nobility. Luke 23.24,” 3. 57 Masselink, “Memory in John Donne’s Sermons,” 103. 54

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Noémi Mária Najbauer In the words, and by occasion of them, we consider the Text, the Context, and the Pretext: Not as three equall parts of the Building; but the Context, as the situation and Prospect of the house, The Pretext, as the Accesse and entrance to the house, And then the Text it selfe, as the House it selfe, as the body of the building. […] We begin with the Context; the situation, the prospect; how it stands, how it is butted, how it is bounded. (6.224)58

In sum, Donne shares his loci with the audience, uses a great variety of them (many of them being non-architectural) and allows parts of the loci to carry relative value and to reflect to some extent the meaning and import of the contents. In one reflection, Donne reassures a most likely overwhelmed audience that although the sermon is massive, it is logically constructed with the limitation of the understanding and the memory of the audience kept carefully in mind. At the end of the divisio, he reassures his audience: And so have you the whole frame mark’d out, which we shall set up; and the whole compasse design’d, which we shall walk in: In which, though the pieces may seem many, yet they do so naturally flow out of one another, that they may easily enter into your understanding; and so naturally depend upon one another, that they may easily lay hold upon your memory. (8.144)59

IV. Donne’s Imagines agentes If we return to the sermon-writing process, we will remember that following the dispositio phase, the preacher proceeds to consider elocutio. In possession of some sort of skeletal structure for the oration, he is now looking for the illustrations and examples that will flesh it out and bring it to life. During delivery of the sermon, the audience can expect to encounter most of the images at the amplificatio stage, following the divisio discussed above. Amplification turns out to be an apt term when describing what Donne does to enhance his arguments. Instead of brief, flashy conceits presented in a few lines, or a stanza or two at most, Donne presents vividly detailed images sprawling out into compound sentences and occasionally one or more paragraphs. By “image” I mean simply something visible that stands for or points to something that generally is not. Using the language of the literary arts, we may define imagery

58

“Preached at White-hall, March 4. 1624. [1624/5] Mat. 19.17,” 2. “A Sermon Preached to the Houshold at White-hall, April 30. 1626. Matth. 9.13,” 4. 59

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broadly as “all forms of figurative discourse, among them, metaphor, simile, and allegory.”60 Robert Hickey is one of the few critics to have recognized the link between Donne’s vivid imagery and his commitment to human memory; he states that “the tremendous range and quality of Donne’s imagery may best be explained by his belief that the ends of persuasive discourse [. . .] are achieved by evoking the faculty instead of, or in addition to, appealing to the understanding [or to the will].”61 Later, Hickey also noted that “by far the greater proportion of [Donne’s] imagery is drawn from fields which would be familiar to followers of the different vocations represented in his congregation.”62 In her 1962 article entitled “The Literary Value of Donne’s Sermons,” Evelyn Simpson, coeditor of the classic ten-volume edition of Donne’s sermons, divided Donne’s imagery into homely, grotesque/macabre, ingenious/far-fetched and incongruous (mixing sacred and secular).63 Winfried Schleiner’s 1970 volume entitled The Imagery of John Donne’s Sermons is by far the most systematic and detailed treatment of a topic that has inspired generations of scholars struck by the poetic qualities of Donne’s prose. Schleiner, towards the beginning of his analysis, debates long and hard over the best method to organize and categorize Donne’s unruly body of imagery. “The task of mapping out Donne’s tropes raises the question of what map to use. On what co-ordinates should they be plotted?”64 Schleiner devotes most of his study to fields of imagery—“Sin as Sickness,” “Life as Journey,” “The Book of the World,” “The Seal of the Sacrament,” “Salvation as a Purchase,” “The Eyes of the Soul”— which, while highly representative and masterfully discussed, are not mutually exclusive but rather overlapping categories. Nobody other than Winfried Schleiner has, to my knowledge, surveyed Donne’s imagery in the entire body of his sermons in a systematic manner. In my 2010 dissertation, I set up my own survey along the Great Chain of Being, a Renaissance structural metaphor for the entire known cosmos, arranging the metaphors according to the ontological position of their 60

Winfried Schleiner, The Imagery of John Donne’s Sermons (Providence: Brown UP, 1970), 5. 61 Robert L. Hickey, “Donne’s Art of Memory,” Tennessee Studies in Literature 3 (1958): 29. 62 Hickey, “Donne’s Art of Memory,” 34. 63 Evelyn M. Simpson, “The Literary Value of Donne’s Sermons,” in John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Helen Gardner (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 146–47. 64 Schleiner, The Imagery of John Donne’s Sermons, 5.

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vehicle or, in the case of multiple vehicles, their lowest one. My examination of Donnean metaphors drawn from various levels of the Great Chain of Being, (i.e., inanimate matter, plants, animals, human beings, angels and God), produced the conclusion that Donne drew on all levels of existence, but the overwhelming majority of his imagery stems from various objects, occupations and experiences within the human framework of the urban world of seventeenth-century London of which he formed a part. What is more, his masterfully contrived images bore a strong resemblance to the seventeenth-century Protestant visual art form par excellence, the emblem.

IV.1. Donne and the Emblem Tradition We will recall that it is the Ad Herennian author who gives the most thorough advice on how to construct imagines and also provides the single detailed example that has survived within the antique ars memoriae tradition. The author suggests images of exceptional beauty or singular ugliness, “images that are not many or vague, but doing something.”65 Cicero had called for imagery that is “effective and sharply outlined.”66 Quintilian proposed symbols such as anchors or weapons, most likely meant to represent parts of an oration concerning naval or military matters. The Ad Herennian author provides our single detailed example, presented above, in which the cup recalls that poison was used, the ram’s testicles on the fourth finger refer to the four witnesses, and the tablets remind us of the inheritance at stake. This carefully constructed, artificial scene may remind students of Renaissance visual culture of a very important art form current in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the emblem. Yates points to this connection in passing when noting that “[a]mongst the most characteristic types of Renaissance cultivation of imagery are the emblem and the impresa. These phenomena have never been looked at from the point of view of memory to which they clearly belong.”67 Yates has also suggested that while the art of memory was an originally invisible art it may have become externalized when the call for harmoniously sized, well-lit loci precipitated the development of perspective in the early Renaissance68 and that the need for striking and complex images may have brought about a 65

Ad Herennium, 3.22. Cicero, De oratore, 2.87.358. 67 Yates, The Art of Memory, 124. 68 Ibid., 93. 66

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proliferation of images in the visual arts.69 Barbara K. Lewalski, too, notes that emblems are partly rooted in the rhetorical tradition, but she cites their “close affinities to [the] epigram.”70 Several key aspects of the emblem may be brought into fruitful connection with the imagery of Donne’s sermons. Renaissance theorists differentiated between the emblem and the impresa. While an emblem may be defined as a symbolic picture supplied with a motto and a few lines of prose or verse text, the impresa consisted of two parts, a figure and a short motto. Lewalski differentiates further between the two visual genres, arguing that while the emblem “had general moral application to all mankind and [was] more open in method and more didactic in intention,” the impresa was drawn up for a single individual and was “more rigidly controlled by strict rules governing its composition.”71 Out of emblems and imprese, it is the former “curious amalgams of picture, motto, and poem”72 that we can connect both with Donne’s imagery and the imagines agentes of the ars memoriae tradition. In her own treatment of the imagery of the sermons, Joan Webber lights upon an exciting consideration. Drawing on Rosemary Freeman’s influential discussion, Webber points out that emblems cannot be considered symbols “because there is no identification of emblem and thing.”73 The emblem, unlike the symbol, is chosen first, and “its points of resemblance to a moral idea [are] imposed upon it.”74 This may give the emblem a forced or stiff character that sets it apart from freer symbols. Although the initial link between the emblem and what it represents is arbitrary, the reader or listener comes to realize the aptitude of the parallels as the emblem is mulled over (or described in words), causing “illustration and moral [to become] fused.”75 69

Ibid., 91. In a sense, the emblem is the anti-epigram, because while “emblems are things (representations of objects) used to illustrate a conceit [. . .] epigrams are words (a conceit) used to illustrate objects.” The two devices are therefore linked through their brevity and illustrative quality. See Barbara K. Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 180. 71 Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 181. 72 Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 179. 73 Joan Webber, Contrary Music: The Prose Style of John Donne (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), 130. 74 Webber, Contrary Music, 130. 75 Ibid. 70

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Donne’s most memorable images share certain qualities with emblems as described above. They, too, are “chosen first” and the initial parallel may seem arbitrary. Then, as they are described element by element, moral meanings accrue until the visible reality Donne has found in the world and described in his sermon merges with the moral message he meant it to convey. These affinities are best traced in a set of concrete examples. Of images drawn from the inanimate class, let us consider the metaphor of the pearl. Thus Nature makes Pearls, Thus Grace makes Saints. A drop of dew hardens, and then another drop fals, and spreads it selfe, and cloathes that former drop, and then another, and another, and becomes so many shels and films that invest that first seminall drop and so (they say) there is a pearle in Nature. A good soule takes first Gods first drop into his consideration, what he hath shed upon him in Nature, and then his second coate, what in the Law, and successively his other manifold graces, as so many shells, and films, in the Christian Church, and so we are sure, there is a Saint. (7.306)76

The very first line of the image, “Thus Nature makes Pearls, Thus Grace makes Saints” may be taken as the motto for this emblem, a motto which makes clear both the natural reality chosen and the meaning to be imposed upon it. Donne describes the mechanism by which pearls are made. They begin with a “seminall drop” of dew, which is then coated by another and yet another, until “many shells and films” have formed around the initial drop. This visible and natural process is then invested with invisible, supernatural meaning. In the moral realm, the first, “seminall drop” is the knowledge that God exists. The second layer is the good qualities possessed by natural man ante legem, the third layer is the goodness of man sub lege and the final layer is the grace conferred upon those living sub gratia and enjoying membership in the Christian Church. There is, however, an element of stiffness, of imposition in that while the layers of the natural pearl are all of the same substance, the levels of grace by which the saint is built up differ in their very nature. From among plants we will consider an emblem of the grain growing out of the earth: Grace does not grow out of nature; for nature in the highest exhaltation and rectifying thereof cannot produce grace. Corn does not grow out of the earth, it must be sowd; but corn grows only in the earth; nature and naturall 76 “The third of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes: Preached at S. Pauls, November 5. 1626. In Vesperis.Psal. 64.10,” 7.

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reason do not produce grace, but yet grace can take root in no other thing but in the nature and reason of man. (2.261)77

Here, too, Donne begins with a fundamental truth observed in nature concerning the relationship of earth to seed to crop. A field only of earth, however fertile, will not produce anything of itself. The corn that will grow out of it must first be planted into it. Donne takes this basic agricultural knowledge and imposes upon it the symbiotic relationship between nature and grace. Nature without grace lies fallow; grace without the strong undersoil of nature is rootless. From the world of animals, one of the most vivid emblems is that of the sponge: You may have a good Embleme of such a rich man, whose riches perish in his travail, if you take into your memorie, and thoughts, a Spunge that is overfilled; If you presse it down with your little finger, the water comes out of it; Nay, if you lift it up, there comes water out of it; If you remove it out of his place, though to the right hand as well as to the left, it poures out water; Nay if it lye still quiet in his place, yet it wets the place, and drops out his moisture. Such is an overfull, and spungy covetous person: he must pour out, as well as he hath suck’t in; if the least weight of disgrace, or danger lye upon him, he bleeds out his money; Nay, if he be raised up, if he be prefer’d, he hath no way to it, but by money, and he shall be rais’d, whether he will or no, for it. If he be stirr’d from one place to another, if he be suffered to settle where he is, and would be, still these two incommodities lye upon him; that he is loathest to part with his money, of anything, and yet he can do nothing without it. He labours for riches, and still he is but a bagg for other men. (3.65)78

Donne himself explicitly calls his image a “good Embleme of such a rich man, whose riches perish in his travail” and bids his auditory take this “Embleme [. . .] into your memorie, and thoughts.” Not only is the motto of the emblem succinctly stated (i.e., a rich man is a sponge), but the role of the memory in absorbing this emblem is also made clear. In what follows, Donne manipulates the sponge, first pressing down on it with a little finger, then lifting it, moving it to the left and to the right, and finally letting it sit still. After instilling the scene in the auditory’s memory, he repeats the scene line by line, attributing moral meaning to each action 77 “Two Sermons, to the Prince and Princess Palatine, the lady Elizabeth at Heydelberg, when I was commanded by the King to wait upon my L. of Doncaster on his embassage to Germany. First Sermon as we went out, June 16. 1619. Rom. 13.11.,” 12. 78 “A Sermon Preached at White-Hall, April 2. 1620. Eccles. 5.[13 and 14],” 19.

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with the sponge. The pressing down of the little finger becomes a light calamity, the lifting up is social advancement, letting the sponge sit is the equivalent of leaving the rich man alone. Yet in all these situations, Donne asserts, the covetous person leaks money for others to enjoy. We will close with two images taken from the level of man and his occupations. The first is the whaling scene in which the minister is depicted as a fisherman and the sinner as a wayward whale: The rebuke of sin, is like the fishing of Whales; the marke is great enough; one can scarce misse hitting; but if there be not sea room and line enough, and a dexterity in letting out that line, he that hath fixed his harping Iron, in the Whale, endangers himselfe, and his boate; God hath made us fishers of Men; and when we have struck a Whale, touch’d the conscience of any person, which thought himselfe above rebuke, and increpation, it struggles, and strives, and as much as it can, endevours to draw fishers, and boate, the Man and his fortune into contempt, and danger. But if God tye a sicknesse, or any other calamity, to the end of the line, that will winde up this Whale againe, to the boate, bring back this rebellious sinner better advised, to the mouth of the Minister, for more counsaille, and a better souplenesse, and inclinablenesse to conforme himselfe, to that which he shall after receive from him; onely calamity makes way for a rebuke to enter. (5.199–200)79

Once again, the first line may be read as the motto of the emblem: “The rebuke of sin, is like the fishing of Whales.” Donne proceeds to detail a vivid maritime struggle. The whale, as a “marke is great enough” and easy enough to hit, yet much “sea room [. . .] line [. . .] and a dexterity in letting out that line” are needed to go after the whale. What is more, “he that hath fixed his harping Iron, in the Whale, endangers himselfe, and his boate.” These elements and these events are natural to a whaling scene, and once again, Donne proceeds to match them with moral meaning. The minister does, by touching upon the conscience of a sinner, place himself in some inconvenience, if not danger, and the sinner may struggle even harder until “God tye a sicknesse, or any other calamity, to the end of the line.” Such hardship will exhaust the sinner and bring him to “a better souplenesse, and inclinablenesse,” allowing the minister to “minister” to him. As a final example, let us examine an emblem drawn from the world of the printing press.

79 “Preached at the Churching of the Countesse of Bridgewater. [?1621 or 1623] Micah 2.10. Second Sermon,” 2–3.

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Be pleased to remember that those Pictures which are deliver’d in a minute, from a print upon a paper, had many dayes, weeks, Moneths time for the graving [i.e., engraving] of those Pictures in the Copper; So this Picture of that dying Man, that dies in Christ, that dies the death of the Righteous, that embraces Death as a Sleepe, was graving all his life; All his publique actions were the lights, and all his private the shadows of this Picture. And when this Picture comes to the Presse, this Man to the streights and agonies of Death, thus he lies, thus he looks, this he is. His understanding and his will is all one faculty [. . .]. His memory and his fore-sight are fixt, and concentred upon one object, upon goodnesse [. . .] (7.190)80

Donne begins by appealing explicitly to the memory of his auditory. In what follows, he presents the steps of the engraving and printing process and imposes moral meaning on them. The lights of the picture and its shadows, and the weight of the press are to remind us respectively of the dying man’s public and private actions, and his lying in the “streights [. . .] of Death.” Once again, the normal steps in the printing process are described in a recognizable way and then invested with moral meaning. The five emblems we have discussed above both match and differ from rhetorical admonitions for striking images. They may certainly be characterized as “effective and sharply outlined and distinctive”81 but it is the Ad Herennian call for “images that are not many or vague, but doing something”82 that seems most resonant, especially the later request that these images be “doing something.” Although Donne’s images bear resemblance to traditional emblems, they differ from them in that they are four-dimensional. Indeed, most of them could not be properly drawn because they represent not a frozen moment of time but a process played out in time, and their very meaning depends upon the fourth dimension. They are living emblems with a temporal dimension and are therefore aptly stored in the memory which is the human faculty that transcends time. Returning to the Ad Herennian deathbed scene, we may note both similarities and differences to Donne’s imagery. Donne’s emblems resemble the Ad Herennian striking image in their complexity. None is a simple symbol, but consists instead of several elements, all of which have their own meaning and contribute also to the collective meaning. Beyond this point, the similarity ends. It is not difficult to see the stiffness and 80

“A Sermon Preached at White-hall. February 29. 1627. [1627/8] Acts. 7. 60,” 17. 81 Cicero, De oratore, 2.87.358. 82 Ad Herennium, 3.22.

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forced nature of the Ad Herennian deathbed image. It is certainly not a scene onto which one would expect to stumble under normal circumstances. Rather, it is a carefully contrived visual cluster. The highbred man in bed, conspicuously gripping a tablet, takes upon himself the role of the victim, while the defendant at the bedside is depicted in the awkward pose of holding a cup in one hand and sporting ram’s testicles on the ring finger of the other, thereby embodying the circumstances of the alleged crime. The Ad Herennian author starts with that which he wishes to remember and assembles an artificial scene in which visual elements are brought in to represent abstract content. Donne’s emblems work the other way around. He begins with the concrete and the natural, with fourdimensional slices of the reality that surrounds him and seems simply to be abstracting a moral from them. Of course, we may argue that he had the original moral meaning in mind and merely reached out into the world to find a physical phenomenon to match it. Nonetheless, from the point of view of the auditory, Donne calls up images of physical reality in the memory of his listeners and abstracts understanding from these images, thereby turning his emblems into his primary teaching tools. In a sense, the entire world in all its concreteness and physical vibrancy is for Donne a treasure-house of images, and his meditative journey through it is mirrored in the psychosomatic exercise that is the sermon.

V. The Sermon as a Journey through Loci and Imagines Throughout the sermons, Donne refers to the sermons themselves as “meditations” or as “exercises.” It is easy to dismiss the latter metaphor in the world of scholarship where academics are used to exercising the brain alone, yet the word “exercise” has a decidedly physical aspect. It has overtones of dynamism and movement. I believe it is best to look at the loci and imagines not only as static rooms filled with stationary pictures, colourful and striking though they may be, but as structures inviting the audience on a journey of discovery. Instead of waiting passively for disjointed images, even if they were living emblems, to flash upon the imagination, Donne’s audience was expected to actively engage itself in a psychosomatic journey. Gale Carrithers proposes the life-as-journey metaphor as central to the sermons: The most pervasive metaphor of Donne’s sermons is living as travelling. For him, Christians not sunk in apathy or “lethargy” are constantly on the move. [. . .] It is a metaphor biblical, Patristic, medieval, Anglican and

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familiar to his hearers in literally numberless devotional and secular ways, evidently ever capable of new turns.83

When viewed in the light of this central metaphor the many words of movement such as advance, ascend, borders bring, carry, comes, contiguous, course, descend, farther, feet, find, go, got up, journey, let you in, meet, navigate, pace, path, perverted, proceed, progress, pursue, run, return, sail, step, strayed, towards, transgress, transported, tread, turn, voyage, walk, way (collected by Carrithers during a cursory survey of the sermons) and restatements of the loci as landmarks, turn sermons into journeys.84 In the end, Donne’s sermonic journeys anticipate another masterpiece of seventeenth-century English devotional literature published two generations after the death of John Donne, namely John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.85 The entire allegorical journey of Christian and his wife Christiana, in all its richness and complexity, may serve as a parallel to experiencing a sermon by John Donne. Yet two episodes, one involving Christian and the other Christiana, stand out. Both man and wife, early in their respective journeys, arrive at the house of the mysterious Interpreter. This house consists of a number of “significant rooms” filled with living emblems: a damsel sweeping, two children at play, a man casting oil into the fire, a host of cheerful folk dressed in gold while a distressed swordsman attempts to break in, and finally a professor in a cage. The Interpreter leads pilgrims by the hand, from room to room. He allows them to carefully observe the scenes, then explains their meaning patiently, occasionally even leaving time for the pilgrim to interpret them for him- or herself. It is illuminating to see Donne’s sermons as strings of significant rooms filled with emblems and to interpret Donne as the Interpreter. The benevolent Interpreter dispatches his visitor with a fervent wish that can easily be placed along the memory-understanding-will trajectory: “Well, keep all things so in thy mind, that they may be as a goad in thy sides, to prick thee forward in the way thou must go,”86 he urges, and finally

83

Gale H. Carrithers, Donne at Sermons: A Christian Existential World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972), 21–22. 84 Carrithers, Donne at Sermons, 92–93. 85 My sincere thanks go to my former doctoral advisor, Tibor Fabiny, for drawing my attention to the parallel. 86 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. Roger Sharrock (New York: Penguin, 1987), 81.

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commends the pilgrim into the keeping of the Holy Spirit, whom Donne, upon biblical precedent, had identified as the master of the memory.87 .

VI. A New Vantage Point I have sought to showcase Donne’s intimate knowledge and creative use of the antique ars memoriae technique. While the antique rhetorical handbooks I examined spoke of loci exclusively as an interior, mental grid available only to the orator, Donne unabashedly and purposefully publicized his own spaces. With this step, he initiated his audience into a system of visualizing sermon content by taking recourse not only to loci derived from the world of architecture, but to spatial metaphors as varied as clocks and fruit-bearing trees, letters of the alphabet and archipelagos of islands, all drawn from the visible world. His fundamental commitment to the “edification” of his auditory’s memory, both in the architectural and in the educational sense, is evidenced by the care with which he announces his delightfully varied mental spaces made public in the divisio and by the faithfulness with which he returns to them throughout the sermon. For my exploration of the imagery placed within these loci made public, I selected a handful of images from various levels of the Great Chain of Being and connected them to antique rhetorical admonitions for imagines agentes as well as to the robust seventeenth-century emblem tradition, which itself clearly belongs to the art of memory but has rarely been discussed as such. In the end, Donne’s sermons may be seen as psychosomatic journeys involving both body and soul in a sensation of moving towards God and conceiving of the world as a gallery of images harbouring deeper, divine realities. Cursory investigations of the divisios of a few dozen sermons by some of Donne’s most important contemporaries such as Lancelot Andrewes, Thomas Gataker and Samuel Ward have led me to suspect that Donne’s open use of ars memoriae may be unique to him, but in light of the astounding estimate that approximately “360,000 sermons were delivered [in England] in the first forty years of the seventeenth century,”88 it would take several lifetimes to conclusively prove that Donne stood alone among his contemporaries in opening up his memory grid to the public. Donne’s bold use of ars memoriae is certainly characteristic of his creative turn of 87 Cf. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26) 88 Jeanne Shami, “Introduction: Reading Donne’s Sermons,” John Donne Journal 11.1–2 (1992): 1.

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mind and deep commitment to memory, and provides a sturdy framework simultaneously ancient and new within which to encounter some of the most memorable prose of the seventeenth century.

TEN DAYS IN PARADISE: THE CHRONOLOGY OF TERRESTRIAL ACTION IN MILTON’S PARADISE LOST* GÁBOR ITTZÉS

In what is arguably the most important eighteenth-century edition of Paradise Lost, Thomas Newton comments on the new morning at the beginning of the epic’s penultimate book (11.135) “that according to the best calculation we can make, this is the eleventh day of the poem, we mean of that part of it which is transacted within the sphere of day.” With that proposal he was engaging in interpretive debate with a distinguished predecessor as the continuation of the text makes clear: “Mr. Addison reckons only ten days to the action of the poem, that is he supposes that our first parents were expell’d out of Paradise the very next day after the fall.”1 In the last essay of his influential critical series on Paradise Lost, Joseph Addison had indeed declared that “from Adam’s first Appearance in the Fourth Book, to his Expulsion from Paradise in the Twelfth, the Author reckons ten days,” to which he then added, “As for that part of the Action which is described in the three first Books, as it does not pass within the Regions of Nature, [. . .] it is not subject to any calculations of Time.”2 The last sentence glances back at the first substantial essay in the series,3 where he argued that “as a great Part of Milton’s Story was

*

Research for this paper was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, OTKA (Grant No. 101928). 1 Thomas Newton, ed., Paradise Lost: Poem in Twelve Books. The Author John Milton. A New Edition with Notes of Various Authors, 2 vols. (London, 1749), 2:315n. 2 Joseph Addison, “Criticism on Milton’s Paradise Lost: From The Spectator, 31 December, 1711 – 3 May, 1712,” in English Reprints, 8 vols., ed. Edward Arber (1869–71; reprint, New York: AMS, 1966), 2:151 (No. 369, 3 May 1712). 3 The series, beginning with No. 267 (5 Jan 1712), was commonly reprinted with the text of the epic in earlier editions, but Edward Arber, from whose edition I quote, prefaces the analysis with No. 262 (31 Dec 1711), in which Addison

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transacted in Regions that lie out of the Reach of the Sun and the Sphere of Day, it is impossible to gratifie the Reader with [. . .] a Calculation” of “the Space of Time, which is taken up by the Action.”4 That is the point whose faint echo was audible in Newton’s caveat even before he named Addison. In fact, Newton’s proviso primarily harks back to a much earlier point in his own text, a comment on 4.598, where he had already been adopting his predecessor’s argument: “for the action of the preceding books [1–3] lying out of the sphere of the sun, the time could not be computed.”5 It is not simply this parallel paradoxicality of the authors’ sceptical declarations and enterprising performance that makes this early controversy so fascinating. It would also deserve closer scrutiny for articulating the problem of the very possibility of a global chronology of Milton’s epic, a concern recently raised again in a forceful manner by Anthony Welch.6 Leaving aside those thorny issues, however, I want to tread on safer ground in this paper and concentrate on the primary bone of contention between Addison and Newton. Whatever their shared reservations about an overall chronology of epic action in Paradise Lost, they both agree that such a reconstructive exercise is legitimate when applied to the portion of terrestrial action—and yet they cannot agree on what the result should be. In the following analysis I will not only attempt to adjudicate between them but, drawing on a broader corpus of critical literature, identify and examine other debated points in the terrestrial segment of the primary narrative, and offer a detailed reconstruction of the poem’s chronology from Satan’s arrival in the cosmos7 to Adam and Eve’s expulsion. That is a perhaps modest but crucial step towards solving the larger and more convoluted issue of the poem’s overall time scheme and establishing its chronology, including the secondary narrative level.

announces his intention to “enter into a regular Criticism upon his [Milton’s] Paradise lost[sic]” (Addison, “Criticism,” 2:14). 4 Addison, “Criticism,” 2:20 (No. 267, 5 Jan 1712). 5 Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:275n. 6 Anthony Welch, “Reconsidering Chronology in Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 41 (2002): 1–17; cf. p. 120, below. 7 I use this term to describe the world created in six days (cf. Genesis 1–2 and book 7 of PL), i.e., the fourth cosmological region, in addition to heaven, hell, and chaos, in Milton’s universe. Further on this usage, see my essay, “The Structure of Milton’s Universe: The Shape and Unity of the World in Paradise Lost,” in Milton Through the Centuries, ed. Gábor Ittzés and Miklós Péti (Budapest: KRE & L’Harmattan, 2012) 34.

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1. The first day of terrestrial action Strictly speaking, terrestrial action begins after the quasi-invocation that opens book 4, with Satan on Mount Niphates, where he alighted in the last line of the previous book (3.742). He had entered “the Regions of Nature” some two hundred lines earlier, however, when he crossed the protective shell of the cosmos at the orifice and flew down through the stars (3.561–63). That descent is surely not “transacted in Regions that lie out of the Reach of the Sun and the Sphere of Day.” Quite appropriately, the first firmly datable, and explicitly dated, event in epic action is Satan’s encounter with Uriel at the sun (3.613–739). Proof positive of its temporal setting “at height of noon”8 is provided only retrospectively in Uriel’s warning to the guardian angels (4.564),9 but that piece of information comes as no surprise since we have been prepared for it by a simile in the original context. When Satan explores the sun, he finds “all sunshine, as when his [the sun’s] beams at noon / Culminate from the equator, as they now / Shot upward still direct” (3.616–18). The rebel angel is walking on the sun (he landed at 3.588) so it is beneath him, sending its beams upward, but they are as direct and perpendicular as they are at noon on the earth’s equator. From here on, Milton takes great care to keep track of time and signal its passage. In the following explorations I will take “terrestrial action” to refer to events on the primary narrative level from Satan’s encounter with “the regent of the sun” (3.690) to the end of the epic. Satan’s descent from the sun to Mount Niphates is virtually instantaneous. When he had landed and began a long soliloquy (4.32– 113), “the full-blazing sun, / [Still] sat high in his meridian tower” (4.29– 30). That is to say, both events—the “stripling cherub” (3.636) episode and the private speech—are dated to noon.10 Unbeknownst to Satan, Uriel observes the latter and notices the changing colour of his visage betraying his disguise (4.114–30). That generates an important subplot that we will pick up again at sunset. First, however, the narrative follows Satan, who approaches Eden and explores the land, then enters Paradise and surveys 8

Verbatim quotations from Paradise Lost are taken from Fowler’s edition: Alastair Fowler, ed., John Milton, Paradise Lost, 2nd ed. (Harlow etc.: Longman, 1998). 9 Cf. also “some evil spirit [. . .] passed at noon by his [Uriel’s] sphere” (Argument 4). 10 On the epic’s noon symbolism, see Albert R. Cirillo’s now classic study, “NoonMidnight and the Temporal Structure of Paradise Lost,” in Milton’s Epic Poetry, ed. C. A. Patrides (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 215–32.

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the garden from the tree of life, where he “Sat like a cormorant” (4.196). At day’s end11 he finds Adam and Eve. After another soliloquy Satan, now disguised in various animal shapes, eavesdrops on their conversation and then goes roaming through the garden (4.288–538).12 With a characteristic “Meanwhile” (4.539) we return to the subplot. To warn the angelic guard in charge of paradisal security, “came Uriel, gliding through the even / On a sunbeam” (4.555–56). The exchange is just long enough to allow the sun to sink under the horizon so that Uriel can return to his post on the very same beam, now sliding in the opposite direction (4.589–97). The image is as witty as it is accurate, and it can brilliantly serve as an emblem of the creativity and precision characteristic of Milton’s temporal references. William Empson was the first to register the play on even: Uriel crosses the evening on a nearly level ray of the parting sun. “[T]he pun gives both Uriel and the sunset a vast and impermanent equilibrium; it is because of the inevitable Fall of our night that he falls to earth.”13 Indeed, almost everything about this first edenic night that we witness centres on balance: the sun Declined was hasting now with prone career To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale Of heaven the stars that usher evening rose. (4.352–55)

The image of the scales here not only aptly describes the equilibrium between the sun’s descent in the west and the stars’ ascent in the east but also invokes the constellation Libra that is just rising above the horizon opposite the sun14 (Figure 1). In that sense the poised scale is indeed “ascending.” J. B. Broadbent observes that this “verse enacts the balance of paradise,”15 and indeed, the balance of Paradise is constantly enacted. The condition of the unfallen world is not stasis but dynamic equilibrium.16 The harmony of the natural world is symbolic of Adam’s 11

For evening references, see esp. 4.327–31 and 352–55. The episode includes Eve’s second-order narrative of her own beginning, that is, her creation story (4.449–91). 13 William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Hogarth, 1986), 158. 14 Keeping with an old tradition, at PL 10.329 Milton states that the sun was in Aries when the cosmos was created. 15 John B. Broadbent, Some Graver Subject: An Essay on Paradise Lost (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), 199. 16 On paradisal landscape as expressive of the prelapsarian world’s dynamism, see Mary F. Norton, “ ‘The Rising World of Waters Dark and Deep’: Chaos Theory and Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 32 (1995): 100; cf. also Gábor Ittzés, “ ‘Till by 12

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standing in obedience: even while he is constant, his moral world is no less dynamic than its objective correlative. But Milton is not yet done with the description of the latter. Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where heaven With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun Slowly descended, and with right aspect Against the eastern gate of Paradise Levelled his evening rays. (4.539–43)

Figure 1. Paradisal equilibrium at sunset

Degrees of Merit Raised’: The Dynamism of Milton’s Edenic Development and Its Theological Context,” The AnaChronisT [2] (1996): 133–61.

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Images of equilibrium are delicately reinforced. Opposites meet at this moment (“heaven / With earth and ocean”), and if the “evening rays” are not enough to recall the earlier wordplay on the “even sunbeam,” the verb introduces the punning metaphor of balance: the rays are “levelled,” that is, “aim[ed], direct[ed], point[ed]” and “[l]ying in a plane coinciding with or parallel to the plane of the horizon.”17 Even more important is the modulation of time that these lines effect. We are now nearly two hundred lines after the previous passage when the sun “was hasting” down (4.353). Instead of having long since disappeared below the horizon, it is still hovering there in decidedly slower motion (4.541). It will not finally give way to twilight for nearly sixty more lines: “still evening” comes on only at 4.598. It is not the number of lines that counts here; it is merely a convenient way of registering the reading experience. Several episodes, we recall, take place between the descriptive passages.18 It is a decidedly leisurely evening, and with the flashbacks— Satan’s, Adam’s, Eve’s, Uriel’s—even more time gets packed into the episode, where time virtually stands still or, more accurately, slows to an almost imperceptible pace. The scene is altogether characteristic of Milton’s dual time-scheme in Paradise Lost whereby we simultaneously experience an interval as both short and long.19 Given the equinoctial days of Paradise,20 it is easy to assign a precise hour to the sunset scene: it must be six o’clock. The balance it embodies therefore has a larger significance. Not only are the sunbeams horizontal, but the sun itself is half-way between its highest and deepest points, midday and midnight, perfectly balancing light and darkness. The scales are absolutely even, symbolic of Adam’s position, “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (3.99). The allusion may be rather understated, 17

The definitions are quoted from the appropriate entries under “level” in OED (v.1 II.7.d, and adj. and adv. A.2, respectively; for the latter, cf. also adj. and adv. A.5), which also lists the past participle form independently as an adjective meaning “[m]ade level; placed in a level position; aimed, directed.” Consider also a now obsolete meaning, surviving in “level-headed,” as “[e]quipoised, steady” (OED “level” a. and adv. A.7.a). The pun is not listed in Edward Le Comte, A Dictionary of Puns in Milton’s English Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 18 Satan utters two soliloquies (4.358–92 and 505–35). In between, pretending to play with other animals, he spies on Adam and Eve (4.395–408), who have a lengthy dialogue about their edenic duties (4.408–39) and Eve’s earliest memories (4.440–91). Satan then takes off roaming the land (4.536–38) while we meet the angelic guards (4.543–54) and witness Uriel’s visit to them (4.555–97). 19 Cf. Ittzés, “Till by Degrees,” esp. 150–52. 20 Cf. Gábor Ittzés, “Milton’s Sun in the Zodiac,” Notes and Queries 250 (n.s. 52) (2005): 308–9.

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but it is not unjustified. The night we are entering will be that of Eve’s first temptation. First, however, we observe Adam and Eve’s evening ritual. They chat for a while after supper, say their evening prayers and retire to the bower to have sex, which occasions the bard to comment on marital love (4.598– 775). The last lines of the epithalamion address the “Blest pair” (4.774) in their sleep, subtly signalling the progress of action. In addition to what we have seen so far, Milton provides temporal clues on yet another level to reassure chronological orientation throughout the long twilight narrative (4.288–775). Not only is the passage packed with explicit time indicators, many already referenced, but the characters’ words as well as the similes also constantly evoke the declining day. The whole scene begins with a splendid, and vastly complex, period unfavourably comparing other famous gardens with the beauty beheld by Satan. Not that fair field Of Enna [. . .] / [. . .] might with this Paradise Of Eden strive; [. . .] Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard, Mount Amara, [. . .] / [. . .] enclosed with shining rock, A whole day’s journey high. (4.268–84)

This is the last, discarded, comparison in a long series before we actually turn to Satan as he catches sight of Adam and Eve, on their way home at the end of the working day as we later learn. The parallel is understated but effective. Mount Amara, where we are invited by the simile despite the negation undercutting the identification, can only be reached at the end of “a whole day’s journey.” Ever so subtly, the scene setting already evokes a sense of approaching evening in the reader. Similarly, Uriel arrives “swift as a shooting star / In autumn thwarts the night” (4.556–57); love “lights / His constant lamp” (4.763–64) in the marriage bed and not at the “midnight ball” (4.768)—all characteristically darkness metaphors evoking eventide. Adam and Eve’s after-dinner conversation also revolves around evening topics with “night” and related terms occurring a dozen times in eighty lines21—a frequency nowhere quite matched in Paradise Lost. The “night measured with her shadowy cone / Half way up hill this sublunar vault” (4.776–77) when, following up on his promise to Uriel, Gabriel gave orders to the angelic guards to comb through Paradise for the 21

Cf. 4.611, 613, 633, 647, 654, 657, 665, 674, 680, 682, 685, 688.

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intruder. As has long been recognised,22 the earth’s conical shadow functions here as a cosmic sundial. The circling cone completes a full round in twenty-four hours. Its axis is “horizontal” (is in an east–west position) at six o’clock, and its tip reaches the zenith at midnight, when the sun is at the nadir beneath the earth. It thus covers the quarter arc in six hours. If it has climbed half-way up, it must be nine o’clock in the evening (Figure 2). Ithuriel and Zephon find Satan “Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve” (4.800), tempting her in a dream. They take him to Gabriel, but a sign in the sky prevents their combat. Instead, Satan decides to flee, which brings book 4 to a conclusion. While the last scene’s opening chronographia is beyond dispute, the exact time of Satan’s departure is a matter of some debate. What we know is that after his near-clash with Gabriel, prevented by God’s “golden scales” “Hung forth in heaven” (4.997), Satan “fled / Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night” (4.1014–15). Fowler argues that if Gabriel tells his opponent to “look up” (4.1010, 1013), Libra must be near the zenith.23 “At sunrise, however, Libra sets beneath the [western] horizon; Satan would not need to look up.”24 “Numerologically,” Fowler advances another observation in favour of his reading, “iv 777 measured the Half way moment between iv 539 (six o’clock, when the sun ‘in utmost 22

Cf. Patrick Hume, Annotations on Milton’s Paradise Lost (London: Jacob Tonson, 1695), 162; Richard Bentley, ed., Paradise Lost: A New Edition (London, 1732), 135n; Jonathan Richardson, Father and Son, Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton’s Paradise Lost (London, 1734), 177–78; Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:288n–289n and Henry J. Todd, ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton, 4 vols., 4th ed. (London, 1842), 2:100n, both quoting Richardson and Bentley; David Masson, ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1874), 1:359n; Merritt Y. Hughes, ed., John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1976), 296n; Fowler, Paradise Lost, 267n. See also Gunnar Qvarnström, The Enchanted Palace: Some Aspects of Paradise Lost (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967), 33 and Harinder S. Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 196–98. 23 Fowler, Paradise Lost, 280n. Note that in Milton’s prelapsarian cosmos, where the celestial equator and the ecliptic coincide, a zodiacal constellation can only be on the zenith in a strict sense if Eden is supposed to be on the equator. That is a tradition Milton incorporates in his poem, but largely to reject it (4.281–85). The garden is probably near the 35ºN parallel (cf. 4.208–14). In a weaker sense, however, “zenith” may be understood as “the highest or culminating point of a heavenly body” (OED n. 2, classifying this meaning as “loose”). 24 Fowler, Paradise Lost, 280n.

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Figure 2. The earth’s shadow as an astronomical sundial

longitude’ crosses the horizon) and iv 1015 (midnight, when ‘the shades of night’ first began to flee).”25 This is insightful but ultimately pure guesswork and cannot serve to establish the timing of Satan’s flight.26 Nor is the textual data sufficient to conclude that “look up” means “look up vertically”—a reading without which Fowler’s interpretation does not hold. Qvarnström agrees with my caveats, “The only safe inference that can be drawn from this passage is [. . .] that the Sun as yet has not risen. To assign [Satan’s escape] to the hour of midnight seems to me to do violence to the text and to superimpose upon it a pedantic precision which 25

Fowler, Paradise Lost, 267n–268n (Fowler’s italics). Milton never states that the “halfway” mark refers to anything but the cone’s journey from six o’clock to midnight. Independent evidence would be needed to put Satan’s departure at midnight.

26

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it does not possess.”27 The exact time of the episode cannot be determined with confidence; all we can assert is that it happened some time between midnight and daybreak, probably close to the latter.

Figure 3. Key constellations in Paradise Lost

2. The epic’s centre The story directly continues in the next book with the “morn her rosy steps in the eastern clime / Advancing” (5.1–2). We see Adam and Eve wake up and discuss her Satan-induced dream (5.3–136), after which— and some four verse paragraphs after the opening lines—we are reminded that it is still six o’clock: “the sun, who scarce up risen / With wheels hovering o’er the ocean brim, / Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray” (5.139–41). The image is the perfect counterpart of the previous night’s 27

Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 171–73 (italics original). Cf. Frank H. Moore, “Astrea, the Scorpion, and the Heavenly Scales,” ELH 38 (1971): 354 and Clay Daniel, “Astrea, the Golden Scales, and the Scorpion: Milton’s Heavenly Reflection of the Scene in Eden,” Milton Quarterly 20 (1986): 92, who argue that Scorpio, Libra and Virgo stand for Satan, Gabriel, and Eve, respectively. Fowler, Paradise Lost, 279n, identifies Satan with the constellation Anguis, unnamed in the text (Figure 3).

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sunset. The prelapsarian equilibrium, despite Satan’s temptation of Eve during the night, is not yet upset. The symmetry is reiterated in another form as well. In his description of the evening, the bard metaphorised the stars as “living sapphires: Hesperus that led / The starry host, rode brightest” (4.604–5). Now Adam and Eve, though unaware of the identity,28 hymn it as Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crownst the smiling morn With thy bright circlet. (5.166–69)

Once they have performed their devotions,29 “On to their morning’s rural work they haste / Among sweet dews and flowers” (5.211–12). God observes them and sends Raphael to warn them of the danger posed by Satan. The angel departs immediately and arrives at noon (5.137–297), which is variously attested in the epic. God commands him to find Adam “from the heat of noon retired” (5.231). The bard reports his arrival “while [. . .] the mounted sun / Shot down direct his fervid rays to warm / Earth’s innermost womb” (5.300–302). Adam takes Raphael to be “another morn / Risen on mid-noon” (5.310–11). And lest we forget how it all began before the meeting is over, Raphael reminds us that he “since the morning hour set out from heaven / Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived / In Eden” (8.111–12). Upon landing, he is spotted and welcomed by Adam. They have lunch and spend the rest of the day together (5.298–8.653). In the course of the afternoon, Raphael relates to Adam and Eve the story of Satan’s heavenly revolt (esp. 5.561–6.900) and the events of creation (esp. 7.131–634). After Eve’s withdrawal (8.40–46) the men discuss, among other things, questions of cosmology. As in book 4, attention is repeatedly called to the gradual progress of time. Raphael is sent to spend “half this day as friend with friend / Convers[ing] with 28

Cf. their mention of “ye five other wandering fires” a few lines later (5.177). It may be an oversight on Milton’s part. “If intentional, the discrepancy may mime uncertainty as to whether Earth counts as a planet” (Fowler, Paradise Lost, 292n). Thomas Orchard in Milton’s Astronomy: The Astronomy of Paradise Lost (1913; reprint, n.p.: Norwood, 1977), 217n, had a simpler explanation: “it is Adam who expresses himself, and, naturally enough, he is unaware that the Morning and Evening stars are one and the same planet. Consequently Venus is again included as the Evening Star, and according to this interpretation of the passage the number ‘five’ is correct.” 29 Their prayer itself constantly calls attention to its temporal setting in the morning, cf. 5.170, 179, 185–87, 208.

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Adam” (5.229–30). He thus acknowledges to his host that he has “these mid-hours, till evening rise / [. . .] at will” (5.376–77). The ensuing dialogue is punctuated by Adam’s references to time. He self-consciously tries to persuade his guest to stay by pointing out how much (or rather, how little) of their allocated time frame they have used up. After their initial after-dinner exchange he observes that “the sun / Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins / His other half in the great zone of heaven” (5.558–60), that is, it is the very early afternoon. When the angel has finished relating the story of the war in heaven, “the great light of day yet wants to run / Much of his race, though steep” (7.98–99)—it is midafternoon. After the dialogue about astronomy (8.5–197) following Raphael’s creation narrative, there is still time for Adam’s account of his beginnings, for the “day is not yet spent” (8.206). It is only after further exchanges that “the parting sun [that] / Beyond the earth’s green cape and verdant isles / Hesperean sets” finally gives Raphael the “signal to depart” (8.630–32). Later Eve also confirms the archangel’s departure at sunset (9.276–78). These three and a half books, then, which contain the history of the preceding weeks on the secondary narrative level, take up merely a single afternoon in the first-order narrative. After the invocation book 9 picks up the story line apparently where book 8 broke it off with a Hesperean sunset (9.48–52, cf. 8.630–32). On closer scrutiny, however, it turns out that the two evenings are separated by a week,30 and the gap is filled with Satan’s journey through darkness (9.53–66, 76–86). That is the longest single episode of the first-order narrative—and one that is perhaps recounted in the fewest lines.31 The scene is crucial for any reconstruction of epic chronology and has generated not only much critical attention but also a considerable variety of interpretations. Since I have discussed that episode at length elsewhere,32 I will simply reiterate here that Milton’s text seems quite clear to me. 30

For a more detailed analysis of the transition, see Gábor Ittzés, “The Hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost: Structural and Chronological Considerations,” in Ritka mĦvészet: Írások Péter Ágnes tiszteletére – Rare Device: Writings in Honour of Ágnes Péter, ed. Veronika Ruttkay, Bálint Gárdos & Andrea Tímár (Budapest: ELTE BTK Angol-Amerikai Intézet Anglisztika Tanszék, 2011), 429–30. 31 Considering, as is usual though not strictly accurate, the rebels’ nine-day stupor (1.50–53) to be part of the second-order narrative. 32 Gábor Ittzés, “Satan’s Journey through Darkness (Paradise Lost 9.53–86),” Milton Quarterly 41 (2007): 12–21, and “Satan’s Return on the Eighth Night and Epic Chronology in Paradise Lost,” in Építész a kĘfejtĘben: Tanulmányok Dávidházi Péter hatvanadik születésnapjára – Architect in the Quarry: Studies Presented to Péter Dávidházi on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Sándor Hites & Zsuzsa Török (Budapest: rec.iti, 2010), 496–501.

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Satan was away for “seven continued nights [. . . and] On the eighth returned” (9.63, 67). That is to say, his travels occupied a full week, neither less nor more. Table 1 summarises the chronology of terrestrial action so far. Heaven [Text]

ňņņņņņņ 1 ņņņņņʼn Raphael dispatched [5.219–47]

3 4 5 6 7 8

Text 3.613–739 3.740– 4.117

… on Niphates

Night ňņņņņņņ 2 ņņņņņņʼn

Earth (Cosmos) Satan enquiring from Uriel at the sun (noon) … surveying Eden and entering Paradise … on the tree of life … eavesdropping on Adam and Eve … roaming the garden Uriel’s visit to Eden (sunset) Adam and Eve’s evening ritual First temptation of Eve Satan’s encounter with angelic guard and his flight Adam and Eve’s awakening (sunrise) … discussion of her dream … morning prayer

5.28–135 5.136–210

… work

5.211–67

Raphael’s arrival (noon) … visit (afternoon) … return to heaven (sunset)

Ŋņņņņ Satan’s week of uncreation ņņņņņŋ [9.58–69]

Day33

4.131–83 4.194–395 4.396–535 4.536–38 4.539–97 4.598–775 4.799–809 4.776–1015 5.1–27

5.268–391 5.391– 8.629 8.630–53

Table 1. Epic chronology from the beginning of terrestrial action to Satan’s journey through darkness

33

Day of terrestrial action.

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3. The fall and its aftermath Upon his return, Satan re-enters Paradise at midnight34 then seeks out and descends into the sleeping snake after a soliloquy. He waits in that shape until the new morning arrives (9.67–197), and the human pair again appear on the scene.35 After much discussion, Adam and Eve separate to be rejoined at noon. Here the narrative is interrupted by a short outburst of lament by the bard, after which enter Satan in the serpent in search of his prey (9.197–423). He finds and encounters Eve alone, leads her to the forbidden tree, and successfully tempts her at midday then withdraws and disappears from the narrative for a while (9.423–785).36 The noon setting is, again, very carefully documented. Eve first proposes to go off alone and “find what to redress till noon” (9.219). At the separation scene, the bard also confirms the plan “To be returned by noon” (9.401). Later, at the crucial moment of Eve’s fall—between Satan’s great temptation speech and her self-convincing soliloquy—he again clocks the event: “Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on” (9.739).37 Having eaten of it, Eve decides, after some deliberation, to share the fruit with Adam, who comes and meets her at the tree of knowledge of good and evil. At the end of their exchange, Adam also eats, and despite some initial cosmic response to original sin they have sex and an unrestful nap, cover themselves with fig leaves, and spend the rest of the afternoon quarrelling (9.785–1189). The relevant time scale is clearly indicated at the conclusion by the bard’s comment that “they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours” (9.1187–88, italics added), but there is a touch of irony in leaving the scene open and not rounding off this book with a sunset: after all, “of their vain contest appeared no end” (9.1189, italics added). Overall, Milton’s treatment of time is so careful throughout this tumultuous day that its chronology from sunrise to the end of the book is beyond dispute. Book 10 opens with a simultaneous time adverb (meanwhile) accompanied by a shift in scenes, which will be characteristic of this book. We now return to heaven for a short time, where the unwelcome news has arrived and occasioned another divine council (10.1–86). The process of information transmission deserves closer scrutiny although it is rarely if ever analysed for its chronological import. On the one hand, there is 34

Cf. esp. 9.58 and 181. The morning dating is also confirmed in retrospect, cf. 9.848, 1135–37. 36 Cf. 10.332–45, discussed below. 37 Cf. also 9.780–81 and 1067 for the “evil hour,” on which see Cirillo, “NoonMidnight,” 219–23. 35

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instantaneous knowledge in heaven of what goes on in Paradise. God is omniscient, and his knowledge is atemporal, which, translated into creaturely terms, means he knows everything without delay (and also ahead of time). As on several other occasions, Milton also makes the point explicitly here: Meanwhile the heinous and despiteful act Of Satan done in Paradise [. . .] Was known in heaven; for what can scape the eye Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart Omniscient. (10.1–7)

On the other hand, the angelic guards “Up into heaven from Paradise in haste / [. . .] ascended” (10.18–19) with the sad news, which they broke to those they met at the empyrean gates, and then “towards the throne supreme / [. . .] made haste” (10.28–29). Their report and plea of innocence is then approved by God addressing, in the first speech directly presented in the whole scene, the assembled celestial hosts. The episode is reminiscent of Abdiel’s return to God’s court from the rebellious camp. “All night the dreadless angel unpursued / Through heaven’s wide champaign held his way” (6.1–2), but upon arrival he “found / Already known what he for news had thought / To have reported” (6.19–21)— except that in book 10 only God knows, and the messengers’ information is indeed new to their peers. On the basis of “haste” mentioned twice in the description (10.17 and 29), it has been suggested that the guards’ “flight to Heaven is more speedy than usual.”38 That need not be the case, however, at least in the sense of affecting epic chronology. As we have seen, it took Raphael some six hours to cover the distance from heaven to Paradise at a speed that is decidedly anything but leisurely (8.110–14).39 If we take, as is common,40 that journey to be paradigmatic, the guards’ haste may and need not have saved a great amount of time and may primarily refer to their best intentions: their sad news drives them on; they want to be unburdened of its weight as soon as possible. If they set out just after the deed, which is not stated but can be presumed, and travel at, or just over, Raphael’s (rather impressive) speed, they can arrive in heaven by sunset (paradisal time). The ensuing council is not particularly long, and when the Son sets 38

Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 41. Satan’s first arrival in book 3 may constitute a parallel case, but that episode falls just outside the timeframe of terrestrial action discussed in this paper. 40 Cf. n. 72, below. 39

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out to execute its resolution, he descends instantaneously, and this divine feature of his movement is explicitly emphasised (10.90–91). That he arrives in Eden at sunset retrospectively confirms my reconstruction that the council was held in the very late afternoon, allowing the guards enough time to return from their outpost to the headquarters at the usual angelic speed.41 The Son’s arrival at sundown further fulfils a divine prediction (10.52–53), and, in addition to being in line with the biblical account (Gen 3:8), it also synchronises the two story lines and brings us back to the same point on the postlapsarian paradisal timeline where we broke off at the end of book 9. The Son judges and clothes the human pair before returning to the Father (10.97–228). In a rare instance of a third layer of simultaneous action, the scene now shifts again: “Meanwhile ere thus was sinned and judged on earth” (10.229). Geographically, we are taken back to the gates of hell; chronologically, back to an unspecified moment prior to the fall or, perhaps, the sentencing. The subsequent scene42 makes it clear that we do not pick up the story at the end of book 2 with Satan’s departure but practically at, or immediately after, the moment of the fall. After a short deliberation, Sin and Death set out following Satan and build a vast bridge all the way across chaos to the outskirts of the cosmos, where they meet Satan on his way back from Paradise, mission accomplished (10.230–409). He comes “steering / His zenith” “Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion” (10.328–29), which both Qvarnström (despite his earlier guardedness) and Fowler take to be a chronographia indicating precise timing.43 The fundamental logic is the same as before. We know that the twelve zodiacal signs circle the earth in twenty-four hours, each being on or near the meridian for two hours. Libra is overhead at midnight, followed by Scorpion and Sagittarius, which Qvarnström and Fowler identify here with the Centaur. If the point between the latter two signs is on the zenith, it must be three hours after midnight (Figure 4). I am not claiming that the reconstruction is wrong, merely that it is conjectural. Its presuppositions include a horizontal axis mundi,44 a paradisal vantage point (although the

41

Recall that, having got up at sunrise and having subsequently performed their morning devotions, Adam and Eve were already at work when “Them thus employed beheld / With pity heaven’s high king, and to him called / Raphael” (5.219–21) to send him on his errand to Paradise. In other words, Raphael’s descent does not take six full hours, either. 42 Esp. 10.238–49, 262–63, 267–69. 43 Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 42–45; Fowler, Paradise Lost, 558n–559n. 44 Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 30; Fowler, Paradise Lost, 202n.

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Figure 4. Satan steering his zenith (10.327–29)

observers are Sin and Death at the orifice), and a substitution of Sagittarius for the Centaur.45 All these may of course be true, but none can be established independently. On a strict reading of “zenith” the chronographia also entails an equatorial Eden,46 but in a weaker sense of the term Milton’s original phrase, especially with its possessive pronoun referencing Satan (“steering / His zenith”), may altogether loosen itself from the sky above Eden. If the “zenith” here spoken of is not “the highest point of the 45 The conflation, or confusion, dates back to antiquity, but there is a constellation called Centaur, and it makes perfect sense to take Milton’s words at face value. As Marjara, Contemplation, 116, recognises, the constellation between the Centaur and Scorpion is Lupus (Figure 3), which harks back to the “prowling wolf” metaphor in 4.183–87. Marjara presents this reading in guarded language, and I need not overstate his case. Lupus at this juncture is as nameless as Serpens. 46 Cf. n. 23, above.

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celestial sphere as viewed from” Eden but the “[h]ighest point or state, culmination, climax” of the archfiend’s career,47 the whole chronographia collapses. It might also be significant that while editors from Hume to Hughes all recognised the cosmic watch in 4.776–77, none of them detected one in this passage. A long and old critical tradition simply saw here Satan’s attempt to avoid detection by Uriel by taking a course through the opposite region of the heavens.48 At any rate, the critical debate is not so much between two conflicting proposals for the particular dating of this scene as about the very possibility of dating it with precision at all. All critics seem to agree that the meeting at the edge of the cosmos takes place some time during the night after Adam and Eve’s sentencing. Inserted in this passage is an atypical flashback of primary narrative49 summarising Satan’s exploits after the seduction of Eve (10.332–45), which not only fills the gap in the archfiend’s story but also adds a fourth layer of simultaneity to the events of this most momentous day. When the hellish trinity part ways, Sin and Death descend to earth (10.410–14) while Satan returns to hell and his throne in Pandæmonium, but the response to his victory speech is “A dismal universal hiss” (10.508) as both he and his cronies are turned to snakes and other creepy creatures. Their punishment is made complete with the appearance of some trees whose fruit they desperately desire in hunger and thirst, but that is turned to ashes as they chew it. That is the last we see of the rebel angels in the epic, but the scene is masterfully rounded off (10.414–584). The bard tells us that after some unspecified time they were permitted to return to their native shape, but they are “Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo / This annual humbling certain numbered days” (10.575–76) although, to cover up their shame, they popularised among the heathen some more respectable myth of their fate.

47 OED n. 1.a vs. 3.a. The figurative reading makes perfect sense. Satan is now returning as a triumphant general from a victorious campaign, and he does get recognition from his offspring (10.355–56). Previously, he had to withdraw and hide in terror (10.332–41). Later, he is to receive hiss rather than applause (10.504–9). Cf. Cirillo, “Noon-Midnight,” 227–30. 48 Cf. Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:239n, quoting Pierce; Todd, Poetical Works of Milton, 2:415n; Masson, Poetical Works of Milton, 1:373n; Orchard, Milton’s Astronomy, 121–22; Hughes, Milton: Complete Poems, 414n. 49 Another significant instance of the same narrative technique occurs in the description of Satan’s journey through darkness (9.76–86). On this passage, see Ittzés, “Satan’s Journey,” 16–17 contra Sherry L. Zivley, “Satan in Orbit: Paradise Lost IX.48–86,” Milton Quarterly 31:4 (1997): 133.

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Despite a certain blurriness, this final infernal scene has not excited much critical controversy in terms of chronology. In fact, it is generally underappreciated and not much discussed in this context. What Milton does here is nonetheless brilliant. On the one hand, he firmly ties in the infernal episodes with the major time scheme of the primary narrative (recall the manifold “meanwhile” coordinations). On the other hand, however, he takes this chronological thread and elegantly brings it to the “eternal present” of the reader’s time (notice the contemporaneous reference of “yearly” and the shift to present tense verb forms). As hellish time was linked with human experience at the beginning (1.50–52) so is it now again connected to the world as we know it. With yet another “meanwhile” we shift back to Paradise and Sin and Death, who take possession of their new colony (10.585–613). This scene is observed by, and thus chronologically coordinated with, God asserting his ultimate authority and hailed by the heavenly chorus (10.613–48). At the creator’s order, the consequences of the fall affect nature (10.649– 715). The description is generalised as it proceeds and finally comes back to Adam, who “The growing miseries [. . .] saw / Already in part” (10.715–16). There is no specific time indication beyond the general coordination, but since we find Adam “hid in gloomiest shade” (10.716), the setting recalls his hiding “among / The thickest trees” (10.100–101) before the judgement scene—the last time we saw him. Reinforcing the effect of the numerous layers of general simultaneity, the continuity is thus also established poetically. Adam’s wailing (10.715–862) is specifically dated to the “still night” (10.846) before he is approached by Eve, who has been observing him from a distance. Her words, though initially rebuffed, help the pair gradually find their way to repentance (10.866–1104). In the entire epic, book 10 has the most complex first-order time structure. Uniquely in the whole poem, it offers a sustained multi-layer parallel account of simultaneous events played out virtually on all stages of the grand drama, heaven, hell, chaos, and earth as well as the outskirts of the cosmos. In the light of this complexity, it has been surprisingly uncontroversial. It clearly narrates the events of the latter half of the day of the fall leading into the night, occasionally picking up threads from earlier books, dropped at around noon of the same day. Apart from the precise dating of Satan’s meeting with Sin and Death, which may be a matter of some dispute, it presents only one major chronological crux, but to grasp it in full we must first analyse the rest of the narrative.

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4. An extra day? Book 11 opens with Adam and Eve’s penitential prayer, which now flies up to heaven, where it is graciously received (11.1–66). The movement of the prayer is “dimensionless” (11.17), which is to be understood primarily in a spatial sense but is probably also applicable to the lack of a temporal dimension50—an interpretation confirmed by later details. After the ensuing council Michael and an angelic cohort prepare to descend to Paradise (11.67–133). The last “meanwhile” in the primary narrative reveals this scene to be simultaneous with the rise of a new morning in Paradise: “To resalute the world with sacred light / Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed / The earth” (11.134–36).51 With that, the focus shifts back to Adam and Eve finishing their prayers: the chronological sequence is established yet once more without any temporal gap. After a short discussion, Adam and Eve see signs in nature and discover Michael’s arrival, who delivers God’s sentence but reassures them by a promise to reveal future history to Adam (11.136–376). The remaining one and a half books to the final scene are filled by the presentation and discussion of revelatory visions (11.376–12.605). When they descend from the hill, Eve joins them and Michael leads them out of Paradise (12.606–49). Simple as this sequence of events seems, the concluding books are beset by chronological questions not altogether unlike those that riddle the opening books “that lie out of the Reach of the Sun and the Sphere of Day.”52 What is the precise timing of the individual scenes, especially of Michael’s arrival and of the expulsion? How much time elapses altogether in books 10–12 from the judgement to the expulsion, or, specifically, how many days after the fall are Adam and Eve banished from Paradise on the one hand, and at what time do they begin their exile on the other? The first, and gravest, difficulty is posed by 10.1069–70. Evening falls at the beginning of book 10: Now was the sun in western cadence low From noon, and gentle airs due at their hour To fan the earth now waked, and usher in The evening cool. (10.92–95)

50

Cf. 11.7–8. For further reference to the new morning, see 11.173–75. 52 Cf. n. 4, above. 51

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Some 750 lines later it is clearly dark when “Adam to himself lamented loud / Through the still night” (10.845–46). The sun, we have seen, is not described to rise until yet another four hundred lines later (11.133–35). Nevertheless, right in the middle of this carefully drawn long night, Adam speaks as if it were before sunset: which bids us seek Some better shroud, some better warmth to cherish Our limbs benumbed, ere this diurnal star Leave cold the night. (10.1066–70, italics added)

Thomas Newton already noted that in book 10 Adam is represented as lamenting aloud to himself, ver. 846. [. . .] Adam is afterwards made to talk somewhat confusedly, in one place as if it was still the day of the fall, ver. 962. [. . .] and in another place as if it was some day after the fall, ver. 1048. [. . .] And having felt the cold damps of the night before, he is considering how they may provide themselves with some better warmth and fire before another night comes, ver. 1069. [. . .] That other night [after the fall] we must now suppose to be past.53

On the basis of this analysis, Newton, as we saw in the introduction, extended Addison’s chronology by a day.54 Anthony Welch has recently picked up the point and turned it into his strongest argument against Fowler’s thirty-three day model. Given the wider context establishing a night setting for the scene, “why does Adam refer to the setting sun, ‘this diurnal Star,’ as if it were currently visible?”55 I admit that this is a very strong challenge, and neither Fowler’s avoidance strategy nor his roundabout answer will do.56 The crucial line (10.1069–70) is truly an odd one. It does imply daytime, albeit the end of it, yet it comes between a sunset and a sunrise where we would expect night-time. Chronologically, it is either anomalous, or the sunset of 10.92– 95 and the sunrise of 11.133–36 do not bracket the same night. Newton, 53

Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:315. Cf. n. 1, above. 55 Welch, “Reconsidering Chronology,” 11. 56 Of course, Welch is later than even the second edition of Fowler, who can only respond to Newton’s objections. He does not comment on 10.1069–70. The tentative explanation he volunteers in connection with 10.773 is certainly insufficient to counter Welch’s protest, “Perhaps the present action takes place on the same night [after the fall]: x 329 does not refer to sunrise over Eden” (Fowler, Paradise Lost, 582n). At 10.1069–70, the sun appears still to be above the horizon, confounding all previous references to evening and night. 54

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Welch, and perhaps A. H. Gilbert57 mainly opt for the latter interpretation. I suggest that, given the overall merit of the case, anomaly is the better explanation. Interestingly, the authors I am opposing here implicitly also allow for that possibility. Newton speaks of confusion while Gilbert and Welch, despite raising the difficulty of 10.1069–70, proceed for the most part as though it was nevertheless established that the day of the expulsion followed immediately that of the fall.58 We have no other textual evidence than 10.1069–70 to postulate an intermediate day between the fall and the expulsion.59 In light of the care Milton takes to describe the sunsets and sunrises of each edenic day he narrates in detail, the idea of a full day that is merely identified by Adam’s brief remark is itself anomalous.60 Welch is absolutely right to “suspect that few would confidently argue, as a rule, for Milton’s inattention to detail,”61 yet in this particular case the far more plausible explanation seems to me that the difficulty posed by the “diurnal star” is rooted in superficial revision rather than authorial intention. Naturally, it does not follow that Milton was careless “as a rule.” Developing Grant McColley’s insight into the compositional order of Paradise Lost, Gilbert assigns the 57

Allen H. Gilbert, On the Composition of Paradise Lost: A Study of the Ordering and Insertion of Material (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 36, says that after the cold and damp night following the fall, “the next day he [Adam] speaks of learning” to find protection against inclement weather. Given the new morning in 11.133–36, the expulsion must then come on the second day after the fall. Gilbert, however, never puts these pieces together. Moreover, later he explicitly states that Adam and Eve are expelled on the day that follows the night “after the Fall, marked by cold and damp” (Composition, 147). Given the nature of his undertaking, this fissure is rather ironic in Gilbert. 58 Cf. Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:315n; Gilbert, Composition, 147–50; Welch, “Reconsidering Chronology,” 10, 15. 59 “That day” at 10.1050 does not count, pace Newton, because it modifies “death” rather than “We expected”: “we expected / Immediate dissolution, which we thought / Was meant by death that day” (10.1048–50). Adam is not referring back to a previous day now gone but, in the context of recalling the judgement scene a few hours after the event, he reminds Eve of their earlier expectations based on the original divine prohibition as if he were saying, “We expected that we would have to die immediately because the prohibition said ‘The day thou eatst thereof, my sole command / Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die; / From that day mortal’ (8.329–31), and yet he did not kill us right then and there but pronounced milder sentences on us.” 60 On the structural significance of mornings occurring at the beginning of odd numbered books, see Ittzés, “Hero of Paradise Lost,” 431–32. 61 Welch, “Reconsidering Chronology,” 13; cf. Helen Gardner, A Reading of Paradise Lost (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 13.

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passages containing the relevant time indicators at 10.92–95, 845–46, 1069–70, and 11.133–36 to different stages in the writing of the epic.62 I think it is more likely that the poet failed to smooth over the troubling detail of the sun’s visibility towards the end of book 10 than that he inserted the passage deliberately indicating a full new day in the chronology. There is another version of the third-day expulsion, which produces the same numeric result by a rather different route. Zivley, ever ready to champion idiosyncratic readings of small details, finds the extra day not in Adam’s reference to a visible sun between what the majority of critics take to be the epic’s last nightfall and last morning but in the eclipse after the sunrise that is otherwise uniformly considered to be the poem’s last. In other words, Zivley agrees, against Newton and Welch, with what I find the most plausible reading, namely, that the astronomical changes effecting a postlapsarian cosmos, Adam and Eve’s quarrel, wailing, and repentance, Satan’s encounter with Sin and Death as well as their respective journeys to hell and Paradise all take place during the night between the judgement scene and the morning at 11.133–36.63 On the other hand, she, alone among all critics whose work I have consulted, takes that morning to be the penultimate in the epic’s time scheme. This is the dawn of the first new day after they broke God’s commandment. Then the garden is “suddenly eclips’d / After short blush of Morn” (11.183–84). [. . .] With the premature darkness, Day Thirty-two comes to a close. Little has happened since dawn, because this day has been considerably shortened. Here, the darkness of the day is symbolically appropriate to the despair experienced by Adam and Eve. The shortening of this day is also useful for Milton dramatically because he has little action to present on this day.64

The refutation of this far-fetched and arbitrary interpretation is hardly an issue. Except for producing darkness, there is little in common between an eclipse and a night. They are perfectly distinguishable phenomena both in astronomical and in lay terms. Rather than their difference, their identity or interchangeability must be established here, and Zivley does little to

62

See esp. Gilbert, Composition, 36–38 and 152–54. It is somewhat surprising that Gilbert, though constantly on the lookout for internal inconsistencies, does not pursue the anomaly of 10.1069–70 and use it as specific evidence in his elaborate reconstruction of how Milton built the final form of the poem. 63 Sherry L. Zivley, “The Thirty-three Days of Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 34:4 (2000): 122–23. 64 Zivley, “The Thirty-three Days,” 123.

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propound it.65 The symbolic appropriateness of darkness certainly does not demand a night over an eclipse. The shortness of the day is decidedly more useful for Zivley than Milton because only she needs an extra day for which she has no dramatic action to present.66 Her proposal is therefore entirely insubstantial and can be simply dismissed.

5. The day of Michael’s visit The remaining questions concern the internal chronology of the epic’s last day. The expulsion obviously marks the end of Michael’s visit, and its commencement depends on how one reads the beginning of book 11. That Michael’s dispatch has to do with the last morning of the epic has only been challenged by Zivley. Taking the eclipse to represent nightfall, she assigns the angel’s visit to hours of darkness, “throughout the night [Michael] shows Adam visions of the future.”67 Three reasons are advanced to substantiate that the scene ends at sunrise: first, because Michael has been showing Adam visions and talking with him throughout the night; second, because they go to wake Eve, an action appropriate to morning; and, third, because they return to the bower in which Eve had been sleeping and “found her wak’t” (12.608), after her night’s sleep.68

The first and third are only apparent arguments; they merely present presuppositions as evidence, namely, that the revelation takes place at night and that it is “after her night’s sleep” that Eve wakes up. There is no independent textual evidence to establish either detail. Nor is the claim any more convincing that waking up itself proves an hour to be morning as anybody who has ever had an afternoon nap will know.69 Zivley’s reading seems to be driven by a typological correspondence she wants to arrive at. 65

Cf. Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 53n, who denies all “real existence” to the “Darkness ere day’s mid-course” (11.204) blaming it solely on the “carnal fear that [. . .] dimmed Adam’s eye” (11.212)—probably overinterpretation, esp. in the light of 11.183–84, coming from the bard. 66 The insertion of a day at this point is a revealing testimony to the strength of the thirty-three-day chronology developed by Qvarnström and Fowler (cf. Ittzés, “Satan’s Return,” 493). 67 Zivley, “The Thirty-three Days,” 123. 68 Zivley, “The Thirty-three Days,” 123. 69 I have pointed out elsewhere that the disruption of Adam and Eve’s sleep pattern after the fall is expressive of their new status (Ittzés, “Hero of Paradise Lost,” 436).

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Gábor Ittzés Adam and Eve’s last three days in Eden are, therefore, analogous to the three days which include Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and Adam and Eve are expelled from their earthly Paradise at approximately the same time of day at which Christ will rise into paradise.70

Zivley’s chronological reasoning is thus putting the cart before the horse, and her proposal can be safely rejected. There is no doubt, then, that God dispatches Michael at sunrise (11.99– 136). When the angel arrives in Eden is a little more difficult to determine. Qvarnström and Fowler are the only commentators I know who care to be specific. They both suggest early morning.71 I am less convinced although it is definitely a possibility. However, as Qvarnström also knows, “an angel requires some six hours to get from Heaven to Earth.”72 Adam comments on the optical phenomena accompanying Michael’s arrival, “Why in the east / Darkness ere day’s mid-course, and morning light / More orient in yon western cloud” (10.203–5, italics added)—closely echoing Raphael’s temporal description of his own morning-to-noon journey.73 It is at least a defensible hypothesis that Michael and his cohort landed in Eden well into the day.74 I wish to attach no great significance to the exact timing of the cherubim’s touchdown and merely want to problematise Fowler’s almost self-evident assumption. As for the expulsion, it is to be expected that Zivley puts it at sunrise, and her proposal need not detain us.75 Fowler thinks it takes place at 70

Zivley, “The Thirty-three Days,” 123. Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 46; Fowler, Paradise Lost, 31. 72 Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 31, and cf. p. 113–14, above. 73 Cf. “ere mid-day arrived” (8.112). It must be allowed that the temporal proximity between sunrise on the last day (11.133–36) and Michael’s landing barely seventy lines later is considerably greater than between the sunrise at 5.1–2 and Raphael’s arrival (5.298–302). It is not so much the number of lines as the action presented in those lines that makes it difficult to pack a full morning into the first passage. In book 11, only the mute signs of lines 182–90 interrupt the relatively compact dialogue of Adam and Eve, and we lack any indication of their occupation beyond the recorded chat that would be comparable to their morning work in 5.211–19. 74 “Haste thee” in 11.104 might perhaps indicate a speedier-than-usual voyage, but such an argument would be a highly speculative construct; cf. the discussion of a parallel case in 10.17 and 29, on pp. 113–14, above. 75 To her list of dubious arguments discussed above, she adds two equally lame reasons: “That ‘all th’ Eastern side … of Paradise’ (emphasis mine [Zivley’s]) is lit suggests that the light source is the sun, not just the light of God’s sword, which would probably produce a more localized light. [. . .] As Adam and Eve leave Eden, ‘The World was all before them’ (12.646), a clause which implies that they 71

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noon.76 His position appears to be determined by his desire to literally save the day—“the day” of the interdiction, that is. God had threatened death for violating his command “The day thou eatst thereof” (8.329).77 Despite the apparent delay in the execution of the sentence, expulsion as symbolic death comes within a day of the fall, provided “day” is rightly understood as a twenty-four-hour period beginning at the time of Adam’s disobedience (noon). Fowler has no positive evidence other than that logic on which to base his inference, which remains inconclusive.78 As before, his construct is elegant but inflated. The exegetical crux Genesis 2:17 presents posed a challenge to biblical interpreters already in antiquity, and the standard explanation was that mortality rather than actual death was meant by the text.79 Death as a loss of life did not mean for Adam his life’s end then and there but the loss of his ability to retain it forever. However long it took him to accurately recognise his new state, only the metaphysical shift is required to fulfil the threatening prediction, and that could happen at the very time of eating,80 keeping it well within “the day.” I might also add that, apart from the archangel’s possible arrival at midday, we already had a metaphoric noon in the middle of Michael’s visions, at the end of the first aeon of world history, revealed in six scenes: “As one who in his journey baits at noon, / Though bent on speed, so here the archangel paused / Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored” (12.1–3). Taken together, I find Fowler’s solution conjectural. Arguing from the metaphoric import of the closing lines, Qvarnström offers a more convincing view. His reasoning deserves to be quoted at length. Thus the executive angels, descending from their Hill to expel Adam and Eve, are compared to “Ev’ning Mist”: “on the ground gliding meteorous, as Ev’ning Mist ris’n from a River ore the marish glides and gathers fast at the Labourers heel homeward returning” (XII 628). Indeed this labourer on are looking at that world in the light of a new day” (“The Thirty-three Days,” 123). For a close reading of the epic’s closing passage about Michael’s sword, although without temporal considerations, see Kester Svendsen, Milton and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 105–12. 76 Fowler, Paradise Lost, 31, 582n, and 674n. 77 Cf. 10.49 and Genesis 2:16–17. 78 Cf. Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 54n. 79 Cf. James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1997), 67– 71. On Renaissance commentary, not vastly different, see Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis, 1527–1633 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1948), 131–33. 80 Cf. 9.792.

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Gábor Ittzés his way home in the evening, after his day’s work, gives further emphasis to the metaphorical suggestion that this Day is over. This suggestion is further stressed by the lines about Adam and Eve taking their solitary way out of Eden: “the Word was all before them, where to choose their place of rest”. My conclusion, therefore, is that the epic and its last Day reach “The End” together.81

The analysis barely needs augmentation, but G. M. Crump’s perceptive qualification, taken from a very similar discussion, is worth recalling, “It is not evening. It is only an image of evening in the midst of [. . .] the seventh day of Milton’s poem.”82 Table 2 offers an overview of the chronology of the last two days of terrestrial action.

6. Conclusion Terrestrial action begins with Satan’s entry into the cosmos, and the first definitely datable episode is his encounter with Uriel at the sun at noon on the first day of directly narrated human time. From then on, Milton, as a rule, carefully indicates the progress of time. Adam and Eve also appear on the scene before this day is over, and the night’s chief events include the first, unsuccessful, temptation of Eve and Satan’s flight. Day 2 of terrestrial time dawns at the beginning of book 5 and ushers in Raphael’s visit. It is also the first day of Satan’s weeklong journey through darkness, which thus covers days 2 to 8 of terrestrial time. On the latter six of those days we have essentially no information, but the remaining two days of epic time, the day of the fall and the day of expulsion, are again narrated in full. Terrestrial action therefore extends over ten days as Addison suggested with only the twice two days in extremis presented in detail.

81

Qvarnström, Enchanted Palace, 47 (italics original). Galbraith M. Crump, The Mystical Design of Paradise Lost (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1975), 174. Laurence Stapleton, “Perspectives of Time in Paradise Lost,” Philological Quarterly 45 (1966): 747, concurs, “We do not know what the ‘hour precise’ is, but [. . .] the beautiful simile in the lines describing the descent of the Cherubim summons before us a darkening landscape.” 82

The Chronology of Terrestrial Action in Milton’s Paradise Lost Heaven [Text]

ňņņņņ 10 ņņņņʼn ňņņņņņņņ Night ņņņņņņņʼn

ňņņņņņņņņņ 9 ņņņņņņņņņʼn

Night

Day83

Earth Satan’s re-entry into Paradise at midnight Adam and Eve’s parting for the morning Eve’s temptation and fall (noon) Satan’s withdrawal Adam’s fall Fallen sex

Council of judgement [10.1–84]

Adam and Eve’s first quarrel

Son descends to judge [10.85–228]

Sentencing and clothing of Adam and Eve (sunset)

Verdict about natural consequences of fall [10.613–51]

Sin and Death in Paradise

Text

9.192–403 9.412–838 9.784–85 9.838–1004 9.1011–45 9.1066–189 2.1023–33, 10.230–326 10.90–219 10.326–410 10.410–14, 585–613

10.714–862

10.504–77 … quarrel with Eve and repentance 10.863–1104 Council of expulsion [11.1–126] Michael dispatched [11.99–133]

Sin and Death build a bridge across chaos… … meet Satan Satan returns to hell…

10.651–714 10.460–98

Adam’s wailing …

Hell

9.69–191

10.414–59 “Fall of nature”

127

Adam & Eve’s morning dialogue

11.133–203

Michael’s arrival

11.203–376

Visions of future history Expulsion

11.376– 12.606 12.607–49

… gives speech… … turns into ashchewing snake

Table 2. Chronology of epic action from Satan’s re-entry into Paradise to Adam and Eve’s expulsion 83

Day of terrestrial action.

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Despite Milton’s general meticulousness in matters temporal, several particulars have been subject to critical debate. Most of them, however, only concern the internal chronology of a given day and do not affect the overall pattern of epic chronology sketchily summarised in the previous paragraph. The only significant exception, in addition to Satan’s sojourn of a week, is the problem of the extra day between the fall and expulsion, raised nearly three hundred years ago in the debate between Addison and Newton. Here, unlike in the longer episode,84 the evidence is indeed controversial, and the price of overall coherence is the admission of Milton’s inattention to this particular detail (10.1069–70). In the other instances I have argued that debated points can be usually settled beyond reasonable doubt; the majority opinion generally holds, and revisionist readings can be safely retired. In some cases (such as the exact timing of Satan’s flight or of his meeting with Sin and Death after the fall of Adam and Eve) the critical question may be whether the given episode can be precisely dated or the textual basis is deemed insufficient to uphold the specific interpretation. Nevertheless, the decision will have no major chronological repercussions because these cases have no large-scale temporal import and bear only on the local scene rather than the overall chronology. It should therefore not be impossible to arrive at a critical consensus about a fundamental epic chronology of terrestrial action in Paradise Lost as reconstructed above. But in the light of the previous three centuries’ developments, that consensus is not likely to be readily forthcoming (recall the dissenting voices from Addison to Zivley and Welch), and a few further implications of the foregoing analysis might be just as important as the specific reconstructive proposal. I want to highlight three of those in conclusion. Milton employs time indicators on both the cognitive and the poeticmetaphorical levels. These indicators are never in contradiction, but they might indeed be in complementary distribution. What I call cognitive signals may be direct (as in the descriptions of new mornings dawning) or indirect (as, for example, in the occasional chronographia), and Milton might also use structural indicators as well.85 I have argued that for a convincing reconstruction of epic chronology the various kinds of Milton’s signals are all to be taken into consideration, but that should not serve to licence overinterpretation where textual evidence is lacking.

84 85

Cf. n. 32, above. Cf. n. 60, above.

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Terrestrial action in Paradise Lost is presented as a continuous whole. That is not to suggest that occasionally rather complex structures of parallel action could not be incorporated into the narrative or that it might not be interrupted at times. The invocations most obviously punctuate the narrative flow as do the second-order accounts on a large and the epic similes on a small scale. Those punctures, however, do not affect the basic continuity of the primary narrative, which picks up the story line after such interruptions where it was left off before. Milton may also tease the reader (as with the gap between the sunsets at the end of book 8 and the beginning of book 9) but he still carefully signals and defines the discontinuity: he creates the gap, as it were, by filling it. More precisely, he draws our attention to holes in the story by precisely presenting them as well-defined discontinuities and thereby paradoxically filling them in. As a general principle, the primary narrative of Paradise Lost is not episodic but continuous; the sequentiality or simultaneity of events is clearly signalled and their linkage consistently maintained. Milton is not so much interested in specifying the clock time for every single scene in his poem as he is in giving a sustained general sense of time’s progress and clearly signalling events at cardinal points on his schedule, chiefly sunset, midnight, sunrise, and noon. Similarly, he uses the scales of days and hours to locate events temporally in his narrative. He never counts the minutes. Where that would be the relevant scale (as in Satan’s descent from the sun to Niphates or Uriel’s arrival at and return from Eden), he typically presents the scene as virtually instantaneous. Where he is safely within the framework of a day (or part of day), he is content to leave the precise clock time unspecified or simply to signal the general progress of time. These tendencies strengthen rather than undermine the established framework within which those episodes are situated. It is my contention that these narrative principles are applicable to the rest of the epic as well, but their in-depth exploration in contexts other than the chronology of terrestrial action must await another opportunity. The more limited aim of this investigation was to reconstruct the timeline of events from Satan’s landing at the sun to the expulsion and review the contentious issues in that segment of the overall chronology. There we found that the debate between Addison and Newton indeed identified the crux of the matter; all other controversies were either possible to settle convincingly or had no significant consequences for the overall chronology. As Milton’s text stands, a solution to the problem of the extra day between the fall and the expulsion can only be achieved at a price: overall consistency and authorial attention to detail in this particular case

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cannot be both maintained. Even if the majority opinion falls out in favour of the former, the decision will always call for individual critical judgement.

PART II SHAKESPEARE ON PAGE AND STAGE

HYMEN’S TRUTH: “AT-ONE-MENT” FROM SHAKESPEARE TO TYNDALE, FROM TYNDALE TO SHAKESPEARE TIBOR FABINY

In the past decade I began an intellectual travel to a yet undiscovered country in English literary studies, namely, the terrain of religious controversies in the early Tudor period where I have found many things that were not dreamt of in our secular philosophy or literary history. It was the theological work of the first Bible translator William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536), for a while regarded as a protege of Luther, but undoubtedly the maker of the English language. The year 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, known also as the Authorized Version. Throughout this year conferences were organized all around the English-speaking world to commemorate that great cultural event. It is now commonly accepted that some 84 per cent of William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament (1526 and 1534) and 76 percent of his Pentateuch-translation (1530) were adopted by the editoral board of the celebrated 1611 Bible.1 Tyndale has, especially since the enthusiatic scholarship of Professor David Daniell, usually been admired for his Greek rather than Latin-based simple English syntax, the graphic vocabulary and so on. It is also known that he invented words like “passover,” “mercy-seat,” and last but not least “atonement.” Now, I do return from this earlier undiscovered country to Shakespeare with the word “atonement” in my bag and my concern is to share its deep linguistic, theological and last but not least literary connotations. The essay is going to be a journey from Shakespeare to Tyndale and from Tyndale back to Shakespeare. First we are surveying the occurances 1 John Nielson and Royal Skousen, “How much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale’s,” Reformation 3 (1998): 49–74.

“At-one-ment” from Shakespeare to Tyndale, from Tyndale to Shakespeare 133

of the verb “atone” or the noun “atonement” in Shakespeare’s plays; then its biblical meaning will be explored and eventually it will be used as a key-motif in our analysis of Shakepeare’s romantic comedy As You Like It. It is our presupposition that the translation of the Bible has not only contributed to the making of early modern culture in England but William Tyndale’s imaginative coining of the word “atonement” and its application in his writings to Bible-related topics resulted in the formation of, among others, the artistic principle of “reconciliation” in William Shakespeare’s dramas.

1. Shakespeare’s Atone(ment)s One is struck and puzzled when one re-reads the end of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy As You Like It (1599), where Hymen, the god of marriage sings: There is mirth in heaven, When earthly things are made even Atone together. (5.4.107–9)2

Agnes Latham, the editor of the 1975 Arden edition explains that “to atone” means, “to set at one,” “agree, are reconciled.” She quotes a nineteenth-century editor (Wright) who said that neither “atone” nor “atonement” occurs in the Authorized Version.3 We shall soon see that Wright was not entirely correct. Juliet Dusinberre, in the 2006 third Arden edition, comments that “ ǥAttoning’ is an act of reconciliation and of temperance, which ‘evens’ the odds in the blood.”4 However, examples can be gained form Shakespeare’s other plays. According to Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon (1874) the word means both “to reconcile” and “to agree, to be in concord.”5 In Richard II, for example, the King explains why he banishes the contesting to Bolingbroke and Mowbray: Since we can not atone you, we shall see Justice design the victor’s chivalry. (1.1.201–3)6 2

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Methuen, 1984). 3 Latham, op.cit., 127. 4 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Juliet Dusinberre, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 338. 5 Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, ed. Gregor Sarrazin, 3rd ed. (1874; reprint, New York: Dover Publishing, 1961), 1:62.

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In Othello when Desdemona is informed of the “unkind breach” (2.1.221), or, the “unhappy” “division” (2.1.225) between her Lord and Cassio, she sighs: I would do much To atone them. (4.1.226–7)

In Antony and Cleopatra Mecaenas says to Lepidus: the present need Speaks to atone you. (2.2.102)

In Cymbeline the Frenchman says to the boasting Posthumus in Rome: I was glad Did atone my countryman and you. (1.5.36–7)

At the end of Timon of Athens Alcibiades uses the word in the sense of “appease” when he tells the senators: to atone With my more noble meaning. (5.4.58–9)

In Coriolanus Menenius finds that Martius and Aufidius can no more atone Than violent’st contrariety. (4.6.73–4)

The noun “atonement” is also used in Shakespeare’s plays—three times. At the beginning of the comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor the Welsh parson Sir Hugh Evans says: I am of the church and will be glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and compromises between you. (1.1.31–3)

In King Henry IV Part 2 the Archbishop uses the word in the metaphorical context of healing when he hopefully says: If we do now make our atonement well, Our peace will, like a broken limb united, 6

The quotations from Shakespeare’s plays, if not otherwise noted, are from the second Arden Shakespeare edition.

“At-one-ment” from Shakespeare to Tyndale, from Tyndale to Shakespeare 135 Grow stronger for the breaking. (4.1.221–3)

It is used in the context of royal peace-making at the beginning of Richard III when Buckingham informs Queen Elizabeth that the ailing King Edward Desires to make atonement Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers, And between them and my Lord Chamberlain. (1.3.36–8)

Each Arden-editor (and I suppose others as well) feels compelled to add an explanatory note wherever the verb “atone” or the noun “atonement” occur in the plays. The explanation always contains that this word is a synonym of “reconcile” or reconciliation. Some of the editors refer to the OED which confirms this notion.7

2. Theological Meaning of the Biblical English of William Tyndale Non-theological minded readers usually associate “atonement” with Joe Wright’s 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement. However, in the English-speaking theological discourse it has been a distinct term of soteriology, i.e., the doctrine of salvation. Neither the German Versöhnung nor the French reconciliation are discussed so frequently, sometimes controversially, as the doctrine of the atonement in English-speaking theology.8

7

J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, ed., The Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth: OED), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). OED confirms that atonement’s meaning is the same as “reconciliation” (OED 1:754) coming from the verb “reconcile” (originally from the Latin “reconciliare”), which means “to bring (a person) into friendly relations to or with (onself to another after an estrangment” (OED 13:352), “to bring (a person) back to, into peace, favour” (OED 13:353); “to bring back, restore, admit to the church” (OED 13:353), “to expiate, to atone for” (OED 13:353, “to adjust, settle, bring to an agreement (a controversy, quarrel, etc).” We learn that among others the word was first used by Wycliff in his translation of 2 Cor 5:19. Concerning “onement” the OED quotes Wycliff’s 1388 translation of Ezekiel 37:16 as the first example: “Ione thou tho trees oon to the tother in to o tree to thee; and tho schulen be into onement [1382 oonyng] in thin hond.” 8 See e.g. Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Maine Types of the Idea of the Atonement (London: SPCK, 1931).

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Let us first turn to two contemporary definitions: The English word atonement is derived from the two words “at onement” and denotes a state of togetherness between two people. Atonement presupposes two parties that are estranged, with the act of atonement being reconciliation of them into a state of harmony. The theological meaning is the reconciliation between God and his fallen creation, especially between God and sinful human beings. Atonement is thus the solution to the main problem of the human race—its estrangement from God stemming from the fall of Adam and Eve.9 The semantic spectrum of ‘atonement’ covers both German Versöhnung (reconciliation) and Sühne (expiation), with some overlap Erlösung (redemption), with emphasis on its effect. In French and other Latin tongues, the main term is redemption (the thought of the price paid is near at hand), with expiation important too. One should also realize that there is no NT word to play a similar role – occurrences of hilaskhetai (nearest in meaning) ‘to propitiate,’ and its derivatives are sparse indeed (Luke 1:3; Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10).10

It was the early English reformer William Tyndale who used it with a conspicuous frequency in his Bible translations as well as his prose works. John Wycliff (c. 1330–1384) had already used “onement” but God as “atone-maker” is undoubtedly Tyndale’s invention. Tyndale rendered both the Greek katallage and the Hebrew kippur (Greek hilasterion/hilasmos) as “mercy-seat” or “atonement.”

2.1. Atonement (katallage) in Rom 5:10–11 and 2 Cor 5:18–21 in Tyndale’s New Testament Translations (1526, 1534) Tyndale rendered Rom 5:10–11 as follows: For yf when we were enemyes we were reconciled to God by the deeth of his sonne: moche more seinge we are reconciled we shal be preservid by his lyfe. Not only so but we also ioye in God by the meanes of oure Lorde Iesus Christ by whom we have receavyd the attonment.11

9

In Leland Ryken et al, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 54. 10 Henri A. G. Blocher, “Atonement,” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, SPCK, 2005), 72. 11 For a comparison of various translations of Rom 5:10–11 see Appendix 1.

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One can see in Appendix 1 that the Greek katallage was rendered as “attonment” by Tyndale and this version was preserved both in the Geneva Bible of 1560 and the King James Bible in 1611. However, the case is somewhat different with the key passage in 2 Cor 5:18–21. Neverthelesse all thinges are of god which hath reconciled vs vnto him sylfe by Iesus Christ and hath geven vnto vs the office to preach the atonement. For god was in Christ and made agrement bitwene the worlde and hym sylfe and imputed not their synnes vnto them: and hath committed to vs the preachynge of the atonment. Or god was in Christ and made agrement bitwene the worlde and hym sylfe and imputed not their synnes vnto them: and hath committed to vs the preachynge of the atonment. Now then are we messengers in the roume of Christ: even as though God did beseche you thorow vs: So praye we you in Christes stede that ye be atone with God [. . .].

One can easily see in Appendix 2 that both the Geneva version of 1560 and the King James Bible exchanged “atonement” for the well-established Latin “reconciliation.”

2.2. Tyndale’s Atonement in the Old Testament (Especially in Lv 16) A certain Philologos on The Jewish Daily Forward website properly argued that the great difference between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is, that while in the Jewish tradition it is only man who atones for his sin, in the New Testament God atones for human sins by sacrificing his only son.12 Van Parunak in another internet article on “Atonement in the New Testament”13 has suggested that four terms dominate the Hebrew vocabulary for atonement: the verb kipper meaning ‘to make atonement’; the noun kofer meaning ‘ransom’ in a non-sacrificial context; the noun kippurim meaning ‘atonement’ which describes either the sacrifice or the day of atonement; the noun kapporet which describes the cover on the ark of the covenant, and is always translated as “mercy-seat.” 12

Philologos, “At-one-ment: On Language,” The Jewish Daily Forward, September 19, 2007, http://www.forward.com /articles/11632/#ixzz12Mch56Dz (last visited: January 21, 2011). 13 H. Van Dyke Parunak, “Atonement in the New Testament,” Cyber Chapel, 21 March, 2006, http://www.cyber-chapel.org/AtonementInTheNT.pdf (last visited: January 21, 2011).

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As for the Greek versions in the LXX: kipper is translated as exilaskomai (it frequently [92 times] occurs in Hebrew and 75 times it is rendered as exilaskomai). Kofer occurs 19 times in the Hebrew text and its most common translation is lutron (ransom). Kippurim appears 8 times, four as exilasmos; Kapporet appears 27 times and 20 times translated as hilasterion. Hebrew Kipper (v, to make atonement) 92 Kofer (n, atonement, non-sacr.)

LXX (Septuagint) exilaskomai 75

Kippurim (n 8, sacrificial) Kapporet (n, cover of the ark, “mercy-seat”)

Exilasmos

Lutron

Hilasterion

New Testament Hilaskomai Lk 18:33; Heb 2:17 Lutron Mt 28:28; Mk 10:45 (ransom) Hilasmos 1 Jn 2:2; 1 Jn 4:2 Hilasterion Rom 3:25; Heb 9:5

Table 3. Kapporet in LXX and its versions in the New Testament Now we turn to Tyndale’s Old Testament, especially to Lv 16, where the Day of Atonement is described. In the sacrificial sense, it was the cover of the ark kofer (kippur) which the LXX rendered as hilasterion and Tyndale as “mercy-seat,” but as this is the very place where atonement is being made the “mercy-seat” is also frequently translated as “atonement.” However, the King James Version (henceforth: KJV) uses “propitiation.” Appendix 3 shows the difference between Wycliff’s rendering and Tyndale’s translating the same passage. In Leviticus 16 the term related to atonement is “mercy-seat.” Appendix 4 shows the various translations of the term.

2.3. Tyndale’s Explanation of the New Testament Texts in Terms of Old Testament Texts Returning to the New Testament from the Old one can understand why and how Christ’s death is related to the Old Testament in St Paul’s language in Rom 3:25. Here Tyndale translates hilasterion as “mercyseat,” the Geneva-versions “pacification” and “reconciliation,” while the King James Bible “propitiation.” (See Appendix 5!) However, some modern versions use here “expiation,” “atonement” or “sacrifice” or “atoning sacrifice.” (See Appendix 6.)

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For Tyndale a closely related term to hilasterion is hilasmos in 1 John 2:2, and 1 John 4:10. Tyndale wrote a whole commentary on St John’s Epistle (1531) and there he provides a long but helpful clarification why he uses in the commentary (not in his translations!) “satisfaction.” 14 Translation in 1526 [. . .] and he itt is that obteyneth grace for oure synnes: not for oure sinnes only: but also for the synnes of all the worlde.

Commentary in 1531 And he is the satisfaction for oure synnes / and not for oures only / but also for all the worldes.

Translation in 1534 [. . .] and he it is that obtaineth grace for our sins: not for our sins only: but also the sins of all the world.

Table 4. Tyndale’s three translations of hilasmos That I call satisfaction, the Greek calleth Ilasmos, and the Hebrew Copar: and it is first taken for the suaging of wounds, sores, and swellings, and the taking away of pain and smart of them; and thence is borrowed for the pacifying and suaging of wrath and anger, and for an amends-making, a contenting, satisfaction, a ransom, and making at one, as it is to see abundantly in the bible. So that Christ is a full contenting, satisfaction and ransom for our sins: and not for ours only, which are apostles and disciples of Christ while he was yet here; or for ours which are Jews, or Israelites, and the seed of Abraham; or for ours that now believe at this present time, but for all men's sins, both for their sins which went before and believed the promises to come, and for ours which have seen them fulfilled, and also for all them which shall afterward believe unto the world’s end, of whatsoever nation or degree they be.15

2.4. “Atonement” in Tyndale’s Prose Works On comparing Luther’s and Tyndale’s prefaces to the Romans András Mikesy pointed out that Tyndale uses the method of “enlargement,” i.e., he uses several synonyms to explain the meaning of a word.16 14

See: Mirjam Szabó, “Texts and Contexts in William Tyndale’s Exposition of the First Epistle to John” (MA thesis, Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church, 2010.) 15 Tyndale, William 1531b (1849), Exposition of the First Epistle of St John, In Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scripture to together with The Practice of Prelates, Ed. Henry Walter, The Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 153–54. 16 Mikesy, András. Martin Luther és William Tyndale Pál Rómaiakhoz írt leveléról. Martin Luther and William Tyndale on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans

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Our first example is from Tyndale’s The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, where “atonement” is both a metaphor of Christ and the subject of preaching: Christ is our Redeemer, Saviour, peace, atonement, and satisfaction; and hath made amends or satisfaction to Godward for all the sin which they that repent (consenting to the law and believing the promises) do, have done, or shall do (italics mine).17 Now I pray you, when was it heard that God sent any man to preach unto the devils, or that he made them any good promise? He threateneth them oft; but never sent any ambassadors to preach any atonement between him and them (italics mine).18

In The Obedience of the Christian Man “atonement” is used in the form of a hendyades, which means “say one thing with two things”19: “to preach the atonement and peace.” But to God-ward Christ is an everlasting satisfaction, and ever sufficient. // Christ, when he had fulfilled his course, anointed his apostles and disciples with the same Spirit, and sent them forth, without all manner disguising, like other men also, to preach the atonement and peace which Christ had made between God and man. The apostles likewise disguised no man, but chose men anointed with the same Spirit: one to preach the word of God, whom we call, after the Greek tongue, a bishop or a priest; that is, in English, an overseer and an elder (italics mine).20

The word most frequently appears in Tyndale’s translation of Leviticus. Here is an example from Lv 5:10:

(Piliscsaba: Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 2008), 17. 17 Tyndale, William 1528b (2000), The Obedience of a Christian Man, ed.David Daniell (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 52. 18 Tyndale, William 1528a (1848), The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, In, Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scripture by William Tyndale, ed. Henry Walter, The Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 120. 19 Cf. George T.Wright, “Hendiadys and Hamlet,” PMLA 96, no. 2 (1981): 168– 93. 20 Tyndale 1528b, 228–29.

“At-one-ment” from Shakespeare to Tyndale, from Tyndale to Shakespeare 141 And let him offer the second for a burnt offering as the maner is: and so shall the priest make an atonement for him for the sin which he hath sinned, and it shall be forgiven him.21

Tyndale wrote two commentaries. In his commentary on 1 John he alludes to the atonement in Ex 30:10: Item, Exodus the xxx. the sin or sin-offering is called atonement; and it was yet but a sign, certifying the conscience that the atonement was made, and that God had forgiven the sin (italics mine).22 [. . .] whereas the scripture saith, Christ is our righteousness, our justifying, our redemption, our atonement, that hath appeased God, and cleanseth us from our sins, and all in his blood, so that his blood is the satisfaction only (italics mine).23

In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount we read as follows: [. . .] whether it were of the holy scripture and of God himself,—was yet but a darkness, until the doctrine of his apostles came; that is to say, until the knowledge of Christ came, how that he is the sacrifice for our sins, our satisfaction, our peace, atonement and redemption, our life thereto, and resurrection. Whatsoever holiness, wisdom, virtue, perfectness, or righteousness, is in the world among men, howsoever perfect and holy they appear; yet is all damnable darkness, except the right knowledge of Christ’s blood be there first, to justify the heart, before all other holiness (italics mine).24 But after the atonement is made and we reconciled, then we be partly righteous in ourselves and unrighteous; righteous as far as we love, and unrighteous as far as the love is unperfect. And faith in the promise of God, that he doth reckon us for full righteous, doth ever supply that 21 Tyndale, William 1534b (1992), Tyndale’s Old Testament. In a modern spelling edition and with an introduction by David Daniell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 155. 22 Tyndale, William, 1531b (1849), Exposition of the First Epistle of St John, In Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scripture together with The Practice of Prelates, ed. Henry Walter, The Parker Society 43, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 152. 23 Tyndale, William, 1531b, 157. 24 Tyndale, William 1533 (1849), An Exposition Uppon the V.VI.VII. Chapters of Matthew, In. Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scripture together with The Practice of Prelates, ed. Henry Walter, The Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 34.

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unrighteousness and imperfectness, as it is our whole righteousness at the beginning (italics mine).25

Here is another example for the enlargement: until the knowledge of Christ came, how that he is the sacrifice for our sins, our satisfaction, our peace, atonement and redemption, our life thereto, and resurrection (italics mine).26

3. At-one-ment-at-Work 3.1. Reconciliation in/of Theology and Literature 3.1.1. Dramatic Theology One of the premises of the present essay is, that atonement and reconciliation are interchangeable synonyms; though atonement has been more frequently used in a theological context while “reconciliation” has had a wider resonance. I will use reconciliation and atonement as synonyms following John W. de Gruchy: “Reconciliation” is one of the words used in English to describe this experience, though the word “atonement” has often functioned as its equivalent in theological textbooks. But “at-one-ment” is a peculiarly English construction coined to describe God and humanity through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.27

De Gruchy mentions that the Greek version of “reconciliation” or “reconcile” only occurs 15 times in the New Testament,28 and he also argues that for Paul “reconciliation” is a controlling metaphor expressing

25

Tyndale, William 1531b, 90. Tyndale 1533, 34. 27 John W. de Gruchy, Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 45. 28 Ibid., 218: “The noun (reconciliation) țĮIJĮȜȜĮȖȖȘ four times (Rom 5:11,11:15; 2 Cor 5:18,19), and the verb (to reconcile) eleven times ȐʌȠțțĮIJĮȜĮııȦ (Eph 2:16; Col 1:20,22), įȚĮĮȜȜĮııȠȝĮȚ (Mt 5:24), țĮIJĮȜııȦ (Rom 5:10 twice; Col 1:20,22); 2 Cor 5:18,19,20), ıȣȞĮȜȜĮııȦ (Acts 7:26). On one occasion the English translators have used “reconciliation” to translate the Greek word for peace İȓȡȘȞȘ (Acts 12:20). 26

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the gospel along with “salvation,” “redemption,” “deliverance,” or, even “justification.”29 The theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer argues that “drama and dogma” go hand in hand,30 namely, that the doctrine of atonement is the most dramatic of all Christian narratives and doctrines. It is indeed the climax of the grand “theo-drama.” Hans Urs von Balthasar rightly says that no theory can express the dramatic richness as the one encapsulated in the “five-dimentional plot of the cross:” “(1) the Son gives himself “for us,” (2) the Son gives himself “for us” by exchanging places with us; (3) the Son saves us from something (sets us free); (4) the Son saves us for something (i.e. participation in the life of God); (5) the Son does all this out of obedience to the Father, who sets the whole process in motion because of his love.”31 Gustaf Aulen’s book on the three main types of the idea of the atonement remains a classic as in his Christus Victor32 the Swedish theologian stressed the dramatic nature of the atonement in its emphasis on Christ’s victory over death. Vanhoozer speaks about the cross as “the historical outworking of an eternal improvizing by which the triune God loves the ungodly creatively while remaining himself.”33 Drama, however, never exists in a vacuum. It comes to life only if it is performed. “The purpose of the doctrine of the atonement [. . .] is to help us understand the theo-drama, to clarify our role in it, and to direct us to play our part as well.”34 We come to understand the theo-drama only in the theatre of the church where we are also involved. Vanhoozer says that “[t]he church, as the theatre of the gospel, celebrates the person and work of Christ: God with us and for us. [. . .] Those who worship in spirit and truth become participants—communicants and celebrants—in the drama of redemption.”35 What does the performance of the atonement mean in the “theatre of the gospel,” i.e. the church? The church is a reconciliatory theatre that revolutionarily proclaims the script of the Gospel and prophetically imitates the lives of her martyrs. 29

Ibid., 45. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005). 31 Vanhoozer, 2005, 383. Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-drama, vol. 4. The Action (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 265. 32 Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor, 1931. 33 Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine 2005, 389. 34 Ibid., 392. 35 Ibid., 409. 30

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Tibor Fabiny [T]he church is itself the end of the goal of theo-drama: the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise to make a people for himself and to be that people’s God. [. . .] When the church participates fittingly in the drama of redemption, then, it assumes the role of corporate witness to the reality of the new creation wrought by the Father in Christ through the Spirit.36

Christian dogma is substantially dramatic and Christian drama is substantially dogmatic. Drama reanimates dogma and dogma is not only a proposition but ultimately and originally a story told and reenacted. In a world turned upside down, i.e. ruled by an enemy, the theatre of the gospel is necessarily subversive. “The church is a theatre of divine wisdom, a participatory performance of the doctrine of atonement, precisely when it is a theatre of ‘holy folly’.”37 3.2.2. Theological Roots of Literary Studies Among literary critics it was my colleague Péter Dávidházi who, in his groundbreaking work on János Arany, recognized that the aesthetic principle of reconciliation is deeply rooted in the Jewish and Christian idea of “atonement.” For nineteenth-century poets and critics it was evident that poetry and art suggest a religious connotation of reconciliation which is deeply rooted in the aesthetic category of catharsis.38 When I began to teach Shakespeare over thirty years ago, I was always struck how frequently the word “reconcilation” was used by literary critics, saying, for example, that in the romances the young couple are the “agents of reconciliation.” I just wondered why drama theory has not really explored the depth of the category. We know, of course, that “reconciling the opposites” was a favourite term of Coleridge.39

36

Ibid., 434–35. Ibid., 439. 38 Péter Dávidházi, “Megváltástan és katariziselmélet határán: a ‘kiengesztelĘdés’ mint közös világnézeti norma,” in Hunyt mesterünk: Arany János kritikai öröksége (Budapest: Argumentum, 1992), 222–39. See also his “A végsĘ birtokbavétel rituálja felé: engesztelĘ áldozat, irodalmi kanonizáció és rejtett testvérharc a Kazinczy-ünnepélyen,” in Egy nemzeti tudomány születése: Toldy Ferenc és a magyar irodalomtörténet (Budapest: Akadémia Kiadó, Universitas, 2004), 265–82. 39 Cf. Alice D. Snyder, The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites as Employed by Coleridge (Ann Arbor: The Ann Arbor Press, 1918), and Miklós Szenczi, “Coleridge irodalomesztétikája (1975)” in Tanulmányok (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989), 349–444. 37

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Most recently, in a collection of essays on Reconcilation in Selected Shakespearean Dramas,40 a doyen of the “Shakespeare and Christianity” school, Chris R. Hassell Jr. publicly confessed how he regretted to have ommitted the word “reconciliation” from his recent (2005) dictionary of Shakespeare’s Religious Language41 and said: “I assure you that ‘reconcile’ will be the first word added into the second edition.”42 It would be an exciting, tempting but longtime project to illustrate how atonement, or reconciliation is at work as a structural principle in most of the comedies, especially Measure for Measure, or, in all of the romances, especially in The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline and last but not least, The Tempest. At the end of the comic and romantic plots the odds are made even, Jacks find their Jills, lost family members are found, who were thought to have died turn out to be alive, couples are brought together after a series of misadventures, the generation-gap is solved, conflicts are healed, lovers united, the wicked forgiven. Moreover, hostile nations like Britain and Rome make peace, former enemy brothers repent and embrace one another and the idea of reconciliation, i.e. at-one-ment of heaven and earth is being celebrated by music in a solemn banquet. In comedies reconciliation and catharsis are achieved by the happy ending. Northrop Frye distinguished between the satirical comedy of Ben Jonson and the romantic comedy of Shakespeare: “There are two ways of developing the form of comedy: one is to throw the main emphasis on the blocking characters; the other is to throw it forward on the scenes of discovery and reconciliation.”43 At the end of his analysis of Measure for Measure Frye remarked: Shakespearean comedy usually ends [with] the vision of a renewed and regenerated society, with forgiveness, reconciliation, and the pursuit of happiness all over the place. Forgiveness and reconciliation come at the

40

Beatrice Batson, ed., Reconcilation in Selected Shakespearean Dramas (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). 41 Chris R. Hassel, Jr., Shakespeare’s Religious Language: A Dictionary (New York and London: Continuum, 2005). 42 Chris R. Hassel, Jr., “’Why, All the Souls That Were Forfeit Once’: Biblical Reconciliation in Shakespeare,” In Batson, ed., Reconcilation in Selected Shakespearean Dramas, 6. 43 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 166.

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In the case of the tragedies there is, of course catharsis but reconciliation is of a different kind, the nature of which we cannot here investigate.

3.3. Enemy Brothers Reconciled: A Motif in As You Like It In the rest of my essay I wish to concentrate on one particular episode of As You Like It that both exemplifies and dramatizes the nature and meaning of atonement. This is the reconcilation betwen Oliver and Orlando as narrated by Oliver to Celia and Rosalind in act 4 scene 3. As You Like It is one of the great romantic (“green world”) comedies of Shakespeare that both celebrates and ridicules the pastoral tradition. The drama is as paradigmatic about role-playing, cross-dressing as it is emblematic about the nature of the theatre: Jacques’s “All the World’s a Stage” monologue just conformed to the Totus mundus agit histrionem motto of the new Globe Theatre opened in 1599. And above all, as all comedies As You Like It is also about love: after the necessary vicissitudes four couples are about to consummate their mutual affections at the end of the play. However, there is an archetypal pattern woven into this multi-layered play: this is the motif of enemy brothers. The pattern is well-known from the Bible from the conflicts of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers and so on. Some New Testament parables begin with the phrase: “A father had two sons.” While reading, for example, the parable of the prodigal son it is not easy to decide whether the prodigal is the lost one, or the one who had remained at home and let himself be captive of his envy and jealousy. Shakespeare seems to have been obsessed with this issue. (Mr Best says in James Joyce’s Ulysses that “that brother motive [. . .] we find in old Irish myths. [. . .] The three brothers Shakespeare.”).45 The sibling rivalry is a pattern in the history plays, especially in Richard III: not only between Gloucester, Clarence or King Edward but even in the emulation of the ill-fated young princes as well. It is there, of course, in Hamlet as Claudius himself admits to have the “primal eldest curse,” i.e. “the mark of Cain” upon himself. It is there in the desire of the

44

Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 153. 45 James Joyce, Ulysses (1922; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), 210.

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bastard Edmund to “top the legitimate” Edgar in King Lear; it is there in Prospero’s banishment by his usurper-brother Antonio in The Tempest.46 Most poignantly it is there even on two levels in As You Like It. The play begins where any of the tragedies ended: in a world of rottenness and death where time is out of joint. Duke Frederick the usurper rules his waste land and the good-hearted banished Senior Duke meditates upon the romantic beauty of exiled life which is “exempt from public haunt” (2.1.14). Duke Frederick is the prototype of the ambitious and jealous tyrant whose court everybody gradually deserts to find freedom in the forest of Arden. The tragic enmity of brothers, is, however, transcended by the mutual and gentle affection of their daughters Rosalind and Celia who “like Juno’s swans, / Still [. . .] went coupled and inseparable” (1.3.71– 72). While the brotherly enmity between Duke Senior and Duke Frederick is the framing facade of the play, the details of their conflicts remain in the background and are assigned into the gloomy past; its lower-levelled same pattern: the archetypal rivalry and hatred beween the wicked Oliver and his oppressed younger brother Orlando is brought into the foregound. It is heard already at the very beginning of the play when Orlando complains to his loyal servant Adam about Oliver: He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother [. . .] mines my gentility with my education. (1.1.18–19)

When he is confronted with Oliver he continues the complaint: The courtesy of all nations allows you my better, in that you are the first born, but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I have as much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming before me is nearer to his reverence. (1.1.45–51)

He clarifies the cause of his complaint: My father charged you in his will to give me good education: you have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. (1.1.66–69)

46 Tibor Fabiny, “Brothers as Doubles: Birthright and Rivalry of ‘Brothers’ in Genesis and Shakespeare,” in Míves semmiségek: Tanulmányok Ruttkay Kálmán 80. születésnapjára. Elaborate trifles:. Studies for Kálmán G. Ruttkay on his 80th Birthday, ed. Gábor Ittzés and András Kiséry (Piliscsaba: Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, 2002), 35–47.

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Oliver unashamedly reveals his wickedness and falsely deceiving him, prompts Charles the wrestler to suspend his inhibition to kill him because Orlando is full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a secret and villanous contriver against me his natural brother. (1.1.141–43)

When left alone Oliver himself is shocked by the irrationality of his hatred for his brother: Now I will stir this gamester. I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul—yet I know not why—hates nothing more than he. Yet he’s gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all. (1.1.161– 70)

However, the wicked design of Oliver is “overthrown” just as Charles, contrary to the expections of many, is “overthrown” (1.2.243) in the wrestling game by the Hercules-like power of Orlando. But in the moment of his triumph Orlando himself is “overthrown” (1.2.249) by Rosalind’s love at first sight. The loyal old servant Adam alerts Orlando that Oliver when hearing him being praised “means / To burn the lodging where you use to lie, / And you within it [. . .] this house is but a butchery” (2.3.21–23, 26). Hatred inflames hatred: on learning Celia’s escape from the court the raging Frederick commands Oliver to find his brother and “bring him dead or living / Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more / To seek a living in our territory” (3.1.6–8). Like cures like. Oliver openly admits: “I never lov’d my brother in my life” (3.1.14). The rest of the play takes place in the forest of Arden, where all the banished or self-banished characters flee. In this counterpart of the apparently civilized but in fact brutally uncivilized courtly world the goodnatured characters find not only themselves but their providentially provided lovers. As it is well-known, this happens on several levels of the play. The crucial scene for the sake of which this essay is written, is in act 4, scene 3. The Rosalind-as-Ganymede-as-Rosalind in the company of Celia is eagerly waiting for Orlando to return on the promised hour so that they continue Rosalind’s “curing” of Orlando’s love for Rosalind. Contrary to the expectations Celia is welcoming an unknown gentleman who brings a bloody napkin from Orlando. He narrates the

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details how Orlando while “pacing through the forest” suddenly caught sight of a “wretched rugged man” who, while sleeping under an old oaktree was threatened by a “green and guilded snake” which, on Orlando’s approach, “did slip away into the bush”. But there a lioness was “catlike” watching the sleeping man to awake. Orlando then recognized it was his unnatural, wicked brother who was chasing him. “Twice did he turn his back, and purpos’d so. / But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, / And nature, stronger than his just occasion, / made him give battle to the lioness, / Who quickly fell before him” (4.3.127–30). The words “kindness, nobler ever than revenge” are theologically loaded words in Shakespeare. They are also echoed by Prospero in The Tempest: “The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengance” (5.1.27–8). In The Merchant of Venice Portia also says that “mercy seasons justice” (4.1.193), just as in Measure for Measure Isabella pleads for Angelo’s mercy on the same grounds: “Why, all the souls that were forfeit once, / And He that might the vantage best have took / Found out the remedy” (2.2.73–75). “Unnatural” wickedness can only be overcome by a supernatural, supralapsarian nature, i.e. goodness, or mercy. This is the “kindness,” the original, God-given “nature” that is nobler than revenge. OLIVER From miserable slumber I awaked. CELIA Are you his brother? ROSALIND Was’t you he rescu’d? CELIA Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him? OLIVER ’Twas I. But ’tis not I. I do not shame To tell you what I was, since my conversion So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am. ROSALIND But for the bloody napkin. OLIVER By and by. When from the first to last betwixt us two Tears our recountments had most kindly bath’d— As how I came into that desert place— In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke, Who gave me fresh array and entertainment, Committing me unto my brother’s love, Who led me instantly unto his cave, There stripp’d himself, and here upon his arm The lioness had torn some flesh away, Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted, And cried in fainting upon Rosalind. (4.3.132–49)

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Oliver narrates that his own brother whom he was chasing with hatred was not only willing to overcome his impulse to revenge by letting him die “justly,” but he felt motivated to fight for his enemy brother while even risking his life. Fighting to rescue your enemy, to save someone who means to kill you by offering your own life for your enemy’s sake—is not what normal people do. This is something “supranatural” but this is real kindness, real, original nature. Orlando, so far pagan Hercules, now becomes the Christ-like Hercules. This is the voluntary sacrifice, or, even, the vicarious sacrifice where the innocent victim free-willingly offers himself for the life of the unworthy— this is the mystery of atonement. Just as one experiences the power of Christ’s redemptive love on Calvary and lets his or her heart be stirred, or, moved by it, so is Oliver’s so far wicked human nature and heart suddenly healed and he becomes a reborn, regenerate human being. This is what he means when he says: “’Twas I. But ’tis not I. I do not shame / To tell you what I was, since my conversion / So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am” (4.3. 135–7). Oliver, whose hard-heartedness had trapped him and wrapped him up in the net of his own hatred, is now melted and now, being purified, is ready to love and be loved. Atonement is reconnecting, i.e., the making “one” of two, the creating of a unity out of a breach. “There can be no reconciliation [. . .] if there has not been a sundering,” says Stephen in Ulysses.47 The great curse of earthly, historical existence is this “sundering,” division, separation, conflict, enmity and so on. Between brother and brother, child and parent, husband and wife, east and west, north and south, the centre and the periphery, a nation and its neigbour, minority and majority, liberals and conservatives, heaven and earth, God and man. This “sundering” needs reparation, redemption, reconciliation, atonement. In the words of Martha S. Robinson: In As You Like It the practice of mercy is in fact the chief mark of the heavenly city, and testifies to the reconciliation of brothers as well as the atonement of earth and heaven. Shakespeare’s vision of the redeemed as a community of brothers who, practicing mercy, ‘find way to heaven / By doing deeds of hospitality’ (2.4.79–80).48

47

Joyce, Ulysses, 195. Marsha S. Robinson, “The Earthly City Redeemed: The Reconcilition of Cain and Abel in As You Like It,” in Reconcilation in Selected Shakespearean Dramas, ed. Beatrice Batson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 164.

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Conclusion At the beginning of our essay we have quoted Hymen’s words “There is mirth in heaven, / When earthly things are made even / Atone together (5.4.107–9) which usually do not come through in various translations as modern translators of the comedy usually fail to recognize the deep biblical resonance of Hymen’s words: “atone together.” Hymen, though a pagan god of marriage, anticipates or prefigures the biblical-Christian notion of all human history with the image of the “marriage of the Lamb” (Rev 19:7). Shakespeare, however, was aware of the Christian semantics of “atonement” as it has been demonstrated by the examples from many of his plays. In search for exploring the deep meaning of atonement we have started a philological investigation in turning to the Bible translation and prose works of William Tyndale, who established the expression “at-one-ment” to express the mystery of the healing of the division between God and man due to the original tragedy of the Fall which Milton called man’s “first disobedience” (Paradise Lost, book 1 line 1.) Tyndale and other sixteenthcentury Bible translators used the term interchangeably with “reconciliation.” From philology we have moved to theology following those modern theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kevin J. Vanhoozer) who have proposed that dogma should be seen rather as drama than a set of rigid doctrines. It has been argued that within the great “theodrama” atonement or reconciliation is a crucial climax that was already performed on the cross of Christ but its performance must be continued in the believers’ theatre, i.e., the church (Vanhoozer). From our excursion to “theodrama” we have returned to Shakespearean drama to investigate how a theological term has been converted into an aesthetic principle. It has been noticed that only a few literary scholars (e.g. Péter Dávidházi) seem to be conscious of the theological roots of the principle of artistic reconciliation. Shakespeare’s great romantic comedy As You Like It, particularly its narrated episode of Oliver’s conversion, has been chosen as case study to demonstrate “reconciliation at work” and thus “Hymen’s truth” was hopefully, justified.

WILLIAM KEMP AND FALSTAFF: REALITY AND ROLE IN ELIZABETHAN POPULAR CULTURE KRISZTINA STREITMAN

In my paper I focus on William Kemp, the most exciting figure of the Shakespearean fool actors who left behind the fewest documents and sources and whose life is full of questions and partial information. Because of the problem of the limited range of primary sources I can only base my assumptions about Kemp on his diary, Nine Daies Wonder, on some fools’ stories like Robert Armin’s Nest of Ninnies and the dramatic texts of Shakespeare. So instead of using “traditional historical” approach, I have chosen to apply “new cultural historical” methods during my research. While “traditional history” concentrated on great figures and events of history, “new cultural history” has come to be concerned with virtually every human activity. It has suggested an emphasis on mentalities, assumptions and feelings, discovered neglected areas of the past such as the history of the everyday, the history of the body, the history of social space and the history of popular culture. Kemp was undoubtedly a true representative of Elizabethan popular culture so drawing on the methods of “new cultural history” and using its concepts helped me to get closer to Kemp’s personality and art. So in the first part of my paper I intend to examine the elements of this tradition upon which Kemp drew and outline the most influential theories of early modern popular culture in the last thirty years: C. L. Barber’s theory of the Saturnalian pattern of Shakespeare’s comedies, Michael Bakhtin’s study on Rabelais, and Peter Burke’s study of early modern popular culture.1 1

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959). There have been three editions of Peter Burke’s influential work Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, the introductions of the second and third editions have given new information and reflections about the

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In the second part I intend to examine the obvious parallels between Kemp, the popular jig-maker and comic actor, and Falstaff, a kind of Lord of Misrule on the stage on the basis of their common roots in popular culture. Shakespeare, similarly to his contemporary playwrights, wrote the roles for the actors in his theatrical company considering their different characters, abilities and conditions. The literary critics in the past twenty years have agreed that Shakespeare certainly relied upon Kemp’s performance skills when creating Falstaff;2 and that Shakespeare actually wrote Falstaff’s role for Kemp. Kemp’s ability to control a long monologue, his intimate relationship with the audience and his witty extemporizing made him especially suitable for the role.3 The evidence that Kemp played Falstaff remarkably modifies the accepted and simplified view about Kemp. It has become a commonplace to assume that Robert Armin played all the fools who were intelligent, sophisticated, and satirical, whereas Kemp played only vulgar, crude, common buffoons.4 There are many problems with such an assumption. The above simplification can be easily refuted with compelling evidence of Kemp’s having played Falstaff, who embodied the witty, clever and ironical comic figure. The above-mentioned list of Falstaff’s talents proves that Kemp who played successfully this complex character was a quickwitted and intelligent actor. So in this paper I depict Kemp in a new light

research on early modern popular culture. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978; 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hants.: England: Scolar Press, 1994; 3rd ed. Farnham, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). 2 In 1927 Thomas Baldwin argued that Pope played Falstaff instead of Kemp. But at the end of the twentieth century David Wiles had the remarkable opinion that the role of Falstaff must have been written for Will Kemp: only the role of Falstaff is congruent with other roles written for the clown of the company in 1595–98. At the beginning of the twenty-first century B. A. Vidabaek and James Shapiro have the same opinion. Thomas Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1927), 233. See more on Falstaff’s role in David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 116–35; B. A. Videbaek, The Stage Clown in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2000) and James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 45–49. 3 Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 119. 4 Joan Tucker, “Actors Will Kemp and Robert Armin: Shakespeare’s Fools: An Analysis and Evaluation” (PhD diss., Drew University, 2002).

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presenting him as the great rival and equal to other leading comic actors like Robert Armin or even to great playwrights like Shakespeare. As a challenge to learned culture, medieval and early modern popular culture also boasts of a host of cultural forms and traditions, contains its own aesthetic rules much the same way as does high culture.5 The essential elements of popular culture such as symbolic clothing,6 the concept of the comic and grotesque body, satirical dance like morris dancing and the jigs,7 theatrical roles like the sensual Falstaff, characters like the rogues and cony-catchers of the literature of the Elizabethan underworld and the ancient fool figure of the jest books dominated Kemp’s art; all of them reflect the Elizabethan popular culture which shaped his sense of identity. Kemp embodied the “resilient” nature of popular culture.8 As a dancer, jig-maker and comic actor he was faithful to his roots and always returned to the community to which he belonged. He was also an autonomous personality, an expert in his profession and a true representative of the new Elizabethan commercial theatre. 9 The following important concepts of early modern popular culture helped me in many ways in my research concerning the role and importance of William Kemp in Elizabethan England.10 The oral and 5

Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes, ed., Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 9. Further references are related to this edition. 6 For further discussion of the fools’ clothes see Anu Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest: The Fool in Renaissance England (Turku: University of Turku, 1999), 164– 75. About morris dancers’ costume consult John Forrest, The History of the Morris Dancing 1458–1750 (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1999), 136–38. 7 For an overview of Elizabethan jigs see Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama (New York: Dover, 1965). 8 Peter Burke emphasized the resilience of early modern popular culture in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 302. All subsequent citations and references are to this edition. 9 In her talk Natalie Zemon Davis highlighted the complexity of the relationship between local and global history; described the relevance of the expansion of the role of history which includes the study of working people and other non-elite groups, researching the cultural crossings across boundaries. Kemp’s life and career also represented the cultural crossings of the boundaries of Elizabethan society. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Decentering History: Local Storytelling and Cultural Crossing in a Global World” (Lecture presented as part of the Annual Lectures Series: Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe 1450–1980 at Central European University, Budapest, 2010). 10 I examined William Kemp’s life and art, discussed the scope of his professional achievements in his active years from the 1580s to 1616 and attempted to meet the demand for a complete panorama of Kemp’s profession, personality and of the

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gestural nature of his art: his dancing, theatrical roles and jigs would have also become problematic if I wanted to work only on the grounds of “traditional history.”11 So instead of the traditional historical approach, I used an indirect and interdisciplinary one, and I drew on the works of cultural historians, historical anthropologists, literary critics, scholars of stage history of early modern England; and by examining the various elements of Elizabethan popular culture—festive rituals, jigs, morris dancing, clowning, old romances, proverbs, and ballads—I tried to reconstruct the mosaic of Kemp’s art and personality. 12 The different forms of popular culture listed above existed both as speech or song and as printed texts in the early modern period and it is impossible to imagine a clear divide between the oral and written cultures at that time.13 The oral dimension of Elizabethan popular culture was essential and its different forms represented the media in which Kemp worked—the foreign courts, the playhouse, and the tavern—they were very much part of the social fabric in which Kemp and his contemporaries grew up.14 cultural and historical context in which he lived in my PhD dissertation. Krisztina Streitman, “William Kemp: a Comic Star in Shakespeare’s England” (PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University, 2011). 11 Marcell SebĘk’s biography of Sebastian Ambrosius, Ginzburg’s highly influential and also irregular biography of a sixteenth-century miller, Natalie Zemon Davis’s exciting and outstanding life story of Martin Guerre and the methodological and case studies on historical anthropology also encouraged me to cope with the methodological problems in my research. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Marcell SebĘk, Humanista a határon: a késmárki Sebastian Ambrosius története, 1554–1600 [Humanist on the border: the story of Sebastian Ambrosius of Késmárk] (Budapest: L'Harmattan, 2007); Marcell SebĘk, ed., Történeti antropológia. Módszertani írások és esettanulmányok. [Historical Anthropology. Methodological and Case Studies] (Budapest: Replika Könyvek, 2000). 12 Peter Burke, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing (London: Polity Press, 2001), 6. 13 Gillespie and Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 1–3. For further discussion of Elizabethan popular culture, see Leonard R. N. Ashley, Elizabethan Popular Culture (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988); Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 14 For further discussions of early modern literacy see Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories. Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-

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Modern scholarship on Shakespeare and Elizabethan popular culture might be said to begin with Barber’s outstanding work. The study of popular culture and Shakespeare continued with high intensity in the 1970s with Robert Weimann’s account of Shakespeare and popular theatrical traditions in 1978 and later in 1991 with François Laroque’s work on Elizabethan seasonal entertainment and the professional stage.15 Barber draws our attention to the detailed connections between the social forms of Elizabethan holidays and the dramatic form of Shakespearean festive comedies. Shakespeare’s merry comedies written up to the period of Hamlet result from his participation in the native Saturnalian traditions of popular theatre and folk holidays. Barber uses “festive” not only as a term for an atmosphere but also as a term for structure, “the Saturnalian pattern.” Barber writes, “[i]t appears in many variations, all of which involve inversion, statement and counterstatement, and a basic movement which can be summarized in the formula, through release to clarification.” 16 Humour is overwhelmingly a part of holidays and plays; it provides a sense of solidarity about pleasure. Barber emphasizes the importance of clowns, the theatrical institution of clowning, the cult of fools and folly and other unsophisticated forms like the morality and the jig in Shakespeare’s comedies. Fools and jigs served as sources among other social and artistic sources to the Saturnalian pattern. Barber, as Northrop Frye before him, has noticed the similarity between Shakespeare’s plays and the Aristophanic festival tradition, and the importance of the recognition of the seasons’ and of nature’s influence on man.17 According to Barber “the clarification achieved by the festive comedies is concomitant to the release they dramatize: a heightened awareness of the relation between man and “nature”—the nature celebrated on holiday.”18 “Holiday,” according to Elizabethan sensibilities, implied a contrast with Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Robert Darnton, “History of Reading” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (London: Polity Press, 2001), 157–187; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); 15 Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); François Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World, Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 16 Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 4. 17 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957). 18 Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 8.

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the “everyday.” The relation and the antithesis of holiday and everyday are accentuated especially in Falstaff,19 in whom Shakespeare combined the Saturnalian implications of both the tradition of the clown’s part and the Lord of Misrule in a more drastic and more complex way than anywhere else.20 The contrast of carnivalesque holiday and everyday has also appeared as a crucial idea in Bakhtin’s work. The contrast between holiday and everyday, rule and misrule has excited interest and proved to be very influential in the field of early modern popular culture.21 Bakhtin presented the public with a number of new discoveries; the most important one was revealing the guiding principle—the “culture of popular laughter”—behind Rabelais’s artistic vision. Three other main theses can be distinguished in Bakhtin’s book: first, the sociological thesis about the importance of the “culture of folk humour” or “marketplace culture”; the second is the chronological thesis, “the rise of folk humour” in the Middle Ages and its decline or “disintegration” in the seventeenth century; the third is the political thesis about the importance of laughter or “carnivalization” as an expression of the unofficial, the subversive.22 Basing a “philosophy of the body” (“the bodily lower stratum”), the “grotesque body,” “the language and morphology of carnival” on Renaissance material (the work of Rabelais) Bakhtin opened a new perspective in the study of culture.23 Bakhtin emphasized that he was not studying medieval culture as a whole, but only popular culture, and he speaks of a “sharp break” between carnivalesque and official culture, although he contradicts himself several times and writes about the interaction between the two cultures as well. In 1968 Bakhtin’s work was translated into English, soon followed by a translation into French in 1970, into Spanish in 1971; the Italian version appeared in 1979, the German in 1985 and the Portuguese in 1987. Thanks to these translations a group of western historians discovered Bakhtin and started to work with his ideas. Thus, the study of popular culture in the

19

Ibid., 192, 193. Ibid., 13. 21 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 173. 22 Peter Burke summarizes briefly and explicitly Bakhtin’s main theories in his paper “Civilization, Disorder, Discipline: Three Case-Studies in History and Social Theory,” in The Postmodern Challenge, ed. Bo Strath and Nina Witoszek (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 101–14. 23 Bakhtin’s ideas were influential in Russia as well, for example: Aron Y. Gurevich, “Bachtin und der Carneval,” Euphorion 85 (1991), 423–30. 20

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Middle Ages and early modern times became an independent branch of research.24 Burke’s book, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe first published in 1978, is the methodologically most refined overview of the field of popular culture. He classifies the social range of the two cultures in a more precise, but essentially similar manner. He thinks that it is a false premise to assume that at the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period there was an elite culture for the clergy and the aristocracy and a “popular” one for the peasants and common people in the towns. Everybody was a participant in popular culture, although it is true that it was the only one for the majority of the people, while the minority of the people, those with privileges had a second, elite culture based on literacy, traditions and institutions as well. He also writes about the “amphibious” nature of these people—the humanist-educated males— who, in spite of their elite culture, grew up listening to old wives’ tales. Burke defines culture as “a system of shared attitudes and values and the symbolic forms (performances, artifacts) in which they are expressed or embodied.” As for popular culture, he writes: “it is perhaps best defined—initially at least—in a negative way as unofficial culture, the culture of the non-elite.”25 There have been other accessible definitions of “popular culture” by historians of this topic; a good example can be found in Gábor Klaniczay’s book about The Uses of Supernatural Power: “If we define ‘popular culture’ (whether shared or rejected by civilized elites) as an orally transmitted, ritually regulated, community-bound culture, opposed to the written, institutionalized, ceremonious, ‘elite’ cultural traditions, it can prove useful as a concept for historical interpretation.”26 Natalie Zemon Davis formulated the following definition: “In the 15th to 17th centuries popular culture acquired a definition: it was the culture of the lower social strata in the process of secularization that also found its expression in written or printed form.”27 In spite of the fact that Bakhtin made a major contribution to the study of popular culture, Peter Burke insists that there are problematic elements in his ideas. In his opinion Bakhtin’s history is thin in the sense that it is 24

Burke, “Civilization, Disorder, Discipline,” 102. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, xiii. 26 Gábor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformations of the Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 3. 27 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 190. 25

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based on a limited range of sources.28 Bakhtin is also vague about periods and social groups; he slips backwards and forwards between the terms “Middle Ages” and “Renaissance” in a confusing way.29 In certain parts of the book he underlines the view of the carnival as a safety valve, supporting the social order, while at other times he stresses the subversive power of humour, the aim of which is “to overcome by laughter.”30 Burke says that Bakhtin’s shift of emphasis “comes close to redefining the popular as the rebel in all of us.”31 Burke in contrast with Bakhtin has not stressed the opposition between the folk and the elite; he emphasized that popular culture was shared both by the upper classes and the folk until around the sixteenth century. The elite classes supposedly retreated from popular culture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Burke’s above-mentioned thesis on the modern “reform of popular culture” became very influential.32 According to him the initiative for reform came originally from the elites, especially the upper clergy, before it spread more widely through society.33 In his “synthesis” Burke calls attention to the emerging problems of the research of the history of popular culture and the notions of “popular” and “culture.” Much of the popular culture of the period was oral culture, so the popular culture of early modern Europe is elusive; the documents are lacking and untrustworthy.34 Burke concludes that a direct approach to popular culture is impossible, and puts emphasis on the role of intermediaries: “an oblique approach to popular culture via mediators like singers and storytellers, actors, carvers and painters who transmitted popular culture is the least likely to put us on the wrong track.”35 In spite of the problems concerning both the notion of “popular” and “culture,” interest in the history of popular culture has not flagged; after different phases of criticism, integration followed. My study on William Kemp also bears testimony to the ongoing interest in this topic. It was 28

Burke, “Civilization, Disorder, Discipline”, 109. Burke, “Civilization, Disorder, Discipline”, 107. 30 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 394. 31 Burke, Popular Culture, 8. 32 Two anthologies, in particular, elaborate and complicate Burke’s paradigm: Barry Reay, Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1985) and Tim Harris, Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1995). 33 Cf. Mary Ellen Lamb, The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson (London: Routledge, 2006), 3. 34 Ibid., 103. 35 Ibid., 119. 29

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useful and pleasurable to work with the thought-provoking theories of popular culture and related topics like the most riotous popular festivity the Carnival, the relationship between the carnivalesque holiday and everyday and the image of the grotesque body. The players and vagrants, petty criminals had an important role in oral literature and in Elizabethan popular culture as a whole. They were all considered to be irregular, disordered and potentially subversive because of their “uncontrollable” nature.36 Both Kemp and Falstaff were at home in the Elizabethan underworld and like the other outlaws, they were also rebellious, uncontrollable and therefore menacing for the official order.37 Kemp followed this tradition throughout his life; he travelled a lot, he was free and spontaneous in his relationship with the audience in the theatre and in his long morris dancing when he wandered through the countryside. He also took advantage of the commercialization of morris dancing and popular culture. His most important, longest and most complex role as Falstaff also emphasizes that he was at home within the popular tradition. I intend to highlight the similarities between Kemp, the comic actor and the role of Falstaff especially focusing on the elements of Elizabethan popular culture in which both of them were rooted and upon which they both drew. I can find important traits of Kemp’s personality and art in Falstaff’s character such as the complexity and richness of life, the tension between the changes and dynamism of early modern society, the intellectual and moral contradictions of their age and at the same time the survival of the old medieval rituals and traditions. Falstaff’s and Kemp’s complex, paradoxical and ambiguous characters and social status reflect the chaotic and unstable society in which Kemp and Shakespeare lived.38 They both

36

Paola Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre, 2. There is a rich critical tradition of discussions of the Elizabethan underworld and its literature. The works of two historians, Paola Pugliatti in her Beggary and Theatre and L. Beier in his Masterless Men, The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 have been especially valuable for my study. Collections of Tudor and early Stuart tracts and ballads were also a great help in my study of Kemp’s jigs. Paola Pugliatti, Beggary and Theatre in Early Modern England (London, Ashgate, 2003); L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London: Methuen, 1985), 69–85. A. V. Judges, ed., The Elizabethan Underworld (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1930); Charles Hindley, ed., The Roxburghe Ballads: A collection of Ancient Songs and Ballads (London: Reeves and Turner 1873); Andrew Clark, ed., The Shirburn Ballads 1585–1616 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907). 38 John Guy describes and analyses the political, economic and cultural problems in the second half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and uses the expression “The 37

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share common characteristic features such as humour, wittiness, talent and experience in extemporizing. The images of carnival, the comic and grotesque body, freedom, laughter, the contrast of rule and misrule, irony, parody and sexuality in jigs and the underworld characters are all dominant and recurring elements of their performances. Kemp and Falstaff are also similar in their resilient but at the same time unrestrainable nature. Falstaff is an ageing merrymaker and Kemp was not young either—he was over forty when he played his Shakespearean roles. Will Kemp was a versatile, talented and successful personality. Given the stormy political, economic and cultural conditions of the 1590s and the turn of the century, only exceptional personalities could achieve what he did. In the beginning of his career he was the general entertainer to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He also performed diplomatic services and was solo artist, professional dancer, the leading comic actor of the Globe, share-holder and actor-manager in one person. Kemp was flexible and resilient in finding the niche he could fill in Elizabethan entertainment and possessed the full knowledge of fool tradition as well.39 The five years of Kemp’s association with Shakespeare between 1594 and 1599 at the Lord Chamberlain’s Company seem to have been an unusually stable, fertile and successful period for them both. At the same time, even as he filled his Shakespearean stage roles and was a leading comic actor of the Chamberlain’s Company where he could freely improvise and had a unique relationship with the audience, Kemp continued to have success with his jigs. He published the text and melody of three of them in 1595.40 Kemp had many performance skills. Although his main talent lay in the direction of jigs and non-verbal performances, he was also good at learning long monologues.41 Kemp’s performances must have been spontaneous, however, and he did not like being restricted by the

Second Reign of Elizabeth I” in his book The Reign of Elizabeth: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 39 For further discussion of Kemp’s life and career see: Chris Harris, Will Kemp Shakespeare’s Forgotten Clown (Oxford: The Kylin Press, 1983); Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown; David Grote, The Best Actors of the World (Westport, NY: Greenwood Press, 2002); James H. Forse, Art Imitates Business: Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001); Videbaek, The Stage Clown. 40 See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), 2:325–27. 41 The further discussion of this problem, see Peter Joseph Cockett, “Incongruity, Humour and Early English Comic Figures: Armin's Natural Fools, the Vice, and Tarlton the Clown” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2001).

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script, so his appearances were often placed at the end of a scene to allow him to extemporize.42 But by the end of the 1590s several problems appeared in the company.43 The greatest was the historical conflict of interests between the comedian and the playwright, between Kemp and Shakespeare.44 Kemp and Shakespeare had different views concerning the theatre and the role of the actor and playwright. They carried equal status in the company.45 Their aims in the theatrical world were different, and they pursued divergent paths. Shakespeare wanted to build a prestigious and profitable company and Kemp continued his spontaneous and uncontrollable role which was strongly rooted in popular culture. Kemp often wanted to represent the common Englishman who has a casual and intimate relationship with everybody he meets. In the above-mentioned complex historical period, censorship became more and more important, and Kemp’s spontaneous and improvisatory performances were impossible to place under tight control. His art was considered more and more dangerous for the company and his personality unpleasant for Shakespeare.46 The expectations of the more aristocratic audience also changed.47 The audience no longer appreciated fooling separate from the play, and their tastes and opinions were primarily important to Shakespeare, who wanted to attract a more sophisticated and wealthier audience. This conflict marks the end of the “players’ theatre”48 and the beginning of the increasing dominance of the playwright over theatrical production values. The disagreement grew into a conflict and Kemp, being a star comic, did not give in. He became Shakespeare’s rival. In the 1590s the conflicts 42

Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 106–107, 119. J. Payne Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1846); Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 326; Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company 1594–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 87. 44 Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 36; David Grote, The Best Actors of the World, 79–81. 45 Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 45–49; Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors and Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation of Plays in England before 1642 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), 217; John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998), 168. 46 Cockett, “Incongruity, Humour and Early English Comic Figures,” 12. 47 Gurr, Shakespeare’s Theatre, 66; Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, 191. 48 Cockett, “Incongruity, Humour and Early English Comic Figures,” 10. 43

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within the company were temporarily resolved, but in 1599 the cooperation between Kemp and Shakespeare ended abruptly. He signed the lease for the Globe theatre in February but was gone by autumn. In 1600, when the theatres closed for Lent, Kemp set off on his famous morris dance to Norwich, a distance of 114 miles. In his published diary, the Nine Daies Wonder Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich, he writes about his journey in details. The dancing took nine days, but bad weather meant that the whole trip lasted for more than three weeks. 49 He was happy dancing with a butcher; he spoke as an equal to the “honest fellows” he met on the road and also to the figures of the underworld who occasionally followed him. He was also quick to accept hospitality from country gentry.50 By the time he finished the journey, Kemp was probably one of the most famous men in the kingdom, and his undertaking brought morris dancing great popularity in court, festivals and the stage as well. He became a “nine days wonder,” but was remembered long after the nine days were up.51 As an equal and after 1599 an important rival of Shakespeare’s, Kemp had become a menacing element for his own company and for his fellow and playwright Shakespeare. His art embodied the traditional elements of popular entertainment: the loud jig, the energetic and unrestrainable morris dancing, free improvisation and clowning, and an intimate and welcoming relationship with the audience of common people.52 With the great conflicts in the background Kemp was still astonishingly flexible. He continued his other enormously successful activities, morris dancing and jigging.53 Even if Kemp’s rivals, the playwrights, wanted to create refined and academically respectable forms of drama, they had to admit that the above-mentioned entertainments were popular even in private playhouses until the middle of the seventeenth century.54 Kemp’s social status was exceptional compared to that of his contemporary fellow actors: he was a lifelong wanderer, so accumulating money and becoming a gentleman were probably not his greatest aims, and it was most likely 49 William Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder: Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich [1600], introduction and notes by The Rev. Alexander Dyce, ed. John Bowyer Nichols and Son (London: Camden Society 1840). 50 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 10. 51 Nine-day wonder, seven-day wonder: that is, a short-lived spectacle. 52 Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 44–49; Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors, 217; Southworth, Fools and Jesters, 168. 53 For further discussion of this matter see Baskervill, Elizabethan Jig. 54 Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 68.

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difficult for him to settle down and build a stable life with a family, a house and land. When we examine Kemp’s career it can be seen that he belonged to an upwardly mobile profession and was a special representative of his kind. His aim was probably different from that of his fellows like Richard Tarlton, who, for example, was the Queen’s jester and became the Master of the Fencing and a permanent Groom of the Chamber. The intellectual, social, psychological, and aesthetic changes in the sixteenth century were complex and dialectical.55 As Greenblatt says, “[t]here was a new social mobility, but there was a new assertion of power by both family and state to determine all movement in society as well.”56 There is profound social and economic mobility in Kemp’s and Tarlton’s case, and in Kemp’s a restless geographical mobility as well. Tarlton’s stage career brought him both social and financial elevation.57 It is a conventional notion that neither Tarlton nor Kemp had ambitions for the solid benefits of gentility.58 Though Kemp did not accumulate money or come to possess a courtly title, he became widely famous in different fields of entertainment and was an outstanding professional. He moved out of a narrowly circumscribed social sphere into a realm that brought him into close contact with the powerful and the great. He was in a position as well to know, with some intimacy, those with no power, status, or education at all. So he had an exceptional situation and could obtain insight into every section of Elizabethan society. To play the role of Falstaff required a complex, ambiguous and paradoxical personality: intelligent and also vulgar, resilient and uncontrollable at the same time — Falstaff’s character grabbed the essence of Kemp’s personality. Sir John Falstaff appears in three plays by Shakespeare: the two Henry IV plays and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He is the fat, vain, boastful, cowardly but also intelligent and witty companion to the apparently wayward Prince Hal, who ultimately repudiates 55

Steven Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 56 Ibid., 1. 57 He wrote plays and pamphlets, some of them are lost, some are extant e.g.: Seven Deadly Sins, Tarlton’s Jests. One of his most famous roles was Derick in the Famous Victories of Henry V. 58 Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 37; Grote, Best Actors of the World, 77–99; James H. Forse, Art Imitates Business: Commercial and Political Influences in Elizabethan Theatre (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001), 121–39; Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, 217; Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 2:327.

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Falstaff when he becomes King Henry V. The second part of my study argues against the long held and one-sided tradition according to which Kemp only played the role of the vulgar, crude and common buffoon. Like Falstaff, Kemp was a lively personality with verbal inventiveness and social intelligence. In the role of Falstaff Kemp represented a wide range of fool figures and crucially important symbols of popular culture: Vice, the Lord of Misrule, the Carnival figure, the court jester, the outlaw, the mock fencer (in this case, not the skilful morris dancer). So the image of Kemp as the harsh, blockheaded, simple clown figure from the countryside is radically challenged as is the widely accepted opinion that Robert Armin was the intelligent comedian. The complexity of Kemp’s personality will be illustrated by the different aspects of Falstaff’s character. One aspect is the image of the comic and grotesque body, which is an essential feature of early modern popular culture and is intensively interwoven with Falstaff’s character as well. The other aspect is Falstaff’s personality and social status, both of which are ambiguous. I will emphasize Falstaff’s intelligence and wittiness as one of his most important characteristic features. Furthermore Falstaff’s relation to Prince Hal in 2 Henry IV is yet another aspect which can be characterized in terms of rule to misrule and can be interpreted as a sign of Kemp’s problematic relationship to Shakespeare. The two parts of Henry IV written probably in 1598 were masterpieces of the popular theatre. Falstaff is Kemp’s most complex and significant role, in the first part of Henry IV Falstaff speaks 542 lines, while Hotspur, Hal and King Henry are allotted 538, 514 and 338 respectively.59 Kemp peeps out of Falstaff’s role when the Hostess says, “He doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see.”60 Falstaff is well-informed, familiar with contemporary popular culture—oral literature, romances, and popular theatre.61 Falstaff boasts of his wittiness: Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolishcompounded clay, man is not able to invent, anything that tends to

59 William Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part I, ed. David Scott Kastan, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (London: Thomson Learning, 2003), 4. All subsequent citations and parenthetical references pertain to this edition. 60 1 Henry IV, 2.4.390–91. 61 Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 129.

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But of course besides wit, which was a constitutive feature of the Vice figure, Falstaff’s character is interwoven with other vital elements of popular culture like the image of the grotesque and comic body. The different parts of the grotesque and comic body represented various symbols and different kinds of ways of communication.63 A scurvy face, fatness, grotesque heads, legs and hands, strong sexuality all symbolized a merry nature, fertility, rotten morals, even a broken relationship with God. If there were significant defects in the body, the image of God was tainted, and the connection to God broken.64 Kemp’s physical appearance was also a very important element in his character as an entertainer. He was a man of powerful build and as Baldwin indicates “of large joint.”65 Kemp possessed a solid physique, great stamina, and athletic prowess, all of which helped him to accomplish the wild leaps and jumps and to keep the pace that was expected of him.66 Kemp’s funny face with a big, flat nose marked him as a comedian and represented the image of the comic and grotesque body. Falstaff’s grotesque size, his bodily distortion, his exaggerated belly which is the result of excessive drinking and eating have different symbolic meanings. Falstaff is sometimes menacing: he is a cause of fear embodied in the highwayman, outcast and rebel. The only antidote to fear is laughter. Falstaff’s grotesque belly is not always frightening; it also recalls a carefree utopian life of drink, food and rest. There are a lot of names by which Falstaff is known in the plays and they are rich in allusions to eating and the abundance of meat at festive occasions. Falstaff’s grotesque and comic body is full of significant allusions to the carnivalesque holiday practices still alive in the Renaissance, and it also brings into focus much that has been mentioned before in this study about “the culture of popular laughter”67 and the grotesque body.68 As a fat man, Falstaff represents the Carnival King, a 62

William Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 2, ed. A. R. Humphreys, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 1.2.7–10. All subsequent citations and parenthetical references pertain to this edition. 63 Roy Porter, “History of the Body Reconsidered” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (London: Polity Press, 2001), 233–61. 64 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 151. 65 Baldwin, The Organization & Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, 243. 66 Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown, 24. 67 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 173. 68 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter, 97.

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personification of Shrove-tide. Hal characterizes Falstaff most of the time with food imagery and meaty references and we can recognize in them the Carnival King: “[w]hy dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend Vice [. . .]?” (1H4, 2.4.442– 48); “Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?” (1H4, 2.4.450–53) He is called “Sir John Sack-and-Sugar” (1H4, 1.2.110), “fat rogue” (1H4, 1.2.182), “clay-brained guts,” “knotty-pated fool,” “whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-ketch” (1H4, 1.2.223), “wool sack”( 1H4, 2.4.133), “huge hill of flesh” (1H4, 1.2.240), “fat guts” (1H4, 2.2.31), “Sir John Paunch”(1H4, 2.2.65), “whoreson round man”(1H4, 2.4.148), “fatpounch” (1H4, 2.4.130), “chops” (1H4, 3.3.176). Hal compares Falstaff to food using festive metaphors such as sweet beef, butterball knight, fat, fatted calf, tripe, fattened pig, roasted ox, holiday beef dish, slain deer. The metaphors which describe Falstaff are full of animal symbolism as it often happens while describing fools in popular culture. Bakhtin’s concept of “the popular culture of laughter” which is so closely interwoven with the largest popular festivity of medieval and Renaissance times, the Carnival, can be entirely applied in the investigation and characterization of Falstaff. Bakhtin points out that the grotesque is the native language of the carnival. He suggests that the kitchen was at the heart of medieval and early modern carnival folklore. The fool can be imagined as a typical representative of the Bakhtinian carnival kitchen. In contemporary thinking, what made fools excessively fat was their continual striving towards all possible pleasures, especially food and drink. The method of getting plenty of food and trouble around it was a very popular theme in fool stories. In Brueghel’s famous painting, The Battle of Carnival and Lent, Carnival carries a pig’s head and sausages on a pike in order to do battle with an emaciated Lent. In the early modern period, famines were a matter of course so food was seen as the basic ingredient of a merry life. The cultural meanings of the festival table received cosmic properties and voracious appetite was understood as a symbol of general well-being and renewal of life. In addition to food, fools also yearned for drink, which was even more sinful. There are different stories about Tarlton in connection with

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drinking;69 Kemp in his Nine Daies Wonder pretends to refuse drinks during his journey,70 but the most important character he played on the stage, Falstaff, who is a heavy drinker, also proves that Kemp was presumably only joking in his diary: How euer, many a thousand brought me to Bow, where I rested a while from dancing, but had small rest with those that would haue vrg’d me to drinking. But I warrant you Will Kemp was wise enough: to thei ful cups, kinde thanks was my returne, with Gentlemanlike protestations: as. Truly sir, I dare not: it stands not with the congruity of my health.71

Falstaff embodies fatty meat which sweats as it is cooked. The grotesque image of sweating plays a leading role, since Falstaff’s everchanging, elusive character can be symbolized by it; there is a constant danger that the fat and sweaty knight will disappear by melting. Doll wipes Falstaff’s face, comparing him to a roasting pig and exclaiming “how thou sweat’st.”72 Hal compares Falstaff to melting butter: “Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter that melted at the sweet tale of the sun? if thou didst, then behold that compound.”73 During the battle, he compares the drops of his sweat to the tears of Colevile’s mourners.74 He arrives at Prince Henry’s coronation “sweating with desire to see him.”75 The epilogue anticipates that in the sequel Falstaff may sweat to death.76 The image of sweating also appears in fools’ stories several times, for example in Armin’s Nest of Ninnies concerning the Scottish fat fool, Jemy Camber, who “looked like a Norfolk dumpling thicke and short.”77 Jemy went with the king: while the footeman had time to worke his will, and mingling a conceit with butter clapt it under the saddle; and as they rode to Edinborough, sayes the king, what say you to the weather now, Jemy? Mee thinks it is hotter than it was. Nay, it is colder, sayes he, for I begin to sweat. The trotting of this mule made the mingled confection lather so, that it got into the breeches, 69

J. O. Halliwell-Philips, ed., Tarlton’s Jests (London: Shakespeare Society, 1844). 70 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 6. 71 Ibid. 72 2 Henry IV, 2.4.216. 73 1 Henry IV, 2.4.118–20. 74 1 Henry IV, 4.3.12. 75 1 Henry IV, 5.5.24. 76 1 Henry IV, 2.2.108. 77 Robert Armin, Nest of Ninnies [1608] in The Collected Works of Robert Armin (New York, London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972), 1:21.

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and wrought up to the crowne of his head, and to the sole of his foote, and so he sweat profoundly. Still he whipt and he whipt, sweating more and more: they laught a good to see him in that taking.78

Falstaff’s body is contradictory; it is a comic body which also represents the liberating, festive side of carnivalesque laughter, which infuses the great comedies of Shakespeare. Falstaff’s wit and exuberant language make the world around him laugh with him; this is a deeply communal, inclusive laughter.79 Falstaff’s character is full of vitality; he embodies the Saturnalian reversal of values, the conflict of holiday and everyday.80 His fat, witty and humorous company satisfied the community’s hunger for festivity.81 At the same time the elements of Lent also appear: in part two Falstaff is compared to “allow,” a “candle-mine.”82 As an emblem of Carnival, Falstaff inevitably must be destroyed by Lent, and roasting is the best way for Carnival to be consumed. Falstaff‘s personality is also always changing; he is continually in motion, assuming different characters. It is a question throughout in the first part of Henry IV who or what Falstaff is. Falstaff pretends to be a holiday lord; he identifies himself as a cutpurse, a highwayman, a court jester, a knight but changes names and their meanings to suit the moment. There is also a contradiction between old and young. Falstaff permanently associates himself with the young: “they hate us youth” (1H4, 2.2.81), “What, ye knaves! young men must live” (1H4, 2.2.86), Hal calls him “the latter spring! Farewell, All-hallow summer!” (1H4, 1.2.155), and “my old lad of the castle” (1H4, 1.2.40). Nevertheless, for all his association with the festive side of carnival, Falstaff is an old man, as the Chief Justice affirms: Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you call yourself young?83

He has white hair; he is weak and can neither walk nor fight. His weakness becomes evident when he takes a young prostitute on his knees 78

Armin, Nest of Ninnies, 1:25. Pikli, The Prism of Laughter, 7. 80 Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 192–222. 81 David Ruiter, Shakespeare’ Festive History: Feasting, Festivity, Fasting and Lent in the Second Henriad (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 80. 82 2 Henry IV, 1.11.157. 83 2 Henry IV, 1.2.179–84. 79

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and says “I am old, I am old.”84 We can notice again the similarities between Kemp and Falstaff: Kemp was not considered young either, especially in Elizabethan times; he was well into his forties when he played the role of Falstaff. As Bakhtin argues, the grotesque body also reveals the human body in all its changes. “The grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world.”85 He adds: “In the events in the life of the grotesque body: eating, drinking, copulation, pregnancy, defecation, sweating, sneezing, blowing of the nose the beginning and end of life are closely linked and interwoven. The grotesque image in its extreme aspect never presents an individual body; it is a point of transition in a life eternally renewed, the inexhaustible vessel of death and conception.”86 Bakhtin also writes that the grotesque imagery of the marketplace—the interstice in the structure of feudal society—was remarkably corporeal and physical in nature. The favourite images were often related to the mouth, the stomach, and the sexual and anal organs.87 According to Bakhtin the grotesque body which appears in Rabelais’s work was open to change and to the elements of nature as well. The organs which performed the body’s tasks of consumption and ventilation were its thresholds to the open air and its sites of pleasure. The main characteristic of the comic body was its continuing change and activity: it was always in motion towards creating and destroying, eating and drinking, secreting and defecating, and towards its sexual fulfilment.88 The sexual body was perhaps more threatening both to social order and in people’s individual lives than was any other form of corporeality. The fool was associated with sexuality partly because he was often found in brothel milieus, both in fiction and in real life. Falstaff is just as eager to engage in sexual banter; but he often charms with words more than with deeds. Fools gave voice to the animal qualities in human sexuality; the fool’s sexual nature can be noticed from the frequent use of the punning proverb “a fool’s bolt is soon shot,” which cropped up in drama as well as

84

2 Henry IV, 2.4.268. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317–18. 86 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 318. 87 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 320–22; see also Keith Thomas, “The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England,” TLS, (January 21, 1977): 79. 88 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 25–26. 85

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in popular ballads.89 One meaning of this statement was to refer to the fool’s habit of judging and commenting quickly as “bolt” could be taken to mean a blunt-headed arrow, but it can also denote premature ejaculation, fumbling sexual encounters and the sin of lechery.90 In Bakhtin’s theory of the culture of popular laughter the evaluation of carnality and sexuality also appears as a cardinal question. In the case of obscene language, the images of the material, physical “baseness”—a typical manifestation of the culture of popular laughter—Bakhtin’s interpretation went beyond the mere fact of vulgarity and proved through many examples that they were not mere examples of “obscenity” for its own sake. “The leading themes of these images of bodily life are fertility, growth, and a brimming-over abundance.”91 He calls this stylistic procedure “grotesque realism,” which degrades all things sublime by linking them mockingly with the functions of eating, digestion and sex.92 As the grotesque body always transforms, Falstaff’s social status is not fixed either; it is similar to his ever-changing personality. Although he is a knight, he has a close relationship with the common people, and as he is also a cutpurse, he knows to some degree of intimacy the cony-catchers, beggars, prostitutes of the Elizabethan underworld. In the first scene in 1 Henry IV, Falstaff is first called plain “Jack”; Poins addresses Falstaff as “Sir John Sack, and Sugar Jack” (1H4, 1.2.110), and Hal calls him “Sir John” (1H4, 2.4.463) in his next speech. Falstaff, however, never refers to himself as a knight, but only as “Old Jack,” “Falstaff,” “every man jack,” “Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe” (2H4, 2.2.125–27). It is likely that Shakespeare borrowed character traits from the tradition of the rogue pamphlets and the cony-catching pamphlets when forming Falstaff’s and other rouges’ and vagabonds’ character. Kemp’s experience with figures of the Elizabethan underworld that he also mentioned in his Nine Daies Wonder must have been very useful as well.93 He plays a conycatcher in both Henry IV plays and he is surrounded by such figures in The Merry Wives of Windsor as well. These plays were written in the 1590s, which was also a fertile period of cony-cathing pamphlets.

89 Samuel Rowlands, A Fooles Bolt Is Soone Shott [1614]; W. G. Day and D. S. Brewer, The Pepys Ballads (Facsimile volumes, 1–5) (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), 1:178–79. 90 Korhonen, Fellows of Infinite Jest, 278. 91 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 19. 92 Klaniczay, Uses of Supernatural Power, 17. 93 Kemp, Nine Daies Wonder, 5.

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Falstaff speaks about this special type of person: “For we, that take purses, go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoebus.”94 Prince Henry says, for the fortune of us, that are the moon’s men, doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is, by the moon. As for proof now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing ‘Lay by’ and spent with crying ‘Bring in,’ now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and, by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.95

Falstaff originates from the witty parasite and miles gloriosus, the braggart soldier of Plautine comedy and the cunning and extemporizing Vice of morality tradition. The intensive involvement with the audience is very important in both Henry IV plays. Falstaff extemporizes when, for example, he elaborates his account of the rogues, plays the King in the tavern or manipulates the Hostess to whom he owes money. The funniest and most ironic improvisation among Falstaff’s jests is Falstaff’s mock combat. When it comes to recounting the heroic deeds at Gadshill, Falstaff’s vitality is irrepressible; in this parody of a chivalric fight, he fights first 12, 16, 50, and 52–53 people, then he encounters and stands up to 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11 men in buckram plus two in Kendall green.96 I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have ‘scap’d by miracle, I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a handsaw: ecce signum! I never dealt better since I was a man: all would not do. A plague of all cowards!—Let them speak: if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.97

Extemporizing was a crucial part of both the plays and the conycatching pamphlets. The mock combat at Gadshill is the parody of chivalric tournament which often appears in the stories of jest books. Mock combats and tournaments were the roots and parts of different folk dances like morris dancing and jigs and they often appeared in fool literature as well.98 94

1 Henry IV, 1.2.12–15. 1 Henry IV, 1.2.30–40. 96 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter, 87. 97 1 Henry IV, 2.4.172–80. 98 Forrest, History of the Morris, 61. 95

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Unfortunately there is no written evidence about Kemp’s mock combats and other fights, but Tarlton’s and Armin’s stories about fools reflect the atmosphere of the medieval and early modern fool tradition which was a significant part of Kemp’s art as well. Tarlton, who often performed at court, amused his queen by arranging a fight between himself and the Queen’s Lilliputian toy dog as if it were a dangerous beast. The battle ended with the dog as the victor. Tarlton, being a Master of Fencing and Kemp, as the head of morris dancers, maintained the combat tradition in their performances and caused it to flourish. There are various stories about Tarlton’s triumphs or misfortunes in mock fights.99 Tarlton’s stories are similar to Armin’s description and stories about contemporary fools (for example the mock battles of Jack Oates and Lean Leonard) because they were quite bloody and brutal.100 A horrific story of Jack Oates took place at Christmas when Jack’s master and mistress had invited a group of travelling minstrels to entertain their guests. Jack’s master threatened to replace him with a new fool, and Jack attacked a bagpiper who was seriously hurt. Then a fiddler was introduced as a new fool as well, and Jack flew at him and beat him. The fiddler “with a fall had his head broake to the scull against the ground, his face scracht, that which was worst of all his left eye jut out, and with all so sore broozed that he could neither stand, nor go.”101 Lean Leonard’s opponent was only imaginary. The fool hurt himself, “his pate broken face scratcht, and legge out of ioynt.”102 Falstaff is not part of the game of chivalric honour; on the contrary, irony and parody characterizes Falstaff’s behaviour and speech. Falstaff’s degradation starts with the military actions and is completed in 2 Henry IV.103 When Falstaff gives Hal a bottle of sack instead of a pistol, Hal is really angry because of Jack’s inappropriate timing of a jest in the battle field, exclaiming, “What, is it a time to jest and dally now?”104 Approaching 2 Henry IV Falstaff gradually becomes cynical, opportunistic and pragmatic; his sceptical attitude suggests that he tends to accept that honour is indeed “but a word.” Nothing is sacred to him; his carnivalesque vitality is failing and the emotional distance between Hal and Falstaff is growing.105 “Virtue is of so little regard in these 99

Halliwell-Philips, ed., Tarlton’s Jests, 195–98. Armin, The Collected Works, 1:20, 32. 101 Armin, The Collected Works, 1:35. 102 Armin, The Collected Works, 1:45. 103 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter, 97. 104 1 Henry IV, 5.3.55. 105 Pikli, The Prism of Laughter, 100. 100

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costermongers’ times that true valour is turn’d bear-herd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit wasted in giving reconings; all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry.”106 He is very pragmatic concerning honesty: “[to] die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a men thereby liveth, is to be not counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in which better part I have sav’d my life.”107 He also raises radical questions about fundamental moral and social principles such as chivalry, honesty and royalty, which are proving more and more of a threat to the established order especially in 2 Henry IV. We can find some more similarities between Kemp and Falstaff both in their striving for financial success and in their practical nature. Kemp attempted to become financially successful and, as occasions arose, they accepted every possible source of support without ideological considerations. They were very practical men. Just as the entertainments provided by Kemp and his fellow comedians in foreign courts, playhouses, and the taverns were commercial ventures, Kemp’s journey from London to Norwich depicted in his Nine Daies Wonder and his later tour to Europe also had primarily a financial aim.108 The tension between Kemp and Shakespeare, which could already be felt in 1598 when these plays were written, very much echoes Falstaff’s and Hal’s problematic relationship. Their conflict can be characterized in terms of the relation of holiday to everyday, misrule to rule.109 There is an important difference in attitude towards time between Falstaff and Prince Hal; time means nothing to Falstaff; he has all the time in the world to enjoy life. He is the “fool-bacchant” who is placed firmly on the material level of folk culture and emphasizes his principles of living in the present moment only. Prince Henry is on his way out of Falstaff’s realm from very early on; his soliloquy of “redeeming time” comes at the end of the second scene.110 His latent threat to Falstaff’s perpetual holiday is made clear for the audience from the start: “If all the year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work.”111 King Henry warns his son that “[t]he skipping king, he ambled up and down / With shallow jesters, and 106

2 Henry IV, 1.2.167–72. 1 Henry IV, 5.4.114–20. 108 Cf. Gillespie and Rhodes, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, 1; Lamb, Popular Culture, 3. 109 Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 37–50. 110 1 Henry IV, 1.2.212. 111 1 Henry IV, 1.2.198–200. 107

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rash bavin wits, / Soon kindled, and soon burn’d; carded his state, / Mingled his royalty with carping fools, / Had his great name profaned with scorns.”112 The interregnum of a Lord of Misrule might develop into the anarchic reign of a favourite dominating a king.113 Hal also has harsh lines about Falstaff’s age and even death in a priggish tone in 2 Henry IV. In the play’s final scene Hal, as the newly crowned Henry V, speaks coldly and officially to Falstaff, his former companion. In the years between 1598 and 1600 Shakespeare’s attitude towards Kemp echoes Hal’s harsh recognition that political order is better than anarchy, that there is a pragmatic virtue in loyalty to the power of the state. For Shakespeare Kemp represented uncontrollable anarchy and a danger in the eyes of the London authorities. Kemp’s personality and what he represented—freedom in playing without a script, improvisation, political satire in his jigs—became more and more threatening to the safe future of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. Kemp and generally the fools and the theatre were criticized and considered extremely menacing not simply because they were considered evil, but also because Kemp and other comic actors were such figures who epitomized a mode of representation that was not possible to restrain or grasp. The best way to achieve order and a safe situation for Shakespeare as for Hal is to get rid of the threat, and this meant the expulsion of Kemp/Falstaff. Kemp/Falstaff can be seen as a threat to order, in Greenblatt’s words he is an example of authority’s “constant production of its own radical subversion and the powerful containment of that subversion.”114 Greenblatt sees Hal’s ultimate, planned reformation, his conversion not as Shakespeare’s idealizing effort to present royalty as Tillyard argues,115 but as Shakespeare’s presentation of Hal’s manipulations to achieve it through a self-conscious strategy.116 Drawing on the relationship between Shakespeare and Kemp, I disagree with Greenblatt; I think Hal and Shakespeare self-consciously wanted to maintain their safe situation and a way to power and success, but they were also under the pressure of external circumstances. 112

1 Henry IV, 3.2.60–64. As it happens in the case of Richard II. 114 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1988), 41. 115 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1944), 299. 116 Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 65. 113

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There is a constant movement between festivity and politics (especially in 2 Henry IV). Falstaff remains far more loyal to festivity than to politics; he views the movement towards “serious business” as an interruption rather than an end to festivity. He does not follow any rules, he seeks a radical challenge to received ideas, a Saturnalian reversal of values. Freedom, fellowship, laughter, pleasure and individual appetite are the important things for him, not responsibility or commitment. There are also suggestions about Falstaff’s reformation, but he uses his fatness, wit, mastery in joking, the witty and communal atmosphere around him to deny it. He is independent, autonomous, intelligent, he is a genius, an intellectual master of humour with a casual, off-hand wit. These are the skills that guarantee his popularity and resilience.117 Due to his similarly resilient nature and various talents Kemp did not disappear from contemporary theatrical life but after 1600, found sponsorship to ensure the continuance of his popularity and fame in the world of feast and holiday.118 Kemp was extremely popular and wellknown in London and in its taverns and so was Falstaff (in the play). Hal has the following to say about him: “This oily rascal is known as well as Paul’s.”119 Kemp’s genres—irony, satire and jig—preserved by custom and oral tradition still remained popular in the seventeenth century mainly because of the vexed political situation. Shakespeare’s promise that Falstaff would return is a clear reference to Kemp’s popularity in the contemporary world of entertainment and promised a successful and prosperous future for him.

117

Ruiter, Shakespeare’s Festive History, 124–25. In Duncan-Jones’s view Kemp enjoyed the patronage of Lady Hunsdon until the end of his life and it is also possible that Kemp—if he was alive and active between 1603 and 1612—appeared in some early Jacobean plays, including plays by Shakespeare. Katherine Duncan-Jones, “Shakespeare's dancing Fool: Did William Kemp live on as ‘Lady Hunsdon’s Man’?” in TLS 15 August, 2010. 119 1 Henry IV, 4.5.21. Saint Paul’s Cathedral was an interesting venue in medieval and early modern London: it was an important religious centre; a place for prayers and a busy marketplace where the cony-catchers and rogues gathered as well. 118

FORGOTTEN AND REMEMBERED: THE SHAKESPEAREAN HOBBY-HORSE AND CIRCULATIONS OF CULTURAL MEMORY NATÁLIA PIKLI

The early modern hobby-horse offers a cluster of meanings, ranging from a breed of horse and the traditional costumed figure of the morris dance to fools and wanton women, while it also focalises problems related to processes of transition regarding early modern popular culture. The present essay intends to highlight and interpret this curious palimpsest of meanings in the wider context of a changing popular culture in Shakespeare’s age, aided by the emerging theory of cultural memory, especially by Jan Assmann. After an introduction to the main problems related to the research, the transformation of late sixteenth early seventeenth-century popular culture will be examined briefly, focusing on the characteristic Shakespearean production, which may also serve as a case study for following the circulation and intermingling of different cultural discourses of the age.

I. Introduction: “For O for O the hobby-horse is forgot” BIONDELLO: Nay, by Saint Jamy, I hold you a penny, A horse and a man Is more than one, And yet not many.

Biondello’s lines in The Taming of the Shrew1 may serve as appropriate introduction to the problems raised in this paper: the hobby-horse, a “horse 1

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Brian Morris, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London: Methuen, 1994), 3.2.79–83. Biondello’s lines seem to be the fragment of an unidentified ballad or a ditty, which also attests to the close relation between the play and contemporary popular culture.

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and a man” offers more than one challenge in interpretation while the transient nature of early modern popular culture—of which the hobbyhorse forms an essential part—yields not many firm handholds for the scholar. Early modern popular culture in England appears as a complex phenomenon at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, being simultaneously “forgotten” and recalled with nostalgia as the lost golden age of Merry Old England, interweaving elite festivals and royal propaganda while also being transferred to written texts of the age, thus preserved and “remembered.” The hobby-horse might serve as a symbol for this transition, since, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the time of the hobby-horse being “forgotten” corresponds to the time of its most frequent appearance in texts of cony-catching pamphlets, Puritan anti-festival attacks, songs and—most importantly—of plays. According to the Oxford English Dictionary,2 the hobby-horse of medieval and early modern festivities is a figure of a horse, made of wickerwork, or other light material, furnished with a deep housing, and fastened about the waist of one of the performers, who executed various antics in imitation of the movements of a skittish and spirited horse.

It featured in morris dances both in popular and elite surroundings, in rural or urban festivals, as part of aristocratic entertainments and on the stage. Hutton briefly summarises the elusive history of the hobby-horse as follows: “[T]he first surviving refence to it is in a late 14th-century Welsh poem by Gryffyd Gryg, who implied that it was a new development.” Later it features as part of parochial finance [. . .] by 1500 it was part of the entertainments of the royal court and familiar in Cornwall, where the author of the play Beunans Meriasek seems to describe it as travelling with a troupe. Thereafter it is encountered in the midland’s churchwardens’ accounts [. . .] but none earlier than 1528.3

2

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), s.v. “hobby-horse.” Also cf. pictorial representations of it, the so-called Betley window (stained glass window of the early 16th c. in a house at Betley, Staffordshire) and the image of morris dancers with a hobby-horse along the Thames near Richmond, c. 1620, detail of the Dutch artist Vinckenboom’s Thames at Richmond, with the Old Royal Palace, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 3 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 61.

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Despite the sketchy nature of records, the interaction of and easy travel between popular and elite pastimes is easy to trace already in the early history of the hobby-horse. Nevertheless, the most curious phenomenon related to the hobby-horse is that the OED records4 most meanings (a special breed of horse, the morris hobby-horse, a fool, a loose woman, a plaything; but not the usual present-day meaning of a ‘favourite theme or pastime’) by references from the second half of the sixteenth century or later. This fact definitely attests to its popularity in Elizabethan and early Jacobean times.5 The hobbyhorse presents a complex phenomenon, varied in meaning and interpretation as well. I agree with Mary Ellen Lamb’s proposition that together with fairies and old wives’ tales, the hobby-horse should be considered as a symbol of popular culture, with differing interpretations in differing productions.6 In addition, the popularity of the hobby-horse in Shakespeare’s age might also be aligned with the concept of monstrosity and the grotesque, so catching and attractive to the Elizabethan age.7 The 4

Although the OED is frequently used as a starting point of investigation in this study, it is essential to keep in mind that the records listed there are neither complete nor absolutely trustworthy regarding exact meaning. First, since the last 1989 edition, which was also retained in the electronic form, new records and texts have resurfaced which have to be reckoned with (cf. volumes of Records of Early English Drama, etc.) and second, etymological data listed under one meaning often need a closer scrutiny of context and actual use as it will be highlighted in the following. 5 Due to the limitations of this paper, the mysterious history of the medieval hobby-horse cannot be treated here, even though Chambers mentions and describes the hobby-horse in his wide-ranging account of The Medieval Stage (E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, vol. 1 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903],142, 196–97.). However, one interesting fact needs to be mentioned here: Cawte translates the fourteenth-century Welsh poem, which expresses a nostalgic (!) attitude to the “once magnificent” hobby-horse (E. C. Cawte, Ritual Animal Disguise [Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978], 11). Jane Garry’s article tracing the history of the morris from agricultural ritual and folk custom and then to courtly entertainment and popular theatre makes a highly valuable attempt at following the morris through the centuries, however, a lot of questions cannot be answered with certainty—therefore the real history and meaning of the morris remain a challenge and a mystery. (Jane Garry, “The Literary History of the English Morris Dance,” Folklore 94, no. 2 (1983): 219–28.) 6 Mary Ellen Lamb, “Producing popular cultures,” in The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–25. et passim. 7 Cf. e.g. Patricia Parker, “Fantasies of ‘Race’ and ‘Gender’: Africa, Othello, and Bringing to Light,” in Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Contemporary Critical Essays. Ed. S. Zimmermann (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 167–94; and Mark

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late sixteenth century was characterised by simultaneous anxiety and curiosity regarding the “monstrous man-beast,” which corresponded to the then dominant form of the tourney-style hobby-horse, where man and beast are both visible as opposed to the earlier full costumes (tourney with a headmask). The hobby-horse may also be symbolic of the process of how different representations of popular culture are transcoded in cultural memory when they reach the phase of “textual coherence” as opposed to “ritual coherence” in Jan Assmann’s terms (see later). Shakespearean texts are specific in the respect that they not only preserve and shape aspects of contemporary popular culture in a specific non-politicised, non-satirical vein (as opposed to e.g. Ben Jonson’s plays or Philip Stubbes’ The Anatomy of Abuses or cony-catching pamphlets) but canonise them for later centuries. While their textual and other uncertainties are curiously disregarded by most, Shakespearean texts are celebrated and revered as part of the English literary canon, they exert significant influence on later workings of cultural memory, e.g. fixing connotative meanings of particular words such as the “hobby-horse.”8 The present study focuses on the way early modern popular culture is reconstructed in the Shakesperean text, as illustrated by the process of coalescing contemporary cultural narratives, such as that of the shrew and of the hobby-horse, which may have intermingled in their circulation.9 Due to the varied nature and ephemeral phenomena of popular culture, the usual methods of historical and literary analysis are combined with the theory of a “palimpsest” culture, as summarised by Jan Assmann in the following: Thornton Burnett, Constructing ‘Monsters’ in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002). 8 The ongoing research, of which this study forms only a small part, reinvestigates the case of the “forgotten” hobby-horse in the framework of the workings of cultural memory regarding early modern popular culture and its representations in written texts, especially in Shakespeare’s plays. Iconographic representations and other texts of different genre or status are also examined and evaluated as a “control group” in order to contextualise and highlight the specific Shakespearean contribution. 9 According to Assmann, cultural memory works in circulation, interpersonal communicaton establishing and re-producing the social identity of the group, keeping the “symbolic worldview” of the community in constant motion. Jan Assmann, A kulturális emlékezet. Írás, emlékezés és politikai identitás a korai magaskultúrákban [Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1992], transl. Z. Hidas (Budapest: Atlantisz, 2004), 139.

The Shakespearean Hobby-Horse and Circulations of Cultural Memory 181 Culture is a palimpsest and in this respect resembles individual memory, for which one of Sigmund Freud’s favourite metaphors was the city of Rome. For Rome is not just a vast open-air museum in which the past is preserved and exhibited, but an inextricable tangle of old and new, of obstructed and buried material, of detritus that has been reused or rejected. In this way tensions arise, rejections, antagonisms, between what has been censored and uncensored, the canonical and the apocryphal, the orthodox and the heretical, the central and the marginal, all of which makes for cultural dynamism.10

In an attempt to uncover the partially hidden layers, the latency of meanings in the hobby-horse, the relation between contemporaneous but differing uses of the same word and cultural memory will be addressed, providing potential explanations for a curious mingling of meanings in the word “hobby-horse,” to which several scholars have called attention without offering wholly satisfying reasons for the phenomenon.11 The paper attempts to address this problem from the view of the “memory of words,” the significance of which regarding psychoanalytical analysis was recognised by Theodore Tass-Thienemann in his book on Understanding the Unconscious Meaning of Language, the second volume of The Interpretation of Language.12 Thienemann focuses on the underlying subconscious content of words in his “exploratory pilot study” (his phrase), which is highly interesting and inspiring despite the fact that he might have gone too far along the Freudian way. He suggests that “[t]he different meanings of one word are much like the different symptoms of 10

Jan Assmann, Religion and Memory: Ten Studies, transl. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 25. (All later references are to this edition.) 11 Cf. “The sexual connotations of the hobby-horse were both feminine and masculine. In the femimine sense, the hobby-horse is equated with a whore, or at least a promiscuous person.” Alan Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris,” The Review of English Studies 30, no.117 (1979): 5; “As for the word ‘Hobby-horse,’ it acquired a succession of meanings, beginning as ‘gee-gee,’ ‘pet hobby’ or childish fancy, and ending up as ‘woman of easy virtue or dissolute morals.’ ” Francois Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, transl. J. Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 46. 12 Theodore Tass-Thienemann, The Interpretation of Language, Vol.2. Understanding the Unconscious Meaning of Language (New York: Jason Aronson, 1973). I owe many thanks to Prof. Péter Dávidházi for calling my attention to Thienemann’s ideas and works during the research project “Cultural Memory” (at the Department of English Studies, ELTE, led by Prof. Ágnes Péter) after my first attempts at combining the results of etymology with the concept of cultural memory.

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neurosis [being] the result of repression, they all refer to one root meaning which has disappeared from the manifest surface of langauge.”13 He recalls Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Old English, even sometimes Slavic and Hungarian meanings to support this argument. Nevertheless, his approach, i.e. the etymological-psychological approach might prove enlightening with respect to both the phenomena of a popular culture in a state of transition and to the workings of cultural memory.14 The most expected result of my research is to entail a deeper understanding of not only the workings of cultural memory but first and foremost that of the Shakespearean text.

II. Disowning and Nostalgical Reclaiming of Popular Culture—With a Shakespearean Twist The cultural history of the English ritual year has been informatively mapped by several essential monographs (cf. Hutton, Laroque, Cressy),15 therefore a brief overview with the most important problems pertaining to the present study will have to suffice here. According to Hutton, who traced the idea of Merry Old England, the rich and varied ritual year during the early Tudors changed inevitably after the establishment of the Anglican Church, with a differing extent of suppression or tolerance. The strictness of the Reformation attempt at wiping out “popish” festivals under Edward was followed by a partial reconstitution of the earlier Catholic festivals—though under a less festive-minded Queen Mary. Finally, Queen Elizabeth’s reign was marked with a more relaxed transformation, festivities mostly tolerated,16 supported and used by the 13

Tass-Thienemann, Understanding the Unconscious Meaning, 229, 10. Cf. in a cross-cultural setting, comparing similar and dissimilar phenomena in English and Hungarian cultural memory regarding shrews Natália Pikli, “Across Cultures: Shakespeare and the Carnivalesque Shrew,” European Journal of English Studies Vol. 14, no. 3 (December 2010), ed. Logie Barrow and Karine Bigand: 235–48. 15 Hutton and Laroque as mentioned earlier, cf. also David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989). This list is by no means exhaustive. 16 Of course, there were also important restrictions to festivities which often prompted political disorder and rebellion, but in general Queen Elizabeth strongly sympathised with festival occasions both on personal and political grounds, understanding their propagandistic potential—in this she was the true daughter of Henry VIII. As Keith Thomas summarizes, carnivalesque events were both 14

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royal propaganda even in the face of passionate Puritan attacks by Stubbes, Gosson,17 and others (to whose accounts paradoxically we owe most of the information on this transient culture).18 The festivals, customs and characters of the early modern ritual year showed an irrepressible vitality till the end of the sixteenth century, even though some metamorphosis and transformation became inevitable not only because of changing political-religious winds but also as a result of the gradual transition of spontaneous participation in and production of a mostly oral popular culture to a more conscious consumption of it, as genres and forms of popular culture became cultural commodities.19 In addition, under the Tudors the crosscutting of high and low, elite and popular culture was so ubiquitous that this challenges the very idea of a dividing line between them, therefore it seems more edifying and precise to speak of different productions of popular culture, as it is proposed by Lamb. The history of the morris, of which the hobby-horse appears an almost inalienable part, demonstrates not only this oscillation between royal court and village church ale but also attests to it becoming a commodity, the most striking example being William Kemp’s Nine Daies Wonder (1600), the written account of his solo morris production, which both in performance and afterwards in print was aimed at individual profit. The role and mode of operation of the public theatre, hovering on the banished and protected under the Tudors. (Keith Thomas, “The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England” in Times Literary Supplement, January 21, 1977, 77– 81.) Stallybrass also cites examples for a direct relation between carnivalesque festivities and political disorder. Peter Stallybrass, “ ‘Drunk with the Cup of Liberty’: Robin Hood, the Carnivalesque, and the Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern England” in The Violence of Representation. Literature and the History of Violence, ed. N. Armstrong and L. Tennenhouse (London: Routledge, 1989), 45– 76. 17 Philip Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses (1583), Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse (1579), Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582). 18 Hutton cites several instances for the anti-festival attitude, saying how the parochial “gatherings with a hobby-horse” stopped after being prohibited in Yoxall, 1547 and in Holme Pierrepoint in Nottinghamshire before 1552. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 87–88. 19 Cf. Bristol’s conclusion on the relation of theatre and popular culture: “The widespread commercial availability of cultural goods and services derived from the resources of popular culture almost certainly helped to accelerate the shift from direct skilled engagement in the production of cultural experience to the more passive habits of cultural consumption.” Michael D. Bristol, “Theater and Popular Culture,” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 248.

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borderline between the oral and the written, also attests to changing attitudes. The public stage, primarily profit-oriented, offered a spatially and temporally limited carnival, where the audience was also moving from active participation to a restricted, more passive one (though by far not as passive as in later periods of theatre history), as opposed to an active participation in spatially less restricted and longer lasting carnivalesque festivals (maying, Shrovetide, etc.). Under the reign of the early Stuarts this transformation became more pronounced and growing nostalgia for a lost golden age was coupled with an even more politicised attitude towards popular festivities (cf. The Book of Sports, 1618, written by James I to protect pastimes against a growing anti-festivity sentiment among Puritans and the middling sorts). In conclusion, as opposed to the more traditional phrase of a decline of popular culture, I would rather emphasise its adaptation to different circumstances. Just like “sweet bully Bottom,” phenomena of early modern popular culture were “translated” into different and competing discourses, thus contributing to a layered cultural memory. The main concern here is the specific phase of this “translation” in Shakespeare’s age and works, since all these historical-religious-attitudinal changes coincide with the transition from a predomimantly oral popular culture to a written one. An informative rendition of these problems can be found in Theseus’s words in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: HIPPOLYTA ’Tis strange my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. THESEUS More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. ................................ The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (5.1.1–3, 12–17, emphasis mine)20

Theseus’s denial and judgement on “fairy toys” and “antique fables” illustrate the aristocratic and educated refusal of popular culture, fairies of popular beliefs, the toys and tales of early childhood, deeming them unacceptable for the rational adult mind, to which they all seem “antique” (a variant spelling of “antic,” a synonym for the later appearing term, the “grotesque”). According to Lamb, this attitude was also symptomatic of 20 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. and intr. by Harold F. Brooks, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).

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educated males of the middling sorts in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who tended to disregard and refuse their childhood playthings and pre-school experiences of “old wives’ tales” as opposed to the ideals transmitted to them through Humanist education.21 Therefore, Peter Burke’s important recognition of the “amphibious” nature of early modern subjects, who could take part in both the “great tradition” of elite culture and the “little tradition” of popular pastimes and beliefs,22 is supported and particularised by Lamb and others to fit the picture of late Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. Shakespeare himself being such an amphibious author, could well represent and harness both traditions working with success for the varied audience of the public theatre,23 although his nonjudgemental authorial attitude fortunately saved him from either denial or prejudice. In addition to a non-comittal approach, the changing attitudes of the middling sort might have contributed to his success in the theatre of his age, thanks to the “aesthetic of double pleasure, not only in an enjoyment in the low for its own sake, but in simultaneously registering one’s distance from the low,” as Lamb explains.24 Although Theseus refers to the imagination, the method of the poet’s pen shaping, naming and localising the transient and ephemeral is an apt metaphor for describing the transition from ritual to textual coherence. As Assmann summarises, ritual coherence is more characteristic of societies without writing, where a cyclical concept of time supports the collective memory represented in never-changing rituals. Textual coherence appears with literacy, and coalesces with the gradually canonised solidity of the “stream of tradition,”25 when ritual becomes text, which might be 21 Lamb, “Old wives tales,” in The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, 45–62. 22 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 9 et passim. 23 It should be kept in mind, however, that even Shakesperean plays written and produced for the aristocratic audience at the Blackfriars, exploited the popular with success, although the reasons might be different—a more politicised nostalgia for Merry Old England characterising even the Stuarts, cf. earlier. 24 Lamb, The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, 21. 25 On ritual and textual coherence, see Assmann, “Chapter 5. Cultural texts suspended between Writing and Speech,” in Religion and Memory, 101–21. The Oppenheimian “stream of tradition” is “a living river: it shifts its bed and the water it contains ebbs and flows. Some texts fall into oblivion, other ones are added; they are expanded, shortened, rewritten and anthologised in a constant flux. Gradually, the center and the perihery become identifiable structures. Because of their importance, certain texts acquire central status; they are copied and cited more frequently than others, and finally come to be seen as classics, embodying

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dangerous as it leaves room for alternative interpretations. In addition, texts may also be forgotten by not being read, therefore writing both preserves and endangers particular elements of cultural memory. The poet’s pen, i.e. writing serves the purposes of preservation, fixing meaning and “shaping,” however, with the potential concomitant side-effects of the danger of distortion and misapprehension (here the role of a “distorting” poetic imagination must also be mentioned). Writing may even paradoxically be a means of forgetting, as the “vessel” which contains the formerly quite amorphous content might also drop out of memory by not being read and not being cyclically-communally repeated. Thus lieux de mémoire,26 places for remembering become textual loci, though their interpretation is individualised and they become subjects for potential criticism as opposed to a former communal understanding. The “poet’s pen” with its name-giving raises another problem in relation to canons. What is canonised, fixed out of the vast and indeterminate field of meanings of Assmannian cultural texts?27 We might gain significant insights by examining the role Shakespeare’s canonised texts play in fixing meaning, brought into relief by non-canonical contemporary variations of the same theme. Contemporary written texts have already fixed meaning to a certain extent but in face of a high variety of competing discourses (e.g. related to shrews, hobby-horses) the Shakespearean text had to face the Hamletian dilemma of choosing from a number of possibilties and finally settling on a limited number of possibilities that suited his purposes, therefore the version of a cultural text, however complex it may be, might easily deviate from the total number of possible meanings. For instance, contemporary popular discourses regarding shrew-taming (e.g. Here Begynneth a Merry Jest of a normative and formative values.”Assmann, Religion and Memory, 40. Cf. also Tass-Thienemann comparing the development of language with the flow of a river, where we know the surface, “the usage, the debris of everyday life floating on the surface,” but are unaware of the submerged material, “the sedimentation of past centuries;” his “psychonalytical interpretation” of language dealing with “the messages of the past as they become ossified and preserved in our present-day verbal material.” (Tass-Thienemann, Understanding the Unconscious Meaning, 225–26). 26 “Such aides-mémoires are also the lieux de mémoire, memory sites in which the memory of the entire national or religious communities is concentrated, monuments, rituals, feast days and customs.” Assmann, Religion and Memory, 8–9. 27 “By ‘cultural texts’ we understand all sign complexes, that is, not just texts, but also dances, rites, symbols, and the rest, that possess a particular normative and formative authority in the establishment of meaning and identity.” Assmann, Religion and Memory, 123.

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Shrewd and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morelles Skin, for Her Good Behavyor, printed by Hugh Jackson, 1550) did entail wife-beating or severe physical punishment of the shrew, while Kate the Curst in The Taming of the Shrew is tamed without a slap, and is considered a shrew already before her marriage. Shakespeare’s special siginificance as a cultural icon for centuries calls for two further possible directions in research. A map of meanings can be drawn regarding hobby-horses with special regard to Shakespearean versions in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The manifestation of these problems in contextualised meanings in later centuries might also be examined, i.e. how Shakespearean “fixed” texts are translated into different discourses/languages in later works; what is retained from the textualised meaning under altered conditions. Therefore, the influence of Shakespearean texts on stabilising meaning and associations needs to be examined. Translations in different languages may provide valuable case studies in this respect. The Shakespearean production of early modern popular culture appears in different forms: sometimes it works similarly to the most usual method of Shakespeare’s contemporary playwrights, i.e. in direct references to festivals, characters, etc. The best-known morris reference is made to Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2, act 3, scene 1: “I have seen / Him caper upright like a wild Morisco / Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells,”28 or in the mostly Fletcherian Two Noble Kinsmen, where a whole group of morrisdancers give a performance.29 Relying on the audience’s intimate knowledge of the things mentioned, they mostly serve the same purpose as mentioning a “maypole,” “May Day,” i.e. as “popular emblems that conjure[d] up an entire scene in which the carefully coded symbols were familiar to everyone.”30 Laroque’s phrase of a “popular emblem” is particularly apt— partly due to the popularity of emblem books in the age, but more importantly alluding to the method of ut pictura poesis, the interdependence of word and image in an emblem. This way even a direct verbal reference to a hobby-horse, like the one in Love’s Labour’s Lost (see later), could evoke a whole range of meanings and images, especially if this potential 28

William Shakespeare, King Henry VI Part 2, ed. Ronald Knowles, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (London: Methuen, 1999). 3.1.363–65. It needs to be mentioned that Cade was most probably played by William Kemp, one of the most famous morris dancers of his age, so these lines are pregnant with double-edged irony. 29 Brissenden’s informative essay on Shakespeare and the morris collects all these references, although he does not offer any serious categorisation and explanation for them (Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris”). 30 Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World, 46.

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was exploited by the poet—and Shakespeare was never one to miss such a chance. Poetic talent prompted Shakespeare to move further along this way and besides the powers of evoking associations from outside the play, he often made these references essential to either character and/or plot. Examples are numerous from Ophelia’s love ballad to Poor Tom’s exorcist chanting, however, what seems the most interesting from the point of view of a transient popular culture is the nostalgia ingrained in Falstaff’s character and the play of Hamlet. Falstaff has often been recognised as a Lord of Misrule, the clownish Vice, the corpulent King Carnival of Brueghel’s famous picture The Battle of Carnival and Lent (1559).31 However, this interpretation tends to simplify the complex representation of carnival in Falstaff’s figure. Shakespeare—instead of simply mirroring aspects of popular culture and festivals—rather preserves and utilises the problems inherent in them. Falstaff’s carnival starts losing its appeal very early, after act 2 in Henry IV, Part 1—the moment he leaves the natural homeland of carnival, the tavern, he and his carnival become corrupted, Appetite becomes Greed, his jokes are misplaced or mistimed,32 his power over Prince Hal is slipping away. Nostalgia is inherent in his figure, as Falstaff seems the greatest and most mythical figure in retrospect. I would even 31 A great number of chapters, articles and even a monograph attest to the popularity of this approach. The following list of works is by no means exhaustive: chapters in C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Ohio: World Publishing, 1967); Neil Rhodes, Elizatbethan Grotesque (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980); three essays in Shakespeare and Carnival: After Bakhtin, ed. R. Knowles (London: Macmillan, 1998); David Ruiter, Shakespeare’s Festive History: Feasting, Fasting and Lent in the Second Henriad (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 32 Cf. in Henry IV, Part 1 how carnivalesque light-heartedness turns to cynicism when Falstaff is speaking about his recruits: “[T]ut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men” (4.2.64–66). Or, when he is offering a bottle of sack to Hal in the battlefield with the words “there’s that will sack a city,” and the Prince throws the bottle back at him: “What, is it a time to jest and dally now?” (5.3.54–56). His final joke of stabbing the dead Hotspur and carrying him away as his own trophy cannot be incorporated in the careless and merry world of carnival either. The second part even robs him of his perfect audience, Prince Hal, and the little though witty Page and the dumb country judges offer no match and foil for Falstaff. He is banished at the end of Part 2, and the city comedy of The Merry Wives of Windsor presents Falstaff as the comic butt—to be tricked, ducked in water, burnt with candles by children dressed up as fairies. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (London: Thomson, 2002).

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surmise that his career in the three “Falstaff plays” (Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor) dramatises the ambiguous fate of popular festivities in the last decade of Elizabethan times, when they become “forgotten” thus contributing to a nostalgic recalling of Merry Old England.33 Hamlet to an even greater extent exploits the theme of popular culture in relation to the main issues within the play, since remembrance and forgetting constitute an integral part of the crux of questions raised by Hamlet, where the father’s ghost appears intermingled with the ghost of popular culture: HAMLET: Then there is hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But by’r lady a must build churches then, or else shall a suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot.’ (3.2.129–33)34

As the “forgotten” hobby-horse makes an appearance in the lines of Prince Hamlet immediately preceding the dumb show of The Murder of Gonzago, trouble ensues both within the court of Denmark and regarding the interpretation of popular culture within the play. The Prince is full of frenzied joking, ackowledging his role as the “only jig-maker,” referring to bawdy sexuality in accosting Ophelia: “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” “That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.” He is denying but representing “country manners” (with the intended pun on “cunt”).35 In

33

This nostalgia is quite characteristic of Shakespeare (cf. Duke Senior’s “merry band” in As You Like It, or the brigands in the woods in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, who recall the jolly company of the Robin Hood ballads more than any real villains). However, Jonson could not be accused of such nostalgic softness, cf. the Scrivener’s words, who promises “neither to look back to the sword-andbuckler age of Smithfield, but content him with the present” (Bartholmew Fair, Induction, 12–13.). Sword and buckler were the symbols of swaggerers of a bygone age, replaced later by the rapier and the dagger as it is nostalgically recalled by Pompey in Measure for Measure (4.3.14–15). Ben Jonson, Bartholmew Fair, The New Mermaids Series, ed. G.R. Hibbard, (London: A&C Black, 1994); William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, ed. J. Lever, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London: Routledge, 1987). 34 W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 1997). The quotations in the paragraph are all from 3.2.110–23. The only siginificant textual variant in the quotes is “he” in F for “a” in Q1. 35 Cf. the phrase “cuntry dance” of ballads with bawdy content, with an unambiguous sexual meaning. Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early

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sum, while mentioning “forgotten” hobby-horses, he is playing out all the carnivalesque aspects of the hobby-horse, its association with merriment, popular culture, country rituals, church ales, sexuality and carnivalesque inversion of the high and low. The words mentioned by Hamlet recall ready associations for the early modern audience: the jig, the liberal (sexual) behaviour at May Day and Midsummer, the church ales (of which the hobby-horse was an essential ingredient according to churchwardens’ accounts),36 and even ballads and proverbs. The phrase “For O for O the hobby-horse is forgot” is explained by OED and glossed in every edition of Hamlet as “proverbial from a lost old ballad.”37 In addition, the O-factor, i.e aspects of orality in the actual theatrical performance must not be forgotten, the gestures, innuendo, the tone of the actor’s voice recalling the performativity of popular quasidramatic phenomena, and the Fool of the morris. In this scene Hamlet’s figure mingles with the image of a true Lord of Misrule, presiding over a winter, i.e. indoor performance, preparing, arranging, commenting it for others.38 However, the Prince has a hidden agenda, and the satirical content of jigs is perceivable in his jibes at easy forgetting. Nostalgia for a changing popular culture underscores and strengthens his recalling of a better past, a lost golden age corresponding to Old Hamlet’s reign. Popular Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 174. 36 Cf. a number of data in Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, also OED referring to Churchwarden Accounts (1557), Nottingham city records (1569) with payments made “to Mynstrels and the Hobby-horse on May Day” and “to them that did play with ye hoby horse.” 37 Cf. also William Ringler, “The Hobby Horse Is Forgot,” Shakespeare Quarterly 4, no. 4 (Oct. 1953): 485, where Ringler refers to Kemp and Weelkes’ Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites for three voices (1608) offering no explanation but a reference to Kemp’s morris. Liebler provides a profound analysis of Hamlet on ritualistic-anthropoligical grounds in the chapter “The hobby-horse is forgot: Tradition and transition,” emphasising nostalgia but her conclusions go in directions different from mine (N. C. Liebler, Shakespeare’s Festive Tragedy: The Ritual Foundations of Genre [London and New York: Routledge, 1995], 173–96). Tracking this phrase in other texts of the age, however, needs a separate study. 38 Arthur Lindley explains this as a recurring phenomenon of revenge tragedies, where “[t]he revenger, by acting on the imperatives of a crazy world, invokes the spirit of carnival, which acts out inversion, disordering, umasking, and the chaotic fluidity of identity.” As he emphasises, “[T]he victim of misrule comes to control and embody it, he becomes, like Tamburlaine, a lord of misrule,” though at the end Hamlet must also be contained and replaced by Fortinbras and order. Arthur Lindley, Hyperion and the Hobbyhorse. Studies in Carnivalesque Inversion (London: Associated University Presses, 1996), 116 et passim.

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culture haunts him even in its death—the skull of Yorick, the court jester being a particularly apt emblem for this.39 Hamlet’s attitude to popular culture, however, is highly ambiguous. Like Theseus, as mentioned earlier, and Horatio, a gentleman with Humanist education, he tends to distance himself from the masses. Horatio’s cautious mistrust of supernatural phenomena and superstitions regarding them—“So have I heard and do in part believe it” (1.1.170)—nicely illustrates this ambivalent attitude. Hamlet also speaks condescendingly of Polonius and popular culture—“he is for a jig or a tale of bawdry or he sleeps” (2.2.496)—and of Claudius, “the king of shreds and patches” (3.4.103.), committing him to the associative semantic field of fools, bedlamites and the Vice. On the other hand, he makes informed use of the vocabulary and gestures of games, gambling and popular festivities.40 Considering another possible contemporary meaning of the word “hobby-horse,” the following interpretation may also be proposed: the hobby-horse was also a play-horse (as it is even today),41 appearing in a number of pictorial representations of the age.42 When it surfaced in texts, however, it often became a complex object of both nostalgia and dismissal as a children’s pastime not fit for grown-up men. George Puttenham’s reference to this toy—though alluding to both attitudes—emphasises the nostalgic aspect, even if in very cautious wording:

39

With respect to this passage Brissenden emphasises the resurrective potential in the hobby-horse, who after dying, springs up “as part of the ritual he is left, ‘forgotten,’ on the ground until he arises, erect and vital once more,” however, unfortunately he does not follow the implications in his article. Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris,” 10. 40 The same distancing attitude is observable in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, where the hobby-horse is listed among “the least toyes”: “Besides, for the solace of our people, and allurement of the Savages, we were provided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horsse, and Maylike conceits to delight the Savage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire means possible” in Richard Hakluyt, ed., Principal Navigations (London, 1589–90, 8:47). I would like to thank Kinga Földváry for drawing attention to this reference, which might lead to a further investigation of the hobbyhorse in colonial discourse. 41 “A (childs) hobbie-horse, bastob, ou cheval du bois d’un enfant” (1632, Sherwood, French-English Dictionary), as quoted in OED s.v. “hobby-horse.” 42 Cf. an early sixteenth-century Flemish calendar, in the British Library, and a French wood carving from 1587, as they appear in Walter Endrei and László Zolnay, Társasjáték és szórakozás a régi Európában [Games and Forms of Entertainment in Old Europe] (Budapest: Corvina, 1986), 15–16, 32–33.

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The hobby-horse in this meaning44 appears as an object of nostalgia, thus adding another subconcious interpretation to the Hamletian passage even for an early modern audience—the yearning for a lost golden age, that of easy play, innocence and childhood. The easy association between popular village festivities, children, foolishness and the toy hobby-horse appears in an illustration to Francis Delarem’s Will Sommers, King Heneryes Jester (1622–27?), which features Will Sommers with a jester’s cap tucked in his belt while in the background a boy is riding a hobbyhorse surrounded by other forms of entertainment.45 Hamlet’s feelings of bitter nostalgia might have resounded in the ears of the groundlings with some latent historical-political overtone as well. Burke highlights that the conservativism and nostalgia for the “good old order” of lower status groups is “not a mindless conservatism but a bitter awareness that change is usually at ordinary people’s expense.”46 Changes in sixteenth-century England were so swift, sudden and wide-ranging, that ordinary people were justified in their yearning for previous, in retrospect less troublesome times. Dr John Caius already in 1552 wrote about “the old world when this country was called merry England,”47 which became an enduring and often repeated expression and after the accession of James I, the reign of “Good Queen Bess” definitely seemed a lost golden age. According to the shifting periodical limits of living memory, or oral history, each bygone age appeared less complicated and easier to have 43

George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), http://etext.virginia.edu. This seems the only meaning easily available to non-English audiences, cf. the “faló” [wooden play-horse] or “hintaló” [rocking-horse] by Hungarian Hamlettranslators (János Arany, 1866, and Ádám Nádasdy, 1999). 45 Digital reproduction of Folger Shakespeare Library ART 256–916, http://luna .folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/6859o4. 46 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 232. 47 Caius as quoted in Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 89. 44

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lived in, the phrase “it was never a merry world since” gaining in popularity.

III. Etymology and the Palimpsest of Cultural Texts The haunting memory of words, the open or latent transmission and conflation of different meanings (in Tass-Thienemann’s phrase, the unconscious meaning in language, cf. his title) might also offer an explanation for the curious semantic multiplicity related to the hobbyhorse, as the morris hobby is applied for fools and wanton women in other Shakespearean texts. 48 A shift in meaning may be detected here, the reasons for which are manifold. In Much Ado About Nothing the hobbyhorse becomes a synonym for a dim-witted, stupid man or fool, with Benedick referring contemptously to Don Pedro and Claudio when exiting with Leonato: “I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak to you, which these hobby-horses must not hear” (3.2.64–66). The shift in meaning seems understandable as the Fool was another traditional figure of the morris dance, and both the hobby-horse and the Fool were responsible for a close interaction with the audience, collecting donations and frolicking with spectators, the Fool beating them with his bauble or pig’s bladder, the hobby-horse pulling girls under its costume. In the Betley window the hobby-horse appears with a ladle in its mouth for collecting donations, the ladle referring to the direct addressing of the audience as the hobby-horse cajoled the onlookers to pay. Foolishness and levity are easily attached to the behaviour of both the hobby-horse and the Fool, therefore the conflation of the two meanings must have seemed uncomplicated and easily available for an early modern audience, wellversed in the traditions of the morris.49 As the phrase “the hobby-horse is 48

The Shakespearean examples cited in this chapter include quotations from the following plays: William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, ed. A. R. Humphreys, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London: Routledge, 1994); Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd ser. (Walton-onThames: Th. Nelson, 1998); Othello, ed. M. R. Ridley, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); The Winter’s Tale, ed. J. H. P. Pafford, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London: Thomson, 2006). 49 Brissenden’s explanations for the line quoted from Much Ado About Nothing seem less persuasive to me: “He [Benedick] may merely mean that Claudio and Don Pedro are dim-witted, like a hobby-horse, or perhaps he is being contemptuous, as the Variorum editor seems to suggest, since the hobby-horse had fallen into disfavour under Puritan influence. A third possibility is that Benedick is implying that their talk is as empty as the hobby-horse’s wooden mouth,

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forgot” gained in popularity around the turn of the century, the interchangebility of fools and hobby-horses may have turned into substitution, as Ben Jonson attests: But see the Hobby-Horse is forgot. Foole, it must be your lot, To supply his want with faces And some other Buffon graces. You know how [. . .].50

The association between wanton women and the hobby-horse, however, proves more complicated, although it is well-known from the following Shakespearean quotations: ARMADO: But O—But O— MOTH: ‘The hobby-horse is forgot’ ARMADO: Call’st thou my love a ‘hobby-horse’? MOTH: No, master. The hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. (Love’s Labour’s Lost, 3.1.26–30) BIANCA [speaking to Cassio about the handkerchief]: This is some minx’s token, and I must take out the work; there, give it the hobby-horse, wheresoever you had it, I’ll take out no work on’t. (Othello, 4.1.151–53) LEONTES: My wife’s a hobby-horse; deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts to Before her troth-plight. (The Winter’s Tale, 1.2.276–78)

The hobby-horse in the previous quotations is explained in the glossaries as a “wanton, loose woman, even a prostitute,” which meaning manipulated by the dancer to open and shut with a dry clacking sound, but signifying nothing” (Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris,” 6). However, neither Benedick appears as one with Puritan sympathies nor the reference to the full-costumed hobby-horse (complete with headmask and snapping mouth) seems probable, as the late sixteenth–early seventeenth-century hobby-horses were rather the visible composite of a half-man, half-horse being. 50 Ben Jonson, Entertainment at Althrope (1603), 286–90, as e.g. quoted in William Montgomerie, “Folk Play and Ritual in Hamlet,” Folklore 67, no. 4 (Dec. 1956): 219. Although Montgomerie’s numerous associations between Hamlet and diverse folklore phenomena are definitely interesting, they are, however, too easily made without further analysis, therefore the reader is not convinced of their validity, e.g. as he links the “forgetting” of the hobby-horse to a concomitant fall of the monarchy (217).

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is further supported by the words “minx” or “hackney” or “flax-wench,” all alluding to a pejorative, degraded image of women, closely associated with sexuality. (The ‘O’ of Armado’s love pains being another bawdy reference to the female genital organ.) How and when did the image of hobby-horses played by a man and the image of wanton women intermingle? Folklore and anthropological studies explain this by pointing to the fertility aspect implied by the hobby-horse,51 who frightened and captured girls, sometimes taking them away “under its skirt,” i.e. the costume, which might account for a transposition of bawdy sexuality from one to the other. This is nicely expressed in the following short verse, which shows hobby-horses and women in parallel grammatical structures and a rhyming pattern, emphasising an equal share of joy for both parties: But when the Hobby-horse did wihy, oh pretty wihy, Then all the Wenches gaue a tihy, oh pretty tihy.52

“Wihy/Wehee” indicates the horse’s sound from Middle English times onwards, “tihy/teehee” already appeared in relation to female sexual joy in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where Alisoun, the young wanton wife in the Miller’s Tale did “tehee” (line 3740), i.e. tittered and giggled after Absolon kissed Nicholas’s backside.53 OED records this word meaning “a representation of the sound of a light laugh, usually derisive [. . .] usually in female use,” citing examples ranging from Middle English to early modern times.54 The onomatopoeic nature of both rhyming words (wihy, tihy) even more emphatically refers to the strong orality or the “acoustic factor” and the atmosphere of joyful and bawdy entertainment. However, the shift in gender still remains a problem. The Maid Marion or the Lady of the morris was played by men, and although we have ample evidence of cross-dressing in festivals and on the stage, they mostly entail men dressed up as women, while in these quotes there is no uncertainty of gender— 51 Cf. Brissenden stressing “the use of the hobby-horse in fertility rituals, with the death of the year and its resurrection at spring” and “the costume of the hobbyhorse, with its protruding head offers ample opportunity for symbolically phallic action,” pulling girls under the skirt/costume. Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris,” 6. 52 Cobbes prophecies, his Signes and Tokens, 1614, Sig. D3, as quoted in Brissenden, “Shakespeare and the Morris,” 6. 53 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. A. C. Cawley (London: J.M. Dent, 1996). 54 OED s.v. “wehee” and “teehee.”

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they directly refer to women. I suggest that different semantic fields and circulating cultural narratives intermingled in the last decades of the sixteenth century: popular shrew-narratives were superimposed on the tradition of the vanishing (and commercialized, cf. Kemp’s) morris. The shrew narratives implied the association of taming women and horses, which was even further strengthened by the original meaning of a “hobby,” ie. a kind of Irish horse (OED, first reference from Florio, 1598)55 and the concept of “mounting or leaping” women sexually, for which again a great number of examples can be detected in the age. “To take his leap” was the technical term for the copulation of mare and stallion, which is exploited with regard to both animals and human beings by Jonson’s Stage-Keeper in Bartholmew Fair when he says, “Nor has he the canvas cut i’ the night for a hobby-horse man to creep in to his sheneighbour and take his leap there!” (Induction, 19–21). Here, however, the hobby-horse is still a man. According to Lamb, “to take a hobby-horse turne or two” also referred to the illicit sexual activity inherent in the figure of the hobby-horse,56 and as she showed in her informative and inspiring book, most aspects of popular culture had a strong tendency towards the sexual, like in the case of fairies. Light women and hobbyhorses featured in playtexts and even in emblem books, cf. George Wither’s recounting of warnings against marriage: “Some, fancy Pleasures; and such Flirts as they, / With ev’ry Hobby-horse will run away.”57 Besides the comparisons in dramatic texts between the gait of the horse and the wife—both considered goods of the husband58—the conduct books 55

1598, Florio Vbino “a hobbie horse such as Ireland breedeth”; 1609, Dekker, Gvll’s Horne-book “At the doors, with their masters hobby-horses, to ride to the new play”; 1614, Jonson, Bartholomew Fair 3.4. “A Carroch [. . .] with four pyed hobbyhorses” as quoted in OED s.v. “hobby-horse.” 56 “A respected and well-loved performer at church ales in the reign of Henry VIII, the hobby-horse came to signify low taste or even illicit sexuality by the close of Elizabeth’s reign.” Lamb, The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, 15. 57 George Wither, A collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, Quickened witheh metricall illustrations, both Morall and divine: And Disposed into lotteries, that instruction, and good counsell, may bee furthered by an honest and pleasant recreation (1635), Book 2, XXI. The English Emblem Book Project, http://emblem .libraries.psu.edu/withetoc.htm. 58 Cf. Joan Hartwig, “Horses and Women in The Taming of the Shrew,” Huntington Library Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Autumn, 1982): 285–94. She also mentions a 1534 treatise on husbandry which contains the word “brydell,”the “leaping,” the idea of commodity and the management and “gait” of horses and women.

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of the age, advising good household management frequently referred to the similarities of taming horses and wives,59 which was made even more direct by the homeopathic practices of early modern ballads. The husband in the anonymous ballad, Here Begynneth a Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morelles Skin, for Her Good Behavyor60 first beats and kills the old horse Morell, then cudgels the disobedient shrewish wife into unconsciousness, and finally puts her into the salted hide of the dead horse, thus equating them physically. (Of course, afterwards the shrew is tamed, and she confesses to the husband’s unquestioned power.) Social humiliating practices, like the Skimmington ride, carting, or the scold’s bridle also associated the loose tongues and loose behaviour of women with horses. The Skimmington ride, though intended to punish mismatched couples, henpecked husbands and shrewish wives, featured a neighbour as a substitute victim, who had to ride through the village, often facing the tail of the horse amongst peals of laughter and derision. The association between a mismatched horse and rider, and wife and husband was easy to make for the early modern onlookers, due to the still prevalent analogous thinking of the supposed superiority of husband over wife, human over beast, will/reason over passion. Some forms of punishment for shrews and scolds61 also entailed humiliation and association with horses. The two categories (the shrew respresenting “home misrule,” the scold being a legal category) often overlapped, as women’s major weapon has always been their tongue,62 and any female subject opposing the traditional hierarchy was often demonised as a shrew, a scold or a witch. One form of punishment was carting, where 59 A number of insightful studies support this argument. Cf. Peter F. Heaney, “Petruchio’s Horse: Equine and Household Mismanagement in The Taming of the Shrew,” Early Modern Literary Studies 4.1 (May, 1998): 2.1–12; LaRue Love Sloan, “ ‘Caparisoned like the horse’: Tongue and Tail in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew,” Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (Sept. 2004): 1.1–24. 60 As it appears in eg. William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, ed. Frances E. Dolan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 257–88. 61 For a good summary see Lynda E. Boose, “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 2 (Summer, 1991): 179–213. 62 Contemporary texts and images abound in references to silencing the tongue. An edifying emblem is Whitney’s Uxoriae virtutes, where the virtuous wife is depicted silencing herself, “Her finger staies her tongue to runne at large.” Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and other devises, For the moste part gathered out of sundrie writers, Englished and Moralized. And divers newly devised (Leyden: Francis Raphelengius, 1586), 93. “The English Emblem Book Project,” http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/biblio.htm#Whitney.

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the female offender was put on an open cart and wheeled through the town. Although not on a horse, the horse-drawn cart and the woman on it were in metonymical relation, being objects of derision and shame, as it is clearly recognised by Shakespeare’s Katharina Minola, who defies being made a stale, i.e a laughing stock for men’s derision: BAPTISTA If either of you both love Katharina, Because I know you well and love you well, Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure. GREMIO [Aside] To cart her rather: she’s too rough for me. There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife? KATHARINA I pray you, sir, is it your will To make a stale of me amongst these mates? (The Taming of the Shrew, 1.1.52–58, emphasis mine)

The scold’s bridle served as an even more obvious connection between unruly horses and women—although the first extant references to it come from after Shakespeare’s career, it might have been known earlier.63 The metal cage surrounding the woman’s head was equipped with a metal (often spiky) gag put into the mouth, effectively silencing and hurting the unruly member of the female body. The scold was then led through the town/village, often on a leash, thus emphasizing not only her inferiority but also her bestiality and similarity to horses. Even today, it is common knowledge that boisterous horses are said to have a “rigid or hard” mouth, which has to be tamed, and managing the horse relies heavily on the controlling power of the horse’s bridle, on the power over its mouth. Although some scholars doubt that such an instrument of humiliation and torture was in use in Shakespeare’s time, the numerous references to bridling the unruly tongue in texts and images of the age render this particular historical problem less relevant from our point of view as metaphorically the association was ready-made for Shakespeare’s contemporaries. The word “bridle” presents another interesting crux of meanings—it often appears in relation to marriage, even in such prestigious and normative texts of the age as the Homily of the State of Matrimony, 63 For more detailed information on scold’s bridles and ducking-stools for scolds see Boose, “Scolding Brides” or William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, ed. Dolan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 288–96. The first pictorial reference comes from 1655 from Ralph Gardiner’s England’s Grievence Discovered (London, 1655), where we see a scold with the metal cage on her head and the tongue suppressor in her mouth, being led on a leash by a man (reprinted in Dolan, ed., The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, 291).

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appearing in The Second Tome of Homilies, of Such Matters as Were Promised and Entitled in the Former Part of Homilies (first published in 1563). This text, due to its wide circulation and ready accessibility became one of the major and most well-known texts of the Elizabethan age. Therefore the following sentences on marriage resounded in the ears of Shakespeare’s contemporaries again and again either by being read or heard in church: The worde of Almyghtie God doeth testifie and declare, whence the originall begynnyng of Matrimonie commeth, and why it is ordeyned. It is instituted of God, to th’ intent that man and woman should lyve lawfully in a perpetuall frendly felowship, to bryng foorth fruite, and to auoyde fornication. By whiche meanes, a good conscience myght be preserued on both parties, in brydlyng the corrupt inclinations of the fleshe, within the limittes of honestie.64 (emphasis mine)

Already in the second sentence the homily refers to the “bridling” aspect of marriage, one of the main virtues of which is controlling and channelling sexual desire. This parallel between women and horses is supported by the fact that for the late sixteenth–early seventeenth-century mind, the words “bridle,” “bridal,” and “brideale” must have sounded homophones, thus strengthening the ties between horses, women, marriage, and curbing unwanted desire. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is also given the whip and the “bridel,” symbols of governing and controlling animals and passion after having made peace with her fifth husband, Jankyn: “He yaf me al the bridel in myn hond / To han the governance of hous and lond, / And of his tonge, and of his hond also” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 813–15).65 I suppose that despite Chaucer’s popularity and the many editions his major works enjoyed in the sixteenth century, this association of governance and bridling is not a question of literary influence on Shakespeare but seems to have been imprinted on the cultural memory of the English people from very early on.66

64

From the first page from the first edition of A Homily of the State of Matrimony, from The Second Tome of Homilies (1563) as reprinted in Dolan, ed. The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, 170. Later editions of the homilies made no significant changes to these sentences. 65 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. A. C. Cawley (London: J. M. Dent, 1996). Cf. also the “wehee/wihy” in The Miller’s Tale and numerous other associations of women and horses. 66 Although this seems to be a more general early modern phenomenon, also present in sixteenth-century Hungarian libellous and edifying popular verse as I

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The phenomenon of overlapping meanings regarding hobby-horses and women was probably strengthened by the easy trespassing of gender boundaries in stigmatised figures, as not only a witch could be of uncertain gender (cf. the bearded Weird Sisters of Macbeth), but also shrews. In The Taming of the Shrew after Grumio’s impromptu and virtuoso performance of the farcical story of the honeymoon ride (Kate’s poor horse stumbling in the mud, the bride falling and wading through dirt, the bridle bursting),67 Petruchio is also referred to as a shrew: “By this reckoning he’s more shrew than she” (4.1.76). Other contemporary texts also support the interpretation that in Shakespeare’s time the Middle English meanings of the “shrew” were not entirely forgotten,68 devilish unruliness could characterise both man and woman in the mind of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: GREMIO: Why he’s a devil, a devil, a very fiend. TRANIO: Why, she’s a devil, a devil, the devil’s dam. (3.2.153–54)

The possible demonization of the hobby-horse, or rather an association between the devil, the demonic and aspects of popular culture is another later phenomenon worth closer scrutiny as it appears in e.g. RowleyDekker-Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton (1621, publ. 1658), and also contributing to the semantic field of the smaller devil “Hobbididance or Hobberdidance,” familiar from Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Popish Impostures (1603) and King Lear (1608). Harsnett lists the following attempted to illustrate in my article on the canivalesque shrew in English and Hungarian cultural memory, Pikli, “Across Cultures.” 67 It is important to note that most references to horses (Petruchio’s sick horse, this anecdote, etc.) in the Folio version of The Taming of the Shrew are missing from the earlier (probably bad quarto) version of The Taming of A Shrew (1594, 1596). Therefore the association of women and horses is strengthened by 1623—either due to a Shakespearean preference (as there are numerous examples for this) or to a more solidified tie between the two in the cultural memory of early modern England. 68 Cf. OED s.v. “shrew”: Holinshed, 1587, “These are some of the policies of such shrews or close booted gentlemen;” Dekker, 1609, “Such as were shrewes to their wiues.” Also Chaucer’s Wife of Bath calls one of her five husbands an “olde dotard shrewe” (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, 291). The figure of the Wife of Bath abounds in references to and comparisons with the behaviour of horses, from stating that “For as an hors I koude byte and whyne” (l. 386) to having a “coltes tooth,” meaning lasciviousness (602). Or, in her tale speaking of women’s behaviour, she emphasises a dislike of truth-telling by “For trewly, there is noon of us alle, / If any wight wol clawe us on the galle, / That we nel kike; for he seith us sooth” (939–41), i.e. women will kick as horses if they dislike men’s speech.

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devils in his work: “Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto were foure deuils of the round, or Morrice,” and Poor Tom complains that “Five fiends haue beene in poore Tom at once, Of lust, as Obidicut, Hobbididence Prince of dumbness.”69 The OED cautiously suggests that the word itself may come from the morris hobby-horse or simply hobby and the French words “de danse,” however, we need further texts to adequately map this coalescence. As Tass-Thienamann emphasises, meanings in language can achieve “cumulative continuity,” according to which “survival meanings, though forgotten and repressed, remain alive in the no man’s land that is called preverbal, prelogical or subconscious [. . .]. In their twilight state they may grow and change, crystallize around new ideas, associate with one another.”70 Although his strict adherence to the main tenets of Freudian psychoanalysis (sexuality, repression, Oedipal state, etc.) and a questionable method of comparing meanings of words from different languages with little or no direct relation to each other at times appear severely limiting, his above mentioned metaphors of the twilight zone and crystallization aptly describe what happened to the “shrew” and the “hobby-horse.” Clusters of meaning related to horses and women were unconsciously superimposed on each other in the minds of Elizabethan and Jacobean people. Similarly to a palimpsest page of a codex, meanings became translucent and loomed through the primary context-determined interpretation of the word. Out of the circulation of a great number of popular (and to some extent even elite, Biblical-religious) discourses, a special combination arose regarding the hobby-horse, the interpretation of which may take us closer to understanding the Shakespearean meanings and aspects of early modern popular culture.71

69

OED s.v. “Hobbididance, hoberdidance.” Tass-Thienemann, The Unconscious Meaning, 9. 71 The author wishes to express her gratitude to the participants of the seminar “Shakespeare and Early Modern Popular Culture” at the 9th World Shakespeare Congress, Prague, 17–22 July 2011, especially to David Cressy, Francois Laroque, and the conveners, Janet Clare and Paola Pugliatti for their encouragement and insightful remarks which helped to clarify certain points. 70

THIS GREAT SHIP OF FOOLS: THE SHIP OF FOOLS AND ELIZABETHAN/JACOBEAN DRAMA1 ZITA TURI

A ship laden with fools embarking on a journey towards the unknown: these are the most commonly known features concerning ‘the ship of fools’ metaphor. The image owes much of its fame to Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (1494), which enjoyed massive popularity and left its hallmark on visual and literary representations throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. In this enumeration of folly each chapter depicts a type of fool both in an implemented woodcut, designed by Albrecht Dürer and his workshop, and an accompanying poem, which reflects on the woodcut. Following the 1494 Basel edition the Das Narrenschiff (originally written in High German) was translated into Low German, Latin, and French and it infiltrated Renaissance literature and visual arts in the sixteenth century. Alexander Barclay, the translator of the English text, used not the original German text but Paul Rivière’s French (La Nef des Fols du Monde, 1497) and Jacob Locher’s Latin version (Stultifera Navis, 1497). Barclay’s translation was published by Richard Pynson in 1509,2 simultaneously with Henry Watson’s prose version, also in 1509, published by Wynkyn de Worde.3 These editions were followed by a 1517 reprint of Watson’s version and Barclay’s text was reprinted in 1570 by John Cawood. After the first editions of The Ship of Fools several adaptations, such as the anonymous Cock Lorell’s Bote (ca. 1510) from Wynkyn de Worde’s publishing company, or Robert Copland’s The Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous (ca. 1536), were written. In addition, there are textual references to 1

The research for this paper was carried out in Cambridge, UK with the support of the Eötvös Scholarship of the Hungarian State. 2 Sebastian Brant, The Shyp of Folys, trans. Alexander Barclay from Latin, French, and Dutch (London: Richard Pynson, 1509). 3 Sebastian Brant, The Shyppe of Fooles, trans. Henry Watson from the French version. With woodcuts (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1509).

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The Ship in such representative Renaissance texts as Thomas Nashe’s preface to Sidney’s first edition of Astrophil and Stella (1591), Gabriel Harvey’s Pierces Supererogation (1593), Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), or Robert Fludd’s Mosaicall Philosophy (1659). The Cawood edition brought The Ship of Fools, which seems to have turned into a metaphor by the end of the sixteenth century, back in vogue, and the image is detectable in such playwrights’ works as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Nashe or, William Shakespeare.4 These dramatic texts were rich and frequently inexhaustible, they were open to other texts and therefore might be considered as hypertexts, which were organic parts of a wider and ever changing artistic constellation. In his book, Theatre and Humanism, Kent Cartwright points out that since the rivalry among various forms of entertainment in the late sixteenth century was huge, playwrights had to be flexible and adopt a “paradigmatic playwriting strategy.”5 In order to satisfy the public’s taste they imitated others or employed familiar patterns or character types, but they also added some unexpected twists to the piece.6 The references to The Ship of Fools in Elizabethan/Jacobean drama suggest that it became a pattern for playwrights, which raises a series of questions. Which features of The Ship of Fools might have been exploitable for Renaissance dramatists and what do the allusions to The Ship of Fools denote in the plays of such playwrights as Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker, or William Shakespeare? Are the seemingly random references to the ship interrelated, and more importantly, are they symptomatic of the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage conventions?

I One of the main difficulties facing the researcher of The Ship of Fools and Elizabethan/Jacobean drama in general is that apart from brief 4

There are traces of The Ship of Fools in other playwrights’ works, such as John Marston’s The Fawn (1606), Robert Greene’s The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay (probably 1589), however, the scope of this article demands certain limitations and therefore I restrict my interpretation to these three dramatists. 5 Kent Cartwright, Theatre and Humanism: English Drama in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 223. 6 Cartwright, Theatre and Humanism, 223. The references to The Ship of Fools in Elizabethan/Jacobean drama suggest that the metaphorical use of the title of the work became a pattern for contemporaneous playwrights, which raises a series of questions.

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discussions there seem to be no studies devoted explicitly to this topic. Secondary sources, however, on Brant’s text and its afterlife in England are available. The most authoritative scholarly works on the issue are predominantly products of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century positivist critical tradition, which was fundamentally concerned with accumulating historical and philological facts in order to set up a literary hypothesis or validate a literary phenomenon.7 This scholarly method can be useful since it provides a solid philological background for the texts, thus enabling their historical contextualisation; yet, the mere accumulation of such information does not explain the dynamics of the literary phenomenon in question. In the 1940s Edwin H. Zeydel’s book changed the landscape of Brant scholarship: not only did he provide a modern translation of The Ship of Fools but he also attached a thorough introduction and commentary to the primary text with a more complex approach. In this introductory chapter Zeydel implies that The Ship of Fools embraces several literary traditions, from the Bible through the legal texts of the fifteenth century, to the popular culture of the age. He also hints briefly at its possible ritual origins when he mentions some earlier interpretations of the ship which claim that the fools’ ship, often represented by vessels or wagons, would float during carnival time laden with various types of comical or fantastic characters as a tribute to the goddesses of spring, who bring peace and fertility to mankind.8 Zeydel does not elaborate on the significance of ritual and carnival, instead, he provides a long list of possible sources Brant might have relied on. Not until Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization (1964) do we get a lengthy theoretical argumentation on the implications of the ship of fools metaphor as a literary force. Foucault’s centre of interest is not only Brant’s text, but rather the whole ship of fools imagery. Instead of focusing on specific works of art, Foucault is more interested in the dynamics of the ship of fools and he establishes his discourse on social grounds, claiming that with the disappearance of leprosy at the end of the 7

See T. H. Jamieson, Notice of the Life and Writings of Alexander Barclay, the Translator of Brandt's “Ship of Fools” (Edinburgh, 1874); C.H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1886); Aurelius Pompen, The English Versions of the Ship of Fools; a Contribution to the History of the Early French Renaissance in England (London; New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1925). 8 Edwin H. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brandt Translated into Rhyming Couplets with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 11–12.

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Middle Ages the hiatus of social outcasts was filled by madmen.9 According to Foucault, the ritual significance of the ship of fools lies in its purifying function: the incarcerated fools were driven away by the sea, thus purging the community of sin. The fool is placed into a liminal position, on the one hand he is cast into the middle of the sea utterly freed from the constraints of society; and on the other he is confined to the ship as a prisoner. Foucault suggests that folly makes people blind, and thus they become lost. However, madmen, reminders of truth, see interrelations in earthly life, normally invisible for sane people, whose attention has to be drawn upon the imperceptible notions of life. In the performing arts the fool fulfils this function: during the Feast of Fools, popular in Flanders and northern Europe, social and moral criticism were formulated through festive performances, often featuring foolish characters.10 However thought-provoking and stimulating Foucault’s work might be, the researcher of the ship of fools has to take his words with a pinch of salt. Even if many of his statements are persuasive (particularly those describing the expulsion of the incarcerated fools as a scapegoating ritual), his claims are often speculative and overtheorised, with little philological, historical, or textual evidence.11 Despite its shortcomings, however, one cannot ignore Foucault’s work during the discourse on The Ship of Fools, since it (re)introduced the text to a wide spectrum of readers. In the 1990s Robert C. Evans devoted an article explicitly to Barclay’s translation, which summarised the critical responses to the text and also provided a theoretical background for the work. He attempted to canonise Barclay by claiming that due to the considerable differences between the original German text and the French and Latin translations which Barclay used for his version, The Ship of Fools may be thought of as an original text rather than a translation. Evans also stated that the text probably had some impact on playwrights such as Nashe or Dekker, however, he omits Shakespeare. He attributes the impact mainly to the translation of Barclay, though he also mentions Watson’s version.12 Although it is impossible to trace back which edition could have inspired the dramatists in question, 9

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001), 4. 10 Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 11–12. 11 It can be generally said that the text lacks precise references and in some cases, like Foucault’s claim that there was an actual ship of fools, the reader cannot trace back the sources, simply because there are no sources provided. 12 Robert C. Evans, “The Forgotten Fool: Alexander Barclay’s Ship of Fools,” In Fools and Folly. Edited by Clifford Davidson (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), 47–72.

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the quality of Barclay’s text, both in the case of the implemented woodcuts and the translation, is incomparably higher. Comparing the two editions and the other volumes of Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde it becomes obvious that the profiles of the two publishers, are different: Pynson produced high-quality books, which were typographically outstanding, whereas Wynkyn de Worde (the assistant of William Caxton) popularised the printing press and produced “sixteenth-century pulp fiction,” texts which were not necessarily quality works, but met the increasing demands of the market. Renaissance playwrights were likely to have been familiar with the Barclay version, on the one hand, because of its qualitative advantage, on the other hand the 1570 Cawood edition of Barclay’s translation was closer in time to these dramatists. During my research, apart from brief comments in brackets or footnotes,13 I have not encountered a study which would confirm this specific interrelation. Nevertheless, these scattered allusions make the imagery seem omnipresent and point towards the assumption that, in one way or another, Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatists made use of The Ship of Fools.

II Zeydel’s and Foucault’s suggestion that Brant’s Das Narrenschiff has its origins in popular culture’s festive performances of the continent (spring rituals and the Feast of Fools, or the German Fastnachtspiele) appears to be convincing, since the ship offers enormous theatrical potential. Barbara Swain mentions that prior to Brant, German poetry often made use of the ship as a container for collections of undesirables. She adds that Brant may have heard a mock oration at Heidelberg University, which exploited the ship-motif in a similar fashion during which the orator summoned various characters into the “Lichtschiff” or ship of irresponsibility. This mock oration was probably rooted in the folk custom which was still practiced in Brant’s time and during which a ship, the emblem of fertility, was dragged through the streets of German towns at Shrovetide.14 Swain does not provide textual evidence to support this idea, though using ships as “stages” during festive occasions was undoubtedly widespread throughout Europe. She continues by saying that 13

Kenneth Muir, for instance, in his Macbeth edition suggests that the ‘tomorrow monologue’ can be traced back to Barclay’s The Ship of Fools (William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Kenneth Muir, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. [London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006], 153). 14 Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 120.

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these ships may have been drawn through the streets and the players, often fools, would perform to the crowds. Since carnivalesque events were massively popular all over Europe, the application of such an appealing element in The Ship of Fools might have been the means by which Brant could attract the popular audience he aimed at. Convincing as this may seem, Swain points out that there is no explicit allusion to the carnivalesque celebrations in Brant’s text.15 She is partly mistaken in that. Though there is no textual reference to carnival, there is a visual one, which suggests that Brant might have had the popular festivities in mind while compiling his text. The title pages of numerous German editions in the 1490s not only depict the ship laden with fools but also a horse-drawn cart full of various types of fools. Interestingly, this feature was cut from the Latin and French editions, and since the English text relied on these translations and not the original compilation, the title page lacks the cart. Nevertheless, in Barclay’s text there are allusions to the stage. In The Ship of Fools the references to the stage are mentioned for a performative rather than a liturgical purpose. In the chapter “Of the Sermon or erudition of vvisdome both to wise men and fooles” wisdom is standing “upon a stage on hye, / Cryeth to mankind with loude voyce in this wise / I truth exalt and vicious men despise.”16 In this passage the stage connotes a pulpit from which Wisdom can scorn and warn mankind and from which her superiority is also depicted in spatial terms. Similarly, in the chapter “Of the euill examples of elders geuen vnto youth” the text reads “Ye aged men rooted in foolishnes, / And foolishe parentes lewde of your language, / Unto our ship swiftly your selfe addresse, / Since ye be worthy therein to haue a stage.”17 In these lines the stage is rather a status, a position which awaits aged fools to fulfil. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the ‘stage’ as “a floor raised above the level of the ground for the exhibition of something to be viewed by spectators, and the word can be applied to a pulpit.”18 Barclay’s choice of the word is interesting since I have not found reference to the stage in Watson’s 15

Swain, Fools and Folly, 121. Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fooles. Translated by Alexander Barclay (London: Iohn Cavvood, 1570) 44r. John Cawood’s 1570 edition is the closest in time to Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights, therefore I quote this version throughout the paper. This second edition differs from the first one: some sections of the preface were moved to the end of the book and some chapers are not in the same order as in the 1509 edition. The text and the woodcuts are identical. 17 Brant, The Ship of Fooles, 1570, 89v. 18 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, Oxford: Calderon Press, 1989. 16

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translation (also based on the French version), which suggests that Barclay seems to have considered it significant to depict this accentuated space where noteworthy events take place. Peter Happé remarks that the fool offered a number of theatrical advantages: he could be inside and outside of the play as a character, or he could be an embodiment of the folly of other characters. Therefore his ubiquity made it possible for him to mingle with other fools, human characters, and with abstractions.19 Happé sees the relatively sudden appearance and the deepening awareness of the theatricality of the fool on the sixteenth-century English stage in the popularity of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. His main argument to substantiate this is that Erasmus used the “quasi-dramatic” device, the monologue, which by being read initiated a dialogue with the reader.20 He is certainly right in emphasising Erasmus’s impact in contemporary England and suggesting that his prose satire was later transferred to the stage of his time. Whilst highlighting that the Praise of Folly is an oration in the first person singular, Happé does not pursue this further. Barclay was a preacher and his translation, although not in the first person singular, also resembles an oration, in which instead of Folly, Wisdom stands on the pulpit and scorns the assembled fools. Hence, it seems reasonable to suggest that The Ship of Fools could have been equally significant in the development of the stage fool as the Praise of Folly. Tudor playwrights may have exploited Barclay’s text since the ship device had long been present in English dramatic practice. E. K. Chambers mentions that during the early spring festivals, surviving in the Plough Monday ceremonies, the plough had a central role in the rituals. A variant of this custom was common in certain maritime districts, where agricultural devices were substituted with sea vehicles. They were paraded round the scenes of the performances. Chambers adds that such processions were common in various parts of Germany and in England in Plymouth, Davenport, and Hull.21 The Noah play was performed on Plough Monday, and similar ship processions might have been present in the coastal area.22 The use of ships in artistic representations had long been common in England, especially in performative arts, hence no wonder that Barclay’s translation of the Das 19 Peter Happé, “Staging Folly in the Early Sixteenth Century: Heywood, Lindsay, and Others,” In Fools and Folly. Edited by Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), 75. 20 Happé, “Staging Folly,”74. 21 E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage II (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996), 120–21. 22 Chambers, The Medieval Stage II, 120.

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Narrenschiff became popular: this compilation depicted moral issues united with allegorical images of the ship’s crew. Whether The Ship of Fools can be regarded as an emblem book or not is still subject to disputes. The authoritative definition of an emblem book is based on Rosemary Freeman’s characterisation, according to which the requirements an emblem book has to meet are the following: “it has to be a collection of moral symbols; it should have pictures, or should postulate the existence of pictures; attached to each picture should be a motto or a brief sententia; there should be an explanatory poem or passage of prose in which the picture and motto are interpreted and a moral is drawn.”23 David Anderson argues that Barclay’s translation resembles emblem books even more strongly than Brant’s text, since Barclay provided a verse motto along with the Latin title and summary to accompany the picture and the main text.24 In addition, there is a historical feature which suggests that The Ship of Fools could be regarded as an emblem book. John Franklin Leisher in his book on Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems attempts to clarify the ambiguities surrounding the definition of the emblem and he characterises the genre in relation to its courtly counterpart, the impresa. The impresa is a device with a motto, mainly used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were easily mistaken for emblems among the contemporaries, so Andrea Alciati, the author of Emblemata (generally considered as the first emblem book printed in 1531), drew up a list of principles which would define them and distinguish imprese from emblems. According to this, an impresa consists of the “body (picture)” and “soul (motto),” it is “never obscure,” it has a “nice shape with no human forms in it,” and it must have “a poem which is not an idiom.”25 Despite this definition, Alciati himself in his Diverse Imprese (1549) does not follow his own definition and includes in his imprese human forms.26 While the emblem was most often based on some well-known mythological pattern and represented some moral doctrine beneficial for the whole community, the impresa was the means of Renaissance selffashioning. Leisher points out that the device came into vogue with the Field of Cloth of Gold, when Henry VIII revived the custom of wearing 23 Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books I (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), 238. 24 Quoted in Evans, “The Forgotten Fool,” 55. 25 John Franklin Leisher, Geoffrey Whitney’s “A Choice of Emblems” and its Relation to the Emblematic Vogue in Tudor England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952; repr.1987), 27. 26 Andrea Alciati, Diverse Imprese (Lione: per Masseo Bvonhomo, 1549).

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personal cognizances in order to impress his adversaries.27 These “emblems” were the subjects of the rivalry between the English and the French and in order to triumph Cardinal Wolsey commissioned Barclay to compose new imprese for the king.28 The Ship of Fools meets every one of Rosemary Freeman’s criteria and the fact that Barclay attached mottos to the chapters might indicate that he had an “emblem-impresa book” in mind when he compiled the volume. As Alciati’s vague definition suggests, the emblem and the impresa were not so strictly separated in the sixteenth century and even Alciati applies the terms “emblem” and “impresa” interchangeably (see Diverse Imprese).29 Since Barclay got the royal commission he must have been a master of these compound signs and seems to have been fully aware of the tradition, hence regarding his translation as an emblem book seems possible. If so, it would mean that The Ship of Fools preceded Alciati’s 1531 Emblemata, Ian van der Noot’s 1569 The Theatre of Wordlings, and Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems (1586), and as such would make Barclay’s book the first of this genre, not only in the English language but also printed in England.30 As Peter M. Daly emphasised, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drama was the most emblematic of all literary arts, combining a visual experience of character and gesture, silent tableau and active scene, with the verbal experience of spoken and occasionally written word.31 Distinguishing between topoi, symbol and emblem, however, might be problematic and Daly warns that images in dramatic texts should be labelled as emblematic only if their formal and structural qualities could be translated into the emblem of an emblem book. Mere similarities in a motif should not be mistaken for an emblematic reading.32 That is, for instance, if a metaphor or motif is only used for the characterisation of a 27

Leisher, Whitney’s “A Choice of Emblems,” 31. Leisher, Whitney’s “A Choice of Emblems,” 35. 29 The OED defines the impresa as “an emblem or device, usually accompanied by an appropriate motto.” For the sake of simplicity I use the term “emblem” during in this essay. 30 The majority of emblem books circulating in England were published on the continent and they were fundamentally translations of already published emblem books: Alciati’s Emblemata was written in Latin and published in Augsburg; Ian van der Noot’s Theatre of Wordlings was originally written in Dutch and then translated into English; Geoffrey Whitney’s famous Choice of Emblems was published in Leyden. 31 Peter M. Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels Between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 134. 32 Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem, 135–36. 28

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figure and does not contribute considerably to the meaning and the dramaturgy of the play, in other words, if the drama does not provide a “subtext” explaining the image, it is not an emblematic image. The Ship of Fools displays a set of powerful woodcuts which depict knaves, vagabonds, beggars, and identifies them with folly, which identification is characteristic in the Renaissance. James A. S. McPeek in his book The Black Book of Knaves points out that the chapter on beggars in Brant’s Narrenschiff was the first representation of the so called rogue literature. For Brant and his translators, as McPeek continues, everyone who deviates from pious virtues is a fool and fools never thrive. They are unthrifts, most of them are knaves, and their function is similar to those characters referred to in the Mirror for Magistrates, who hold up a mirror to princes and rulers, as The Ship of Fools’ characters do the same to common man. Brant most probably drew his ideas from the Warnung of Basel, which was one of the early institutions giving shelter for the poor, the insane, and the unthrift.33 Such institutions existed from the Middle Ages in London, too. In London, there were four shelters for the poor, the sick, and the mentally diseased: Bethlehem, which became the most important such institution later associated with the knave bedlamites and Poor Tom; Bridewell, originally the palace of Henry VIII, turned into a workhouse and a house of reformation for criminals; Newgate was the third, given to London in 1400, most commonly known as a prison; Bartholomew was the biggest of all such institutions, which was turned into a hospital in 1536 when the city acquired the building to shelter diseased and vagrant people.34 The increasing presence of social outcasts was recurrently depicted in literary representations of the sixteenth century.

III Rogue literature seems to have been extremely popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century. An adaptation of The Ship of Fools, the Cock Lorell’s Bote (ca. 1508) was most probably initiated by Wynkyn de Worde, the publisher of Watson’s prose translation of Brant’s text.35 This poem employs the Brantean enumeration of fools and contains two of the original woodcuts. It is explicitly dedicated to the depiction of vagrant life: 33

James A. S. McPeek, The Black Book of the Knaves and Unthrifts (Storrs: University of Connecticut, 1998), 43. 34 McPeek, The Black Book, 55–56. 35 McPeek, The Black Book, 51.

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the craftsmen who enter the ship seem to be deliberately mingled with rascals. This theme is echoed in Robert Copland’s The Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous (ca. 1536), which, as McPeek argues, was influenced either by the Cock Lorell’s Bote, or Barclay’s text, or both (there is a stanza on Cock Lorell in the poem).36 The poem follows the patterns of rogue literature and depicts Bartholomew hospital as a common platform of social outcasts. McPeek suggests that Thomas Nashe seems to have relied on Copland’s poem, and thus indirectly The Ship of Fools, while composing Summer’s Last Will and Testament.37 However, The Ship of Fools is referred to many times in Nashe’s works, therefore its impact appears to be a direct one. Textual references to The Ship occur in Nashe’s preface to Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, in his Pierce Penilesse, and in his Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Since the main concern of this paper is the image’s relevance in Elizabethan/Jacobean drama, Summer’s Last Will and Testament is the most suitable for such an interpretation. Nashe calls his play rather a “show,” it is similar to the interludes of the middle of the sixteenth century. The dramaturgy is built on the appearance of allegorical characters, the four seasons and various holiday groups, representing the cyclicality of time on stage. McPeek builds his interpretation of Summer’s Last Will and Testament on the suggestion that Will Summers functions as the Porter of Copland, who enters the beggars and fools. In Nashe’s play Will is the one who summons and admits the vagabonds appearing in the show: “So we come hither to laugh and be merry, and we heare a filthy beggerly Oration, in the prayse of beggary.”38 Indeed, the linking of beggary and art is conspicuous in the “show”: Ver, the allegory of Spring, claims that “All the Poets were beggers: all Alcumists, and all Philosophers are beggers” and later on he asks: I will proue it, that an vnthrift, of any, comes neerest a happy man, in so much as he comes neerest to beggery. Cicero saith, summum bonum consistes in omnium rerum vacatione, that it is the chiefest felicitie that may be, to rest from all labours. Now, who doeth so much vacare à rebus, who rests so much? who hath so little to doe, as the begger? Who can sing so merry a note, as he that cannot change a groate?39

36

McPeek, The Black Book, 67. McPeek, The Black Book, 73. 38 Thomas Nashe, A Pleasant Comedie, Called Summers Last Will and Testament (London: Simon Stafford, 1600), 10. All quotations are taken from this edition. 39 Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 9. 37

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In Ver’s opinion philosophers are merry and free of the constraints of society, yet this is not the only description of them in the text. Winter fiercely criticises poets and scholars claiming that they are “drunken parasites,” “thriftless kind of men” whose ink comes from Cerberus’s poisonous mouth and they are right next to the philosophers: Next them, a company of ragged knaues, Sun-bathing beggers, lazie hedge-creepers, Sleeping face-vpwards in the fields all night, Dream’d strange deuices of the Sunne and the Moone; And they like Gipsies, wandering vp and downe, Told fortunes, iuggled, nicknam’d all the starres, And were of idiots term’d Philosophers.40

These are completely opposite attitudes towards scholarly life and poetry, and they also seem to echo two opposite attitudes towards folly, those depicted in Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and Barclay’s The Ship of Fools. While Folly is already wise at the beginning, the fools on the ship are castigated and condemned for their folly. Whereas Folly preaches the secret wisdom of fools to the crowd, the ship of fools holds up a mirror of human weakness in which readers could face their flaws and by doing so they could change their lives. Winter, traditionally the season of plays and shows, is portrayed as the enemy of poetry and folly,41 and is clearly against the idea of the wise fool delivering a mock-sermon during the carnival, explicitly referring to Erasmus: A drunken Dutchman spued outfew yeares since: Nor wanteth sloth (although sloths plague bee want). His paper pillers for to leane vpon, The praise of nothing pleades his worthinesse. Follie Erasmus sets a flourish on.42

40

Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 37. Marie Axton points out that the impact of the Reformation on seasonal customs was clear by 1590, which significantly altered the festive calendar. The previous practice was interrupted by the Reformation and during King James I’s reign the Puritans went so far as to demand the abolition of holy days including Christmas. Nashe’s show could have been performed only because his Archbishop, Whitgift was in favour of seasonal household entertainments. Marie Axton, “Summer’s Last Will and Testament: Revels’ End,” In Thomas Nashe. The University Wits. Edited by Georgia Brown (Surrey; Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 291–309. 42 Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 40. 41

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Seemingly, the two opposing traditions of depicting folly are simultaneously present in Nashe’s show and they are displayed on a “shipstage” under the supervision of Will: Faith, this Sceane of Orion, is right prandium caninum, a dogs dinner, which as it is without wine, so here's a coyle about dogges, without wit. If I had thought the ship of fooles would haue stayde to take in fresh water at the Ile of dogges, I would haue furnisht it with a whole kennell of collections to the purpose.43

Will’s lines seem to refer to the ship of fools as a stage and to Orion as a dog and a fool. Had Will recognised at the outset that the performance would take such a twist, he would have decorated the stage accordingly. He associates Orion with dogs, which are also the symbols of fidelity, yet in the Renaissance were frequently assigned negative connotations; they were often the symbols of traitors. Marie Axton argues that Summer banishes Sol and Orion for crimes against the Moon, which in the Renaissance generally alludes to challenging the authority of the Queen.44 The Isle of Dogs refers to the location in London near Greenwich, where the Privy Council held meetings, and also to Nashe and Jonson’s lost play, which was performed in 1597 and immediately suppressed due to its alleged satirical tone aimed at the Queen. Orion is not a beggar, nor is he an unthrift like Ver, yet the character is labelled as a traitor, an offender of the Queen, which makes him an anti-social knave, and therefore a fitting member of the ship of fools’ crew. The ship as a possible stage definition is more conspicuously present in Thomas Dekker’s allegorical play, The Whore of Babylon (1607). The play portrays English historical events by depicting an allegorical battle between the true Anglican Church and Rome. The dramaturgy is centred on the fight of the queen of Fairyland, Titania (the representation of Queen Elizabeth), and the Whore of Babylon (the Pope), during which Titania is exposed to numerous threats. Upon comparing Babylon with Titania’s land, one of the characters, Plain-Dealing says the following: Troth mistresse, I left villains and knaues there, & find knaues & fooles here: for your Ordinary is your Isle of Gulles, your ship of fooles, your hospitall of incurable madmen: it is the field where your captaine and braue man is cal'd to the last reckoning, and is ouerthrown horse and foot: it is the onely schoole to make an honest man a knaue: for Intelligencers

43

Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 23. Axton, “Revels’ End,” 303.

44

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may heare enough there, to set twenty a begging oflands: it is the strangest Chesse-board in the world.45

In this passage Titania’s “Ordinary” refers to the taverns of the age where people of all social ranks would gather and enjoy pastimes such as bear-baiting, cock-fighting and various types of performances. Hence, Plain-Dealing’s list of alternatives to the tavern might also be alternatives to the stage. These include the Isle of Gulls, a reference to John Day’s scandalous comedy with the same title; a hospital, which might allude to one of the above mentioned institutions; and it also stands in comparison with the ship of fools. Villains stand for folly in Plain-Dealing’s lines and this folly is closely related to the stage, which is identified with the ship of fools. What makes this passage interesting is the reference to the cockpit in Plain-Dealing’s response to Titania’s question: TITANIA: Affoard our shores such wonders? PLAIN-DEALING: Wonders? why this one little Cocke-pit, (for none come into it, but those that haue spurs) is able to shew all the follies of your kingdome, in a few Apes of the kingdome. 46

E. K. Chambers in his commentary on the play mentions that the cockpit alluded to a place where follies were “shown in apes,” which referred to the palace where Henry VIII saw plays.47 The cockpit might denote the restricted theatrical space which contains unrestricted potential for plays.48 In Dekker’s text the ship of fools may be an alternative for the stage, which relies heavily on the imagination of the audience. Though both the ship and the stage are spatially restricted, the imagination of the audience endows them with unlimited potential by which they manage to hold infinite number of fools. In Shakespeare’s Pericles the ship is defined as a stage. After act 2 scene 5 the chorus instructs the audience: “In your imagination hold / This stage the ship, upon whose deck / The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak” (3. Ch. 58–60). Shakespeare substitutes the setting with rich dramatic language, through which practically anything can be staged. Through the 45

Thomas Dekker, The Whore of Babylon (London, 1607), 24. Dekker, The Whore of Babylon, 24. 47 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 296. 48 Shakespeare also employs the cockpit image in the prologue of Henry V, where the Chorus apologises for the “poor” potential of the stage for a play in which grandiose battles and historical events take place, and implores the audience to rely on their imagination (Henry V, Prologue 11–18). 46

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imagination the stage can be turned into an ark, as Jaques’s lines suggest in As You Like It, in which upon seeing Touchstone and Audrey entering the stage he says: “There is sure another flood toward, and these / couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very / strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools” (5.4.35–37).49 Although this passage might allude to the Noah’s Ark play, in which the beasts embark in pairs, yet the sea vehicle and the fools aboard are present. Even though this is rather an “ark of fools” and not a “ship of fools,” the notion of folly and the ship are undoubtedly linked. One must not forget that Shakespeare tailored his characters to his actors and in King Lear he had Robert Armin in mind while creating the fool. H.F. Lippincott argues that Robert Armin’s Foole upon Foole (1600, 1605) can be directly linked to Barclay’s The Ship of Fools, and indeed, upon reading the enumeration of various types of folly the resemblances seem remarkable.50 In such a close artistic collaboration as that of Armin and Shakespeare it seems unlikely that this tradition would have slipped the playwright’s attention. Since Shakespeare is the most outstanding playwright in the English Renaissance canon whose dramas reflect the cultural, literary, and iconographical context of the Elizabethan/Jacobean era, his works in relation to “the ship of fools phenomenon” cannot be bypassed. The following section of the paper attempts to place Shakespearean drama in the already established semantic field of folly in order to provide a more systematic interpretation and argue that though The Ship of Fools is not conspicuously present in his works, the imagery is perceptible in the plays. To achieve this I selected one specific play, King Lear, as this drama seems to offer the greatest potential for such an interpretation.51

IV King Lear invites numerous emblematic readings and in order to demonstrate the possibility of such an interpretation in relation to The Ship of Fools it seems reasonable to single out one specific image which is 49

The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 2007). Apart from King Lear and Macbeth, all Shakespeare quotations are taken from this edition. 50 H. F. Lippincott, “King Lear and the Fools of Robert Armin,” Shakespeare Quarterly 26.3 (1975): 243–53. 51 The King Lear quotations are taken from William Shakespeare, King Lear. Edited by R. A. Foakes (Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1997).

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dominantly present in both works, namely, the wheel of Fortune. This image is rooted in antiquity, yet its flourishing in the Middle Ages is mostly due to Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. In his book The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, Willard Farnham provides a lengthy discussion of the wheel of Fortune and points out that the basic idea behind the wheel is the mortal world being ruled by Fortune, the irrational spirit of chance. The power of Fortune is the power of God, and God has different methods in heaven, which is perfect, and on earth, which is imperfect. Since Fortune dominates the earth, there is “no perceptible order of cause and effect which would permit an ambitious man to avoid material misfortune by foresight, wise judgement, or even the most perfect allegiance to God and the Christian religion. No man has any control over his mortal fate.”52 Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium discusses the image and reviews the misfortunes of the great of all times and both sexes in order to demonstrate that nobody can avoid the power of Fortune, which came into being because of Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to God.53 Boccaccio’s concept of Fortune is the core of The Monk’s Tale in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which also exploits the wheel of Fortune imagery, and so does John Lydgate’s influential work, the Fall of Princes, which is not a mere translation of the De Casibus, but rather an adaptation of it. Lydgate’s text relates the whims of Fortune to the sins of man and suggests that sin is the cause of the fall of princes.54 Farnham points out that the wheel of Fortune tradition functioned “as a nondramatic preparation for the establishment of tragedy upon the Elizabethan public stage.”55 This idea is exploited by early Elizabethan playwrights, and dramas such as Thomas Norton’s and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc.56 The imagery is common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and it is not surprising that both Brant and Barclay included a woodcut in chapters 37 and 56 depicting the wheel (the only woodcut appearing twice in The Ship of Fools). However, compared to its medieval predecessors, the moral content is altered, moreover, mocked in this woodcut since it depicts asses attached to the wheel, which transforms the image into a grotesque wheel of fools. The wheel is explicitly linked with folly and the use of the image is not restricted to kings and princes like in Boccaccio, 52

Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), 78. 53 Farnham, The Medieval Heritage, 84. 54 Farnham, The Medieval Heritage, 162. 55 Farnham, The Medieval Heritage, 271. 56 Farnham, The Medieval Heritage, 353.

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Lydgate, or the Mirror for Magistrates. In The Ship of Fools’ topsy-turvy world everybody seems to be a fool exposed to the whims of Lady Fortune. These sections (chapter 37 and 56) elaborate on the basic idea of Fortune exploited in the woodcut and emphasise the unsure and inconstant nature of it. Barclay’s chapter 37 says of those seeking fortune that “their foolish heartes and blinde see not their fall [and] nought is so sure, if thou the truth enquire / But that he may dount to fall downe in the mire.”57 Later on he specifies the image to princes, emphasising that “punishment and payne, / Have to them fallen, sometime by their folly.”58 McPeek rightly points out that the wheel of Fortune turns down for Lear, or more precisely he becomes deserted by Fortune and thus “The natural fool of fortune” (4.6.187),59 when the Fool appears in the play. McPeek discusses the significance of Barclay’s woodcut in chapter 37 and 56 and he suggests that this representation of the wheel of Fortune is the closest of all to King Lear.60 No other sixteenth-century representation of the wheel of Fortune depicts fools (represented by asses) attached to the wheel. McPeek adds that unthrifts like Lear should accept the mutability of Fortune and acknowledge themselves as Fortune’s fools.61 As it has already been discussed, Barclay’s The Ship of Fools is the first literary representative of rogue literature in England and unthrifts, knaves, and beggars are closely related to folly. In As You Like It Touchstone62 identifies himself as a knave: [to Celia and Rosalind] “swear by your beards that I am a knave” (1.2.70). According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the word “knave” also connoted “an unprincipled man, given to dishonourable and deceitful practices,” and “base and crafty rogue” as early as 1205.63 The entries to the word “knavery” explain the word as crafty business or trickery (from 1528 onwards), an in a weakened sense it can be understood as “knaveship,” which is a mock title of someone of roguish nature playing tricks. In relation to this latter meaning, the OED mentions Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Oberon says to Puck: “This is thy negligence; still thou mistak’st, / Or else commit’st thy knaveries wilfully” (3.2.346). Puck is the jester in the play, 57

Brant, The Ship of Fooles, 1570, 72v. Brant, The Ship of Fooles, 1570, 72r. 59 The mention of the “natural fool” is most probably a reference to Armin’s Foole upon Foole, which distinguishes between the artificial and the natural fool. 60 McPeek, The Black Book, 227. 61 McPeek, The Black Book, 229. 62 Touchstone was also played by Robert Armin. 63 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 58

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the fool who complicates the plot by making mistakes, and in this quote his character is linked with knavery. The idea of identifying fools and knaves is central to King Lear and its most outstanding example is when in act 1 scene 4 Lear asks: “Where’s my knave, my fool?” (1.4.42). Lear constantly calls the Fool boy or knave, moreover, after the first conflict in Goneril’s castle Goneril says to the Fool: “You, sir, more knave than fool, after / your master” (1.4.307). The Fool is not the only knave in the play, Kent is also labelled so. Before he is put in the stocks Cornwall calls him “stubborn, ancient knave” (2.2.124), which gains crucial significance later in the scene when Kent utters his famous line: “Fortune, good night: smile once more; turn thy wheel” (2.2.171). A “knave” uttering this line strengthens the suggestion that the chapter from The Ship of Fools on the unpredictability of Fortune is perhaps more compatible with the context of the play than other representations of the image. Depictions of the wheel of Fortune tend to focus on the fall of high-rank figures; Boccaccio and Lydgate are concerned with princes and other royalties, and Chaucer describes in The Monk’s Tale the fall of Lucifer. Through depicting the fall of the mighty, these texts set an example to common people and remind them of the unpredictability of fate. Shakespeare follows this pattern, yet his play takes a slightly unconventional twist when he depicts the fall of not only Lear the sovereign, but also that of his “non-royal” followers. The image of the wheel appears in the text four times, and each time it is uttered by knavish characters: by the Fool (“Let go thy hold when a great wheel goes down / a hill lest it break thy neck with following it; but the / great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after” 2.2.261–62); by the base Edmund, who is referred to as a “knave” by Gloucester (1.1.20) and who utters “the wheel is come full circle, I am here” (5.3.173); and last but not least, upon meeting Cordelia Lear mentions the “wheel of fire” (4.7.47). Even if Lear is not called explicitly a knave in the text, he alludes to the wheel after his wits have turned and he has given up his social rank and became a base character, which places him in line with other knavish figures in the play. McPeek remarks that after being deprived of his followers Lear is left with nothing of his own, he is reduced to the ranks of rogues and vagabonds and this is the point when the theme of madness begins to take shape, anticipated by Edgar’s description in relation to the Bedlam Beggars (2.3.5–21).64 Lear and Kent are not knaves in the literal sense, since the word primarily connoted lower-rank members of society.

64

McPeek, The Black Book, 230.

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However, after losing their social positions, they both display the universal knavery Hamlet mentions: “We are arrant knaves all” (3.1.129). In King Lear the wheel of Fortune seems to be more than a mere symbol of the fall of the mighty. On the one hand, since it is uttered by figures of various ranks it denotes not only one character but a group of characters collected under the term “knave,” which makes the image more subtle. On the other hand, the wheel of Fortune is in dialogue with the text and it also seems to be the central dramaturgical force in the play. At the beginning of the drama, the two groups of characters take different directions on the wheel: Lear and those linked with him (the Fool, Kent, Edgar, and Gloucester) go downward and the “evil characters” (Regan, Goneril, Edmund, and Cornwall) go upward. They reach the highest and the lowest points simultaneously and arrive at their final position at the same time, best described in Edmund’s line: “the wheel is come full circle, I am here.” The two directions draw semi-circles and they constitute together the whole wheel of Fortune, or wheel of fools, which sets up the dramatic frame of the play. Upon Lear meeting Gloucester in act 4 scene 6 the king says “When we are born we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools” (4.6.178–79), by which he suggests that the characters appearing on the stage are all foolish in one way or another. Indeed, in King Lear everybody seems to be a fool. However, from the seemingly random application of such terms as “fool” and “knave” it turns out that the borders of the semantic field they cover were not strictly set in the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century the word “fool” and “knave” were interchangeable and they were used in a much broader sense functioning as umbrella terms for rascals, madmen, unthrifts, beggars, and other marginalised characters of this sort. King Lear is an enumeration of folly of all social ranks and both sexes, and hence offers a grandiose theatrical tableau within the spatial limitations of the stage of fools.

Conclusion The Ship of Fools is a rarely researched subject in English Medieval and Renaissance studies and its significance seems to be underestimated by critics. It gave enormous stimulus to fool literature and established the genre of rogue literature in the sixteenth century. The numerous adaptations and references to it throughout the century suggest that it was massively popular with the contemporaneous audience, and later with many of the Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights. The Ship of Fools turned into a metaphor by the end of the century and infiltrated the works of the popular

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dramatists of the age, who apparently saw the image as an alternate “stage definition.” Alexander Barclay, being a preacher, was fully aware of the theatrical potential of The Ship of Fools since the analogy between the stage and the pulpit had long been established in England when he translated the work. No wonder therefore that the playwrights in question exploited this dramatic potential. At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries “the ship of fools” image functioned as a platform for unthrifts, knaves, and other marginalised characters and thus reflected upon the marginal social status of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre.

“WALKING ANATOMIES:” VIOLENCE AND DISSECTION ON THE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH STAGE1 ATTILA KISS

“What brother, am I far enough from myself?” (The Revenger’s Tragedy, Vindice, 1.3.1)2

Walking anatomies: I borrow the expression that so aptly characterizes many of the figures in English Renaissance tragedy from Una EllisFermor, who wrote, as early as in 1936, that characters in The Revenger’s Tragedy are presented as “walking anatomies” or “galvanized laboratory subjects.”3 Ellis-Fermor’s figurative language is interesting because it was not yet coined under the effect of the corporeal turn in critical theory, nevertheless even today it would be difficult for the Renaissance scholar to find an image more telling and more applicable to the agents on the early modern stage that are so systematically engaged in producing or suffering violence, dissection and death in the most anatomical manner. EllisFermor’s metaphor is indicative of the fact that structuralist and formalist criticism did not fail to notice the anatomizing habits of mind in early modern culture, but we had to wait until the emergence of poststructuralism and performance criticism to have the interpretive tools to explain the agency of violence and anatomy in English Renaissance drama, or, more 1

The original paper was presented before the formal announcement of the foundation of the Transatlantic Network for Emblem Studies by the Research Group for Cultural Iconology and Semiography (REGCIS) at the University of Szeged in June 2011. My research was supported by the János Bolyai Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. An earlier version of this paper appeared in Early Modern Culture Online Vol 2, No 1 (2011), http://journal.uia.no/index .php/EMCO/article/view/17. 2 References are to Cyril Tourner, The Revenger’s Tragedy, ed. Brian Gibbons, 2nd ed., (London: A & C Black; New York: W. W. Norton: 1989). I do not address questions of authorship here, since they bear no relevance in the present writing. 3 Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama (London: Methuen, 1936), 154.

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precisely, in the plays that marked and interrogated the crisis of the Renaissance in England. The persistent employment of excessive violence on the early modern English stage was studied by Renaissance scholarship for centuries in diverse but rather formal or historicist ways, and this critical focus received no new impetus until the corporeal turn in critical theory after the 1980s. Before the poststructuralist, or, more precisely, the postsemiotic and corposemiotic investigations, critics tended to categorize bodily transgression as part of the general process of deterioration that lead to the decadence and all-enveloping perversity of the Stuart and Caroline stage, or they merely catalogued the metamorphoses of iconographic and emblematic elements of the memento mori, the ars moriendi, the contemptus mundi, the danse macabre or the exemplum horrendum traditions through the imagery of violence, mutilation and corporeal disintegration. The reception history of Shakespeare’s first tragedy exemplifies the general hostility towards extreme violence, an attitude which was established by the technologies of canon formation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Generations of Shakespeare scholars cherished hopes, on account of authorship debates, that one day it would perhaps turn out that Shakespeare had not committed the error of writing the infamous Titus Andronicus, the drama T. S. Eliot considered as one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written. Many interpretations found no clue to the apparently irrational intensification of horror in plays such as The Revenger's Tragedy. Besides claims about the perverse multiplication of evil, the thematic incoherency, the abrupt and amoral ending, the agitated and segmented language, we have such extremes of critical evaluation as that of William Archer: I will only ask whether such monstrous melodrama as The Revenger's Tragedy, with its hideous sexuality and its raging lust for blood, can be said to belong to civilized literature at all? I say it is a product either of sheer barbarism, or of some pitiable psychopathic perversion.4

The critical discontent, if not hostility, towards the play was well summarized and sanctified by T. S. Eliot in his essay on Tourneur. Just as Hamlet fails to live up to the principle of the “objective correlative,” The Revenger's Tragedy also proves to be a failure, since here the object exceeds the play: the drama is the expression of an immature, “adolescent hatred of life.” “It is a document on one human being, Tourneur; its motive is truly the death motive, for it is the loathing and horror of life 4

William Archer, The Old Drama and the New (London, 1923), 74.

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itself.”5 Of course, together with these condemning tones, there were also critics who pointed out that the medieval morality play as well as the religious, homiletic, and allegorical traditions formed the dramaturgical and philosophical basis of these plays, but the semiotic efficiency of these representations was scarcely studied. It was the advent of performance-oriented semiotic approaches in the 1970s that brought a new orientation in the explanation of violence. These interpretations restored early modern dramas to the representational logic6 of the contemporary emblematic theatre, and maintained that verisimilitude or mimetic realism should not necessarily be searched for in English Renaissance dramas, since these plays were purposefully designed for an audience that was ready to decode a multiplicity of emblematic meanings simultaneously. The prevailing emblematic mode of thinking enabled the early modern spectators to establish a symbolical or allegorical interpretation for scenes, events or characters which would prove nonsensical or unrealistic for an audience accustomed to the photographic realism of the later bourgeois theatre.7 Simultaneously with this emblematic panmetaphoricity, an emerging psychological and representational realism was also becoming more and more powerful, and we have to be aware of the presence of both types of representational logic when we read or stage early modern drama. Glynne Wickham explained the transition from the early modern into the bourgeois theatre as a move from the emblematic representational techniques towards a photographic realism which will become characteristic of the “black box” theatre of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, we have both: What we are really confronted with is a conflict between an emblematic theatre—literally, a theatre which aimed at achieving dramatic illusion by figurative representation—and a theatre of realistic illusion—literally, a theatre seeking to simulate actuality in terms of images.8

5

T. S. Eliot Selected Essays. 3rd ed. (London: Faber, 1951), 189–90. I am relying on the concept of the representational logic as it has been introduced in the works of Allan C. Dessen. See especially his Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 7 For the emblematic mode of thinking in the English Renaissance, see György Endre SzĘnyi, “The ‘Emblematic’ as a Way of Thinking and Seeing in Renaissance Culture” e-Colloquia 1, 1 (2003), http://ecolloquia.btk.ppke.hu/issues /200301/. 8 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages. 1300 to 1600. Volume Two 1576 to 1660, Part One (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 155. 6

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The new performance oriented approaches of the 1970s started to understand the iconographical complexity of violence and horror as a semiotic attempt of the early modern stage to establish a totality of semiosis. Just like the multi-channelled emblem, the English Renaissance emblematic theatre also aimed at achieving a complex representation that could perhaps transcend the limits of our knowledge and establish an immediate connection with a more and more questionable and unreachable reality through the multileveled emblematic representations. This semiotic endeavour was a reaction to the epistemological uncertainties of the age, the general crisis in knowledge which, alas, also characterizes our world of the postmodern. These interpretive approaches have helped us understand the way theatrical effect emerged on the early modern stage, and they have established a general awareness in critics and readers that we have to direct these dramas in our imaginative staging. Part of the persistent metatheatricality of early modern plays is a selfreflexive ostentation of their nature as designed spectacle. “See here my show, look on this spectacle” (4.4.89).9 This is how Hieronimo, “Author and actor in this tragedy” (4.4.147) presents the staging of the climactic, final ostentation of the human body in the penultimate scene of The Spanish Tragedy. His words are emblematic of the most important endeavour of English Renaissance theatre, which was to produce a spectacular show that foregrounds questions of the human condition within the context of a quite unstable and controversial, new model of human subjectivity. However, when it is not witnessed in the playhouse, it takes serious imaginative effort and visualization by the reader of Kyd’s play to realize the weight of this scene. We miss the very efficiency of the stage tableau, performance oriented approaches warn us, if we do not insert it into the representational dynamics of the stage. Horatio’s body, carried on stage quite ritualistically by a mourning patriarch, is a “butchered” cadaver well in the process of decomposition, and we should smell this when we read the play. Thus, violence and horror, transgression and excess, came to be observed in Renaissance scholarship as perhaps the most important constituents in the imagery and representational repertoire of early modern tragedy. Although, as has been argued, the abundance of corporeal representations was studied within rather formal interpretive frameworks until the advent of poststructuralist approaches, after the 1970s the semiotic analysis of stage–audience interaction and representational 9

References are to Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J. R. Mulryne (London: A. & C. Black; New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).

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efficiency opened up the scene for a more contextualizing cultural iconology and a psychoanalytically informed investigation of the effects of horror. Since then, the interpretive efforts accounting for the imagery and dramaturgy of violence have argued that the transgression of the body was not only an emblematic mode of expression that relied on numerous iconographic traditions inherited from the Middle Ages, and it was more than a representational technique which aimed at producing a polysemous totality of theatrical symbolism. The performance oriented semiotic approaches have explicated how the representational logic of the English Renaissance emblematic theatre gave rise to various techniques that thematised the problems and antagonisms of the constitution of early modern subjectivity. The postsemiotic scrutiny of these representational techniques has revealed that the violence and transgression which concentrated upon the dissected, tortured, anatomized and mutilated human body on the Tudor and Stuart stage did not merely function to satisfy the appetite of a contemporary public that demanded gory entertainment in the public theatre. These representational techniques of dissection and violence participated in a general epistemological effort of early modern culture to address those territories of knowledge that had formerly been hidden from public discourses. The human body, the temple of divine secrets and the model of universal harmony, was undoubtedly one of the most intriguing of such territories. The corporeal turn has directed the focus of critical attention to the fact that transgression and violation, as represented on the early modern stage, concentrate with anatomical precision on the body of the human being. Poststructuralist theories have helped us understand how the foregrounding of abjection and disintegration produces an effect in the psychosomatic structure of the receiver, which effect largely accounts for the career of these plays. However, it has not been left unnoticed either that the early modern corporeality and inwardness emerge not only in gruesome dramatic literature and on the public stage, but in a multiplicity of aesthetic and social discourses as well, and these discourses all appear to engage in a dissective effort. Sir Philip Sidney, for example, relies on an anatomically penetrating bodily imagery when commenting on the uses of tragedy: So that the right use of Comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed, and much less of the high and excellent Tragedy, that openth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue.10 10 Sir Philip Sidney, Selected Writings, ed. Richard Dutton (Manchester and New York: Fyfield Books, 1987), 124 (my emphasis).

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Figure 5. Portrait of Andreas Vesalius, the Flemish anatomist who revolutionized the practice of dissection, from his De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543). Unlike in earlier representations of the public autopsy, the anatomist here is in an almost intimate connection with the cadaver. The attitude so consciously displayed by Vesalius is emblematic of the early modern anatomical curiosity. (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged)

There is an obsession in the English Renaissance with the skin that covers the depth of things and hides the structuration of some innermost reality from the public eye. Transgression in early modern tragedy is very often not merely a violation of social or political standards and laws, but primarily a transgression that penetrates the surface of things in an epistemological attempt to locate the depth behind the surface. Of course, this obsession had its modes of expression as well as its regulatory forces of surveillance and containment, but the skin of the human body surely became to be understood as a general metaphor of the new frontier that started to be tested in the process that I call the early modern expansive inwardness: a more and more penetrative testing of the inward dimensions of the human body and the human mind.

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Figure 6. The title page of De Humani Corporis Fabrica. The powerful verticality of the woodcut is clearly reminiscent of the idea of the Great Chain of Being, the secrets of which are now being tested by the new methods of anatomy that penetrates the skin of the body as well as the existing surfaces of knowledge. In the focal point, where the diagonals of the composition of characters intersect, we have Vesalius’s hand resting on the peeled off skin of the cadaver. (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged)

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Travelling and exchanged body parts, dismemberment, dissolution by poison, self-beheading, torture, macabre spectacle, madness and terror— anatomical images of the body recur in English Renaissance tragedies from The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus to The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Broken Heart. The popularity of the public autopsy and the anatomical theatre was second only to the public playhouse by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The lesson that the emergent modern cultures of Europe learned from such anatomies was that the human body is something uncontrollably heterogeneous and difficult to contain, and this is why the corporeality of the subject became the primary object of ideological suppression. After the anatomical discourses that penetrated the surfaces of the human body with relentless effort in the Renaissance, the human corpus had to be covered up again totally by a new ideological skin, that is, the discourses of rationalism and the newly fabricated Cartesian ego. This commences, however, only in the eighteenth century. Naturally, the body had always been in the forefront of general human interest. Death and the body have become inseparably intertwined in the history of western civilization, and this union, which marginalized the corporeal and tried to eternalize some other constituent of the subject as incorporeal and thus immortal, resulted in the suppression and demonization of the body. The body, however, has been held accountable not only for mortality, but everything which is beyond the capacity of the reasoning mind or the rationalizing ego to control: transgression, sexuality, heterogeneity, incalculable acts and thoughts of the subject. The early modern period was an age of corporeal experimentation, but this inwardness is then followed by the advent of a new bourgeois ideology. By the time the dominant discourses of the Enlightenment settle in, the body becomes articulated as the ultimate target of social censorship and individual self-hermeneutics. Consequently, nothing could be more fascinating than the re-emergence of this corporeality in the cultural imagery of the postmodern. As the thought of death is in continuous metamorphosis with the new technologies of cloning, gene manipulation and hibernation, in the same manner the body reappears from under the skin of ideologically determined meanings as a site of epistemological curiosity, and a new postmodern inwardness directs the public attention towards the interiority of the subject. Fantasies of corporeality, which used to be marginalized and suppressed, are now infiltrating the practices of

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social spectacle.11 I propose that it is perhaps exactly through this postmodern renaissance of anatomy that we can understand better the function and representational logic of bodily transgression on the English Renaissance stage. The postmodern interest in the bodily constitution of the subject and the corporeal foundations of signification has been necessitated not only by the critique of phenomenology and the early findings of psychoanalytically informed postsemiotic theories, but just as well by the growing presence of the anatomized and displayed body in the practices of every-day life. The phenomenon that perhaps best characterizes the body in the cultural practices of postindustrial societies is the way it has been subjected to a process of anatomization and inward inspection. Anatomy has become an all-embracing and omnipresent constituent of the postmodern cultural imagery, and its growing presence has saturated not only the urban spaces where body representations are disseminated, but also the multiplicity of critical orientations that have been aiming at accounting for this postmodern interest and investment in the corporeal. The body is endlessly commodified, interrogated, dissected and tested in ways that are very often reminiscent of the early modern turn to the interiority of the human being. The intriguing private body has, once again, become a primary site of social fantastication. As much critical literature has argued recently, the postmodern scrutiny of the body is comparable to the early modern anatomical turn towards the interiority of the human body. As David Hillman and Carla Mazzio argue, “Early moderns, no less than postmoderns, were deeply interested in the corporeal ‘topic’.” 12 In both historical periods the body is a territory of the fantastic, an epistemological borderline, a site of experiments in going beyond the existing limits of signification. In short, 11 The most complex and spectacular example of this postmodern anatomical interest is the hugely successful traveling exhibition invented, organized and orchestrated by the German Gunther von Hagens. His Body Worlds has attracted tens of millions of people to see his specially plastinated human corpses that reveal the several layers in the structuration of the human body in often shocking or grotesque positions. See http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html. The success and influence of this highly theatricalised exhibition was further intensified by the public autopsies von Hagens has performed, and its influence is indicated by the fact that its rivals have also appeared on the market of postmodern social spectacle, for example the show Bodies: The Exhibition. See http://www.bodiestheexhibition .com/. 12 David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, “Introduction: Individual Parts,” in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), xii.

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postmodern anatomies are grounded in an epistemological crisis which is very similar to the period of transition and uncertainty in early-modern culture, when the earlier “natural order” of medieval high semioticity started to become unsettled, and the ontological foundations of meaning lost their metaphysical guarantees. As the various images of death in the memento mori and ars moriendi traditions functioned in early modern culture as agents of Death the Great Leveler, so the corpses in the postmodern anatomy exhibition may unveil the sameness of the subject and the Other by the ostentation of that which is other in both: the corporeal, bodily foundations of our subjectivity. In this respect, postmodern anatomy goes beyond a mere catering for the sensationalism and curious appetite of the general and alienated masses of consumerism. I maintain, in light of the above considerations, that the subject of present day culture is enticed to bear witness to its own otherness and, thus, to its sameness with the Other in the cultural imagery of anatomization. In other words, public anatomy establishes an effect in which the subject is compelled to experience and see the strong materiality into which its own subjectivity is inscribed: the flesh behind the face, the body behind the character, the tongue behind the speaker. This is the very materiality that we are also compelled to bear witness to in English Renaissance tragedy. From this new postmodern affinity towards the protomodern anatomizing habits of mind, I would like to turn back to the early modern stage in order to demonstrate through textual examples how the dissective epistemological curiosity of early modern culture manifested itself in ways that were constitutive of the dramaturgy of English Renaissance tragedy. The idea of the tongue behind the speaker probably urges us all to think of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy who, in a self-dissecting and mutilating act, bites out his own tongue in order to close up all secrets and stratagems in himself, and thus secures a final authorial control over the happenings of the revenge tragedy. Indeed Thou mayest torment me as his wretched son Hath done in murd’ring my Horatio; But never shalt thou force me to reveal The thing which I have vowed inviolate. And therefore, in despite of all thy threats, Pleased with their deaths, and eased with their revenge, First take my tongue, and afterwards my heart. (4.4.184–91)

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The concept of the body behind the character will make us think of Lavinia, who becomes a living emblem of woe in Titus Andronicus, and incites old Titus to embark on a peculiar semiotic endeavour to devise a new alphabet, a different language that could interpret between Lavinia’s tongueless, handless and ravished body and the world. Hark, Marcus, what she says; I can interpret all her martyr'd signs; [. . .] Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven, Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign, But I of these will wrest an alphabet And by still practise learn to know thy meaning. (3.2.35–45) 13

We will of course also think of Hamlet, where we find an interesting typological structure if we are careful enough to observe the anatomical imagery of corporeality in the play. Immediately after his famous outcry about the melting of flesh, Hamlet builds up a description of his mother’s face and this image will inevitably be informed by the idea of decay and decomposition which had just preceded it. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! [. . .] That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. [. . .] Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. (1.2.129–59)

The face, the eye, the heart and the tongue function figuratively here, but they are also examples of how English Renaissance tragedy displays a postmodern kind of awareness about the materiality of language that is always at work as an agency beyond the human being’s capacity to control it. What is said very often becomes performatively and uncontrollably active later on in these plays, and it takes just a small step to move from 13

Quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).

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figurative metaphoricity into corporeal action, from fantasized decay into rotting death. Again, we have to be aware of the theatrical space, since the actual method of stage performance can foreground a connection between the above soliloquy and Hamlet’s meditation upon Yorick’s remains later, when “Hamlet undertakes a forensic reconstruction”14 of the skull. This connection is a potential in the text and can be realized if the actor uses, for example, the same movements of the hand when he imaginatively portrays his mother’s face and when he touches the jester’s skull. Hamlet’s imaginative anatomization of the skull functions as an antitype to the earlier meditation on flesh, face and tongue, and the typological link is established retrospectively if the actor performs similar gestures in the two scenes. Alas, poor Yorick! [. . .] Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. (5.1.184–94)

The extreme visions or fantasies of a tongueless Hieronimo, a decaying Horatio, a Faustus torn apiece by devils, a mutilated Lavinia, a lipless Yorick, an anatomized Regan—the examples could be listed endlessly—all mark the intensive anatomization of the body in English Renaissance tragedy, a transgressive representational technique that brought the early modern spectator face to face with its own innermost Otherness, the frontier of (new) knowledge. Of all these anatomical plays, I would now like to turn to The Revenger’s Tragedy to show how the play mobilizes a set of well known but already half-exhausted iconographic traditions to establish an effect which is a special mixture of moralizing and ridicule. This late revenge tragedy by Middleton (or Tourneur?) is a mature piece in the tradition of a special double anatomy in early modern revenge tragedies. This anatomy is double in two different ways: it is operational not only in the sense that the tragedies foreground the systematic dissection of both the mental and the physiological potentialities of the human being. Within the dramaturgy of these tragedies, the anatomization of body and mind is accompanied by 14 Graham Holderness, “’I covet your skull’: Death and Desire in Hamlet,” Shakespeare Survey 60 (2007): 226.

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a special double anatomy of and by the revenger. On the one hand, an anatomy of adversaries is staged by the revenger, but the revenger’s anatomy lesson at the same time gradually turns into his own selfdissection, stripping his personality bare naked to the point of self-loss. This point of disintegration and loss is seemingly negative and harmful, but in fact it is the condition in which the revenger really becomes able to act out and master those roles which had been necessitated by the taking up of the task of revenge. “Man is happiest when he forgets himself” (4.4.85), says Vindice, and the explanation for this seemingly paradoxical ars poetica is that, in order to demonstrate and perform the typically Neoplatonic capacity of the human being to go through endless metamorphoses, the revenger has to master the art of self-loss, a self-anatomy which then enables the revenger to carry out the anatomy of his enemies. This art of self-loss is performed in The Revenger’s Tragedy through a series of shockingly spectacular anatomical twists. Renaissance scholarship has long held the beginning of The Revenger’s Tragedy as a peculiar example of ambivalence. Vindice appears on stage with a skull in his hand as the presenter of a play that later turns out to be his own device, and the metatheatrical framework is already anticipated by the puppet-show-like presentation he produces when introducing the characters. This initial scene provides the spectators with a synthesis of memento mori and contemptus mundi traditions with the obligatory iconographic accessories. We have here the emblematic skull, already a commonplace so widespread that aristocrats in Jacobean England had jewellery with skull shaped figures. As Phoebe S. Spinrad explains: By the end of the sixteenth century, the inanimate skull was so common that it had become first an item of fashion and then an object of derision. All classes of society began wearing death’shead rings, much in the manner that people today wear religious symbols: some as a genuine aid to prayer; some as an outward show of faith; and some, no doubt, as a matter of fashion, because everyone else had one.15

We also have characters presented like cadavers turned into puppets that are now enlivened, or “galvanized” as Ellis-Fermor wrote, by the commanding words of Vindice, the master of puppets in his net of intrigues. As early as this, Vindice positions himself in the role of master of revels, the supreme director who prepares the stage for his own show to unfold, and his appearance and stage directions are clearly reminiscent of 15 Phoebe S. Spinrad, The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987), 23.

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the medieval morality and mystery plays and the enumeration of various “types.” The first few lines and the atmosphere will unmistakably urge us to associate the scene with the danse macabre tradition as well. Spinrad notes that this imperative mood is persistent throughout the entire drama: Vindice will use the imperative mood again and again in staging his productions, assuming in turn the roles of prompting devil, sender of death, tempting Vice, and Dance of Death choreographer; until at last he will look up to Heaven and order his own applause.16

The skull, like so many other parts of the human body in the play, appears to start a life, an agency of its own, and anatomy makes its powerful appearance already in this prologue.17 Even a superficial count will come up at least with fifteen images of human corporeality in Vindice’s opening soliloquy: Four ex’lent characters!—Oh that marrowless age Would stuff the hollow bones with damned desires, And ‘stead of heat kindle infernal fires Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke, A parched and juiceless luxur! Oh God! one That has scarce blood enough to live upon, And he to riot it like a son and heir? Oh, the thought of that Turns my abused heart-strings into fret. Thou sallow picture of my poisoned love, My study's ornament, thou shell of death, Once the bright face of my betrothed lady, When life and beauty naturally filled out These ragged imperfections; When two heaven-pointed diamonds were set In those unsightly rings—then ‘twas a face 16 Spinrad, Summons of Death, 230. For the stage employment of dramatic and iconographic devices like the skull, see Douglas Bruster, “The Dramatic Life of Objects,” in Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama, ed. Gil Harris et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 67–96. 17 Of the various body parts, J. L. Simmons elaborates on the importance and independent agency of the tongue. “The detachable tongue and its office in Tourneur’s play rely upon the Hebraic and popular tradition of psychology that ascribed psychic and ethical potency to organs of the body. The tongue functions, that is to say, with more than symbolic efficiency: the unsanctified member exerts an independent moral force that can defile because the organ is at the same time an integral part of the whole personality.” “The Tongue and Its Office in The Revenger’s Tragedy,” PMLA, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Jan. 1977): 60.

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Several interpretations in the recent trend of problematising early modern corporeality and inwardness have dealt with the emphasis on the dead body and the skull in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Susan Zimmerman argues that the ambiguous status of the cadaver as something in between the animate and the inanimate was an important element of English Renaissance popular beliefs, and the ideas about the latent harmful or even contagious powers of the corpse inform the presentation of Gloriana’s skull and Antonio’s wife. Writing about the “grotesquely outrageous humour” that is so characteristic of many tragedies of the period, Zimmerman contends that: the ‘graveyard ambience’ of these plays proceeds in part from their appropriation of popular notions of the corpse, particularly the long tradition of its mysterious, semi-animate status. In Middleton’s play the shifting symbolic values of Gloriana’s skull serve to activate, as it were, the latent power of her original corpse; and the newly dead and eroticized body of Antonio’s wife evokes the preoccupation in Renaissance iconography with the sexual/reproductive power of the female corpse, seen in phenomena as disparate as the danse macabre and the illustrations of anatomical treatises.18

Hillary M. Nunn in her powerful book on dissection and spectacle excels in mapping out the various connections between early Stuart theatrical and anatomical practices, and she also draws attention to Vindice’s obsession with the skull which he employs as if it was still a living person, a fully animate agent. As Nunn puts it: for Vindice the bony head remains the indisputable embodiment of his dead beloved’s spirit, as well as his exclusive property. Holding such conversations with Gloriana’s skull evidently proves a habit with Vindice, for when his brother Hippolito comes upon the scene, he wearily asks why Vindice is “Still sighing o’er death’s vizard” (1.1.49).19 18

Susan Zimmerman, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare’s Theatre (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 129. 19 Hillary M. Nunn, Staging Anatomies: Dissection and Spectacle in Early Stuart Tragedy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 142.

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I cannot but fully agree with these observations, but I also think they fail to observe that Vindice the presenter-revenger literally dissects the verbally built up and visualized image of Gloriana’s head and face, and finally arrives at the bare skull, only to set it into its lethal motion. It is the agency of this skull that will generate the anatomization and death of the royal members in the corrupt court. As a matter of fact, Vindice presents a public and retrospective autopsy of Gloriana which sets up a typological agency in the tragedy, since it foreshadows that disintegration which awaits the Duke and his allies. Thus, Vindice’s prologue works as the type of the play as antitype. Vindice functions as “author and actor in this tragedy,” in the very same way Hieronimo did in the metatheatrical framework of The Spanish Tragedy, and he initiates the dissective work of the skull by rolling it into the world of the plot he intends to direct. The scene is certainly reminiscent of Hamlet’s appearance with the skull, and it is also an iconographically exuberant melting pot of a number of commonplace moralizing traditions. To further intensify the effect of the scene, we are shocked by the revelation that the skull in the revenger’s hand belongs to his former lover. This shock then definitely turns into some uncomfortable laughter when the spectator comprehends the complexity of the situation: Vindice must have taken careful and professional steps to prepare the skull of the long-diseased Gloriana in order to transform it, first, into an ornament of his study, and now the emblem of the anatomical agency in his play. What is it, then, that still saves The Revenger’s Tragedy from becoming a cheap parody or burlesque of the traditions and representational techniques that had lost their power by the beginning of the seventeenth century? My contention is that the representational efficiency of the play is a result of its systematic staging of that kind of transgression which moved into the forefront of public attention with the advent of early modern public autopsy. Bodily transgression in Middleton’s play is systematically anatomical and it exposes the early modern spectator to the questions of its own constitution, questions that were becoming more and more acute in the epistemological crisis of the period. These anatomical transgressions add a new dimension, a new depth to the memento mori in this revenge tragedy. The foregrounding of the human being’s fallibility and corporeality reminds the subject not only of its mortality and the approaching time of death, but of its corruptible, material origin as well, of the Other, the cadaver inside. Huston Diehl argues that early modern drama, just like its medieval origin the morality play, was supposed to “put us in

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remembrance,”20 but remembering was becoming exceedingly problematic at the time of a new, reformed theology in Renaissance England. Michael Neill contends that revenge narratives make an attempt to process the traumatic effect of the abolition of Purgatory and intercession,21 and I believe another important element of this thanatological crisis was the newly discovered corporeality of the subject, which the audience of the Renaissance emblematic theatre was constantly put “in remembrance of.” This corporeality is already much more than the medieval moralizing on the dust that we will all return to. It establishes the effect that can be best characterized by the term Vindice himself employs at the end of his opening soliloquy: terror. “Advance thee, O thou terror to fat folks” (1.1.45)—thus the revenger commands the skull, the master agent of the play, and terror is the proper word here, since the agency of the skull disseminates the latent potentiality of death in the entirety of the play, and, theatrically directed by Vindice, it will truly peel off skin and flesh during its anatomical movement. This omnipresence of death had of course been focal in medieval drama and iconography as well, and the symbolical skeleton with the scythe peeped and sneaked into the rooms and bedchambers of mortals at the most unexpected hour, but English Renaissance tragedy goes beyond this iconography, and systematically thematises the skeleton, the skull within us. The adventures of the skull in The Revenger’s Tragedy set up a peculiar economy of terror through the anatomical imagery, because they implant in the spectator a continuous awareness of his or her own anatomical reality, the skull beneath our face.

20

Huston Diehl, “To Put Us in Remembrance: The Protestant Transformation of Images of Judgment,” in Homo, Memento Finis: The Iconography of Just Judgment in Medieval Art and Drama, ed. David Bevington (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1985), 190. 21 “…revenge narratives [are] a response to particularly painful aspect of the early modern reimagining of death – the wholesale displacement of the dead from their familiar place in the order of things by the Protestant abolition of purgatory and ritual intercession. Revenge tragedy exhibits a world in which the dead, precisely because they are now beyond the help of their survivors, have become practically insatiable in their demands upon the living.” Michael Neill, Issues of Death. Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 46.

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Figure 7. “To have their costly three-pil'd flesh worn off / As bare as this.”— Vindice instructs the skull to engage in an operation that is quite identical with the dissective work of early modern anatomy, as demonstrated above in a plate from De Humani Corporis Fabrica. (Courtesy of Somogyi Library, Szeged)

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After the anatomization of Gloriana and the introduction of her skull in the first scene, the second anatomical twist in the play comes with the first spectacle of revenge carefully designed and performed by the protagonist. The sophisticated and prolonged staging of the killing of the Duke in the dramaturgical turning point of the play is also meticulously anatomized by Vindice. The Duke is not simply tortured and murdered—the scene is designed in a way so that the totality of the human being is literally dissolved. Poison is perhaps the most frequently recurring element in the imagery of the play, and poison is employed on Gloriana’s skull to launch the process that turns the face of the Duke into a rotting skull, the thing he had turned Gloriana into several years earlier. As the teeth of the Duke are being eaten out by the poison, his tongue is nailed to the ground, and his eyes are being pushed out by the revengers. “The very ragged bone has been sufficiently revenged” (3.5.153–54)—proclaims Vindice, but the process also has to penetrate the enemy’s soul, so the Duke is forced to bear witness to how his bastard son cuckolds him with his wife in the neighbouring chamber. Puh, ‘tis but early yet; now I’ll begin To stick thy soul with ulcers, I will make Thy spirit grievous sore: it shall not rest, But like some pestilent man toss in thy breast. Mark me, duke, Thou’rt a renowned, high, and mighty cuckold. (3.5.170–74)

The ulcers Vindice intends to implant in the Duke’s soul curiously echo Sidney’s conception about the power of tragedy that “openth the greatest wounds [. . .] and showeth forth the ulcers”—mental and psychological as well. Vindice performs a double anatomy of body and soul here, and the scene foregrounds an awareness of the psychosomatic complexity of the human being. The unity of the corporeal and the mental is exposed here to a slow process in which the revenger-anatomist tries to grasp the moment of transition from life to death, to reveal the mystery that was also the objective of public autopsies in the Renaissance anatomy theatres. We might comprehend the anxiety aroused by the scene even better if we consider that the roles of the executioner and those of the anatomist were not so clearly distinct as we would perhaps presume today. As Jonathan Sawday explains: In the past, however, such a finely drawn distinction between the art of the healer and the skills of the executioner did not exist. On the contrary, early-modern understanding of the human body is firmly anchored in the willingness of the body’s investigators to participate in the execution process in claiming for the anatomy table the bodies of the executed.

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[. . .T]here was very little distance between the ritual of execution and the opening of the body to knowledge. This confusion of roles, or (less charitably) this assumption of a dual role on the part of the anatomistexecutioner was of crucial importance to the rise of anatomical science in the Renaissance.22

With his initial metaphorical dissection of Gloriana, his persistent effort to wear off the skin and flesh of the members of the corrupt court, and his relentless self-examination in the process of getting as far from his original self as possible, Vindice as arch-revenger in the play’s web of revenges outdoes the others because he is capable of fully identifying with the roles he strives to master. In his capacity as executioner-anatomist and metatheatrical master of revels, he opens up the ulcers in the society that surrounds him as well as those in his own soul and mind, but this process inevitably leads to his total self-dissection. He becomes a living emblem of the Neo-platonic teaching about the potential in the human being to change, to go through transformations. It is typical of early modern contrariety, and especially of revenge tragedies that this art of metamorphosis does not culminate in a final Renaissance self-realization, because the roles that the revenger assumes entirely consume his original personality. Vindice’s revenge strategies go hand in hand with his selfanatomy which has its concluding act in a final anatomical twist, in his own disassemblement, and this is how the play becomes “an exercise in theatrical self-abandonment.”23 The revenger departs from the world of the play in excellent spirits although he is to be executed, because he realizes that, with the completion of the task of revenge, with no more roles to play and no original identity to return to, there is nothing left that would legitimate his existence. Violence in these scenes, as in English Renaissance tragedy in general, is thus never for its own sake. The repeated anatomical turning points in The Revenger’s Tragedy and in early modern English revenge plays are difficult to comprehend without a knowledge of all the emblematic codes that the plays simultaneously employ and interrogate. At the same time, we also have to bear in mind that the excitement and tension that emerged in this emblematic theatre were, to a large extent, grounded in the early

22 Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned. Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 79–80. 23 Scott McMillin, “Acting and Violence: The Revenger’s Tragedy and Its Departures from Hamlet,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, Vol. 24, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring 1984): 275.

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modern anatomizing curiosity, the relentless investment in an inwardness that informed the representational logic of the English Renaissance stage.

“IN WHAT VILE PART OF THIS ANATOMY DOTH MY NAME LODGE?”: PARTS OF NAMES AND NAMES OF PARTS IN SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET GÉZA KÁLLAY

“Shakespeare founded the passion of the two lovers not on the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced” (William Hazlitt: The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays [1817])

“What’s in a name?” (2.1.85)1—Juliet’s question, sometimes taken as rhetorical, and thus meaning ‘name is unimportant’, has become not only a possible focus for pieces on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but has also served as a proverbial motto or title for essays on the philosophy of language.2 However, in the philosophy of language—by which I wish to mean here roughly the British, Austrian and American schools of logic in the so-called ‘analytic tradition’ of philosophy—Juliet’s question has meant almost the direct opposite. It did not mean that ‘names have no significance’ but rather: ‘the way (two-valued) logic gives an account of the workings of names provides us with the clue as to how language works in general, so names are all-important.’ In what follows, it will be names (such as Romeo) and so-called definite descriptions (e.g. the young man 1

Throughout this paper I quote Romeo and Juliet according to the following edition: William Shakespeare, “The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” in The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Greenblatt et. al. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2008), 189–256. 2 For a recent use as title see e.g. David Robson, “What's in a name? The words behind thought,” New Scientist, 6 September, (2010), http://www.newscientist.com /article/mg20727761.500-whats-in-a-name-the-words-behind-thought.html?full= true.

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who fell in love with Juliet) wherein I try to catch the consciousness of the play called Romeo and Juliet, studying how the text seems to conceive of itself with respect to the relationship between names and personal identity. This question seems to me to be deeply connected with the many uses of the word part in the play: names appear to be connected both with parts (elements) of certain states-of-affairs and parts of the human body but also, and even more importantly, what is put to hazard is the power of names and naming over the very existence and identity of persons. As far as the problem of naming is concerned, I will start out from classical theories of reference as put forward especially by Gottlob Frege,3 Bertrand Russell,4 Peter Strawson,5 John Searle6 and Saul Kripke7 but if I am to identify a ‘school of thought’ I follow in terms of my reading the play, I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness—not for the first and the last time—to the works of Stanley Cavell,8 and to Brett Bourbon,9 both scholars engaged in the grand theme of ‘philosophy and literature.’ What I hope to achieve, in line with their approach to literature and philosophy, is not only an attempt at providing a more systematic, analytical approach to the play, made ‘rigorous’ by the philosophy of language but I also wish to perhaps show some new aspects of the theory of names and reference in the light of the Shakespearean text.

3

Frege’s classic article, the starting-point of all theories of naming and reference is Gottlob Frege, “On Sense and Nominatum [1892]” trans. by Herbert Feigl, in The Philosophy of Language, 4th ed., ed. A. P. Martinich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 191–98. 4 Russell’s equally classic article on names, definite descriptions (his “invention”) and reference is Bertrand Russell, “On Denoting [1905],” in Martinich, The Philosophy, 212–20. 5 See e.g. Peter F. Strawson, “On Referring [1950],” in Readings in the Philosophy of Language, ed. Peter Ludlow (Cambridge, Mass. and London, Engl.: The MIT Press, 1997), 350–58. 6 Cf. John R. Searle, “Proper Names,” in Philosophical Logic, ed. P. F. Strawson (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 89–96, and John R. Searle, Intentionality, An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 231–61. 7 See Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), especially Lecture II, reprinted in Ludlow, Readings, 609–34. 8 See especially Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays by Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 9 See especially Brett Bourbon, Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Mind and Meaning in Literature and Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2004).

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“What’s in a name?” (2.1.85)—Juliet asks, and she does not know that the bearer of the name Romeo is under her balcony, in the garden of the Capulet-house: Romeo Montague’s very position has metaphorical implications; he, having a fixed place in the very much closed-off class of ‘Montagues,’ has displaced himself, “with love’s light wings” (2.1.108) over the garden-wall into Capulet-territory, the ‘enclosed garden’ (hortus conclusus) even physically sealed off. Before Juliet’s question, we heard exclamations and a seemingly nonsensical question inquiring about why Romeo was given the name he was given: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” (75). It is unlikely that “wherefore (why, perhaps: for what purpose) are you Romeo?” should be taken as an inquiry into why the parents chose that name from among all the possible ones when baptising Romeo. Juliet rather asks why she was doomed to fall in love with someone held to be an enemy to her family, or, more precisely, to what extent the identity of Romeo carries the quality, the ‘semantic content’ of ‘enemy.’ Yet Juliet is also savouring the name and, as it is usual with lovers, she perhaps hopes to conjure up, through the very mentioning of the name, the beloved person himself. The heat of elemental love warms up one of the oldest, animistic beliefs about names: the very uttering of the name may make the bearer of it present. This is why, for example God’s Real Name in the Old Testament is a taboo; this is why “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”10 Yet the idea (or rather: the desire) that if the beloved one is not present, then at least the pronunciation of his name—audible, of course, for the speaker, too—may help the speaker, as it were, to bathe herself in the person’s presence, aura, halo, and atmosphere, is in striking contrast with Juliet’s next suggestion, which is, in terms of its semantic purport, the mixture of an imperative and an optative: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name” (76). There is a conflict here because if the name does carry the Other’s very self (as the animistic belief suggests), then how could the ‘conjuring up’ happen, once the bearer of the name has dispensed with his name? How could he be brought, through and ‘in’ the name, into the ‘here and now’ of the speaker? Further, Juliet’s formulation indicates that she is well aware of an existing, operative social (‘earthly’) commandment (though, undoubtedly, even socially modelled on the Biblical one): the law is that a man inherits (and ‘takes on’) the name of his Father and thus throwing away the name is tantamount to denying, betraying, maybe even profaning the Father. Thus name is socially engrafted into the heir: the son inherits (some of the) father’s characteristics, talents, shortcomings but also his wealth (or 10

Exodus 20:7.

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poverty), to some extent also his reputation; even the right and duty to procreate: especially in Verona—here standing for Early Modern English and European society—this law is a taboo and transgressing it—to use the formulation of the Third Commandment—“will not hold [one] guiltless.” Yet does the son inherit, and does he necessarily inherit the emotional orientations (hatred, preferences, love etc.) of the Father, too? Juliet here can clearly see one of the main conflicts of the play enfolding in its future: on the one hand, there is her love towards Romeo which he returns, and, as a very rare phenomenon, he returns it in exactly the same quantity and quality. On the other hand, she is well aware of the ancient, legendary grudge between Capulets and Montagues, the origins of which have faded into oblivion but it is there, as a most stubborn fact, palpable in every house, every street, every yard (and in almost every garden). Even further, by emphasising a key word, part of the play—as it will become clearer below—Friar Lawrence is also of the conviction that parents do have a very important share (‘part’) in their children. When Capulet is desperately wailing over his daughter whom he thinks to be dead, the Friar chides him with the following words: Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion’s cure lives not In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid [i.e. Juliet]. Now heaven hath all [the whole of Juliet] And all the better is it for the maid. Your part in her you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. (4.4.92–97)

While old Capulet had his “part” in Juliet, the hatred between the two families took, indeed, such irrational degrees—as it has been several times pointed out in connection with the play11—as the love of the single descendants of the two respective families: in Verona, not only love but hatred is totally mutual and match each other, both being equally insane, and they are bound to clash with equal force. The members of the opposing families will not endure12 one another’s presence, aura, atmosphere: precisely that personal halo Juliet wishes to conjure up on the balcony with respect to Romeo. For example Tybalt, the chief troublemaker has such a finely honed ear that he can, at old Capulet’s “old11 Cf. for example István Géher, Tükörképünk 37 darabban. Shakespeareolvasókönyv [Our mirror-image held up to us in 37 pieces: a Shakespeare-Reader] (Budapest: Cserépfalvi és Szépirodalmi Kiadók, 1991), 184. 12 Cf. Tybalt’s words: “ ‘Tis he, that villain Romeo [. . .] I’ll not endure him” (1.5.61; 73).

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accustomed feast” (1.2.18), recognise a Montague by his voice: “This, by his voice, should be a Montague” (1.5.51). (One wonders if hatred has engraved sound-recordings, samples of Montague-voices into Tybalt’s mind under the label ‘What and Whom I Hate’, or the Montagues speak a special dialect, and this is what he means.) Hatred—like love—is a plague, an affliction and in this play comes—like everything else—in extremes. “A plague o’both your houses” (3.1.103) are some of the last words spoken by the deadly wounded Mercutio, with whom, at the turning point of the play, comedy bleeds out as well, and the quicksilver-like young man does not realise that plague need not be left in the air of Verona as a curse, since it is precisely this plague, always-already there, everywhere, which has slain him, too. By the end of the play, this plague turns, as it were, into a ‘literal’ one, which hinders Father John from delivering Father Lawrence’s warning letter to Romeo in time. In Verona hatred, prejudice, respective anti-Montaguism and anti-Capuletism is the custom, the tradition, the norm, like Petrarcan, love-for-love’s sake infatuation among the youth; real love—incredible but elemental and unquenchable even for Romeo and Juliet—is the exception, the transgression, the subversive, the scandalous, the incalculable, the non-categorisable. Juliet—although her desire is only a few minutes old—wisely knows that ‘love’—meaning both the emotion and the beloved, the latter a common but now particularised new name— must conflict with proper names people got at their birth: Romeo, Montague, Capulet, which symbolically comprise the common, social norm, the very context they live in. Juliet is willing to deny her Father, too: “Or if thou wilt not [refuse thy name], be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (77–78): in fact they will both deny their fathers when they marry secretly and without their parents’ permission and blessing. It is enough to recall how John Donne’s career was ruined for more than a decade (some would say: forever), when he secretly married Anne More in December 1601: the enraged father, Sir George More had Donne imprisoned, and even after his release Donne did not get permanent employment until 1615.13 Romeo’s question, addressed half to himself, half to the audience: “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?” formulates the eternal dilemma of a by-stander who is addressed without the awareness of the addressee. The last thing Romeo would like to do is to humiliate Juliet by being an eavesdropper to her secrets, yet he would not like to frighten her, either. Further, it is also very pleasing to hear: “be but sworn my love,” if 13 Cf. A. J. Smith, ed., John Donne: The Complete English Poems (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 18–20.

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one is in love with the person who utters this sentence. Yet love will heat Juliet’s mind up to the extent that she presents quite a pretty theory of names and Romeo listens spellbound: ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though [=even if] not a Montague, What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, Retain that dear perfection which he owes [=owns] Without that title. Romeo, doff [=remove] thy name, And for thy name—which is no part of thee— Take all myself. (2.1.70-91)

This is also a beautiful piece of rhetoric, starting from “name”, “enemy Montague” and “thyself” and arriving, through the re-interpretation of these, at “myself”. This interpretation, however, as all theories of names are, is full of heavy epistemological and ontological commitments. What Juliet puts forward is, in the broad sense, a version of nominalism: the name is a purely conventional label on the person or thing referred to by the name and thus it can really be “doffed,” i.e. removed without any loss whatsoever, since the name does not carry, in its semantic content, or in any way, any of the ‘real,’ inward or outward characteristics of the things or persons themselves: especially the name itself is not a typical feature of the thing or person. Names just conventionally refer, from the outside; they just touch but never contain the qualities of things or persons. A version of this nominalism (dating back, ultimately, to Plato’s Cratylus) was taken up, at the turn of the century, by Gottlob Frege, his theory debated, refined but followed in the main by Russell, Strawson and Searle. The theory is often called the “descriptive theory” (later, after Strawson and Searle, the “cluster theory”).14 Its gist, in Juliet’s terms, is as follows: the name Montague or Romeo does not, indeed, ‘capture’ anything directly in the person thus named. The name, conventionally attached to the person as a label, is not inherently tied to any part “belonging to a man.” Thus, it is “nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face”: 14

Cf. William G. Lycan, “Names,” in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language, ed. Michael Devitt et al. (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 255–73.

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hand, foot, arm, face are pieces of reality external to language. The name, coming from speakers of the language, will provide an ‘overall sticker’ for the person, including the parts which of course make the person up, yet become ‘hidden’ and lie ‘dormant’ once the name is attached. Of course, if one of the ‘parts,’ the features, the characteristics of a person, inward or outward, sticks out for some reason, it may become, metonymically, or even following the principle of pars pro toto (‘the part for the whole’) the root of name-formation. For example, if we are aware that in the name Benvolio two Latin words: bene (‘good’) and velle (‘to wish’) are put together, we may assume that the name of Romeo’s cousin is anchored in one of his characteristics, namely that he is benevolent: a ‘well-wisher.’ Once the word or words referring to this ‘part’ (feature) of the person is used as a name, we, after all, refer to the whole person through the word (words) standing for this single feature. The epistemological commitment the theory implies is that names do not play any active role in getting to know a person or a thing; as Juliet says: “That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” In terms of getting to know, we have direct access to beings via our minds and not through the detour of our language; language—name—is only there to record and carry the knowledge-content we acquired through the mind and independently of names; we would know that the flower rose is sweetsmelling, has thorns, may be of different colours such as red, pink, yellow, white, etc., even if it was referred to by another name, say, ‘esor.’ Similarly, “Romeo would,” as Juliet claims now of her love, “were he not Romeo called, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title,” that is, Romeo would still have the quality of perfection, even if he was not called Romeo. (It is another question that Juliet, in attributing features to Romeo, is, to say the least, rather biased. But this is understandable: granting perfection to someone may be the first—although undoubtedly hazardous—sign of real love). According to the descriptive- and the cluster-theories, in language we have, most of the time, ‘conventional names’—like Montague—, which themselves do not mean anything, and less often so-called ‘speakingnames’ that may already indicate (‘contain’) some characteristics of the person (or thing). Yet ‘speaking-names’ must also become at one point conventional, if they want a place in the system of language but may, at the same time, call our attention to the fact that under the label of a name we store several characteristics, ‘parts’ of a person which may not only include bodily features and inward characteristics but actions the person performed in certain situations, or events the person was participant in, etc. Thus, a name may carry (stand for) shorter or longer stories, narratives,

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plots in which the person named is a more or less significant character. Another way of putting this is to say, in a rather Humean fashion, that we ‘associate’ all sorts of characteristics and features—including situations the person has been a part of—with the name that refers to the person. These can be given in sentences; for example Juliet may say: I kissed that boy at the ball; We talked in a sonnet. These sentences, true in the world of the play, can be turned into descriptions of Romeo: the boy Juliet kissed at the ball, the boy with whom Juliet talked in a sonnet. Such descriptions were called definite descriptions by Russell; he claimed that definite descriptions were the equivalents of proper names like Romeo, ‘equivalent’ here meaning that the name Romeo can be substituted for e.g. the boy Juliet kissed at the Capulet ball ‘salva veritate’, i.e. without effecting the truth-value of the sentence in which the name/the definite description occurs. For example, Romeo climbed into the Capulet garden may be exchanged for: The boy who kissed Juliet at the Capulet ball climbed into the Capulet garden, and the two sentences will describe the same state-of-affairs and will, in the world of the play, equally be true. Thus Romeo can be referred to in several ways: with his proper names themselves (Romeo, Montague), but also with definite descriptions (the boy who kissed Juliet at the Capulet ball; the only son of the Montaguecouple, etc.) which are of the same value as the proper name Romeo. This theory was refined by Strawson and Searle on several points. One of the crucial problems they pointed out was that it is hard to tell which description, from among the many possible ones, is through which a speaker fixes the person or thing she is referring to. Is there a ‘privileged’ description, and if there is, on what grounds? Searle concluded that we rather make use of a ‘cluster’ of descriptions, and the speaker’s intention plays a decisive role in choosing certain descriptions for identification.15 In Juliet’s terminology, Searle would claim that it is precisely through the cluster of references to “hand, foot, arm and face” (i.e. parts of the person through which we may describe her) that we remember, and thus ‘store,’ the referent of the person as a whole, and we fix (identify) her precisely through such clusters. (It is another matter what delight Juliet takes in naming Romeo’s bodily parts one by one, and which part she is actually referring to when she says “any other part”). The descriptive and the cluster theories, in many points different but sharing the same ontological and epistemological assumptions, were challenged by Saul Kripke in the early 1970s, claiming almost the direct

15

Cf. Searle, “Proper Names,” 93–95 and Searle, Intentionality, 255–61.

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opposite of previous conceptions, and the debate has not yet subsided.16 I guess Kripke would, in Juliet’s monologue, point at the significant occurrences of “thyself” and “myself” (the latter emphatically closing the monologue): Juliet offers herself, in an almost business-like manner, in exchange for Romeo’s “doffed” name. This, for Kripke, may already indicate that the relationship between names and (the whole) self, i.e. between names and the identity of a person, is not as unproblematic as descriptivists and clusterists had assumed. Kripke claims that Russell was simply wrong in being of the opinion that proper names and definite descriptions were on the same level: it is true that, in several cases, a definite description may replace the proper name in the same context ‘salva veritate.’ Yet the problem is that a definite description contains a quality or an action of a person (e.g. the boy who is perfect, the boy who kissed Juliet etc.), which is a contingent fact about Romeo in the world of the play, while his proper name, i.e. Romeo or Montague, is not. It would have been possible that Romeo does not meet Juliet at the ball for the first time but e.g. in the cell of Father Lawrence, it could have been the case that he does not notice her, that he does not fall in love with her, that his ‘bodily parts’ do not have this charm for the girl, etc. Of course, because the story has become so emblematic, it is now hard to imagine that events do not happen in the play the way we expect them to happen. Even— horribile dictu—that Shakespeare did write Romeo and Juliet, or that he was born at all, is a contingent fact of the world, since, for Kripke, the possibility that certain events or qualities associated with a person, and sometimes also used as a definite description, could be or could have been otherwise, is a universal feature of the universe. For example the definite description the person who won the presidential election in 2008 in the US designates Barack Obama but the election could have had different results; the definite description the man who was tutor to Alexander the Great refers to Aristotle yet it could have been the case that someone else was Alexander’s tutor, or that he had no tutor at all, etc. However that Obama 16 I do not wish to create the impression that Kripke is ‘alone,’ while the descriptivists and the clusterists are neatly in one camp: there are several differences between Frege’s, Russell’s, Strawson’s or Searle’s respective theories, while Kripke has—of course, also critical—followers such as Michael Devitt, Designation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), and especially Scott Soames, Beyond rigidity: The unfinished agenda of naming and necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Cf. also Paul Horwitz, “Reference,” in A Companion to Metaphysics, 2nd ed., ed. Jaegwon Kim et. al. (Chichester: WileyBlackwell Publishing, 2009), 539–41.

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is Obama, that Aristotle is Aristotle, that, in the world of the play, Romeo is Romeo, is not a contingent but a necessary fact because it is impossible that anyone be not identical with him-or herself.17 Of course, anyone could have been called differently (e.g. baptised under a different name) but, Kripke claims, once a name has been given, it functions as a so-called ‘rigid designator,’ which means that it is anchored in, and carries, the very identity (the very ‘self’) of the person. Thus, for Kripke, proper names such as Romeo or Montague or Capulet are far from being equivalents of definite descriptions; proper names directly refer to, and are anchored in, the respective identities of people, and identity is different from qualities, characteristics and features because qualities, characteristics and features are contingent, and can therefore be predicated of persons, truly or falsely, whereas identity is unique to everyone and—in my interpretation of Kripke’s theory—identity, like existence, is not a predicate. This means that identity logically implies existence but neither identity, nor existence is ‘one of the qualities’ of a person but the very ‘prerequisite’ of our ability to predicate anything, including qualities, of the person at all. The strong ontological commitment of Kripke’s theory is that names as rigid designators (as referring expressions) cannot be detached from the person. Once a name is given, it captures something necessary about the person, namely that he is (‘name-ly’) identical with him- or herself, providing something like a ‘skeleton’ onto which all sorts of qualities, features and characteristics might be ‘hung’ or ‘stuck.’ Qualities, features and characteristics might, of course, be highly relevant epistemologically but are contingent ontologically, and, thus, epistemologically, too. Kripke’s strong—and strange—ontological commitment is that identity (and, thus, existence, once a person is born) is not a contingent fact of the world, and since it is necessary, it remains what it is in every ‘possible world,’ too, including worlds we create through our imagination. Thus for him, Romeo, Juliet or any other ‘literary character,’ carries his or her identity into the ‘everyday world’ we live in e.g. right now, too. This, I think, raises fascinating new prospects to rethink, for instance, the relationship between ‘fiction’ and ‘reality.’ Contrary to the today ‘mainstream’ post-modern conviction that ‘everything might be fictional’ because it is impossible to distinguish between ‘fiction and reality,’ we may find, with Kripke, that there is a ‘hard core’ reality to everyone: his or 17 Kripke’s theory applies to inanimate things (objects) too, in a complicated manner (complicated, because e.g. ‘table’ or ‘chair’ may be a generic name, too, which does not have unique reference and thus must be made singular e.g. with the help of demonstrative pronouns (determiners) like this (this table (in front of me), etc.) but here I will not go into that.

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her identity, no matter whether he or she is ‘real’ (i.e. part of our everyday world) or created by somebody’s imagination. Kripke’s theory has very significant ethical implications, too: one must not kill because human life is far beyond the ‘biological’; killing is eliminating a—unique—identity which can never be ‘replaced.’ Thus, for Kripke, naming is not an epistemological business, happening through qualities of persons but an ontological matter, names penetrating into the very self of the person rigidly designated. This might perhaps be read as a return to a kind of animism, although Kripke would most probably resist such a reading of his theory. Yet, I claim, Kripke’s theory implies that there is something more than social and communal in name-giving: rather, the name somehow carries the ‘soul,’ the ‘essence’ of a person with a force which is stronger than ‘social agreement’; this is the possible animism I started from when I began interpreting Juliet’s monologue. Yet Kripke also has some bad news for the enamoured girl: the name Romeo, or Montague cannot be “doffed” without hurting Romeo’s identity, his self; “Thou art thyself, though not a Montague,” i.e. ‘you are yourself, even if you are not a Montague’ is hardly possible under a Kripkean reading. I think the clash between descriptivist-clusterists and Kripkeans of name theory neatly models the central conflict of the play: in order to unite forever, at least here on earth, both Romeo and Juliet should get rid of their names. Are their names just arbitrary accessories equivalent to definite descriptions which contain contingent characteristics of their respective selves? Or is name rather their very self, necessarily anchored in their respective souls, unalienable from either of them, perhaps also prescribing their doom? Where Kripke, I suggest again, might bring new insight into the interpretation of Romeo and Juliet is precisely the force of logical necessity he claims to accompany personal identity, rigidly designated by names. That the names Capulet and Montague stick to the members of the respective families like stigmas has, of course, been pointed out endless times about the play,18 yet names are usually handled as social phenomena (as they are in the works of descriptivists and clusterists). Even if names have been connected with identity, identity has been taken to be a social (historical)—basically an epistemological and not an ontological— problem. Stephen Greenblatt’s no doubt brilliant introduction to the play in the Norton Shakespeare may serve as an example. Greenblatt does talk 18

See, for example, for a very helpful summary, Rex Gibson, Cambridge Student Guide to Romeo and Juliet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4 and 84–104.

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about the “magical, passionate, transformative language of Romeo and Juliet” which is in opposition to Mercutio’s (and the others’) wordplay, just as much as the everyday language of the Nurse and the language of ‘social exchange’ in general.19 “[I]n the garden,—Greenblatt writes— away from church and family and friends, the fullness of the lovers’ matched longings finds expression in words that seem to possess mythic power, power to transform darkness into intense light and at the same time block out the harsh, unforgiving light of the everyday.”20 However, in the next paragraph Greenblatt becomes more ‘sober’: “as Romeo and Juliet repeatedly discloses, words as we ordinarily use them are rarely wholly arbitrary or wholly mythic. They are social constructions, communal creations that are neither complete unto themselves, nor empty and hence malleable by individuals.”21 Greenblatt—no doubt like Russell, Searle and the other descriptivists and clusterists—is of the generally received opinion—confirmed by several other post-modern thinkers such as Foucault or Lacan—that not only family rivalry, business relations, etc. but the family, the self—everything—, even human emotions like love and hatred, as extreme as they might be, are socially ‘constructed.’ I see the significance of Kripke’s theory in—at least in my reading— implying that self-identity is not socially constructed, and I wish to claim that Romeo and Juliet (and several plays of Shakespeare) hazard a ‘no,’ at least as one possible alternative, to the question whether everything is constructed by society and history. (Perhaps some of the debates between New Historicists and old and new ‘humanist’ readers of Shakespeare could at least be surveyed along this line). Yet I do not think the real opponent of ‘the social’ would be the traditional ‘natural,’ against which the adherents of the social constructivist theories often rebelled from the late 1960s and, with reinforced vigour, in the early 80s. I think the truly subversive is not ‘within the social’ in Shakespeare, and the real conflict is not between the ‘natural’ and the ‘social,’ but—as Greenblatt indicates, too—between the social and the precisely unnaturally magical, mystical, mythological, as, e.g. very obviously, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale or The Tempest, a force coming from outside of society, even of nature, which is the challenge of the supernatural and the divine. With this, I do not wish to promote a 19

Stephen Greenblatt, introduction to “The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” by William Shakespeare, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2008), 184. 20 Greenblatt, introduction, 185. 21 Greenblatt, introduction, 185.

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traditional Christian reading of the plays—far from it. Yet I think it is too easy to explain the magical, the mythological, the mystical, the supernatural and the divine away as always already also socially constructed. The significance of a Kripkean challenge is that he does not even resort to a mythical or magical or animistic interpretation of names but remains within the rational, rigorous field of logical necessity (it is of course another question where logic—and this logic—comes from). Does Romeo and Juliet decide about the power of names in a way in which a Kripkean reading, with its ontological assumptions, may present a significant alternative? In order to hazard an answer, I take my clue from the many uses of the word part in the play for two reasons. One is that part—as we saw—occurs in the very context of the name-problem: “What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, // Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man” (2.1.82–85) and: “And for thy name— which is no part of thee—/ Take all myself” (90–91). Here part is a noun and it means ‘a portion, a bit, a separated section, a piece of somebody’ or, even literally of some ‘body,’ as opposed to a ‘whole’ (“all myself”). The other reason why I attempt an answer to the Kripkean challenge through the word “part” is that the text of Romeo and Juliet seems to go out of its way, right from the beginning, to engrave this word into our minds. When, in act 1 scene 1, Benvolio is asked by old Montague to describe the broil the servants of the Capulet and the Montague houses incurred, Romeo’s cousin ends his little speech with: “Came more and more, and fought on part and part [fought on both sides] / Till the Prince came, who parted either part” (1.1.107–8). In this latter case part is a Verb with the wellknown meaning of ‘separate’. Benvolio especially likes this word because previously he already shouted at the fighting servants: “Part fools. Put up your swords” (1.1.58) and at Tybalt: “Put up thy sword, / Or manage it to part these men with me” (61–2). The ‘separation’ aspect reinforces the ‘label’-quality of language: each word, name is a classificatory term through which we, willy-nilly, separate phenomena from one another and put them into ‘classes.’ In Benvolio’s locutions part is in the close proximity of swords, either ‘put up,’ or directed at someone, and besides the phallic associations (throughout the play), the specific directions signs and speech take (what exactly swords, words and gestures ‘point at’) are highly significant as well. In act 1 scene 1 the brawl starts when Samson is no longer just “biting his thumb” (cf. 1.1.45), but he is biting it “at” Abraham and the other Montague-servants (39), a highly insulting gesture. Samson will accept Abraham’s challenge with “I am for you” (49): the very same words will be repeated by Tybalt (3.1.77), when, in act 3, Mercutio provokes the “Good Prince” or “King of Cats” (2.3.17; 3.1.72)

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into a fatal duel. Even more importantly, in the balcony scene Romeo finds it significant to note that although Juliet speaks, her words at first are not addressed to him: “ ‘Tis not to me she speaks” (2.1.56, emphases mine throughout). In the balcony-scene, monologue turns into a dialogue, just as in act 2 scene 2, when Friar Lawrence’s famous soliloquy on nature is interrupted by Romeo’s “good morrow, father” (2.2.31). A few lines before, just when according to the stage-direction “Enter Romeo” (23),22 Lawrence said: “Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence, and medicine power. / For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part [i.e. with the smelling act it cheers up all the bodily senses]; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart” (24–26). This is more than just a traditional ‘lesson’ in the difference between pleasing (maybe tempting) ‘external qualities’ and deadly ‘internal qualities’: the phrasing also takes a stand with respect to our senses, and suggests that through one single part of ours, all our other parts (senses, bodily parts) might be affected. Since the same word—part—is used both for the act of smelling and the bodily organs, this ‘four letter word’ indicates, somewhat performatively, the inner division within an organism, which, through one part, has to suffer the ruin of all the other parts. That for Lawrence the body may be—like Verona—a ‘kingdom divided’ is nicely demonstrated by the moral he draws from the example of the poisonous flower: “Two such opposèd kings encamp them still [always] / In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will; / And where the worse is predominant, / Full soon the canker [grub] death eats up that plant” (27–30). One may suspect that this is the flower from which the Friar prepares the “distilling liquor” (4.1.94) for Juliet’s feigned death. This seems to be the case not only because the “vial” Lawrence gives to Juliet in act 4 contains poison which will perform the exact semblance of death on Juliet’s body (“this borrowed likeness of shrunk death”, 4.1.104), or because this make-believe death should be in striking contrast with Juliet’s behaviour when she gets home with the vial, pretending to be happy (“go home, be merry, give consent / To marry Paris”, 4.1.89–90) but also because the word part reoccurs again in the Friar’s speech during the herbcollection: “Each part, deprived of supple government [control of movement] / Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death” (2.2.103–4). 22 This is a stage-direction which already occurs in the so-called Good Quarto of 1599, and Brian Gibbons quotes Sampson, the latter praising Shakespeare’s art in “making the victim of poison enter when poison is the subject of discourse,” in William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, ed. Brian Gibbons, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), 138.

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Here part of course means ‘bodily part, organ’ but in the context of death, it comes very close to the very (even physical) existence of Juliet. In a play where there was little doubt about the tragic outcome of the plot even in Shakespeare’s time,23 it adds to the tragic feeling how the Friar, with his chemical machinations, wishes to rewrite the end by creating the simulacrum of death, which, on the stage, will be make-belief anyway, yet, because of the logic of the plot, will—literally—be deadly serious. In the critical literature, some unease is often felt when it comes to giving the genre of Romeo and Juliet: there is the element of the revenge tragedy in it (when Romeo kills Tybalt avenging the death of Mercutio), there is plenty of comedy precisely until Mercutio, the most vigorous, vibrant and sophisticated agent of comedy bleeds out; further, since the story does not put kings or princes on display, it is often called Shakespeare’s first ‘domestic tragedy’ (like Othello), and the frequent occurrence of ‘accidents,’ ‘mishaps’ and ‘coincidences’ (Father John’s delay in delivering the letter; old Capulet’s largely inexplicable, sudden insistence on an immediate wedding in spite of Tybalt’s death; Romeo’s unfortunate stumbling upon the quarrelling Mercutio and Tybalt right after the marriage ceremony, etc.) have often left critics dissatisfied as regards ‘inevitability,’ which is often set as a criterion for ‘serious’ and ‘real’ tragedy.24 It would be too easy to claim that here it is precisely ‘everyday matters’ which create the ‘tragic’ and particular logic of their own: petty market-place quarrels; feasts and dances; unruly, but more or less ‘normal’ young men fooling around; a father haggling with his daughter over her marriage, etc., as opposed to ‘mighty matters’ like regicide, the division of a whole country, and so forth. This would indicate, as it were, that even our everyday world is permeated with tragic patterns. There is a lot of truth in these observations, yet now I would like to claim that Shakespeare, after his first full-fledged and sufficiently bloody, revenge-tragedy, Titus Andronicus (1591? 1594?), wished, in the mid-1590s, to ‘deconstruct’ tragedy (especially its Senecan type) but suddenly saw a truly tragic potential in the conflict between the desperate attempt of the Friar to bring about the semblance of death, and the ‘real,’ even tradition-dictated inevitability of the death of Romeo and Juliet. Lawrence thus might be 23

The story of Romeo and Juliet, going ultimately back to Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe-tale in the Metamorphoses (or perhaps even to earlier sources) was wellknown for many in the audience, especially from Arthur Brook’s long narrative poem The Tragycall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which Shakespeare undoubtedly had in front of him while writing the play, cf., e.g. Brian Gibbons, ed., Romeo and Juliet, Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser., 55. 24 Cf. e.g. Gibbons, ed., Romeo and Juliet, 58–60 and 84–87.

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seen for a moment as the emblem of the perhaps equally desperate playwright, who produces one (feigned) death after the other on the stage but knows too well about the unavoidable nature of ‘real’ death at the end of everyone’s ‘real’ life. As if we were supposed to realise that nothing, not even the feigning of death (on the stage, and even feigning the death of feigned death on the stage) can exorcise death from anyone’s life, in spite of the plan that Juliet should “undertake”—as Lawrence himself puts it— “A thing like death to chide away this shame [to take away the shame of having to marry Paris], / That cop’st with death himself to scape from it” (4.1.73–75). The idea, indeed, seems to be that something like death should start to wrestle, to cope with death in order to escape the shame, the catastrophe. A curious instance of the ‘rewriting’ attempt on the Friar’s part may also be seen when he, in the context of the word part again, told earlier to Romeo that “Thy fault [i.e. that Romeo killed Tybalt] calls death [i.e. it is a capital offence] but the kind Prince, / Taking thy part [being on your side], hath rushed [pushed] aside the law / And turned that black word ‘death’ to banishment” (3.3.25–27). Yet in the same scene—act 3 scene 3—a far more radical connection, this time by Romeo himself, is established between name and part, the latter coming very close to the sense of ‘identity.’ The Nurse complains that Juliet, upon hearing the news that Romeo killed Tybalt, “says nothing [. . .] but weeps and weeps, / And now falls on her bed, and then starts up, / And ‘Tybalt’ calls, and then on Romeo cries, / And then down falls again” (3.3.98–101). Romeo responds: As if that name Shot from the deadly level [aim] of a gun Did murder her as that name’s cursed hand Murdered her kinsman. O tell me, friar, tell me, In what vile part of this anatomy Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack The hateful mansion. (102-7)

and, according to the stage direction, Romeo “offers to stab himself but the Nurse snatches the dagger away.” Romeo is ready to cut out, at the hazard of his death “that vile part of his anatomy” (his body, his flesh, his constitution) in which his name lives. In Shakespeare’s age death and identity go hand in hand: as Attila Kiss, in his Double Anatomy in Early Modern and Postmodern Drama, observes “The corpse, the abject body, dissolves the distinction between signifier and signified, representation and reality. It rejects symbolically codified social meanings that are based on the absence of the represented

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thing and deprives the subject of its identity: the corpse does not signify: it ‘shows.’ The theatrical semiotics of testimony depends on the unsettling of the subject’s identity.” 25 Romeo is not yet dead but in the moment of attempted suicide, his identity, by implication, is temporarily confirmed and it is bound up with his name. What Friar Lawrence says, right at the beginning of act 3 scene 3 seems to be true in the Kripkean sense as well: “Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fear-full man, / Affliction [suffering] is enamoured of thy parts” (3.3.1–2), but this part is not some social construct but the very self, the very identity of Romeo. Throughout the play, the word part plays a nasty part, in fact hide-andseek with the spectator and reader. Part, as we saw, may mean several things in the play: ‘bodily organ,’ ‘bits and pieces of a phenomenon,’ ‘to separate,’ ‘inner division within something or someone,’ ‘on whose side somebody is’: with respect to these meanings, descriptivists and clusterists may rightfully claim that they suggest nothing more than a conventional tie between name and named through the socially fixed part or parts the name happens to refer to directly. Yet it is in the context of death that some names start to refer to an unalienable part of a person, a part that can only be separated from the person at the cost of his or her very identity and existence because, in the Kripkean sense, the name is linked to the person with the force of logical necessity. Thus, in the light of a Kripkean reading, it is death, inseparably tied to love, and, unfortunately to hatred, too, which appears to be necessary, creating unavoidable, inevitable ties also between the characters in the play. To me the semantic journey the word part makes, suggests that it is emotions that create the necessary core of one’s identity, so it seems that the tragic necessity, often demanded of tragedy, is inscribed into the plot of Romeo and Juliet not in terms of action and event but rather in terms of the very emotions the characters feel with almost insane intensity. To put this in another way: the moment Romeo and Juliet fall in love, this love creates and recreates their identities to such an extent that love becomes and remains their identity, which would mean and bring about their death even if there was no lethal feud between their families: the hatred only speeds the process up but it seems that in the world of the play, love is represented as always-already carrying—mystically, magically, inherently, necessarily—death as its integral part, of course very much in line with another meaning of death in early modern English: ‘the sexual act, the moment of orgasmic fulfilment.’

25 Attila Kiss, Double Anatomy in Early Modern and Postmodern Drama (Szeged: Szegedi Egyetemi Kiadó, JATE Press, 2010), 31–32.

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All these meanings seem to mingle in Romeo’s curious lines, spoken over Juliet in the tomb, in which the word part occurs for the last time in the play, this time in the form of de-part: Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial [immaterial] death is amorous, And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour [lover]? For fear that I still will stay with thee, And never from this pallet of dim night Depart again. (5.3.101–8)

Much is said in these lines of vow and commitment. It is clear that Romeo emphasises his eternal unity with Juliet and since he thinks her to be dead, he wishes to follow her, lest Death be her lover instead of him. Yet pallet is problematic: in the so-called ‘Good Quarto’ (Q1) of 1599 there is pallat [sic!], which is changed, in the subsequent Quartos and the Folio of 1623, into palace.26 The pallet of the Norton-edition— presumably following Q1—is not unproblematic, either since pallet may mean ‘a straw bed,’ and then we should envisage Romeo and Juliet on the bed of the night. Yet pallet may also mean ‘a flat piece of wood or metal,’ on which artists mix their paints, and then Romeo might be seen as a coartist with the Night painting dark pictures of Juliet and himself. However it is, the emphasis is on the inseparability of love and death and of Romeo and Juliet, who cannot depart, since their now identical parts, carrying their identities, cannot part, with the force of logical necessity, from their love, and, therefore they can necessarily not part with the doom of death, either.

26

Cf. Gibbons, ed., Romeo and Juliet, 227, which has palace in the main text, too.

“O YET DEFEND ME, FRIENDS!”:1 CLAUDIUS’S STRUGGLE FOR THE FAVOUR OF HIS AUDIENCE BALÁZS SZIGETI

In what follows, I will observe Shakespeare’s Hamlet from one specific perspective: I will be concentrating on Claudius’s career, and especially on his encounters with Hamlet. In the course of the investigation I claim that their battle takes place on two levels: one is the level of the conventional revenge tragedy (a person murdered someone and the other person tries to, and eventually does, kill the murderer), while the other is a contest to establish an intimate relationship with the audience. A popular interpretation of soliloquies is that these are not thoughts overheard by the audience but in them a character directly addresses the spectators.2 This approach entails that there should be a direct relationship between certain characters and their audience and this approach will be my starting point when observing the above outlined second level of the contest between Hamlet and Claudius. The method I will use in the interpretation is part of a larger research project called “pre-performance criticism.” Pre-performance criticism first and foremost makes use of the several potentials a play contains and puts on display before an actual performance; it offers, also in the light of the secondary literature, various ways of interpretation, resulting from the close-reading of the play and considers their possible realizations on the stage, including the consequences the respective lines of interpretation 1

I quote the text of Hamlet according to the Norton Shakespeare edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., The Norton Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2008), 1683–1784. The locus of the quotation in the title is: 5.2.266. 2 Cf. Martin White’s claim that “[i]t is common in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays for the actors to interact in some way with the audience to acknowledge its presence as an audience.” Martin White, Renaissance Drama in Action (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 61.

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may have as regards the play as a whole. Thus, in the analysis of Hamlet, I will open the scope of interpretation from the self-enclosed space of the characters and extend it to the relationship between the audience and a potentially realized theatrical production of the play, based on the insight that Hamlet—like several other plays by Shakespeare—often addresses the audience directly, and this has a significant structural impact on the dramaturgy of the play, governing the characters’ strategies. Regarding the already flourishing literary theories, the approach of “pre-performance criticism” is, to a certain extent, related to the metatheatrical reading of the drama. As James Calderwood points out, Shakespearean drama is characterized by the simultaneous mechanism of making-an-illusion and making-an-illusion. Consequently a character appears “both as a realistic person in a realistic world and as a device fashioned by himself [i.e. Shakespeare] to insert into an artificial environment [. . .] to satisfy the necessities of a literary and theatrical structure.”3 This division stands in accordance with my initially outlined scope of investigation: the level of the revenge tragedy corresponds to the aspect of making-an-illusion, working in the self-enclosed world of the play, while making-an-illusion is connected to the battle for the favour of the audience, where the play’s dramaturgy will imply and acknowledge the presence of the spectators; moreover, it will adjust itself to them. In the following, I will focus on the observation how this dramaturgical adjustment takes place in the tragedy regarding the career of Claudius. The first scene of Hamlet is set amid the gloomy bastions where Horatio and two other soldiers, Marcellus and Barnardo encounter the Ghost, whose resemblance to the recently dead king, Old Hamlet is immediately apparent to them. This scene also caters for several dramaturgical needs, since it provides the bare minimum of necessary information for the audience (e.g. the conflict between Denmark and Norway, going back to the reign of the previous king). However, its primary importance lies in the setting of the atmosphere. Before the audience faces the glimmering spectacle of Claudius’s court and the King himself at the zenith of his career, we are introduced to something dark, misty and nasty, which later on also turns out to be connected to Claudius in a highly significant manner: the Ghost is nobody else but the consequence of the present king’s way to the throne, the price paid for the feast of the second scene. Although in the very first scene the audience does not know what Claudius has to do with the death of Old Hamlet, after 3

James L. Calderwood, Shakespearean Metadrama (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 11.

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witnessing this cold, foggy and ominous introductory scene, they transform themselves into the crowd present at the new king’s inauguration with a bitter taste in their mouth. When Claudius first appears on the stage in act 1, scene 2, he is the one who speaks the first lines there, more precisely, he starts with a long monologue. This seems to be an obvious dramaturgical solution, as he is the one who is in charge, who controls everything and by his first appearance he wants to persuade the court (and, with equal importance, the audience) that he is the proper person to lead the country and the play. In my interpretation, this duality, i.e. courting the graces of the Danes and at the same time of the audience in the theatre is an important feature of the play: this is the first time that the battle between Claudius and Hamlet can also be seen as a battle for the audience. Hibbard suggests that the structure of the first part of Claudius’s speech, including conjuncts like “Though yet [. . .] Yet [. . .] Therefore” is similar to the structure of Gloucester’s opening lines in Richard III, as both characters’ aim is to justify their present state, i.e. being the new monarch (Claudius) and being a villain (Gloucester).4 Yet, a further similarity and difference may be added to their first appearance; the similarity is that they both start their presence on the stage with these monologues and, by doing so, they turn to the audience, while the difference is that whereas Gloucester stands alone on the stage and has a private conversation with the spectators, Claudius addresses them only indirectly. Gloucester can indeed make a direct, intimate and honest confession to the audience, while he also promises (as a good Prologue should do) to entertain them and he will do exactly that throughout the play. Claudius, in terms of directness, is addressing the court, which obviously does not allow him a Gloucester-like honesty and selfrevelation. Claudius has to be more cunning, he has to playact in front of the Danes in order to hide the fact how he really got to the throne. Thus, with respect to the relationship with the audience, Gloucester is in a much better position: he is the one who starts the play, while Claudius is preceded by the Ghost; furthermore, Gloucester can immediately turn to the spectators and ally with them, while Claudius’s potential conversation with his audience is overheard by the court, thus he cannot establish such a connection. As I will argue later on, his one and only possibility to do so is in the prayer scene in act 3, scene 3, but until then someone else has

4

G. R. Hibbard, ed., Hamlet. The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 42–43.

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already approached the audience in his soliloquies and petitioned for their sympathy, and this is, of course, Hamlet. The audience starts to watch the events in Denmark when Claudius’s success is fully realized: he is now in possession of he throne and the Queen. In his prayer scene in act 3, scene 3 he marks these two factors as his motivation for becoming a murderer (“for which I did the murder— / My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen” [3.3.54–55]) but we will never know for certain which the primary motivation was. The portrayal of Claudius on the stage might highly depend on emphasizing one reason over the other but neither of them will cut a straight and unambiguous path for the actor. Putting his desire to become the number one person in Denmark into focus may make him a careerist and ambitious pusher, hungry for power, or even someone who is convinced that he can lead the country much better than his brother. Similarly, his devotion to Gertrude can range from deep love to unleashed lust and since any combinations of these are permitted by the text, it is the actor’s and the director’s duty to find their own way into the character. In his inaugural speech, he aims at reconciling the contradictions the situation involves verbally with his phrases (oxymorons) like “defeated joy,” “auspicious and a dropping eye,” “mirth in funeral” and “dirge in marriage” (1.2.10–12) and also proves his competence in leadership by being generous to Polonius and his son and by being up-to-date and tactical in foreign affairs when handling the Fortinbras matter. So far everything seems to be perfect from Claudius’s point of view and should the events flow in the way he hopes for, he would enjoy happily what he has gained for the rest of his life. He is not like Macbeth in this respect: although Claudius committed regicide, moreover, he killed his own brother, he will not have nightmares (that we know of) of his victim; furthermore, while Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth right after the murder, the ghost of Old Hamlet never appears to Claudius. In Claudius’s mind, Old Hamlet is buried deep down and, as opposed to Banquo he will not “rise again, / With twenty mortal murthers on [his] crowns, / And push [him] from [his] stools” (Macbeth, 3.4.79– 81). However, Claudius has a different ghost, which will not bring him a torment of conscience but the danger of external impeachment and a threat on his life. Claudius’s ghost is there at the feast in the form of a flesh-andblood Prince, in a black suit, thus mourning the recent death of the previous king, and bearing the same name Claudius’s victim had: Hamlet. What triggers the play is precisely the real Ghost (that of Old Hamlet) meeting up with the private ghost of Claudius (i.e. young Hamlet): this will set events in motion.

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As we have seen, Claudius wishes to demonstrate his capability to handle each and every situation he is expected to take care of as the new ruler. He has gained encouragement from the smoothness and swiftness he has tackled the matters of Polonius and Fortinbras with, and now he turns to the most problematic aspect of his reign and addresses Hamlet. It might appear to be strange that foreign affairs, and even the permission of Laertes’s journey to Paris precede the King’s words to the Prince but it can also be considered as leaving the most difficult encounter till the end. Claudius has created his own world by murdering Old Hamlet, becoming the King, marrying Gertrude and building the court around himself and he wants to give a part to Hamlet too, to build him into his arbitrary world as his “cousin [. . .], and [his] son” (1.2.64). Yet, with the famous contradictory responses with which he goes against Claudius’s attempt to reconcile the paradoxes, Hamlet refuses the position he is offered and it is clear he does not look at the King as others do. Interestingly, in the eyes of the other characters Claudius seems to replace Old Hamlet in a perfect fashion. As if the title of the King was just a role and instead of a certain actor (Old Hamlet) a new one (Claudius) took it over. In performance, should another actor take the role of Claudius over, the rest of the company should of course continue playing their roles as if nothing had happened. Claudius, like a replacing actor, puts the costumes of the previous King on (and, most importantly, his crown), which has all the more importance in the Elizabethan theatre where costumes, as it is well known, had great significance, indicating even gender roles. Additionally, it has frequently been observed5 that Claudius is never mentioned by this name in the text and we only know his “real” name from the Dramatis Personae. By this example, Old Hamlet might never have been called “(Old) Hamlet” if we had seen him on stage as acting the monarch but he might have been referred to as King, too. This way, with respect to the names, the two “actors” might exclusively be identified by their titles, which happen to be the same. As it is apparent from the second scene, everybody accepts Claudius as the new king, as the unbroken continuation of the previous one to such a degree that Gertrude also regards him as her husband. Hamlet is the only character who is not willing to accept this continuation, this seemingly perfect replacement, and his Seems-monologue can also be considered as his reply to the above outlined stage-logic. When he claims “I know not ‘seems’ ” (1.2.76) he

5 Cf. James L. Calderwood, To Be and Not To Be: Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 8.

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denies the possibility of any judgement based on surface features, such as the costumes (or the name) one has. Yet, Claudius, being a good politician, immediately reacts to the situation and delivers, as an answer to Hamlet, a speech, which approximately has the length of his first monologue. This is again a doubly targeted speech: while he directly addresses his nephew, it is also a gesture towards the court to demonstrate his goodwill, confidence and power. At the end of this longish speech, he expresses his desire that Hamlet should remain in Elsinore (most probably to keep an eye on him) and finally he returns to the shaky grounds of offering roles to Hamlet as “Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son” (1.2.117). Obviously, the last part of his sentence is the most problematic unit again. When he earlier offered the role of the son, Hamlet wittily refused him (Claudius: “But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son” / Hamlet: “A little more than kin and less than kind” [1.2.64–65]) and Claudius must very well be aware that his nephew’s attitude has not changed within a few minutes; yet, he takes the risk of repeating his offer. But he is not a person who boldly takes unnecessary risks. Therefore a theatrical production has to pay attention to create a situation where Claudius can be sure that his previous fiasco will not happen again, either by suggesting to Hamlet during his long reply that it is in Hamlet’s best interest to avoid further confrontation, or by using Gertrude as a go-between. It is again a question of production how and why Gertrude joins in the conversation because after the problematic utterance of her new husband, she is the one who takes up the thread of the conversation. Does she feel the danger of another verbal battle between the two men? Or is it by some of Claudius’s gestures to her which prompt her to act? Or is it just a natural expression of a mother’s desire to keep her son close, and at the same time to side with her husband? Should we drop all suspicions of any strategy in her move and leave all the tactics to the King? Be it in any way, the Queen’s two lines (“Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. / I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg” (1.2.118–19) are highly significant dramatically, as Hamlet clearly says to her and not to the King: “I shall in all my best obey you, madam” (1.2.120, emphasis is mine), though her two lines of persuasion are just a short coda upon Claudius’s speech. And Claudius is happy with the situation for the time being, the effect of Hamlet’s words is only a matter of presentation: the King thinks that if he labels the Prince’s words as “a loving and fair reply” (1.2.121) and a “gentle and unforc’d accord of” his (123), then they will most probably be interpreted exactly that way by the court. After giving the impression of handling also Hamlet’s case successfully, he

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brings the focus back to himself and with glorious and ceremonial words he leaves the stage. As we have seen, there are several possibilities of presenting Claudius’s strategy against Hamlet but the bottom line is that his political skills proved to be successful and he won the first round over his nephew. However, by leaving the stage together with the whole court, he leaves Hamlet behind and alone, and the Prince can now turn directly towards the audience in the “Sullied flesh” soliloquy and open their eyes (if they had been too much dazzled by the glory of the King) to see that something is very much amiss here. What becomes clear to Claudius (or maybe it was clear to him earlier as well) after act 1, scene 2 is that Hamlet is to be reckoned with, although the King does not really know the danger the Prince can represent. Polonius suggests that Hamlet’s strange behaviour is rooted in his love towards Ophelia but the King is less and less convinced about this and suspects something more ominous. Finally, Hamlet is heard to prepare a play with the recently arrived players and the King is about to attend the performance, probably in order to gain some more information about Hamlet. After the court-scene discussed above, act 3, scene 2 is the next scene when Claudius and Hamlet meet again face to face.6 Up until now, besides the most famous “To be or not to be” monologue (the dramaturgical integration of which is usually questioned but will not be discussed here) Hamlet has delivered two great soliloquies: the “Sullied flesh” and the “Hecuba” speeches. These two are important milestones from the point of view of Claudius’s knowledge. The “Sullied-flesh” soliloquy (1.2.129–59) describes Hamlet’s claustrophobic condition in a world where he has no place at all and his reasons for despair are obvious: the death of his father and the quick marriage of his mother to his uncle whom he considers to be a beast-like man as opposed to a god-like father (“Hyperion to a satyr” [1.2.140]). It is again a matter of interpretation whether Claudius more or less corresponds to this description but the play (which is, at least on the most visible level, primarily built on the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius) is, I think, more effective if this is only Hamlet’s private view and the new king is a worthy adversary. The sorrow which is articulated in this speech of Hamlet is roughly known by Claudius and he largely builds on this while trying to figure out the strange behaviour of the Prince. From this point of view, the “Hecuba” soliloquy (2.2.525–82) is important because it contains precisely those pieces of 6

They are also on the stage simultaneously in act 3, scene 1, during Hamlet’s encounter with Ophelia but here Claudius is hiding together with Polonius.

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information which are unknown to the King and which he thus cannot take into consideration. Claudius committed the so-called “perfect murder” and the only thing he does not (and, of course, cannot rationally) count on is that his victim will be the only witness against him, passing this information on to Hamlet. Claudius is a realist and a politician and thus he cannot and will not count on the appearance of ghosts who order their sons to take revenge. Old Hamlet and Claudius represent two different traditions:7 Old Hamlet was the chivalrous knight king who defeated the Norwegian monarch face to face in a duel-like “combat” (cf. 1.1.85–98), one reminiscent in kind of the duel Hamlet will fight with Laertes at the end of the play, and whose obvious duty is to return from the dead and visit the son to urge him to take revenge as a good son is expected to do. Claudius is, on the other hand, a politician, in a way the representative of a new generation, who relies much more on diplomacy (see his use of Polonius, Cornelius and Voltemand, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) than on his sword. This is further emphasized by the way he murdered his brother: not by stabbing him (obviously this has a dramaturgical function besides the symbolical one as Old Hamlet’s death cannot be sold as “natural” if he is stabbed) but by pouring poison into his ear. This, besides being a much more delicate way, is also connected to the verbal poisons Claudius constantly pours into the ears around himself (consider especially the temptation scene with Laertes in act 4). Thus this politician did everything within his range to avoid suspicion but the previous tradition had means he could not possibly dream of (i.e. someone returning from Purgatory). Should Claudius overhear the “Hecuba” soliloquy, he would be surprised to a great extent. Still, Claudius has not overheard Hamlet’s speech telling himself off for his inactivity, mentioning the ghost and his duty to take revenge for his 7 The contrast between Old Hamlet and Claudius is a recurring motif in the play (cf. Hamlet’s juxtaposition of the two brothers in the “Sullied flesh” soliloquy (act 1, scene 2) and in his mother’s bedchamber (act 3, scene 4). Jenkins also argues that the “moral and dramatic structure” of the play is significantly characterized by the antithesis between the brothers: “Before we behold the reigning king, the dead king has already been presented, through the Ghost, as a man of heroic valour; and as soon as the new king has left the stage, the first of Hamlet’s soliloquies explicitly contrasts them. And then, the soliloquy dividing and yet linking the two halves of the scene, our attention swings back to the former king as the watchers duly come to ‘young Hamlet’ to report the apparition.” Harold Jenkins, ed., Hamlet. Arden Shakespeare, 2nd ser. (London and New York: Methuen, 1982), 129.

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father and expressing considerable verbal aggression against his uncle. Thus, the plot that will come to life in front of Claudius in the Mousetrap scene (act 3, scene 2) will strike the King like a bolt of lightning. The King believes that he has control over everything and although suspects something ominous behind Hamlet’s behaviour, would never have thought (obviously, he cannot even imagine) that the murder, which apparently has been buried so deep in the murderer’s conscience as he thought his brother’s body was, will suddenly be reenacted in a theatrical production. Here I will not provide a comprehensive analysis of the scene8 but from Claudius’s point of view it is important to consider the fact that the murder is depicted twice (once in the dumb show and then in the verbal scene) and the King only stands up during the second one. Productions can solve this problem by making Claudius not pay attention during the dumb-show but it seems much more obvious that the King is cold-blooded enough not to jump up and thus reveal himself when the stage poison is poured into the Player King’s ear, although he is stunned by the revelation that his secret is probably known by Hamlet. This means that his standing up should be triggered by something else than the mere representation of the murder. In my interpretation, it is Hamlet’s encroachment into the story which is the evocative factor. This may manifest itself by Hamlet calling Lucianus, the murderer “nephew to the King” (3.2.223), thus offering a reading to his uncle that the victim does not correspond to Old Hamlet but to Claudius himself, and then Hamlet might be the murderer, which means that the play is not a representation of the past but a prognosis for the future, and this way an open threat to Claudius. However, we have plenty of references in the text of the Player King (e.g. “Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round / Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground / [. . .] Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands / Unite commutual in most sacred bands” [3.2.139–40, 143–44]), which suggest that the performance is about Hamlet’s parents. What may count as Hamlet’s— more and more aggressive—intervention may also be his constant and loud interpretation of the performance together with his comments and addresses to the spectators, with which he himself gets deeper and deeper into the fictitious story, hysterically working himself into it as if he were indeed looking for a role in this story, as he does in the whole play, in the “new world” created by his uncle. The two men can be seen as competing now for the plot of “The Mousetrap”: the story which originally Claudius thought to have under control, so completely that nobody else on earth 8

For a detailed discussion of the Mousetrap-scene, see Géza Kállay, “A képzelet Hamlet Egérfogójában [Imagination in Hamlet’s Mousetrap],” Liget 23, no. 8 (2010): 2–20.

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might know about it, is not only put on display in front of the court, in the public arena by Hamlet but the Prince also claims it to be his and only his, and intrudes upon the private work and world of the King as well. Should we choose either this or that interpretation, it is Hamlet’s disturbing presence in Claudius’s story which makes the King leave the show. Hamlet is now most probably certain that Claudius is guilty and Claudius is most probably certain that Hamlet knows about his deed. However impossible this seems for the King, he has to face the new situation. As we have accounted for it already, Claudius did everything possible to keep his sin a secret and it would have been ridiculous on his part to worry about supernatural forces. In a realistic world Claudius would survive the play and live happily ever after. By introducing the Ghost of his victim as the only supernatural element in the play—in the tradition of the conventional revenge play, the one the Ur-Hamlet most probably had been—, the author was simply not fair with Claudius. But the author’s duty was to please his audience and thus he needed to set things in motion, therefore he invoked the Ghost, also complying with the already existing Hamlet tradition.9 Moreover, roughly in the middle of the play, he approaches a seemingly climactic point when he brings the two chief antagonists, Hamlet and Claudius together in a situation where Claudius’s guilt is revealed in front of Hamlet and Hamlet’s knowledge is revealed to Claudius. Now they can put their cards on the table and their playwright seems to be generous enough to bring them together immediately after the player-scene. Yet, in this odd situation what the audience gets are two consecutive speeches, without proper action. Hamlet does not want to kill Claudius because he is in a praying posture and the Prince fears that this way Claudius’s soul might be saved. But before Hamlet enters the stage, Claudius delivers his one and only great soliloquy in the play: his prayer. To be precise, Claudius’s speech is seemingly anything but a prayer. Rather, it seems to be a hopeless preparation of a politician to pray, claiming right at the beginning that “Pray can I not” (3.3.38). But this soliloquy gives him the opportunity which he never had so far, i.e. to establish an intimate relationship with the audience. We have seen that he did not have the possibility to do so at the very beginning of the play 9

Of course, several metaphorical-symbolic interpretations of the Ghost may be and have been given (the Ghost is either Hamlet’s or Claudius’s unconscious, it is the symbol of conscience, he represents the missing masculinity in Hamlet, etc.) especially to make sense of a supernatural creature for a modern audience no longer reckoning with ghosts as “reality.” My main focus is on the dramaturgicaltheatrical function of Old Hamlet.

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because, first and foremost, he had to address his court. On the other hand, Hamlet has opened up his mind in front of the spectators several times. Now it is Claudius’s turn. Therefore I would suggest that this soliloquy is still a prayer but not to God (remember: “Pray can I not”) but to the audience: an intimate confession. As a starting point, it is important to clarify that, in a soliloquy, a character is very unlikely to tell lies. Since he or she is completely alone on the stage, such a private speech is the outburst of his or her deep emotions and thoughts without the controlling knowledge of being overheard by anyone else. At the same time, the audience is addressed but their position does not take away anything from the honesty and truthfulness of the speech. Even such an eternally playacting and deceitful character as Richard III turns towards the audience in total sincerity. Therefore, Claudius’s “prayer” can also be considered as a clear mirror of his feelings. This speech had only one single and short precedent, namely in act 3, scene 1, when, while Polonius was positioning Ophelia in her place to use her as a bait in the hope of revealing the real cause behind Hamlet’s seeming madness, in an aside the King reacted to Polonius’s utterance (“with devotion’s visage / And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself” [3.1.49–51]) with: O ‘tis too true. How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden. (3.1.51–56)

As it is well known, in the play these lines are the first indicators of the King’s guilty conscience. Yet, this does not mean that his conscience would be gaining control over him, threatening to destroy him, as it happens with Macbeth. Macbeth’s destiny is immediately more or less clear to the audience right after his murders: following Duncan’s assassination, he has visions about the blood of the previous king stigmatizing his hands and after Banquo is killed upon Macbeth’s order, the ghost of the previous friend immediately appears to him. We cannot detect such signs of guilty knowledge on the part of Claudius and his four and a half lines of confession in act 3, scene 1 do not diminish the feeling of his being in control of everything after having killed his brother. It is only dramaturgically that this is the first “real” proof of the King’s guilt provided by the best authority: himself (especially if we consider the unreliability of the Ghost) and also this is his first turn towards the

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audience. It is as if he were striving for an audition (and absolution) but cannot confess, since he is surrounded by other characters and Hamlet is expected to arrive in any minute. Therefore, he has to be satisfied with this short outburst of honesty and move on to handle the situation but, as it turns out later, these lines serve as a dramaturgical preparation for his great soliloquy. It is important to note, though, that although the King’s aside in act 3, scene 1 and his soliloquy two scenes later breed from the same guilt, they originate in quite different impulses. The aside’s cue is a simile devised by Polonius when comparing their act of spying on Hamlet to putting sugar on the devil, and this focus on hiding some nasty business with a glorious surface triggers the confession. On the other hand, the soliloquy’s initiator is not a generalized verbal expression but the direct facing of a theatrical production about a murder and Claudius cannot react to this impulse with an aside while moving out of the theatre, or while making arrangements with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or with Polonius. Claudius has to appear alone and give free way to his thoughts. In his soliloquy, Claudius demonstrates to the audience his impossible situation in which he is attempting to make a deal with God like a good businessman. What he has is glory (the crown) and a possibly happy personal life (the Queen). What he needs is salvation. The existence of the first two and the absence of the last one originate from one single deed, namely that he murdered his brother.10 This brought him the glory on earth and this will push him out of heaven after death. The question arises why this is the time when this problematic situation moves so much into his spectrum, when, obviously, the problem of salvation is not a new revelation for him. It might be claimed that seeing his deed in the Mousetrap-scene brought out his guilty conscience but this supposition is made invalid (in my interpretation) by the most important line of his speech: “Yet what can it [i.e. repentance do] when one cannot repent?” (3.3.66). In other words, if he had the chance he would most probably do the deed again. Then why must the soliloquy importantly be where it actually is, i.e. after the Mousetrap-scene? The answer coincides with the possible interpretation I offered concerning why he leaves Hamlet’s Mousetrap-performance, namely that it is not because of what he did to 10

John D. Cox emphasises that “without Claudius’s admission of guilt, the principal question in criticism of Hamlet would not be why Hamlet delays but whether or not Claudius is guilty. Claudius’s obvious statement of his guilt is arguably the most important passage in the play.” John D. Cox, Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 159.

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Old Hamlet that he goes out but because of what Young Hamlet is doing to him. The Prince of Denmark is now an obvious threat on Claudius’s life, especially if he interprets the show as being a declaration of war by Hamlet calling the murderer “nephew to the king.” And if Hamlet kills Claudius, then everything he gained through his murder will be gone and the question of afterlife will be highly relevant for him. This means that after a few weeks of enjoying the goods he collected he will be tormented in Hell. And then it will be all for nothing. Consequently, a good businessman like Claudius is expected to negotiate a better position for himself, he is expected to make insurances on his soul. His uneasy situation is reflected already in the introductory lines of his speech as he delays the naming of his sin. He first calls it in general terms as “my offence” in the first line, then in the second line he identifies it— referring to the Biblical story of Cain—as the “primal eldest curse,” and it is only in the third line where he decides to tell the exact nature of his crime: “a brother’s murder.” Should the soliloquy be only a private stream of thoughts overheard by the audience, then this attempt to actually name the deed would not be important and the first line would do the job. Yet if we consider the speech as turning directly towards the audience, naming the sin—however difficult it might be for the speaker—is an attempt to gain the goodwill of the listeners by talking frankly to them. The same motivation appears behind the following short statement: “Pray can I not,” i.e. Claudius wishes to demonstrate his impossible situation: his soul is burdened by the sin and the only remedy, i.e. prayer is not available for him. The following four and a half lines also show a person who approaches his sin much more rationally than emotionally: Though inclination be as sharp as will, My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. (3.3.39–43)

These are not Macbeth’s words, who approaches his deed emotionally and aesthetically when for instance he describes visions about the dead Duncan.11 It is a logical representation of a difficult situation, the rationality of which is further emphasized by the starting conjunct “though” (compare 11

“His silver skin laced with his golden blood, / And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature / For ruin’s wasteful entrance; / there the murderers, / Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers / Unmannerly breeched with gore.” (Macbeth, 2.3.109–13)

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the very beginning of Claudius’s first monologue: “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death / The memory be green” [1.2.1–2]) and the appearance of the word “business” in line 40.12 As it has already been mentioned, Macbeth visualized the blood of Duncan eternally painting his, the murderer’s hands red (“What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes. / Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No” (2.2.57–59), and this vision has seemingly corresponding lines in Claudius’s account: What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood… (3.3.43–44)

Yet, the nature of the King’s sentence unambiguously points to the difference between the two men’s attitudes. Macbeth can see the blood on his hands and is certain about its eternal stigma, while Claudius’s utterance is emphatically a conditional, starting with “what if.” His blood on the hand is only an alternative with which he would like to test the forgiving capability of Heaven, together with the three questions following the conditional, in order to know what he can expect. The above mentioned feature of his thoughts proves that Claudius’s interpretation of his guilt is quite far from that of Macbeth and he discusses the guilt from a rational point of view, never losing his sober logic. Claudius is very well aware of the price of his possible salvation, he actually names it: I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder— My crown, mine ambition, and my queen. (3.3.53–55)

Crown and ambition (these two can generally be considered as one unit) plus Gertrude: these are his gains and the King can see the problem, i.e. until he gives them up, his soul cannot be redeemed. He knows that a simple verbal apology will not do and mentioning the phrase “Forgive me my foul murder?” as searching for possible ways of praying sounds absurd to himself, too. The conclusion is there: his earthly and the heavenly glory cannot be reconciled with each other; he either sacrifices the first and gains the second, or the other way round. The metaphorical scale he 12

“Business” in Shakespeare’s time primarily meant ‘deed,’ ‘mission’ and ‘important matter, serious concern,’ yet it could also communicate that the person feels uneasy, is in distress—it is this, latter semantic field which Claudius here seems to evoke, cf. David Crystal and Ben Crystal, Shakespeare’s Words: a Glossary and Language Companion, with a preface by Stanley Wells (London: Penguin, 2002), 59.

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wished to manoeuvre with right at the beginning of his appearance on the stage (“In equal scale weighting delight and dole” [1.2.13]) is not functioning in this situation and it turns out that it is simply impossible to reconcile the paradoxes he tried to overcome and transcend, in his speech and with his attitude in the first act. The “prayer” is Claudius’s second long speech in the play: the first one was, as we remember, the monologue in front of the court, now the second is a soliloquy alone, directed towards the audience, the basic aim of which is to deconstruct the first. In fact, the surface of act 1, scene 2 was already scratched by Hamlet’s behaviour, and, for the audience, by seeing the Prince’s point of view right after the ceremony in the “Sullied flesh” soliloquy. Now, in the “prayer,” Claudius’s inaugural speech is being completely deconstructed by the King himself. The irreconcilability of Claudius’s earthly and heavenly welfare is further expanded in his contrasting the two realms to each other, depicting this world in the following way: In the corrupted currents of this world Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law. (3.3.57–60)

This world is Claudius’s realm: everything is under his control and he can easily manage any kind of business. Here, in this passage the language of business so characteristic of his attitude returns with words like “currents” or “prize”. The adjective ‘corrupted’ might also bring in the taste of self-irony, indicating that it is his power, the guilty person of the very king representing the whole country which makes this world sullied. But the passage also indicates that Claudius is not afraid of facing responsibility in this world: for one reason, he took care of everything to avoid suspicion, and, for another, his power can make him escape from any uncomfortable situation. The only person he has to fear is Hamlet, who apparently cannot be bought (consider the attempt on Claudius’s side to include Hamlet in his plans at the beginning of the play) and who means a possible threat on Claudius’s life. This threat brings the realm of afterlife into the King’s speech, where his power is no longer valid: But ‘tis not so above: There is no shuffling, there the action lies In the true nature, and we ourselves compell’d Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults To give in evidence. (3.3.63–64)

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The way of contrasting the two worlds in this second passage clearly points to the main difference: whereas the first one works with the imagery of a business trade where Claudius can feel himself at home (“Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,” etc.), the second one is more about a trial where the King finds himself in the position of the accused, deprived of all his previous power. The opposition between the situations in these two worlds described in the two passages may correspond again to the relationship between Claudius’s monologue in act 1 and his soliloquy now. In his monologue, the King faced the representatives of the earthly world and could successfully use his power to manipulate and “buy them.” During his confession in his solitude, he is more in the second position: alone, facing his guilt in the face of divine judgement, and talking to the audience as if they were a kind of jury gathered to pass judgement on him. His final conclusion in evaluating his own situation is what I claimed to be the key sentence in his soliloquy: “Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?” (3.3.66). Claudius knows well that he is unable to let his possessions go and face the consequences of his murder, i.e. to go public with it. This is too much as a price, it is something he cannot pay. The following self-abusing utterances (e.g. “O bosom black as death!” [3.3.67]) are just the acknowledgement of his situation. He will never be able to make the deal he wanted. As a last resort he decides to try to pray: maybe for the grace of being able to repent or what is more likely for Claudius, to achieve salvation without renouncing his glory. He can lose nothing with this attempt and this opinion stands behind the last sentence of his soliloquy: “All may be well” (3.3.72). Ironically enough, as a response to Claudius’s hope, it is Hamlet who enters the stage with his sword. But their encounter does not bring open conflict between them13 and Claudius does not know anything about Hamlet’s presence. By the time he is done, his nephew is already gone. Claudius has finished his attempt, which proved to be unsuccessful: the businessman could not make a connection with the authority above. His final words are characteristic of the soliloquy as a whole: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (3.3.97–98)

13

For a detailed analysis for the postponement of Hamlet’s revenge in the prayer scene see László Kéry, Talán álmodni. Hamlet-tanulmányok [Perchance to Dream: Essays on Hamlet] (Budapest: MagvetĘ Kiadó, 1989), 199–206.

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Again we have the antithesis of “up” and “below”: the words going upwards, i.e. his desire is directed to the realm of Heaven, while his thought, his concern is connected to mundane prosperity. And his attempt to separate the two: to treat worldly life independently and thus without consequences in the afterlife, to separate his words from thoughts entails the non-admittance of his words into Heaven but also the non-admittance of himself. From one perspective, the King was unsuccessful. He wished to bring two worlds together and wanted to transfer his power from one realm to the other by negotiating his salvation. Claudius’s problem is that he observes the question of afterlife from the perspective of his present life, realizing that from a human standpoint this is the only possible way to treat this question, since one has “real” experience only from the existence of his or her own. This way Claudius approaches a question just as Hamlet did in his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy14 when the Prince contemplated upon the nature of life after death and realized that it is only possible to talk about the “undiscover’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns” (3.1.81–82) in terms of the metaphors of the known realm, i.e. of our life. This way the two great soliloquies of the chief antagonists correspond to each other in several ways: both men try to approach the nature of afterlife but whereas Hamlet does this with the method of a philosopher (and that is why his contemplation is in far more general terms), Claudius tackles the question with the inventory of a businessman (and will be very personal). As I suggested previously, it is not precisely Claudius’s facing his deed again which generates his speech but the fact that the question of “what happens to us after death” becomes highly relevant to him in the course of the play. Yet, on the whole, Claudius is a man who throughout thinks his best counsellor to himself is himself: he does not remain open to the real hreat of another world barging into his own; he asks his questions and he immediately provides the answers. One may call this the lack of humility but the point is that he is ultimately the exact opposite of Hamlet; for Hamlet, nothing is ever certain, for Claudius there are clear causes and clear effects, even his “undiscovered country” is modelled after this structure: one gets what one 14

Kent Cartwright also calls attention to the parallel nature of Claudius’s soliloquy and Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy: “Like Hamlet, immobilized in the choice of being or not being, Claudius is a man to a double business bound, snared between consciousness of sin and desire of forgiveness. Both seek a certain oblivion.” Kent Cartwright, Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double: The Rhythms of Audience Response (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 122.

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deserves, there is no incalculability, there is, ultimately, no room for scepticism. A realistic politician can hardly afford scepticism of any sort. Yet it is not only in thwarting scepticism that Claudius is successful; he succeeds from another perspective as well. It has already been mentioned that this is his great opportunity to make private contact with the audience and try to get closer to them, while Hamlet has already invited them to observe the events from his point of view in his numerous soliloquies. Although on one level Claudius did not manage to solve his problem concerning salvation, on another layer the King was able to demonstrate his complex and impossible situation in front of the spectators indeed, and could break the dominant position of his nephew in this matter. It might also be suspected that the King’s soliloquy, though unsuccessful in its (seemingly) most important purpose, thus has a kind of cathartic effect on him: when we see Claudius again, we do not see a desperate, hopeless ruler but the previous confident politician who wants to keep in control everything that happens within the castle of Elsinore. So far we have observed the actions of the two protagonists from the point of view of acting in a revenge tragedy and trying to outwit each other, as well as from the perspective of fighting for the favour of the audience. When Claudius and Hamlet first appeared on the stage together in act 1, scene 2, the battle between them was won by the King, who gave evidence of his perfect capability of handling problematic situations. Yet, on the other hand, Claudius could not confide in the audience directly and intimately but it was Hamlet who had the possibility to address them first. The second time they met, during the Mousetrap scene, their respective secrets and purposes became much clearer for each other. The third opportunity may make the audience expect an open confrontation between them, yet they get two soliloquies instead, basically independent of each other: Claudius’s prayer and Hamlet’s speech behind the kneeling King, unable to fulfil his revenge. From the perspective of establishing a relationship with the audience, it is noteworthy that right after Claudius delivers his one and only soliloquy, Hamlet immediately enters the stage and tries to draw the attention from his uncle back to himself as if he were highly alert not to let Claudius get too close to the favour of the spectators. From the aspect of the revenge plot, obviously their last encounter (act 5, scene 2) will be the concluding one, when finally both of them die, yet from another perspective, a much earlier scene will be the culmination of their battle. Right after visiting Claudius in the prayer scene, Hamlet appears in his mother’s bedchamber and kills Polonius, who is hiding behind the arras. Claudius, being informed about the event can consider himself to be in a

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victorious position: he has now the opportunity to get rid of Hamlet as a murderer and send him to England with a letter that contains a deathwarrant. However, before Hamlet is sent on his journey, Claudius and Hamlet encounter each other once more to present their greatest verbal battle in the whole play. The witnesses to this scene (act 4, scene 3) are attendants, together with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: none of them is a decisive factor in the play, it is barely important for either the King or Hamlet to impress them, thus their witty argumentation is directed more towards each other and towards the audience to please them. The scene starts with a seemingly obvious representation of power relations: Claudius is in the role of authority in front of whom the accused has to answer for his deed, whereas Hamlet enters the scene surrounded by guards. However, he is not willing to comply with the relationship Claudius would like to impose on him. With his initial question “Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?” (4.3.17), the King starts the conversation (or the interrogation) as the person now absolutely in the higher position, and he does not offer roles to Hamlet like he did at the beginning of the play (the role of the son, etc.). Now the new situation allows him to push, even to force his nephew into a different role. The tone of the King’s above quoted first utterance to the Prince can vary on the stage from an almost jovial and seemingly kind inquiry to a rigorous questioning in a prison but either way it has to suggest that Claudius can feel he is in command and is relieved from the threat which Hamlet meant to him and which triggered his confession in the prayer scene. Yet, just like at the beginning of the play, Hamlet does not accept this role offered by Claudius either, and enters into a strange conversation with his questioner by starting with his first answer: “At supper” (4.3.18), i.e. that Polonius is at supper. Hamlet’s rejection of the role of the entrapped accused connects this scene with act 1, scene 2 but the main difference between their two encounters is that in this latter one both of them are aware of the other’s clear intentions. Yet, while the first encounter was altogether controlled by Claudius, here he slowly gets entrapped in Hamlet’s game without even realising it until the game is in fact over. To use a commonplace, in this scene it is Claudius who “asks the questions”; yet, by doing so he precisely becomes a victim to Hamlet’s intentions. With each of his questions, he gets deeper and deeper into the realm Hamlet guides him towards, which first seems to be utter nonsense, until finally, like a sudden flash of lightning, Hamlet gets to the point: “Nothing but to show you how a king may go a process through the guts of a beggar” (4.3.30–31). Thus, it turns out that the Prince’s previous seemingly mad ravings in this conversation had a specific intention indeed, i.e. to prepare this sentence in

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which “a king” denotes a very specific one: the present king of Denmark. By bringing the end of the king’s life into focus, Hamlet does not do anything else but returns to his point which he probably suggested already in the Mousetrap scene as well, so now Claudius is caught again. The change of the King’s temper at this point is indicated by his reaction: he no longer responds to Hamlet’s previous utterances but returns to his initial question as if he wanted to forget what had happened so far and start the whole conversation anew; he asks again: “Where is Polonius?” (4.3.32), probably with a much more aggressive or frustrated intonation. But by this time Hamlet is already in the leading position and strikes at the King for the second time: “In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’th’other place yourself” (4.3.33–34). It is only at this point that the King decides to take the role of the initiator of the conversation over again (partly because Hamlet has finally revealed the place where he hid Polonius’s body, partly because he has realised the danger of following Hamlet’s thoughts) and makes an attempt to climb back into the saddle of the confident ruler. Claudius in fact changes the subject when he announces the decision (the sentence) on Hamlet’s destiny and sends him to England. Yet, Hamlet grows more and more sinister when making references to his knowledge of the King’s real purposes of sending him to England (it is all the time uncertain how Hamlet really knows that his journey also means taking a death sentence on him to the English monarch) and he finishes the conversation with another enigmatic sentence, calling Claudius his mother. This is in a way a twisted version of the family ties Claudius wished to offer him at the beginning but also an ominous reenactment of the marriage between Claudius and Gertrude (“Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh; so my mother” [4.3.53–54]), which, repeated not by a priest but by Hamlet entails not the reinforcement of the connection but casting some dark clouds over it.15 Even further, it is a twisted recollection of act 1, scene 2 again, when Hamlet was practically only talking to his Mother. Although Hamlet is guarded by soldiers and is about to get on the ship which is expected to take him to his execution, he has undoubtedly won this battle. Claudius is left alone on the stage and is desperate and 15 Calderwood connects Hamlet’s statement about marriage to Claudius with the one to Ophelia (“I say we will have no more marriages [3.1.46–147]) and contrasts it with God’s establishment of marriage, where man “shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), claiming that Hamlet here “seems possessed of the Uncreating World.” However, Calderwood also notes that “the discreations in Denmark are owing not to Hamlet but to Claudius.” (Calderwood, To Be and Not To Be, 62).

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outraged. He delivers a speech, which, although no one is around, is not a soliloquy but a dialogue where the other party is missing: he is addressing the English king, and his words are likely to be the ones in the letter he is about to send to the other monarch. Again, we do not have unequivocal indications of the tone of his speech; yet, expressions as “like the hectic in my blood he [i.e. Hamlet] rages” (4.3.67) or “[t]ill I know ‘tis done, / Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun” (68–69) suggest a frustrated position he got into. What is more important is that Claudius will not have the opportunity to strike back in the battle of wits and to defeat Hamlet in front of the audience. The battle of masterminds is finished at this point. What follows is barely more from this specific point of view than the representation of how the dramaturgy of the revenge tragedy defeats Claudius. This is the same force which brought out the Ghost from its tomb to present him as a witness in an otherwise perfect case of murder (ghosts, after all, are usual devices in revenge plays, like e.g. in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy) and this very force is responsible for the end of Claudius’s career. There is nothing necessary in his death: it is not necessary that Hamlet may return from the ship, that Laertes cannot fulfil his duty, that Hamlet does not drink from the poisoned cup, etc. It is only the revenge-play dramaturgy that makes the death of Claudius necessary; it is, in a way, a series of accidents that leads Hamlet to finally take his revenge, since it is not obvious that he arrives at the fencing contest with the plan of killing the King on this particular occasion. If we consider Hamlet’s and Claudius’s battle for the audience then Claudius most probably lost it (“most probably” because finally it is the audience that decides this question) not only by having less occasion to get close to them in soliloquies but also by being defeated by Hamlet in act 4, scene 3, where he simply let Hamlet enter his mind and dictate the tempo and direction of the conversation. This scene sheds light on the dual nature of their contest: while on the one level Claudius had the upper hand throughout the scene as it was Hamlet who was escorted in and out by guards as a prisoner, on another level Hamlet was the one who left the stage as the victorious party. Although Claudius was defeated on this second level, he still could have remained a winner on the first one: his only problem is that he happens to be the chief, “Machiavellian” antagonist in a revenge play and this is the one and only cause of his fall at the end. His fall strangely connects back to his first appearance on the stage when he utters his last words after Hamlet stabs him: “O yet defend me, friends. I am but hurt.” (5.2.266). In his ultimate line he obviously addresses the court to ask for help, while at the same time the indirect

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addressee of this is the group he has been trying to move onto his side as his friends: the audience.

“SO BERATTLE THE COMMON STAGES”:1 METATHEATRICALITY AND POLYFUNCTIONALITY IN TWO HUNGARIAN SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTIONS VERONIKA SCHANDL

The current paper revisits two Hungarian Shakespeare-productions, as case studies that engaged themselves with postmodern theatricalities. Challenging Árpád Kékesi-Kun’s categories of Hungarian postmodern theatre, through the analysis of István Somogyi’s 1986 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Sándor Zsótér’s 2009 Hamlet it wishes to offer metatheatricality and polyfunctionality as terms that could be used to describe certain important trends of post-1989 Hungarian theatre.

1. Introduction Performance is an ephemeral art form that only exists in the present moment. Peggy Phelan’s often-quoted remark about performance art could be extended to every theatrical performance, since “[they] cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representation of representations: once [they do] so, [they become] something other than performance.”2 Performance’s ontological quality, as Phelan argues, is precisely its disappearance with time—therefore a research directed at performances, by definition, has no subject—the sign to which we wish to give interpretive significance is non-existent. Thus with Árpád Kékesi Kun3 we can conclude that theatre research has, in the 1

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (2.2.343), in William Shakespeare, The Complete Works. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 2 Peggy Phelan, “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction,” in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), 146. 3 Árpád Kékesi Kun, “Hist(o)riográfia. A színházi emlékezet problémája,” in Színház, kultúra, emlékezet (Veszprém: Pannon Egyetem Kiadó, 2006), 35.

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Foucauldian sense, no primary source—all sources we rely on are postulated, secondary sources, later records of performances. Although much of the twentieth century was spent by theatre historians with the effort to establish theatre history as a scientific discipline that relies on evidence, and this documentary imperative led to the establishment of important archives and databases, it also has to be admitted that the value of that information lies in their application, which is often problematic in itself. First, because it would be naive to suggest that these documents are neutral recordings of the events. Although they are ultimately substitutes for the reality of the performance they all carry a purpose, so they can be seen as performatives in their own right. Photographs are taken with the aim to preserve the significant moments of a performance, thus out of context, interrupting the flow of the staged events that changes every night—reviews, though sometimes seem eye-witness accounts, are always written with a critical purpose and the audience, although an essential element of the theatre event is often missing from these data altogether. Second, because we have to be aware that our relation to the “events” of theatre history is not historical, but linguistic—“the archives in which a historian works are repositories not of pure data, but of texts: and the criteria by which texts qualify as evidence must always be subject to negotiation.”4 Texts are not only the most common sources for our knowledge about performances, but constructing narratives is also the most dominant way how we discuss the theatre. The narrative form, as William Ingram reminds us is “hospitable to all comers,” thus is probably still the most suitable structure to relate history, “so long as the various narratives [. . .] can coexist in some relation to each other, so long as they remain fairly particularised rather than all-embracing, so long as they offer themselves as provisional rather than final.”5 One, however, has to avoid the narratizing impulse and construct all-encompassing cause and effect master narratives from theatrical events (or, more specifically from the documents we have about them). That is why, making use of the possibilities cyberspace provides us with to construct parallel narratives co-existing next to one another, the most recent project6 to map the theatre history of Hungary (covering the period from 1964 to 2008) is launched as a website, a database of almost 4

William Ingram, “What Kind of Future for the Theatrical Past: Or, What will Count as Theatre History in the Next Millennium?” Shakespeare Quarterly 48, no. 2 (1997): 218. 5 Ingram, “Future,” 218. 6 The project is led by Magdolna Jákfalvi, Árpád Kékesi Kun and Gabriella Kiss.

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400 productions that seemed to have been determinant in the theatre of the past 40 or so years. The choice of the productions that are included in the database was made on aesthetic grounds, surveying mostly those directions that left a visible mark on the theatricality of today’s Hungarian theatre world. Although the legitimacy of such an approach can be well argued, this also results in the fact that Shakespeare’s presence on the Hungarian stages fares somewhat poorly in this study, since several of the Shakespeare productions of the past 40 years were not directed in what is today considered to be the main trail of Hungarian directorial trends. Surveying recent Shakespeare productions in Hungary, the theatre historian, indeed, must come to the conclusion that they imply rather conservative notions about Shakespeare’s text and theatricality. I would highlight this claim by examining what theatrical definitions describe the directorial concepts of some recent Shakespeare productions. Eric Bentley’s basic definition states that theatre is created when A performs B for C.7 This equation first and foremost establishes that C knows A is playing a role and they both share a common code (based on culture, social conventions and history) that prescribes their behaviour in situations like this. Furthermore, it states that theatre performance is a direct form of art that needs the personal presence of both participants whose interaction is also necessary for theatricality to be born, since theatre as an aesthetic experience is ultimately created in the spectators. This definition, however, builds on the pre-Romantic axiom that to be able to enjoy the play the spectators have to willingly suspend their disbelief and accept that while A embodies B the transformation is perfect, and the actor becomes the role he impersonates (i.e., it is not Lawrence Olivier we are watching, but Hamlet). Therefore, this classification presupposes a traditional understanding of the subject, in which the actor portrays a closed dramatic character with a static identity. It also presumes that perfect interpersonal communication is achievable between the actors and the spectators, as a result of which the impersonation will create a faultless illusion for audience members. This is still the definition that describes most of the recent Hungarian Shakespeare productions, which I would like to illustrate through the example of Péter Gothár’s 2010 King Lear at the National Theatre in Budapest.8 Although given in a radically playful and overtly metatheatrical contemporary re-translation by poet Dániel Varró, the whole of the 7

Eric Bentley, A dráma élete (Pécs: Jelenkor, 1998), 123. National Theatre, King Lear, 2010, directed by Péter Gothár. See http://www .nemzetiszinhaz.hu/eloadasok/index.php?list=archive&performance=125 for production details.

8

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production can be described with Bentley’s above-quoted definition: the audience is separated from stage events by the invisible fourth wall; actors portray characters in high realistic fashion, while closed static characters move on stage in a classic story. Theatrical illusion is created through several means: music, sound effects, costumes and scenery all indicate that we are participants of a theatre production where we willingly have to suspend our disbelief and passively accept the string of events unfolding on stage. Realising its pitfalls Erika Fischer-Lichte modified Bentley’s definition in the following way: Theatre is born when actor A impersonates role X while S is watching.9 Although the alteration in the phrasing seems minimal, it highlights an important difference while placing a greater emphasis on the process-like nature of the connection between role and actor. According to this concept of theatricality, roles no longer appear as closed units of communication, spectators thus must pay more attention to the mediality of bodies on stage, to the process of impersonation, to the creation of scenic bodies during the theatrical events. The above quoted King Lear production makes little use of this aspect of theatricality, and even when doing so, it elevates the bodily changes of the actors to the symbolic level. One such device during the production is that Lear, Gloucester and Albany have got significantly thinner by the end of the play. Parallel to realising the faulty ways of their previous existence, while losing the power that connected them to their courtly way of life they also shed their prop bellies that were seen as somehow symbolic of their mistakes. Fischer-Lichte’s second definition of the theatrical already takes into account the different demands performance art, cultural rituals, happenings and mix-media presentations place on spectators and asserts that the theatrical can be seen as the staging of the body in various media, the purpose of which is to allow others to perceive it.10 This axiom maintains the importance of audience participation; moreover, it imposes on the theatrical event the condition that the staging should come about with the ultimate aim to be observed. Observation is a wider category than seeing, since it also includes the various means of visual codes that can reach spectators (films, videos, installations and all influences that affect the non-visual capacities of audience members as well). Furthermore, it implies that the quality of reception also varies on a larger scale (e.g. the 9

Erika Fischer-Lichte, “A színház nyelve,” Pro PHILosophia, 1, no. 1 (1995): 25– 45. 10 Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetische Erfahrung: Das Semiotische und das Performative (Tübingen, Basel: Francke, 2001), 312.

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measure of participation can fluctuate; the spectator can also become an actor). This definition excludes the concept of a role, and replaces it with that of the body, the changes and the appearance of which is monitored by the observer during the theatrical moment. Classical productions, such as Gothár’s Lear only inadvertently slip over to this form of theatricality. These are moments when the perfect illusionary cover of the unity between a role and a performer comes unstitched and we get a glimpse of the actor in their off-character identity. In the 2010 Lear this happened when Lear was supposed to appear with the dead Cordelia onstage, and according to the century-old theatrical tradition the audience expected him to carry her in his hands. Instead, however, she was pushed onto the stage in a sling hung from the stageloft, probably because the actor playing Lear (János Kulka) would physically not have been able to carry the somewhat heavier Cordelia (Piroska Mészáros) by himself. This instance tore the illusory fabric of the performance and approximated the tragedy to a circus trick, while raised the question in the audience members (“how will they solve this problem?”) that directed the attention of the spectators to the theatrical nature of the performance they were watching and distanced them from the plot of the play. To further highlight my argument that in recent Hungarian productions Shakespeare is mostly associated with the first, most traditional definition of theatricality, let us take a look at an example from a recent dance theatrical performance which, from the perspective of an avant-garde, mixed-media production also located Shakespeare in regions it wished to distance itself from: the realm of old-fashioned realism. The 2010 production of the Symptoms Ensemble (Tünet Együttes),11 entitled Mourning,12 investigates the possibilities of creating an imperishable artwork, one that would subsist beyond the ephemeral moment of a performance. In the course of the show Shakespeare and Hungarian Shakespeare productions of the past always appear as codified, untouchable and unchangeable relics from a bygone era, monuments that though are still officially celebrated, carry no meaning for the generations of today. Since the premise of the production is that theatre as an art form is dead,13 11

An untranslatable pun: in Hungarian symptom ensemble means a syndrome, both referring to a clinical case and a theatrical troupe. 12 Tünet Együttes, Gyász, Katona József Színház—Kamra, 2010, directed by Réka Szabó. See http://www.tunetegyuttes.hu/index.php?page=repertoar_details&id=27 §ion=szinlap for production details. 13 “It is with deep sorrow and a sunken heart that we announce that we do not exist anymore. Following a protracted bout with illness, we unexpectedly stretched out

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Shakespeare is relegated to the museum of the theatrical past, in the form of a talking sculpture reciting Juliet’s poison soliloquy. The criticism the production directs towards “classical Hungarian” theatre productions, of which Shakespeare becomes the epitome, is that they forcefully keep a dead, last-century performance tradition alive. Their claim echoes the general impression mainstream productions, like Gothár’s Lear also give. According to Hungarian theatre historian, Árpád Kékesi Kun, however, the postmodern turn that embraced more diverse forms of theatricality has already reached Hungarian theatres. Surveying post-1989 productions, Kékesi Kun detects four main trends that signal a break with traditional illusionist-realist stage tradition. First, there is what he calls “radical reinterpretations,” a trend that usually includes drastic rewritings of dramatic texts and fundamental changes in the outcomes of dramatic situations. Second, there is the directorial tendency Kékesi labels “imagist theatricality,” where productions centre on the compositions of striking images. The third main line of development is a new kind of “neo-avantgarde visuality” that suspends dramatic linearity and forcibly disassembles plots. Last but not least there is the very influential tendency that propagates a disharmonious ideal of beauty. Productions influenced by this style also stress plastic visuality, and often reflect upon the nature of theatricality, too.14 Although Kékesi Kun also quotes some Shakespeare examples from the early 1990s among the representatives of these tendencies, looking at current Shakespeare productions, one has the feeling that these did not take foothold in the mainstream of Shakespeare directions on the Hungarian stages, most of which still seem to embrace a more conservative, a more retrograde view of Shakespeare and Shakespearean theatricality. Productions that probe the confines of theatricality are either experimental in their nature (like Árpád Schilling’s 2007 school Shakespeare, Hamlet.ws15), or were directed by foreign artists (as Tim Carroll’s 2005

in a comic twist. As if we had never been around. We are grateful for your visiting us in dwindling numbers towards the end. It’s hard to piss in one’s bed with dignity. We have left behind our clichés to haunt you. We have left a trace. As for deciphering it... The poor world has just turned poorer, and it does not even notice. May his memory be eternal. Or at least last as long as we do.” Tünet Együttes, Gyász, Programme Note, 2010. 14 Árpád Kékesi Kun, Tükörképek lázadása (Szeged: József Attila Kör, 1998), 85– 104. 15 Krétakör Theatre, Hamlet.ws, 2007, directed by Árpád Schilling. See http://hamlet.kretakor.hu/szinlapeng.html for production details.

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Hamlet in Bárka Theatre16 or Silviu Purcarete’s Troilus and Cressida in Katona József Theatre17). The seeming traditionalism of most post-1989 Shakespeare productions, I wish to argue here, stems, however, not from their conventionality per se, but from the fact that they indeed follow different modes of theatricality than most postmodern productions of the country, trends that might not be included among Kékesi Kun’s above quoted categories. This is why a reassessment of post-1989 Shakespeare productions is necessary, a reconsideration of categories of theatricality that would prove successful in our understanding of the tendencies that shaped the theatrical reception of Shakespeare in Hungary. To achieve this we need case studies of productions that would provide us with actual examples. This paper wishes to launch such investigations through the example of two shows, a 1986 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a 2009 Hamlet. The aim is not to claim existing links between these different productions, but to establish sustaining modes of theatricality, and lay down one of the many particularised and provisional narrations about Shakespeare in postCommunist Hungary.18

2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Arvisura Theatrical Company, 198619 Although in his lifetime he was mostly viewed as a playwright, in Hungary William Shakespeare was canonized primarily as a poet. The main reason for this being that through the first translations of his plays, Shakespeare’s name became associated with the major poets of the socalled Reform-era and the heyday of classical Hungarian literature. As literary scholar Kálmán Ruttkay has pointedly noted, for Hungarians “Shakespeare is a nineteenth-century Hungarian poet.”20 It is not by 16

Bárka Theatre, Hamlet, 2005, directed by Tim Carroll. See http://www.barka.hu /2010/04/shakespeare-hamlet.html for production details. 17 Katona József Theatre, Troilus and Cressida, 2005, directed by Silviu Purcarete. See http://katonajozsefszinhaz.hu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=38625%3Awilliam-shakespeare-troilus-es-cressida-&catid=9%3Aarchivum& Itemid=1 for production details. 18 I include the 1986 Arvisura Production here as a precursor of post-1989 theatrical trends. 19 Arvisura Theatrical Company, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1986, directed by István Somogyi. See www.szinhaziadattar.hu for production details. 20 Kálmán Ruttkay, “Magyar Shakespeare,” in ÖsszegyĦjtött írások (Budapest: Universitas, 2002), 9–86.

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chance, therefore, that up until 1989 Shakespeare mostly featured in the repertoire of mainstream theatres of the country that treated him primarily as a poet, and even if several of these Shakespearean productions reached iconic status, they rarely became involved in the development of groundbreaking or even avant-garde theatrical endeavours.21 This is why the 1986 A Midsummer Night’s Dream of the Arvisura Theatrical Company can be regarded as a momentous production in Hungarian theatre history, since it was the first avant-garde Shakespeare performance that actively influenced the Hungarian theatrical reception of Shakespeare’s plays. Arvisura, a company led by István Somogyi, was an ensemble that had its roots in the amateur movement and was later active as an alternative company in Szkéné Theatre. The cultural prominence of the company is also reflected by the fact that their productions were endowed with much media and critical attention. In these writings Somogyi’s directorial concepts are linked to those of Grotowski’s,22 as well as to the traditions of shamanistic, and Eastern theatres,23 while actors whose career was launched under Somogyi’s auspices (among others Béla Pintér and Péter Scherer) emphasize the importance of his non-textcentred rehearsal processes that developed the body consciousness of the performers.24 The analysis of their long-running Midsummer Night’s production can be helpful to understand how and in what ways the Arvisura broke with the previous (psychological) realistic acting traditions of the second half of the twentieth century and what alternative theatricality it offered in its place. According to the 1989 TV recording of the production the performance started with a short prologue, in which young couples were aimlessly wandering among the white tulle curtains that erratically broke up the empty stage, calling one another by name, just to wearily drop onto the floor after a few seconds and fall into a slumber. This short scene as well as Puck’s final words that the “weak and idle theme” of the play was “No more yielding but a dream”25 framed the production to call attention to the 21 From the 1970s onwards several amateur troupes turned to Shakespeare’s plays, but these productions rarely became popular. 22 Eszter Somogyi, Az Arvisura Színházi Társaság története, http://arvisura .szinhaz.org/tortenete/index.shtml. 23 István Sándor L., “Technika és rítus,” Színház 24.5 (1992): 7–12. 24 Lívia Ölbei, “Saját fejlesztésĦ történetek,” Vas Népe, 31 July, 2010, http://www .vasnepe.hu/hetvege/20100731_sajat_fejlesztesu _tortenetek. 25 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Epilogue, 6. William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

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fact that what we watch will break away from the reality of everyday life, from the intentions of realist theatre to map the world. The main organising principle of the production to achieve this goal became polyfunctionality, the forms of which we will introduce in the following. The play was performed in an intimate, closed space that, however, did perpetually change in its interior. It was divided by translucent vertical white tulle curtains that did not construct a stable space structure, but enabled the same neutral space to simultaneously take on several meanings. The curtains could thus at times turn into canopies, or an impenetrable, menacing forest, or blankets that soothingly covered the lovers. Even the structure of the draperies seemed unstable—depending on how they were lit, they uncovered or hid the actors lurking or hiding behind them (e.g., the Puck characters hatching [their] plots, or Oberon spying on Titania). The curtains also constantly changed their relation to the actors’ bodies—at times they blocked their passage, hindering their free movement, at other times they almost breathed with them and moved as extensions of their limbs—all in all successfully blurring the stark boundaries that would divide actors from scenery. This harmonious unity between the outside world and the player’s body was created during Oberon’s and Titania’s first debate, when both appeared as multi-headed, multi-personal mystical creatures, wrapped in these curtains. The magical, conjoint breathing of body and environment of course also revealed the frightful world-guiding power of the fairies. The polyfunctionality of the few scenic elements also reinforced the mystical, shamanistic connections linking people and objects in this stage world. The swing26 dominating the centre of the stage could, as if under a magic touch, transform into a bed or a chair. In the same way, the frameless door the artisans carried with themselves could turn into a table then back again into a door, if they so wished. The constant transformation of the scenery opened the confines of the closed stage, urging the audience to develop newer and newer interpretational strategies to make sense of the workings of the stage. In this environment none of the signs had just one signifier, the rules of referentiality were incessantly altered. 26 The swing naturally linked the production to Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While Brook’s direction is usually quoted as an example for the renewal of classic theatre, in Hungary it is strangely linked to alternative theatrical endeavours as well, since the guest performance of the RSC in1972 launched the first serious critical debates after 1945, in the course of which several elements of the classic theatre structure were questioned (albeit indirectly) by the members of the debate.

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This was also true with regard to the actors. The production not only doubled but also dissected some roles—e.g. Sándor Terhes appeared as Theseus, Oberon and Flute, while Puck’s role was played by three actors, Ádám Horgas, László Robin and István Reinhardt. Besides evoking early modern theatrical traditions, doubling breaks down the unambiguous relations between actor and role realist theatre establishes. Furthermore, it unfolds new, hitherto unnoticed links between roles, thus guiding audience attention to the polyfunctionality of the actor’s body as a theatrical sign. In the production the most interesting instance of this is when Sándor Terhes, who plays both Oberon and Theseus, a character that enslaves and reprimands women in the play also puts on the role of Flute, who in turn acts Thisbe in the artisan’s performance, a character synonymous with the female sacrifice for love. Here the link is not there to connect, but to divide the characters and raise the spectators’ awareness about the plurality of interpretations for which an actor’s body can be used. Before discussing Puck’s character, let us take a look at the scenic elements the production uses to visualise doubling. Theseus and Oberon, as well as Hyppolita and Titania are linked together by their costumes and the lights following them on stage. Theseus wears a modern red costume with schematically Eastern or Greek elements that are classified as Athenian in the production’s world; Oberon has a red cape and a half mask to complement it, with red light following his movements. As his contrastive pair, Hyppolita wears a blue costume and is followed by blue light. The roles are, however, separated in their acting style. Instead of Theseus’s and Hyppolita’s realistic way of acting, Oberon and Titania use more stylised, more ritualistic gestural and physical elements. While in the Athenian world they always stand close to each other, hug and touch each other, in the fairy world there is always some distance kept between them, since they do not even have to physically be in contact with each other or with their subject in order for their movements to have an effect on them. Oberon can lift or knock down Puck (or the Pucks) with a wave of his hand; Titania hardly needs to touch the ass-headed Bottom in their erotic “swing” together to still make him swoon at the side of the swing after her. This stylized acting style characterizes all the inhabitants of the fairy world—the acrobatic and airy Pucks as well as the swift and swirly fairies.27 27

Oberon’s and Titania’s household does not only not have to touch the others, they do not even have to see where they are going. They move with utmost ease in the tulle forest, although their eyes are covered by a mask, a disguise. As Vera Kérchy pointedly remarks this does not only emphasize their magical character, but the masks also deprive the spectators from the actor’s gaze and thus increase

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Although the two modes of acting were not consistently used throughout the production, since for instance Titania did at times fall back into realist declamation, they still enabled the performance to reflect on the contrasting traditions of theatricality. In one of the scenes in the wood when both Athenian men are blinded by love juice and the four youngsters are pugnaciously at each other’s throats, the action is played at the back of the stage, while the three Pucks in the foreground comment on it in a caricaturist pantomime. The rage, anger and jealousy that are acted out by the Athenians in psychological-realistic terms become a series of petty clichés in the version of the Robin Goodfellows. Reality and its depiction lose their relevance and their weight in the dream world, while realist playacting also gets discredited. Since the beginning of the performance placed the whole course of the action in the realms of dream, these theatrical hierarchies function not only in the actual forest scenes, but throughout the whole production. Puck’s representation (or, more precisely representations) displays the most significant traits of this change in theatricality. The three ethereal figures in identical black costumes and masks are indeed the personification of the polysemantics that permeate the whole of the production. Although they are called by name (Puck or Robin Goodfellow) and are treated as one character by the others in the play, it would be impossible to describe Puck’s figure with traditional theatrical terms. Sometimes he is a sixlegged, six-armed monster, or he is buzzing as a mosquito next to Demetrius, at other times he is a dog, or a ghost—always shifting his place and his mode of acting. As if his (their) trebled physique would intentionally call the spectator’s attention to the doublings of the play, to the dissolution of the traditional, psychological realistic character that used to appear as a unity. So far we have seen how through the polyfunctionality of the scenery, the props, the lights, the costumes and the actors the production delineates an alternative mode of theatricality that would break away from the traditional ideal of psychological realism. This is all the more interesting, since in the world of the play polyfunctionality, that is the doubling of roles as well as the accentuation of the dichotomy between the realistic and the pointedly theatrical modes of playacting are important elements of

their anguish that has already been raised by the magical world of the fairies. Vera Kérchy, “A mĦvészet igaz, az igazság viszont megöli magát”—Arvisura Színházi Társaság,” in Alternatív színháztörténetek, ed. Zoltán Imre (Budapest: Balassi, 2008), 313.

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the artisans’ concept of theatricality. Bottom’s “Let me play the lion too”28 is nothing less than a suggestion for doubling, the prop use, also advocated by him (the man in the Moon with his lantern and his dog, the wall with a little plaster on) is an emphatically non-realistic, meta-theatrical solution, too. Bottom’s concept of the theatrical, however strange it seems, is closer to the theatrical world of the production than the expectations the artisans would like to come up to, or the realistic acting style the Athenians represent at the beginning of the play. The production, it seems, ultimately celebrated Bottom’s idea of theatre more than the realistic theatricality of Athens. The acting style of the artisans was also closer to the world of the fairies, closer to a typifying characterisation than to realism, since most of the actors portray them as lovable idiots in their first joint scene, a character trait that most of them signal with one or two dominant gestures only. When Bottom is transformed, his physique starkly contradicts reality—once he has a phallus made of Puck, at other times he makes love to Titania with his head. And although order is seemingly restored in the last scene, it is this other kind of reality that gains the upper hand. After the artisan’s play the queen and king of fairyland assume authority over the court, and the final words are uttered by the Pucks. What also accentuates this shift in styles is that the artisans’ Pyramus and Thisbe performance is not strikingly dissimilar in its visuality and theatricality from the rest of the show. The text itself and the enthusiasm of the artisans do get ridiculed (since for instance none of them wants to die), but the “play within the play” applies the same artistic tools as the whole of the performance. Character portrayals range from the extremely realist (Thisbe, who portrays her [his] death agony in a clown costume, but with full introspection), to pantomime (the lion). Prop use is symbolic— there are no swords, as there were neither papers, or any other props during the performance either. Scenery is metaphorical and anthropomorphic (the grave emphatically moves in sync with the characters, and the side curtain catches the dropping Thisbe’s body as it did previously the Athenian youngsters). Even the splitting of roles is used here, too, given that the Wall is played by two actors. Since due to the doubling of the actors the deprecating comments of the court are missing from the production, the artisans do not become the laughingstock of the final scenes. All in all the 1986 production of the Arvisura Theatre Company is important in our understanding of the Hungarian theatrical reception of 28

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 1.2.166.

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Shakespeare, since, through a classical play, with the help of polyfunctionality it presented several modes of theatricality, while in its conclusion it distanced itself from the realist theatrical modes of playacting, albeit not fully rejecting them. What is even more important is that it did not only reveal an alternative mode of representation, but did fortify its legitimacy in its interpretation of the play, especially in the portrayal of the artisans’ performance, thus, while remaining within the boundaries of a traditional theatre experience it allowed for such diverse audience behaviour as described by Erika Fischer-Lichte’s second definition of theatricality. Through the second example in this essay we shall see how the use of polyfunctionality and a stark reliance on metatheatricality enabled Sándor Zsótér in his 2009 Hamlet production to achieve the same kind of criticism of prevalent modes of theatricality and to offer other interpretational modes for a contemporary Shakespeare production.

3. Hamlet, József Attila Theatre, 200929 The József Attila Theatre, situated on the Northern outskirts of Budapest is a venue with a rather stable circle of regular audience who frequent its seasons that mainly consist of French burlesques, musicals and some popular classics. When the manager of the theatre, Péter Léner, invited director Sándor Zsótér to put on Hamlet in 2009, he could partly build on the previous success of Zsótér’s unusual Der Besuch der alten Dame the previous year, but still was running a significant risk, since Zsótér’s mostly experimental, often postmodern productions tend to trespass the boundaries of classical realist theatre the regular audience was used to. Indeed, his Hamlet questioned the validity of a classical understanding of the play on various levels, but, as opposed to referencing a postmodern version, it approximated Shakespeare’s play to a tradition of the Shakespeare burlesque. If the first scene of Somogyi’s production transferred the play into the dreams of the Athenian youngsters, Zsótér’s Hamlet was relegated to a theatre, since the production started with a man in dungarees—resembling a stage hand—coming onto stage and probing the scenery’s safety and endurance. This character later turned out to be Hamlet, so the play was seemingly performed under his auspices, since it received a frame that interpreted the whole tragedy as Hamlet’s direction. According to Csaba 29 József Attila Theatre, Hamlet, 2009, directed by Sándor Zsótér. See www .szinhaziadattar.hu for production details.

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Horváth, the Hamlet of the production, Zsótér, the director had “an exact vision of the production, in which the “theatre in the theatre” concept plays the greatest role, therefore his choice of protagonist could have been influenced by the fact that I am a leader of an ensemble [in real life]: I am being directed from this position in the performance.”30 The scenery underlined this metatheatrical concept as well. The reviewer of the online journal PRAE.HU described it as “the intentionally botched version of the painted scenery for a romantic theatre,”31 while Ágnes Bakk compared it to the stage design commonly associated with “the amateur child performances given in cultural centres before the change of the regime.”32 The set that evoked such diverse associations consisted of four elements. On the centre of the stage a miniature fairytale castle rose above a cave-like hole to its right, while on the left the wrought-iron gates of a cemetery were erected, with a cross in the background. In the forefront of the stage an unusual shrine took centre stage created from a kitsch porcelain mole statue, a similarly tasteless ceramic fox statue and some flowers in an old-fashioned vase. To confuse the audience even more, this shoddy ensemble was backed by an onstage cloakroom on the left of the proscenium stage, and an open back which showed the empty backstage of the József Attila Theatre. Although crowded with scenic elements, the set could still be used to display polysemantic meanings. As evident from the above-quoted reviews as well, it first and foremost reflected on modes of theatricality. Putting a castle onstage stage designer Mária Ambrus evoked classical productions of the tragedy, where a looming backdrop of Elsinore was seen as a must to conjure up the gloomy atmosphere of Denmark’s prison, however, the scale of the castle—hardly reaching up to the armpits of the actors who still had to climb into it—at one stroke ridiculed such Romantic solutions. The same way the giant cross in the cemetery referred to the impending death of the characters, as well as to the ghost’s importance, but with its overbearing size at the same time discredited such interpretations. The cheesily inappropriate composition of the statuettes further complicated the scenery, since it downright ridiculed the seriousness of the play. In the 30

Ágnes Veronika Tóth, “Ne meló legyen az elĘadás!” Fidelio, January 4, 2010. http://www.fidelio.hu/szinhaz/interju/horvath_csaba _interju.aspx. 31 Pál Száz, “Hamlet: a kor foglalata,” Prae.hu, http://prae.hu/prae/articles.php ?aid=2468. 32 Ágnes Bakk, “Ledarálomlennivagynemlenni, avagy a mesebeli cselekvĘ Hamlet,” Ellenfény Online, http://www.ellenfeny.hu/szinhazmuveszet/budapest /ledaralomlennivagynemlenni-avagy-a-mesebeli-cselekvo-hamlet-zsoter-horvathcsaba-hamlet.

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course of the closet scene the statues were used as images of Claudius (the fox) and Old Hamlet (the mole), while in the gravedigger scene they were upturned to bury Ophelia beneath them, but up to that point they rather functioned as constant reminders for the audience of the silliness and the clearly perceivable theatricality of the production. The open back of the stage also emphasised this metatheatricality since, in stark contrast with the childishly colourful scenery, it showed the rundown black backdrop of the stage. As if the foyer would continue on the stage, the cloakroom on the left of the stage also stressed the theatrical nature of the production. This is where the actors changed their costumes, in front of the spectators, but it was also used by Polonius to hide, or by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet. All in all the scenery functioned as a polysemantic ensemble, where exact signifiers could very rarely be found to every single stage sign. This polyfunctionality was even more evident when it came to the actors and the roles they played. Similarly to the diversity of functions the acting spaces could take on throughout the performance, the bodies of the actors were also used as empty canvases, the roles of which was determined by the situations they were in. The twenty-two roles of the Shakespeare play were portrayed by nine actors,33 some of them playing five roles in the course of the play. The doubling, tripling and quintupling of roles allowed the audience to connect certain characters, for instance in a meaningful doubling Claudius and Fortinbras were both played by Csaba Krisztik, implying that with the change of regime nothing really changes in Denmark—but also to confuse their understanding of the true nature of some characters. Hamlet’s true friend, Horatio, was played by Nóra Földeáki, who also portrayed Rosencrantz, traitor to the Danish prince. Still, for the most part the significance of these doublings was purely theatrical; a means to raise the audience’s attention to the changeability of the actor’s body as a signifier, or even to the discrepancies between role and character. Zsótér’s direction tested the spectators’ preconceptions about the characters in Hamlet in several ways. A number of his doublings included cross-dressing, while age also became a random signifier for his characters. 33 Csaba Krisztik played Claudius, Francisco and Fortinbras, Pál Ömböli put on the roles of Polonius, Bernardo and Osric, József Kádas took on five roles: those of Laertes, Guildenstern, Marcellus, Reynaldo and the friend, while Nóra Földeáki was Horatio, Rosencrantz and the gravedigger. Gertrude’s, Hamlet’s, Ophelia’s, Old Hamlet’s and the First Actor’s roles were portrayed by non-doubling actors, Éva Szabó, Csaba Horváth, Éva Vándor, Balázs Csórics and Márta Bakó respectively.

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Ophelia was much older than Hamlet, and older than her father, Polonius, while Claudius also married an elderly Gertrude, him being younger than even Hamlet. Old Hamlet’s ghost was younger than Claudius, consequently younger than his supposed son, too. Instead of logics, or systems that govern our lives “in the real world” this production forced us to suspend our disbelief at an utmost grade, and accept these unlikely generations on stage. The greatest sacrilege of all these directorial decisions was, however, that for the role of Hamlet Zsótér chose not a prose actor, but a dancer-choreographer, Csaba Horváth. Mostly speaking in a matter-of-fact, down-to-earth manner, yet spectacularly failing to deliver the soliloquies, Horváth’s Hamlet undermined the general assumption that Hamlet is the greatest poetic role of all times. Ádám Nádasdy’s less lyrical, modern translation supported an understanding of the insignificance of the character’s verbality. This enabled the self-reflexive theatricality of the production to also reflect on modes of theatricality. But, whereas Somogyi’s production contrasted a more postmodern sensibility of theatricality with a realist understanding of Shakespeare, Zsótér set the tradition of the Shakespeare burlesque against a classical understanding of the play, since the parodistic use of scenic elements, the cynical use of the actor’s body as a changeable signifier and the subversive understanding of the major roles all link the production to the nineteenth-century tradition of Shakespeare travesties. The development of the genre which was alternately called burletta, travesty or burlesque in the nineteenth century was a consequence of the English theatre patent system that only gave the right to two royally patented theatres in London (Drury Lane and Dorset Garden) to perform “high art.” Unpatented theatres opened all over the city, but they had to restrict their repertoire to pantomimes and burlesques, the latter being imitations of serious works of art in a grotesque, debased and comical style, interspersed with contemporary popular songs instead of soliloquies. Shakespeare provided a good source for such caricaturistic enterprises, since, as Richard W. Schoch remarks “the meta-dramatic qualities of nineteenth-century burlesques” could easily be used to critique “Shakespeare’s cultural worth.”34 Laden with puns and contemporary references, these burlesques35 relied on visual gags, cross-dressing, overthe-top stage and costume design and presented a reduced plot of the Shakespeare classics. However, these plays, mostly written for the stage 34

Richard W. Schoch, Not Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 23. 35 See for example the five-volume collection entitled Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Burlesques, ed. Stanley Wells (London: Diploma Pres Lund, 1977).

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and not for publication entered into a more complicated dialogue with contemporary cultural values than merely making fun of them. Primarily they did not set out to criticize Shakespeare per se, but, as the editor of the Punch remarked, they responded to the occasions when Shakespeare was “injured by the misinterpretation of self-complacent mediocre actors” or “rendered ridiculous by extravagant realism in production.”36 The primary targets of Shakespeare burlesques, in short, were contemporary theatrical tendencies, such as scenic illusionism, which it refused to embrace, or the stylised interpretations of the contemporary stars of the stage. As Richard Schoch pointedly summarizes: “burlesques did not aim to overthrow Shakespeare, but to overthrow authentic productions (e.g. Kean, Booth)’s claim of legitimacy and authority.”37 He goes on to explain that with surprising self-reflexivity, the burlesque signalled its own “self-generated occlusion of meaning under the ultimately false guise of recognition and remembrance”38 that is by recalling and at the same time reversing the classical clichés of Shakespeare productions, it “styled itself as the norm to which transgressive theatrical practices should revert.”39 To achieve this, burlesques required a high level of virtuosity from their actors, and aimed at providing more than a circus performance. Hamlet’s words to the actors who are to perform a travesty for Claudius in Gilbert’s burlesque Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are relevant to our understanding of their ideals of theatricality as well: HAMLET (turning to the Players) For which reason, I pray you, let there be no huge red noses, nor extravagant monstrous wigs, nor coarse men garbed as women, in this comi-tragedy; for such things are as much as to say, “I am a comick fellow—I pray you laugh at me, and hold what I say to be cleverly ridiculous.” Such labelling of humour is an impertinence to your audience, for it seemeth to imply that they are unable to recognize a joke unless it be pointed out to them. I pray you avoid it.40

By taking Shakespeare as their source, these burlesques exhibited an ambivalent relationship to him, at the same time asserting his position as a 36

Quoted in Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 4. Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 65. 38 Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 40. 39 Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 4. 40 Gilbert, W. S., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, http://math.boisestate.edu/gas /gilbert/plays/rosencrantz/script.html. 37

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cultural force and drawing attention to his influence as an overbearing cultural threat. In Richard Schoch’s words, the burlesque is “necessarily ambivalent towards its sources, whose values it at once affirms and denies.” But, as Schoch shrewdly remarks, as opposed to a postmodern, deconstructionist stance, the burlesque has a deep feeling of nostalgia towards a past culture “which would no longer need to be attacked if only it were properly performed.”41 This nostalgia, the invocation of the glory days of Shakespearean playacting is the sentiment that ultimately links Zsótér’s production to the tradition of the burlesque. Applying burlesque elements in the scenery (the animal statuettes, or the miniature castle), the costumes (Norwegian pullovers signalling a Danish origin, Claudius/Fortinbras wearing fox claws and a red cloak), as well as in the acting style (the gravedigger’s cabaret-like solo in the grave, or Hamlet’s dance with Polonius) Zsótér’s Hamlet resembles a Shakespearetravesty in its structure, too. As several reviewers42 disparagingly noted, by taking a purposefully amateurish stance, the production does not aim to present a coherent view of the play, but instead is built up from virtuoso solos mixing various acting styles. All in all, since Csaba Horváth’s dancer colleagues were given several roles43 in the play the emphasis of the show was tilted towards the physical and not so much the verbal presence of the actors. Zsótér recognises that several of the theatrical clichés Shakespeare employed can only be portrayed as their own caricatures today. Thus his Ghost appears hanging from a traverse with a bare butt and only half of a chain-mail on, Ophelia gives out coats from the cloakroom and not flowers, the symbolism of which is mostly lost on contemporary audiences. She is probably the only real tragic figure of the production, who even returns after her death and watches the unfolding of the events from the graveside with much pain and reproach. These above quoted moments clearly signal that a serious, romanticised performance of the tragedy of Hamlet is an enterprise that is doomed to failure in Zsótér’s understanding. The amateurish, clownish, circuslike air of the production, however, does contain a large portion of nostalgia towards those times when a straightforward recital of the play was still possible. While 41

Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 19. Andrea Tompa, “Civilitas Dei. Egy nem-rendezésrĘl,” Színház 42, no. 3 (2010), http://szinhaz.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35574:civilitasdei-egy-nem-rendezesrl&catid=40:2010-marcius&Itemid=7; Róbert Markó, “Minden férfi és nĘ,” http://www.szinhaz.net/index.php?option=com_content& view=article &id=35435:minden-ferfi-es-n&catid=13:szinhazonline&Itemid=16. 43 József Kádas and Nóra Földeák. 42

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subverting all such events in his direction, as opposed to Somogyi’s 1986 Dream, Zsótér, in true burlesque fashion, posits the classical theatrical tendencies of a “safer and more honest era”44 as those we have irrevocably lost, but still are yearning for. The representative of this theatrical past in the production is the First Player, portrayed by the then 89-year-old Márta Bakó, one of the longtime actresses of the József Attila Theatre, a symbol for a classical, more declamatory style of acting. Her recital of the Hecuba speech, which she masters perfectly, in a somewhat old-fashioned manner, is in stark contrast with the rest of the production. She is an echo of the past, “the last Mohican of an actor generation, who with unbelievable force embodies a past, on the granite foundations of which a theatrical future could be built.”45 Hamlet leans close to catch every word she utters, but she is nonimitable, the continuation of this tradition is deemed impossible by the production. Márta Bakó stays on stage after the Mousetrap scene and watches from her cave with slight disbelief in her eyes how the younger generation botches up a classic. She is later identified as Yorick, and leaves to give her place to Horatio, the next witness of a past that cannot be continued.

4. Conclusion This essay wished to demonstrate that although not exhibiting the categories established by Árpád Kékesi Kun as the signs of postmodern direction on the Hungarian stages, some post-1980 productions of Shakespeare’s plays do aim at experimenting with new modes of theatricality, as well as engage their audiences in the process of the staging of the body in various media. I argued that the categories of semiotic polyfunctionality shown in scenery, costumes as well as the stage usage of the bodies of the actors all enabled directors to reflect on the theatrical and metatheatrical nature of their productions, as well as exhibited alternative modes of theatricality in Shakespeare productions. István Somogyi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream thus pointed towards a more avant-garde depiction of a Shakespeare comedy, while Sándor Zsótér’s Hamlet posited the Shakespeare burlesque as a contemporary possibility of accessing Shakespeare. To understand the tendencies that govern post-1989 44

Pál Száz, “Hamlet: a kor foglalata,” Prae.hu, http://prae.hu/prae/articles.php?aid =2468. 45 (anon.) “Hamlet, Zsótér Sándor, József Attila Színház,” 2012, http://toptipp.hu /szinhaz/zsoter.htm.

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Hungarian Shakespeare productions, further close studies are necessary, for which I hoped to have provided some examples.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1.

Rom 5:10–11 in various translations

Latin

si enim cum inimici essemus reconciliati sumus Deo per mortem Filii eius multo magis reconciliati salvi erimus in vita ipsius

Luther (1522)

Denn so wir Gott versöhnt sind durch den Tod seines Sohnes, da wir noch Feinde waren, viel mehr werden wir selig werden durch sein Leben, so wir nun versöhnt sind.

Tyndale (1526,1534)

For yf when we were enemyes we were reconciled to God by the deeth of his sonne: moche more seinge we are reconciled we shal be preservid by his lyfe.

Rom 5:11 ouv mo,non de,( avlla. Kai. kaucw,menoi evn tw/| qew/| dia. tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n VIhsou/ Cristou/ diV ou- nu/n th.n katallagh.n evla,bomenÅ non solum autem sed et gloriamur in Deo per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum per quem nunc reconciliationem accepimus Nicht allein aber das, sondern wir rühmen uns auch Gottes durch unsern HERRN Jesus Christus, durch welchen wir nun die Versöhnung empfangen haben. Not only so but we also ioye in God by the meanes of oure Lorde Iesus Christ by whom we have receavyd the attonment.

Geneva (1560)

For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Sonne, much more being reconciled, we shalbe saued by his life,

And not onely so, but we also reioyce in God through our Lord Iesus Christ, by whom we haue nowe receiued the atonement.

King James Version (1611)

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

Károli (1590)

Mert ha, mikor ellenségei voltunk, megbékéltünk Istennel az Ę Fiának halála által, sokkal inkább megtartatunk az Ę élete által, minekutána megbékéltünk vele.

Nemcsak pedig, hanem dicsekedünk is az Istenben a mi Urunk Jézus Krisztus által, a ki által most a megbékélést nyertük.

Greek

Rom 5:10 eiv ga.r evcqroi. o;ntej kathlla,ghmen tw/| qew/| dia. tou/ qana,tou tou/ ui`ou/ auvtou/( pollw/| ma/llon katallage,ntej swqhso,meqa evn th/| zwh/| auvtou/\

APPENDIX 2.

2 Cor 5:18–21 in various translations Greek

2 Cor 5:18 ta. de. Pa,nta evk tou/ qeou/ tou/ katalla,xantoj h`ma/j e`autw/| dia. Cristou/ kai. do,ntoj h`mi/n th.n diakoni,an th/j katallagh/j(

Latin

omnia autem ex Deo qui reconciliavit nos sibi per Christum et dedit nobis ministerium reconciliationis

Luther (1522)

Aber das alles von Gott, der uns mit ihm selber versöhnt hat durch Jesum Christum und das Amt gegeben, das die Versöhnung predigt.

Tyndale (1526, 1534)

Neverthelesse all thinges are of god which hath reconciled vs vnto him sylfe by Iesus Christ and hath geven vnto vs the office to preach the atonement.

2 Cor 5:19 w`j o[ti qeo.j h=n evn Cristw/| ko,smon katalla,sswn e`autw/|( mh. logizo,menoj auvtoi/j ta. paraptw,mata auvtw/n kai. qe,menoj evn h`mi/n to.n lo,gon th/j katallagh/jÅ Quoniam quidem Deus erat in Christo mundum reconcilians sibi non reputans illis delicta ipsorum et posuit in nobis verbum reconciliationis

2 Cor 5:20 ~Upe.r Cristou/ ou=n presbeu,omen w`j tou/ qeou/ parakalou/ntoj diV h`mw/n\ deo,meqa u`pe.r Cristou/( katalla,ghte tw/| qew/|Å

pro Christo ergo legationem fungimur tamquam Deo exhortante per nos obsecramus pro Christo reconciliamini Deo Denn Gott war in So sind wir nun Christo und Botschafter an versöhnte die Welt Christi Statt, denn mit ihm selber und Gott vermahnt rechnete ihnen ihre durch uns; so Sünden nicht zu und bitten wir nun an hat unter uns Christi Statt: aufgerichtet das Lasset euch Wort von der versöhnen mit Versöhnung. Gott. For god was in Christ Now then are we and made agrement messengers in the bitwene the worlde roume of Christ: and hym sylfe and even as though imputed not their God did beseche synnes vnto them: you thorow vs: So and hath committed praye we you in to vs the preachynge Christes stede that of the atonment. ye be atone with God:

2 Cor 5:21 to.n mh. gno,nta a`marti,an u`pe.r h`mw/n a`marti,an evpoi,hsen( i[na h`mei/j genw,meqa dikaiosu,nh qeou/ evn auvtw/|Å eum qui non noverat peccatum pro nobis peccatum fecit ut nos efficeremur iustitia Dei in ipso Denn er hat den, der von keiner Sünde wußte, für uns zur Sünde gemacht, auf daß wir würden in ihm die Gerechtigkeit, die vor Gott gilt. for he hath made him to be synne for vs which knewe no synne that we by his meanes shuld be that rightewesnes which before God is aloved.

Appendix 2.

306 Geneva (1560)

King James Version (1611)

Károli Gáspár (1590)

And all things are of God, which hath reconciled vs vnto himselfe by Iesus Christ, and hath giuen vnto vs the ministerie of reconciliation

For God was in Christ, and reconciled the world to himselfe, not imputing their sinnes vnto them, and hath committed to vs the word of reconciliation

Now then are we ambassadours for Christ: as though God did beseeche you through vs, we pray you in Christes steade, that ye be reconciled to God. And all things are To wit, that God was Now then we are of God, who hath in Christ, reconciling ambassadors for reconciled us to the world unto Christ, as though himself by Jesus himself, not imputing God did beseech Christ, and hath their trespasses unto you by us: we given to us the them; and hath pray you in committed unto us Christ's stead, be ministry of the word of ye reconciled to reconciliation reconciliation God. Mindez pedig IstentĘl van, a ki minket magával megbékéltetett a Jézus Krisztus által, és a ki nékünk adta a békéltetés szolgálatát;

Minthogy az Isten volt az, a ki Krisztusban megbékéltette magával a világot, nem tulajdonítván nékik az Ę bĦneiket, és reánk bízta a békéltetésnek ígéjét.

Krisztusért járván tehát követségben, mintha Isten kérne mi általunk: Krisztusért kérünk, béküljetek meg az Istennel.

For he hath made him to be sinne for vs, which knewe no sinne, that we should be made the righteousnesse of God in him. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Mert azt, a ki bĦnt nem ismert, bĦnné tette értünk, hogy mi Isten igazsága legyünk Ę benne.

APPENDIX 3.

Wycliffe and Tyndale (Lv 16) Wycliffe 1388 CAP 16

Tyndale 1530 Chapter 16

1 And the Lord spak to Moises, aftir the deeth of the twei sones of Aaron, whanne thei offriden alien fier, and weren slayn, and comaundide to hym,

1 And the Lorde spake vnto Moses after the deeth of the two sonnes of Aaron, when they had offered before the Lorde and dyed:

2 and seide, Speke thou to Aaron, thi brother, that he entre not in al tyme in to the seyntuarie, which is with ynne the veil bifor the propiciatorie, bi which the arke is hilid, that he die not; for Y schal appere in a cloude on Goddis answeryng place;

2 And he sayde vnto Moses: speake vnto Aaron thy brother that he go not at all tymes in to the holy place, that is whithin the vayle that hangeth before the mercyseate which is apon the arcke that he dye not. For I will appeare in a clowde vpon the mercyseate.

14 Also he schal take of the `blood of the calf, and he schal sprenge seuensithis with the fyngur ayens `the propiciatorie, `to the eest.

14 And he shall take of the bloude of the oxe ad sprinkle it with his finger before the mercyseate eastwarde: euen .vij. tymes.

17 No man be in the tabernacle, whanne the bischop schal entre in to the seyntuarie, that he preye for hym silf, and for his hows, and for al the cumpeny of Israel, til he go out of the tabernacle.

17 And there shalbe no bodye in the tabernacle of witnesse, when he goeth in to make an attonement in the holy place, vntyll he come out agayne. And he shall make an attonement for him selfe and for his housholde, ad for all the multitude of Israel.

APPENDIX 4.

“Mercy-Seat” in Lv 16 in various translations Lv 16 Nr 2 13 14 15

Wyclyffe

Tyndale

King James Version

Vulgate

LXX

Propiciatorie, answeryng place Answeryng place Answeryng place Propiciatorie

Mercyseate

Mercyseate

Propitiatorio

LODVWKULRX

Mercyseate

mercy seat

-

LODVWKULRQ

Mercyseate

mercy seat

propitiatorium

LODVWKULRQ

Mercyseate

mercy seat

-

LODVWKULRQ

APPENDIX 5.

Rom 3:25 (“hilasterion”) in various translations Greek

Vulgate

Wycliffe Luther

Tyndale Geneva (1560)

KJV

O]n proe,qeto o` qeo.j i`lasth,rion dia. Îth/jÐ pi,stewj evn tw/| auvtou/ ai[mati

Quem proposuit Deus propitiationem per fidem in sanguine

Whom God ordeynede foryyuer, bi feith in his blood

God hath made a seate of mercy thorow faith in his bloud

God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood

welchen Gott hat vorgestellt zu einem Gnadenstuhl durch den Glauben in seinem Blut

God hath set forth to be a reconciliation through faith (1557 NT: God hath set forth to be a pacification through faith)

Rom 3:25 in other English translations Some use “expiation” (NAB, RSV), others “sacrifice of atonement” (NIB, NRS), or, “sacrifice of reconciliation” (NJB). NAB He is expiation for our sins

NIB He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins

NJB He is the sacrifice to expiate our sins

NKJ And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins

NRS and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins

PNT And he is ye attonement for our sinnes

RSV And he is the expiation for our sins

RSV=Revised Standard Version, New York and Edinburg, 1952 NAB= The New American Bible, The Catholic Biblical Association of America, New York, 1970. NJB=New Jerusalem Bible, Oxford, Cambridge, 1970. NIB=The New Interpreter’s Bible NKJ=New King James, 1982 NRS=New Revised Standard, 1989

APPENDIX 6.

1 Jn 2:2 in various early modern translations Greek Kai. auvto.j i`lasmo,j evstin peri. tw/n a`martiw/n h`mw/n

Vulgate et ipse est propitiatio pro peccatis nostris

Wycliffe he is the foryyuenes for oure synnes

Luther Und derselbe ist die Versöhnung für unsre Sünden

Tyndale and he it is that obteyneth grace for oure synnes

Geneva And he is the reconciliation for our sinnes

KJV And he is the propitiation for our sins

Tyndale and sent his sonne to make agrement for oure sinnes.

Geneva And sent his Sonne to be a reconcilia tion for our sinnes.

KJV And sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins

NRS And sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

PNT And sent his sonne to be the agreement for our sinnes.

RSV And sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.

1 Jn 4:10 in various early modern translations Greek to.n ui`o.n auvtou/ i`lasmo.n peri. tw/n a`martiw/n h`mw/n

Vulgate et misit Filium suum propitiationem pro peccatis nostris

Wycliffe Sente hise sone foryyuenesse for oure synnes

Luther Und gesandt seinen Sohn zur Versöhnung für unsre Sünden.

1 Jn 4:10 in other English translations: NAB And sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

NIB And sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

NJB And sent his Son to expiate our sins

NKJ And sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins

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CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Tibor Fabiny is the Director of the Institute of English Studies at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Budapest. He teaches early modern English literature and culture, including the works of William Tyndale, William Shakespeare and John Milton and the history of biblical interpretation. He is the author several books in Hungarian; his book in English (The Lion and the Lamb. Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature, London, Macmillan, 1992) was on biblical typology and literature. Kinga Földváry PhD is senior lecturer in the Institute of English and American Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba, Hungary. Her main research interests, besides a close reading of William Harrison’s Description of Britain include Shakespearean tragedy, problems of genre in film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, together with twentieth and twenty-first century British literature. Gábor Ittzés (PhD, English, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and ThD, theology, Harvard University) is associate professor at Semmelweis University, Budapest. He has widely published on Milton, Luther, Melanchthon, the German Reformation, and religion and culture. He is senior member of a research team supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) working on an annotated edition of the Hungarian translation of Paradise Lost. Géza Kállay is full professor at the Department of English Studies of the School of English and American Studies (SEAS), Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, where he is also the head of the Doctoral School in Literature. Current research areas include the relationship between literature and philosophy, Shakespearean drama and Hungarian literature. He has published 8 books and more than 70 articles in Hungarian and English. His recent publications include “At T-time: Time and History in the Analytic Philosophy of Language” (Journal of the Philosophy of History, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2011), “‘What will thou do, old man?’: The Uneasy Pleasure of Being Sick Unto Death: Scrooge, King Lear and Kierkegaard” (Partial Answers, Vol. 9, No. 2, June 2011). His ninth book “És most

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beszélj!”: dráma, nyelvfilozófia, elbeszélés [“And now, speak”: drama, the philosophy of language, and narrative] is forthcoming with Liget Publishers in 2012. Attila Kiss is an associate professor and the head of the English Department at the University of Szeged, Hungary. He specializes in early modern and postmodern drama and the poststructuralist semiotic theories of subjectivity. His publications include Contrasting the Early Modern and the Postmodern Semiotics of Telling Stories. Why We Perform Shakespeare’s Plays Differently Today (Mellen, 2011). Noémi M. Najbauer works as an assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs, Hungary, where she teaches courses in the poetry and drama of the 16th and 17th centuries. She defended her PhD thesis on the sermons of John Donne in 2011. Her research interests include methods of teaching Shakespeare, 17th-century religious lyric, the Early Modern Sermon and the Bible and literature. Ms. Najbauer is also active as a literary translator. Natália Pikli, PhD, is senior lecturer at the Department of English, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She published extensively on Shakespeare, early modern popular culture, carnival, cultural memory and present-day reception of Shakespeare. Her other research interests include contemporary English and Hungarian literature, especially poetry and drama, and Tom Stoppard’s works. Veronika Schandl is associate professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Her fields of studies include Shakespeare in performance, with a special emphasis on politicized Shakespeare productions, British and American theatre history and the 19th-century theatrical partbooks. She has been a Fulbright visiting professor at Rutgers, New Jersey. Her recent book Socialist Shakespeare Productions in Kádár-regime Hungary: Shakespeare Behind the Iron Curtain was published by The Edwin Mellen Press. Krisztina Streitman graduated from Eötvös Loránd University, School of English and American Studies in 1991. She obtained a postgraduate degree in International Communication at Budapest Business School in 1996, where she has been teaching since 1994. She also worked at Berzsenyi Daniel College of Szombathely from 2000 to 2004 and Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church from 2005 to 2009 as a part-time temporary

338

Contributors

lecturer. She completed her PhD in 2011, the title of her dissertation is William Kemp: a comic star in Shakespeare’s England. Her main field of research is early modern English popular culture and theatrical life, British history and civilization and the history and present state of British and American media. Agnes Strickland-Pajtók completed her PhD at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 2011. Her doctoral thesis analysed the female figures in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. She has been teaching at King Sigismund College, currently on maternity leave. Main field of research: Renaissance poetry, translation studies, women’s literature. Erzsébet Stróbl PhD is lecturer in English Literature and Culture at Károli Gaspar University, Budapest. Her interests include early modern cultural history, political theory, urban history, and discourses on feminine authority. Among her publications are articles on the progresses of Queen Elizabeth I, the symbolism of the figure of the ‘wild man’ in Tudor courtly and civic performances, and the prayers about Queen Elizabeth in Thomas Bentley’s The Monument for Matrons. Balázs Szigeti is a third year PhD student at the Doctoral School of Literary Studies of Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest. His field of research and teaching is primarily Shakespearean drama and its potential for the stage. He has directed several plays, including Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia working with university and high-school students. He also directed the puppet-show titled Re: Hamlet, which has been performed in several European countries and at various festivals. Zita Turi is PhD candidate in English Literature at Eötvös Loránd University, Doctoral School of Literary Studies, Renaissance and Baroque English Literature Programme. Her research topics are sixteenth-century English theatre and literature with special emphasis on Shakespeare; contemporary visual culture, especially the films of Peter Greenaway and the contemporary screen-adaptations of Shakespearean drama. Her current occupation is English teacher and translator. The topic of her dissertation is The Ship of Fools and Elizabethan/Jacobean drama, with special regard to William Shakespeare’s plays.

INDEX

A Addison, Joseph, 40, 100–1, 120, 126, 128–29 anatomy, 5, 222, 226–33, 235–41, 243, 258 Aristotle, 80, 251 art of memory, 3, 74–75, 77, 80–81, 90, 98 atonement, 4, 132–38, 140–46, 150– 151, 304–05, 309 Aylmer, John, 24–25

B Barclay, Alexander, 5, 202, 204–10, 212–13, 216–18, 221 Black Death, 21 Book of Hours, 11–13, 18, 22, 31 Bourbon, Brett, 244 Brant, Sebastian, 5, 202, 204, 206– 207, 209, 211, 217–18

C carnivalesque, 5, 22, 157, 159–60, 166–67, 169, 173, 182, 184, 188, 190, 204, 207, 213, 337 Cavell, Stanley, 244 chorography, 3, 34, 36 chronographia, 107, 115–16, 128 chronology, 4, 101, 111–14, 118, 120, 122–23, 126, 128–29 Cicero, 75–77, 79, 80, 90, 95, 212 conduct book, 53–54, 71, 196 constellation, 103, 107, 109, 116, 203

contextualised meaning, 18, 187 corporeality, 56–57, 170, 222–23, 225–26, 229–33, 235–37, 240 cultural memory, 177, 180–82, 184, 186, 200, 337

D Dance of Death, 10, 13–15, 17–18, 20–22, 25, 29, 31, 235 danse macabre, 3, 11, 17, 20–23, 29, 223, 235–36 Day, John, 2, 10–11, 13–15, 17–18, 25, 29, 31 Dekker, Thomas, 5, 196, 200–1, 203, 205, 214–15 Donne, John, 3, 73–74, 76, 80–98, 247, 337

E early modern popular culture, 2, 4– 5, 14, 152–59, 162, 165–67, 177–180, 182–84, 187–91, 196, 200–1, 204, 206, 337–38 Elizabeth I, 2, 10–11, 14, 17, 23–30, 160, 182, 214, 338 Elizabethan underworld, 154, 160, 163, 171 emblem, 5, 74, 90–94, 98, 103, 169, 187, 191, 196–97, 206, 209–10, 225, 232, 237, 241, 258 enemy-brothers, 135, 145–47, 150, 268 epistemological, 5, 225–27, 229–31, 237, 248–50, 253 Erasmus, Desiderius, 208, 213

340 etymology, 44, 57, 75, 179, 181– 182

F forgiveness, 66, 70, 145, 274, 277

G giant, 3, 32, 34–35, 37–43, 45–50, 52, 61, 296 Goropius (Johannes Goropius Becanus), 50–51

H Harrison, William, 3, 32–52, 336 Holinshed’s Chronicles, 3, 32, 34, 36, 47 Humanism, 34, 203

I identity, 6, 110, 122, 154, 180, 186, 190, 241, 244–45, 251, 253–54, 258–59, 285, 287 imagery, 3, 5, 11, 15, 73, 82, 84, 88–91, 95, 98, 167, 170, 204, 206, 216–17, 223, 225–26, 229– 232, 238, 240, 276 intertextuality, 29, 31

J jig, 4, 153–54, 156, 163, 176, 189– 191 justice, 28, 149, 275–76

K King James Bible, 43, 132, 137–38 Kripke, Saul, 6, 244, 250–54

L Leland, John, 35–36, 41, 45–47, 50, 136 literature and philosophy, 244, 336 Luther, Martin, 35, 132, 139, 304–5, 309, 310, 336

M margins, 2, 10, 16–17, 19, 22–23, 25, 31 memento mori, 21, 30, 223, 231, 234, 237 mercy, 64–65, 132, 136–38, 149– 150, 308–9 metaphysics, 125, 231 metatheatre, 234, 237, 241, 285, 296, 301 Milton, John, 3, 4, 56, 100–11, 113– 114, 116–18, 121–23, 125–26, 128–29, 151, 336 mixed monarchy, 27 morris dance, 4, 154–55, 160, 163, 165, 172–73, 177–79, 183, 187, 190, 193, 195, 201

N Nashe, Thomas, 5, 203, 205, 212– 114 Newton, Thomas, 100–1, 107, 117, 120–22, 128–29

O oral culture, 159, 190, 195

P peace-making, 135 polyfunctionality, 6, 283, 291–93, 295, 297, 301 pre-performance criticism, 6, 261– 262

Early Modern Commun(icat)ions Puritanism, 3, 33–35, 37, 51–52, 178, 183, 193

R reconciliation, 4, 133, 135–38, 142, 144–46, 150–51, 265, 275, 306, 309, 310 Reformation, 2, 5, 11–12, 14, 16, 31, 38, 48, 132, 182, 213, 336 Renaissance rhetoric, 80 representational logic, 224, 226, 230, 242

S sermon, 3, 73–74, 81–89, 91–92, 96–98, 213, 337 Shakespeare burlesque, 295, 298– 299, 302 Shakespeare, William, 4–5, 7, 32– 33, 56, 131–34, 144–47, 149, 151–57, 159–66, 168–69, 171, 174–77, 179, 181–82, 184–85, 18–98, 200–1, 203, 205–6, 215– 216, 219, 223, 232–33, 243–44, 246, 251, 253–54, 256–57, 261– 263, 268, 272, 283–85, 287–90, 294–95, 297–301, 336–38 As You Like It, 4, 133, 146–47, 150–51, 189, 216, 218 Hamlet, 5–6, 140, 146, 156, 188– 192, 194, 220, 223, 232–33, 241, 254, 261–81, 283, 285, 288–89, 295–301, 338 Romeo and Juliet, 6, 243, 247, 251, 253–57, 259–60 Ship of Fools, 5, 202–13, 216–20, 338 Smith, Thomas, 27

341

Somogyi, István, 6, 227–28, 239, 283, 289–90, 295, 298, 301 Spenser, Edmund, 54–58, 66–71, 159, 179, 185, 196 The Faerie Queene, 3, 53–55, 57, 64, 71, 338

T terrestrial action, 4, 101–2, 112, 114, 126–29 thanatological crisis, 238 The Revenger’s Tragedy, 5, 222, 229, 233–38, 241 The Spanish Tragedy, 225, 229, 231, 237, 281 theatre, 4, 6, 80, 143–44, 146, 151, 154, 156, 160, 162–63, 165, 175, 179, 183, 185, 221, 224–26, 229, 238, 241, 263, 265, 272, 283–88, 290–92, 294–96, 298, 337–38 theory of names, 6, 244, 248 Tyndale, William, 4, 132–33, 135– 142, 151, 304–5, 307–10, 336

V Vesalius, Andreas, 227–28 violence, 5, 64, 108, 22225 visuality, 15, 288, 294

W Wycliffe, John, 43–44, 307, 309– 310

Z Zsótér, Sándor, 6, 283, 295, 297– 298, 300–1